Tes Podagogy

A lot of what you think you know about project based learning (PBL) is likely to be wrong, according to Professor Pam Grossman, Dean of the graduate school of education at the University of Pennsylvania. In this episode, she explains that this approach to teaching suffers from a wide range of misconceptions, mostly because no-one has really agreed what PBL is and reveals how to do it well.

Could Bananarama be the answer to social mobility? Lee Elliot Major, the UK's first professor of social mobility, explores the systemic issues holding back the country's young people, and how a bit of Bananarama can help their teachers improve attainment

If you want good behaviour in every secondary classroom, the current mantra suggests that creating whole school norms - rigorously enforced through routine, rules and modelling - is the best way of going about it. But how realistic is it that a school can enforce a norm upon a diverse and friendship-seeking group of teens?  “Well, it is a realistic starting point,” says http://psy2.fau.edu/~laursen/ (Brett Laursen), professor of psychology at Florida Atlantic University, and editor in chief of the International Journal of Behavioural Development. In this podcast, he talks about the complexity of peer influence and the ways it can and cannot be used to manage behaviour in schools.

Gaming has a bad reputation, with accusations ranging from warping young minds to inspiring mass shootings, but the data doesn't back these ideas up, says Dr Peter Etchells

Teachers are becoming ever-more comfortable talking about attachment when it comes to students who have experienced trauma, but attachment-aware practice should not just be used with the most vulnerable - every child would benefit, according to Professor Peter Fonagy. Speaking on this week's Podagogy podcast, the head of psychology and language sciences at University College London, explains that attachment is a fundamental part of successful teaching that needs more consideration

There are a group of pupils in your school who are at a disadvantage you may have never considered. It impacts their access to the curriculum, their social interactions and their self-esteem. And the worst thing is, schools tend to make things worse, not better. These pupils are those who do not have a strong background in ‘standard English' This is the view of Rob Drummond, reader in sociolinguistics a Manchester Metropolitan University, and head of youth language, at the Manchester Centre for Youth studies. He explains all on this episode. Links mentioned in this episode are as follows: https://protect-eu.mimecast.com/s/oTZCC1jmXt6NBNoULm6f6?domain=accentism.org (www.accentism.org) https://protect-eu.mimecast.com/s/7U_EC2RnYiVzZzXT1MUhf?domain=manchestervoices.org (www.manchestervoices.org)

“There are so many stages that need to be gone through before a child is at a stage when they are ready to sit and write at a desk,” explains Jo Atkinson, research fellow in the school of psychology at Leeds University and lecturer in the school of applied health professionals at the University of Bradford. Speaking on the latest episode of Tes Podagogy, she explains in detail how complex a skill handwriting is and why the way EYFS professionals and primary teachers facilitate its development is crucial to a child's eventual success. “As adults we take it for granted, we think it is an easy skill. But beneath that it is a very complex skill involving many areas of the brain and body,” she explains. So how should we be teaching a child to write? She details all you need to know.

In the latest episode, researcher Caren Gestetner explains how a new programme is setting out to remove harmful stereotypes from schools for good

The perception of creativity among some teachers is that it cannot be taught or assessed – or that is separate to knowledge – that's all wrong, says Professor Bill Lucas. He explains why we can and should teach creativity, and explains the research that shows we can get better at being creative.

Researcher Catherine Dilnot talks us through her work on the effect of A-level subject choices - and the magic of maths

While some say it causes behaviour issues and wastes time, new research suggests peer learning can be one of the most effective tools in the classroom, claim two academics. Patrick Leman, dean and professor of psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London, and Dr Harriet Tenanbaum, reader in developmental psychology at the University of Surrey explain all.

John Hattie wrote one of the most famous books in education: Visible Learning. It was dubbed the 'holy grail' of teaching on its release, but has since attracted criticism. In this podcast, professor Hattie answers his critics, explains his view on education and pinpoints what he thinks will truly make teachers great.

Curriculum design should be at the forefront of what schools do, but are they equipped to do it and does the system let them do it? Professor Mark Priestly talks you through how to build a curriculum and what may stand in your way.

“The earlier you go, the more likely you are to pick up kids who may just catch up on their own – they're just late starters,” states https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/team/dorothy-bishop (Dorothy Bishop), professor of developmental neuropsychology at the University of Oxford. At a time when education systems across the world are pushing for educational interventions at ever younger ages, Bishop argues this ignores a huge amount of evidence about what are 4 and 5 year olds should be doing in school - and whether they should be in school at that age at all.

“I think it is an enormous mistake to still have the GCSE examination at 16,” states Michael Young, professor of education at the UCL Institute of Education. For those that know his work – particularly his research on powerful knowledge and curriculum – such comments will not come as a surprise: an education system that is geared to examinations and accountability is the opposite of what he thinks our children need. On this episode, Professor Young talks about scrapping not just examinations at 16 years old, but literacy and numeracy, too. He also talks about subject specialisms, the role of education and the power of knowledge to grant access to adulthood for children.

In a new format for the Podagogy podcast, Tes commissioning editor Jon Severs chats to Senior Content Writer Grainne Hallahan and deputy commissioning editor Dan Worth about the challenges of remote learning and how we might overcome them. We mention: Dan's article on remote learning: https://www.tes.com/magazine/article/coronavirus-how-maximise-distance-learning (https://www.tes.com/magazine/article/coronavirus-how-maximise-distance-learning) Grainne's article about YouTube: https://www.tes.com/magazine/article/edutubers-will-they-really-change-how-you-teach (https://www.tes.com/magazine/article/edutubers-will-they-really-change-how-you-teach) Our coronavirus guides: https://www.tes.com/news/hub/features (https://www.tes.com/news/hub/features)

Working from home is something we have all had to get used to very quickly – whether we live alone or surrounded by flat mates or family members, especially young children who have a seemingly never ending list of demands and find the most inopportune moments to voice them. In the second of their Tes Lockdown podcast series Tes's Jon Severs, Grainne Hallahan and Dan Worth discuss how they are making working from home work for them, the issues they have encountered and ways to make the process as smooth as possible.

“Deep cleaning does not make a lot of sense,” explains Jack Gilbert, professor of paediatrics at the University of California and a specialist in microbes and the immune system. “It is stage craft – security theater.” On this episode of Tes Podagogy, Gilbert talks about managing the risk of coronavirus transmission in schools, how to have a healthy immune system, the unseen microbes impacting your health in classrooms and... public toilets. You can also watch this podcast here:

“The reason we are having so many issues in the US,” states ED Hirsch, emeritus professor at the https://www.virginia.edu/ (University of Virginia), “is that there isn't that commonality of culture, and for any human tribe to stick together they need that commonality.” For Hirsch, the lack of that commonality - causing huge political rifts and leading to protests such as the Black Lives Matter movement - is down to a failure of education. And in this episode, he explains why that has happened and how we can fix it. You can watch this interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMpX033XR7w&feature=youtu.be

“There is no right answer [on Covid],” laments science broadcaster and writer Dr Kat Arney. And that's not good news for schools trying to find the ‘right' route through the Covid-19 pandemic. Speaking on the latest episode of Tes Podagogy (which you can watch and listen to below), Arney - author of Herding Hemingway's Cats and How to Code a Human - explains that the past six months have brought all the existing problems with science communication to the forefront, and “ramped them up to 11”. And that's left schools in a tricky position.

“We overvalue early specialisation and under-value generalisation,” states https://davidepstein.com/ (David Epstein). That's a criticism not just of the sports world that has been the focus of much of the journalist and writer's previous work, but the world in general, and that includes education. Epstein explains how we have come to believe that success comes from deliberate practice in a single domain – so to become a world-class golfer, or scientist, or writer, we need to start practising that skill intensely from a very early age. And more broadly than that, we see expertise in any given subject or domain as the product of specific practice within that domain. This is all wrong, he says.

“Structured input does not have to be children sitting on the carpet with an adult talking to them or children sitting at a table with worksheets,” states Camilla Gilmore, professor of Mathematical Cognition at Loughbrough University. In this episode, she explains how early years settings and parents can build on a child's natural understanding of maths to move them to being able to better understand and manipulate number and shape. It may seem easiest to simply ‘tell' children how to do this, but from the research we have into early numeracy, she believes that is not going to work. 

Perhaps the biggest casualty of the ‘reading wars', or more specifically the fight over whether to teach phonics, is that it robs a lot of time from potential discussions about how to teach phonics well. And considering every primary school in England teaches phonics, that seems like a conversation we should be having, says https://pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/persons/julia-carroll (professor Julia Carroll) who is a reader in Child Development and Education at Coventry University and one of the world's leading authorities on phonics. So in this podcast, we delve into the nitty gritty of phonics teaching, looking at topics such as differentiation, spelling and when phonics should stop...

“Is there any research that says the school timetable we have adopted around the world is the right one?” asks Jared Cooney Horvath, a cognitive scientist at the https://www.unimelb.edu.au/ (University of Melbourne). “Believe it or not, there's little to none. Everyone just kind of assumes, this is what it's going to be, this is what it always has been. Let's go with it.” On this episode of Podagogy, Horvath goes on to explore how we can translate the research we do have into insights about how we might want to structure the school day differently. During the Coronavirus, when schools are adapting timetables more than ever before, he has some rather useful advice. So if we were to build a research-informed timetable, what would it look like?

Rob Coe – one of the leading education researchers in the world – is torn on the term ‘catch-up', the phrase now widely used to refer to ‘lost learning' over the period of the pandemic. But what he is more sure about is how assessment should work to spot any learning gaps that have emerged in the 12 months of the coronavirus pandemic. He speaks to Tes editor Jon Severs about the research around assessment and what schools should do with it.

In this special episode of the Tes Podagogy podcast we chat with Professor Dan Willingham from the University of Virginia about how you teach students to understand if they know something - or just think they know it. Professor Willingham spoke with us after speaking at the World Education Summit that took place last week and for which Tes was the media partner.

In this week's podagogy, Professor Patrick Leman and Dr Harriet Tenanbaum explain the research behind peer learning, and offer advice on how to embed it in your classroom

Tes Podagogy is back with a new season and this week, we return to a 2019 episode with expert John Dunlosky to find out what works - and what doesn't - when it comes to revision.

Motivation matters: naturally, we all know this. It's what drives us, as humans, to behave and act in a certain way. In schools, you'd struggle to find a teacher, or even a pupil, who would say that motivation doesn't have a part to play in teaching and learning.  However, up until recently the science behind motivation was a mystery to classroom teachers. Peps Mccrea, the dean of learning design at the Ambition Institute, and director of research and development at Steplab, has been a key player in this change. In 2020, he published Motivation Teaching, a book which shifts through the science to bring educators practical advice about motivation. In this episode of Tes podagoy, Mccrea explains his findings, and shares the approaches to boosting motivation in your classroom.

In this episode of Tes Podagogy, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore talks about the developments in cognitive neuroscience research on the teenage brain - and how this should impact for teaching and learning.

In this week's Tes podgaogy, we're joined by Dominic Wyse, a professor of early childhood and primary education at UCL. He discusses his latest research on grammar, and how he believes teachers should approach writing.

In this episode of Tes Podagogy, leading behaviour researcher Linda Graham talks about productive and supportive discipline, and how it works in the classroom.

In this episode of Tes podagogy, we're joined by Mark Hardman, an associate professor at UCL. He discusses the importance of teacher agency, and how you can ensure you have it in your classroom

In this week's Tes podagogy, Professor Michael Young discusses how schools can embed powerful knowledge in their curriculum

As exam anxiety builds, teachers need to avoid telling students to "do their best" says Dr Tara Porter. In this week's Tes podagogy, she explains why

On average, two to three children in your class will be preterm babies – but do you know how to support them? In this week's Tes podagogy Professor Samantha Johnson, a developmental psychologist from the University of Leicester, explains everything you need to know.

In this episode of Tes Podagogy, consultant clinical psychologist Dr Jane Gilmour discusses why teachers should celebrate, not tolerate, a neurodivergent diagnosis, and how to support students in the classroom

To improve primary and secondary literacy, teachers need to stop playing the blame game, says Professor Jessie Ricketts in this week's Tes podagogy

Skilling up on artificial intelligence may not be at the top of your to-do list, but on this week's podcast, two experts explain why learning about AI could help you cut your workload

In this week's Tes Podagogy, Professor Daniel Ansari explains what research says is the best way to teach children to count

In this week's Tes Podagogy podcast, two experts explore the problems schools face when it comes to transition, and what they can do to overcome them.

In this episode of Tes podagogy, Professor Sara Baker explains why self-regulation needs specific attention in Reception and Year 1, and which activity is best for supporting these skills

In this week's Tes podagogy, SEND expert Rob Webster explains his research into the educational experiences of children with SEND in mainstream schools, and what can be done to improve them

This week, we revisit a podagogy episode from 2018 to explore what we really mean by ‘school ready' with Dr Louise Kay.

On this week's Tes podagogy, literacy expert Alex Quigley highlights the importance of reading comprehension, and how secondary teachers can foster it in their classrooms