Podcasts about podagogy

Welcome back to the tes news podcast. We're currently on Easter break, so while we stuff ourselves with chocolate eggs, we're hosting some of our other great audio content at tes. This week we're featuring the tes podagogy podcast, hosted by tes features writer Kate Parker. In this series she interviews leading academics to discuss their research and take deep dives into some of the big issues facing teachers today. In this featured episode, she's talking to Dr. Mark Hardman. If you enjoy this episode please make sure to check out tes podagogy, available on all good podcast platforms!

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.

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.

“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?

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.

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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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-learningGrainne's article about YouTube: https://www.tes.com/magazine/article/edutubers-will-they-really-change-how-you-teachOur coronavirus guides: https://www.tes.com/news/hub/features See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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)

“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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“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 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Researcher Catherine Dilnot talks us through her work on the effect of A-level subject choices - and the magic of maths See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the latest episode, researcher Caren Gestetner explains how a new programme is setting out to remove harmful stereotypes from schools for good See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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:www.accentism.orgwww.manchestervoices.org See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr Alice Jones explores the causes, symptoms and impact of social and emotional difficulties in young people, and looks at how schools can create environments that best support them See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“There is a perception from top to bottom that doing things on paper, doing conceptual thinking, is at the apex of everything, that this is where you want to be,” muses Trevor H J Marchand, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at SOAS London. “Working with your hands is seen as something for kids who did not quite make it in the classroom."Speaking on this episode, he explains that this needs to change, urgently. “We need to broaden our understanding of what knowledge and what intelligence is,” argues Marchand. “Until we establish a new values system, we are going to struggle to get the hands on learning into the curriculum and have respect for it.”He and Kester Brewin discuss why this is, taking in everything from building Minarets in Yemen to 2.6m tall people in the classroom. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Do we know enough about the early signs of mental health problems that emerge in childhood? And how best can schools support young people with mental health issues? Dr Wendy Sims-Schouten, associate professor in childhood studies at the University of Portsmouth and head of the mental health in childhood and education research group, discusses these issues and more. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Are we born with an innate sense of number? Or is it something we develop? And how best should we be teaching young children to count? Daniel Ansari is Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, where he heads the Numerical Cognition Laboratory, and in this episode he answers these questions and more. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“The notion of an unteachable child, that is nonsense,” says Dr Simon Edwards, senior lecturer at youth studies at the University of Portsmouth. “There is no such thing.”Edwards’ view comes from extensive experience: he has worked across the education spectrum, from mainstream teacher, to being a teacher in AP and now as a researcher working with children deemed even too tough for pupil referral units. Speaking on this week’s Tes Podagogy, he talks at length about why children get excluded, why he thinks no child is unteachable, and how we can best support these young people. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Every teacher knows transition is an issue. Not just between primary and secondary but between phases, sectors or even year groups. And the research is clear that there is an issue, too. Problems of transition can completely derail a child’s education, according to Stan Tucker and Dave Trotman, both professors of education policy at Newman University and the guests on this week’s Tes Podagogy. Both academics believe the problem is not down to schools not trying to bridge the gap, or not understanding the issue. They speak of the “great practice” many schools have adopted. But what these schools cannot change, they argue, is the fact that primary and secondary are fundamentally different systems of education. And it is that, they say, that causes the issues. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In every classroom, there are likely to be at least three children who were born pre-term. And according to Professor Samantha Johnson, those children may be missing out on vital support, due to a dearth of knowledge in schools about the challenges these pupils might face and a lack of identification of the children who may be affected. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The shift away from modular exams was hailed as a move towards higher standards and an end of gaming the system. But did it work? We talk to Professor Jo-Anne Baird, director of the University of Oxford’s Department of Education and expert in educational assessment See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

One of the world's leading experts on the teaching of inference and comprehension explains why schools need to take a fresh look at what they do, moving from a simplistic way of teaching knowledge and vocabulary to also supporting the development of skills See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“Once you get to real academic learning, the child discovery approach is just not going to work,” explains David C Geary, Curators' Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri, keeping alight the eternal flame of the debate about the best way to teach.Geary’s statement is based on what is really his secondary research focus: much of his career has been spent looking at how we learn maths, but his surety on how best we should teach in general is based on his theory of primary and secondary knowledge.   In this podcast, he explains the theory and what impact it should have on teaching.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What do we know about the causes of eating disorders, and what teachers can do to spot the signs and intervene early? Helen Amass speaks to clinical psychologist Dr Tara Porter to find out.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How much of a problem is diversity in children’s literature, and what can teachers do to make events such as World Book Day more inclusive? In this week’s episode of the Tes Podagogy podcast, Helen Amass talks to professor of English Karen Sands O’Connor to find out.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“Students do a whole lot of things to prepare for their exams, some of which are good uses of their time and some of which are not,” explains professor John Dunlosky, professor in the department of psychological sciences at Kent State University.Dunlosky is well placed to tell you which techniques fall into each category: he is behind the oft-quoted paper Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology. Speaking on this week’s Tes Podagogy he provided an overview of the key points from the paper, with some interesting comments on the various techniques and broader education issues. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mental health among teenagers is out of control, there is an epidemic of issues, and things are so much worse than they used to be - that is the message that has been perpetuated in the media and that has largely been bought into in schools. But the data simply does not support that narrative, according to Tamsin Ford, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Exeter.Professor Ford was one of the principal researchers for the largest study of mental health in 2-19 year olds in the UK, which was published last year and funded by the NHS. It was a follow up to two previous studies, one in 1999 and one 2004. “The question we were answering was how many young people in England have a serious impairing mental health condition. This was clinically relevant problems, not mild conditions,” she explains on this week’s Tes Podagogy podcast (see audio player below to listen). “If we look at the 5-15 year old group, across the three studies we see a bit of an increase, but not much. It is a matter of a couple of per cent, and the increase is almost all explained by more teenagers having more emotional problems, so significant anxiety and depression.” The figures for this group were as follows: 9.7 per cent in 1999 and 10.1 per cent in 2004 to 11.2 per cent in 2017. In this podcast, Professor Ford delves deeper into the data (including some figures around very high levels of problems among 16-19 year old girls), discusses what schools can do to support mental health and explains how social media is not necessarily the driver of problems it is widely considered to be.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Play is one of the most misunderstood topics in education, says developmental cognitive psychologist and early years specialist David Whitebread. In this week’s episode, he talks to Helen Amass to set the record straight. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What is ‘spatial thinking’ and how important is it in the classroom? In this week’s Tes Podagogy Helen Amass talks to cognitive developmental psychologist Emily Farran about the need for teachers to “spatialise” their teaching. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mentors provide crucial support for new teachers, but without proper recognition the role can become a workload ‘burden’ says Rachel Lofthouse, professor of teacher education at Leeds Beckett University. In this episode she discusses what makes a good mentor and what can be done to raise the profile of mentoring. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Is your child 'school ready'? Your answer will depend on what you think that term means. And from policy makers to parents, and teachers to pupils, everyone seems to have a different view.  “There is no clear definition about school readiness actually means, therefore, it has been left open to interpretation,” explains Dr Louise Kay, who researches EYFS practice at the University of Sheffield School of Education. On this week’s Tes Podagogy she talks at length about the problems with the school readiness concept and the way it is assessed by government.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sarah Jane Blakemore wants you to be nicer to teenagers. Or rather, to show more understanding that they are not as adult as they may appear and that the behaviours they often adopt are sometimes out of their control. “One of the messages of my research, the papers we write and the books I have written, is that we should be more understanding of teenagers, of this really critical period of development,” she says. Blakemore is professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London and the author of books including the multi-award winning Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain. Speaking on the Tes Podagogy podcast, she explained that we often over-estimate what a teenager is capable of doing. She also discusses mental health, mindfulness, school starting ages, and sleep.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

"We are fed a steady diet from the press that screens are bad for kids - if you show people enough of those terrible articles based on terrible research, a proportion of people will have a terrible idea about screens," says Andrew Przybylski, associate professor in the department of psychology at the University of Oxford and director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute.In this podcast, he banishes the myths around screen time and tech, explaining that our condemnations are way ahead of the evidence and that we need a more nuanced view of tech in schools.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Fairy tales, as originally written, are some grisly stuff.So why does HRA intentionally have young children read these stories?  Spoiler alert: it has something to do with the vital work of forming moral imaginations.Find out more in this episode of Podagogy!Thanks to Ask Anything for our theme, Appalachian Coal Mines.The song is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.You can find more of Ask Anything's music on FreeMusicArchive.org

“Being autistic is not necessarily disabling,” explains Dr Luke Beardon. “Instead, it is a disadvantage. And is that disadvantage a result of being autistic, or is it a result of being in a certain environment?”Dr Beardon is certain it is the latter. He is a senior lecturer working within The Autism Centre at Sheffield Hallam University and on this week’s Podagogy podcast he explains why he believes autistic children have an unnecessarily challenging time in school. “Being a teacher and having that level of expectation to engage with the autistic community without really good solid levels of support is massively unfair on the teacher, the child and the family,” he explains. “But there is no doubt we are failing these kids.” He discusses how we combat this. He offers three golden rules to support autistic students and offers a huge amount of advice to teachers on everything from pastoral care to academic support to behaviour.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“Children do make choices to misbehave,” states professor Essi Viding, “but the tools they bring to make the choices are different. Someone who has very stable developmental history is making a particular choice with a completely different toolkit than a child who has a unpredictable developmental history.”Viding is professor of Developmental Psychopathology at UCL and, together with professor Eamon McCrory, professor of Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology at UCL, she studies the impact of trauma on a child’s behaviour at the Developmental Risk and Resilience Unit at UCL. Speaking on this week’s Podagogy podcast, they explain how trauma impacts development, how this affects behaviour and what teachers can  - and should - do about it. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

There is plenty that we can all do to support young people’s mental health, says clinical psychologist Dr Emma Mahoney on World Mental Health Day.In this podcast, Mahoney talks about the statistics around young people’s mental health, the causes of mental health problems, and what schools can do to help tackle the problem. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dominic Wyse has a challenge for you: “How often does a child in England get to genuinely do a piece of writing that begins with a blank page and is entirely their own ideas because they think those ideas are important?”The professor of Early Childhood and Primary Education at the University College London (UCL), Institute of Education (IOE), already thinks he knows your answer. “I know from my own research and experience, it is incredibly rare,” he states.  And he says that because this is not happening, pupils are not really learning what it is like to “be a writer”. Speaking on the Tes Podagogy podcast, professor Wyse explores several different aspects of teaching the writing process. He explains that it has to begin at the earliest ages of school and that, often, this is hampered by teachers not recognising when the youngest pupils believe they are writing. “They are naturally curious about writing, and they play with the tools of writing given the opportunity. But in some research a PhD student of mine did recently, they found that adults did not pick up on the fact the children were writing when the children were very clear that they were writing. That is an important pedagogical lesson for us.” He argues that teachers also need a broader appreciation of what writing is, and of its societal context. That means including examples of writing in different media or getting children to compose in different media, be it text messages, snapchats, formal reports, handwritten diaries - the list should be extensive. “We have to teach writing as it really is, not base it too much on tests or a romantic notion of what it was,” he says. That said, he is a firm advocate of a mixed approach to writing: part formal, part informal, so that the conventions are taught but creativity and engagement can also be cultivated. “A general writing area in an early years setting is vital so children can, in any way they feel comfortable (at tables; on the floor on cushions) be making marks and have children interacting with children about those marks," he explains. "But also there is absolutely a place for more teacher-directed activities where teachers can stimulate with things they would like students to learn. Those things should be based on what the teacher has witnessed in those informal writing periods - that’s how they spot where the challenges are.” In the podcast, he talks through the different stages of teaching writing and the latest research on how best to do it. You can listen via your Podcast provider (tyope in Tes- the education podcast) or via the player below: See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

 Fred Oswald seems to audibly cringe when the words “21st Century Skills” are mentioned. But that’s not to say the professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychologyin the  Department of Psychology at Rice University does not think such skills exist. Rather, he believes this set of “non-cognitive” skills – including resilience, pro social skills, conscientiousness - have always been required in society, but the demand for them has now increased.   “What makes them 21st century skills? Technology and internationalisation – these disrupting forces, how are they going to shift the relative weight on these skills,” he asks.  “With automation, if the technical aspect can be automated, does that leave the worker to have to concentrate on the non-cognitive skills, the social skills? I would not say these are new skills, but they are [now] just receiving more emphasis [from employers].” Speaking on this week’s Podagogy podcast, he explains that organisations will try and influence education so as to produce workers with these skills. “Businesses have an interest to find talent that will give them a competitive edge, so [if] they can [persuade schoolsto] develop that talent to their own advantage they will do it,” he explains. Whether schools should – or can – listen is, of course, highly debateable. Oswald’s view is that a balance is needed. He believes schools should have an eye on what the jobs market requires, but that businesses need to be more realistic about their role, too. “Some organisations need to lean more to training, rather than selection, they are depending too much on the school system,” he argues. But can schools even teach the non-cognitive skills companies are asking for, if they did choose to do so? Oswald says the research cannot yet answer that question, but believes the work of professors Angela Duckworth and Carol Dweck (who have both appeared on the Podagogy podcast) is beginning to show us what might be possible. He also explains that some of the research he has undertaken with US assessment companies has also produced encouraging results of correlation between grade scores and these skills. But for now, he thinks teachers just need to have these skills in mind when teaching, and to think about the balance between them and knowledge. “We need to do more research to understand the balance between skills and knowledge in schools and how that translates to value for organisations,” he says. “A lot of effort and team work and leadership happens in classrooms but we do not necessarily recognise it as such [through assessment] . I think educators need to be more mindful of these skills in their classrooms.” Oswald also discusses the impact of big data on assessment and the “partial reality” of the ‘skills gap’. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Fred Oswald seems to audibly cringe when the words “21st Century Skills” are mentioned. But that's not to say the professor of https://protect-eu.mimecast.com/s/JDC2CO71NHAwW0jUEXT7K?domain=iopsychology.rice.edu (Industrial/Organizational Psychology)in the  https://protect-eu.mimecast.com/s/L9IsCP12OI4ZpoRT0RYPm?domain=psychology.rice.edu (Department of Psychology) at https://protect-eu.mimecast.com/s/F8wcCQ13PI6903psMChSV?domain=rice.edu (Rice University) does not think such skills exist. Rather, he believes this set of “non-cognitive” skills – including resilience, pro social skills, conscientiousness - have always been required in society, but the demand for them has now increased.   “What makes them 21st century skills? Technology and internationalisation – these disrupting forces, how are they going to shift the relative weight on these skills,” he asks.  “With automation, if the technical aspect can be automated, does that leave the worker to have to concentrate on the non-cognitive skills, the social skills? I would not say these are new skills, but they are [now] just receiving more emphasis [from employers].” Speaking on this week's Tes Podagogy podcast, he explains that organisations will try and influence education so as to produce workers with these skills. “Businesses have an interest to find talent that will give them a competitive edge, so [if] they can [persuade schoolsto] develop that talent to their own advantage they will do it,” he explains. Whether schools should – or can – listen is, of course, highly debateable. Oswald's view is that a balance is needed. He believes schools should have an eye on what the jobs market requires, but that businesses need to be more realistic about their role, too. “Some organisations need to lean more to training, rather than selection, they are depending too much on the school system,” he argues. But can schools even teach the non-cognitive skills companies are asking for, if they did choose to do so? Oswald says the research cannot yet answer that question, but believes the work of professors Angela Duckworth and Carol Dweck (who have both appeared on the Podagogy podcast) is beginning to show us what might be possible. He also explains that some of the research he has undertaken with US assessment companies has also produced encouraging results of correlation between grade scores and these skills. But for now, he thinks teachers just need to have these skills in mind when teaching, and to think about the balance between them and knowledge. “We need to do more research to understand the balance between skills and knowledge in schools and how that translates to value for organisations,” he says. “A lot of effort and team work and leadership happens in classrooms but we do not necessarily recognise it as such [through assessment] . I think educators need to be more mindful of these skills in their classrooms.” Oswald also discusses the impact of big data on assessment and the “partial reality” of the ‘skills gap'.

“Systematic phonics is the great equaliser,” states Anne Castles, distinguished professor in the department of cognitive science at Macquarie University. “If the child does not have rich language background, you can teach them phonics then they can go and read and supply themselves with that rich language, which is so key for their ability to access the curriculum later on.”Speaking on this week’s episode of Tes Podagogy, Castles argues the evidence this is the case is now compelling.  “There have been thousands of studies that have looked at phonics in various ways, various forms and using various measures,” she reveals. “We are at a level of confidence now where we can say we have a pretty good understanding that if a phonics programme follows a set of principals then most likely it will be effective, because it would fit with the broader evidence base we have.” Evidence for phonics Despite this evidence base, however, she admits to understanding why the topic of phonics remains controversial. “It is certainly true that is has been more difficult to document evidence of the success of phonics in the long term, but we are starting to see that evidence come through,” she says. “However, we do need more of it. “And a lot of teachers have used whole language methods for a long time and have experienced success. There are plenty of children who will learn to read regardless of the method being used. So it is very hard for teachers, as they have seen a method bring success, to be told there is a better method.” She says there has also been a tendency on both sides of the argument to claim phonics should be the totality of reading instruction in the early years - or that this is what people wish to happen - and this has fanned the flames of the debate unnecessarily. It’s an issue she touched on in a co-written article for Tes earlier this year and one she revisits in the podcast. “There should never be a suggestion that the only reading instruction children should be getting is phonics,” she says. “They should be read to, they should be enmeshed in a reading environment, they should be engaged in all sorts of reading instruction.” A balanced approach Another claim she says is unhelpful is that, if well taught, every child will ‘get’ phonics. That is simply not the case, she says, but what phonics can do is help teachers spot those with reading disorders sooner.  “i don’t believe it is true that all children will ‘get’ phonics if they are taught properly,” she explains. “There are some children who are instructional casualties - they have no reading disorder but have not been taught explicitly and have needed the instruction - but there will also be a group who will continue to struggle way past the first few years of schooling [despite good phonics teaching]. What phonics can do, is help us spot those children who do have reading difficulties. By having a phonics check in place, you can pick out the ones who do not seem to be responding well and get some intervention in place. “ In the podcast, she goes on to discuss the evidence base in ore detail, to talk about the commercialisation  and politicalisation of phonics and how that influences the debate, and also about the problems with identifying language problems at too early an age.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“Most things in education, we have no idea whether they work,” admits professor Steve Higgins.The professor in the school of education at Durham University and co-creator of the EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit, speaking on this week’s Tes Podagogy podcast, explains that this is because research in education is extremely complicated. “Schools are unpredictable places and you cannot control all the variables. But when you control all the variables for a study in the lab, you make it less applicable to the real and hectic world of classrooms. “Lab studies are useful in exploring some of the theoretical components but when you move into a field trial in schools in the real world you want a much better idea of whether this is practical and whether it makes a difference and if so how much. From that you can learn whether you think it is worth trying the approach in other settings. This is expensive, and you could not test everything this way, but unless you do test things this way you run the risk of always assuming you know what is effective without really knowing how much difference it makes.” Transfer problems He believes certain fields of research are falling victim to difficulties in transferring to the classroom. “With memory, you want to control and understand the variables, so design a study to do that in the lab, but in a school you want to answer a slightly different question, which is what is the best way to remember a particular skill or content, so that children can use it to be successful in school, and that is a lot more complicated. Motivation studies are also tricky. You can isolate all the variables in the lab, but when those concepts reach schools you get the messiness of the real world and it becomes more complicated again. “Even if you do have a really rigorous series of lab studies you still need to do translational research to understand which of those are actually useful for the classroom and not all of them will be” Selective enquiry He goes on to express concern about the kinds of schools engaging with trials and the impact that might have on the results of those trials. “One of my worries is that we have a self=selecting group of schools who volunteer for trials and they are the schools who are looking to improve anyway and are looking for different ways to help the children in their care, and that may bias your results. Ideally you would want to randomly select schools, but that is not practical for all kinds of reasons. So we have to be cautious about generalising from the findings.” In a wide ranging interview he also discusses randomised controlled trials, comparisons with medical research, teacher research and the role of research in education. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

HRA has students memorize a lot of stuff.   A lot.Why?Is this an example of the dreaded drill-em-and-kill-em approach that progressive educators have warned against for the last century or is there a reason for the repetition?Find out in this episode of Podagogy!

“If a teacher takes a moment to think about what they actually do in their own classroom, there is tonnes of experimentation. You try a lesson plan one way and you realise at the end of that class that it’s really not going as well as you would have liked and then maybe your new class files in and you tweak it a little bit,” says Angela Duckworth, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.Duckworth, best known for her work on the science of ‘grit’ – the combination of passion and perseverance for long-term goals that she says sets high achievers apart from the rest of the population – is currently conducting research more broadly into character education through her non-profit organisation Character Lab, with the aim of providing a robust, scientific basis for teaching the ‘soft’ skills that are viewed with scepticism by some. To do this, she explains in this week’s episode of Tes Podagogy, she is relying on classroom teachers conducting experiments with their classes. This is a task that they are more than equipped for, she believes. “I know that in the UK there is a really robust and reasonably recent, but really robust and admirable tradition of doing research in schools,” Duckworth says. “So, the idea of experimentation isn’t really new [for teachers]...I think that idea of really closing the loop and doing it systematically with measures and statistics is of course new.” The Character Lab Research Network conducted its first large-scale experiment in January, with 14,000 high school students, who participated in a variety of different activities designed to increase positive character traits. “It was a coin-flip which activity they would get. This enables us to see if any of the activities were helpful, which of the activities were more helpful than others,” Duckworth says. 'Innovation and experimentation' The random nature of the experiment was the best way to ensure fair results, but it also required the teachers taking part to take a leap of faith and accept the uncertainty of the scientific method, she adds. “Generally, teachers like to try to give the best thing to their students and just give it to all of them. When I was a classroom teacher I never did anything with half my kids that I didn’t do with the other half of the kids and so that is a bit of a paradigm shift for some teachers.” So, what has Character Lab uncovered about character education so far? In the podcast, Duckworth shares her findings and explains why she is hopeful for taking this research further, working in collaboration with teachers and helping them to become "psychologically wise". “Innovation and experimentation is what every teacher has to do. We’re just hoping to do it in a more cumulative way. “So many things that teachers figure out work for them, they never really get to tell other teachers what it is that they did and why it might have worked, because teachers tend to not have that medium. But scientists, that’s kind of what they do: they have hypothesis, they test it, and whether it works or not, hopefully you write it up and you tell the world so that the insight can be shared,” says Duckworth. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Herman Newticks?Don't believe I've ever met him.Heremeneutics isn't a word lots of people meet in their daily conversations.  However, HRA requires students to study the subject?  Why is that?On this episode of Podagogy Headmaster Nick Duncan and guest Jeff Wright talk about why this subject is essential not just for well educated students but for all believers.

This week HRA's Podagogy gets into the time-tested teaching strategy known as the Socratic Method.This style of teaching fills Highland Rim Academy classrooms so people want to know: What is the Socratic Method, why is it so helpful to Classical Christian Education, and what are some common misconceptions about the methodology?Find out the answers to these questions and more on this episode of Podagogy!Thanks to Ask Anything for our theme, Appalachian Coal Mines. The song is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  You can find more of Ask Anything's music on FreeMusicArchive.org

Executive function is like an air traffic controller, directing the focus of our brain, says Lucy Cragg, associate professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of Nottingham. This is what makes effective executive function crucial to how we learn."Some people liken it to an air traffic control system or the conductor of an orchestra, where you are drawing on the resources of the brain and coordinating them towards the goal that you want to do," explains Cragg. Executive function, also known as cognitive control is "the set of skills we use to control or adapt our behaviour". “For example in the classroom, a teacher might give a child a task. The child has got to keep that task goal in mind, they’ve got to ignore any distractions that are going on, either internally or externally that might distract them from that goal and they’ve also got to be flexible and adapt their behaviour.”  According to Cragg, executive function can be split into three subprocesses: 1. Working memory This is the ability to "hold information in mind and do something with it in your head or hold it there in the face of distractions". 2. Inhibition This is the ability to ignore all forms of distraction, whether that is ignoring information in the environment or "suppressing responses or actions that are not appropriate in that situation".  3. Flexibility This is the ability to adapt and shift between different mental processes in the face of unforeseen circumstances. This means, for example, understanding that you need to try a different approach to solving a maths problem if the first method you try isn't getting you anywhere.  For children who struggle in the classroom, poor cognitive control is likely to be a key factor, says Cragg. "In any child that is struggling in the classroom, there is likely to be some element of an executive function problem," she explains. However, identifying interventions that can help students to improve their executive function has so far proved difficult. “We know that these skills are really important in the classroom and for learning, but actually trying to pinpoint interventions that can work – there’s still a lot of work to be done."  In the podcast, Cragg explains how further research can help and how increasing teachers' understanding around cognitive control could be the best way forwards for now. "One approach is just generally increasing awareness and being aware of the executive function demands and working memory demands that there are in the classroom," she says. "So, when you are giving instructions and things to take those into account." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“Roughly two children in every classroom will have significant language needs,” explains Courtenay Norbury, professor of developmental language disorders at UCL. “[But] a teacher may not always recognise it as a language problem first, it may be spotted as a difficulty with learning, or with peers, with reading or behaviour. But very often it is a language difficulty.”Norbury is on a mission to find better ways of diagnosing language problems and more comprehensive interventions for teachers and specialists to support these children. In this week’s Tes Podagogy podcast, she explains that the first step was to give these language issues a name. “Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is now used as the term when children are not developing language as you would expect them to be - they will use shorter utterances, they may struggle to understand what you have said or asked them to do, they have difficulties with communicating with people. They say less and what they say is less complex. They tend to not understand context.” Currently, children with DLD tend to be seen as “lower ability” or wilfully naughty. Neither, she says, is true. “The assumption is often that they are naughty, but it is actually that they do not understand what you have asked them to do,” she explains. “Behaviour is communication - if you can’t express your need, or they have misunderstood you, then children try and express that in another way. It is perceived as naughty behaviour but the child may simply not have the language skills to negotiate what they want. “[But] if you were to speak to a young person with DLD, they will say the hardest thing is that people think they are ‘stupid’, and they are not, they just cannot explain themselves easily.” Interventions for children with DLD tend to be “variable”, Norbury says. And the evidence suggests there is no cure for DLD, rather that it is persistent throughout school. “Language disorder is persistent, you can make a lot of progress in primary school but it is likely these children will still go into secondary school with a gap to their peers and in secondary the challenges will become greater because the language you need to access the curriculum becomes more complex,” she explains. As for what might work to help, the research is ongoing, but teaching of specific skills seems to be the most effective strategy - which is why Norbury is wary of the rush to see vocabulary teaching as some sort of catch-all treatmen. “Vocabulary is hugely important, it is the building block of language, but while we can teach children vocabulary, there is no real evidence this cascades down into reading comprehension,” she explains. “For example, you can teach children the word they need to understand an inference, but unless you teach them how to inference specifically, it may not come naturally to them. “What we are learning is that kids are very good at learning the things you teach them, but that does not necessarily transfer to these other things we would like them to, and that is particularly true of children with language disorders. You should not assume that just by teaching high quality vocabulary, which is very important, that that will have transfer.” In the podcast, Norbury goes onto discuss the pros and cons of diagnosis labels, the fact the causes of DLD remain largely a mystery and also the fact that a screening programme to spot DLD early may prove counter-productive in that it diverts cash away from much-needed interventions for older children with DLD, who tend to be more likely to experience SEMH challenges.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“I can easily see why teachers would feel a little negative about group work,” says professor Christine Howe. “They must surely think it’s hard to do well, so why should I bother?”Howe is a developmental psychologist and professor emeritus in the faculty of education at the University of Cambridge. She has spent the past twenty years researching how children develop conceptual knowledge, peer relations and communicative competence through working together in groups, and in the latest Tes Podagody podcast, she explains that teachers should not be intimidated by group work. By meeting certain criteria, she says, it’s possible for anyone to make a success of it. “The crucial thing is that everybody is actively engaged, there are a range of different opinions and these opinions are shared and negotiated,” says Howe. “It doesn’t matter that much whether the way in which [students] resolve their differences is productive in terms of moving their understanding on then and there...What we’ve found in our research is that the very process of negotiating ideas, giving reasons for differences of opinion and so on will stimulate the students to think about what they’re saying and, perhaps many weeks later, it will twig.” Howe also discusses some of the biggest misconceptions that exist around group work, how research in the field has developed over the years and what teachers can do to make their group tasks more effective. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

 “If you look at what most good teachers do, they are using direct instruction, but if you say to them they are using direct instruction they look at you as if, and this is a Dutch phrase, water is on fire, and they say ‘No I am a progressive’,” says professor Paul Kirschner, University Distinguished Professor at the Open University of the Netherlands. “They have a blind spot, they tend to see the straw man of direct instruction.” Kirchner is one of the world’s leading researchers into instructional design and on this week’s episode of Tes Podagogy he explains that direct instruction is widely misinterpreted in schools. He believes most teachers see it as “drill and skill, authoritarian, isolated fact accumulation, one sized fits all” when it is nothing of the sort. “What is direct/explicit instruction? You have to set the stage for learning, you have to make sure learners have the pre-requisite knowledge to learn, which can also include creating a learning context for them. You have to make sure there is a clear explanation of what is expected of the them and what you want them to do - to give them the procedural knowledge to carry out what they are doing. You have to model the process, show them how it is done, and try to explain what you did and why you did it. You have to provide guided practice time. That gradually gives way to independent practice. Finally, you should assess it, formally, informally, and formatively throughout,” he explains. He believes these tenets are applicable across a broad range of pedagogical tools and techniques, including many more commonly seen as progressive. For example, he gives a detailed explanation as to why group work can be extremely effective if the tenets of direct instruction are in place. He also says discovery learning can be direct instruction if following the principle points. Indeed, he warns against just trying to teach one way only, labelling this ineffective and akin to being a fish and chip restaurant. “They only have one way of cooking, which is frying,” he explains. “A good chef does not limit themselves to just one technique, tool or ingredient and neither should a teacher. The teacher should be making use of everything they have to achieve effective, efficient and enjoyable learning.” In the episode, he also ruminates upon why direct instruction has got such a bad name. Partly, he blames the likes of Sir Ken Robinson and progresso Sugata Mitra for pushing a narrative of a pedagogy fit for the 21st Century. “21st Century skills is the biggest piece of snake oil that I have ever come across,” he says.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“EAL is a problematic category,” states Victoria Murphy, professor of applied linguistics at the University of Oxford.Murphy is a long-time researcher into English as an additional language (EAL) and on this week’s Tes Podagogy podcast she explains that use of the term brings multiple problems. “The way it is defined is so general, it really just highlights children who have another language in the home,” she explains. “It does not speak to whether and to what extent the child is exposed to English since birth or any other context, and it doesn’t say anything about their proficiency in English, and importantly it does not say anything about their knowledge of their home language or proficiency in that language. “It is a group that is massively diverse. So any time we talk about EAL in general terms, we are really being a bit reckless.” She goes on to say that another issue she has with the term is that it is seen as a negative attribute. “It is used as a deficit term - we assume there is a problem. It really doesn’t have to be a problem,” she argues. In a wide-ranging discussion, Murphy talks about the problem with interpreting the performance data of EAL children too simplistically, the issues with ‘immersion’ programmes and the lack of support for schools in helping EAL children in the classroom. “I don’t think there is enough financial support for children with linguistic challenges and I don’t think teachers have historically had enough support in supporting EAL students,” she says There is recent research that suggests that teachers generally feel unprepared to support students with EAL.” Murphy also offers some insights to the research going on around the best pedagogy for EAL students, including translanguaging. “Translanguaging is a little bit of a tricky construct - essentially it means drawing from the child’s other languages within the English classroom, so they can use those other languages as support while they are carrying out work,” she explains. “This approach recognises that the child comes to school with knowledge of another language, that it is a huge resource not just for that child but for the other children in that class if teachers were equipped to use that pedagogical strategy. The teacher would not need to know that home language, it is about a multi-lingual pedagogy. “I hope to see more studies that will look at when this should be used or if it should be used, the research is in its infancy.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Professor Neil Mercer takes a moment to consider the question, and then launches into an answer that should please any teacher who has been told to talk more or less in the classroom.“The research does not tell you what the balance between teacher and student talk should be, in any clear way,” says the emeritus professor of Education at the University of Cambridge and director of Oracy Cambridge. “Crude proportions are not important or useful.” Mercer has dedicated his career to looking at the power of teacher and student talk in schools and he discusses the research on both in this week’s podcast. He is certain teachers need to be both excellent talkers and spend time talking in lessons. “I always say to primary teachers: you are the only second chance for some children to have the rich language experience. If they are not getting it in school, they are not getting it,” he explains. However, this does not mean that a teacher should spend all lesson talking. “We know enough [from the research] to say you should strive for a balance between authoritative presentation and genuine dialogue,” he says. “And that the proportion of instructive talk and dialogue should be determined by what you want to achieve, not by your personality. A teacher may be more suited to one of those approaches, but they need both and it needs to fit the objective at that time.” When the teacher does talk, it needs to incorporate all the essential skills of good presentation (which Mercer says anyone can learn to do well) and it needs to be considered and well thought through in its content. When the teacher is not talking, activities need to promote spoken language skills in students, and these are not, he stresses, just those skills that seem to be promoted through oracy interventions. “There is tendency to think or oracy as speech making or taking part in debates, but we actually mean the full range of spoken language skills, which would include working in a team, helping someone else learn something, listening sensitively to someone so you can help them and so on,” he explains. “Children will differ in these skills, some may be excellent making speeches but not skilled in a group situation, they may not listen to anyone else at all. While another student may be the opposite.” In the podcast, he talks at length about the research around teacher and student talk and about strategies teachers need to implement to improve both their own spoken language skills and those of their students. He also discusses whether a test for oracy is now needed. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Rose Luckin, professor of Learner Centred Design at the UCL Institute of Education, is worried about the machines. Or more specifically, artificially intelligent machines seeping into education and the lack of response, thus far, from teachers as to what that might mean for their jobs.“The computer can do the academic knowledge delivery in a very individualised way for each learner,” she explains on this week’s Tes Podagogy. “For academic knowledge, in well-designed subject areas, the evidence shows that these systems can be as effective – if they are well designed – as a human teacher, but not a human teacher acting 121.” The implications of this have not been fully realised, she believes. “If what you prize in your education system is academic knowledge and we can build systems that can teach it and learn it faster than we can, you put yourself in a tricky situation,” she says. “You can understand why someone in charge of the purse strings might think: why do I need these humans? “That is an apocalyptic scenario, certainly dystopian, and I don’t think that is what we should do. But I think we need to recognise that if we don’t change our perceptions about what we should be valuing in our education system we do run the risk of handing over too much to artificially intelligent systems.” In a wide-ranging podcast interview, professor Luckin explains how we build a system that guards against the slow creep of technology-led teaching into the classroom. She believes it is about better understanding intelligence and the difference between information and knowledge. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“If we said, ‘On Monday, when you go back to school, there will be no teaching assistants (TAs)’, I doubt very much schools would make it to the end of the week,” says Rob Webster, an academic at the UCL Institute of Education (IoE). “TAs are the mortar in the brickwork.” Webster heads up the Maximising the Impact of Teaching Assistants initiative for the UCL Centre for Inclusive Education and is one of the country’s leading researchers into the role of TAs. In this episode, he talks about how the role of TAs has been under appreciated and largely ignored by government. “You would struggle to find a speech, or substantive bit of a speech, by an education minister that deals with support staff, or specifically teaching assistants,” he explains. “That is a curiosity when you consider the numbers: there are around 390,000 people working in schools as a teaching assistant or similar. It is a lot of people, and it is estimated it costs the system £5bn per year. So why would successive governments not have anything to say about them?” He believes this “policy blackhole” from government about what a TA should be doing has given rise to bad practice in schools. “As a teacher, it is easy to think that if I have someone to take those five or six children [with SEND] and they will give them the small group attention they need, then that must be a good thing, and I can concentrate on everyone else,” he says. “It is seen as a win win. But there are unintended consequences of that. “You ask schools what TAs do, they tell you they support children with SEN, support learning, support the teacher. But what does good support look like? That gets very fuzzy. We need to pin down as a system what we think good support is. Without that, we will always get patchy practice, and a drift towards what looks like it is most helpful, but that is not.” Do we know what good support looks like? Webster details the research that gives us a good idea on what works. “When you have TAs delivering highly structured interventions, the outcomes are profoundly positive,” he says. “We know that when used properly, when they supplement teaching, delivering structured interventions, TAs are really effective.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“It is dangerous to say there is one particular method that will work in any classroom in any school,” warns professor Daniel Muijs, head of research at Ofsted.The former University of Southampton academic explains that education research is incredibly “complex” and judging teacher or school effectiveness is therefore also difficult. “The research suggests you need a holistic approach to assessing teacher effectiveness so you do not rely on any single measure,” he says. “You could never attribute the attainment of pupils purely to what the teacher does.” Neither, he says, can you rely on added-value measures to judge individual teachers. “We have to be careful with progress measures and judging individual teachers. The cohort size is quite small if you are looking at one classroom so your confidence intervals – your estimates – are not particularly reliable,” he says. “So I would not advocate judging teachers by value added measures alone.” Judging schools is similarly complex, he feels, with a need to be open to multiple ways a school can work successfully in order to overcome any bias in the analysis. “Teaching is partly a contextual activity, so it is about the interaction between the teacher, student and curriculum,” he explains. “[And] teaching is both a science and an art. There is an element of expertise to it that is not necessarily captured in research evidence. We need to be aware of the different models that exist and that work. We also need to experience different schools, the more schools you visit the more aware you come to be.” In a wide ranging interview, professor Muijs discusses his plans for research projects while at Ofsted, the ethics of education research and also the lack of evidence-based approaches to behaviour management.   “The evidence on the how stringent you need to be on behaviour is not that clear at the moment,” he says. “There is evidence for both a no excuses approach and approaches that are much more laissez faire.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“Very few schools consider themselves to be promoting gender norms or particular ideas about sexuality, but they do promote lessons about boys and girls and heterosexuality all the time,” says Vanita Sundaram, professor in the department of education at the University of York.Sundaram explains that this begins at the earliest ages of schooling. “We know from a very young age that gendered norms are learned and enacted in primary schools,” she says. “Boys are using objectifying language about girls to evaluate their appearance, girls are using that same language to evaluate themselves. Teachers use gendered language all the time in schools, too.  That arbitrary division of classroom spaces, school spaces, into binary categories of boys and girls. Those kind of things absolutely re-enforce the notion that there are two genders and each behaves in a particular way.” Sundaram has researched what this leads to in the teenage years. Her research has focussed on violence and ‘lad culture’ and how gender stereotypes and identities can mean young people excuse or justify violent acts against women. “Students will start off by saying violence is not acceptable,” she says. “But as you begin to talk about different scenarios, in which coercive control, pressure or abuse might happen, they begin to justify why violence might take place and they do that with reference to gender expectations and scenarios. “So for example, if we gave a scenario of a young man putting sexual pressure on his girlfriend at a party and she says no, but he continues to pressure her and calls her a gendered insult like ‘slut’, we find that when interpreting that, young people rely on stereotypes of how they think boys or girls should behave or what girls should put up with. They do this to justify, explain or sometimes even excuse violence. They will say things like ‘It is understandable because she rejected him sexually and boys don’t like that kind of thing’ or there is an expectation that girls will be sexually acquiescent so the violence would have been deserved.” In the podcast, Sundaram discusses how schools can begin to dismantle these gender stereotypes and talks at length around a number of issues around gender, including the negative impact gender stereotypes have on boys and the calls for “more men” to be employed in primary schools. “A lot of the debates around why we need more male teachers have drawn on very essentialist notions of gender,” she explains. “So men can promote particular types of masculinity in boys, or teach in a way that appeals more to boys, I think those ideas of gender are really unhelpful. There is research in which male teachers talk about schools being very feminine spaces, but pinpointing exactly what that is and why it is exclusionary to men is not so easy to establish. “Men also lose in the game of gender stereotyping – the pressure to perform masculinity in certain ways is very limiting.”   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“The message in secondary is that we don’t necessarily know what to recommend in terms of teaching reading as there is so little research in secondary when it comes to reading,” laments Dr Jessie Ricketts, head of the the Language and Reading Acquisition (LARA) research lab at Royal Holloway university. The LARA lab researches all aspects of reading, writing and language acquisition, but problems with reading at secondary is a current focus.  In this week’s Tes Podagogy, Ricketts explains how it is unfair and unhelpful when literacy issues in secondary are blamed on primary schools. “I think it is unfortunate that some teachers feel they need to do this blame game,” she says. “For any teacher in any classroom, unless they have a selected class, you are likely to have an almost impossible range of knowledge and skills. What you have to do is do the best with what you have got. I think it is a really tall order to expect every child to leave primary school with all of the knowledge and skills they need to enter secondary schools. Teachers are incredibly hard working and they care about what they do, and they are doing their best with the time and resources they have.” Shifting literacy focus She says part of the problem is that, as you move through school, the focus of literacy shifts: from everyday vocabulary acquisition and phonics in early years, to general comprehension, and then to academic and subject-specific language. She explains that problems may not necessarily emerge at the start, but rather at any one of these stages. And also, she adds, kids get very good at hiding problems. What is clear, she says, is that secondary teachers need help: they tell her this constantly during her research. “From talking to secondary teachers, I realised that secondary schools were faced with a group of children who did not have functional reading abilities and they did not know what to do about it because in their ITT and CPD they did not get much information on the science of reading, how children read or what you might do to improve reading skills,” she explains. “It is not really seen as the job of secondary.” In the podcast, she talks at length about how literacy at secondary might be tackled and she also covers the role of oral vocabulary in early reading, the impact of reading on spoken language and the need to help students independently broaden their vocabulary.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“I have some sympathy for people getting nervous when discussing genetics and education,” says https://www.york.ac.uk/education/our-staff/academic/kathryn-asbury/ (Dr Kathryn Asbury), a senior lecturer in psychology in education at the University of York.  Unfortunately for her, though, she can't avoid it: Dr Asbury is one of the country's leading genetics researchers and is co-author of https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/G+is+for+Genes%3A+The+Impact+of+Genetics+on+Education+and+Achievement-p-9781118482780 (G is for Genes: The Impact of Genetics on Education and Achievement). In this week's Tes Podagogy podcast, she talks at length about why the teaching profession needs to get beyond its nervousness on the topic of genetics. She argues that the problem for teachers is often not the research, but how they fear it may be used.  She also details common myths around genetics (such a what heritability means), how teachers might take genetics into consideration in terms of pedagogy and also why genetics research demands more diversity of options after education (a theme she also mentions in https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/difficult-it-its-important-we-discuss-part-played-genes-cognitive (this Tes article)). 

“I have some sympathy for people getting nervous when discussing genetics and education,” says Dr Kathryn Asbury, a senior lecturer in psychology in education at the University of York. Unfortunately for her, though, she can’t avoid it: Dr Asbury is one of the country’s leading genetics researchers and is co-author of G is for Genes: The Impact of Genetics on Education and Achievement. In this week’s Tes Podagogy podcast, she talks at length about why the teaching profession needs to get beyond its nervousness on the topic of genetics. She argues that the problem for teachers is often not the research, but how they fear it may be used.   She also details common myths around genetics (such a what heritability means), how teachers might take genetics into consideration in terms of pedagogy and also why genetics research demands more diversity of options after education (a theme she also mentions in this Tes article).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“The international research is very clear that overall there is no positive impact of setting and streaming on young people’s attainment,” says Professor Becky Francis, director of the UCL Institute of Education.In this week’s Tes Podagogy podcast, she explains in detail why this might be and reveals just how damaging setting often is for the education prospects of disadvantaged children. “We find a disproportionate amount of kids from low social economic backgrounds in low sets and streams,” she says. “And we also know that kids in low sets and streams make poorer progress than higher sets and streams. So those children are subject to a double advantage, that is being pushed onto them by the education system. The kids that need the best help and the best practice, are being disadvantaged by grouping practices. This is why grouping is an issue for social inequality. “ In a detailed discussion around setting practices, professor Francis explains where schools often go wrong when setting and the logistical challenges in opting for alternatives. She touches on behaviour, SEN, teaching effectivness and she also reveals that mixed-ability teaching is currently not a valid alternative due to a complete lack of research about how you do mixed-ability teaching well. “If we are not able to tell teachers what the alternatives look like and provide good quality materials and support and so on, then why on earth would they discard the practice of a life time?” she asks. Touching on social justice, her current research project pinpointing where setting goes wrong, and a range of other issues including self-perception, motivation and peer impact, it is a podcast that should give you everything you need to know about setting in schools.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“If you have a child that is more practical, that is not getting there academically, and you do not build their confidence, you do not equip them with life skills, then how have you prepared them for life?” Alex Richards is the farm manager at http://www.westrisejunior.co.uk/ (West Rise Junior School) in Eastbourne. The https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McGynHspkos (school is famous) for its risk-embracing pedagogy, with students engaged in multiple out-of-the-classroom lessons, predominantly on a large marshland rented from the council. Since winning the http://www.tesawards.co.uk/tessa2018/en/page/home (Tes Primary School of the Year )award in 2016, it has received a lot of coverage for taking its students shooting and teaching hunting skills and for its headteacher, Mike Fairclough, a self-proclaimed hippy. But for this episode of Tes Podagogy, I went down to the school to look beyond the headlines, to find out what drives the pedagogical approach and to talk to the children about their experiences at the school. In the podcast, I chat to pupils, to Mike, to Alex and to other staff members to see how they can manage to balance an academic programme that has put the school (which is situated in a derpived area and has a high percentage of chidlren eligible for pupil premium) among the best in terms of results in the region, and a pedagogy aimed at life lessons, too. For some photos of the day http://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/listen-how-teach-a-child-a-lesson-life-tes-podagogy-visits-west-rise (follow this link) I went down on a snowy day in December and, a warning, the podcast also contains audio of the gutting, cooking and eating of pheasents.

“If you have a child that is more practical, that is not getting there academically, and you do not build their confidence, you do not equip them with life skills, then how have you prepared them for life?”Alex Richards is the farm manager at West Rise Junior School in Eastbourne. The school is famous for its risk-embracing pedagogy, with students engaged in multiple out-of-the-classroom lessons, predominantly on a large marshland rented from the council. Since winning the Tes Primary School of the Year award in 2016, it has received a lot of coverage for taking its students shooting and teaching hunting skills and for its headteacher, Mike Fairclough, a self-proclaimed hippy. But for this episode of Tes Podagogy, I went down to the school to look beyond the headlines, to find out what drives the pedagogical approach and to talk to the children about their experiences at the school. In the podcast, I chat to pupils, to Mike, to Alex and to other staff members to see how they can manage to balance an academic programme that has put the school (which is situated in a derpived area and has a high percentage of chidlren eligible for pupil premium) among the best in terms of results in the region, and a pedagogy aimed at life lessons, too. For some photos of the day, visit: http://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/listen-how-teach-a-child-a-lesson-life-tes-podagogy-visits-west-rise I went down on a snowy day in December and, a warning, the podcast also contains audio of the gutting, cooking and eating of pheasents.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“If you listed everything that all the experts we spoke to as part of the Carter review said was essential for the basic understanding a newteacher needed, it adds up to five years [of training],” states professor Samantha Twiselton, director of the Sheffield Institute of Education, on this week’s Tes Podagogy podcast. “There would be nothing on that list you would disagree with, but it is completely unrealistic [in the timeframe we have].”Initial Teacher Training is regularly criticised on social media and by some in the DfE, with accusations about ideological bias and ‘missing’ elements. On the latter, professor Twistelton is clear that – as her quote above demonstrates - too much is expected of ITT in the time they have, and she adds that often people misunderstand the timeline of a developing teacher. “We need a better understanding of the stages of development a trainee teacher will go through,” she says. “Early on they do need lots of practical things, until they have got the behaviour and routines sorted, and know it is not going to go completely wrong for them. We have to recognise that the bigger picture has to come a little later in the course.” As for the ideological criticism, she explains that the nature of ITT means such a one-sided approach would be impossible. In a wide-ranging discussion, professor Twiselton also talks about the role of research in ITT, how schools can best support trainees, and the importance of behaviour management quick wins.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“If you are a white teacher in a classroom, you still have a responsibility to think about, teach about, and understand issues of racism,” states Kalwant Bhopal, professor of education and social Justice and deputy director of the Centre for Research in Race & Education (CRRE) at the University of Birmingham.In this episode, she explains that, too often, issues around diversity and racism are left to BAME teachers to call out. She adds that in everything from behaviour techniques and recruitment decisions to curriculum choices and pedagogy, every teacher needs to have race issues in mind. “We have to start dismantling and disrupting the social structures that continue to perpetuate the notion of whiteness,” she says. “It is not just the job of the BAME teachers [to think about and tackle race issues], quite frankly BAME teachers need white allies to stand up and say racism is going on. A white person saying that will be seen quite differently to someone like me saying it, I am quite often told I have a chip on my shoulder.” In a wide ranging discussion, professor Bhopal details how racism can occur in schools, the need for more BAME teachers, and the fact that issues can be worse in schools where there is the least diversity. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“You can shout as often as you like that ‘x’ should work, but if it is not working while I am teaching, I will do other things that on paper might not be as efficient,” says Dr Christian Bokhove, a lecturer in mathematics education at the University of Southampton and a specialist in research methodologies.Speaking on this episode of Tes Podagogy, which focuses on spotting research myths and how teachers can be empowered by research, Bokhove explains that the relationship between teachers and education research is a difficult one to get right. On one side, it has huge scope to improve practice; on the other, there are real dangers in how teachers often consume research. Bokhove – a former teacher - identifies some prime examples of where he feels research has been oversimplified or misconstrued by educators, including popular work from the likes of ED Hirsch and John Sweller. He also details things teachers should look for in research and discusses issues such as publication bias. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“You can shout as often as you like that ‘x' should work, but if it is not working while I am teaching, I will do other things that on paper might not be as efficient,” says Dr Christian Bokhove, a lecturer in mathematics education at the University of Southampton and a specialist in research methodologies. Speaking on this episode of Tes Podagogy, which focuses on spotting research myths and how teachers can be empowered by research, Bokhove explains that the relationship between teachers and education research is a difficult one to get right. On one side, it has huge scope to improve practice; on the other, there are real dangers in how teachers often consume research. Bokhove – a former teacher - identifies some prime examples of where he feels research has been oversimplified or misconstrued by educators, including popular work from the likes of ED Hirsch and John Sweller. He also details things teachers should look for in research and discusses issues such as publication bias.

“The curriculum is quite weird, the learning a certain feature at a certain point, I do not understand that at all,” says Mark Brenchley, associate research fellow at the Centre for Research in Writing at the University of Exeter.  He and Ian Cushing, a teaching fellow in English linguistics at University College London, believe that is not the only weird thing about grammar teaching in schools and how teachers perceive grammar. In the 8 December issue of Tes, they detail a number of these aspects and in this episode of Tes Podagogy they build on these and add a few more.  In an advice-packed podcast the pair discuss how to teach grammar most effectively, what impact grammar teaching has on writing, why grammar is “fuzzy”, how we empower teachers to be more confident with grammarand the delightful sounding “noun-y nouns”.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The last thing Sir Kevan Collins, chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), wants teachers to do is to log on to the organisations Teaching and Learning Toolkit and read it like a prescription: do this, then this, this number of times a day.“We are absolutely not looking to nail what works – there are no absolutes in this,” he explains. “It is always about trying to reduce your uncertainty, to get a bit more confidence about what you do.” For Sir Kevan, research is only useful when it is viewed in the context of a teacher’s own classroom and is part of a much broader body of knowledge. He expands upon this theme in this episode of Tes Podagogy, discussing whether research is useful to teachers and how it should be used. He also tackles criticisms of the EEF’s work, including the use of “months progress” as a measure of potential impact of an intervention, the reliance on RCTs and the lack of analysis of specific SEND interventions. Across all these themes, though, is an insistence that research is something that should empower teachers, not dictate to them. “It should be the starting point of a conversation,” he says, “not telling you what to do” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The education author and teacher explains how teachers need to set out and establish routines for learning behaviour so all children can thrive“Sometimes our most rigorous intentions in the classroom are undone by a lack of the attention to mundane details of how things should go right,” says Doug Lemov. He details some of the routines that he advocates in the podcast, including ‘cold calling’ and ‘tracking’. He also details the theory behind his work, and  discusses the role of knowledge in learning to read, how to establish behaviour systems and how teachers need to be more appreciated.  “The best teachers are outstanding problem solvers. They are some of the smartest and most important people in our society,” he says. The videos Doug mentions can be found here: http://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/videos-go-podogogy-interview/     See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“People used to think dyslexia was a clear cut syndrome with signs and syndromes like a medical disease, but it is actually much more like blood pressure – it can range from very low to very high,” explains professor Margaret Snowling, president of St John’s College Oxford and one of the world’s leading dyslexia researchers.Speaking on the Tes Podagogy podcast, she addresses numerous others myths around the condition, provides some tips and strategies to support dyslexic learners  and explains that education is still missing opportunities to help students with dyslexia get support at an earlier stage. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“Schools can create a climate where bullying becomes more acceptable," says Cambridge University Phd researcher Luke Roberts. He has done extensive research into bullying and finds that what most schools are doing is not only ineffective, but in some cases schools can also make things worse. In this podcast, he talks about effective ways of tackling bullying, why we need to change our language and approaches, and why we may need to get rid of those anti-bullying display boards in schools.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Anders Ericsson, professor of Psychology at Florida State University and the academic behind deliberate practice theory, discusses his expertise research and how to ensure students work at their peak performance.NOTE: there is some slight clipping of the sound on this podcast due to a technical issue due to the international phone line, it should hopefully not spoil your enjoyment of the interview  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Uta Frith is one of the world's leading experts on autism and emeritus professor of cognitive development at UCL. In this episode, she talks about damaging stereotypes and myths that surround autism and how teachers are crucial to the devlopment of children with autism. She also talks about the best ways for teachers to assist autistic students.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Carol Dweck, Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and the woman behind Growth Mindset theory, explains how her theory has been misinterpreted, what she has to say to her critics and her efforts to create a growth mindset pedagogy See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Professors Robert and Elizabeth Bjork are among the world's leading researchers into memory and learning. For this podcast, they discuss what teachers need to know about memory and explain how group work, tailoring content to student interests and testing are key to helping students retain knowledge.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr Sara Baker of the Cambridge Unviversity PEDAL centre explains why we may have got play wrong in education - she asks whether we should be more playful as chidlren progress through school, rather than less? She also talks EYFS, YR to Y1 transition, why secondary teachers are more playful than they think they are and the importance of matching teaching to cognitive development.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The renowned reading expert, professor of psychology at the Unviersity of Virginia, and author of numerous education books including Why Don't Students Like School?  talks to the Tes Podagogy podcast about the three processes children need to get right to become successful readers and why teachers need to overcome the fact that phonics resources tend to be 'boring'.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In episode three of Tes Podagogy, professor Linda Graham, a leading researcher into behaviour in the classroom, talks 'No Excuses' policies, misdiagnosed SEND, "productive discipline", and students "hard-baked" to be disruptive by ineffective school behaviour mangement policies See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the second episode of Tes Podagogy - the Tes podcast all about teaching and learning – Dylan Wiliam, emeritus professor of assessment at UCL Institute of Education author of books including Inside the Black Box, talks about the complex relationship between education research and classroom practice and ruminats upon everything from Dweck's Mindset theory to John Sweller's Cogntiive Load Theory.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the first episode of Tes Podagogy - the Tes podcast all about teaching and learning – Daisy Christodoulou, author of Seven Myths About Education and Making Good Progress – explains why assessment is important, how teachers can do it better and why it's much more interesting than some would have you believe.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It's been fun, everybody, but summer is upon us – it's time to say goodbye to season 1 of Podagogy! Before we head off, though, tune in for our final thoughts on what this project has meant to us, what topics we still want to cover, and also some exciting news about our plans for next year. Thanks for listening, everybody!

Sometimes, students say that they feel "stuck" at a certain grade – no matter how hard they work on a given assignment, they claim, they'll still end up with the same grade as they always get. This week on Podagogy, we investigate this phenomenon: are there things we do that can make students feel stuck? How fair are our grading practices, really? Get ready for some vulnerable moments, folks!

This week, your Podagogy hosts take a field trip to our school's new i.d.Lab, our very own MakerSpace. We'll give you a virtual tour of the lab, and then we'll brainstorm some ways to use such a space in our English classes. How much of a difference does location really make in the kind of learning that happens? And why, according to one of your hosts, is foam core an extremely important teaching tool?

This week, we are so excited to welcome Michael Godsey as our special guest! Michael teaches English in San Luis Obispo, CA, and he's written several articles on education for The Atlantic. We were so inspired by his latest article, "The Value of Using Podcasts in Class," that we reached out and asked if he would call in as a guest on Podagogy. Read his article first (http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/the-benefits-of-podcasts-in-class/473925/), and then take a listen! And thanks so much to Michael for joining us this week – you can find more information about him on his website, www.mrgodsey.com. Stay tuned through the very end of the episode... you won't want to miss the last few seconds!

We're back from our spring hiatus! In this episode, we welcome longtime Podagogy fan Tom White as our guest. In his role as our school's Director of Faculty Development, Tom's been thinking a lot about what faculty members can be working on outside the classroom to improve what happens inside the classroom. Give us a listen!