#57 - Dr Nina Hood - How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Broke The Classroom

Our education system is in a code red emergency.

We are failing our students, parents and educators yet we are unwilling to have constructive debate on the root cause. Hot topics like the structured literacy versus balanced literacy debate results in sensationalist biased headlines that deepen the ideological divide.

According to New Zealand's Auditor General, the Ministry of Education does not know why we have worsening disparities in educational outcomes for our richest and poorest neighbourhoods.

When we send our children to state schools to be educated by teachers who trained in taxpayer-funded tertiary institutions, we should expect that the training received by teachers and the education provided in state schools are following the evidence in the science of learning.

But when you speak to parents, educators and students, something is going terribly wrong.

To talk more on where, how and why we have gotten education wrong, I bring on Dr Nina Hood, a secondary school teacher who founded The Education Hub, an organisation that creates learning opportunities for teachers that bridges the gap between scientific research and everyday practice.

Dr Nina is also the academic director of The Teacher's Institute, a new education program for new teachers that puts the science of learning and in-classroom practical experience at the heart of teacher training.