Emma & Tom Talk Teaching

It's a momentous day for the PGCE podcast! This week we managed to meet and record in person, which was the first time we'd seen each other outside of a screen for FIVE MONTHS. And it's doubly momentous because this is our first episode sound-edited by Emma! Using some suitably social-distance-friendly long cables, we produced our first al fresco recording, to bring you a quick reflection and reminiscence on season 2 of the podcast, plus a look forward to some of the goodies we've got planned for you in season 3. We hope everyone's having a wonderful summer, and are keeping well and safe. Enjoy the rest of it, and we'll be back with our first full episode of season 3 on Friday 4th September, bright and early as usual. Bye for now!     ---------- Recorded at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 11th August 2020

It's the final episode for this season of the PGCE podcast, and we've got a fascinating discussion that gives our listeners plenty to chew over, whether you're a brand-new member of the profession or a high-powered senior leader. We're joined again by Dr Judith Kneen to discuss an article she has lead-authored, entitled Pioneer teachers: how far can individual teachers achieve agency within curriculum development? We hear a lot about the need for teachers to have more agency - the power to do things, essentially - and this is a major change in direction after decades in which teacher agency has been reduced by the introduction of a central National Curriculum and an increasingly challenging accountability culture. Here in Wales, our pioneer teachers, who met to co-construct the new curriculum documents for the Curriculum for Wales were essentially also pioneers of a major shift in teacher agency. Judith was there during the process to see what it looked like. Judith's article asks some powerful questions about the extent of teachers' agency at primary and secondary, and how the view changes if you look at the individual, school or national level. The findings raise some challenging topics of conversation about where the potential sticking-points for teacher agency lie, and where we need to look to address potential obstacles to giving teachers the agency they need. In a final run-out for the regular slots this year, Tom returns to the celebrated Daisy Christodoulou for a book recommendation (and is a lot more positive than last time), the team reflect on how we use our existing teacher skills to navigate the brave new world of coronavirus-lockdown remote teaching, and Emma's wellbeing recommendation is a stock-take of all the things we've stopped doing during the pandemic. Do we really need to start doing them all again once things are back to normal? Judith's article will be published somewhere once the academic peer-review process reaches its slow and stately conclusion; we'll update these show-notes with a reference once publication is complete. That's it for this academic year. Thanks for sticking with us, especially while we worked out how to keep recording while in separate locations - apologies for the lapses in sound quality. Our very best wishes to all our listeners, and especially the Initial Teacher Education students of Cardiff Metropolitan University (PGCE and BA) who have been loyal and supportive listeners this year, and many of whom had to deal with the shutdown of their schools mid-placement. Once we've recovered from the insanity that is the end of the PGCE year, we'll record a few bits and bobs to see you through the summer, so keep an eye on your podcast feeds. Please do rate and review us, and tell your friends about the podcast. We'd love to hear your suggestions for topics for next year (we will be back!) so feel free to tweet us: @ethayer_cmu and @thomasbreeze. Have a wonderful summer, keep well and we'll be back very soon! All the best from Emma and Tom   ---------- Recorded remotely on 27th May 2020 We're joined again by Dr Judith Kneen to discuss an article she has lead-authored, entitled Pioneer teachers: how far can individual teachers achieve agency within curriculum development? We hear a lot about the need for teachers to have more agency - the power to do things, essentially - and this is a major change in direction after decades in which teacher agency has been reduced by the introduction of a central National Curriculum and an increasingly challenging accountability culture. Here in Wales, our pioneer teachers, who met to co-construct the new curriculum documents for the Curriculum for Wales were essentially also pioneers of a major shift in teacher agency. Judith was there during the process to see what it looked like. Judith's article asks some powerful questions about the extent of teachers' agency at primary and secondary, and how the view changes if you look at the individual, school or national level. The findings raise some challenging topics of conversation about where the potential sticking-points for teacher agency lie, and where we need to look to address potential obstacles to giving teachers the agency they need. In a final run-out for the regular slots this year, Tom returns to the celebrated Daisy Christodoulou for a book recommendation (and is a lot more positive than last time), the team reflect on how we use our existing teacher skills to navigate the brave new world of coronavirus-lockdown remote teaching, and Emma's wellbeing recommendation is a stock-take of all the things we've stopped doing during the pandemic. Do we really need to start doing them all again once things are back to normal? Judith's article will be published somewhere once the academic peer-review process reaches its slow and stately conclusion; we'll update these show-notes with a reference once publication is complete. That's it for this academic year. Thanks for sticking with us, especially while we worked out how to keep recording while in separate locations - apologies for the lapses in sound quality. Our very best wishes to all our listeners, and especially the Initial Teacher Education students of Cardiff Metropolitan University (PGCE and BA) who have been loyal and supportive listeners this year, and many of whom had to deal with the shutdown of their schools mid-placement. Once we've recovered from the insanity that is the end of the PGCE year, we'll record a few bits and bobs to see you through the summer, so keep an eye on your podcast feeds. Please do rate and review us, and tell your friends about the podcast. We'd love to hear your suggestions for topics for next year (we will be back!) so feel free to tweet us: @ethayer_cmu and @thomasbreeze. Have a wonderful summer, keep well and we'll be back very soon! All the best from Emma and Tom   ---------- Recorded remotely on 27th May 2020

In an episode which was bumped from its original position in the schedule by the global Coronavirus pandemic, we've gathered together two of our international student teachers - both from Canada - to talk about what it's like to train as a teacher in Wales when you've come to us from another country. From the practicalities of explaining to the pupils where you're from to the differences between education systems, Rachel and Ben have got first-hand advice for anyone looking to take the plunge and hop on a plane! We certainly hope you'll consider coming to train in Wales soon! Our regular slots this episode focus heavily on how to stay happy and well when you've come to a new country to do a challenging course, so keep listening to the end for some great advice. If you're in Canada and want to teach abroad, you can check out canteach.net, and anyone outside the UK can contact our wonderful international office at cardiffmet.ac.uk/international   ---------- Recorded at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 7th February 2020

Our recent mega-episode on curriculum design featured, amongst other stars, Dr Kevin Smith from Cardiff University. His presentation to our student teachers encouraged them to think about their values and beliefs, and question everything, while also giving them a rucksack-full of book recommendations. We decided it would be good to invite Dr Kevin back for a longer discussion about curriculum theory and, undeterred by the Coronavirus lockdown, we got him on the line from his house to expand on his ideas. We hope you enjoy our discussion! Dr Kevin Smith’s blog can be found here: https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/drkevinsmith/   Reading List   Curriculum Theorists: Elliot Eisner Paulo Freire Henry Giroux William Pinar Joseph Schwab Ralph Tyler   Books: March, C. J., & Willis, G. (2007) Curriculum: alternative approaches, ongoing issues. Upper Saddle River, NJ: University of Rhode Island Pinar, W., Reynolds, W., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. (1995). Understanding curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. New York: Peter Lang. Tyler, R.W. (1949) Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. London: The University of Chicago Press.     ---------- Recorded remotely on 16th April 2020

We’ve travelled a whole mile away from campus for this episode, for the very first ResearchED Cymru event. ResearchED is an organisation aimed at bringing educational research to teachers in a way they can use, promoting the idea that knowing about the clues to ‘what works’ that current research gives us as teachers can save us chasing myths or getting stuck in practice that’s not the best for our pupils. ResearchED events happen on Saturdays, and this year the organisation came to Wales for the first time. There was a star-studded list of speakers for teachers to choose from… and us! While we waited to give our presentation on cross-curricular pedagogies in the expressive arts (see episode 2 of this season of the podcast for details of what we were talking about), we attended some interesting presentations, watched a video message from the mighty Dylan Wiliam, and grabbed some informal interviews with some of the big-name speakers. Now we’ve glued it all together, along with an interview with Gareth Rein who organised the event, and our own musings on the day, to give a flavour of ResearchED to anyone who hasn’t managed to attend the real thing. Our grateful thanks to everyone who contributed to this episode, and to ResearchED for inviting us to speak!   Our contributors this episode, in order of appearance: Gareth Rein (Headteacher of St Joseph’s RC Primary School, Penarth) Dylan Wiliam (Emeritus Professor of educational assessment at UCL, co-author of the seminal Inside the Black Box and AfL guru) Mary Myatt (author of The Curriculum: Gallimaufry to Coherence) David Didau (author of Making Kids Cleverer: A Manifesto for Closing the Advantage Gap and loads of other books) We also feature a blog post by John Tomsett, headteacher of Huntington School in York, which you can find here.     ---------- Recorded at Cardiff High School on 29th February 2020

With the nation still in lockdown, and no prospect of normal life resuming, our intrepid podcasting pair have used all the ingenuity and bloody-mindedness that comes as standard with classroom teachers everywhere to bring you some light relief, despite our enforced separation now well into its third week (or fifth, by the time this hits your devices). With Emma still speaking down the line from her house, and Tom’s car parked in his street doing sterling work as a recording studio (picking up the all-important WiFi signal through the front room window), we’ve scoured the internet to bring you our trademark mix of high-minded, substantial reflection on the world of education (Emma) and a load of bizarre ramblings from way out of left-field (Tom). We flatter ourselves that the overall effect is something that will at least while away 40 minutes of lockdown time, so kick back, ignore your children trashing the house [or is that just mine? - Tom] and enjoy the audio equivalent of that meal you cooked from things you chipped from the ice encrusting the inside of your freezer when you were too scared to get fresh food from the shops. As an added bonus, listen with a mixture of horror and pity as our flimsy masks of professionalism finally slip and we get an unstoppable case of the giggles courtesy of Tom’s final offering. If you’ve been affected by any of the issues raised in this programme (basically, if you are a senior leader who wants to put the case for misunderstood SLT everywhere, or you have suggestions for crimes against education that are punishable through the medium of cake) please tweet us: @ethayer_cmu or @thomasbreeze We’ll be back in a fortnight with an audio relic from a distant age, when ‘social distancing’ was that thing you did when you sat at the opposite end of the staff meeting from the person who asks all the awkward questions: namely, our episode from ResearchED Cymru. We’ve got exclusive interviews with Mary Myatt and David Didau, plus a talk from the almighty Dylan Wiliam (of ‘Inside the Black Box’ fame) himself. Stay safe!     ---------- Recorded remotely on 1st April 2020

In an unfortunate quirk of the episode schedule, we were originally going to put out a lovely episode about our community of international students who travel to Wales to train as teachers here. But that just seemed like adding insult to injury when we’re all confined to our homes by the global Covid-19 pandemic, so we’ve postponed the release of that episode and cobbled together a lockdown special for you to enjoy, if enjoy is the right word. With Tom sitting in a deserted university campus and Emma speaking down-the-line from her house, we discuss the very sudden transition of educational institutions to remote learning approaches. What can we realistically expect to achieve as teachers in this new environment, and how do we keep a critical eye when investigating the huge flood of resources that have been kindly made available by individuals and institutions as a response to the global lockdown? We’re assisted by a blog post from the mighty Tom Sherrington which gives lots of practical advice to those grappling with a new way of working. With many of us wondering whether we might have more time to read, reflect and ponder the big educational questions, we also bring you a discussion of a chapter of Mary Myatt’s book The Curriculum: Gallimaufry to Coherence which started off as a remote-learning resource for our students before being repackaged for our podcast audience. We’ll do our best to keep our normal service going as much as possible, and hope all our listeners and their families and friends are keeping safe and well.     ---------- Recorded remotely on 20th March 2020

While anyone who knows anything about education (and especially primary education) will know that literacy is a Very Big Deal, our guests this episode want to talk about something very specific and slightly different: reading for pleasure. Could it be that such a strong focus on literacy skills might mean that the simple pleasure of reading things for fun might be getting squeezed out? How can we as teachers help our pupils to be motivated to read for pleasure? In the last of our suite of episodes this year on the theme of literacy (the others being episodes 6 and 7), we're joined by Jo Bowers from Cardiff Metropolitan University, Claire Douglas from Clytha Primary School in Newport and Lucy Matthews from Llanedeyrn Primary School in Cardiff to discuss how they have set up a 'reading for pleasure' group for teachers to support them in knowing what books are out there and how to get pupils reading. If you're inspired by this episode to investigate what support is out there to get a reading for pleasure culture going  in your school, you can email Jo directly at jbowers@cardiffmet.ac.uk. You can read the report on ethnic diversity in childrens' books that Claire mentions in the episode here.     ---------- Recorded at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 20th January 2020

Our curriculum design panel mega-episode landed in your feed today, with nearly two hours of thought-provoking presentations and discussion about curriculum design and the new Curriculum for Wales. We actually ran this event twice on the day so that every one of our PGCE students could see it. The second run had a slightly different panel - Kathryn Lewis from Central South Consortium replaced Nicky Hagendyck and Lloyd Hopkin from the Welsh Government replaced Sonny Singh. We retained the services of Dr Kevin Smith, Gareth Rein and Barry Crompton. The second batch of students also had some great questions for the panel, and we didn't want you to miss out on hearing these, so we hope you enjoy an additional 20 minutes with our experts.  

Today, we’re gatecrashing one of the lecture theatres at Cardiff Metropolitan University to join our student teachers as they grapple with some of the big issues in education today. In a special (very) extended edition of the podcast, recorded live in front of an audience of PGCE primary and secondary students, we’ve gathered together a panel of speakers who represent school senior leadership, government, the regional consortia and academia to present and discuss on the topic of curriculum design. Speaking just three days after the publication of the final version of the Curriculum for Wales, due to be implemented in schools from 2022, our panellists are generous with their thoughts and advice to the next generation of the profession, making it clear that we need to become curriculum designers as well as classroom practitioners. Our panel consists of: Dr. Kevin Smith from Cardiff University Gareth Rein from St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Primary School in Penarth Barry Crompton from Stanwell School in Penarth Nicky Hagendyk from the Education Achievement Service regional consortium Sonny Singh from the Welsh Government   Following their presentations, the panel answer questions posed by the audience. This event took place twice (as we have a lot of student teachers!), and you can hear the audience Q&A from the other session (featuring a slightly different lineup of panellists) in a bonus episode also released today. If you’ve been inspired to ‘read, read, read’, the book recommendations from Kevin and Gareth are listed below to get you started.   Dr. Kevin Smith Dewey, J. (1938) Experience and Education. New York, Macmillan. Eisner, E. W. (1979) The educational imagination: on the design and evaluation of school programs. New York: Macmillan Freire, P. (2014). Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Hooks, B. (1994) Teaching to transgress : education as the practice of freedom. New York/London: Routledge. Illich, I.D. (1996) Deschooling society. London: Marion Boyars March, C. J., & Willis, G. (2007) Curriculum: alternative approaches, ongoing issues. Upper Saddle River, NJ: University of Rhode Island Tyler, R.W. (1949) Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. London: The University of Chicago Press.   Gareth Rein Hirsch, E. D. (1989). Cultural literacy. Melbourne: Schwartz Willingham, D.T. (2009) Why don't students like school? a cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for your classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Christodoulou, D. (2014) Seven myths about education. London: Routledge   ---------- This episode was recorded live at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 31st January 2020.