An Irish perspective on education for all who value teaching
Episodes
Sunday Nov 01, 2020
Sunday Nov 01, 2020
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
My guest on the podcast this week is Dr. Pam Moran who is the Executive Director of the Virginia School Consortium for Learning and is a former superintendent of Albemarle County Public Schools.
Among the points we discussed in the podcast were the following:
- The role of a superintendent in US education
- Desmos software that is used to teach mathematics.
- The reintroduction of maker skills into US education in response to narrow testing and the benefits of it
MAKER LEARNING
- Students who take making courses
- Safety in maker learning
- Involving the wider family in maker learning
- How maker learning is reflected in the school curriculum
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR TEACHERS
- Her thoughts on professional development that works best for teachers
- Professional development to help teachers teach online
- Flipgrid
EDUCATION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
- What schools need to do to be more relevant to the twenty-first century (automation, climate change, working from home, demographic changes, superficial learning for tests)
- Edward Hess books: Learn or Die, Humility is the New Smart and Hyper Learning: Learning at the speed of change)
- How she would reform the mathematics and science curriculum to make it more relevant for students
- The book she co-authored, Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools. Reimagining education using zero-based thinking
- Ira Socol.
- Yong Zhao episode on Inside Education.
- Catherine Cronin's interview on Inside Education.
- Pam O’Brien, Mags Almond, John Heffernan.
- Maya Angelou, Séamus Heaney
- Stories from the Pandemic.
- Website of Pam Moran and Ira Socol
Monday Jun 01, 2020
Monday Jun 01, 2020
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
This week on the programme I interview five colleagues who participated recently in an Erasmus+ project titled EDUCATE. This project involved developing materials for teachers, providing providing professional development, and conducting research on how to combine challenge and differentiated instruction in the teaching of mathematics at pre-primary, primary and post-primary levels. Project materials are available here. The guests on the programme are Charalambos Charalambous from the University of Cyprus, Ann Marie Gurhy from the Marino Institute of Education, Despina Potari from the University of Athens, João Pedro da Ponte from the University of Lisbon, and Evridiki Kasapi from the University of Cyprus. Among the topics we discuss are:
- Realising that mathematics is more than memorisation and drill and practice.
- How the study of differentiated instruction and challenge in mathematics came about
- What it means to introduce challenge to mathematics tasks
- An overview of differentiated instruction
- Using enablers and extenders to promote differentiated instruction
- Why a teacher needs to know a student’s cognitive, social and affective needs in order to differentiate
- Observing teachers’ needs in differentiating and providing challenge through reading research and observing lessons
- Developing materials to support teachers
- Using video clubs as a model of teacher professional development
- Challenges teacher encounter when working with challenging tasks
- The difference between video clubs and lesson study
- Overview of the modules created as part of the project (each module is based around a number of cases of practice)
Wednesday Feb 05, 2020
Wednesday Feb 05, 2020
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's podcast I speak to Viv Grant who is Executive Coach and Director of Integrity Coaching. She was a keynote speaker at the 2020 annual conference of the Irish Primary Principals' Network. Among the topics we discuss are the following:
- Identifying your stories as a school leader: why are you in the profession? What motivates you? What inspires you? What brings you joy?
- Her story and how she began to articulate it for herself
- The importance for principals of recognising and articulating their inner, subconscious narrative
- How underlying thoughts and experiences can affect a principal’s ability to have difficult conversations
- Becoming aware of when the old narratives no longer serve us
- Getting our back stage narratives aligned with our front stage performance
- The role of the Centre for School Leadership
- What coaching for principals involves
- Just like social workers and psychologists get “supervision” in their work as a matter of course, so should school principals because as well as being leaders of curriculum and instruction, many of them are practising aspects of psychology and social work.
- Why school development and human growth and development go hand in hand and why offering coaching to principals is a way of appreciating their taking on this important role.
- Is coaching something that is needed on an ongoing or on a needs-only basis?
- How coaching for a principal works
- Qualities a coach needs to have in order to work with principals
- How coaching differs from mentoring
- Why supporting coaching for principals is a good investment for a school
- Why coaching is the norm in several other sectors
- How she turned around “failing” primary school
- How to bring about change at school level
- The source of a school’s vision
- Her book called Staying a head: The stress management secrets of successful school leaders
- The challenge of creating time to develop the inner work of school leadership
- Pauline Lysaght Jones and Mary Fuller
- David Whyte’s poetry
- John O’Donohue
Wednesday Oct 09, 2019
Wednesday Oct 09, 2019
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
On this week's programme I discuss how research can inform teaching with Professor Chris Brown from Durham University's School of Education. Professor Brown discusses his work with teachers in professional learning networks, how teachers can apply research in their schools, and the barriers to doing so.
Among the topics discussed are the following:
- How frequently do teachers consult research to solve problems of teaching?
- The need to draw first on teachers’ knowledge and experience
- How does research add to, challenge or deepen teachers’ knowledge?
- The importance of teachers collaboratively engaging with and looking at research
- Having an “evidence champion” in a school and partnerships with higher education institutions
- The quality of research available to teachers (original, significant, robust methods)
- Different kinds of research (Stokes’s quadrant)
- Carol Weiss and instrumental research use, conceptual research use and symbolic research use (9’22” – 10’08")
- Drawing on research to develop theories of action
- Teachers’ access to published research
- Networks of teachers and effective change management (17’36). The focus of the four whole-day workshops each year is:
- Vision and engagement with research
- Trialling
- Change Management
- Impact
- Leadership and degree centrality (24’53”)
- Evaluating “best practice” (27’58”)
- Areas of research that have been particularly helpful in informing teachers’ practice (30’26”)
- Factors that influence what and how research influences policy (31’49”)
- Professional Learning Networks (34’45”)
- The role played by encouragement, trust, social influence, and innovation in promoting research-informed practice (35’59”)
- Avoiding edu-myths or other dead-ends in research (39’39”)
- What are schools for (40’51”)
- A teacher who had a significant impact on him (42’17”)
- What inspires him (43’17”)
Among the people named by Chris Brown in the course of the interview are Stephen Ball, Jean Baudrillard, Alan Daly, Jim Spillane and Carol Weiss, some of whom have appeared on previous episodes of Inside Education: Ball, Spillane.
The paper that I reported on in the research section is Fan, H., Xu, J., Cai, Z., He, J & Fan, X. (2017). Homework and students' achievement in math and science: A 30-year meta-analysis, 1986-2015.
Wednesday Jun 26, 2019
Wednesday Jun 26, 2019
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
Theme tune by David Vesey
This week's programme is the last for the school year 2018-19. We look at topics relating to the end of the primary school year: school tours (in a continuation of my conversation with Caitriona Cosgrave and Martin Kennedy from last week's programme), summer courses for teachers (with my colleague, Dr. Gene Mehigan), and presents for teachers (again with Martin Kennedy and Caitriona Cosgrave).
I wish all listeners to the podcast a great summer. I always love to get your feedback on it by e-mail (insideeducation@dublincityfm.ie) or through Twitter. Similarly suggestions for future topics or guests are always welcome.
Wednesday May 01, 2019
Wednesday May 01, 2019
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
Theme tune by David Vesey
On this week's programme I bring you the second part of my interview with Professor Lin Goodwin from the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. We continue the discussion we began on last week's programme about mentoring and progress onto other topics. Among the matters discussed this week are:
- How to recognise when the moment is right for mentor input
- What trends she perceives in the future of mentoring
- Rounds as a practice in teacher education
- Her work as Dean
- How she uses her teaching skills in her work as Dean
- Looking at education and teaching across cultures
- Ruth Wong
- Who and what inspires her
When I asked A. Lin Goodwin for her favourite book about education, she nominated, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a book that was also recommended by Karen Hammerness when I spoke to her.
Wednesday Apr 03, 2019
Wednesday Apr 03, 2019
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
Theme tune by David Vesey
This week on the programme I explore the area of postgraduate study in education. Why do a postgraduate accredited course? Where to do it? When is a good time to do it? How to choose it and ways to do it? Who to study with?
Such courses are addressed to the extent that they can be within a 30-minute course. To respond to any of the ideas raised, leave an idea on the programme's website or on Twitter using the handle, @insideed.
One website mentioned on the programme is the MOOC, Coursera.
Wednesday Feb 28, 2018
Wednesday Feb 28, 2018
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's programme I bring you the second part of my interview with primary teacher and mathematics teacher educator, Claire Corroon. You can access resources and opinions about mathematics teaching on her website, Primary CPD. Among the topics we discuss this week are the following:
- Her Views on Curriculum Revision in primary mathematics
- Differentiation in mathematics
- Assessment in mathematics
- Mathematics curricula in other countries
- Jerome Bruner
- Singapore Maths
- Sherry Parrish (https://twitter.com/numbertalks?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
- Jo Boaler
- Marilyn Burns
- Christina Tondevold
- Graham Fletcher (three act tasks for maths)
- The usefulness of mini-whiteboards
Wednesday Feb 21, 2018
Wednesday Feb 21, 2018
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
This week my guest on the programme is Claire Corroon a primary teacher and teacher educator with a particular interest in mathematics education. She has many resources on her website, Primary CPD, where she also blogs. In this, the first part of our interview, among the topics discussed are:
- How she got involved in mathematics education
- Courses she gives for teachers in summer and at evenings
- Number talks
- Concrete, pictorial and abstract representations in mathematics
- Her approach to teaching tables
Wednesday Jun 21, 2017
Wednesday Jun 21, 2017
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's programme, philosopher and retired primary school teacher, John Doyle, reflects on teaching. First he uses the boxing ring as a metaphor for the classroom and preparation for teaching is like the time spent in a gym. Later in the programme he answers questions on books that influenced his teaching and advice for a beginning teacher. John taught for several years in St. Brigid's National School in Castleknock; I first met him when I was placed as a student teacher in his class in the mid 1980s.