Episodes
Tuesday Jun 22, 2021
Inside Education 419, Deirdre Hodson on Technology and Sustainability (22-6-21)
Tuesday Jun 22, 2021
Tuesday Jun 22, 2021
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
On this week's podcast I speak to Deirdre Hodson who works in the European Commission’s department for Education, Youth, Sports and Culture in Brussels. She provides a European Union policy perspective on technology and sustainability in education. Among the topics we discuss are:
- How she came to work in the area of digital education policy and her studies in the area
- Ben Williamson
- Neil Selwyn
- How her studies contributed to her work as a policymaker
- How the pandemic is likely to impact on policy and practice
- The need for schools to have digital strategies
- The importance of the school as a whole being the unit of change and of hearing the student voice
- The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning
- How countries reaped the benefits of investment in digital resources in education during the pandemic
- Asking what we can learn from remote teaching and learning as a result of the pandemic
- Broadening the education infrastructure to include collaboration with libraries and museums
- The origin, purpose and launch of the SELFIE diagnostic/planning tool she was involved in developing
- How SELFIE has been used and a new SELFIE tool for teachers to be launched in October 2021.
- Report on Artificial Intelligence in Education
- Examples of interesting practices in digital education across Europe
- An account of a visit to a school in Finland and the phenomenon-based learning and to one in Austria
- Sustainability, digital technologies, accessibility and inclusion
- Risks and threats of technology alongside opportunities (e.g. data protection; student and teacher agency)
- Differences between aspects of a teacher’s job that are routine (e.g. marking) and those that are human (e.g. coaching and mentoring)
- Neil Selwyn Should robots replace teachers?
- Challenges of not being able to hold the regular Leaving Certificate examinations in 2020.
- The value of learning languages
- Erasmus and E-Twinning: Léargas
- Neil Selwyn’s book Distrusting Educational Technology: Critical Questions for Changing Times
Saturday Mar 06, 2021
Saturday Mar 06, 2021
On this week's podcast I address the topic of academic integrity, a concern at all levels of the education system. My guest is Professor Diane Pecorari from the City University of Hong Kong, who is an expert in this area. Among the topics we discuss on the episode are the following:
- Intertextuality – borrowing from earlier texts
- Plagiarism involves deception
- Plagiarism inside and outside education settings
- Accidental “plagiarism” and the need to differentiate it from deliberate deception
- Advocating a pedagogical response to plagiarism (punishing versus coaching and supporting)
- How widespread plagiarism is in higher education settings
- Causes of plagiarism
- Students may feel inadequate to a task facing them because of the expansion of access to university education and increasingly educating students through a language that is not their own leading to plagiarism
- Preventing plagiarism – rules, detection mechanisms, penalties; admitting students with proficiency in the language of instruction and with sufficient academic preparation for studying the subject they’re going to study; giving students the skills they need to use quotations and to develop their voices as writers.
- Text-matching software such as Turnitin and Urkund. Risk of false positives and false negatives.
- Deterring plagiarism through penalties
- Patch writing (coined by Rebecca Howard) as a particular kind of plagiarism
- Essay mills and contract cheating – challenges to detect. Risk of students being blackmailed or ripped off.
- Predatory publishing and predatory conferences: no quality control mechanisms and whose sole purpose is to make a profit.
- Avoid them by looking for journals in which authors you respect publish, look at who is on the editorial board, consider the proportionality of any fee that is requested and consider the time taken to have an article published.
- Use this website to identify reputable journals.
- How her interest in this area was sparked
- English for Academic Purposes versus English as an additional language
- Content of an English for Academic Purposes course
- Hot topics in research on English for Academic Purposes
- What schools are for
- Academic Tribes and Territories by Tony Becher and Paul R. Trowler.
- Methodical, patient clear teachers are what we all need.
Wednesday Apr 15, 2020
Programme 397, Alfie Kohn on Homework, Testing, Rewards and More (15-4-20)
Wednesday Apr 15, 2020
Wednesday Apr 15, 2020
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
On this week's podcast I bring you my interview with Alfie Kohn, who writes and speaks about education, especially in areas such as homework, standardised testing and punishments and rewards. Among the items we discuss on the podcast are the following:
- Fostering students’ curiosity and encouraging them to think deeply
- Teachers participating with children in an exploration of ideas to move beyond factual knowledge
- How teachers can teach to promote students’ thinking
- The inverse relationship between teacher control and student learning
- Why learning starts with a question
- John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Ed Deci and Richard Ryan (Self-determination theory)
- Why rewards and punishment don’t help children learn
- Why saying “Good job” to your students is the equivalent of a “verbal doggy biscuit”
- Children who are frequently praised are less generous than their peers
- How children know when they’re being controlled and how they respond to it
- How teachers can respond to students’ work and respect the child’s autonomy
- Implementing a no-homework policy in a school
- Why he believes that giving homework to children constitutes malpractice.
- Excitement (about learning) drives excellence
- Standardised tests and teacher accountability; Authentic assessments – tap into projects done by students over time
- Why standardised teaching tells you only two things: (i) how much time was given to teaching test taking and (ii) how big the houses are near the school.
- Differences between role of parent and teacher: Unconditional parenting and unconditional teaching
- Punished by Rewards
- Unconditional Parenting
Wednesday Mar 11, 2020
Podcast 393, Professor Kathy Hall (11-3-20)
Wednesday Mar 11, 2020
Wednesday Mar 11, 2020
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's programme I'm delighted to speak to Professor Kathy Hall from University College Cork. In a wide-ranging discussion about teaching, teacher education, research and policy, the topics raised include the following:
- Becoming a primary teacher in Carysfort College
- Doing a Bachelor in Arts degree in University College Dublin, with many other primary teachers, followed by a H.Dip
- Returning to Carysfort to do a postgraduate diploma course in special educational needs
- Starting a Masters degree in Trinity College, transferring to complete and PhD and becoming a teacher educator in Christchurch Canterbury College
- Moving to Leeds Metropolitan University and subsequently to the Open University and two years later to University College Cork
- Her doctoral dissertation on the topic of discovery learning and first language learning
- Her book, Listening to Stephen Read and its implications for teaching reading
- Why some children leave school with limited literacy
- The relationship between policy and teaching literacy
- How the market influences education in Ireland
- Assessing student teachers’ preparedness to teach literacy
- Summative and formative Assessment – Black and William Important Review on Formative Assessment
- Can anyone teach?
- The relationship between skills, practice and reflection in teaching
- School and University roles in teacher education
- The unifying theme across all her research
- Discourse analysis as a research method and what you can learn about classrooms from using this method. In this framework she refers to the IRF – initiation, response and feedback – pattern of classroom interaction.
- Doctoral research topics
- How different opportunities to learn can exist within the same classroom
- Problems with competitive classrooms
- Advice she would give the Minister for Education
- Etienne Wenger Communities of Practice book
- Tara Westover Educated
Wednesday Jan 15, 2020
Podcast 385, New Educate Together CEO, Emer Nowlan (15-1-20)
Wednesday Jan 15, 2020
Wednesday Jan 15, 2020
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
This week I bring you an interview with the new Chief Executive Officer of Educate Together, Dr. Emer Nowlan in the week she takes up her new appointment. Among the topics we discuss are:
- Her career in education to date: becoming a PE teacher, running a language school in Portugal
- Doing a masters and doctorate in UCD
- Being project manager for setting up second level Educate Together schools
- Working on the Migrant Teacher Project
- Challenges faced by migrant teachers who wish to teach in Ireland
- Lessons learned from the Migrant Teacher Project to date
- Anticipating her new role as CEO of Educate Together
- Plans for establishing new Educate Together schools
- How Educate Together has evolved over the last 40 years
- What equality-based education looks like
- How to promote equality-based education without stereotyping
- Educate Together’s role as school patron
- Enrolment policies for schools
- The work of CEO in Educate Together
- Her priorities for her term as CEO
- Challenges facing the Educate Together sector
- Characteristics of a principal in an Educate Together school
- Facilitating denominational religious instruction in Educate Together Schools
She names some people whose work she admires.
Wednesday Oct 09, 2019
Programme 374, Chris Brown on Research-informed Teaching (8-10-19)
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 Oct 31, 2018
Programme 339, Sustainability and Disruption in Education (31-10-18)
Wednesday Oct 31, 2018
Wednesday Oct 31, 2018
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
Theme music composed and arranged by David Vesey.
On this week's programme I speak to Arjen Wals from the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands where he is Professor of Transformative Learning for Socioecological Sustainability/UNESCO Chair. He was a keynote speaker at the 2018 annual conference of the Association for Teacher Education of Europe, which was held in Gävle in Sweden in August. Among the topics we discussed were the following:
- Why a sustainable approach to teaching is important
- Why teachers alone cannot bring about sustainable living
- How to promote sustainable choices in education
- How sustainable choices may vary from one place to another
- Why making teachers more accountable discourages them from taking risks
- CSI – Critical Sustainability Investigations (example with old mobile phones)
- Students taking photos of things that bother them in their environment and sharing them
- “Alternative” pedagogies (experimental learning, embodied learning, place-based learning, discovery learning, problem-based learning)
- The risk of having future people in power acting in an eco-totalitarian manner if sustainability issues are not addressed while time is available
- What Policymakers can do to make education more sustainable
During our conversation Professor Wals referred to Fairphone.
Wednesday May 17, 2017
Programme 292, An Irish-US Perspective on Education (17-5-17)
Wednesday May 17, 2017
Wednesday May 17, 2017
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's programme I bring you the second part of my interview with members of the Mulcahy family who are originally from Cork but who are now working as education professors in the United States. Donal G Mulcahy and Cara Mulcahy are in the School of Education and Professional Studies at Central Connecticut State University. Donal E Mulcahy is a professor and Director of Elementary Education in the Department of Education at Wake Forest University.
Among the topics we discussed in this part of the interview are the following:
- Donal G's career trajectory
- Comparing features of the US and Irish education systems
- The establishment of the Education Studies Association of Ireland
- Diane Ravitch and her influence in US education
- What constitutes a liberal education?
- Having faith in teachers
- Sources of Inspiration
Thursday May 11, 2017
Programme 291, Purpose and Control in Education; Reading/Writing Workshops (10-5-17)
Thursday May 11, 2017
Thursday May 11, 2017
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's programme I interview three members of the Mulcahy family who are originally from Cork but who all work as education professors in the United States. The father, Donal G. Mulcahy, and daughter, Cara Mulcahy both work in the School of Education and Professional Studies at Central Connecticut State University and Cara's brother, Donal E. Mulcahy is a professor and Director of Elementary Education in the Department of Education at Wake Forest University. They each addressed the 2017 annual confernece of the Education Studies Association of Ireland, of which Donal G. was a founding member.
Among the points raised on the programme are:
- The purpose of Education
- Control of education and the role of teachers, policymakers, administrators, foundations and corporations
- The workshop approach to teaching reading and writing 18’26” Authors referred to include Lucy Calkins, author of The Art of Teaching Writing; Linda Rief, author of Seeking Diversity: Language Arts with Adolescents; and Nancy Atwell, author of In the Middle.
- Why policymakers pay insufficient heed to education research.
Wednesday Mar 29, 2017
Programme 286, Cherishing All the Children? (29-3-17)
Wednesday Mar 29, 2017
Wednesday Mar 29, 2017
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
This week I speak to Dr. Brian Fleming, a retired school principal and author of Irish Education 1922 - 2007: Cherishing all the Children? Among the topics discussed during our conversation were the following:
- Who he spoke to in writing the book
- Where the power lies in education today
- What can be done to reduce inequality in education
- How the insertion of a single word, “for” in the Irish Constitution shaped the government’s role in education
- Provision for reducing disadvantage in the 1998 Education Act