Emma & Tom Talk Teaching

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...

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 Nick...

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, gov...

A slightly different episode for February half term - this is our reflection on a talk we attended in September which was presented by the Singaporean ITE specialist Professor Pak Tee Ng. An adviser to the Scottish government on their education reforms, the professor was making a quick trip to Wales to deliver a 'masterclass' entitled 'The Singapore Story'. Singapore is the world's highest-ranking...

In an episode recorded in the final hours before we staggered into the sunset for our Christmas break (indeed, just a few hours before we recorded the Christmas special episode!), we travelled the short distance to the other university in Cardiff: the mighty Cardiff University, member of the Russell Group and now officially part of the Cardiff Partnership for Initial Teacher Education. While not i...

If you've been with us since the start, you may remember our second-ever episode, in which we sat in Emma's house and discussed coaching and mentoring. We were inspired by a talk by a colleague from another university, Jordan Allers, to chew over the different ways we can help novice teachers (as well as more experienced colleagues) to improve their practice. Well, now we can return to the discuss...

Happy New Year / Blwyddyn Newydd Dda to you all! We've gone back on the road, battling through torrential rain to the town of Caerphilly, where we tracked down what can only be described as edu-twitter royalty! Yes, it's the mighty Impact Wales, aka Finola and Jane, who provide tailored support to schools. However, for those of us without a school budget to play with, Impact Wales are probably bet...

Merry Christmas from us both! For your festive pleasure, we present the 12 days of Christmas in the form of 12 items drawn from our regular topics of 'wellbeing', 'something interesting' and 'something to try' - four of each. It's a slightly more wholesome Christmas special than last year, but hopefully there's something in here for everyone, from substantial academic text recommendations to wellb...

For our final episode of the Christmas term, we welcome an award-winning researcher to our humble studio! Bethan Rowlands joined Cardiff Met from our friends at the University of South Wales at the start of this year, and promptly won a BERA award for a poster presentation on raising awareness fo dyscalculia. Dyscalculia is, as Bethan describes it, dyslexia with numbers, and is very much the poor...

We’re looking at literacy again today, and particularly what seems to be a perennial problem: the engagement of boys with reading. Our guest is Paul Warren, a former primary headteacher who now advises schools across a wide area of south Wales, and who is in the final stages of a PhD investigating this very area. His approach is to use comics to engage young pupils with stories, and he’s got plent...

We're back on the road, and have finally got some pupils on the podcast! For this episode, recorded back in July (hence the frequent references to the summer holidays, now a distant memory), we popped down the road to Eastern High School in Cardiff, taking over a room in their shiny new building to interview four special guests. Georgina Saunders was mentioned in one of the regular slots back in s...

Teachers should always practise what they preach, and we firmly believe that the holidays are a great opportunity to do just that! So we want everyone to make time for a break from whatever they do in the hard-working world of education. In true teacher style, we've provided you with a resource to assist! It's a small but perfectly-formed episode following the 'blogs, tweets and stories' format th...

We've got a very special treat for you this episode - an exclusive half hour interview with none other than Professor Graham Donaldson, author of the  Successful Futures report in 2015 that made 68 recommendations for reform of the education system in Wales. His name is used as a shorthand for the new curriculum that was finally published in draft in the summer of 2019, and somehow, we're still no...

Today we're joined by primary specialist Sian Davies-Barnes to consider a recent report by the Education Endowment Foundation entitled  Improving Behaviour in Schools . We love the EEF because they crunch a lot of research, make it clear and accessible and give us several points of entry depending on how busy we are! This episode is particularly aimed at our student teachers who are just starting...

It's episode 2, and Dr Judith Kneen is still with us for the second half of this double-bill. We're discussing our ongoing research into how to combine subject disciplines in the expressive arts (though plenty of this will be relevant for those working in other subject areas too). In season 1 episode 5 we described how we jumped in with both feet, trying out some bright ideas with our students wit...

We're back! It's season 2, and we've decided that the best way to get over the fear of dusting off the microphones and recording a new episode is to call upon the ever-reassuring Dr. Judith Kneen, who is now approaching the status of regular guest and national podcast treasure. Judith has stopped by to discuss her recent research into how primary and secondary schools are faring with their work to...

We're coming back to your podcast feed very soon! Emma and Tom's PGCE Podcast will return for Season 2 on Friday 6th September. We'll have all the deep discussions about teaching that you need to see you through your Friday commute or the weekend, plus regular tips for wellbeing, things to try and pointers to interesting things we've read, heard or watched. If you haven't subscribed already, you c...

Emma and Tom are here to interrupt your summer holiday downtime with a public service announcement: there will definitely be a season 2 of Emma and Tom's PGCE Podcast! In the meantime, they've dusted off the microphones to bring you a quick reflection on season 1, some favourite moments from the series, and to look forward to what's coming up in season 2. We'll be back with episode 1 of the new se...

It's the end of the road for the 2018-19 PGCE cohort here at Cardiff Met, and that means it's time to put our last PGCE podcast episode out into the world. It's episode 21 and we've somehow managed to send our ramblings out into the world every fortnight since the start of September! For our final episode we're back out on the road, visiting Katy Edwards and Sarah Cason, Headteacher and Deputy Hea...

We’ve reached episode 20 of the podcast with a certain amount of amazement that we’re still here! After the excitement of episode 19, we’re back in Emma’s office to chat to our friends and colleagues from Teach First Cymru.   Dr Julia Jenkins and Rhian Davies-Jones (Damehood surely just a matter of time) have popped in to talk about one of the strategies that underpins the Teach First philosophy:...

Well, this isn’t quite what we expected when we set up the podcast in summer 2018... shortly after the release of episode 16, in which our lovely students discussed a talk by the education minister, we received a message from the minister’s office suggesting that we might be able to get an interview with Kirsty Williams herself! It’s a big moment for Welsh education, as the draft curriculum has be...

Emma and Tom are joined by Sally Bethell, Senior Lecturer in PGCE Secondary PE, to discuss the five recommendations at the end of Lucy Crehan's book  Cleverlands , in which the intrepid author gets on a plane to find out what lessons can be learned from five countries whose education systems are routinely held up as examples of excellent practice. The final chapter of the book distils everything C...

It's the middle of the Easter holidays, and Emma and Tom enjoyed recording the last holiday special for Christmas so much that they've decided to do another one! This time there's a bit more of an educational theme, but a change to the format: Emma and Tom both bring a blog post, a tweet and a story about a teacher into the studio, and neither of them is letting the other have any advance warning...

It's a cosy recording session in Emma's office this time, as we manage to squeeze four student teachers around the table with us to discuss the future of education, focusing particularly on the curriculum reforms here in Wales. After attending a talk by the Welsh Education MInister, Kirsty Williams, all four students felt they wanted to share their thoughts on the way things are moving, and the pa...

Emma and Tom return to their roots with a podcast episode featuring just the two of them - it's been a while! Tom's also relieved to be back in the land of the living after recording the last three episodes back-to-back while suffering from terrible man-flu. With a two-weekly release cycle, that's over a month he's been missing in action on the podcast, occasionally croaking an intervention and th...