Emma & Tom Talk Teaching

We're starting to hear more and more about cognitive science when discussing research-informed approaches to teaching. It can seem an intimidating field, and can also come across as quite 'black and white' - especially when co-opted as an argument-winner in some of the less friendly contributions to edu-Twitter! So we thought it was high time to sit down for a discussion with someone who can throw...

Welcome to the first in a new podcast venture! From the team behind  Emma and Tom Talk Teaching we present  PGCE Research Bites ! Every year our PGCE students produce high-quality research work that informs their own philosophy and practice, and benefits the schools they work with. We've decided to make use of the 'in between' Fridays to share some of the very best of that work with you. We've got...

Our guest today is Cameron Stewart, who runs the PGCE secondary mathematics programme here at Cardiff Met. He's come to talk to us about research he's carried out into strategies for closing the gender gap in mathematics. Maths is a subject that can sometimes feel like it needs an image makeover - why, we ask Cameron, is it so socially acceptable to say you're bad at it?! And how do we try and dis...

For this episode we welcome three special guests to our podcast! Dr Fiona Chambers is the head of the School of Education at University College Cork, and she has co-authored a book with our very own Dr Anna Bryant and Dr David Aldous. The book, entitled  Threshold Concepts in Physical Education covers an enormous amount of fascinating ground, and isn't just for PE specialists. With curriculum desi...

It's always good when a previous podcast guest comes back for more, so we're delighted to welcome Fiona Heath-Diffey back to our studio! Fiona is the programme leader for PGCE Secondary PE here at Cardiff Met, and you may remember her from our interesting discussion about physical literacy way back in season 1. Fiona's back to talk about the new Health and Wellbeing Area of Learning and Experience...

This week we've cast our net outside the world of schools to speak to two peer mentors from the homelessness charity, Shelter. Thanks to loyal friend of the podcast Becky Brynolf, we've got an interview with Colette Carter and Lee Demetriou, who are peer mentors with lived experience of homelessness and multiple complex needs. We wanted to speak to Colette and Lee about their experiences of educat...

So here we are, the newly regenerated version of the PGCE Podcast! We're now known as Emma and Tom Talk Teaching, and hope this will encourage more serving teachers to listen to us and realise that we're here for educators of all types! Hope you enjoy the snazzy new artwork and remixed podcast theme music too. For this first episode of 2021, we're talking to two colleagues from Cardiff Met who spe...

Merry Christmas! In a quirk of the release schedule, this one's coming out on the big day itself, so we hope you enjoy the traditional spectacle of two lecturers in the last stages of complete exhaustion, wittering on about some random things that seemed interesting or amusing at the time. We've got it all this year: from a pair of academic papers to a humorous twitter account; from book quotes to...

It's high time for another book review, and our podcast pair have reached for the latest work by Daisy Christodoulou. Tom still lives in a safe house under an assumed identity after being less than effusive about the famous  Seven Myths About Education a while back, so here's hoping he can redeem himself with some much happier thoughts about  Teachers vs. Tech , an amazingly timely book given the...

It's time for another addition to our new strand of episodes loosely entitled 'ethics in teaching', and for this we've called upon the expertise of Rachael Morgan-Jones. Rachael has had a very successful career teaching music in schools where an enormous number of cultures, languages, faiths and backgrounds come together. She's here to argue that there are exciting opportunities to make a differen...

This week we've got a guest from our friends at the University of South Wales - it's Professor Brendan Cropley, who is a professor of sport coaching. The world of elite sports has plenty to tell those of us in education about reflecting on our performance, so we asked Brendan to join us on the line to chat about his work. Brendan has a wealth of down-to-earth advice for any of us engaged in reflec...

Congratulations, fellow education specialists - we've made it to October half term! We're doing our bit for the Welsh lockdown and have fired up the remote recording gear to bring you our latest offering from our houses (so please accept our apologies for the odd glitch in the sound quality). Since we're at the half-time break in a very long and very strange term, we thought this would be another...

In the first of a series of episodes this year on the loose theme of 'ethics in teaching', we're delighted to bring you an interview with Catrina Kirkland of the Holocaust Educational Trust. This episode is all about how we approach teaching difficult or sensitive subjects, and Cat has a wealth of strategies and thoughts to help us deal with one of the biggest, most sensitive and problematic subje...

Do not adjust your set: there are some sound quality issues in the first half of this episode, as were recording in three different locations over the Internet. Sorry! This episode was recorded while we were in full-on coronavirus lockdown, and on the line linking Emma and Tom we also have Elizabeth MacGregor. Currently a doctoral student at the University of Sheffield, Elizabeth was described by...

With some excitement we find ourselves recording back on our beloved university campus - but outdoors to avoid having too many lines on our risk assessment! With suitably long wires plugged in, our podcast duo tackle the very topical concept of resilience, with the aid of a number of sources that we've mashed up to help us. Having become something of a hot buzzword even before we all found ourselv...

We're back! And to celebrate the start of season 3 we're back together in person, recording safely outdoors (complete with strange background noises) to bring you a bumper first episode to help you get thinking about your philosophy. As teacher educators, we sit in a sometimes uncomfortable place outside the schools where our students undertake their placements, and it's important for all of us to...

Just a week to go until  Emma & Tom's PGCE Podcast returns for its third season! Here's a little trailer to whet your appetite. Tune in on Friday 4th September for our first episode, in which we discuss philosophies of teaching and teacher education. See you soon!

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 remi...

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 curri...

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 e...

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 theo...

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 ou...

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 he...

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 specia...

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...