Psychology in the Classroom

In this deeply personal episode, I'm joined by  Harriet Ennis , a psychology teacher from York and this year's winner of the British Psychological Society's Pre-Tertiary Education Psychology Teacher of the Year (PEPTOTY). Harriet reached out to share her personal experience of  Emotionally Based School Avoidance (EBSA), previously referred to as school refusal. Harriet brings both professional ins...

In this episode of Psychology in the Classroom, Dr. Lauren Margulieux helps explore why failure isn't just a learning opportunity—but a biologically powerful one. Drawing on neuroscience, Lauren explains how our brains react to failure, the role of neurotransmitters like epinephrine and acetylcholine, and why moderate emotional discomfort can actually prime the brain for better memory and attentio...

In this episode we explores the impact of perfectionism on exam anxiety, particularly among neurodivergent individuals. Dr. Tracey Donachie, a lecturer in sports and exercise psychology, discusses the components and prevalence of perfectionism, highlighting its psychological and behavioral effects. Maciej Matejko, from the Re-Star Project, shares his perspective on perfectionism in relation to aut...

Summary In this episode Dr. Carolina Guzman Holst is a NIHR Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, discusses her recent paper titled Scoping review: potential harm from school-based group mental health interventions.   Where the authors 'examine three areas: the types of potential harms and adverse events reported in school-based mental health interventions; the subgroups of children and ado...

This month Dr Katy Burgess, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Cardiff University, talks about her research into students' learning - what they do and how effective they think this is - this is useful for us, as teachers, to understand how, what we are teaching them in school about learning and revision, is being interpreted and used by students. We discuss the best ways to revise but perhaps more i...

The NEurodivergent peer Support Toolkit (NEST) is a set of free resources for staff in mainstream secondary schools who wish to facilitate peer support for neurodivergent young people. The toolkit was co-created by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, neurodivergent young people and a neurodiverse group of adults who work with neurodivergent young people. The project was funded by the Salve...

This is the 7th podcast from the RE-STAR team and Professor Edmund Sonuga-Barke and Dr Georgia Pavlopoulou share the findings from work package one. This episode explores how the RE-STAR team has collected qualitative data through innovative methods that really allow the voices of young people with ADHD and Autism to be heard. They also share the findings about the upsetting experiences of young p...

In this week's episode Purvi (Vi) Gandhi shares her knowledge about implementing effective and evidence based strategies to improve mental health or mental fitness in schools. Vi has recently published a book 'A little guide for teachers: Student Mental Health' with lots of ideas of how teachers can support the mental health and fitness of the young people in schools. In this interview we discuss...

On World Mental Health day 2024 Psychology in the Classroom discusses Mindfulness. We eschew the 'Crystals and Muesli' version and reframe it to ask how to be more attentive, calmer, more grounded, more aware, more responsive, less anxious. Willem Kuyken and Maggie Farrar join me to discuss, how we can make moments in our day to be mindful and how this can help us align ourselves better with our p...

In this final summary interview with Prof. Dr. Suzanne Narciss, we review all our learning about failure over the last few months. There is much we can do to encourage our students to learn from errors, including interactive formative assessment and feedback strategies, prompting reflection and adaptive strategies for dealing with errors and using other people's errors. As teachers we need to help...

More than one in 10 children 'almost always' or 'often' fear failure. But where do they learn this from? This fear can often pass from parents to children. Parental communication about failures and setbacks plays a critical role in shaping a child's perception of mistakes. In her research Dr Elizabeth Peterson found that: Clear action plans without discussion of collaborative resources increased c...

Today's discussion focuses on our perceptions, as teachers, of failure. When as a teacher we watch our lessons back on film where do we see failure and how do we respond? Reflecting on our own relationship with failure could be important in informing our practice in the classroom. For example our personal relationship with failure will inform how we respond to student failure and this in turn coul...

How students and teachers navigate and prioritise different learning processes after encountering impasses during learning can be complex. Recognising that failure moments can be multifaceted, today's episode explores how classroom discourse reveals varied valued learning processes, such as problem-solving, preventing future issues, and developing troubleshooting skills. The research being discuss...

How errors are handled in the classroom is an important aspect of teaching and has a variety of consequences for students' own dealing with errors, their learning and their performance. In classrooms with a negative error climate, students are more likely to experience fear of making mistakes and feel alienated from their teachers. Teachers' unsupportive behaviours, such as negative reactions to e...

In order to learn from errors it is important that pupils regulate their emotions. The emotions that they feel when they make an error is underpinned by their Error Learning Orientation - whether they see errors as positive and an opportunity to learn or as a negative thing that brings shame. In this interview Rahel Schmid discusses her paper about emotions pupils feel when they make errors and ho...

This week find out how you can encourage students to persist with learning and engage with metacognitive strategies when they make mistakes.  Dr Maria Tulis talks about her experiments that aimed to find a causal link between beliefs about errors, how these beliefs maintain motivation and how students then adapt their actions to effectively analyse and correct errors. In study two during learning...

This is the 3rd episode in the failure series of podcasts this term. We are staying with the theme of feedback to errors this week. Professor Janet Metcalfe discusses her paper on learning from errors and in particular how one teacher uses an interactive approach, encouraging students to work out why they made an error rather than simply correcting them, and the impact it had on the students' lear...

When students receive error feedback it usually causes a negative emotional response, this in turn can impact learning.  If we could somehow elicit a positive emotional response to error feedback, research suggests that this will increase motivation, enhance the desire to continue on a learning task and promote the use of efficient metacognitive strategies.  In today's podcast with Dr Annalisa Son...

Failure - a word that is taboo in education and yet is part and parcel of the learning experience. As teachers, dealing with errors in the classroom can fundamentally change so much of the learning experience. The beliefs teachers and students hold about failure and errors changes behaviour and can cause students to persist and grow or to avoid risk and challenge. This term Psychology in the Class...

Exam season is now in full swing and we are all really trying to encourage students to move away from the comfortable passive revision strategies such as reading and highlighting notes and get them to engage in more retrieval practice with flashcards and mindmaps. This week I talk to psychology teacher, Jonny Wainman about how he teaches his students study skills, we cover a wide range of topics a...

My guest this week is Dr Michelle Tytherleigh author of Positive Education at all Levels: Learning to Flourish , and we are talking about how we can use positive psychology in the classroom to students to flourish. Martin Seligman asked two questions: In two words or less what do you want for your children? In two words or less what do most schools teach? To answer these questions so that the resp...

Dr Charl Emmerson is an Organisational Psychologist who has worked in schools and researches wellbeing in schools. In this interview we are discussing teacher wellbeing at both an individual level and an organisational level. WIth top tips of teachers and leadership on creating a supportive culture. In addition we discuss how SEND impacts teacher wellbeing  Key papers/links: NASUWT study findings...

This week I am joined by Professor David Daley from Nottingham Trent University to talk about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ADHD is something that most teachers will come across at some point and managing it well in the classroom can make a huge difference to outcomes for young people with ADHD. In this episode we cover the main psychological underpinnings of the disorder and how these...

The teaching profession is in crisis and whilst it can be an extraordinarily rewarding and it is also an exhausting profession so self-care is essential. As a regular diary keeper I was curious to find out just how this might be helping my own wellbeing. Dr Lucy Kelly  is an Associate Professor in Education in the School of Education whose main research interest is reflective practice as a positiv...

In this episode Dr Hannah Wilkinson talks about her doctoral research which focused on re-evaluating teachers' use of test-taking practices from a psychological lens; unpicking how students appraised these types of communications and how it affects their engagement in the classroom. Essentially we will consider the messages that we, as teachers, give to students when we talk about exam preparation...