Rethinking Education

Today I am speaking with Jay McTighe about Leading Modern Learning: A blueprint for vision-driven schools, the 2015 book that Jay co-authored with Greg Curtis. Leading modern learning builds on Jay’s previous work on Understanding by Design, to guide the reader through the process of taking vision statements really seriously, and then backwards planning your school in such a way that you WILL prod...

Warwick Mansell is a long-time contributor to the Guardian and the Observer, and worked for many years at the TES - the Times Education Supplement. He writes blogs for Prospect union, and the National Education Union teacher magazine, among others. A few years ago, he was shortlisted for the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Education Journalist of the Year. Warwick runs a subscription-based...

Geraldine Rowe is an educational psychologist and former teacher, and a specialist in Parent Partnership and Behaviour and Attendance. She has taught in Primary and Middle Schools and been a member of the Senior Leadership Team of an alternative provision secondary school. Her 30-year career has taken her into 100 schools, and Geraldine is a really good example of someone who is outside the teachi...

Donald Clark is a man of many hats. He’s an EdTech entrepreneur who was formerly the CEO and one of the original founders of Epic Group, a pioneering company in online learning, and he is now the CEO of Wildfire Learning, an AI company. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Derby. And he is the author of at least two books - Artificial Intelligence for Learning, and Learning Experience D...

Today I am speaking with behaviour specialist and volcano of positivity Adele Bates. As you will hear at the start of our conversation, I worked with Adele for a short period, and so I speak with experience when I say that the second you meet her, you immediately realise that you are dealing with an incredibly compassionate, thoughtful, unique human being. Adele has recently written a fascinating,...

This episode features a conversation with Harry Fletcher-Wood, who has written an absolutely fascinating book called Habits of Success: Getting every student learning. Ground-breaking books about education don’t come around too often, but Habits of Success is truly pioneering. We’ve heard a lot about cognitive science in recent years - often a quite narrow interpretation of cognitive science which...

Today I am speaking with Michael FD Young, Emeritus Professor of Sociology of Curriculum at the UCL Institute of Education. Michael has been a towering figure in the field of Sociology of Education for over five decades. He has written and edited many books throughout his career, including Knowledge and Control (1971), Bringing Knowledge Back In (20080) and Knowledge and the Future School (2014) -...

Earlier this year, through connecting with people in the Mighty Network, I hosted a series of six "campfire conversations". In contrast to the podcast, which features long-form, pre planned, recorded conversations with individuals, the campfire conversations were an attempt to bring more people into the conversation. These were live-streamed, shorter, more spontaneous conversations that usually in...

Today I’m speaking with Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, whose work is, I honestly think, the most important I’ve yet come across in all my years of dabbling in education research and trying to understand how young people learn and develop, what we should be doing in schools to help them, and what we should maybe stop doing as soon as is humanly possible. Mary Helen is a Professor of Education, Psycholo...

A trailer for Season 2 of the Rethinking Education podcast. Website: https://rethinking-ed.org Email: enquiries@rethinking-ed.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/rethinking_ed Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rethinking.education/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtu5tET_5HwSEcuG0OwmsbA Mighty Network: https://rethinking-education.mn.co/feed Campfire Conversations: https://www.youtube.co...

Rachel Lofthouse is a Professor of Teacher Education in the Carnegie School of Education at Leeds Beckett University. Rachel has a specific research interest in professional learning, exploring how teachers learn and how they can be supported to put that learning into practice. The first part of the conversation - roughly the first hour or so - focuses on a controversy that is unfolding in England...

Dr Naomi Fisher is a clinical psychologist with a doctorate in clinical psychology and a PhD in Developmental Cognitive Psychology, focusing on autism. She is also the mother of two self-directed learners, having decided not to send her children to school. Naomi is the author of 'Changing our Minds: How children can take control of their own learning'. It's about self-directed learning and it's an...

This is a cross-post of an episode of the Flourishing Education podcast, in which Fabienne Vailes interviewed James Mannion about, well, Rethinking Education. Fabienne is a brilliant, intuitive interviewer who lets the conversation go where it will. Which made for a fascinating and, in places, quite emotive conversation. I would like to express my thanks to Fabienne for taking the time to speak wi...

Dr Amelia Peterson is an LSE Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she teaches social policy, and she is soon to become a founding member of faculty at the London Interdisciplinary School. She completed her PhD in Education Policy and Program Evaluation at Harvard University, where she was an Inequality and Social Policy fellow. During her studies she was a junior v...

This is a cross-post of an episode of the podcast 'From Page to Practice', featuring the book Fear is the Mind Killer by Dr James Mannion and Kate McAllister. The 'From Page to Practice' podcast features audio clips from readers who have translated the ideas from books in their practice. This episode is an international affair, featuring Freya in Italy, Dean and Mark in Shanghai, Caryl in Cambodia...

Welcome to episode 6 of the Rethinking Education Campfire Conversations. The theme of today’s episode is around supporting children and young people with mental health issues, and with barriers to school attendance more widely. In this episode, we are joined by: Fran Morgan - Founder, Square Peg (https://www.teamsquarepeg.org) Ellie Costello - Director, Square Peg Lydie (Ellie’s daughter) - age 12...

Episode 5 of Rethinking Education Campfire Conversations, a series of live-streamed, group conversations with people who want to rethink and reform education so as to bring about a more harmonious, less hair-raising state of world affairs. Today's conversation features: Naomi Fisher - author of Changing Our Minds: How children can take control of their own learning - https://twitter.com/naomicfish...

Welcome to this special, shorter than usual episode of the Rethinking Education podcast featuring my recent conversation with two previous guests - Tom Sherrington and Adam Boxer. As with so many things these days, this episode came about because of a Twitter exchange I was involved in, in which Adam wrote: “as you know, I accept that there are many "prog" methods that can be excellent. the discus...

In this episode I am joined by Fran Morgan and Ellie Costello from Square Peg, a social enterprise that was set up in 2019 to shine a light on the plight of the many young people who struggle to attend school for various reasons. Fran and Ellie were inspired to set up Square Peg following their own experiences as parents of young people who have struggled to attend mainstream. As Fran points out i...

Episode 4 of Rethinking Education Campfire Conversations, a series of live-streamed, group conversations with people who want to rethink and reform education so as to bring about a more harmonious, less hair-raising state of world affairs. Today, Dr James Mannion, Kate McAllister, Kath Pratt and Natalie Rothwell-Warn are joined by three young people from Pupil Power - Sephora, 18, Yumna, 16, and Z...

Tom Sherrington is one of those guests who probably needs no introduction, but in case his prolific output has somehow passed you by these last few years, here’s a quick one. A former teacher and school leader for over 30 years, more recently Tom has become a hugely popular blogger, author and training provider. His blog (teacherhead.com) has had approaching 7 million hits, and his recent books Ro...

Episode 3 of Rethinking Education Campfire Conversations, a series of live-streamed, group conversations with people who want to rethink and reform education so as to bring about a more harmonious, less hair-raising state of world affairs. Today's episode features a conversation between James Mannion, Kate McAllister, Aliyah York, Lottie Cooke, Grace McAllister, Lox, Andreas, Olivia, Marcos, Sam a...

Today’s show features a conversation with four inspirational women who have taken matters into their own hands and set up alternative schools in recent years - 3 in the UK and one in the Dominican Republic. Avid listeners of the Rethinking Education podcast will probably know that the one in the DR is my good friend, co-author and Learning to Learn copilot Kate McAllister, who featured in Episode...

Episode 2 of Rethinking Education Campfire Conversations, a series of live-streamed, group conversations with people who want to rethink and reform education so as to bring about a more harmonious, less hair-raising state of world affairs. Today's episode features a conversation between James Mannion, Kate McAllister, Kath Pratt, Sarah Fraser, Natalie Rothwell-Warn, and two special guests: Lottie...

Naheeda Maharasingam is the headteacher at Rathfern Primary School in London, the Leader of Rathfern Teacher Research Network, and a local leader of education. In this conversation, Naheeda outlines her homespun framework for school improvement - the 3 Ms - metacognition, malleable intelligence and moral purpose - and outlines how the curriculum at Rathfern is underpinned by the UN Sustainable Dev...