When Will They Learn?

This week, we’re talking education gossip - not the staffroom kind, but the stories that dominate headlines and social media before anyone has had time to think them through. We start by discussing the debate surrounding school suspensions, isolation, and behaviour management, following on from last episode’s conversation. Along the way, we explore how schools are portrayed in the media and how pu...

This week we’re diving into three topics that have generated plenty of headlines, strong opinions, and more than a few questionable cases of what we’ve termed ‘neurononsense’. We unpack discussions around the Victorian' Government’s decision to give principals more powers to suspend students, finally talk about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and its inherent similarities to learning styles (t...

In this episode of When Will They Learn? , Greg and Caiti tackle a stack of education policy debates - beginning with the most pressing and meta question of all: is it, in fact, all Ashman’s fault? From claims that evidence-informed approaches have reduced teaching to “death by PowerPoint” and scripting, to the shift from the reading wars to the emerging learning wars, the conversation explores ho...

This episode’s theme is “neuroscience!” Actually, it’s not, but it comes up a few times. Greg and Caiti kick things off by unpacking a recent article discussing potential limitations of cognitive load theory. They talk about where these sit within the current cognitive load theory research. The conversation then takes an unexpected turn into information theory. What is information? Can meaning act...

In this episode, Greg and Caiti discuss recent research into mobile phone bans in schools, exploring whether they’re actually effective and why schools may choose to implement them in the first place. They also unpack debates around teacher autonomy, low-variance teaching and standardised curriculum resources, questioning whether shared approaches are truly a threat to professionalism or a way to...

In a funny episode complete with robotic pigeons and disturbing AI-generated images (see below), Greg and Caiti look at some of the more popular conversations in the education world right now. Starting off with a discussion around gamification and broader technology use in the classroom, they consider the role of schools and the impacts of trying to appeal to student interests in a contrived way i...

In this episode, Greg and Caiti catch up in sunny Brisbane to cast some light on some of the more uncomfortable conversations happening in schools right now. They begin by unpacking conversations around teacher humiliation as a form of entertainment - from dunk tanks to pie throwing - and question what sits beneath these. They talk about coercion, humiliation and the origins of these practices. Wh...

In this episode, Greg and Caiti dive into some of the biggest conversations currently shaping education, unpacking what the research says, and what it’s not saying. In this episode, they explore the role of knowledge in reading comprehension, positioning a knowledge-rich curricula as central to teaching comprehension. The conversation then turns to “transliteracies” and the teaching of poetry, exa...

In this episode, Greg and Caiti unpack key ideas from the recent researchED Ballarat conference, reflecting on some of the takeaways from sessions they attended, including those of the two keynote speakers, David Didau and Bronwyn Ryrie-Jones. They discuss Didau's ‘Two rules for great session (and how to apply them)’, unpacking what these offer in managing the complexities of real classrooms. They...

In this episode, Greg and Caiti finally tackle the topic of AI in education, responding to a blog post published by BERA about using AI to mark student homework. They explore how teachers might use AI in practice and what its growing role could mean for our education system. Next, they discuss an episode of the podcast Let's Talk Teaching , unpacking what differentiation actually means, how it is...

In this episode, Greg and Caiti take on the idea of ‘critical thinking’ in schools. They respond to a recent EducationHQ article on teaching critical thinking and unpack the assumptions behind calls to prioritise it in classrooms. They explore what ‘critical thinking’ actually means, whether it can be taught as a general skill, and what the evidence from cognitive science suggests. They then turn...

In this episode, Greg and Caiti respond to recent discussions on The Balance podcast between Dr Catlin Tucker and Dr Pete Liljedahl about ‘Building Thinking Classrooms’. They examine how key claims do or don’t align with evidence from cognitive science. They then unpack a recent opinion piece by John Cole for the Australian Association for Research in Education’s blog, asking who gets to decide wh...