Emma & Tom's Pgce Podcast

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 subjects of them all - the Holocaust. In a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion, Cat explains the importance of the human angle, how to avoid unconsciously reinforcing problematic ideologies and ideas, and gives us an insight into her pedagogical approaches when working with teachers and student teachers. She also reflects on how the new curriculum for Wales gives us opportunities to make connections that allow subject specialists to support one another to create a rich and deep learning experience for pupils - though you can also try this if you're outside Wales, of course! The Holocaust Educational Trust has a wealth

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! We're back! Welcome to the first episode of our third season. This one 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 Cambridge University's John Finney as 'a British philosopher of music education' in the wake of the publication of her article Justifying Music in the National Curriculum. The article is certainly a gripping read and has plenty to say to all of us in education, regardless of whether we're music specialists. Elizabeth has also had a second article published recently: Participatory performance in the secondary music classroom and the paradox of belonging, which is a great example of practitioner research. Over the course of this episode you can hear us enjoy a w

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 ourselves battling the coronavirus, resilience is a tricky concept to nail down, but very relevant to those of us in an education profession that can test our resilience to the maximum, whether we're at the start of our careers or grizzled old pros. This episode is illustrated with some carefully chosen snippets from the following sources, and we believe we're on the right side of the fair use copyright provisions, but are willing to stand corrected if either the BBC or Harvard want to tell us otherwise! Either way, we'd urge you to visit these sources to enjoy them in full: BBC Radio 4: The Science of Resilience https://ww

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 understand what we're for, what we do and why we don't just point student teachers at a school and let them get on with it. The Universities' Council for the Education of Teachers recently published a position paper setting out the principles on which we work, so we start by chewing that over with our good friends Dr Judith Kneen and Jordan Allers. After that, we respond to a comment by our student teachers themselves that they'd like to know more about our own philosophies as teachers - we've got a collection of short pieces from colleagues around campus, and we explain our own philosophies as teachers. Hopefully t

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 reminiscence on season 2 of the podcast, plus a look forward to some of the goodies we've got planned for you in season 3. We hope everyone's having a wonderful summer, and are keeping well and safe. Enjoy the rest of it, and we'll be back with our first full episode of season 3 on Friday 4th September, bright and early as usual. Bye for now!     ---------- Recorded at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 11th August 2020

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 curriculum development? We hear a lot about the need for teachers to have more agency - the power to do things, essentially - and this is a major change in direction after decades in which teacher agency has been reduced by the introduction of a central National Curriculum and an increasingly challenging accountability culture. Here in Wales, our pioneer teachers, who met to co-construct the new curriculum documents for the Curriculum for Wales were essentially also pioneers of a major shift in teacher agency. Judith was there during the process to see what it looked like. Judith's article asks some powerful questions abou

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 education systems, Rachel and Ben have got first-hand advice for anyone looking to take the plunge and hop on a plane! We certainly hope you'll consider coming to train in Wales soon! Our regular slots this episode focus heavily on how to stay happy and well when you've come to a new country to do a challenging course, so keep listening to the end for some great advice. If you're in Canada and want to teach abroad, you can check out canteach.net, and anyone outside the UK can contact our wonderful international office at cardiffmet.ac.uk/international  

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 theory and, undeterred by the Coronavirus lockdown, we got him on the line from his house to expand on his ideas. We hope you enjoy our discussion! Dr Kevin Smith’s blog can be found here: https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/drkevinsmith/   Reading List   Curriculum Theorists: Elliot Eisner Paulo Freire Henry Giroux William Pinar Joseph Schwab Ralph Tyler   Books: March, C. J., & Willis, G. (2007) Curriculum: alternative approaches, ongoing issues. Upper Saddle River, NJ: University of Rhode Island Pinar, W., Reynolds, W., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. (1995). Understanding curriculum: An introduction to the study of h

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 our pupils. ResearchED events happen on Saturdays, and this year the organisation came to Wales for the first time. There was a star-studded list of speakers for teachers to choose from… and us! While we waited to give our presentation on cross-curricular pedagogies in the expressive arts (see episode 2 of this season of the podcast for details of what we were talking about), we attended some interesting presentations, watched a video message from the mighty Dylan Wiliam, and grabbed some informal interviews with some of the big-name speakers. Now we’ve glued it all together, along with an interview with Gareth Rein w

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 her house, and Tom’s car parked in his street doing sterling work as a recording studio (picking up the all-important WiFi signal through the front room window), we’ve scoured the internet to bring you our trademark mix of high-minded, substantial reflection on the world of education (Emma) and a load of bizarre ramblings from way out of left-field (Tom). We flatter ourselves that the overall effect is something that will at least while away 40 minutes of lockdown time, so kick back, ignore your children trashing the house [or is that just mine? - Tom] and enjoy the audio equivalent of that meal you cooked from things

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 special for you to enjoy, if enjoy is the right word. With Tom sitting in a deserted university campus and Emma speaking down-the-line from her house, we discuss the very sudden transition of educational institutions to remote learning approaches. What can we realistically expect to achieve as teachers in this new environment, and how do we keep a critical eye when investigating the huge flood of resources that have been kindly made available by individuals and institutions as a response to the global lockdown? We’re assisted by a blog post from the mighty Tom Sherrington which gives lots of practical advice to those grap

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 as teachers help our pupils to be motivated to read for pleasure? In the last of our suite of episodes this year on the theme of literacy (the others being episodes 6 and 7), we're joined by Jo Bowers from Cardiff Metropolitan University, Claire Douglas from Clytha Primary School in Newport and Lucy Matthews from Llanedeyrn Primary School in Cardiff to discuss how they have set up a 'reading for pleasure' group for teachers to support them in knowing what books are out there and how to get pupils reading. If you're inspired by this episode to investigate what support is out there to get a reading for pleasure culture

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 Nicky Hagendyck and Lloyd Hopkin from the Welsh Government replaced Sonny Singh. We retained the services of Dr Kevin Smith, Gareth Rein and Barry Crompton. The second batch of students also had some great questions for the panel, and we didn't want you to miss out on hearing these, so we hope you enjoy an additional 20 minutes with our experts.  

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, government, the regional consortia and academia to present and discuss on the topic of curriculum design. Speaking just three days after the publication of the final version of the Curriculum for Wales, due to be implemented in schools from 2022, our panellists are generous with their thoughts and advice to the next generation of the profession, making it clear that we need to become curriculum designers as well as classroom practitioners. Our panel consists of: Dr. Kevin Smith from Cardiff University Gareth Rein from St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Primary School in Penarth Barry Crompton from Stanwell School in Penarth

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 education system according to the international PISA tests (with Wales considerably further down the list!) so we were eager to hear what he had to say, and we weren't disappointed. On returning from the talk back at the start of this academic year, we sat down and recorded a podcast episode with our thoughts, which was then promptly relegated to the 'we have no idea when to put this out' folder, and then became our unofficial 'emergency episode', to fill a gap if something went disastrously wrong with something else! More than four months later, with no sign of a podcast disaster, we decided that if we didn't relea

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 involved in the training of school teachers, Cardiff University has an education department staffed with top-flight, internationally-renowned researchers, so we wanted to have a chat with one of them about the various knotty questions around how we can work to close a perceived gap between academic research and classroom practice. Professor David James kindly invited us to his office for a conversation which ranged widely across some really interesting questions in this important area, and we hope you find the discussion as thought-provoking as we did.  

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 discussion because the wonderful Jordan Allers has jumped ship and joined us here at Cardiff Met! We managed to track him down and bring him to the microphone to put some substance on the original discussion, and to give us some pointers about how we in the teaching profession can raise our mentoring game! Tackling the regular slots, Jordan reveals himself as a lover of organisation, as well as providing us with some reading material and something to try that relates to today's topic. We hope you enjoy what Jordan has to say. We'll be back in a fortnight, when we'll be discussing the role of educational research with Profes

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 better known for filling Twitter with wonderful sketchnotes, each of them informed by a solid bed of research, and serving up the findings of that research in a single graphic. We know lots of you are, like us, huge fans of their work, so we thought it was high time to get inside Impact Wales HQ and ask them how they ended up as a team, what they do, and how we can all be a bit more impact-focused in our working lives. And while we were there, we couldn't resist asking Finola and Jane for their responses to our regular slots: wellbeing and something interesting - only letting them off 'something to try' because there wa

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 wellbeing tips and a vintage Tom item in the form of 'the bus factor'. Please do rate and review us if you have a moment. We'll be back on January 10th, when we'll be talking to edu-twitter royalty in the form of Finola and Jane from Impact Wales. See you then!