Kath Murdoch is a well known and hugely popular teacher, writer, university lecturer and consultant who has worked for many years with teachers and students in schools all over the planet. The author of 15 books and numerous articles for teachers – including the best selling ‘The Power of Inquiry’ (2015) - Kath is widely respected for her work in the field of inquiry-based learning in which she has taught, researched and published for well over 30 years. In fact, so popular is Kath’s work in the field of inquiry learning that she was recently described to me by a teacher in an International School as the Beyonce of the PYP (the Primary Years Programme, the International Baccalaureate curriculum for 3 to 12 year olds). 

Here's where you can buy 'The Power of Inquiry':

UK: https://store.kortext.com/the-power-of-inquiry-793815 

Australia: https://www.kathmurdoch.com.au/where-to-buy 

USA: https://www.follettibstore.com/search

Here's Kath's website: https://www.kathmurdoch.com.au/

And here's her TED talk, The Power of Ummmm...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFt15Ig64Yg

The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter.

S1E15: Kath Murdoch on planet earth, paradox and the power of inquiry

Professor Guy Claxton is a hugely influential academic, thinker and author of over 30 books on learning, intelligence and creativity, including Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind, Wise Up, What’s the point of school, Intelligence in the flesh, Educating Ruby and The Learning Power Approach. Guy previously appeared on the Rethinking Education podcast, an episode you can access here: https://soundcloud.com/rethinking-ed-podcast/re07-guy-claxton.

Guy’s latest book, The future of teaching and the myths that hold it back, is a blistering critique of what is increasingly a neotraditional orthodoxy. Here are some of the incredible things people have written about the book:

"So much simplistic nonsense is being touted about “direct instruction” and the “knowledge rich curriculum”, it is great to see someone finally talking sense. As a practising cognitive scientist, Guy Claxton in perfectly equipped to take us beyond the familiar slanging-match between traditionalists and progressives. He illuminates, with his trademark wit and style, complex issues such as the function of knowledge, the psychology of creative and critical thinking, the true nature of memory, the culture of the classroom, and the many purposes of education.  A timely tour de force." (John Hattie, Laureate Professor, Melbourne Graduate School of Education)

"This is the book I’ve been longing to read for at least six years. The surgical dismantling of myths and misinformation, the clarity of explanation of complex ideas, the clear examples from real schools, and the humour peppered throughout had me punching the air, laughing, and then thinking hard to process those ah-ha moments. I’ll read it again and again." (Dr Debra Kidd, author of A Curriculum of Hope)

"This is the book that was crying out to be written. Systematically, and with refreshing clarity, Guy challenges many of the assumptions that have held sway in education for the last decade. I defy anyone not to be challenged, stimulated, and inspired by the breadth of Guy’s expertise. His is no cheap or superficial assault on current orthodoxy but a fair-minded, forensic pulling apart of partial, lazy or simply wrong-headed thinking that too many have fallen for in the desire for simple truths." (Peter Hyman, co-founder of School 21 and Big Education)

The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter.

S1E16: Guy Claxton on neotraditional myths

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 9. 

My other 3 guests today are people that I have come to know only very recently, as a result of having set up this podcast. They are Kath Pratt, who has set up an alternative school called Soweni, down on the cliffs of Cornwall; Hayley Peacock, who has set up a proudly progressive private school called Atelier 21, in Crawley; and Lucy Stephens, who has set up a democratic school in Croydon, known as the New School, which is free to attend because it is funded by private philanthropists, rather fascinatingly. 

Links:

Soweni: https://www.soweni.com/landing-page 

Hive: https://thehive.school/about 

Atelier 21: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP80Nt5ynps 

New School: https://www.thenewschool.org.uk/ 

Guardian article about the New School: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/mar/13/a-community-of-equals-the-private-school-with-no-fees-set-up-by-a-south-london-teacher  

First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW8amMCVAJQ 

Glossary of acronyms:

AP: Alternative provision
IB: International Baccalaureate
PYP: Primary Years Programme
PWC: PricewaterhouseCoopers
SCITT: School-centred Initial Teacher Training

The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter.

You can join the Rethinking Education Mighty Network here: rethinking-education.mn.co

S1E18: Kate McAllister, Kath Pratt, Hayley Peacock and Lucy Stephens on opening alternative schools

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 and Eddie.

To view the video version, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7iOUZRqZWE.

To view the comment feed, join the (private) Rethinking Education Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/rethinkinged

To join the Rethinking Education Mighty Network, visit: rethinking-education.mn.co/feed

Campfire Conversations #003: "I am more than a candidate number"

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 in the conversation, one day her daughter refused to go to school, and it was like being plunged into freezing water - total shock, and an increasing awareness that there is scant help for the parents and carers of young people who struggle to go to school for any length of time. Fran and Ellie have since come to realise that the current situation – with school budget cuts, problems in the SEND and mental health systems and increasing anxiety amongst children and young people – means that things are far worse for families today than theft were even ten years ago. Working closely with another organisation, Not Fine In School, Square Peg has achieved an incredible amount in its first year, including appearances on various national television news programmes, articles in the mainstream and education press and questions being asked in parliament. 

This is a eye-opening conversation in which we discussed Fran and Ellie’s experiences as parents of young people who were ‘not fine in school’; the jaw-dropping statistics around absenteeism, school refusal and exclusion; and School Differently, a new organisation that Fran and Ellie have set up with Ian Gilbert and others to look at how we might urgently rethink a school system that serves so many young people so poorly.

LINKS:

Square Peg: https://www.teamsquarepeg.org 
Poem - https://www.emilyperlkingsley.com/welcome-to-holland 
School Utopia - https://www.teamsquarepeg.org/school-differently 
Petition: https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/create-a-new-absence-code-for-school-refusal 
Book: Changing our minds, by Naomi Fisher: https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/naomi-fisher/changing-our-minds/9781472145505/ 
Not fine in school Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/NotFineInSchoolPublicPage/ 
Book - Hey Warrior: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hey-Warrior-Karen-Young/dp/1912678004 
Fran Morgan on Channel 4 news: https://www.channel4.com/news/parents-fined-because-their-sen-children-wont-go-to-school 
Fran Morgan on BBC Breakfast TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9An8doDKO8&t=3s
School differently: https://www.schooldifferently.net/ 

The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at https://rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter.

You can join the Rethinking Education Mighty Network here: https://rethinking-education.mn.co

S1E20: Fran Morgan and Ellie Costello on speaking up for young people who struggle to attend school

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, Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Southern California and the Director of Candle: the Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education, which, among many notable achievements, is surely the most successful academic acronym of all time.

Mary Helen and her team study the psychological and neurobiological development of emotion and self-awareness. In particular, her work highlights the importance of emotions, sociality and culture in young people’s social, cognitive and moral development. She uses cross-cultural, interdisciplinary studies of stories and the feelings they induce to shine a light on the neural networks that underpin identity, intrinsic motivation, and deep, meaningful learning. Mary Helen’s work often features children and adolescents from disadvantaged communities, and she often involves young people from these communities as junior scientists who are participants, as well as subjects, in her research.

A former public high-school science teacher, Mary Helen has a doctorate in human development and psychology from Harvard University, and she completed her postdoctoral training in social-affective neuroscience with Antonio Damasio, whose research has been incredibly important in shaping Mary Helen’s work.

In 2016, Mary Helen published a book, Emotions, Learning and the Brain, which summarises the key findings from the previous decade of her work. I can’t recommend this book highly enough to anyone with an interest in how children and adolescents learn. I really think it’s an incredibly important read, as is the work Mary Helen has done in the 5 years since the book was published. 

Mary Helen has received numerous awards for her research and impact on education and society, including an Honor Coin from the U.S. Army, a Commendation from the County of Los Angeles, a Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and a host of early career achievement awards too numerous to mention. 

Toward the end of the conversation, we talk about three networks of the brain - the default mode network, the salience network and the executive control network. Understanding what these three networks do, and how they interact, is absolutely central to understanding the importance of Mary Helen’s work. I was hoping that we would have time to discuss these three networks in the conversation, but unfortunately we ran out of time toward the end of the conversation. 
Fortunately however, Mary Helen recently co-authored a paper with her colleague Doug Knecht, which explains these three brain networks and how they work and interact in lay terms. The paper is called ‘Building Meaning Builds Teens' Brains’, and it’s well worth a read.

Links:

Building meaning builds teens’ brains: https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/building-meaning-builds-teens-brains 

CANDLE (The Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education): https://candle.usc.edu/ 

The Rethinking Education Mighty Network: https://rethinking-education.mn.co/feed 

Contribute to the Rethinking Education project: https://www.patreon.com/repod

Buy James a pint, a coffee - or perhaps even a pint of coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/repod

S2E1: Mary Helen Immordino-Yang on the neurobiological case for progressive education

In this rich crossover conversation, Chris Braitch and Dr James Mannion interview one another about trauma, healing, and the deep structural shifts needed in education.

Chris Braitch is a father of three whose mission is to move himself and others towards connection and compassion. He works as an emotional health coach, a leadership coach with Compassionate Leaders Global, and is the founding director of Seen & Heard, a not-for-profit supporting the wellbeing of past and present pupils of the private school system - many of whom have experienced institutional neglect, emotional harm or abuse.

After two decades in global sales and marketing, Chris realised that his life had been shaped by powerful, unexamined forces: early separation, boarding school culture, unresolved childhood experiences, and profound personal grief. Through coaching, men’s groups, the Emotional Freedom Technique, and a life-changing spiritual awakening, he discovered a new sense of purpose rooted in authenticity, service, and compassion. This journey transformed his parenting, his perspective, and the work he now offers to others.

James shares the origins of the Rethinking Education Podcast, his work with the Learner Effectiveness Programme, slice teams, implementation science, and the Education Policy Alliance, and explores why so many top-down reforms fail to shift what actually happens in classrooms.

Together, they explore:


- The “myth of privilege” and why suffering in elite institutions is so often minimised
- How early separation and boarding school cultures shape adult hypervigilance, self-protection, and leadership
- The emotional and spiritual turning points that redirected Chris’s life
- How Seen & Heard supports former pupils, works with schools, and campaigns for safer legislation
- Why spoken language (oracy) is an overlooked equity issue
- Why the system keeps “locating the problem in the child”
- How learner-effectiveness, self-regulation, and holistic education can transform outcomes
- The cultural assumptions baked into British schooling and politics
- Why compassion-centred leadership matters now more than ever

This is a deeply human, hopeful conversation about trauma, awareness, systemic change, and learning to live - and lead - with compassion.


LINKS

- Chris’s not for profit supporting the wellbeing of past pupils of boarding and independent day schools and their families – https://seenheard.org.uk

- Chris’s not for profit supporting the wellbeing of present pupils of boarding and independent day schools and their families – https://seenheardschools.org.uk

- Chris’s coaching business where I support men and women through 1-2-1’s and groups – https://growthwave.uk

The Compassionate Leader Pathway Course - designed to help people lead with purpose, perform with clarity and live with integrity. https://compassionateleadersglobal.com

CREDITS

- The Rethinking Education podcast is brought to you by Crown House Publishing. It is hosted by Dr James Mannion and David Cameron, and produced by Sophie Dean. 

- Outro track: How it is and how it should be by Grit Control

SUPPORT THE PODCAST:

This podcast is a labour of love, with the emphasis on both the labour and the love. 

If you’d like to support the podcast or convey your appreciation for these conversations, you can:

Become a patron: https://patreon.com/repod  

Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/repod

Boarding school trauma and "the myth of privilege” - a conversation with Chris Braitch

Professor Guy Claxton is a hugely influential academic, thinker and author of over 30 books on learning, intelligence and creativity, including Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind, Wise Up, What’s the point of school, Intelligence in the flesh, Educating Ruby and the Learning Power Approach. 

Guy’s latest book, The future of teaching and the myths that hold it back, is a blistering critique of what is increasingly a neotraditional orthodoxy. It is scheduled for release in Spring 2021, and Guy has very kindly agreed to come back on the show when the book comes out to discuss the issues he raises in detail. In this episode, we have a much more expansive conversation about education, and about our shared passion – teaching young people how to teach themselves. 

Guy has an enviable knack for expressing ideas about Learning to Learn that I have thought about for years but struggled to express. To give you a flavor, I will end this introduction with a couple of short excerpts from his recent book, The Learning Powered Approach:

“Schools should be preparing kids to flourish in a complicated and demanding world. Just trying to squeeze better test scores out of them is not enough. We know that, in the long run, character counts for more than examination results. To prosper – to live good lives – today’s students will need curiosity, determination, concentration, imagination, camaraderie, thoughtfulness and self-discipline as well as literacy, numeracy, general knowledge, and the best possible grades. These attributes contribute hugely to people’s success and fulfilment in life. And we also know that they are capable of being intentionally developed – or unintentionally stifled. The desire to cultivate them has to be at the heart of every school’s endeavour.”

And here is the second excerpt, in which Guy suggests that the question of how to develop these character traits is cultural rather than curricular:

“Such dispositions cannot be ‘taught’ directly. Of course they can be made explicit and talked about, and that helps, but merely understanding the concept of ‘resilience’, say, and even being able to write an A-grade essay about it, does not by itself make you any more resilient. Character is a constellation of habits, and habits are tendencies that are built up over time. If you regularly find yourself in a culture – a family, for example – where the people you look up to continually model, value and expect politeness, honesty or curiosity, you are likely to grow towards those qualities, as a plant grows toward the sun. Such habits begin to become part of your natural way of being.” 

Here are a few links to things we discuss:

BOOK: On becoming a person, by Carl Rogers: https://uk.bookshop.org/books/on-becoming-a-person/9781845290573 

BOOK: What’s the point of school, by Guy Claxton: https://uk.bookshop.org/books/what-s-the-point-of-school-rediscovering-the-heart-of-education/9781851686032 

VIDEO: The Scary Guy Combats Bullying on Teachers TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js8Hrqvk8QM 

BOOK: Fear is the Mind Killer: Why Learning to Learn deserves lesson time - and how to make it work for your pupils, by James Mannion and Kate McAllister: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fear-Mind-Killer-teaching-Learning/dp/1911382772

The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter.

S1E7: Guy Claxton on learning to learn

Tim Taylor is a writer and freelance teacher who works on promoting and developing innovative practices in primary schools. He is also the author of 'A Beginner's Guide to Mantle of the Expert', an approach to teaching and learning that involves engaging the children in a process of what Tim describes as ‘imaginative enquiry’. Working with Luke Abbott and others, Tim has helped grow a sizeable community of practice around the approach in recent years, and it’s well worth a visit to the Mantle of the Expert website: https://www.mantleoftheexpert.com. 

This is a fascinating conversation in which we discuss some of the ludicrous educational fads and bizarre beliefs that have gripped the teaching profession in recent years; the powerful potential of mantle of the expert, of course; and the troubling fact that if you were going to change the education system, you wouldn’t want to start from here. 

The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter.

S1E10: Tim Taylor on the power of the imagination

Ross McGill really needs no introduction. Through his alter ego Teacher Toolkit, Ross is something of a publishing powerhouse, with a quarter of a million followers on Twitter - by far the biggest following of anyone in education. A teacher and school leader with decades of experience, Ross now works as a consultant and has worked in over 200 schools, colleges and universities across the UK and around the world. Ross also has one the most influential education blogs on the planet, with around 12 million hits. He has also published five books, the most recent being Mark Plan Teach 2.0.

This is a fascinating, wide-ranging conversation in which we discuss the perils of EduTwitter; the way in which teaching is becoming a much more sure-footed, evidence-informed profession; and the trouble with Ofsted, an organisation Ross refers to as the Grim Reaper.

Here's a link to the verbal feedback report and toolkit Ross developed alongside Mark Quinn at UCL Institute of Education: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/widening-participation/teachers-and-education-professionals/teacher-research-projects/verbal-feedback-project. And here's a blog by Mark Quinn outlining the key findings: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/tag/verbal-feedback-in-schools/.

The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter.

S1E11: Ross McGill on Ofsted, EduTwitter and the trouble with academies

Adam Boxer is Head of Science at what he describes as a “great” secondary comprehensive school in North London, and a prolific tweeter and blogger. His blog, A Chemical Orthodoxy, recently tipped over a million readers, and considering Adam only joined the fold of bloggers fairly recently, that’s really quite impressive. As you will hear, this is the thin end of the wedge of Adam’s prodigious output, and he is a rare example of someone who has been able to have a significant impact on the school system while teaching full-time. 

This, as ever, is a fascinating conversation in which we discuss neotraditionalism, practical tips on behaviour management and reducing workload, and the thin slither of Twitter beef that led to his coming on the show. 

Links to interesting stuff we talked about:

Adam’s blog - A Chemical Orthodoxy: https://achemicalorthodoxy.wordpress.com/ 

Adam’s YouTube channel of Science videos - Boxer’s shorts: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBHqVPDozD6Dg3tRN1-JSgg/videos 

Cog Sci Sci, the organisation Adam founded for science teachers with an interest in cognitive science: https://cogscisci.wordpress.com/resources/ 

Carousel Learning - a website app based on retrieval roulette: https://app.carousel-learning.com/teacher/access 

Adam’s videos and blogs on behaviour: https://achemicalorthodoxy.wordpress.com/behaviour/ 

The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter.

S1E12: Adam Boxer on behaviour, workload and neotraditionalism

"Civilisation is a race between education and catastrophe." (HG Wells)

In this podcast, we take Wells at his word. Hosted by Dr James Mannion and David Cameron, Rethinking Education features long-form conversations with fascinating guests about how we might create a more diverse, intelligent, responsive educational ecosystem that works for *all* young people.

If this sounds interesting to you, welcome to Rethinking Education: Education's Critical Friend: https://rethinking-ed.org/podcast

Boarding school trauma and "the myth of privilege” - a conversation with Chris Braitch

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