Today I am speaking with David Price OBE. David is the author of two books - ‘Open: How we'll work, live and learn in the future’ - and ‘The Power of Us: How we connect, act and innovate together’. It is this latter book that I’m mainly speaking with David about today. I listened to it recently as an audiobook and it’s absolutely fascinating. Here are some of the lovely things people have written about The Power of Us: ‘The Power of Us is the first book that captures the cultural forces that pow...
Dec 10, 2022•2 hr 12 min
Sophie Christophy is a culture transformer, feminist, unschooling parent and activist. She works on deconstructing patriarchy, from childhood socialisation in education and family culture, and in organisational culture, by creating a shift to principles of consent and self-direction. As a conduit for the emergence of a consent-based social and environmental paradigm, Sophie works with individuals and organisations on deschooling, integrating consent and self-direction based principles into pract...
Nov 19, 2022•1 hr 17 min
Ollie Lovell is a teacher, author and podcaster based in Melbourne, Australia, and the host of the Education Research Reading Room (ERRR) podcast. In summer 2022, Ollie visited the UK on a whirlwind tour of three fascinatingly different educational institutions: Michaela School in North London, often described as the strictest school in the country; XP School in Doncaster, which places great emphasis on pastoral care, beautiful work and expeditionary learning; and the Self-Managed Learning Colle...
Oct 23, 2022•2 hr 34 min
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and co-director of the Wellcome Trust PhD Programme in Neuroscience at University College London. She has been awarded a number of prizes over the last 20 years or so, including the British Psychological Society (BPS) Doctoral Award, the BPS Spearman Medal for outstanding early career research, and the Royal Society's Rosalind Franklin Award. She was also the winner of the 2018 Royal Societ...
Oct 14, 2022•2 hr 18 min
The final episode of Season 2 of the Rethinking Education podcast features a conversation with Jonny Hunt, an independent sex and relationships consultant and the author of Sex Ed for Grown Ups: How to talk to young people about sex and relationships. NB: Contains strong language - not safe for work! LINKS: Everyone's invited: https://www.everyonesinvited.uk/ Jonny's book 'Sex Ed for Grown-Ups: How to talk to Children and Young People about Sex and Relationships' - https://www.waterstones.com/bo...
Jul 14, 2022•3 hr 15 min
Peter Gray is a research professor at Boston College and the author of 'Free to Learn' and 'Psychology', a college textbook now in its 8th edition. Here are some of the incredible things people have written about 'Free to Learn':: “The modern educational system is like a wish made in a folk tale gone horribly wrong. Peter Gray's Free to Learn leads us out of the maze of unforeseen consequences to a more natural way of letting children educate themselves. Gray's message might seem too good to be ...
Jul 03, 2022•1 hr 57 min
Emma Ann Hardy is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle since the 2017 general election. She is also the Shadow Minister for Further Education and Universities. Recently, Emma launched and chaired the Oracy All Party Parliamentary Group, which carried out an inquiry and published an excellent report, Speak for Change, in 2021. LINKS The Oracy APPG - https://oracy.inparliament.uk/about-us Speak for Change - the report of the...
Jun 24, 2022•1 hr 4 min
An interview with Rachel Sylvester on the findings of the Times Education Commission. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/society/education/education-commission
Jun 16, 2022•1 hr 7 min
In this episode, Dr James Mannion - the creator of the Implementation Science for Schools programme - interviews two senior leaders, Kate Barry and Elaine Long, about their experience of the ISS pilot study at their school. RETHINKING ED CONFERENCE LINKS Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lets-get-together-the-rethinking-education-conference-2022-tickets-226415834857 Social media links: Youtube (trailer): https://youtu.be/JKz8ALX2QFM Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rethinking_Ed/status/1528046...
Jun 12, 2022•2 hr 50 min
In this episode I am joined by Ian Cunningham, the founder of the Self-Managed Learning College (SMLC) in Brighton; Dr Naomi Fisher, a clinical psychologist who sends her children to SMLC; and Ellie Costello, the Director of Square Peg, a social enterprise that supports young people and families with barriers to attendance. We are here to discuss the Schools Bill currently going through the English Parliament, which presents a significant challenge for people seeking to rethink education; indeed...
Jun 01, 2022•1 hr 15 min
In this episode, titans of education Mick Waters and Tim Brighouse talk about their sensational new book 'About our schools: Improving on previous best'. Here are some of the breathless reviews the book has received:: "You can hear the passion, the decency, the anger, the compassion, and the hope in this insider–outsider story about England’s education policy over the past 45 years... the most exciting and exacting book I have read in a long time." (Professor John Hattie) "It seems odd to refer ...
Apr 29, 2022•3 hr 38 min
Jon Hutchinson is the Head of Training and Development at the Reach Foundation, an educational charity that focuses on expanding the role of schools into the wider community through a cradle to career model. Prior to this, Jon was an Assistant Headteacher at Reach Academy Felt-ham. He has taught across both KS1 and KS2, and also tutors on Ambition Institute’s Masters in Expert Teaching. Jon has taken part in expert panels for the Department for Education, Ofsted and the Standards and Testing Age...
Mar 19, 2022•2 hr 17 min
Today I am delighted to be able to share with you my recent conversation with Andy Sprakes, the co-founder of XP school in Doncaster. I also had the opportunity to speak with two students from the school, Declan and Guraaj, who were absolutely lovely and insightful as you will soon discover. There has been a lot of interest in XP school in recent months, partly following a very complementary profile of the school that was published in the Sunday Times magazine, entitled: ‘Is XP the school of the...
Mar 04, 2022•2 hr 16 min
Today I am speaking with John Higgs, the cultural historian and author of many excellent books, several of which we draw on in this conversation - especially: Watling Street: Travels Through Britain and Its Ever-Present Past Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century The Future Starts Here: An Optimistic Guide to What Comes Next William Blake versus The World So this conversation draws together ideas from a number of John’s books, in an attempt to weave a positive narrat...
Feb 20, 2022•2 hr 25 min
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 produce the kinds of young people who will be able to thrive and flourish in this bewildering and rapidl...
Feb 03, 2022•4 hr
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 education news website, Education Uncovered, which has the strap-line "digging around in the underg...
Jan 21, 2022•1 hr 49 min
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 teaching profession, but who has immense experience and insight to share. Geraldine recently published an ...
Jan 07, 2022•2 hr 35 min
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 Design. But today I am speaking with Donald about a different writing project. Over the last 20 years...
Dec 24, 2021•3 hr 6 min
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, down to earth, warts-and-all book called 'Miss I don’t give a Sh*t: Engaging with Challenging Behav...
Dec 11, 2021•1 hr 16 min
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 focuses largely on memorising stuff. But there has been another area of social science bubbling awa...
Nov 27, 2021•1 hr 56 min
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) - to name just a few. You may have noticed a theme in those book titles - Michael writes about knowle...
Nov 14, 2021•2 hr 26 min
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 included between 6 and 12 people at a time - always including young people, as well as parents and car...
Oct 29, 2021•2 hr 26 min
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 ...
Oct 15, 2021•2 hr
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.com/playlist?list=PLZ6mCUmebHJNC-qrWX9gMBCQJtHxoGNh2 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/rethink...
Sep 15, 2021•18 min
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 at the current time (summer 2021) which can reasonably be described as the government’s assault on ...
Aug 07, 2021•3 hr 4 min
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 absolutely brilliant read - I really can’t recommend it enough. We talk about the book in depth in ...
Jul 31, 2021•2 hr 53 min
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 with me. I’ve really enjoyed listening back to this conversation, and I hope you do too. The Rethinkin...
Jul 23, 2021•1 hr 24 min
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 visiting scholar at Nuffield College, Oxford and holds a masters degree in Human Development and Psyc...
Jul 09, 2021•2 hr 51 min
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 and Gina (not sure where in the world she is!) Enjoy!
Jun 28, 2021•44 min
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 Will Carter - a FullBright Scholar and a PhD student at Berkeley, California who recently appeared ...
Jun 28, 2021•2 hr 33 min
