ITV National News have just dropped a hard-hitting report about standards of literacy in Welsh schools. I you haven’t seen it, you can get the text and video here.

We wanted to put together a reaction piece to unpack the issues around phonics and reading (without getting embroiled in any reading wars!), but also zoom out a bit and see whether this first really prominent news investigation into the Welsh education reforms might be pointing to wider questions or concerns with the Curriculum for Wales.

Thanks to Rhys Williams at ITN, Gareth Rein at St Peter’s RC Primary School in Cardiff, Dr Gareth Evans at UWTSD and the various people who gave me background information and understanding, especially about systematic synthetic phonics!

If you were hoping to hear Emma's dulcet tones on this episode, apologies - she was teaching all day and we wanted to turn this episode around in a single day. She'll be back next week!

For today's snippet of student teacher research Tom is joined by Ella Cleary from PGCE Secondary Biology. Ella was interested in how to use assessment for learning strategies to create an equitable biology classroom.

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Recorded in studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 29th April 2024

For today's episode, we return to a comment made by Professor David Egan in a previous episode, where he identified community focused schools as important in supporting pupils and their families living in poverty.

To dig a little deeper into what they are and what they do, we've invited Dr Jan Huyton to the studio. Jan has done a lot of work on this, and also uses a multi-agency approach when teaching on the MA in Education here at Cardiff Met.

Jan tells us what community focused schools can be, what they do, and what obstacles we need to overcome to join up various types of organisations which seek to support children and families.

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Recorded in studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 24th April 2024

English language listeners: a reminder that we also produce occasional episodes in Welsh! This is the beginning of a new block of PGCE Research Bites, and English-speaking listeners can get their fix in a fortnight!

Welcome back for our seventh season of the podcast!

We’re opening the new academic year with another of our live panel sessions - this one was recorded in June this year at our PGCE research conference. Joining us to discuss what enquiry can look like in schools, and how we can make it work for us as teachers, is a quartet of people with a claim to have something to say on the subject! Emma Aston and Sarah Cason join us from Whitchurch High School and Palmerston Primary school - both schools with excellent track records. Louise Muteham was previously heard this time last year asking a great question and now joins us as a panellist - she’s from the Central South Consortium. And Dr Matt Hutt is a colleague from just down the road at the University of South Wales.

We hope you enjoy what they have to say, and their answers to the questions provided by our audience.

As ever, we’ll be back in a fortnight with more goodies for you.

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Recorded live in Lecture Theatre 1 at Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Cyncoed Campus on 10th June 2024.

Hello to all our listeners, and we hope you're enjoying the tail end of a well deserved summer break!

We recently popped in to the studio to have a brief look back at season 6 and discuss some of our favourite moments that you might want to listen to if you missed them.

Then it was time to lift the lid on a few things you can look forward to in season 7, which kicks off on the 6th September.

If you've stuck with us for the long haul, thanks for being with us, and if you're a new listener, welcome and we hope you enjoy our podcast.

Don't forget you can watch us on youtube - our channel is at youtube.com/@talkteachingpod and our handle on Twitter/X is @talkteachingpod

If you like what you hear, why not leave us a rating or review?

See you on the 6th!

Best wishes from Emma and Tom

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Recorded in studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 9th August 2024

We've reached the end of season 6 of the podcast, and thanks to all our listeners for coming along for the ride!

Today we bring you a live recording of a panel discussion we put on for our PGCE Secondary student teachers. The panellists were the international curriculum consultant and bestselling author Lucy Crehan, former educational journalist Dr Gareth Evans who's now director of education policy at Yr Athrofa, UWTSD, and Matthew Maughan who's deputy headteacher at Bassaleg School in Newport.

We asked them to tell our student teachers where they need to look and what they need to prioritise as they join the profession early in the implementation of the new Curriculum for Wales. But if you're listening from outside Wales, there are plenty of universal bits of advice to help everyone make their way as teachers!

Thanks to all our panellists, and to the student teachers who asked the questions. We'll be back in the new academic year with season 7 - see you there!

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Recorded live in Lecture Theatre 1 on 20th March 2024 (panel discussion) and studio B2.15 on 24th April 2024 (Emma and Tom opening and closing sections) at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus.

Strap in and prepare yourselves for another roller-coaster ride as regular guest Dr Kevin Smith from Cardiff University is back in the studio, and this time he's brought sweets!

Kev is here to talk about Currere, an approach to considering curriculum which might be refreshing to those of us who work in the world of education. We'll leave it to Kev to explain all about it, but you can also find a list of resources and links below.

Dr Kev says:

https://www.currereexchange.com/currere-exchange-journal.html - this is the Currere Exchange Journal. It is a journal solely dedicated to Currere work and welcomes submissions from everyone teachers, academics, etc. They also offer a 'Currere exchange' event where people take part in, and learn about, the currere method. This year it is a virtual event (here are the details: https://www.currereexchange.com/registration.html).

https://journal.jctonline.org/index.php/jct - this is the link to the Journal of Curriculum Theorising. My friend/colleague Tom Poetter is currently the editor, but he is stepping down this year after a long, six-year stint. They have just released the older issues from the 70s/80s that had key publications in critical, reconceptualist approaches to curriculum, so definitely worth browsing! They also have an annual conference (http://www.jctonline.org/conference/ in October.). Bill Pinar, who developed the currere method and introduced 'reconceptualist' approaches to curriculum is one of the keynote speakers.

Also, here is the URL to my blog that has a few posts related to 'currere' as well as other topics we've discussed in other episodes: https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/drkevinsmith/ and this is the link to my paper Ambulare: https://cej.lib.miamioh.edu/index.php/CEJ/article/view/209.

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Recorded in studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 24th April 2024