Teaching Excellence podcast

Stuart is the first principal to come on the Teaching Excellence Podcast. With a keen interest in leadership, Stef chats with Stuart about his leadership journey in FE, the challenges that we currently face and the vision of FE in the future. 

This week Lindsey and I chat about Induction and the things that we think make it meaningful. Its a good time to consider how we best welcome students to college but also move away from induction being about assessment, assignments and course requirements. Its time to be creative and consider all the ways in which we can create a memorable experience that will build a sense of belonging and engage students in their future.

This week Stef and Isla chat about the last few weeks, what we have been up to, where we have been and what we have heard which has caught our interest. Isla talks about the NATECLA conference and I chat about training I ran with Apprenticeships tutors and we both talk about some of our initial thoughts about our Ofsted experiences this year. We could probably talk for a week about Ofsted, but we just threw out a few of our first initial thoughts. We get that usually it generates a lot of discussion, so if you want to ask us a question, use the voicenote or message function in Anchor to ask us something about our experiences or our thoughts. Much Joy. Stef and Isla.

I talk to Paula who is a co-head of a primary school. She shares how this works and how they have aligned CPD and their whole school approach to being curious and inquisitive about improvement.

Its time for Season 5 of the Teaching Excellence podcast. There is podcast news and we chat about things we have been up to recently in 2022, including a project which explores teaching low level English skills as well as exploring collaborative professionalism to create positive quality improvement cultures. If you find any of this interesting be sure to let us know or get in touch and we can point you in the direction of resources or further reading, or we could even include further discussion in future episodes.

Stef and Amy chat about Culture Development through TLA and Quality Improvement, the need for focus and rapid action in response to learner needs as well as the 'noise' that can exist when there feels like there is so much to do. We also chat briefly about Amy's research  as part of last years SUNCETT research programme.

Stef and Rachel talk about Professional Development, Coaching and Mentoring in Education, with a specific focus on the Early Careers Framework and Contextual Coaching. We dig into the importance of relationships, nuance, challenge and the educational landscape in which we find ourselves as well as consider how practice can really be shaped to support and nurture teachers as professionals.

We talk about a recent research paper that Rachel has written and published with Trista Hollweck (@tristateach), titled Contextual Coaching: levering and leading school improvement through collaborative professionalism. The paper has many golden nuggets within it, of which we definitely do not get to cover everything within it in our conversation. The main focus is contextual coaching and collaborative professionalism, of which both have super powers in relation to quality improvement in schools and colleges. More to come on both of these in future podcasts. 

If you would like a copy of the paper then you are more than welcome to contact Rachel on twitter @DrRLofthouse or by email on r.m.lofthouse@leedsbeckett.ac.uk.

I talk to Tony Davies about the conditions by which we can promote learning, including links to learning theory and how emotion can support or hinder learning. We also get into some discussion about quality improvement, action planning and observation processes to support teacher development. I hope you enjoy it. If you have a comment or response to anything we talk about, please leave me a voice note in Anchor. Id love to hear your thoughts. 

Stef talks to Bryony Evett Hackfort, Director of Teaching, Learning, Technology and Skills at Coleg Sir Gar and Coleg Ceredigion, about the way in which Professional Development for teachers has evolved over the last several years, how they have created a culture where curiosity is the focus and professional autonomy is built in. 

Stef is joined by Joanne Miles to discuss some of the key themes that are popping up through conversations across the country as well as the importance of reflection as we head towards the end of this academic year. We discuss the importance of reflection for staff as well as how reflection can support learner engagement and ownership of learning. We discuss ways in which this can be implemented as a professional development practice for staff development and throughout the learner journey, starting with being creative an purposeful in the first 6 weeks of the academic year.

This week, Stef talks to Trista Holweck about her research into coaching and support programmes for new teachers. We talk about the importance of coaching, the importance of humility and the way in which both coachee and coach/mentor can benefit from coaching relationships.

Stef talks to Joanne Miles about online teaching and learning,  evidence based pedagogical principles that can help us to focus as well as hybrid models that teachers are currently navigating.