The teaching profession is in crisis and whilst it can be an extraordinarily rewarding and it is also an exhausting profession so self-care is essential. As a regular diary keeper I was curious to find out just how this might be helping my own wellbeing. Dr Lucy Kelly  is an Associate Professor in Education in the School of Education whose main research interest is reflective practice as a positive tool for educator wellbeing, and she is Principal Investigator for the 'Reimagining the Diary' project. Lucy talks about how our narrow concept of what diary keeping is could be a barrier to en ..read more

In this episode Dr Hannah Wilkinson talks about her doctoral research which focused on re-evaluating teachers’ use of test-taking practices from a psychological lens; unpicking how students appraised these types of communications and how it affects their engagement in the classroom. Essentially we will consider the messages that we, as teachers, give to students when we talk about exam preparation specifically and the different ways that students might interpret these communications and how, hopefully we can make them more impactful. We talk about threat and efficacy appeals.   Papers Han ..read more

In this episode, and as we fast approach exams, we look at how to help student manage their nerves. There are lots of strategies that can be employed but learning to sit comfortably with the uncomfortable feeling of exam anxiety can be challenging. This episode looks at one way we can help our students to learn to bring their thoughts and feelings under control using a technique stolen from sports psychology, but equally effective for high pressure exam performance situations: visualisation. It allows students to practise their coping skills and to understand that they can manage any exam scen ..read more

This week we look at why exam technique matters - the more working memory students can free up to write good answers, rather than figuring out what they need to do and how long they have got left, the better. This episode covers 5 things that students should practice to help make an exam go smoothly:  Knowing the rubric Overall plan of attack Managing timing (including extra time) Breaking down the question Spotting traps If you want to know more about working memory and cognitive load there are a couple of good episodes you can listen to here: Working Memory: https://changing ..read more

Despite all our efforts to teach students to revise using effective methods they often revert back to less effective methods such as copying and reading and rereading notes. Why is this, when we have told them that these techniques are less effective in the long term? This week's episode looks at 4 common reasons why students revision fails: Planning Fallacy Illusion of Fluency Misinterpreted-effort hypothesis Failure to reflect The link to the episode about Roediger and Karpicke's research is https://changingstatesofmind.libsyn.com/recall-or-re-read-the-research-into-retrieval-practice The ..read more

This week the episode will be based around retrieval practice - a concept most of you will be familiar with, and if you aren’t then do take a listen to this episode which delves into the research underpinning the concept. Many students when learning, make the error of being passive recipients of information, reading, listening, watching or copying. Whilst a few bits may stick, more information will stick if they actively reconstruct the information through some sort of recall activity.  Today we will cover 4 retrieval concepts you will know but thinking about the why.  My hope is tha ..read more

You know that thing, you're listening to the radio and minding your own business and a song comes on the radio and memories flood back (possibly embarrassing teenage ones!). That song is a cue to unlocking your memory - all sorts of things can be cues - smells, images, letters, words. In an exam the main cues are going to be words - specifically those in the question. If we understand that cues help us remember and that they are important at the time of learning then we can ensure that when we learn information we learn it with specific cues at the forefront of our mind. This week we consider ..read more

This week we move from the practialities of starting and planning revision to the learning itself.  The focus is on how we can help students to build learning so that it is retained in long term memory. Whilst there are lots of ways to approach this today's episode focused on 3 key concepts: Levels of processing, spacing and interleaving. I mentioned that there are several podcasts that delve into these concepts in more depth. Further information can be found here: Levels of processing: https://changingstatesofmind.libsyn.com/getting-stuff-to-stick-in-long-term-memory Interleaving: https ..read more

I would argue that good planning is an art or at the very least a skill that needs to learned and perfected and yet we often cut our planning teeth on a revision timetable just before we do exams. How many student's plans turn out to be too vague, over ambitious or too rigid? This week's episode explores this skill and how we can best encourage students to become effective planners: understanding what they need to get done, what the time frame is in which they need to do it and how best they can plan to suit their own context.  If you want to watch the youtube video I made you can take a ..read more

What is it that motivates students to study? A few lucky people may genuinely enjoy the process of memorising facts and preparing for exams, but this is probably rare. For most people studying requires effort and despite the high stakes, the reward of good exam results (or fear of bad ones) in the distant future is not enough of a motivation when there are far more exciting and immediately rewarding things to do instead. So this week we consider how we can motivate students to engage in independent study by bringing in short term, tangible rewards. If you want to learn more about planning the ..read more