Psychology in the Classroom Lucinda Powell

Exam season is now in full swing and we are all really trying to encourage students to move away from the comfortable passive revision strategies such as reading and highlighting notes and get them to engage in more retrieval practice with flashcards and mindmaps. This week I talk to psychology teacher, Jonny Wainman about how he teaches his students study skills, we cover a wide range of topics and if you want do dive a bit deeper into the different concepts he mentioned you can find much more on the links below:
Cognition & Learning: https://changingstatesofmind.com/cognition-and-learning-1
Exam prep mini series: https://changingstatesofmind.com/mini-series
 

My guest this week is Dr Michelle Tytherleigh author of Positive Education at all Levels: Learning to Flourish, and we are talking about how we can use positive psychology in the classroom to students to flourish. Martin Seligman asked two questions:
In two words or less what do you want for your children? In two words or less what do most schools teach? To answer these questions so that the responses are not contradictory or incompatible Positive Education recognises the need to incorporate wellbeing into education, into the everyday learning experience and needs to involve the whole community - teachers, leaders, parents and student. In this podcast we look at how we can do just this.
Link to Michelle's book: https://books.emeraldinsight.com/download_pdf.php?k=9781837531578
Link to Worthit: https://www.worthit.org.uk/
 

Dr Charl Emmerson is an Organisational Psychologist who has worked in schools and researches wellbeing in schools. In this interview we are discussing teacher wellbeing at both an individual level and an organisational level. WIth top tips of teachers and leadership on creating a supportive culture. In addition we discuss how SEND impacts teacher wellbeing 
Key papers/links:
NASUWT study findings on pupil behaviour: https://edexec.co.uk/verbal-and-physical-pupil-abuse-skyrockets-in-the-past-year-says-nasuwt-report/
Importance of teacher-pupil relationship: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-011-9170-y 
Pupil wellbeing - teacher wellbeing: https://www.sueroffey.com/wp-content/uploads/import/32-Roffey%20ECP29-4.pdf 
Charl’s research with University of Sheffield: EU-funded project looking at developing compassionate workplaces https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/iwp/research-projects/eu-cowork
Education Support Partnership: https://www.educationsupport.org.uk/
 

This week I am joined by Professor David Daley from Nottingham Trent University to talk about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ADHD is something that most teachers will come across at some point and managing it well in the classroom can make a huge difference to outcomes for young people with ADHD. In this episode we cover the main psychological underpinnings of the disorder and how these manifest in the classroom as behaviour. David also offers some really useful tips on how to help young people with ADHD manage in the classroom.
You can find more on executive function, working memory and cognitive psychology here: https://changingstatesofmind.com/cognition-and-learning-3
You can learn even more about ADHD here: https://changingstatesofmind.com/send-and-inclusion
 

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 engaging with it, how it can many benefits and how we can engage with a broader and more creative concept of diary keeping.
 
If you want to find out more about Lucy’s work here are the links:
The Diary Toolkit: https://thediarytoolkit.com/
Reimagining the Diary (Book): https://www.johncattbookshop.com/products/reimagining-the-diary-reflective-practice-as-a-positive-tool-for-educator-wellbeing
More about the project itself: https://reimaginingthediary.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/

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 Hannah Mentioned:
Wilkinson, H. (2024). Efficacy Appeals in the High-Stakes Classroom: Re-Examining Teachers' use of Test Preparation Strategies (Doctoral dissertation, Liverpool John Moores University):
 
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215091920300018?casa_token=DxwxBEbesPIAAAAA:TUTqZCb43dZAokxGby9v6k2sfGKV9FosFhbi7Lhux0xjlYsgtYw8Hk_U_GeQjJsdkmWQ13Gw
 
Putwain, D. W., Symes, W., Nicholson, L. J., & Remedios, R. (2021). Teacher motivational messages used prior to examinations: What are they, how are they evaluated, and what are their educational outcomes?. In Advances in motivation science (Vol. 8, pp. 63-103). Elsevier:
 
https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/22471/2/2024wilkinsonphd.pdf