Building Lasting Change in Education: Insights from Dr. James Mannion

Speaker A 00:00:00

I realized immediately that that was just this unbelievable opportunity to do something very radically bold and different.

Speaker A 00:00:06

Those kids went on to achieve the best set of results that that school had ever seen.

Speaker A 00:00:10

And especially it was, it was beneficial for disadvantaged kids.

Speaker A 00:00:14

So the gap closed from the bottom up almost completely, which was amazing.

Speaker A 00:00:18

Start with the end in mind and then you go back to the, revert to the present moments and you think, what are the problems of the present that we want to fix and what are the root causes of those problems?

Speaker A 00:00:28

Backward design is where you start.

Speaker A 00:00:30

It's a three step process where you start with the end in mind.

Speaker A 00:00:33

What difference do you want to make for whom and by when?

Speaker A 00:00:38

There aren't any quick fixes in change management.

Speaker A 00:00:40

We know it takes two or three years to bring about lasting cultural change in a school.

Speaker A 00:00:47

If we could improve that, that success rate to like, say, say 50% or even just 30% or 20%, the amount of people's lives that are positively affected by that turning of the dial is absolutely mind blowing.

Speaker A 00:01:03

If we had a different education system, we would see a very different world recognize failure for what it is, which is feedback in wolf's clothing.

Speaker A 00:01:13

A mistake is just a mis take, right?

Speaker A 00:01:16

It's just like you just do it again and, you know, learn from it.

Speaker A 00:01:20

Allow your curiosity to run wild and we will empower you to pursue those ideas.

Speaker B 00:01:27

Hello.

Speaker B 00:01:27

That was Dr.

Speaker B 00:01:28

James Mannion and he is a keynote speaker, teacher trainer, researcher, consultant, podcaster and author with a passion for education and political reform.

Speaker B 00:01:36

He is the co founder and director of Rethinking Education and we chat about his new book, Making Change Stick, a practical guide to implementing school improvement.

Speaker B 00:01:46

Hello, my name is Mark Taylor and welcome to the Education on Far podcast, the place for creative and inspiring learning from around the world.

Speaker B 00:02:00

Listen to teachers, parents and mentors share how they are supporting children to live their best authentic life and are proving to be a guiding light to us all.

Speaker B 00:02:08

Hi James, thank you so much for joining us here on the Education on Far podcast.

Speaker B 00:02:12

One of the things we're really passionate about here is a different version of education.

Speaker B 00:02:17

Redefining education, a rethinking of education.

Speaker B 00:02:20

And I think we're talking to the right person today.

Speaker B 00:02:22

So thanks so much for being here.

Speaker A 00:02:25

Yes, indeed.

Speaker A 00:02:26

I basically it's all I do is think about that stuff.

Speaker A 00:02:28

My brain starts thinking about that from about a minute after I wake up and that's basically me.

Speaker A 00:02:33

My wife often says, if I'm staring into the distance, are you thinking about reforming education?

Speaker A 00:02:38

The answer is nearly always yes.

Speaker A 00:02:39

So yes, you are talking to the right guy.

Speaker A 00:02:42

And thank you very much for having me on.

Speaker B 00:02:44

It's my pleasure.

Speaker B 00:02:44

And I think what I love about the podcast so much is that, you know, there are many people who talk about these things sort of around the water cooler, so to speak, or in the staff room, but to be able to speak to people who are making a difference, who are writing books, who are organizing programs, who are actually, in a way of actually trying to make this change happen within the system, which we know is obviously sort of quite tight and hard to maneuver, then that's, I find a fascinating conversation in a way that we can move a needle, which is what it really needs.

Speaker A 00:03:12

It sure does.

Speaker A 00:03:13

Yes, it really does.

Speaker A 00:03:14

It's a very urgent and it's been urgent for a really long time.

Speaker A 00:03:18

But, you know, there are so many amazing things about the education system that it's hard to sort of to talk about it as, you know, a thing that needs reforming because that's almost like doing a disservice to all these people who are doing all of this amazing work.

Speaker A 00:03:32

But, you know, I think the evidence is in.

Speaker A 00:03:36

It's very clear that this system is really causing a lot of problems in the way that we've configured it.

Speaker A 00:03:41

And so I think we just need to reconfigure it and maybe we'll get into some of that.

Speaker B 00:03:47

Absolutely.

Speaker B 00:03:48

We're going to be talking about your book Making Change Stick.

Speaker B 00:03:50

But let's just sort of first of all sort of start with an overview really, because I know you've been involved in education directly in terms of teacher, in terms of how you're then working around, in terms of speaking and of course your podcast.

Speaker B 00:04:01

So sort of give people sort of an umbrella, a bird's eye view of sort of what education looks like for you, sort of in a day to day manner.

Speaker A 00:04:10

Sure.

Speaker A 00:04:10

So.

Speaker A 00:04:11

So I came to teaching fairly late.

Speaker A 00:04:13

I was like 30 when I trained to teach and I became a science teacher and quickly found that that was quite restrictive.

Speaker A 00:04:23

I found it really quite.

Speaker A 00:04:25

Yeah, like I, I had my moments, you know, but generally speaking, I found that there were, there were some kids for whom science was just not of interest and they would find it very difficult to engage in a lesson about electromagnets or the nitrogen cycle or whatever it is in my heart of hearts.

Speaker A 00:04:45

I'm not particularly interested in that either.

Speaker A 00:04:47

Or like, you know, the specific heat capacity of steel or something.

Speaker A 00:04:50

I don't care about that at all.

Speaker A 00:04:52

Maybe it's my lack of a gift as a science teacher that I wasn't able to bring this material to light, but I found that there were some kids that I just couldn't connect with.

Speaker A 00:05:00

And yet when I taught other things, for example, if we were in tutor time with those same kids and we were talking about other things or in a PSH lesson and you're talking about something like animal rights or, you know, bullying or like often things, I would find things that have some sort of a moral dimension, some sense of justice, which seems to be inbuilt into kids.

Speaker A 00:05:20

They just have this burning sense of fairness and right and wrong and so on.

Speaker A 00:05:24

Those same kids would come alive, they would just be really animated and they were able to, you know, evaluate information as it came to light and see things from different perspectives and do really, really sophisticated things.

Speaker A 00:05:36

And so I sort of realized quite early on that I wanted to get out of the science lab and into other areas.

Speaker A 00:05:42

And I was very fortunate to be at a school where we had a head teacher who came in and implemented a.

Speaker A 00:05:48

This was back in 2010, so I've been teaching for four years.

Speaker A 00:05:51

And he implemented what was then called a learning to learn curriculum.

Speaker A 00:05:56

I now refer to it as learner effectiveness.

Speaker A 00:05:58

It goes by many names.

Speaker A 00:05:59

Self regulated learning, competency based learning, character education, some people call it essentially teaching kids how to learn, how to become more effective learners.

Speaker A 00:06:09

And it was an incredible project.

Speaker A 00:06:12

So I was invited to join this team, or rather everybody was invited to apply to join this team.

Speaker A 00:06:17

And we were given five lessons a week, or 20% of the curriculum time with the whole of year seven.

Speaker A 00:06:24

So this is a secondary school and we could just do with that time whatever we wanted.

Speaker A 00:06:29

The senior team sort of said, here's a blank sheet of paper over to you.

Speaker A 00:06:32

Just like do whatever it is that you think that these kids need to be able to become more activated, to become more confident, to be able to become, you know, better at learning stuff.

Speaker A 00:06:43

And I realized immediately that that was just this unbelievable opportunity to do something very radically bold and different.

Speaker A 00:06:49

And as I say, this was 2010, which is the year that, you know, there was a change of government in this country and things were moved in a much more traditionalist direction.

Speaker A 00:06:58

And yet we had this little oasis of very, really quite progressive practice.

Speaker A 00:07:03

You know, lots of project based learning philosophy for children.

Speaker A 00:07:06

Lots of kids being able to choose what they, what they learned about choosing how to present it, choosing who to work with and so on.

Speaker A 00:07:16

And so yeah, I realized early on that this was an incredible thing.

Speaker A 00:07:20

And I decided to do a Ph.D.

Speaker A 00:07:22

to study it.

Speaker A 00:07:23

And that turned into an eight year study because we followed four cohorts of kids from year seven through to GCSE and that finally resulted in my Ph.D.

Speaker A 00:07:34

as I say, but also in this book that I wrote about it.

Speaker A 00:07:36

If I may do a little plug for this book, Fear is the Mind Killer, which I co wrote with my amazing friend Kate McAllister who got so good at self regulation that she now lives in the Caribbean.

Speaker A 00:07:50

She is, I still work closely with her.

Speaker A 00:07:54

And that that project had just an unbelievable impact.

Speaker A 00:07:58

Those kids went on to achieve the best set of results that that school had ever seen.

Speaker A 00:08:02

And especially it was, it was beneficial for disadvantaged kids.

Speaker A 00:08:06

So the gap closed from the bottom up almost completely, which was amazing.

Speaker A 00:08:10

And now I do lots of work around the world, lots in Wales recently, but also around the world helping schools to develop self regulated learning, you know, through the curriculum, through pedagogy, through tutor time and so on.

Speaker A 00:08:25

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:08:25

So I'll, I'll stop talking for now.

Speaker A 00:08:27

There's more to say, but I'll pause there for now.

Speaker B 00:08:29

And I think being able to see two cohorts go through that is amazing, isn't it?

Speaker B 00:08:33

Because like you say, it's not just it happened to be a good year or it happened to be this or it happened to be that.

Speaker B 00:08:38

You start to really see those trends and that must be very exciting because you suddenly realize that everything that you believe in, the things that you're researching, the things that you want to be able to explain is you've then got that evidence to back it up.

Speaker A 00:08:51

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A 00:08:52

And it was.

Speaker A 00:08:53

So it was four cohorts.

Speaker A 00:08:54

We had, there was one control cohort, so the previous year group at the same school who had very similar data at entry to the school.

Speaker A 00:09:01

And then there was three learning to learn cohorts and they had, they had taught lessons throughout year seven, eight and nine.

Speaker A 00:09:07

So they had over 400 lessons over a three year period, which was a big chunk of time.

Speaker A 00:09:12

And yet.

Speaker A 00:09:13

And Therefore they had 400 fewer lessons of subject learning compared with that control group.

Speaker A 00:09:20

And yet they significantly outperformed the control group in measures of subject learning because they were able to learn more effectively.

Speaker A 00:09:27

Right.

Speaker A 00:09:27

We'd activated them as, or helped them to activate themselves.

Speaker A 00:09:31

They had become more effective at learning stuff and they were able to learn more in fewer lessons.

Speaker B 00:09:37

It's an, it's an amazing thing and I think the more I hear about project based learning and the sorts of things that you're talking about here as well, it really does make you realize it makes such a big Difference, but there is a sort, a certain amount of leap of faith.

Speaker B 00:09:50

And I know one of the things you talk about in the book is the idea of sort of top down learning and sort of support from sort of senior leadership and, and how that combination of those things.

Speaker B 00:10:00

So why don't we sort of dive into the book and, and explain some, some of those things.

Speaker B 00:10:04

And I think I'd just like to start by.

Speaker B 00:10:06

I know at the very beginning of the book you mentioned Sir Tim Brighouse, who I've been involved in, he was president of the national association for Primary Education, who I've been involved in for a few years and he was a man.

Speaker B 00:10:18

And just sort of tell us your relationship with him, first of all and then we can sort of dive into what the book covers.

Speaker A 00:10:24

Yes, sure, yes.

Speaker A 00:10:25

So we're talking about the second book now, if I may do Plug number two, which is Making Change Stick, which came out only last Friday.

Speaker A 00:10:37

And this has been about 10 years of reading and researching and trialing these ideas in school.

Speaker A 00:10:43

So it has a very, very long gestation period, this book.

Speaker A 00:10:47

But yes, so Tim Brighouse gave me the title.

Speaker A 00:10:51

So I've been working on this for a few years and at the time I was calling it Implementation Science for Schools, which is technically accurate.

Speaker A 00:10:59

Like it is this field of implementation science, which is really a health discipline.

Speaker A 00:11:04

There's an implementation science journal and it's basically a health journal and it's importing those ideas into education.

Speaker A 00:11:10

And so Implementation Science for Schools is technically an accurate phrase, but it's terrible marketing.

Speaker A 00:11:16

And Tim had an amazing way with words.

Speaker A 00:11:19

And so I was very fortunate to get to meet Tim a few times in the last few years of his life.

Speaker A 00:11:24

Of course, he, he suddenly left us last year and yeah, I was just in a conversation with him.

Speaker A 00:11:32

He took a shine to this work that I was doing.

Speaker A 00:11:34

He could see the value in these ideas around implementation science and improvement science.

Speaker A 00:11:40

And it was almost just an aside as we were chatting and he was like, you need to change the name.

Speaker A 00:11:46

You should call it Making Change Stick because it's the stickability that's the problem.

Speaker A 00:11:50

Like people can implement change, which, you know, there's a little buzz and loads of school leaders and teachers that I talk about say, oh yeah, we did this thing a few years ago and it was amazing.

Speaker A 00:12:00

But you know what happened to it?

Speaker A 00:12:01

It's just sort of not happening anymore.

Speaker A 00:12:03

And if that's the problem, it doesn't stick.

Speaker A 00:12:05

There's staff turnover, there's changes of personnel in the senior team or whatever.

Speaker A 00:12:09

And everything that they were doing sort of collapses behind them and everything reverts back to the status quo.

Speaker A 00:12:14

And so it's very, very hard to implement change in a way that's lasting and that's what this, this book is all about.

Speaker B 00:12:22

And in terms of that, if you could give us, I guess, kind of the, the main three areas, because you've got it in sort of three main phrases, haven't used, the way you sort of split the book up.

Speaker B 00:12:33

So sort of take us into that sort of global oversight and then you can take us into sort of how it's then sort of split up sort of further into that.

Speaker A 00:12:41

Yeah, sure.

Speaker A 00:12:42

So.

Speaker A 00:12:42

So this process, just to give you a bit of context, I, I stumbled upon it completely just by accident.

Speaker A 00:12:48

I went to a conference.

Speaker A 00:12:50

I was, I was, as I was.

Speaker A 00:12:51

My, my university was a long way away, so I was a distance learner and I wasn't there very often and I just happened to be there on this one day when there was a conference on, called Implementing Implementation Science.

Speaker A 00:13:02

I didn't know what it was at the time, but I thought I'd sort of stick my head in the door and see what it was all about.

Speaker A 00:13:07

And it was, and it just blew me away.

Speaker A 00:13:09

I was just like, jaw on the floor, like, oh my goodness, this is what we need in education.

Speaker A 00:13:15

And as I said at the time, I was halfway through my PhD, but I scored a note into my pad, capital letters, double underlined, which said, after your PhD get into implementation science.

Speaker A 00:13:26

I could just see that this was the future, or it should be the future.

Speaker A 00:13:31

And so that started this very long process initially of just reading all of this stuff about implementation science, as I mentioned, and improvement science as sort of a related field from the world of healthcare, but also reading the change management literature more widely from books from political science, behavioral science, psychology, sociology, like flow research.

Speaker A 00:13:53

There's loads of really interesting stuff out there, but it's, it's quite a slog.

Speaker A 00:13:57

It's not what you might call a page turner.

Speaker A 00:13:59

The change management literature, very jargon heavy, lots of bewildering diagrams and ladders and light bulbs and cogs and what have you.

Speaker A 00:14:08

But within all of that there's so much good stuff.

Speaker A 00:14:12

And so I've sort of.

Speaker A 00:14:13

I started out by trawling the literature and I sort of identified a whole bunch of practices, of strategies, of tools, of ideas, which I've then been implementing really quite intensely, intensively over the last sort of five or six years, really 2018, goodness, nearly seven years now.

Speaker A 00:14:33

And so, yes, as you say.

Speaker A 00:14:35

So the book is split into these three broad phases which is make a, make a start, make a plan and then make it happen.

Speaker A 00:14:44

And I should say that the book is the book of a program.

Speaker A 00:14:47

So the Making Change Stick program is a thing that is a process.

Speaker A 00:14:52

It's a framework that schools work their way through.

Speaker A 00:14:55

And there's an online course, there's an online training suite that sits alongside the book where schools can access, support and have something that's a more interactive set of resources with like a facilitator guide and a set of videos and a playbook and activities and so on, quizzes so that they can interact.

Speaker A 00:15:14

And that's designed to be facilitated in house.

Speaker A 00:15:18

And so yeah, I mean we could pick out a few examples of things from, from so in maker start.

Speaker A 00:15:25

The step number one, really, which we could maybe come back to in a minute, is called a point, a slice team.

Speaker A 00:15:32

And that's a revolutionary idea which is right at the heart of this, of this approach, which we could come back to in a minute if you like.

Speaker A 00:15:39

And then there's things, there's things in that section like choose a focus, do a little literature review, see, find out what's known about this thing.

Speaker A 00:15:46

If you're implementing stuff around feedback or about a particular approach to behavior management or curriculum or whatever, and then make a plan.

Speaker A 00:15:54

Is, is the more sort of detailed bit where most of the substance of the program is.

Speaker A 00:15:59

And you start by mapping the journey from where you are to where you want to be.

Speaker A 00:16:02

You do a root cause analysis.

Speaker A 00:16:04

So you start with the end in mind and then you go back to the, revert to the present moment and you think what are the problems of the present that we want to fix and what are the root causes of those problems?

Speaker A 00:16:14

You do, you write a comms plan, you come up with you, you, you write a, an improvement strategy, you plan how to collect data and so on.

Speaker A 00:16:22

So it's very, very sort of quite a time, time intensive process.

Speaker A 00:16:26

Takes usually about 24 hours to work your way through the whole program, which is a big chunk of time.

Speaker A 00:16:32

But you know, it's very, very well, well worth the investment.

Speaker A 00:16:36

And then once you've written that amazing plan, then we move into the make it happen phase.

Speaker A 00:16:41

And that's where you look at things like project management, writing individual improvement plans, thinking about how to embed and sustain improvements.

Speaker A 00:16:50

There's a thing called pivot or persevere meetings, where the team, that slice team comes together and reviews the data as it comes in and you look at each aspect of what you're doing and think, is this working or do we need to tweak it in some way?

Speaker A 00:17:02

And so you're adopting this very sort of agile, light footed, responsive approach to, to implementing change.

Speaker A 00:17:09

You're continually reorienting what you do to, to guide you towards wherever it is that you, that you want to be.

Speaker A 00:17:16

So, yeah, that's a very quick overview of the program.

Speaker B 00:17:20

So the thing that really struck me about this is, like you said, it's quite intensive.

Speaker B 00:17:24

There's lots of sections to it which are going to be integral to kind of making that development.

Speaker B 00:17:29

But I.

Speaker B 00:17:30

One of the key things as you start is of those implementations that have been put in now, or ones that you've done in the past, how much of it actually affects the pupil outcome or supports the pupil as they're going through.

Speaker B 00:17:41

So I guess that's probably a great place just to sort of kick off in terms of why are you doing these changes?

Speaker B 00:17:48

What's the like say, what is the goal?

Speaker B 00:17:50

Is it just for the sake of it?

Speaker B 00:17:51

Is it because someone's told you you ought to?

Speaker B 00:17:52

Is it because you've got an offset coming?

Speaker B 00:17:54

Or is actually we're trying to improve the school in a way that's going to really support the pupils that are part of it?

Speaker A 00:18:01

Absolutely, yes.

Speaker A 00:18:02

And so it's, it's very, very centered around pupil outcomes and, and placing that at the heart of this, of this process.

Speaker A 00:18:10

And yeah, the rationale for why you want to change could come from a number of places and it often does.

Speaker A 00:18:16

Could be that Ofsted has given you a target that you need to, that you need to, you know, improve outcomes or behavior or attendance or whatever it might be.

Speaker A 00:18:24

It could be that you've got like, lots of issues around, like mental health and well being, teacher retention.

Speaker A 00:18:29

So it's very adaptable process.

Speaker A 00:18:31

You can, you can lend it not just to, it doesn't actually revise what I just said.

Speaker A 00:18:35

It doesn't have to only be about pupil outcomes.

Speaker A 00:18:37

It could be about parental engagement, it could be about improving outcomes for teachers.

Speaker A 00:18:41

You know, the mental health and well being of teachers and school leaders is, is not in good shape either.

Speaker A 00:18:47

So.

Speaker A 00:18:48

But, but generally speaking, it's, it's centered around, around improving outcomes for kids, of course.

Speaker A 00:18:56

And, and you start with.

Speaker A 00:18:58

So we, one of the, one of the tools is called backward design.

Speaker A 00:19:00

And so you don't just sort of say, oh, we want to close the gap or we want to, we want to improve engagement or like people often come up with quite vague sounding goals, you know, we want to close the literacy gap.

Speaker A 00:19:11

Well, between whom and by how much do you want to eradicate it?

Speaker A 00:19:14

Do you want to reduce it down to, you know, less than 5%, less than 10%?

Speaker A 00:19:18

What would be a suitable range?

Speaker A 00:19:21

You know, like, so you really get granular.

Speaker A 00:19:23

And so backward design is where you start.

Speaker A 00:19:25

It's a three step process where you start with the end in mind and you get your right impact goals.

Speaker A 00:19:30

So, but that's like, what difference do you want to make for whom and by when?

Speaker A 00:19:35

So you know, we want to eradicate the disadvantage gap by 2026.

Speaker A 00:19:41

So we want there to just be no discernible outcome in the data whether you, whether you're eligible for free school meals or not.

Speaker A 00:19:47

Just don't want there to be any, any gap at all by, by, you know, two years from now.

Speaker A 00:19:52

And so you've got a sense of who you want to make the difference for essentially raising outcomes among disadvantaged learners by when and, and, you know, and what have you.

Speaker A 00:20:01

And then you take a step back and you think, okay, so how are we going to measure that?

Speaker A 00:20:05

How will we know whether we're on track?

Speaker A 00:20:07

So you might think, you know, we'll, we'll look at GCSE results OR Key Stage 2 results Two years from now, but how are we going to know if we, if we're on track?

Speaker A 00:20:15

And so what are the, what the, what are the data points?

Speaker A 00:20:18

What's the evidence that we need to collect?

Speaker A 00:20:20

And then finally you think, right, so what do we need to do differently?

Speaker A 00:20:23

What do we need to do more of or less of or differently in order to amass that evidence that we've achieved those goals?

Speaker A 00:20:31

And so, yeah, hopefully that gives you a sense as to how you can, how you can really get great clarity about what it is that you're wanting to achieve and then work systematically towards making it happen.

Speaker B 00:20:43

And I think the key there, like you say, is to have that kind of overview, isn't it?

Speaker B 00:20:46

And I think for a lot of people in education, there's so much sort of hamsterball going on to, to get organized for the next class, the next semester, the next term, whatever it happens to be.

Speaker B 00:20:55

You sort of literally like say time poor and, and trying to do that.

Speaker B 00:20:59

So having the, the team together, the senior leadership to understand how that is and, and put it all together.

Speaker B 00:21:06

So talk me through that sort of top down or, or how the, the school works as a whole.

Speaker B 00:21:10

When you sort of go in and people that are going to be using this to support them, who's getting involved first, how does it sort of get sort of disseminated through the rest of the school and sort of start to be implemented?

Speaker A 00:21:21

Yeah, so I mentioned that idea earlier on the Slice team.

Speaker A 00:21:26

And so I think just to take a step back for a second, one thing that I've found absolutely mind blowing as I've been doing this work is that I often ask schools and teachers and school leaders if you, if you look back over your career, maybe I'll ask this to yourself, Mark.

Speaker A 00:21:41

If you look back over your career and you think of all of the improvements, initiatives that have come and gone over the years, what proportion of them would you say actually improved outcomes in a lasting way?

Speaker B 00:21:57

Oh, I mean, I'd say probably relatively, relatively few.

Speaker B 00:22:02

And also I guess that the, the side point to that is that a lot of these ideas have come through once or twice since then in a different form or a different, in a different way and then still started to change and then gone back.

Speaker B 00:22:16

And like you say, that sort of status quo or that kind of normal level of, of the way things work seems to return.

Speaker A 00:22:22

Yeah, right.

Speaker A 00:22:23

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:22:24

So you, you mentioned the hamster wheel earlier.

Speaker A 00:22:25

Like individually we're on little hamster wheels, just keeping it going and marking the books and planning lessons and getting through the term.

Speaker A 00:22:31

But also as a system, we're on this, we're in this process of churn where we're implementing ideas, they don't really work.

Speaker A 00:22:37

And I talk about this at the start of the book.

Speaker A 00:22:40

There's a chapter called the Mind Blowing Question.

Speaker A 00:22:42

And that is the question that I just said.

Speaker A 00:22:45

How many of these improvement initiatives actually improve anything?

Speaker A 00:22:49

And the reason that that's mind blowing is A, like it's really low.

Speaker A 00:22:54

Most people put the figure at around 5, 10%, something like that.

Speaker A 00:22:58

B, everybody knows it.

Speaker A 00:22:59

If you ask them, most people agree.

Speaker A 00:23:01

And C, that doesn't seem to stop people from implementing the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, which also often don't work.

Speaker A 00:23:08

And so, and then the question is, well, why is that happening?

Speaker A 00:23:11

And you mentioned top down change there.

Speaker A 00:23:13

And I think that that's one of the two major reasons why, why the success rate is so low is that we default to top down change.

Speaker A 00:23:21

By the way, the second reason is that we're not teaching teachers and school leaders about implementation and improvement science, which is, you know, something that I hope that this, this book will go some way to remedying.

Speaker A 00:23:34

But top down change is just the default mechanism, isn't it?

Speaker A 00:23:38

It's the go to thing.

Speaker A 00:23:40

Like if you look at how Schools are organized, you know, you have lots and lots of kids, I could say a thousand kids, maybe 100 teachers, 10 middle leaders and you know, a small number of pyramidal.

Speaker A 00:23:52

Right, and this is the same with hospitals, businesses, the government.

Speaker A 00:23:56

Everything's just pyramids, isn't it?

Speaker A 00:23:58

With a small number of people at the top of an organization who are supposed to, to call the shots and make decisions and, and make good things happen.

Speaker A 00:24:07

And top down change can be effective at some things.

Speaker A 00:24:10

Like if, if you've got quite a simple problem that you, that can be affected, that can be solved by a simple policy decision.

Speaker A 00:24:16

Like you know, if you look at something like the introduction of the smoking ban or the introduction of seat belts, for example, good examples of how like a fairly simple to implement top down change initiative has brought about huge, you know, improvements in public health.

Speaker A 00:24:33

But when it comes to more complicated issues like, you know, you mentioned the disadvantage gap, we've talked about mental health and well being, attendance.

Speaker A 00:24:42

If you look more widely at society, at things like, you know, the social care crisis or climate change or you know, life expectancies going in the wrong direction for the first time in decades, you know, it's very clear that the small number of people at the top of these pyramids do not have the answers to these questions because they still exist and in some cases worsening from year to year.

Speaker A 00:25:06

And so when we're, when we're working in schools, we want to try to overcome that problem.

Speaker A 00:25:11

And that's not to say that leaders don't have an important part to play.

Speaker A 00:25:16

There's a chapter in the book called the Role of School Leaders in Making Change Stick.

Speaker A 00:25:20

And of course school leaders are super important, but we need to get out of that top down mindset.

Speaker A 00:25:25

And so we, we implement change in this program using a thing called the Slice Team where you take a cross section through the organization and you get representatives of different types of people sitting around the decision making table together.

Speaker A 00:25:38

And so in a school that might include a senior leader or two, perhaps a middle leader, an early career teacher, so you're looking at it through those fresh eyes.

Speaker A 00:25:48

Teaching assistants and learning support assistants, sometimes pupils, the Senko or Alenco if you're in Wales, you know, sometimes pastoral staff, site staff, parents, governors, whoever it is, who's got some valid perspective on the problem that you're trying to solve and you get those people sitting around the table together.

Speaker A 00:26:11

And it's not just a consultation exercise, but rather it's a, it's like the decision making around this particular aspect of school Improvement is kind of devolved from the senior team to this Slice team and they become equally responsible for implementing this.

Speaker A 00:26:28

And it's often over like, you know, a two or three year period.

Speaker A 00:26:31

Like there aren't any quick fixes in change management.

Speaker A 00:26:34

We know it takes two or three years to bring about lasting cultural change in a school.

Speaker A 00:26:41

And so it's quite a, it's quite a shift from the usual way of doing things.

Speaker A 00:26:45

But two things happen when you work with this, with a size team in this way.

Speaker A 00:26:49

One is that you get much better decision making because you've looked at it from all of these different perspectives and how does this play out for, you know, the parents of kids with send or with, for early career teachers or teaching assistants and so on.

Speaker A 00:27:04

So you get much better decision making but also you get buy in from the whole school community.

Speaker A 00:27:09

People can see that this is not the usual just, I'm being just told what to do by somebody who's forgotten what it's like to be on the, you know, at the chalk face.

Speaker A 00:27:17

It's like they can see that they are represented on this, on this change team.

Speaker A 00:27:21

There's somebody like them with whom they can interact throughout the change period.

Speaker A 00:27:24

And so you bring people with you and it just unleashes all of this like energy and goodwill and an intelligence of people to be able to solve problems at the point of view and just, it's a remarkable thing.

Speaker A 00:27:36

It works so well.

Speaker A 00:27:39

I'm just kind of bowled over and lots of the schools that I've worked with say once you've worked in this way, there's no going back.

Speaker A 00:27:45

Like we're always going to use Slice tunes from now on because it's so effective.

Speaker B 00:27:49

And I think I can certainly already feel that power because I've sat in too many staff meetings as a musician and the, the sense of kind of we're here so that we can all share what's going on and eventually it just becomes, well, this is just where we are.

Speaker B 00:28:03

This is what we've been told can happen.

Speaker B 00:28:04

This is what the budgets are, this, you, X, Y and Z, like you say.

Speaker B 00:28:08

But it's quite matter of fact there, there's never, I've never been in that position where it's kind of, well, let's really talk about.

Speaker B 00:28:13

And you input exactly what all those areas are so that everyone can understand it and then you can want to make change.

Speaker B 00:28:21

Like you're saying that you have someone that you recognize who's represented and you can actually get those, get those points across in a Safe, but a progressive and a productive way going forward.

Speaker B 00:28:31

I mean, like I say, that's very progressive in itself.

Speaker A 00:28:34

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A 00:28:36

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:28:37

It's a, it's a forward thinking way of doing things.

Speaker A 00:28:39

And, and when, when I started this process, I sort of had two main concerns.

Speaker A 00:28:44

One was how time consuming it is, which we've mentioned briefly, and also this idea of the Slice team.

Speaker A 00:28:49

I thought that maybe some people wouldn't want to devolve their power as a senior leader to this team, but I've just found absolutely the opposite.

Speaker A 00:28:57

I've been really pleased to see that people can see that they, they don't know how to implement change effectively and that this, this program is just, is what they need.

Speaker A 00:29:06

And you know, the implementation guidance, the EEF Implementation guidance is the most downloaded document from their website.

Speaker A 00:29:12

People know that they don't know this stuff and they, and when, when you come along with a, with a, you know, program to help them, they will just go, cool, we'll make time for it.

Speaker A 00:29:21

You know, we were able to, to shuffle, you know, get rid of tutor time on a Wednesday and we'll finish half an hour early and that will create a bit of time.

Speaker A 00:29:28

There's loads of creative things you can do if you, if you need to make the time for something.

Speaker A 00:29:33

And yeah, and the Slice team, again, you know, people have, people are really, really up for it.

Speaker A 00:29:38

And I was talking to somebody the other day who said that it like leaders, leaders are keen on it because it takes away that sense of the loneliness of school leadership, like the fact that we often don't think of that.

Speaker A 00:29:48

But from the school leaders perspective, it's quite a lonely experience to be responsible for carrying all of this weight.

Speaker A 00:29:54

And what if you make the wrong call?

Speaker A 00:29:56

And this is a way of sort of just bringing people in, a supportive network of people around you.

Speaker A 00:30:01

So you are still in the mix, you still get to have a say, but it's like shared responsibility.

Speaker A 00:30:06

John Hattie calls it collective efficacy, which by the way, he cites as the number one influence on improving pupil outcomes is like how to harness the collective efficacy of the staff body.

Speaker A 00:30:18

So yeah, it's good stuff.

Speaker B 00:30:20

And I'm, I'm, I'm assuming it sort of also can sort of just sort of move and be organic because like I say, there's still going to be people that may well leave or come into the school over that, maybe that two or three years, which is an integral part, but because you've got a, a larger pool of people and a diverse pool of people within that it's just going to strengthen it.

Speaker B 00:30:40

It's going to sort of mold around what you're doing.

Speaker B 00:30:42

Like, say, rather than, this was a great idea, this person's now gone.

Speaker B 00:30:45

So therefore we've either got to start from the beginning or we kind of need to reframe it in a new way, or someone's new personality comes and has their take on it, even though it's sort of the same program, but not really.

Speaker B 00:30:55

So I guess that becomes easier to manage completely.

Speaker A 00:30:59

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:30:59

And it, and it's, it's.

Speaker A 00:31:00

It's always a challenge that, like, turnover is probably, I think, the number one barrier to, to effective implementation.

Speaker A 00:31:08

If you have 10% turnover a year, you know, within five years, up to 50 of your staff, assuming that some of them haven't turned over twice in that time, I will be, you know, we'll be new to this.

Speaker A 00:31:20

And so turnover is a big one.

Speaker A 00:31:22

And so like onboarding, having protocols for onboarding people and off boarding as well.

Speaker A 00:31:27

So if somebody's leaving the Slice team, who has a pivotal role that you're like, well, how are you going to train up your replacement?

Speaker A 00:31:32

What, what even.

Speaker A 00:31:33

And if you're leaving in July and they don't join till September, what can you do to, you know, create some documents or just a little training pack for them so that they can just get up to speed?

Speaker A 00:31:43

So there are, there are ways that we can smooth those transitions.

Speaker A 00:31:46

We do, we do have a little thought exercise, which is like, just imagine that, you know, that 50% of the teachers leave next, next summer, and then the following year, the other 50% leave.

Speaker A 00:31:57

So two years from now, you've got a completely different staff body.

Speaker A 00:32:00

What processes would you have to put in place to make sure that this thing is still walking and, and, and operating smoothly, given, like that total turnover?

Speaker A 00:32:11

Which is a helpful thought experiment.

Speaker B 00:32:13

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:32:14

And I think the whole idea of that and a little bit like workflows in some ways, it's certainly something I've known is I've sort of got more into certainly the podcasting side and having sort of more people around me helping me.

Speaker B 00:32:25

Is that what becomes obvious to you, which is often in your head, to be able to get that out and articulate it in a way that someone fully understands it and also then give them agency to kind of do their own thing.

Speaker B 00:32:35

It's a real skill in itself.

Speaker B 00:32:37

And I think, like I said, been able to sort of understand that we don't have all this written down or we don't know how that's going to change.

Speaker B 00:32:43

But we need to be aware of it and we need to think about it and we want to kind of make sure that we have those systems in place because I guess that then is going to feed into everything you do, not just this kind of new thing that you're trying to put in place.

Speaker A 00:32:55

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B 00:32:59

So in terms of what use, what you personally want people to take away from, from this book, in this program, is it kind of you feel the need that almost every school needs to have it and sort of do it because it can make such a big change, or are you able to go, we've got the research, we've got everything in place, we know it works.

Speaker B 00:33:18

Can you sort of take one step back and just sort of be a bit sort of okay, it's there for people and I just need to let them know and let them kind of find and dive into it themselves.

Speaker A 00:33:28

Yeah, I mean, yeah, you can't.

Speaker A 00:33:30

You can't.

Speaker A 00:33:30

You can take a horse to water.

Speaker A 00:33:32

What's that phrase?

Speaker A 00:33:33

But you can't make them drink.

Speaker A 00:33:33

Yeah, I just want people to about this.

Speaker A 00:33:35

But like, the early signs are really hopeful.

Speaker A 00:33:37

Like I say, the book came out, you know, only a week ago and it's in the middle of, you know, the, the winter term, and teachers are super busy, school leaders are super busy, and not that many people will have had time to read it yet, but a few have.

Speaker A 00:33:51

And people are writing some really remarkable things about it online.

Speaker A 00:33:56

And I am hopeful that the book and the course that goes with it, this sort of online training suite, will help to scale these ideas far and wide.

Speaker A 00:34:05

Because, like, often in the work that I do with schools, so I now, I now work as an independent consultant.

Speaker A 00:34:11

And often in the work that I do with schools, it's me facilitating this program.

Speaker A 00:34:16

And that takes quite a lot of my time.

Speaker A 00:34:18

So therefore it's quite expensive.

Speaker A 00:34:21

But.

Speaker A 00:34:21

And there's only one of me.

Speaker A 00:34:22

Right.

Speaker A 00:34:23

And there's like lots of schools out there.

Speaker A 00:34:24

There's about 5 million schools on this planet.

Speaker A 00:34:27

And so I have to get out of the way and allow these ideas to fly.

Speaker A 00:34:32

And so that's what I'm hoping that this book will do.

Speaker A 00:34:35

And I am hopeful that, that it will be embraced by every school.

Speaker A 00:34:40

Like, I don't see that there's a good reason to not to not use this approach unless everything is perfect at your school, which it isn't.

Speaker A 00:34:48

But I think everybody struggles with this stuff and, and the impact that we could have.

Speaker A 00:34:55

If you think if you go back to that 5 or 10% improvement rate, which, you know is a 90 or 95 failure rate.

Speaker A 00:35:02

If you turn it around, if we could improve that, that success rate to like say 50% or even just 30% or 20%, if you think, if you scale that up across the planet, the, the amount of people's lives that are positively affected by that turning of the dialogue is absolutely mind blowing.

Speaker A 00:35:20

You know what, on whatever and whatever it is that you're trying to do, improve literacy, numeracy, you know, mental health, whatever it might be.

Speaker A 00:35:27

And so I'm, I am very hopeful that people will take these ideas and run with them and also adapt them and make them their own and keep in touch.

Speaker A 00:35:35

You know, I'm not, I'm not saying that this is a done deal.

Speaker A 00:35:37

I am very pleased with, with where the book landed.

Speaker A 00:35:41

It's been a 10 year process.

Speaker A 00:35:42

Like I say, there's been a lot of revisions along the way, but there's nothing really since I've, since I sent it off to the publishers six months ago, there's nothing that I think, oh, I wish I'd had included that.

Speaker A 00:35:53

And so I feel good about where it landed, but I'm very keen to dive into this next chapter and see what happens as these ideas start to spread their wings.

Speaker B 00:36:04

And I think what I like the most about it is the fact that like you say, this isn't about just sorting out English or maths or well being.

Speaker B 00:36:12

It's a, it's a framework for, you know, rethinking education.

Speaker B 00:36:16

It's, it's a way of actually being able to implement an idea in a supportive, easy to follow way that can be that revolutionary and that must be an exciting prospect.

Speaker B 00:36:26

And I'm curious how that sort of fits in with how you feel it is being an author, sort of having sort of written the books with the podcast and the consulting, like say I, you sort of mentioned what it was like being in the classroom and how sort of restrictive that was in some ways.

Speaker B 00:36:40

So how freeing is it now to have these sort of different outlets?

Speaker A 00:36:44

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:36:45

So pros and cons, you know, like I, so, so when I first started to, to work with these ideas when it was in 2018, and then I was working at the Institute of Education in the center for Educational Leadership, and I had a certain amount of autonomy in that role.

Speaker A 00:37:03

And so I was able to write this program, this implementation science program and start to trial it and so on.

Speaker A 00:37:08

And I worked with this amazing team of people there who I am still in touch with some of them and I just learned a crazy amount of very, very helpful stuff from them.

Speaker A 00:37:18

And the collaborative nature is a wonderful thing, which is the one thing that's lacking from my lone ranger freelancer life.

Speaker A 00:37:27

I work from home a lot.

Speaker A 00:37:28

I do travel a lot.

Speaker A 00:37:29

I've been going to Wales a lot recently.

Speaker A 00:37:32

I'm off to Bahrain at the weekend, going to Holland a few times the next couple of months.

Speaker A 00:37:37

So it takes me into some interesting places and I absolutely love the travel.

Speaker A 00:37:42

So that's freeing, you know, as you say.

Speaker A 00:37:46

But yeah, it's the one thing that, that I, that I wish I had more of is the collaboration which I'm getting from other areas of my life.

Speaker A 00:37:55

As we mentioned earlier that I do some musical projects and, and so on.

Speaker A 00:37:59

So.

Speaker A 00:38:00

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:38:01

But, yeah, I, I'm happy with, with how things are going.

Speaker A 00:38:06

It's always a bit, you know, it's, it's what, what, what's the word that people say?

Speaker A 00:38:11

It's precarious.

Speaker A 00:38:12

It's precarious work.

Speaker A 00:38:13

Right.

Speaker A 00:38:14

Like, I don't have a salary, I don't have any sick pay.

Speaker A 00:38:18

Don't really have much in the way of a pension and stuff like that.

Speaker A 00:38:21

And so, like, it's.

Speaker A 00:38:22

I, I have quite a high appetite for risk, I think.

Speaker A 00:38:25

And so I'm, I'm okay with that.

Speaker A 00:38:27

I know that many people wouldn't be.

Speaker B 00:38:30

I think also it's a reason to, to like, say, ask for that feedback in terms of what they're doing.

Speaker B 00:38:36

Because I think, I mean, even, certainly as a podcast, like you say, you're putting stuff out, you're chatting to people, we get to, you know, hang out for an hour and have a great conversation and then it becomes everyone else's enjoyment or their kind of ex.

Speaker B 00:38:48

Experience in terms of doing that.

Speaker B 00:38:49

And so I always love it when people just get in touch and just say they've enjoyed something or they, they'd like to hear something else or the types of guests that we have on the show, I think never underestimating that.

Speaker B 00:39:00

And so I love the fact that you mentioned that because like I say, it can be a lonely existence in so many different ways, and it's different when you're working on your own.

Speaker B 00:39:07

So how those sort of touch points come back can be very effective.

Speaker B 00:39:10

So I always think whenever you think you want to do something and you think, oh, I won't bother them or I won't do this do.

Speaker B 00:39:15

Because that people really do appreciate it.

Speaker A 00:39:18

Yeah, right.

Speaker A 00:39:19

And it's funny because I just had this amazing correspondence this week with, with a podcast listener over the years, and you know, you know what it's like.

Speaker A 00:39:27

You work on these podcasts and it takes sometimes if you, if you have to read somebody's book and then interview them and process the sound and so on.

Speaker A 00:39:33

And my podcast, Rethinking Education is long form.

Speaker A 00:39:37

So sometimes they're like two or three hours long, four hours even.

Speaker A 00:39:41

That's a lot of time.

Speaker A 00:39:42

And then you put it out into the world and just.

Speaker A 00:39:44

You don't hear anything back really.

Speaker A 00:39:46

But very occasionally I do.

Speaker A 00:39:48

And, and some of the feedback that I've had is just been absolutely unbelievable.

Speaker A 00:39:54

It's like so humbling.

Speaker A 00:39:55

These are the people really, really.

Speaker A 00:39:58

It means a lot to people, this stuff.

Speaker A 00:40:00

And that's, that's a wonderful thing.

Speaker A 00:40:03

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:40:04

And I think certainly it's a podcast listener.

Speaker B 00:40:07

There's a, there's a certain intimacy, I think, about podcasts.

Speaker B 00:40:10

I mean obviously people are going to watch these things on YouTube now and videos becoming more.

Speaker B 00:40:14

But there's something about putting your.

Speaker B 00:40:15

So your headphones in and then just sort of listening.

Speaker B 00:40:18

Like say you're on your way to work or you're at the gym or you're taking your dog for a walk or whatever.

Speaker B 00:40:22

No matter how many people are listening or part of that community, it's actually only me and you or me and the person listening each time.

Speaker B 00:40:30

And so I think sometimes you, there's part of people that think, oh, we are almost like friends because I'm sort of hearing you all the time but at the same time.

Speaker B 00:40:38

But I don't actually know you, so maybe I shouldn't feel as well.

Speaker B 00:40:41

So you sort of get that sort of double edged sword, really.

Speaker A 00:40:43

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:40:44

It's interesting.

Speaker A 00:40:44

I've had people saying that as well.

Speaker A 00:40:46

They're like, oh, it's really weird talking to you now because it's like you're this person who's just.

Speaker A 00:40:51

Yeah, right.

Speaker A 00:40:51

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:40:52

It is a very intimate experience, isn't it?

Speaker A 00:40:54

A podcast?

Speaker B 00:40:54

Yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker B 00:40:56

So I'm always curious, is there a teach or an education experience which has had an effect on you and, and how's that kind of worked in terms of how your sort of career has progressed?

Speaker B 00:41:06

Obviously did it make a difference when you were starting to teach and being involved in that way?

Speaker B 00:41:11

And now you're sort of like, say you've got this sort of global idea of what education could be and you've sort of stepped into how it could change.

Speaker B 00:41:17

Are there sort of any sort of similarities of things?

Speaker B 00:41:19

You thought that was a great ide, even though it wasn't formalized earlier on or.

Speaker B 00:41:23

That was definitely the way I didn't want to go.

Speaker B 00:41:24

And I understand that's influenced me now as well.

Speaker A 00:41:27

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:41:28

So are you thinking of my experience as a.

Speaker A 00:41:31

As a student or as a young person or as an adult or either?

Speaker B 00:41:34

Yeah, either really.

Speaker B 00:41:36

But certainly I think it's interesting from that sort of younger sort of student sort of standpoint because then you sort of, you sort of see things in a slightly different way and I think understanding that when you become an educator to see how that can then be sort of processed or sort of given back from.

Speaker B 00:41:51

From that sort of adult pupil relationship.

Speaker A 00:41:53

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker A 00:41:55

So I was thinking back and I think like both, both this experience as a child but also my subsequent career as an adult has been as a sort of.

Speaker A 00:42:05

As an outsider, as somebody who wants to change things.

Speaker A 00:42:08

And in particular there was a.

Speaker A 00:42:10

There was an English teacher.

Speaker A 00:42:11

I had this, this English teacher called Mr.

Speaker A 00:42:13

Keating, John Keating, which is the same name as the English teacher in.

Speaker A 00:42:18

In Dead Poet Society.

Speaker A 00:42:20

I think it went to his head for a little while there.

Speaker A 00:42:23

I wasn't in a lesson, but I had it on good authority that you had the kids ripping introductions out of books and things.

Speaker A 00:42:30

But he, I remember this, he was a great teacher.

Speaker A 00:42:33

Wore his heart on his sleeve.

Speaker A 00:42:34

Very passionate, brilliant, very sort of oracy based lessons.

Speaker A 00:42:38

He would really get us talking and thinking and get us out of our seats and moving around and if you agree with this, cross the floor if you disagree and what have you.

Speaker A 00:42:46

And, and there was this one lesson in particular, I think he'd had some sort of run in with his head of department or with a senior leader.

Speaker A 00:42:54

I don't know what it.

Speaker A 00:42:55

Whether it was something stupid about like he wasn't wearing a tie because he just, you know, coming back from a sports fixture or something and he was just fuming and he was like, right, put your pens down, we're going out on a walk.

Speaker A 00:43:08

And we just like walked around the school and he, you know, we were looking at, you know, there was some different bits of art dotted around.

Speaker A 00:43:16

Like stuff that stuck to the wall that you just never look at even though you walk past it a hundred times a year.

Speaker A 00:43:21

And one of them was of the sunflowers.

Speaker A 00:43:23

And he was.

Speaker A 00:43:23

And I think at that time it had just been sold.

Speaker A 00:43:25

It was like the most expensive painting in the world.

Speaker A 00:43:27

And he was like, what is art?

Speaker A 00:43:29

You know, we had this whole conversation about that and then he was like, what about this nameplate on the door?

Speaker A 00:43:33

Is that art?

Speaker A 00:43:34

What makes that art?

Speaker A 00:43:35

And not that.

Speaker A 00:43:35

So we were having that whole conversation and then I remember he took us out onto the field and we were all just sitting on the grass and we were just talking about like what is all this for?

Speaker A 00:43:43

Like what is this life?

Speaker A 00:43:45

Like why are we here?

Speaker A 00:43:46

And all of that stuff.

Speaker A 00:43:46

And it was just such a beautiful moment of human connection.

Speaker A 00:43:52

And I remember the next lesson, it was a Catholic school and the next lesson we were being taught by this very strict nun and she was sort of just being quite heavy handed and this very mild mannered kid who was sitting in the road behind me just took a stand and he was just like I'm not, not having it.

Speaker A 00:44:10

And I remember he got sent out and everyone's like oh wow.

Speaker A 00:44:13

Kevin's just like come alive because.

Speaker A 00:44:16

But he's been activated by John Keating.

Speaker A 00:44:18

And even now as I think about it, it almost like viscerally think like wow, like that's a beautiful thing.

Speaker A 00:44:23

And so.

Speaker A 00:44:24

And that sense of like wanting to.

Speaker A 00:44:28

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:44:28

Wanting to create an education system that, that is different, that produces a different world.

Speaker A 00:44:34

You know.

Speaker A 00:44:34

For a long time, as I said, I came to teaching quite late but through most of my 20s, whenever I thought about the world and the problems that we face, I just almost always arrived back at education's doorstep.

Speaker A 00:44:46

Which is, you know, not to say that you know, the education system is directly causing the problems that we have in the world but rather the like the negative case if you like that like if we had a different education system we would see a very different world.

Speaker A 00:44:59

And so that's been my sort of my agenda all the way through.

Speaker A 00:45:02

Is that sort of like wanting to change things approach.

Speaker B 00:45:05

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:45:05

And that kind of makes sense.

Speaker B 00:45:06

What you said about the pre.

Speaker B 00:45:08

The first book that you mentioned sort of coming through that sense of how, how and what and where and how people can sort of articulate what they're doing I think is a.

Speaker B 00:45:17

Is really fascinating.

Speaker B 00:45:19

Now is there a piece of advice that you've been given that you'd like to share or a piece of advice that you might give your, your younger self.

Speaker B 00:45:26

Looking back is, is a more experienced James, shall we say?

Speaker A 00:45:30

Yeah, there is and it would be get into theater sooner and music in particular.

Speaker A 00:45:37

Like I can remember this moment when I was about 10, I was in primary school and I was like playing football on the, on.

Speaker A 00:45:44

On you know like on a Saturday morning and it was one of those like pitches where there's not a blade of grass.

Speaker A 00:45:49

It was like February or something.

Speaker A 00:45:51

It's just all mud and there's just like this Group of kids just running around after this ball in the mud and the rain was coming down sideways and I can remember just like standing off to the side of the pitch a bit and looking at this bunch of kids chasing this muddy ball around and just thinking, how pointless.

Speaker A 00:46:06

Like, just, I don't want to be here.

Speaker A 00:46:08

And at the time, I was in a play and I was.

Speaker A 00:46:10

I had one of the.

Speaker A 00:46:11

A decent role in this.

Speaker A 00:46:12

In this school play and I had a singing part and I loved it.

Speaker A 00:46:15

I can remember thinking that morning, like, I just want to be there.

Speaker A 00:46:18

I just want to be in a rehearsal.

Speaker A 00:46:19

And for some reason, I don't know why, I think it was, like, the lack of decent careers advice that was around at the time.

Speaker A 00:46:25

But I never put two and two together and I didn't choose music or drama for gcse.

Speaker A 00:46:31

And I sort of went down this scientific cul de sac, if you like.

Speaker A 00:46:34

And it's how I ended up becoming a science teacher years later, even though I was always better at and more interested in arty stuff.

Speaker A 00:46:42

And so years later, I've kept with the piano, as you can see, in the background, and.

Speaker A 00:46:47

And now I'm in a band.

Speaker A 00:46:49

I sing and play the keyboards.

Speaker A 00:46:51

And we're about to do our third rock musical in the Brighton fringe this year, and it's so much fun.

Speaker A 00:46:58

I absolutely love it.

Speaker A 00:47:00

And it's like, it's all.

Speaker A 00:47:01

I was thinking about it the other day and it's like all of that stuff that is often derided as, like, 21st century skills, like fluffy progressive nonsense.

Speaker A 00:47:10

It's like, what do I get out of doing this stuff?

Speaker A 00:47:12

It's like, it's collaboration, like I was saying earlier.

Speaker A 00:47:15

It's like we're working towards this.

Speaker A 00:47:17

This really exciting goal.

Speaker A 00:47:18

Let's just make this happen.

Speaker A 00:47:19

And there's problem solving and there's communication and it's just a.

Speaker A 00:47:25

It's just a wonderful thing, creativity.

Speaker A 00:47:27

Of course, it's a wonderful thing to be and to be in the thick of it.

Speaker A 00:47:32

And there's going to be this moment in about two months, just about a month before the show, where we all get together in the room.

Speaker A 00:47:39

And there's me, there's.

Speaker A 00:47:40

There's two other actors, there's the rest of my band, we've got a choir, but the director, we've got the sound and the light guys.

Speaker A 00:47:46

And all of these people come together into this room because of this seed of an idea that I had.

Speaker A 00:47:51

And it's like just the best feeling this.

Speaker A 00:47:54

There's so much love in that room.

Speaker A 00:47:55

And it's, and you know, performing live in front of people is, is its own delight.

Speaker A 00:48:00

And so, yeah, I wish I've just not spent enough of my life doing that.

Speaker A 00:48:05

I think I absolutely adore it.

Speaker A 00:48:07

And so I would, I would advise my younger self to take the leap sooner.

Speaker B 00:48:13

I love that.

Speaker B 00:48:14

And I challenge everyone listening who's involved in a school that maybe they can put that at the heart of your book.

Speaker B 00:48:21

And how can we implement more of the arts, more music, more drama, more theater, and not just for the sake of it, but for all those reasons that you said.

Speaker B 00:48:29

It makes such a difference to the, the environment of the school, the way people relate, let alone all those skills that they're doing.

Speaker B 00:48:36

And at the end of it, you just have everyone having an absolutely wonderful finding their niche.

Speaker B 00:48:41

You know, whether they're singing, whether they're musicians, whether they're backstage, whether they've written the play, whatever it happens to be, or however you decide to do it.

Speaker B 00:48:48

I just think it is such an incredible thing.

Speaker B 00:48:51

And I have to say I was lucky.

Speaker B 00:48:52

My secondary school was very forward thinking along those lines and I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to do that.

Speaker B 00:48:59

And it turned into a career.

Speaker B 00:49:00

But I know that's not the case as much certainly these days.

Speaker B 00:49:03

So, yeah, that would be my challenge to people as well.

Speaker B 00:49:06

Use the book to kind of get the arts back into the center of what you're doing at a school.

Speaker B 00:49:10

Cool.

Speaker A 00:49:11

I, I endorse this message.

Speaker A 00:49:13

There we are.

Speaker A 00:49:14

Absolutely.

Speaker A 00:49:15

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:49:15

I love that.

Speaker A 00:49:16

I love that.

Speaker B 00:49:18

Now is there resource you'd like to share?

Speaker B 00:49:20

And, and of course we're going to come to all, all, all the things that you're going to be doing, but whether it's a video, song, book, film, play, but something that's had an impact, could be professional but personal as well that you, you'd like everyone to know about.

Speaker A 00:49:34

Yes.

Speaker A 00:49:35

So, I mean there's so much stuff.

Speaker A 00:49:37

I recently did a blog of like, like six word reviews of like all of this stuff that I consumed last year.

Speaker A 00:49:44

And there's, there's so much stuff, I can pull out a few highlights.

Speaker A 00:49:48

So podcast wise, there's a, there's a great education podcast called Future Learning Design which I have known about.

Speaker A 00:49:56

I was on it years ago and I'm going to go on it again soon.

Speaker A 00:49:59

And I, to my, to my regret, I forgot that it existed for a while.

Speaker A 00:50:03

It just slipped off my radar and I've recently got back into it.

Speaker A 00:50:06

It's a guy called Tim Logan who hosts it and it's just A treasure trove of conversations with.

Speaker A 00:50:12

With really, really interesting people that I just did not know existed.

Speaker A 00:50:16

And Tim is just like, enviably good at, like, getting hold of really, really interesting people.

Speaker A 00:50:23

I recently came across an episode of his with somebody called Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, which just blew me away, it was so interesting.

Speaker A 00:50:33

And she's written this book called Hospiting Modernity, which I'm listening to at the moment, which I.

Speaker A 00:50:38

I recommend.

Speaker A 00:50:41

On the personal side, like, I've been reading quite a lot about spirituality in recent years, and probably the gateway drug to that was the Bhagavad Gita.

Speaker A 00:50:53

I really recommend that book.

Speaker A 00:50:54

It's absolutely amazing introduction to, like, Hindu mythology.

Speaker A 00:50:58

Essentially the idea that, like, everything is interconnected, we are all one.

Speaker A 00:51:03

The.

Speaker A 00:51:03

The idea of an individual self, you know, is.

Speaker A 00:51:06

It's true on some level that I am James and I am this guy with the headphones in, but equally, I am a splinter of the universe, and so are you, and so is everything else.

Speaker A 00:51:16

And the universe is one thing, and we're all one.

Speaker A 00:51:18

And.

Speaker A 00:51:19

And, you know, it's possible to.

Speaker A 00:51:23

To understand that, I think, on an intellectual level, and that's, you know, using metaphors like splinters and so on, but to actually feel it and to live it, to breathe it and to be it, you know, that's.

Speaker A 00:51:36

That's the life's work.

Speaker B 00:51:38

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:51:38

And then some.

Speaker A 00:51:39

But yeah, the bag of agita, I think is.

Speaker A 00:51:42

Is.

Speaker A 00:51:42

Is.

Speaker A 00:51:44

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:51:44

Something else.

Speaker B 00:51:45

Yeah, I love that.

Speaker B 00:51:46

And this is why I love the podcast so much, is because the one thing you never get when you hit someone's website or you read the book or whatever is.

Speaker B 00:51:52

Is just that nugget of something which kind of sudd you.

Speaker B 00:51:56

I don't know, a little bit of an insight, a little bit of an understanding, a personality trait or something where you can see where that passion comes from or that insight or that understanding or what you believe is possible because of all those things.

Speaker B 00:52:08

And yeah, it's really great to hear.

Speaker B 00:52:09

I really appreciate you sharing all that with us.

Speaker B 00:52:13

So, obviously the acronym FIRE is important to us here at Education on Fire.

Speaker B 00:52:17

And by that we mean feedback, inspiration, resilience, and empowerment.

Speaker B 00:52:22

I'm just curious, what is it that strikes you, whether it's one word or the combination of words, but something that hits you when you see that?

Speaker A 00:52:30

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:52:31

So, I mean, they're super interconnected.

Speaker A 00:52:35

I like that acronym a lot.

Speaker A 00:52:37

They're super interconnected, aren't they?

Speaker A 00:52:39

And so the initial thing that I think about is about feedback, and there's a phrase that I've used over the years, which is about failure.

Speaker A 00:52:48

And it's like recognize failure for what it is, which is feedback in wolf's clothing, right?

Speaker A 00:52:53

Like, it's, it's not that scary.

Speaker A 00:52:55

It's just, it's, it's just, you know, it's just a way of.

Speaker A 00:52:59

What, what was it I heard Tim Taylor saying the other day?

Speaker A 00:53:02

Like a mistake is just a miss take, right?

Speaker A 00:53:04

It's just like you just do it again and you know, learn from it.

Speaker A 00:53:09

And so that's a big part of it.

Speaker A 00:53:10

But, but in order to do that, you like the resilience comes in then, right?

Speaker A 00:53:14

So you need to have the ability for people to take risks, to be able to try to, to be willing to make mistakes and to, to face up to that.

Speaker A 00:53:23

And often kids are really afraid of that, right?

Speaker A 00:53:26

There's lots of fear around.

Speaker A 00:53:28

The reason that my first book is called Fear is the Mind Killer is that there's a lot of fear around people.

Speaker A 00:53:33

Kids are afraid to put their hand up in class, they're afraid to do public speaking.

Speaker A 00:53:38

Lots of fear around exams and, you know, anxiety and what have you.

Speaker A 00:53:43

And I think that the way that we do that is to take a step back as teachers and it comes back to that project based learning thing.

Speaker A 00:53:49

I think in schools we micromanage kids a lot, we micromanage each other as professionals a lot.

Speaker A 00:53:57

And you know, and you might get really good results if you, if you micromanage kids.

Speaker A 00:54:02

But how can they learn to self regulate in such an externally regulated environment?

Speaker A 00:54:09

And what happens when that micromanager isn't there, like at the end of the school day or when they, when they leave school?

Speaker A 00:54:16

If they, if they're only learning how to respond to stimuli and not how to, how to regulate themselves emotionally, cognitively, relationally, then we're, we're not setting them up for success.

Speaker A 00:54:27

And so that's a big part of it.

Speaker A 00:54:30

And, and I think that that stepping back process, like our job as educators, therefore becomes about inspiration and empowerment.

Speaker A 00:54:38

So it's like, here are some ideas that you might find of interest.

Speaker A 00:54:42

Just like take something and run with it and you know, allow your curiosity to run wild and we will empower you to spend this amount of time in this, in these conditions to go and pursue those ideas, you know, and so they're, they're all super interconnected and they, and it does a nice job of summing up the, the ideas that I've been working with for a long time.

Speaker A 00:55:03

So thank you for sharing that acronym with me.

Speaker B 00:55:05

Brilliant.

Speaker B 00:55:06

Well, thank you so much for, for sharing all the work that you've been doing.

Speaker B 00:55:10

I'm as I said at the very beginning, I'm fascinated by all this.

Speaker B 00:55:14

Not in just in terms of the conversation but the ability to put things in place that people can then learn from, go away having the program and actually improve what they're trying to do or like say bring their dream of what education or their school environment can be.

Speaker B 00:55:28

So yeah, thank you very much for that indeed.

Speaker B 00:55:30

So we'll have links to everything in the show notes but please, where would you like people to go first off just so that they can, they can find out anything, Anything more?

Speaker A 00:55:37

Yeah, thank you very much.

Speaker A 00:55:39

So the, for the Making Change Stick program, there's a website called making changestick co.

Speaker A 00:55:47

That's it.

Speaker A 00:55:47

There's no.uk@ the end, just.co and there's a bunch of resources there and blogs and stuff which is a nice introduction to this program.

Speaker A 00:55:55

There's also a five part taster course, a free taster course.

Speaker A 00:56:00

So the full version of the program is a paid thing but there's like a sliding scale of fees according to the size of your school.

Speaker A 00:56:06

So smaller schools pay less and it's very affordably priced.

Speaker A 00:56:11

But there's a bunch of free stuff there.

Speaker A 00:56:13

So go and have a look at that.

Speaker A 00:56:15

Making changestick co.

Speaker A 00:56:17

And about me more generally I have a website, drjamesmanion.com which is where you can find, you know, resources and more about the work that I do.

Speaker A 00:56:28

There's lots of stuff that we haven't had a chance to talk about today that people can read more about there.

Speaker A 00:56:34

I have a couple of substacks, I have a substack on rethinking education which is more broadly like thinking about how to change the system.

Speaker A 00:56:43

And also I have a Making Change Stick substack.

Speaker A 00:56:46

So there's newsletters that go out every other week and you can find those links on my website, Dr.james manion.com Fantastic.

Speaker B 00:56:54

Well, there's a good reason to, to try and fit in a, a follow up episode so we can talk about everything in more general terms and some of those other things that you've been doing before.

Speaker B 00:57:03

So James, thank you so much.

Speaker B 00:57:04

Really appreciate you in having this conversation and yeah, keep up the great work.

Speaker A 00:57:08

Thank you so much for the, for the opportunity.

Speaker A 00:57:10

Mark, it's been lovely to meet you.

Speaker B 00:57:13

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.