Teaching Methods Podcasts

Becoming Educated is the clearest way into the research now reshaping many classrooms. In Science of Learning TL:DR with Dr Carl Hendrick, Hendrick traces thinking about working memory through decades of models. He keeps reminding listeners that they are models: open a brain and you will not find boxes labelled schema.

Better Teaching: Only Stuff That Works carries those instincts into coaching. Gene Tavernetti says his goal for every episode is a laugh and an actionable idea. In From The Archives: Teachers Helping Teachers Getting Better with Laura Stam, a second-grade teacher from Thermopolis, Wyoming, recalls being coached to script better questions. She says the change was rough at first for her and her pupils, yet "I didn't feel like I was being attacked." From The Archives: Digital Delusion with Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath is more combative. When Horvath estimates that 70 percent of teachers he works with are sick of classroom tech, he adds that the figure is "not scientific." Listeners drawn to coaching can continue on the Professional Development page.

At the other end of the argument are shows built around student agency. All Things Montessori is the most philosophical. In the 54-minute Revisited: Freedom & Responsibility, the hosts argue that freedom is a capacity children develop, not a reward to hand out and take away. They also say that "we cannot teach responsibility," because it grows within relationships. They are clear about limits too: bullying and hate speech get stopped from the top.

In mathematics, the debate includes Building Thinking Classrooms. On the KINL Podcast Network, S6:E28 Bending Ears with a Panel of Thinking Classroom Practitioners hears from teachers using the approach. One panelist says, "I got tired of doing the thinking for the kids." Panelists also raise the worries a sceptic would: covering the content, and pulling a lesson together when groups finish the day in different places. The Mathematics Education page continues that thread.

IB Matters brings in an educational psychologist for Creating Autonomous Learners with Taryn Moir. Moir calls the metacognitive cycle the engine of thinking, and she reports that her own reading intervention helped children overcome the fourth-grade slump. That claim comes from her account of her own study. A 2018 episode of The Student-Centered Learning Podcast names the hard part of the approach: Steambox Rhode Island founder Roberto Gonzales says it is asking facilitators "to give up the locus of control."

Grading prompts the most candid conversations. The EduGals Podcast, hosted by Rachel Johnson and Katie Attwell, works through Joe Feldman's Grading for Equity chapter by chapter. In Examining Traditional Grading and its Impact on Teaching - E138, one host admits she once put stickers only on tests above a certain score.

ClassCast Podcast pushes harder. In the 98-minute Ep.081 -- Tyler Rablin -- Anti-Grading Crusader on Fixing Feedback, Rablin argues that a teacher can run a classroom almost entirely without grades and settle the mark at the end. He also describes weekly student self-reflections that go into the gradebook.

Outrageous Love the Podcast: Our Journeys to Responsiveness, hosted by Dr. Sharroky Hollie, asks guests about the moment an inequity hit home. In Micaela Altamirano's Journey To Responsiveness, Episode 61, the Open Mic Series, Part 1 of 2, Altamirano recalls being called into the office with friends after they wrote an AP essay together. Only her mother, a special education teacher, came in to call it collaboration.

On AI, Empower Students Now is blunt. In I'm Not Okay with AI Anymore: The Hypervigilant Teacherpreneur, Amanda argues that letting a chatbot write takes away the struggle of finding out what you think: "I've always told my students that writing is thinking." In Design Cast - Episode #115 - Rita Bateson - Eblana Learning, one teacher's estimate is passed on: 90% of the design projects she received were AI. The same episode notes that some students are now too afraid to touch it. The Educational Technology page picks up from there.

Music teachers are unusually well served. In The Anacrusic Podcast's TAP 144 - How to Fix Your Music Lesson Plan Before it Flops, Anne Mileski describes a kindergarten circle game that dissolved about ten minutes into a 30-minute lesson. She moved the children to a reading corner and sang them a story, because "honestly, that's what those kids needed that day."

The Teach Piano Today Podcast puts research to work. In Why Do Piano Students Quit? Karen King’s Research Provides The Answers, King passes on a line from the founder of the theory she studied: "it's not your job to motivate people it's your job to create the environments in which people will motivate themselves." Her practical advice is to praise effort over ability and to offer students even trivial choices. On How To Teach Music with Jessica Grant, Centers in the Music Room with Becca Davis turns donated beanie babies and two buckets marked P and F into a dynamics station.

Writing teachers get a parable in The Arts of Language Podcast's Episode 541: Process versus Product. The episode recounts a film scene in which a father hands back his son's composition with "again, half as long," and finally with "good, now throw it away."

Language teachers can hear method taken apart. In EVERYTHING EFL's Episode 156: Using Videotelling in Class with Jamie Keddie, a video of a baby's first ice cream is told aloud, then the telling itself is analysed: present continuous sets the scene, and present simple carries the action. We Teach Languages Episode 152: Teaching Teachers, Language Learning Myths, and Metacognition with Doran Katz frames metacognition as learners learning to plan, monitor and assess. The Language Learning page goes deeper. College instructors should try Literaturely, where one host opens close reading by asking what students liked, disliked, found surprising and found confusing. They should also see the Higher Education page.