Embedded Files
These podcasts can be accessed on your smartphone through a variety of podcasting apps (apple podcast, spotify, stitcher, pandora, etc.). Links to the podcasts’ websites are included below. If you want to listen on your phone while you walk, mow the lawn, etc., then it is best to access them through an app on your smartphone. If you want to listen while at your desk, then the websites are a good option.
Must Listen-to Podcast Episodes for Educators
Must Listen-to Podcast Episodes for Educators
People I Mostly Admire (Freakonomics spinoff). He’s been an Arctic scientist, a sports journalist, and is now a best-selling author of science books. His latest, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, makes the argument that early specialization does not give you a head start in life. David and Steve talk about why frustration is a good sign, and why the 10,000-hour rule is definitely not a rule. Full of great insight into how people learn and how to design learning experiences for deep understanding.
Freakonomics: People I (Mostly) Admire. Economist Michael D. Smith says universities are scrambling to protect a status quo that deserves to die. He tells Steve why the current system is unsustainable, and what’s at stake if nothing changes.
Freakonomics. In the U.S. alone, we hold 55 million meetings a day. Most of them are woefully unproductive, and tyrannize our offices. The revolution begins now — with better agendas, smaller invite lists, and an embrace of healthy conflict.
Freakonomics. The term “merit pay” has gained a prominent place in the debate over education reform. First, it was D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee trumpeting it as a key to fixing the D.C.’s ailing public schools. Then a handful of other cities gave it a go, including Denver, New York City, and Nashville. Merit pay is a big plank of Education Secretary Arne Duncan‘s reform platform. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has just launched his own version of merit pay that focuses incentives toward principals.
There’s just one problem: educators almost universally hate merit pay, and have been adamantly opposed to it from day one. Simply, teachers say merit pay won’t work. In the last year, there’s been some pretty damning evidence proving them right; research showing that merit pay, in a variety of shapes and sizes, fails to raise student performance. In the worst of cases, such as the scandal in Atlanta, it’s contributed to flat-out cheating on the part of teachers and administrators. So, are we surprised that educators don’t respond to monetary incentives? Is that even the right conclusion to draw?
For answers to these and related questions, we decided to convene a Freakonomics Quorum. We reached out to a handful of education researchers and experts, and asked them the following: Why don’t incentives appear to be working in cases of teacher merit pay?
Freakonomics: People I Mostly Admire. Dr. Sarah Hart explains how patterns are everywhere, constraints make us more creative, and literature is surprisingly mathematical.
Freakonomics. Most high-school math classes are still preparing students for the Sputnik era. Steve Levitt wants to get rid of the “geometry sandwich” and instead have kids learn what they really need in the modern era: data fluency.
Freakonomics. Exam high schools are generally regarded as a cut above, turning out congressmen, scholars, and all-around high achievers. They account for over half of the top 109 American schools in the U.S. News and World Report best high schools list, and an incredible 20 out of 21 from Newsweek’s list of “public elite.”
But a new study from Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer of Harvard throws cold water on this notion, and calls into question whether the exam schools typically cited for excellence are, well, really all that excellent.
Freakonomics. Family environments and “diversifying experiences” (including the early death of a parent); intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations; schools that value assessments, but don’t assess the things we value. All these elements factor into the long, mysterious march towards a creative life.
Freakonomics. What should be done about the quality and quantity of standardized testing in U.S. schools? We touched on the subject in Freakonomics, but only insofar as the introduction of high-stakes testing altered the incentives at play — including the incentives for some teachers, who were found to cheat in order to cover up the poor performance of their students (which, obviously, also indicates the poor performance of the teachers).
Plus this Deseret News op-ed
Freakonomics. The black-white gap in U.S. education is an issue that continues to occupy the efforts of a great many scholars. Roland Fryer and Steve Levitt have poked at the issue repeatedly; a recent study by Spyros Konstantopoulos looked at class size as a possible culprit, to little avail.
We gathered a group of people with wisdom and experience in this area — Caroline Hoxby, Daniel Hurley, Richard J. Murnane, and Andrew Rotherham — and asked them the following question: How can the U.S. black-white achievement gap be closed?
Freakonomics. The gist: If U.S. school teachers are indeed “just a little bit below average,” it’s not really their fault. So what should be done about it?
Freakonomics. Our take: maybe the steps aren’t so easy, but a program run out of a Toronto housing project has had great success in turning around kids who were headed for trouble.
Freakonomics. The gist: in our collective zeal to reform schools and close the achievement gap, we may have lost sight of where most learning really happens — at home.
Emerging Research In Educational Psychology. Dr. Naomi Winstone discusses "Supporting Learners' Agentic Engagement With Feedback: A Systematic Review and a Taxonomy of Recipience Processes.”
Emerging Research In Educational Psychology. Weapons on school grounds can have negative emotional, physical and even lethal effects on victims and witnesses. In this podcast episode, Dr. Ron Avi Astor contends that policies addressing these events at all levels are absent and needed. Be sure to read the official Division 15 policy brief discussed in this episode at: www.EdPsych.us/ReducingWeaponsInSchools. A full copy of Chapter 5 from the discussed book (Bullying, school violence, and climate in evolving contexts: Culture, organization, and time) may be found here: bit.ly/2TyYkOq
Emerging Research In Educational Psychology. Drs. Jessica DeCuir-Gunby and Paul Schutz discuss their 2014 Educational Psychologist article, "Researching Race Within Educational Psychology Contexts."
Emerging Research In Educational Psychology. Dr. Revathy Kumar discusses the 2018 Educational Psychologist article she co-authored with Dr. Akane Zusho, entitled, "Weaving Cultural Relevance and Achievement Motivation Into Inclusive Classroom Cultures."
Emerging Research In Educational Psychology. Drs. Alyson L. Lavigne & Thomas L. Good sit down with host Jeff Greene to discuss their Division 15 Policy Brief, "Addressing Teacher Evaluation Appropriately."
Emerging Research In Educational Psychology. Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang discusses her 2019 Educational Psychologist article, "Nurturing Nature: How Brain Development Is Inherently Social and Emotional, and What This Means for Education."
Emerging Research In Educational Psychology. Dr. Erik Girvan discusses his 2019 Educational Psychologist article, "Tail, Tusk, and Trunk: What Different Metrics Reveal About Racial Disproportionality in School Discipline"
Emerging Research In Educational Psychology. Dr. Helenrose Fives discusses "Teachers' Epistemic Cognition in Classroom Assessment."
Recommended Podcast Series
Recommended Podcast Series
A really interesting series that interviews scholars that work in the science of learning and teaching. There are episodes about things like brain development, social development, teacher evaluations, student motivation, etc.
Flying Coach
Flying Coach
Steve Kerr and Pate Carroll discuss their respective coaching and leadership experiences, how they run their teams, where the NBA and NFL overlap and differ, and the formative influences in their careers. Only two episodes so far, and the second is pretty specific to sports (NFL Draft), but they discuss leadership, coaching, evaluating talent and in the first episode how they bring their own identity and personality to the cultures they create.
A fascinating look at many areas of life. It is informative, uses research/data, and is highly entertaining. There are many episodes specifically about schools and education
A top tier, highly entertaining, and highly informative podcast series. Each episode is about a different topic. There are episodes about every subject imaginable. And they are all amazing.
This podcast tackles controversial topics and widely held beliefs across wide ranging subject areas. It surveys the research on the topic and presents it in a very entertaining production.
Four highly successful authors of different fiction genres discuss various aspects of the art of writing fiction. Each episode is only 15 minutes long. There is an archive of episodes that goes back years. As a side perk, each episode contains a book recommendation and writing prompt.
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