Education Bookcast
Episodes
84. Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a former options trader who noticed that the financial markets were unstable ahead of the crash in 2008, and made a lot of mo...
83. SuperMemo's 20 rules for formulating knowledge
16 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
SuperMemo is a flashcard and spaced repetition software that has been around since 1991. Its founder, Dr Piotr Wozniak, maintains a blog with many int...
82. Memorable Teaching by Peps McCrea
29 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Continuing with our information processing model theme (i.e. seeing the mind as made up of long-term memory and limited working memory), we now have a...
81b. ...except for this one "learning style"!
17 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There one major, well-documented factor that effects what the best kind of instruction is for different people: expertise. This episode's article is T...
81a. The Myth of Learning Styles
10 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Learning styles are one of the most widely believed psychological ideas known by scientists to be invalid. Over 90% of university students in the USA ...
80. The Chimp Paradox by Prof Steve Peters
27 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is a book with a terrible title and wonderful ideas. Isn't there a saying about not judging the quality of a publication's contents by the attrac...
79. What learning is
13 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This may be the most important episode on the podcast so far. When I started out on this journey of coming to understand education, I had a lot of que...
78. Interview with Dr James Comer
25 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I have the great privilege to invite Dr James Comer, the creator of the Comer School Development Program (SDP), onto the show. Dr Com...
77b. Case study: the Comer SDP in New Jersey
23 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this part of the two-part episode about Linda Darling-Hammond's book With the Whole Child in Mind, we will look at one of the two case studies ment...
77a. With the Whole Child in Mind by Linda Darling-Hammond
18 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Last episode, we saw a meta-analysis of comprehensive school reform (CSR) programmes. The best-performing programmes are Success for All, Direct Instr...
76. Comprehensive School Reform
11 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Comprehensive school reform (CSR) is a name for any set of policies that are simultaneously enacted in (usually a single) school for the purposes of s...
75. What great teachers have in common
04 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the past three episodes, we have looked at three great teachers: basketball coach John Wooden, mathematics teacher Jaime Escalante, and primary sch...
74e. Marva Collins' educational philosophy
25 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this final part of the series on legendary teacher Marva Collins, we look at her educational philosophy, i.e. things that she believed and that imp...
74d. Marva Collins' curriculum and teaching approach
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this part of the series on Marva Collins, we look at her curriculum and some elements of the way that she taught. The most surprising thing is the ...
74c. Dealing with difficult children
23 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When she was working at Delano Elementary School in Chicago, Marva would often be given the "worst", most disruptive students, and in her 14 years the...
74b. How to start the school year, Marva Collins style
22 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In one chapter of the book Marva Collins' Way, we are treated to a fly-on-the-wall view of Marva Collins' first day with a new class in a new school y...
74a. Marva Collins' Way by Marva Collins and Civia Tamarkin
21 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Marva Collins is the best teacher I have ever seen or heard of. Working in a poor black neighbourhood in Chicago in the 1970s, she took on the worst o...
73e. Escalante - the glory years
10 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After the events of summer 1982, when Jaime Escalante's Advanced Placement Calculus students were accused of cheating and then vindicated on a re-test...
73d. Escalante - raising academic standards
10 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After a short time working at Garfield High School, Jaime Escalante was asked to take over Advanced Placement calculus. Advanced Placement is a type o...
73c. Garfield and discipline: a clash of philosophies
08 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1974, Garfield High School got a new principal (headmaster) in the form of Alex Avilez. The school was in turmoil, with a major gang presence, and ...
73b. Escalante: introducing the characters
06 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
One of the main lessons from the story of Jaime Escalante's career at East LA's Garfeild High School was that it was ultimately a team effort to reach...
73a. Escalante: The Best Teacher in America by Jay Matthews
03 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jaime Escalante was a Bolivian teacher who came to Los Angeles in the 1960s. After joining the chaotic failing school Garfield High as a mathematics t...
72b. John Wooden and cognitive science
28 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
I first read You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned almost five years ago. In that time, I have learned much about how people learn. Re-reading th...
72a. Star coach John Wooden's pedagogy
20 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
John Wooden was a basketball coach for UCLA and an English teacher. He is renowned as one of the greatest coaches of all time, winning 10 out of 12 NC...
71. Visible Learning by John Hattie
01 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
John Hattie is an education researcher from New Zealand with a very ambitious goal: to synthesise the myriad quantitative research studies on educatio...
70. The Hidden Lives of Learners by Graham Nuthall
01 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Graham Nuthall was an education researcher from New Zealand who spent most of his career on classroom observation, both by directly sitting in on less...
A public service announcement
01 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It's been three years since the start of Education Bookcast. I will be attempting to change the format to make episodes shorter. I also mention some s...
69. Edward de Bono: Criticisms and controversies
30 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
I've spent a total of seven episodes up till now on Edward de Bono's work on creativity, lateral thinking, and the workings of the mind. While reading...
68. The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal
16 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Stress is broadly understood to be a serious health risk and a destructive factor in many people's lives. It has been advertised as such for several d...
67. Edward de Bono: Odds and ends
02 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Edward de Bono has written a lot of books. Although they often contain small novelties, overall his bibliography is quite repetitive, meaning that it'...
66. The teacher crisis in the UK
24 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Teachers are leaving the profession in droves in Britain - over half have left before having worked for five years. New and experienced teachers alike...
65. Beyond the Hole in the Wall by Sugata Mitra
27 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sugata Mitra gained widespread acclaim after his TED talk on the Hole in the Wall experiment. In the experiment, he put a computer in a wall of a New ...
64. What Bruce Lee taught me about learning
07 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A while back, I listened to an interview with Bruce Lee*. There were two things that I took away from it, neither of which I understood at the time: B...
63. I am Right, You are Wrong by Edward de Bono
23 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We've already seen a number of books by Edward de Bono. I am Right, You are Wrong is (was?) probably my favourite book of his, but since it is such a ...
62. Brainstorming makes you less creative
09 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
I've recently been doing a series on creativity on the podcast. Edward de Bono has featured heavily, but there are other creativity-related topics and...
61. Po: Beyond Yes and No by Edward de Bono
26 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Edward de Bono has long stressed the need to be open to the creation of new words in order to support the development of new concepts and ideas, even ...
60. Dual N-Back: The best "brain training"?
12 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the previous episode, we looked at a range of articles concerning the effectiveness of so-called "brain training" in general, with a particular foc...
59. Does "brain-training" work? The case of Lumosity
05 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Could specially designed exercises on your computer or mobile phone make you smarter? "Brain-training" is now a multi-billion pound industry, and that...
58. The Use of Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono
03 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we will look closely at Edward de Bono's idea of lateral thinking by considering two of his books, The Use of Lateral Thinking (1971)...
57. Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir
28 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Although ostensibly about economics, this book is in fact about the effect of poverty of various kinds on the mind. Poverty is a shortage of resources...
56. The Mechanism of Mind by Edward de Bono
27 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Edward de Bono's work can mostly be divided into two parts: models of how the mind works; and applications of principles extracted from those models t...
55. How to Become a Straight-A Student by Cal Newport
01 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Cal Newport is a computer scientist at Georgetown University who writes a blog called Study Hacks about effective study methods. We have covered one o...
54. Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono
31 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Edward de Bono is an expert on creativity, author of over 40 books on the subject. He invented the term "lateral thinking" in the 1960s, which is now ...
53b. Brain-Based Learning by Eric Jensen [continued]
09 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This is the second part of the episode about Brain-Based Learning. In the previous part, I discussed the chapters concerning relative lateralisation (...
53a. Brain-Based Learning by Eric Jensen
09 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Jensen is a former teacher with a PhD in Human Development from Fielding Graduate University. In 1981, he co-founded "the United States' first an...
52. How We Learn by Benedict Carey
22 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This is an episode which requires little justification for its relevance to education - the title says it all. How We Learn presents a selection of co...
51. Review of episodes 1-50
28 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
I've spent some time thinking about the past 50 episodes of the podcast, and I've identified a number of themes - why people do things; how people get...
50. Types of explanation
03 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Explanations can broadly be categorised according to two adjectives: nomological and mechanistic. Mechanistic explanations are to do with cause and ef...
49. The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin
28 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Josh Waitzkin was the international under-18 chess champion at age 18, only to quit chess at age 22 and pursue Tai-chi Push Hands, the martial applica...
48. I Thought It Was Just Me by Brené Brown
27 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This book is about shame. Shame is a taboo emotion in our culture. It is not talked about, which is part of what makes it so powerful, and part of its...
47. Optimism
22 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we will look at the article Seeing the Glass Half Full: A Review of the Causes and Consequences of Optimism by Mary Forgeard and Mart...
46. Self Compassion by Kristin Neff
22 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We've seen in the previous episode how trying to increase one's self-esteem is a dangerous proposition, and how having high self-esteem is not necessa...
45. The problem with self-esteem
20 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Self-esteem is a psychological concept that has penetrated everyday language. In many Western countries, it is generally understood that high self-est...
44. History as citizen-building
20 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
I spent a month in summer in Lithuania on a language course. Some events while I was there prompted me to realise something about education that I had...
43. Night School [on sleep] by Richard Wiseman
25 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It reduces productivity, prevents learning, reduces effective IQ, disrupts relationships, undermines creative thinking, and saps self-control. It incr...
42. Do Schools Kill Creativity? by Sir Ken Robinson
05 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk Do Schools Kill Creativity is the most popular TED talk ever given, with just under 45 million views at the time of my wri...
41. What Reading Does for the Mind
13 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
I thought it was about time to cover something about books on this book-related podcast! Keith Stanovich and Annie Cunningham are two researchers who ...
40. ADHD Does Not Exist by Richard Saul
08 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
11% of children and 4% of adults in the US are said to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Dr Richard Saul has been a specialist in ...
39b. The Geography of Thought by Richard Nisbett [continued]
08 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This continues the episode about The Geography of Thought, looking at more ways in which the cultural differences manifest themselves in differing psy...
39a. The Geography of Thought by Richard Nisbett
05 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Unlike many books that I cover, this is one that I read recently and felt an urgent need to share its contents even before I got to the appropriate th...
38. Uncle Staś' advice column [RTTP, homeschooling, and the dangers of social media]
19 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
I've received a lot of messages from listeners (as well as from an author!) in the past few days. Several of these messages are things that I would li...
37. A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
19 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The words "theory" and "fun" in such close proximity may make you suspicious. Or, they may make you curious. "Fun" is one of those ideas that is so na...
36. What is fun? What is play? What is a game?
17 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In recent episodes, we have been discussing games and play, and their relevance to education, as well as to an improved understanding of human psychol...
35b. Minds on Fire by Mark Carnes
17 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This is a continuation of the episode on Minds on Fire by Mark Carnes. The main idea of this part of the episode is the effects that Reacting to the P...
35a. Minds on Fire by Mark Carnes
16 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Last episode, we looked at the various ways in which games can both improve our theoretical understanding of human psychology and of learning, and als...
34b. Which is broken: reality, or Jane McGonigal's mind?
02 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This episode serves two purposes. On the one hand, I want to go over some more ideas from Jane McGonigal's book, as it is so rich in fresh and origina...
34a. Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal
02 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Jane McGonigal is a game designer who believes that, in many ways, games bring out the best in people. The reason for their popularity, she claims, is...
33. Interview with Malke Rosenfeld of Math in your Feet
02 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Malke Rosenfeld is the creator of Math in your Feet, a program to teach students mathematical concepts through the medium of dance. (Really!) She does...
32. The Visual Edge by Sargy Letuchy [interview]
02 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Today we have an interview with Sargy Letuchy, a public school teacher from Chicago, who has produced some materials to help other teachers with stand...
31+. How I learn languages
02 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Depending on what counts as knowing a language, I speak anything between 7 and 12 languages, namely: English, Polish, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Fren...
31. Lessons learned from 50 years of language teaching at the Foreign Service Institute
20 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I review a paper from the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) about language learning and teaching. The key insights are eleven: Mature ...
30. Cultural Learnings of America for make benefit glorious podcast of Education Bookcast
20 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
I wanted to share some things I learned from my trip to the US this summer, and what my own experience of running maths circles has been like so far. ...
29+. Interview with Robert Kaplan of The Math Circle
12 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Interview with Robert Kaplan, co-author of Out of the Labyrinth (the book we looked at in the previous episode), co-founder of The Math Circle, and th...
29. Out of the Labyrinth: Setting Mathematics Free by Robert & Ellen Kaplan
12 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This is a book that I have more of a connection with than many of the others I cover on the podcast. I first bought a book by these authors when I wa...
28. Why do kids give stupid answers to simple maths questions?
26 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Have a go at some of these: An athlete's best time to run a mile is 4 minutes and 10 seconds. How long would it take him to run 5 miles? It takes one ...
27+. Interview with Dr Amanda Serenevy
24 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Amanda Serenevy is a mathematician and mathematics educator, focussing on outreach through the medium of Math Circles, and on teacher training. Thi...
27. Consider the Circle by Eliza Vanett
24 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A very short episode about an article written by a young girl concerning her experiences with maths. At school, she is faced daily with the same works...
26. A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart
05 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What do you think of mathematics? Is it: a sterile tool for accounting? boring, mindless, and annoying stuff your teacher makes you do? an anarchic, ...
25. Chess, gender, and intelligence
29 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past century, women have been gaining rights and prejudice against women has declined. Although many would argue that there's still a way to ...
24. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
15 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
I write a little blurb like this for every episode, but I feel that some books hardly need any introduction. This is one such example. Malcolm Gladwe...
23. So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport
30 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
"Follow your passion" is bad advice. It seems an almost blasphemous thing to say. And yet in this book, Cal Newport argues that it is, indeed, genera...
22. The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
18 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
With The Talent Code, we have another perspective on the development of expertise. Daniel Coyle looks at "talent hotbeds" in music, sport, and academi...
21. The Defining Decade by Meg Jay
04 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Genius Explained, we saw how people considered "geniuses" build up their skills over many years prior to their production of great works. Although ...
20b. Genius Explained [bringing up geniuses, genius writers, and the fallacies of talent] by Michael Howe
20 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Last episode, we got to see the lives of three exceptional individuals in depth: Charles Darwin, George Stephenson, and Michael Faraday. In today's e...
20a. Genius Explained [Darwin, Stephenson & Faraday] by Michael Howe
06 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Genius Explained, Michael Howe takes us through biographies of many people with great achievements, who we might consider to be "geniuses". It is a...
19b. Seven Myths about Education [myths 4-7] by Daisy Christodoulou
23 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A continuation of last week's episode about Daisy Christodoulou's book.
19a. Seven Myths about Education by Daisy Chirstodoulou
16 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This should be a controversial episode! I cover this book in the interests of looking at the cognitive science it refers to. However, this is also the...
18. Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice by Matthew Syed
09 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
We are now moving on to a series of episodes answering the question: How do people get good at things? In Bounce, Commonwealth champion and Olympian t...
17. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
02 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The funny thing about Malcolm Gladwell is that everyone seems to enjoy reading him, but few remember many details of what he actually wrote. I had a c...
16. Willpower by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney
25 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A natural continuation from last week. Habit formation, and breaking habits, takes willpower. So how does willpower work? Like a muscle. Willpower...
15. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
18 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Up till now, we've had several episodes looking at the question of "why do people do what they do?". Most recently, we asked and answered that questio...
14. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
11 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
So far in the podcast, among other things, we've looked at the topic of motivation. In the last few episodes, we've also started to look at human irr...
13. The Psychology of Self-Defense: Self-Affirmation Theory by David Sherman & Geoffrey Cohen
04 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, we saw the destructive effects of a psychological phenomenon not many people would have heard of known as "stereotype threat". This week, w...
12. "Picture yourself as a stereotypical male" by Michelle Goffreda
28 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Ethnic minorities and women are disadvantaged enough as it is. When considering why members of some ethnic groups tend to do badly in school, and why ...
11. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
21 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A classic book on people's irrationalities. Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and cognitive scientist. Together with his late res...
10. Flow by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
14 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What's the best kind of experience you have? When do you feel happiest? Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (pronounced me-HIGH CHEEK-sent-me-HIGH) shows us th...
9. The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey
07 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Writing in the 1970s, Timothy Gallwey comes eerily close in The Inner Game of Tennis to what modern cognitive scientists have discovered about the na...
8. Goals Gone Wild: the Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting by Lisa Ordóñez et alii
29 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Psychological "urban myths" come in a few flavours. Some, such as the idea that high self-esteem leads to less violent behaviour, are so completely,...
7. The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life by Thomas Sterner
22 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
So far, we have seen a several books with messages relating to the psychology of motivation, particularly to the conditions under which people have ...
6. A Russian Teacher in America by Andrei Toom
15 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Finally! An episode with the word "teacher" in the title. What kind of teacher is Andrei Toom? And what interesting comparisons does make between ed...