Episodes

We've reached the end of season 8 of Emma and Tom Talk Teaching, and to celebrate the end of another academic year, we're going to take on the end-of-level boss! Learning Styles is a neuromyth (something that people say about how the brain works that sounds attractive but is basically a load of rubbish). Not just any old neuromyth, but THE neuromyth that just refuses to lie down and die. For decades, some in the education world have been beguiled by the notion that all our pupils can be defined ...

Today we look at our own initial teacher education (ITE) provision here at Cardiff Met, and question how effective the concept of Research and Enquiry has been for our student teachers. Working in a policy environment where teachers are expected to be capable of creating and consuming knowledge about teaching, and bringing to to bear on their own contexts, we provide time and space for our student teachers to learn how to do that. The idea is that this will make them into better teachers - but h...

Tom is joined in the non camera-enabled studio today (sorry, YouTube subscribers!) by Sarah McErlaine, who works with schools in Caerphilly county here in Wales. Sarah has just completed her professional doctorate, in which she worked with literacy specialists to try and nail down the key concepts in English. In the absence of much in the way of clues in the Curriculum for Wales framework, this turned out to be an important and difficult undertaking, and resulted in the production of some very h...

This week we welcome two academics from the University of the West of England - Joe Brown and Dr Tim Clark - to the studio. They’re here to discuss their recently published book Debating Childhoods, which gives Tom and Sian the chance to have an in-depth discussion about how we think of childhood and how society’s values influence the things we prioritise and consider when providing education and experiences for children. There’s lots to think about in this extended episode, and if you’re inter...

With the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) elections here in Wales just around the corner, the team got together in Cardiff Met's broadcast centre to discuss what we learnt from the six parties in relation to some of the big themes facing education today. Tom is joined on the studio sofa by Dr Gareth Evans from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and Finola Wilson from Impact Wales to discuss school standards, the future of Curriculum for Wales, funding, teacher recruitment, and more. You can ...

Podcasting solo today, Tom is relieved to have not one but two remote guests to keep him company! Donald Mbeutcha and Sara Gattward are from Every Future Foundation, an organisation that aims to support schools with anti-racist education, mainly in London and the surrounding area. Whilst the Welsh government have made a commitment to an anti-racist Wales by 2030, and we have organisations like DARPL (founded by colleagues here at Cardiff Met) doing great work to make this vision a reality, we ...

Our notorious Easter holiday light episode is back for 2026, and we’re delighted that we have Emma’s dulcet tones on the recording! In order to achieve this, we recorded this way back in July 2025, and Tom’s got his fingers crossed that everything we bring to the table ages well in the intervening nine months. Building work outside our normal studio means that we’re in a temporary setup for this recording, so YouTube viewers can see our big screen misbehaving, and everyone can hear the sound of...

In this Senedd Election Special, we tried very hard to interview someone from Reform UK about the party's education policy offerings for the upcoming Senedd elections. As you'll hear, we weren't successful in getting anyone to come on, so we discussed the education content of their manifesto document without them. As always, here on Emma and Tom Talk Teaching we then turn to analysis from Dr Gareth Evans from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. The manifesto discussion was recorded on...

In this Senedd Election Special, we interview Cefin Campbell from Plaid Cymru about the party's education policy offerings for the upcoming Senedd elections. As ever, here on Emma and Tom Talk Teaching we have post-interview analysis from Dr Gareth Evans from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. The interview was recorded on 16th February 2026, and is a collaboration between Emma and Tom Talk Teaching and The Impact Podcast. You can also hear this interview, together with Jane and Fino...

In this Senedd Election Special, we interview Jane Dodds from the Liberal Democrats about the party's education policy offerings for the upcoming Senedd elections. As ever, here on Emma and Tom Talk Teaching we have post-interview analysis from Dr Gareth Evans from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. The interview was recorded on 25th February 2026, and is a collaboration between Emma and Tom Talk Teaching and The Impact Podcast. You can also hear this interview, together with Jane an...

We're back next week with the final three slots in the series: the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and Reform. Here on our podcast you'll get the usual post-interview analysis with Dr Gareth Evans. Don't forget that Jane and Finola will be discussing the interviews from their point of view over on the Impact Podcast too. This Senedd Elections Special series is a co-production of Emma and Tom Talk Teaching and the Impact Podcast.

To complement our Senedd election special episodes, we welcome Dr Gareth Evans back to the podcast to set the scene with a look at how education in Wales has developed since devolution in 1999. Gareth is well-placed to give us the back-story leading up to these pivotal elections, as he is Director of Education Policy at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and previously the education correspondent of the Western Mail, Wales's national newspaper. He's just had a paper published in the ...

In this Senedd Election Special, we interview Lynne Neagle from the Labour Party (and the current Cabinet Secretary for Education) about the party's education policy offerings for the upcoming Senedd elections. As ever, here on Emma and Tom Talk Teaching we have post-interview analysis from Dr Gareth Evans from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. The interview was recorded on 5th March 2026, and is a collaboration between Emma and Tom Talk Teaching and The Impact Podcast. You can also...

In this Senedd Election Special, we interview Angela Karadog from the Green Party about the Greens' education policy offerings for the upcoming Senedd elections. As ever, here on Emma and Tom Talk Teaching we have post-interview analysis from Dr Gareth Evans from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. The interview was recorded on 18th February 2026, and is a collaboration between Emma and Tom Talk Teaching and The Impact Podcast. You can also hear this interview, together with Jane and ...

In this Senedd Election Special, we interview Natasha Asghar from the Conservative Party about their education policy offerings for the upcoming Senedd elections. As ever, here on Emma and Tom Talk Teaching we have post-interview analysis from Dr Gareth Evans from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. The interview was recorded on 25th February 2026, and is a collaboration between Emma and Tom Talk Teaching and The Impact Podcast. You can also hear this interview, together with Jane and...

Next week we'll have interviews with the Conservatives, the Green party and Labour. Here on Emma and Tom Talk Teaching there's analysis after every interview with Tom and Dr Gareth Evans from the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David. Join us on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday for our first three episodes! This Senedd Elections Special series is a co-production of Emma and Tom Talk Teaching and the Impact Podcast.

As Wales's elections to the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) draw nearer, the polls continue to suggest that we might see a major redrawing of the political landscape here. Since devolution in 1999, Labour has always held power. That's a quarter of a century of government, with education one of the policy areas that was devolved from Westminster by the Blair government. So we thought it was worth finding out what the six major parties contesting the election here had to offer in terms of education po...

Friend of the podcast Dr Mary Woolley joins us on the line from Canterbury for this episode, to discuss a research project about teachers' curriculum conversations. The Curriculum for Wales makes the suggestion that if learners are given the opportunity to make 'powerful connections' between subject disciplines, their overall learning can be more meaningful. The curriculum framework empowers schools designing their curriculum to structure learning experiences in more flexible ways than have pre...

Wales and England have had different education systems for more than 25 years now, so it’s a weird coincidence that both countries published a ‘National Plan for Music Education’ in the same year - 2022. This was an opportunity that Tom and friends of the podcast Dr Elizabeth MacGregor and Dr Viv John, all being music education specialists, couldn’t pass up. They’ve published, and presented in various events, an analysis of the two plans. The analysis aims to spotlight the presumptions, values ...

Wales is a country in which two languages (English and Welsh) have equal status in law. So parents can choose whether their children are educated through the medium of English or Welsh. There are lots of interesting issues that arise when pupils educated in Welsh come from homes where English is mainly spoken, and these issues are interesting to teachers anywhere in the world who work with pupils where a different language is spoken at home to the one being used in the classroom. We welcome Dr ...

Most of the guests who pass through our studio are teachers of some kind, so it’s a rare treat to welcome some people who are from a slightly different world, but who have taken a real interest in helping out the profession with their specialist insights! Chris and Suzy Peach are both doctors, and decided that they wanted to make something that could help young people with their health and wellbeing. Their creation is the Peach Wellness Academy, which is now available for schools and has a weal...

After welcoming Kelly Bubbins from Willows High School in Cardiff to our studio a year ago, we're delighted to be having a chat with one of Kelly's colleagues. Nicola Lo Celso is literacy coordinator at the school, and has been responsible for developing the school's literacy policy. Listeners who remember our discussion with Kelly last year will know that Willows have a strong view about how they want to do things, and we've always found it rewarding to dig into that and see how the school's v...

It's time for our notoriously long and self-indulgent Christmas special, in which we bring in strange, interesting and (sometimes) festive things we've found, to see what others make of them. This year we also welcome Emma's stunt-double, Sian Wickersham, who's standing in for some episodes this season, to join in the fun. We've got everything from poems to articles, festive food and unsung heroes of music (of course), and we hope it whiles away a bit of washing up or a long walk for you over ...

For this episode, we’re delighted to welcome back our colleague Kerry Bevan who runs the PGCE Secondary Languages programme here at Cardiff Met. Kerry’s here to contribute to our occasional series of episodes on individual subjects in the curriculum. It’s always fun to geek out about the subject we love, and Kerry’s got plenty for us on the purpose of languages in the curriculum, what the subject looks like in the classroom, and the various issues, myths, challenges and opportunities that chara...