My friend Niamh Ryan, joins me to talk about evaluating teacher training. How can you tell if your training is making a difference?
Is Your Training Making a Difference? (with Niamh Ryan)
Effective Online Teacher Development (with Thom Kiddle)
What Motivates Teachers to Develop? (With Amol Padwad)
I speak with Amol Padwad from Ambedkar University Delhi about teacher motivation and teacher development. What incentives make sense for teachers at different stages of their career? What demotivates teachers from wanting to develop? And how can schools encourage all their teachers to develop without forcing them?
Online Forum-based Teacher Training (with Simon Galloway)
Simon Galloway (author of Teaching Teachers Online) joins me to discuss using forums in online teacher training. We talk about how to encourage interaction between trainees, how to encourage trainees to post critical and reflective comments, and how to incorporate variety into forum tasks.
Running Effective Webinars to Train Teachers (with Simon Galloway)
Simon Galloway (author of Teaching Teachers Online) joins me to discuss how to run webinars. We discuss how to make the most of breakout rooms, polls and chatboxes, why webinars should be part of distance learning courses and when to avoid using webinars.
What makes Teacher Training Successful? (with Diederik Van Gorp)
Tools For Teacher Reflection (with Dave Weller)
5th Anniversary Podcast: The Best Language Learning Activities Known To Mankind
We break our record for the most guests on one show ever! Hear experts from the TEFL industry with over 200 years of collective experience share their favorite language learning activities. We speak with Edmund Dudley, John Hughes, Matt Courtois, Brian Tomlinson, Ben Beaumont, Dave Weller, Wendy Arnold, Debbie Hepplewhite, Ray Davila and Diederik Van Gorp and ask them all the same question: “What’s your favorite language teaching activity?”
Why Do We Teach The Way That We Teach? (with Karin Xie)
What shapes the ways we teach? What influences teachers' views and beliefs about language learning?
Trinity College London teacher trainer Karin Xie and I discuss what factors we see influencing teachers' ideas about teaching and talk about how our own experiences have informed our views of language teaching and learning.
Observations & Feedback – They Don’t Need to be One Size Fits All
The Apprenticeship of Observation (with Donald Freeman)
Donald Freeman, professor at the University of Michigan, joins me to talk about the how teachers become teachers. Do teachers teach as they were taught? What role does our experience as students play in forming our attitudes about teaching? And how does our experience as language learners and users influence our behavior in the classroom?
What To Do When Your Trainees Fail (With Fifi Pyatt)
As a teacher trainer, one of the most uncomfortable experiences in telling trainees they failed something; a class, an assignment or possibly even a whole course. We speak Trinity College London CertTESOL and DipTESOL course director with Felicity Pyatt about what to do when that happens. How to decide to ‘fail’ a trainee, how to break the news and how to help trainees bounce back.
Opportunities in Online Teacher Development (with Matt Courtois)
Challenge, Conflict and Cooperation in Online Education (with Simon Galloway & Dave Weller)
Reflection in Teacher Education (with Ben Beaumont)
How to Challenge Yourself as a Teacher or Trainer (from IATEFL 2019 with Matt Courtois, Simon Galloway & Dave Weller)
In our second of two podcasts recorded at IATEFL Liverpool (this one recorded at the end of day one), we speak with our favorite podcast guests Matt Courtois, Simon Galloway & Dave Weller about how teachers and trainers can challenge themselves and discuss sessions by Paula Rebolledo, Adrian Underhill and Julie Choi & David Nunan.
Context – Tyranny or Triumph (with Diederik Van Gorp)
All language lessons need a context. Language must be learned and practiced in context. Without context, students cannot remember or use new vocabulary. You've probably heard these arguments before (possibly on this podcast), but are they true? We discuss the pros and cons of context with our friend and teacher trainer (and former many other things!) Diederik Van Gorp.
Podcast: Learning from Theory, Learning From Practice (with Dave Weller)
Everyone learns from their experiences in the classroom, and if you’re listening to this, you’ve probably learned from theory too. What are the differences and similarities between the two? Ross and Dave Weller discuss the differences between theory and practice in teacher development and the most effective was to learn from theory and learn from practice.
