Today we're all on our own without a guest, because we're presenting original Cardiff Met research! But our colleague Sioned Dafydd is with us in spirit as she was a key member of the three-person research team that carried out this work.

Today we're looking at what happens when student teachers change from one school placement to another, and when they move from their initial teacher education into their first job. In particular, we're focusing on the part that Wales's Professional Standards for Teaching and Leadership have to play, but many of the issues we uncovered are universal for all of us who work with new members of the profession.

Using the results of interviews with student teachers and their school-based mentors over the course of a year (plus a final interview with three of our participants once they had secured jobs), we pieced together what goes on when new teachers make the transition from one school to another. With a little help from theories by Wenger, Maton and Korthagen & Lagerwerf, we try to explain what causes those tricky moments in new schools when people feel they've gone backwards, and propose some ways to make things easier.

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Recorded in studio D0.18 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 16th December 2024

We interrupt our normal service with a callout to all our listeners who are secondary school teachers in Wales!

Dear teacher,

Cardiff Met is working with Canterbury Christ Church University on a research project to explore teacher-teacher dialogue around Curriculum for Wales. As a first stage of the project, we're releasing a survey aimed at secondary school teachers across Wales. We would really appreciate you, as a secondary school teacher in Wales, taking the time to complete this survey. It should take 15 minutes. We also ask you to have a conversation with your teaching colleagues about the survey so that they have a reminder to complete it. We're hoping to understand the conversations you have before launching some research interventions later in the project. We plan to donate money to some Welsh charities in line with responses to the survey. Go to our website to find out more about our project and sign up for updates. nicer.org.uk/cultivating-dialogue

Here's the survey in English

Dyma'r Arolwg yn Gymraeg

Thank you / Diolch!

In a very impressive move to win 'most dedicated podcast guest', today we welcome Dr Rachel Shanks from the University of Aberdeen to our studio in person! For obvious reasons, our original request to Rachel involved a down-the-line interview, but we were very happy indeed to be able to instead welcome her to Cardiff after an epic train journey from Scotland.

Rachel has had a major impact on school uniform policy in Scotland following her work with students to analyse the policies of a huge number of schools in the country, and today she joins us to discuss this often under-appreciated aspect of school life. As we found, the more you dig in to what seems like a relatively simple topic, the more interesting cans of worms get opened, and regular listeners to the podcast will know that's just the way we like it!

The discussion ranges across Rachel's around such knotty issues as affordability, sustainability, comfort, and why schools feel the need to have uniforms in the first place. If you want to find out more about Rachel's work, you can check out her web page here.

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Recorded in studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 18th November 2024.