Inside Education - a podcast for educators interested in teaching

My guest on this podcast is Pamela Snow, University Distinguished Professor from La Trobe University in Australia. She was in Ireland for the inaugural Right to Read conference, which was held in Dublin on Saturday, 21 March 2026. 

Among the topics discussed were:

Why functional literacy is insufficient for full civic engagement

What it means to be literate

Students from some groups disproportionately underachieve in literacy

The challenge of being critically literate in the world today

Why teaching a knowledge-rich curriculum is essential to help students discern authentic news sources

Why reading is a public-health imperative

“Once you get to school, everybody should be exposed to high-quality explicit instruction delivered by knowledgeable teachers”

“Low literacy achievement in the first three years of school really casts a very long shadow. We know from international research that if you’re behind in reading … after your first three years of school, only twenty per cent of children catch up.

Instead of teachers choosing “their own adventure” they need to use proven methods of literacy instruction that work at scale to help all readers, especially those likely to be lower achievers.

The difference between “balanced literacy” (grew out of whole language ideology – associated with people like Kenneth Goodman) and structured literacy (structure-explicit reading instruction – mapping speech and text as the “on-ramp to the comprehension freeway.”)

Inquiries were held into poor levels of reading following the emphasis on “balanced literacy”: National Reading Panel in the United States (2000); National Inquiry into the teaching of literacy in Australia (2005) and in England, the Rose Report (2006). Finding was that whole language was not working at scale.

English is a rule- and pattern-governed language when you understand etymology.

“Reading is not biologically natural and we need to teach in a way that doesn’t leave reading to chance. We need to be bringing all children along by giving them the essential code knowledge that they need.”

What it means to say that phonics is a constrained skill and essential but unconstrained skills (such as the size of your vocabulary; ability to work with active and passive voice) are also required to read competently.

The importance of background knowledge for readers, depending on their age and stage.

Background knowledge can help a reader see nuance, inconsistencies and inaccuracies in a text.

What a knowledge-based curriculum looks like in practice.

John Sweller and cognitive load theory. Something has been learned when it’s in long-term memory.

Why “discovery learning” is an unjust and inefficient approach for many children but is still advocated to student teachers in many initial teacher education programmes.

Pre-teaching that might occur and how it is different for fiction (e.g. metaphor and simile) and non-fiction (a lot of vocabulary, for instance).

Influences on her thinking about literacy include Professor Kevin Wheldall, Professor Max Coltheart, Dr. Louisa Moats, Professor Linnea Ehri, Professor John Sweller, and Professor Jeanne Chall.

Education has done a poor job of knowledge translation, in contrast to other fields such as medicine, engineering and aviation. See Nidhi Sachdeva’s Substack post on this topic here.

She seeks “levels of evidence” – an article published in a peer-reviewed journal is a start but is not enough. She looks for rigour, how a research sample was recruited, how terms were defined, what was done, if it was an intervention study where the intervention came from, how well it was implemented and if there were fidelity measures. She also wants to know about the experiences of the teachers and what parents think of an intervention. Frequently a probabilistic approach needs to be taken.

Teachers need to be critical consumers of research, using strong critical appraisal skills.

Education has a tendency to adopt fads and fashions. No regulatory body in education tests approaches before they are rolled out in classrooms. This would not be tolerated in a field such as healthcare.

Education needs to surrender its love of fads and fashions and be more evidence-led and evidence-aligned.

Professor Snow and her colleague, Professor Tanya Serry conduct research at the SOLAR Lab at La Trobe University.

The importance of having printed text present when teaching phonemic awareness, to help children map speech to print.

Questions remain about how much of the phonics code to teach to all children. See work of David Share and statistical learning.

Pronunciation correction as an exciting new frontier in reading instruction.

Why she likes the Dibels suite and believes the running record should be retired.

Research questions that are settled in literacy education: For now, all children need to be able to decode and this can best be taught by explicitly teaching children how the code works, enhancing automaticity and fluency. We need to not use predictable texts in the early stages of reading because they encourage children to guess, which is not reading. It leverages their oral language skills. But unlike aviation and medicine, education does not have a strong culture of de-implementation. Eclecticism is not the friend of evidence-based practice in education. Doctors and pilots sign up for a high level of scrutiny and they have low levels of autonomy in doing their work.

Fluency as a bridge between decoding and comprehension according to Tim Raskinski.

Pam’s blog.

She admires the work of Carl Hendrick who collaborates with Paul A Kirschner. Both do a tour de force in distilling complex concepts in ways that teachers can pick them up and use them in their classrooms.

Greg Ashman and his “Filling the Pail” Substack.

She is currently reading Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton.

Variability in schools is the enemy of quality.

My guest on this podcast is Dr. Conall Ó Breacháin from the School of Language, Literacy and Early Childhood Education in Dublin City University. Among the topics we discuss in this episode are: 

Differences between 1999 language curricula and the 2016 language curriculum in Ireland (e.g. focus on plurilingualism and the transfer of skills is a noticeable difference in emphasis in the redeveloped curriculum, broad learning outcomes versus learning objectives in 1999). He refers to the work of Jim Cummins who featured on Inside Education in Episode 15 and Episode 16.

How learning one language can help the learning of another.

Was there a need to change the 1999 curriculum when “it was working fine”?

Finding the right degree of innovation in curriculum change.

The importance of providing teachers with a timeline for proposed change and a plan for how teachers will be supported around the change.

Why teachers typically don’t ask for curriculum change.

The most underrated ideas in the redeveloped language curriculum – digital literacy? Plurilingualism?

What is meant by the term “knowledgeability,” a term used by Anthony Giddens

What teacher agency is.

The difference between teacher agency and teacher autonomy

A practical example of teacher agency applied to a problem of teaching reading

Agency is a conceptual framework to understand how people act in the structures within which they are acting.

Ethical and unethical agency

Challenges of measuring agency

Questions Conall still has about teacher agency

How teachers can influence one another in their practice

Changing the culture of a school and the role of leadership (wherever it comes from)

“Connecting” to a curriculum (current or previous)

Associating curriculum with accountability.

Analogy: Changing curriculum is like servicing an airplane mid-flight – “It’s not like [teachers] get a six-month sabbatical to get their heads around” a new curriculum before implementing it.

The process of writing the dissertation

Gert Biesta (qualification, socialisation and subjectification) on Inside Education 356  and Inside Education 357. 

Catherine Snow on Inside Education 184 and Inside Education 185. 

Nell Duke

Ciaran Sugrue Curriculum and Ideology

The difference between educating pre-service and practising teachers.

We Cut Corners (http://wecutcorners.net/)

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.

My guest on the podcast today is my colleague, Dr. Claire Dunne, from the Marino Institute of Education. Among the topics we discussed were:

Why learning another language gives you another window on the world.

Why literacy is crucial for those who speak minoritised languages so that they can have widespread access to texts in the language.

Why should people learn Irish, when in most cases it is not required for communication purposes?

What the Irish language has in common with Cant and Irish Sign Language.

How older people in Wales are incentivised to learn Welsh and share it with younger people.

People’s favourite memories of learning Irish (including creative applications, the arts and the relationship with the teacher).

The positive impact parents can have in showing an interest in a child’s learning of Irish

Setting targets for what you want to learn in the language (e.g. tell a joke, sing a song)

Identifying good practice in the teaching of Irish (e.g. board games, more time in the yard)

Resources are available from An tÁisaonad in Belfast.

The importance of practitioners sharing with each other experiences of what works [in the teaching of Irish].

Resources available on COGG (including the report on good practice in the teaching of Irish).

The importance of giving older children responsibility as a way to motivate their interest in the language; give them a reason to improve their Irish.

More suggestions: Going to the Gaeltacht for a night; starting a reading club in Irish.

Universal Design for Learning contrasted with differentiating learning.

Different ways to practise teaching language related to clothes.

Handbook titled “An Ghaeilge do gach duine” based on the principles of engagement, representation and expression in multiple ways.

Drawing inspiration from textbooks published in the past for inclusive teaching of Irish today.

The first all-Irish school was set up by Luíse Ghabhánach Ní Dhufaigh and Áine Nic Aoidh and was innovative in using continuous assessment, writing their own textbooks and in emphasising health and wellness. Role plays, games and visual aids were also present in many Irish-language publications of the time. Recommendations to commit to memory stories and poems were common in the publications for teachers; this was good where the material to be memorised was relevant, useful and meaningful.

Early publishers of books and pamphlets in supporting the Irish language are named and she notes the importance of the establishment of An Gúm in 1926.

The development of Irish-language immersion education in schools from 1917 onwards. All infant-classes were to practise immersion education for the first decades of the new state.

The importance of motivating students to want to learn Irish.

The benefits of multiple representations to help children learn new vocabulary

Why adaptations to assessments might be preferable to granting exemptions from studying Irish to students with learning disabilities.

The relevance of learning Irish in an era of translation software and large language models.

Nell Noddings

Find resources created by Claire (and others) on the COGG website.

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.

On this week's episode, we delve into the history of Irish education in the 1800s to learn about an ambitious attempt to educate teachers by co-locating theory and practice. We look at the rise and fall of model schools as a means of teacher training. My guest is retired primary school teacher and principal, Dr. Joe Doyle who recently published Model Schools - Model Teachers? A nineteenth-century Irish teacher-training initiative.

Among the topics we cover are:

Being prompted to study the topic by William Murphy, a fellow member of Dúchas – the Tullaherin Heritage Society that produces a journal titled In the Shadow of the Steeple.

Being bowled over by the amount of information that was available to access in the National Archives of Ireland.

He chose history as his academic subject when he studied for the Bachelor of Education degree in the early 1990s (a truncated course awarded to those who had the National Teacher (NT) qualification before the B.Ed. degree was introduced).

His first scholarly foray into history and education was an account of education in the Thomastown area in the nineteenth century.

Having expressed interest in pursuing his studies in the history of education, he was invited to meet with the late Professor John Coolahan, previously a guest on episode 10 and episode 253 to discuss the matter.

His initial interest was in Kilkenny schools which had landlord patronage in the 1800s. However, Professor Coolahan persuaded him to pursue what he saw as a more fruitful topic, about cooperation in Kilkenny school management between 1831 and 1870.

Winning a millennium scholarship in St. Patrick’s College where he was advised by Professor James Kelly on the topic of model schools.

What model schools in Ireland were (built in the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s). They consisted of 19 District Model Schools, 7 Minor Model Schools and 3 others: the central model school, West Dublin, and Inchicore. The central model school was a fully fledged institution for preparing teachers but a wider network was needed to achieve the aim of preparing sufficient teachers for the entire national school system. They combined teacher education with education of young schoolchildren.

The Kildare Place Society received Government grant aid from 1811 on the basis that one of their principles was that they were there for people of all religions. They provided short courses for practising teachers, who would previously had had minimal preparation for their roles.

The Kildare Place Society was promoting the (quite rigid) Monitorial system developed by Joseph Lancaster. Training took place for implementing that system and for organisation and keeping school records.

This was a system whereby one teacher, assisted by capable pupils, could supervise up to 500 children.

Hedge schools mostly taught the three Rs and did not have Irish although some variations may have been present.

He refers to Brennan’s Schools of Kildare and Leighlin.

Here is a link to a talk by Dr. Antonia McManus on hedge schools in Ireland and here is a link to a book she wrote on the topic.

The difference between district model schools and minor model schools (the latter did not have student teachers in residence there).

The retention rate of teachers who were prepared in model schools was around 30%. The pay was poor and many of the students used it as a way of getting a good intermediate education and went on to work in the civil service or in a bank.

More presybyterians and Anglican teachers than Roman Catholic teachers were prepared.

He acknowledges the work of Emmet Larkin in understanding the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century.

Archbishop Paul Cullen initially focused on sorting out problems among Roman Catholic clergy in the Dublin Diocese before becoming interested in the model schools. He was opposed to the model schools because they were non-denominational.

From 1863, any Catholic trained in a model school would not be employed in a national school under Catholic management.

Some information about the Powis commission is available on pages 22-23 of this doctoral thesis.

How preparation of Catholic and Protestant teachers became segregated in Ireland.

A description of a typical day for student teachers in a model school.

Sources of information for the history of Irish education: Annual Reports (include a section on model schools), Government inquiries late 1830s on the practical working of the National System), 1854 (substantial report), 1870 (Powis Commission – 10 volumes; report and minutes of evidence and statistical part). ED1 reports – initial applications for setting up national schools). ED2 reports (registers – dealings of Board of Education with individual schools – a lot of detail when things go wrong); ED9 reports (specific reports that arose between the school and the Board of Education); ED3 files used to report on model schools. All in the National Archives. Minutes of commissioners’ of national education and kept in the manuscript room of the National library. The minutes generally are a bit formulaic. Some national schools still have their own records.

The experience of working as a research student supervised by Professor John Coolahan.

Irish Education: Its history and structure by John Coolahan.

The Irish Education Experiment by Donald Akenson.

Joe’s book is titled Model schools – model teachers? A nineteenth-century Irish teacher-training initiative.

The dust jacket of the book was designed by Terry Bannon and it was printed by Naas Printing.

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.

On this week's podcast I speak to Professor Sonia Cabell who is an associate professor of Reading Education in the School of Teacher Education and the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University. She was a keynote speaker at the Literacy Association of Ireland conference on 9 November 2024. Among the topics we discussed are the following:

How Marcia Invernizzi, co-author of Words their Way introduced her to the idea of doing a doctorate.

Laura Justice was her dissertation adviser.

She became interested in preventing reading difficulties through interventions in the pre-school to second grade years.

More teachers today are consulting original research on literacy than twenty or twenty-five years ago. “If you know better, then you do better.”

Teacher education programmes frequently don’t teach student teachers how to consume research.

An important trait for teachers to develop is to be curious about what the evidence says about “this” practice and being open to what the evidence says as reported in trusted journals that translate the research well.

She recommends The Reading Teacher and The Reading League Journal as sources of accessible reliable information for teachers.

She likes Scholastic’s The Science of Reading in Practice series.

Don’t make one person a guru. Listen to different voices and compare them.

Jeanne Chall refers to the transition of “learning to read to reading to learn” as a stage of development and not as a way to intervene (in the teaching of reading).

A good eight-year-old reader would be decoding fluently (their grasp of the alphabetic code continues to increase) so they can focus their attention on what the text means and they should be continuing to develop fluency in their oral reading.

Scarborough’s Reading Rope.

Strands of language comprehension: Background knowledge, perceptive and expressive vocabulary, verbal reasoning (inferential thinking and abstract thinking), language structures (syntax), and literacy knowledge (understanding different kinds of genres).

John Guthrie’s work on Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction.

James S. Kim of Harvard University and his (Model of Reading Engagement) MORE assessment.

The inextricable link between knowledge and oral language skills and can be built together in young children.

In the interactive read-aloud context you are exposing children to the formal language of books, which is critical because of the formal language structure of books (syntax and vocabulary).

How to Teach Your Baby to Read By Glenn Doman.

Self productivity by Cunha and Heckman.

It’s not just where you start in pre-school that counts but the rate of skill growth in oral language and decoding and subsequent writing; skills beget skills in early literacy.

“Our ability to read becomes really stable, really early.”

“There is power in setting the stage and setting the stage early.”

She would like to see all teachers, including early years teachers, getting the respect and professionalism they deserve

Her realisation of the importance of oral language.

The “strive for five” framework, developed with Tricia Zucker. How do we help teachers have conversations with students that are meaningful and that expand students’ language in ways.

Teacher asks an open-ended question (turn 1)

Student responds

Teacher can scaffold upwards and provide more challenge through another question or scaffolds downwards, and use an either/or question or similar. This third step is the most critical turn in the sequence.

Student responds

Teacher wraps it up

Revoicing

Phrase “Strive for Five” was coined by David Dickinson

When implementing the CHAT programme (Children and Teachers together led by Laura Justice) When teachers tried to become conversationally responsive partners, teachers could change some aspects of their language use but the things that were more difficult to change were some of the most important aspects that needed to change.

The Learning Language and Loving It program from The Hanen Center.

Pre-K on My Way from Scholastic.

When you give children and teachers something to talk about, you can build their language more easily.

Science lends itself to disciplinary language and to meaningful ideas.

Promotion of comprehension is all in children’s oral language skills.

Both knowledge and comprehension strategies are important. Monitoring comprehension is also important.

It is important for parents to read to children and to talk about what they’re reading and viewing things together.

We learn language through warm and responsive relationship. This applies in the home and in school (especially in the early grades). Dr. Bob Pianta has studied this area. He created the classroom assessment scoring system. The interactions must be combined with explicit literacy teaching.

How mothers’ impact on literacy has been studied more than the impact of fathers.

Criteria she uses when selecting texts to read aloud in school: Begin with your purpose (e.g. building knowledge and language).

Why she likes The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.

How she carries out her (mostly quantitative) research: randomised control trials (Core knowledge language arts programme Tricia Zucker from the University of Texas), observational studies, and survey research. How she organises a randomised control trial in education.

Her research is funded by the Institute of Education Sciences. Other sources of funding in the United States include the National Institutes of Health and the National Science foundation.

Who educational research is for and how it helps.

Research in early years literacy today needs to go beyond what works to why it works and who it works for.

A researcher shouldn’t be trying to prove themselves right but to prove themselves wrong.

Shayne Piasta, Ohio State University suggests having a journal of null effects.

Writing is central to what she does. She feels like she has not worked for a day until she has pushed forward a manuscript for publication. If it’s about finding time to write, it will never happen! She is a writer as part of what she does and she builds around that. She stacks meetings and schedules no meetings before noon.

She was influenced by the work of Linnea Ehri and Susan Neuman.

This article about the impact of a content rich literacy curriculum is now available freely online.