 Welcome to Pookey Ponders, the podcast where I ask big questions of brilliant people. Today's question is, what does every teacher need to know about neuroplasticity and learning? And I'm in conversation with Jennifer A. Hawkins. Okay, so I'm Dr Jennifer A. Hawkins and I'm a former primary and secondary teacher in a former life a long time ago. And I taught mainstream art and English and special needs pupils, young offenders in a remand center. And then in 2000, I decided I wanted to do research for my master's by research. And I then gave up full time teaching and started to do freelance work to collect my data for my, what eventually turned into my PhD. So, and I'm still doing it. I'm now getting on a bit and I'm enjoying it so much that I'm researching now on Twitter and LinkedIn and getting lots of fascinating information. What are you researching at the moment? I've been, I've been researching neuroplasticity and learning, and I'm hoping to open up pathways for teachers and practitioners in areas that I think they'll find helpful. I just find neuroplasticity fascinating. So I've, my first book was a theory of learning, which I wrote about from my PhD research, and I've taken that further forward to get involved in researching neuroplasticity. So just for the uninitiated, what does neuroplasticity mean? Right. Gosh, I've got reams and reams of explanations on that. But I'm just trying to think, you see this sort of thing helps a lot because you think, right, you need a succinct message here. And whereas I get bogged down in all these thoughts. So basically how your brain works by looking at the scientific research and we have electrical imaging and all that sort of stuff going on and explaining how your body brain works. But it's all terribly complicated and I don't know whether I can explain it in one sentence. I don't think anybody else has. So, yeah, but now you've set me a job, so I shall have to do that. How would I explain neuroplasticity to a five year old? That's always the challenge I set myself is if I can't explain it to a five year old, then I need to think again. Well, it's all to do with electrochemicals, apparently, and all these complicated stuff. And what's the link between neuroplasticity and learning? Right. Well, it's basically what it's all about. It's a fundamental thing that drives learning, isn't it? And so I've tried to connect two or three things that psychology research and neuroscience research. So I don't know a huge amount of reading upon all that stuff, but I always try because I'm a phenomenological researcher, which means that stuff that affects me in my daily life. I try to connect with what I'm researching, my reading and everything. So it's been brilliant on Twitter and LinkedIn because I've met all sorts of other teachers and found out all the different things they're working on. For instance, I listened to your podcast with Lucy Six, who I have a lot in common with because I am a creative person and a painter. And I did, now I was going to say, I did paintings in my PhD about my feelings and emotions. So I'm very much into that area of creativity, but now I'm looking across all the subjects and exploring other people's discoveries in that field. So quite often, for instance, listening to Lucy talking on your other podcast, she's a creative person who helps young people in camps, apparently. I've done quite a lot of evaluating with that sort of thing. I did it through the Arts Council in Manchester and went into schools and watched teachers working with creative practitioners to do their research. Oh, that must have been fascinating. So I'm sort of continued that in that vein, my book that has already been published two years ago, explains how I did all that research around collecting stuff and data. And I'm now carrying on and looking at the current concerns of teachers, psychologists and therapists on the internet. So I'm very intrigued about this interplay between your arts and then the kind of neuroscience because at a glance to an outsider, those things, your polls apart, right? One is the kind of, you know, very, very sciencey and sort of specific and the other is quite the opposite. Or maybe not, clearly, you've married the two. So tell me more about that. Well, I look at teacher's work, but I also find that the neuroscience I can understand best in a narrative form. So one of the things I'm doing in my new book is I'm looking at the history of how neuroscience was discovered, neuroplasticity was discovered and I'm telling some of the stories I've discovered by other writers which are kind of ring the bell to me as a teacher and helped me to understand it. So I'm kind of, I take it, I regard myself as an ordinary teacher researcher. And I've just developed my interest over the years, kind of trying to work out what makes us tick really human beings and I'm finding that fascinating. It sounds to me like you're trying to keep away from that danger zone of becoming overly kind of academic in the way that we communicate, which I think can sometimes alienate the people whose practice we really want to actually impact on, can't it? And have you found that you've had success with that? Have people been able to pick up your ideas and use them? I think that's still much very much a coming thing. I get the odd person who's who straight away connects with my book, that when it was sold originally, the chapters were sold separately, because they're sort of on different subjects. Okay. That seems because I've divided it up into areas to try and make it a bit more accessible, because it's such a difficult subject. It's a huge massive subject. So in my next book, I'm hoping to kind of point the way for people in different areas across education and give them some pointers as to references which would help them pursue their own particular interest. And what are the things that you hope people would do differently if they engage with your kind of learning and teaching? I found that exploring how your brain works gives you a huge insight. If you can connect it up with your practice, it sort of informs your practice. So I'm kind of hoping that what I write supports what people already do and kind of justifies good practice, because I find a lot of really good teachers out there who are working with the plastic brain of their learners. I would say that Lucy Six is one of them, from what you say, but I think that if you if you can justify what you're doing to those who are in charge who are managing you, this would be very beneficial. And to perhaps help them to understand why you're doing what you're doing and that you're actually doing something sensible that makes sense in human terms for your learners. Can you give an example of the sort of practice you might be talking about? So you kind of talked about Lucy, but what might this look like in a classroom when you say that there might be a teacher who might be quite intuitively working with their learners, plastic brains? What does that mean in practice? Well, you would be realising that the children are very much how their length of concentration span, you would develop your empathy so that you can spot when children need particular interventions and many teachers have already developed those. So we're talking, I think on Twitter about Lynn McCann who does wonderful work teaching teachers about autism. And that we need to be aware that we need to develop this knowledge of different sorts of students, be aware of them, but also relate that to our own practice that actually we're following the science that we are there is a scientific reason why we are contributing good practice. And are there any things that people kind of habitually do or regularly do or perhaps that older schools are thinking might have thought were good practice that your research would suggest isn't helping our learners, are there things we should avoid? The over emphasis upon testing would be an obvious one which most teachers would agree with in the current climate I think that that's that there are sort of repressive ways of teaching which are not sufficiently empathic. In actual fact I believe that's quite an ignorant way to go on because you need to take account of we need to develop our professionalism in responding to individual learners. One of my my current memes is we're all part of the human family but neuroplasticity makes us all unique. Oh that's nice. And isn't neuroplasticity something that kind of I think my my understanding in my kind of younger years it always been that you know that it's really only something that we have when we're younger but that my more recent understanding is that actually our brains are kind of plastic throughout our lifetimes and that there's always a capacity for change. Yes. If you look at myself I always try and relate things to my own experience or other people's experience I like to ask them how they feel so that's interesting in saying that, because I think that I was a very different person when I was teaching. And I've changed enormously as I've gone on and I can see how I've become kind of an expert in my narrow field really although I'm trying to expand it across. We all only have our own corridors, but we need to listen to other people because we need all of us to bring our experience. But I think you can develop your brain over the years and I think I have in the area I'm interested in and that's what all learners do. You know I think I'm different now than I was 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago at the end of my life but you know where I am now I can look back and say ah you know I've carried on learning. And I think that's a really powerful thing actually isn't it, it's certainly something that I've come to kind of later but have come to really enjoy picking up new skills and hobbies and realising that learning is really fun at whatever age and certainly as a parent it's something I found has been really important is to just have a go and learn alongside my children and let go of the perfectionism and just have fun with it really. Yes yeah I think so and I think teachers learn from their pupils which lots of them will say they do as well. I remember doing outdoor pursuits in Wales with teenage special needs kids and I've never done anything very physical. I had elderly very religious parents as a child and didn't do anything very physical at all. So when I did that in my 30s I think I learnt more from up-sailing and climbing in the climbing room and doing I had to do canoeing and the kids all volunteered. They were with instructors they'd say who goes first and they'd all look at me and go misses and I just have to go you know and I developed my confidence. I remember doing an 80 foot wire glide you know and that sort of thing and the instructor shouting do you want who's next and they went watch out it's a big one coming down. You had very self you know into everything so and I felt it gave me confidence huge amount of confidence I hadn't had I was a very buttoned up teacher before that. Oh really so it's not always about learning over the long term there could be an experience that's kind of really formative and really begins to kind of shift things. And that sort of connects up with what Lucy was saying about bringing children together in new experiences and designing the environment for them and giving them a social environment with new people to meet. I was working as a family and working in a summer camp or whatever it was she was saying, doing art activities you know. But the interesting work I did in Salford in Manchester was a researching program for teachers, and I was a mentor on that and then became the evaluator for part of it. The teachers chose a creative practitioner to do that sort of work to pursue their own research question with their classes right across junior and secondary, and they devised their own research question. They chose their artists their art form in order to do it so it could be 10 year old boys doing creative wanting to help their creative writing, and they might get a book illustrator and a storyteller in. And then they would, we would try they would decide where the research was going with the artist helping them so somebody like Lucy who's very adept at helping those sort of social emotional learning situations to happen to set it up. And in a way it isn't as predictable as your normal classroom, you depends on the, what the teacher is doing but sometimes I think we just make it so boring for children. How do you mean. Well you know you everything you will read this, you'll read this you'll do that you'll learn that that, you know, and you're on a sort of railway track. And you do an exam at the end of it, but I think that's part of it and not saying you shouldn't do that. I think we ought to mix it up a bit. And how do you think we should be mixing it up. I think I'm very keen believer in teacher research, obviously I've done lots myself, but also working with these teachers and watching what they learned from working with creative people. That was very interesting. And I can't say any reason why you can't have creative science creative maths. And the more I read about it the more that seems possible. Obviously you have to learn knowledge and and have your learn your subject language and your subject. Important frameworks. Yeah. But I think the teachers working individually with their own class can could could research collaboratively. Yeah, it would be a much better way to go. One of the interesting things I found during the the course of the pandemic where some schools and organizations have given teachers a bit more freedom with the curriculum where perhaps learners aren't having to do exams and so on. And some of the directions that teachers have chosen to take things have been really fascinating, really inspiring. One of my daughters has a fabulous science tutor who has made science really exciting for her. My daughter thought she might be interested in science before and now she's really up for it. Yesterday she had a online tutorial with with Sally. And she said I need marshmallows and a microwave and I was like, okay, why and she said, because we're going to work out the speed of light. Wonderful. And I don't know how that went or why why marshmallows and a microwave would help but my my daughter I'm sure could tell you and she certainly came out very enthused and you know it's. Yes. Yeah, I think I don't know. And I don't think you know everything doesn't always say have to be with bang and fantastic does it but it's about firing and engaging isn't it. So, as I'm reading through the neuroscience stories about different people, for instance, who had disability or whatever, how they solved their problem quite a lot of neuroscientists actually did have disability is interesting to find out. There's quite a lot of interesting stories. So, I'm referencing it as I go along to these different books in different areas and it's kind of as I do my research it's ended up being across teachers current concerns because being phenomenological which means whatever happens basically your take on whatever happens. So, this, so I've ended up with four chapters on education, sort of inclusion mental health, and all this stuff all informed by practitioners and people, including some of them who've had experiences themselves who very generously agree to let me use the stories in poems or videos, which supports what which sort of supports the theory and sort of developing a backup theory. Tell me, or is it too early. Well, my first book just said that, as far as I can make out as a teacher, everybody's emotions and feelings were actually rational. They made sense to them, whether or not they made sense to anybody else. And that's just that simple concept was the foundation of my PhD. Then, but it was met with a fair amount of derision to start with. Oh, just others. Anybody I tried to explain it to you know, sort of all from that's obvious isn't it. You know, that people's feelings would make sense to them to. So how are you going to prove that then because it's also vague. But then I found that the way our methods for proving that and in my research I developed a way of recording what people's feelings and emotions were and provided it was person place and time specific. It stands as a piece of data. So it may change you may change your view of it, but whatever was recorded then and I thought that was terribly useful for teachers. Because if you do a video of your classroom with a lesson that went really well. You could stand back when I was doing evaluation of teachers and artists doing their research. I could easily stand back I had to think about it a lot in retrospect, but I could see that they were doing pre language skills. And all this sort of thing you find stuff out. It's fascinating. Wow. So did people become more convinced as you worked through this process. Yeah. So I work I did. I've done a chat I did a three threads of work teachers reasons. And all I said to them was what can you tell me about your feelings and emotions about teaching and learning. And I didn't specify I didn't give questionnaires I didn't specify and they all came out with pertinent stuff. I drew pictures while they were doing it. As well I did a kind of say while we were chatting. They're unconscious drew a picture I would give them crayons and things. I've got those in my first book, some of them, which I put in anonymously some of them wrote their life story. I just picked extracts about why they became a teacher. Many of them had problems myself at school and wanted to help children. A bit like the neuroscientists that have disabilities themselves. So I had great fun with it really. I got in touch with Barbara Arasmith Young who wrote a book. I think it's 2006. The woman who rebuilt her mind she was born with full set of learning difficulties in every direction, sort of thing. And she now runs a school in Canada and she's worked out how children can be helped. In different ways she I think she's the best time I looked she had 19 interventions. And it's a lot of that to do with repetition. So a bit like some dyslexia programs do five or 10 minutes a day of doing reading. Non-sensible phonics for 10 minutes every day for three years and gradually the dyslexic brain adjusts to improving its skills. So yeah, so I've discovered a huge amount. The trouble is it's such a massive amount of I've got one and a half thousand references of books, books and papers. Wow. So how did you decide for the second book then like what to you know where are you focusing on what's the thing that you most need to share that you've learned. Right well I have a list. I've got a list of some of the things. Neural maps change their borders. They become greater and less detailed. They move around the brain and can even disappear, which I thought was fascinating. What does that mean? Well, these are the electrical connections that are made you know how with neural imaging you can watch people recognizing photographs. And you can see their feelings and emotions happening in their brain and it's also your body as well. So but we're so hugely complicated. And I found it very difficult to get my head around a tool but I just think right what how do I regard this as a teacher and what can I get out of it. Yeah. So it's helped me to understand how complicated our brains are plus another fascinating fact is that the your electrical connections can be anything between two to 200 miles an hour. Oh, and what why the why the difference. Well, because it varies depending on. I don't know. Oh, just have no idea. I think we can all empathize with that a bit can't we all have those days when it feels like two miles an hour. Exactly. I would say that definitely relates to me. But, you know, but also you have that flash moment. But whether or not that's actually making sense of anything I don't know maybe just a response to stimulus. You know where you suddenly somebody comes up and gives you a fright or something, you know, you know. So it's all fascinating stuff. And yeah, so I've been extracting stuff like that and there's a lady who came out with a with a book on the emotions and she says that every emotion is different. So every emotion you feel is slightly different because your neural paths are slightly different every time you feel something you have certain patterns. But you also have sort of blips and you have random stuff going on. Okay, so even if I if it feels similar, like I might feel sad about something one day and then sad about something another day but it will be a slightly different. Yes. So, but I found I found I found I can extract from that. Like you've just done with me, something that makes sense from that to you. Because when you read this big complicated book. It's quite hard to extract that but I think it's useful I think that the layperson needs to. It would inform our lives enormously if we knew all this stuff, some of this stuff, you know, the main points. Yeah. So feelings like fingerprints then I'm thinking that's where my head's gone with that. And do you find that with usually learning all the time and it seems you've done a huge amount of research that's taking you in lots of different directions and you find now that you find yourself reflecting on, you know, other times in your career and thinking I wish I would have known this then. Yes. Yes. I started me off I was teaching special needs teenagers. And I just felt there was more to it, you know that we would sort of retraining them on reading schemes it was back in the dark ages really I mean much better nowadays. And I thought, you know, these children have got emotional problems. So I worked with teenagers who refused to go to school that was one of my strands as well. And I spent a lot of time over two years going into their houses as a home tutor and getting to know their situation. And I learned things that I couldn't possibly have known as a teacher in the classroom. And I found that, well, some of them had there was there was bereavement. There was parents with mental health problems, which is a very tricky one, you know, obviously, and quite a lot of the children would become a carer for the parent and that sort of thing, but very subtle stuff was going on. Some of them were bullied and some quite serious stuff going on. But and what I found work really well was getting them to choose, make a choice. So I would do an educational program with them. And I'd say this is the syllabus. What do you want and then have a think about this is what the next bit of the syllabus is because I was doing GCSE. And when I when I come next week, I'll ask you where you want to start. Because they then you're starting somewhere that they've chosen that they feel they have some kind of a hook into because they recognize something that connects with what's in their head, rather than you telling them they've got to follow this external track. Maybe a bit of a feeling of control for them as well. I guess control, but also they would hook onto something they recognized. I see. So that yes. Okay, so you're building on what's already there, hopefully. And did you find that in those conversations that you had with young people who were struggling with school that it always kind of made sense once you stopped and listened to them or were there some that stayed. Not necessarily. I found that very often people can't explain what their problem is. And it's not always terribly helpful to expect them to. I think that sometimes a bit like psychoanalysis, you may be reinforcing the problems. And when you read about neuroplasticity, it's about embedding neural nets. So if you keep asking them about their problems, you're actually maybe reinforcing them. So it's be better to. And I found chatting to Dr. Jeffrey James who does a behavior. He does behavior program, which is very good, which is solution focused. If you focus on the solution, which is what he does with children, he doesn't give them the solution. He asks them to find it themselves, and then encourages them. He has his own brilliant method. But basically it's building on positive neural nets, which, you know, it's like a bit like the other lady was saying, sorry, I've forgotten the name Lucy Lucy was saying. My brain gets all over the place with all this stuff. She was saying she's giving them confidence. Well, I could explain to her why that's working. If we were having a chat because she's actually, she's giving them the social and peer group stuff that teenagers need for their brains. And she's stimulating them and it's positive. It makes sense. So she was saying they're choosing, you know, they're given an opportunity, but they're supported to do what they want basically in that situation. So it's a bit like choosing from a syllabus. This is what's available. What would you like to do? What about things that we'll often see in adolescence that we know is a massive time of kind of, you know, big brain development. We often see things around kind of pushing of boundaries and like risk taking behavior. Are those sorts of things, things that have kind of come up in your work at all? Yes, I've been recently I've been doing. I'm just doing a section about the teenage brain. This book's brilliant. Sarah Jane Blakemore. Oh, she's fabulous. Yeah. Inventing ourselves secret life of the teenage brain. So I'm working from that at the moment, but I haven't done much of it. So I can't tell you. You don't know the answer to it. No, that's fair enough. And I wondered as well, when we're talking about how, you know, thinking what you know now and how that might have informed decisions and your practice earlier in your career. I was particularly interested in you said you spent some time working with young offenders. And yeah, tell me more about about that and what you think you know now that might have informed that practice or would help other people working with similar youngsters. That you need to listen to them and to believe what they say. Tell me more. So if you come from a different background, you find it really hard to imagine the sorts of things that have happened to other people. So it's almost like you have this as kind of a natural law of first comparisons for us that we only understand what we already understand. You know what I mean? So it's hard. We need to actually take on board what people are saying to us instead of interpreting it through our own experience or negating it. You know, surely that can't be possible or trying to solve their problems for them doesn't work. That's quite hard though, isn't it? It's hard. So how do we do that? How do we succeed in that? You do counselling skills. Person-centered counselling helps with that. So I think probably a bit of that might be on teacher training courses. I've not come across it, but I think maybe it should be. At least I think teachers should consider their own childhood to some extent. Because do you think that their experience will so heavily influence how they interpret what they see? Not necessarily, but I don't think that necessarily is so, but I think it's likely. So at least I think you should think about it. It's difficult because some people haven't had particularly traumatic experiences. You know, and you've got to accept that as well. I mean, I had quite a difficult childhood, but I have to accept that some people don't. Some people have a marvellous childhood. It's one of the things that I find interesting as an adult because I live now in very different circumstances than those which I grew up and I've worked really hard to ensure that my children have a, you know, it's a different experience than I had as a child. And I find myself every now and then just wishing that I could transplant them for just an hour or two. Just because I think sometimes, but it's exactly as you say, I think they just only know their own experience. And I think sometimes be helpful to look outside of that. I think we're all like that. And that's something we need to teach children to talk to each other and understand walking in other people's shoes much more, much earlier. So that, you know, so then you would have the multicultural, the cross-cultural thing, the decolonising the curriculum thing would happen if we all respected each other's stories and believed each other more. Yeah, maybe if we were even a little bit more serious. Yeah. I don't, I dislike the class, the idea of class structure as well, because I was quite a privileged child financially, but I was also underprivileged as far as I had a mother with mental health difficulties. So it annoys me when, and I also, when I was talking to teachers and they told me why they went into teaching, some of them had really poor upbringings and were discriminated against at school. I think one person in particular became head boy and was discriminated against because he was from a poor home but had wonderful parents who believed in education, took him to the library and were marvellous parents. You know, they were being underprivileged themselves, but they gave him a wonderful educational upbringing. Even though they didn't have a car and they couldn't afford, he said there was always money for books even though we couldn't, they couldn't afford shoes. You know. So you can't assume anything. No, absolutely. And certainly in my work, one of the things that I see often is this kind of middle-class neglect, which, you know, where families are working so hard and their children might have everything that one could wish for in terms of material possessions, but what they're really lacking is the time and space to feel really heard by a significant adult in their lives. And it's, you know, it brings me great sadness when I hear those kinds of stories from youngsters because I know when I hear them speak that I can identify with those parents and I'm sure they're doing, they think they're doing the best thing. All of the children who didn't go to school that I went and tutored, there were 12 all together. All of the parents really loved their children. They were just not in the right place to help them as much as they wanted to. I mean, I think that there are really bad parents, but they're very few and far between. Parents, you know, really would like to help their children. They're just not in a position to do so for one reason or another. Yeah, absolutely. And I think sometimes it can get quite toxic, can't it? That I think parents and carers can feel quite blamed if things aren't going quite as we'd hope for their child, that it can sometimes feel that they feel that this is their fault or that people feel it's their fault and that can make that relationship. I had one parent who was being about to be prosecuted. I was taken away from the situation because the younger child went to school and the older one wouldn't go. And the single parent who was bereaved had only been bereaved a year before couldn't cope with the two teenagers. And because the younger one went to school quite happily, the older one, he was going to be prosecuted for not sending his child to school. But he didn't know what to do. He was out at work all day and she just kept coming home, you know, and he couldn't. So I think situations or stuff happens, doesn't it? Absolutely. It's not expecting to happen. And that child wrote me a long essay about a parent who didn't know whether to tell their child that he was terminally ill. She was terminally ill. Wow. And the, you know, so the mother had died. And they hadn't told the child. The child was angry, I think. Because this had suddenly disrupted the life and they didn't know why and they had no sympathy at school and we're just told they had to keep going to school. You know, nobody gave any counseling or I think the whole family probably needed counseling from the shock, you know. Yeah, that's really difficult, isn't it? And I think that's the thing sometimes when we stop and we listen to the stories that people tell us about their lives and the things that they're experiencing that we can begin to empathize a little bit more and perhaps help them in better ways. But that can be hard. They can't. I mean, in a school setting in particular, things are so busy and as a teacher, you've got 30 children in your class. Can you be expected to understand and empathize with each one of them? No, but I think you can give the right sort of response in the moment. Actually. Okay. What does that look like? How do you mean? It looks like listening, taking and giving them a little bit of space, tiny bit of space, perhaps not much, but just a few seconds where you just take a moment or you ask to speak to them on their own at some point that's appropriate. If you have a teaching assistant, you know, you, you talk to them on their own when you get an opportunity. I think I think teachers will have to find their own solutions. I don't think there's a magic. Method really. We'll, but just if we were more aware, we might be able to develop techniques. I think I'm a great believer in, I think lots of teachers do have their techniques. And that if you're aware, you can develop and support each other and collaborate together to develop. Good practice. It sounds like some of the work that you're doing is about taking what is intuitive to some of our more inspired educators and providing the research about why it works and why they should trust their instincts. I think so, because I think it's providing you with the justification for what you're doing. I mean, I used to do my outdoor pursuits, develop programs for my special needs students. I ran the school garden and we used to have planting out seed certificates and, you know, different stuff that I developed, but I couldn't justify it. So when the national curriculum came in, people were actually saying, these children are entitled to a normal classroom. And I'm saying, but they can't read or write. They're meant to sit at the back. This is secondary school. And some of them are included because they're well behaved and quiet. They can sit at the back, but they can't won't be able to take an exam at the end of it, probably. And they're not really being supported properly. So that's seen because of the attitude of ordinary main school that that was seen as a solution, but of course it isn't, as you know. So they're kind of overlooked to make to be normal, which doesn't do them any good at all, because they do need special help. Yeah, so inclusion is not always the answer. So, yeah, so all of my certificates and things were thrown out of the window and the whole of the organization was closed down. We were attached to a comprehensive school eventually after I left. So really the systems have got to be made suitable as well. And what we need is management that understands. So I think that has to come from the bottom up. And you're right, you have master crafter teachers, I call them in touch with a lot of them on Twitter, and they really know their stuff that they need to be allowed to So teachers need a sort of career path where they can, they learn on the ground. And I think the Finnish method is brilliant where they're all researching as they teach you, you can do it retrospectively you can look think of your data afterwards and you can do it on a daily basis for each you plan your lesson. You can do it at a very easy manner. It doesn't have to be a great long essay or anything. So what might that look like for your typical teacher who might be listening to this because lots of teachers that I speak to are scared about research. It feels like this other thing. Yeah, I understand that. But you, if you could learn to just do what's possible. And even if you only do a little tiny bit of something, for instance, I'm a governor at a junior school and this teacher was saying to me, I had an idea I set up a video camera and I thought I'd film myself and see how I interacted. So I did that and I was amazed she only did one film. She didn't do a program of research on any particular thing. And she said it's changed my whole practice. I suddenly saw the children I was ignoring. Wow. You know, as I walked around the class, I didn't realize I just set the camera up and when I look back and reflected on it. So what you can often do now with modern technology, you can do that and you don't have to keep masses of children's paperwork. You know, we used to have great cupboards full of artwork and stuff. You can just photograph it. And then when you review your every six months review back what you've been doing and whatever it is you're particularly trying to develop or you know you want to see how you can just be honest and share it with other teachers. What you've found you discover something amazing, you're proud of share it with your colleagues, you know, and that's research basically. Yeah, wholeheartedly agree with you. It's one of the things I have the great privilege of working with loads of really inspiring practitioners all the time and so often it will take quite a lot of coaxing from me to encourage them to share the great stuff that they're doing because this might be a learning support assistant who doesn't have loads of letters after their name or something but I've watched them and what they're doing is great. We just want more people to be able to learn from that. Yes, we've got two teaching assistants at the junior school. I go in and I just get them to talk to me and they've been doing the Elster course. And they've got their little room where they take children to who are having difficulties, you know, emotional difficulties, and they have hanging up from the ceiling on string stars where the children have written things like they could get on better with so and so, you know, whoever it is their friend. It's upset me because I'm not talking to so and so and or whatever. My mummy's not well or something like that. I miss my grandad would be a lot of that I'm afraid at the moment, or Nanny or something. I've said to them at the end of the term, could you put them all on a piece of paper and just photograph them. They haven't got the children's names on or anything. But you will be able to get themes out of that. Just look at them and analyze them and go, Oh, we've had so many bereavements children worrying about friendships. I do think there's a feel they're being bullied or whatever, you know, somebody that's not very good at something that they're worrying about. I can't think of anything off the top of my head. But that's a simple piece of research. Actually, and you could collect that and keep those sheets and you just put the date on and say that's what we did that term. Think about the next time. What did you do you think we did better that way? We found some resources that helped to address those problems. Yeah, so it's really about kind of making sure that we stop and we're curious about our practice and we learn from what's working and yeah explore a little really isn't it. I think people have the idea you've got to plan ahead and rigidly stick to a program of research but actually the sort of research I do is much better in retrospect when you look back and you admit your way you admit your failure at the beginning if you're not doing something well and then you look back and say, oh, we made progress on that particular thing. If you don't admit failure, you can't admit progress properly. You can prove progress if you keep a record of failure. I'm a big fan of sharing mistakes. I often will set people a task when I'm working with them to be brave and bold enough to share a mistake with a colleague because I think when we do that then it stops someone else having to walk that same path in the same way doesn't it because we learn so much from the things that we do less well. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I agree with that. What thought would you like to kind of summarise with or leave people with? What would you like them to think about having this into this? Right, well I think that they ought to come up with a much better definition of neuroplasticity than me because there's lots of very clever people out there. And what would you like to, you know, if people kind of went away and changed one thing about their practice or how they approach things in the classroom or at school, what would you? Note what's not working and have a look to see how you've improved or not presumably but mostly the trouble with teachers is they're so well-meaning and lovely people that they don't record their successes. They record your successes by looking to what you've helped because they often don't tell you about what was wrong to start with. And they're never always satisfied with what they've achieved but usually they've achieved all sorts of things, you know, and they are researching and they are working really well, a lot of them in my experience anyway. They do make mistakes but I think they sort of prove, justify what you're doing. Most people know really why they're doing what they're doing. They just don't take time to explain it to themselves or to other people.