In this episode I’m talking to Dr James Mannion. James is co-author of Fear is the Mind Killer a book designed to guide, implement and evaluate a Learning Skills curriculum in schools. More recently he has written Making Change Stick, a book that brilliantly synthesises research on school improvement so that is can be practically implemented in a sustainable way. James is also a fellow podcaster, hosting the Rethinking Education podcast and is director at Rethinking Education.

I was really happy to be able to speak with James after following his work on Learning to Learn for a long time and wanting to know his interpretation of the International Baccalaureate’s approach to this. Additionally, his more recent writing on implementation science is incredibly useful in providing pragmatic approaches for new and existing leaders of change.

We discuss:

• What the distinction is between cognition, metacognition, self-regulation and self-regulated learning
• What James makes of the IB's Approaches to Learning framework
• How his Learning to Learn programme was sequenced
• Whether Learning to Learn should be tailored to respective subjects or taught through a bespoke class
• How much of the Making Change Stick programme would be relevant to middle leaders
• And finally, whilst compiling a fantastic collection of implementation strategies, who are James’ 3 or 4 pillars of the field in terms of researchers or texts that proved seminal

Thanks again to James for doing the hard yards in condensing a decade’s work of research down into an eminently readable books on two separate occasions.

If you want to be kept up to date on when educational chat like this happens, then be sure to subscribe to the podcast and/or follow me on Twitter @chrisjordanhk

Links:

James blog post on metacognition and self-regulation

James’ books

Rethinking Education Podcast

Viviane Robinson’s Reduce Change to Increase Improvement

Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers

The Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM)