Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and co-director of the Wellcome Trust PhD Programme in Neuroscience at University College London.

She has been awarded a number of prizes over the last 20 years or so, including the British Psychological Society (BPS) Doctoral Award, the BPS Spearman Medal for outstanding early career research, and the Royal Society's Rosalind Franklin Award. She was also the winner of the 2018 Royal Society Prize for Science Books for her brilliant book 'Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain'.

I’ve wanted to speak with Sarah-Jayne for a really long time - not just about her brilliant work on the teenage brain, but because of her work with Rethinking Assessment, and a fascinating blog she wrote recently about how GCSEs are misaligned with what we know about how teenage brains develop (see below).

LINKS

SchoolsWeek review of the Rethinking Education conference: https://schoolsweek.co.uk/the-review-the-rethinking-education-conference/

Tina Farr blog: Mainstream educators and Unschoolers: Never the twain shall meet? - https://headlearnercom.wordpress.com/2022/09/26/mainstream-educators-and-unschoolers-never-the-twain-shall-meet/

Sarah Jayne’s book ‘Inventing ourselves - The secret life of the teenage brain’ - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inventing-Ourselves-Secret-Teenage-Brain/dp/1784161349/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1524214280&sr=1-1

Sarah Jayne’s TED talk ‘The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain’ - https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_jayne_blakemore_the_mysterious_workings_of_the_adolescent_brain

Sarah Jayne and Tamsin Ford's 'Neuroscience, adolescence and GCSEs - a misalignment?' - https://rethinkingassessment.com/rethinking-blogs/neuroscience-adolescence-and-gcses-a-misalignment/

The Rethinking Ed Conference (>90 videos): https://www.rethinking-ed.org/reconf22

Rethinking Education Mighty Network: https://rethinking-education.mn.co

Become a patron: www.patreon.com/repod

Buy me a coffee: www.buymeacoffee.com/repod

The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at www.rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter.