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Welcome to Meddwl Mawr, the EWC’s new book and journal club
Engaging with research can play an important role in helping you develop your own ideas and practice as an education professional. That’s why we’ve started Meddwl Mawr, a new book and journal club designed to support you on your professional learning journey.
The book and journal club will help you to make the most of over 4,500 education journals, papers and e-books available to you free on EBSCO - the world’s largest library of education research.
We’ll be publishing regular recommendations on this page covering a range of interesting topics, pointing you to some of the great content available on your free online library.
Your EWC registration gives you free access to EBSCO via your Professional Learning Passport (PLP).
Keep an eye on this page to stay up to date on the latest recommendations. To hear about them as soon as they’re published, make sure you sign up to our mailing list.
How to access EBSCO
It takes two simple steps to access EBSCO.
- Log in to your PLP. Not set up your PLP yet? You can sign up via MyEWC.
- Click on the ‘help and resources’ option on the PLP dashboard.
To find out how to use EBSCO, read our guide.
We’re keen to hear about any books or journal articles you’ve found interesting, enjoyable or useful on EBSCO. If you have a recommendation that you would like to share, then please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Your recommendations
March 2023
All Systems Go – The Change Imperative for Whole System Reform by Michael Fullan
In this book, world-renowned expert on educational reform, Michael Fullan, offers a clear and compelling model for whole-system education reform.
Based on Fullan’s own experience, this book is packed with examples of how to engage those who are needed to truly reimagine our schools, and how to encourage collaboration amongst staff and learners. It addresses whole-system reform in a practical way, and is essential reading for practitioners and policy-makers.
Realization – The Change Imperative for Deepening District-Wide Reform by Lyn Sharratt and Michael Fullan
Described as a must-read for education reformers, this book provides a clear and compelling model of how whole-system reform can be achieved for sustained learner improvement.
The research presented in this book offers strong support for the idea that when opportunities are provided to meaningfully increase the skills and knowledge of education practitioners, it will be their learners that are the real winners.
February 2023
Equitable Education: What everyone working in education should know about closing the attainment gap for all pupils by Sameena Choudry
In this highly readable and inspirational book, Sameena Choudry uses her vast experience of addressing matters of equality and diversity in education. She ensures educators are better informed of the issues impacting on the achievement and attainment of key groups of disadvantaged learners.
Chapters focus on social class, gender, English as an Additional Language, Minority Ethnic achievement, Gypsy, Roma and Travellers, refugee and asylum seekers, and those with special educational needs and disabilities. Throughout each chapter Choudry gives the reader evidence-informed strategies and practical approaches to support educators as they address the needs of their learners.
Aiming High: Raising Attainment of Pupils from Culturally-Diverse Backgrounds by Marie Parker-Jenkins, Des Hewitt, Simon Brownhill and Tania Sanders
The Drawing on the authors’ research and experience, Aiming High provides a comprehensive toolkit for educators working in a culturally diverse setting.
This easy-to-navigate book contains practical suggestions and proven strategies for raising attainment. Shaped around several themes, the book covers:
- induction for new arrivals
- supporting EAL pupils
- raising ‘Black Boys’ attainment
- Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children in the UK
- working with parents and the local communitys.
January 2023
Live Well, Teach Well: A practical approach to wellbeing that works by Abigail Mann
“In order to secure the best possible outcomes for your pupils, you must look after your own wellbeing”
Live Well, Teach Well, is brimming with a host of practical ideas and strategies to help you do just that.
Drawing on her own experiences, Mann provides a whole host of easy to implement ideas and techniques to help educators stay energised, focused and positive. Mann also looks at ways educators can work more efficiently and effectively, to reduce workload and support a healthy work-life balance.
If you’re looking for straightforward techniques that have a big impact, this book is a must read!
The mentally healthy schools workbook: Practical tips, ideas, action plans and worksheets for making meaningful change by Pooky Knightsmith
The Mentally Health Schools Workbook is an ideal place to start for anyone wishing to promote and encourage mental health in their workplace.
Drawing on the latest thinking of mental health, Knightsmith offers relevant and practical advice in a clear and easy to understand way.
This book features a host of tried and tested tools to support the mental health needs of learners, offered in a sincere and encouraging manner.
Whilst this book may be aimed at senior leaders it offers something for all practitioners looking to make meaningful change for their learners.
November 2022
The reform of initial teacher education in Wales: from vision to reality
We've got a special edition for you this month, since Emma and Tom from Talk Teaching are discussing this month’s Meddwl Mawr recommendation on their latest podcast.
Education in Wales has been going through a period of transformation over the last few years, with a new approach that places teachers at the heart of the reform process.
To ensure teachers are confident to successfully deliver the reformed curriculum, a new approach for initial teacher education (ITE) has also been needed.
This paper sets out the background to these reforms and discusses three of the key dimensions of Wales’ new model of ITE: co-construction and governance, integrating university and school perspectives and re-envisioning mentoring.
October 2022
100 Ideas for Primary Teachers: Supporting Children with Dyslexia
This practical guide provides anyone supporting children and young people with dyslexia with 100 engaging and practical activities to help reinforce their learning development.
In addition to covering all key areas of the primary curriculum, the book offers an assortment of approaches on differentiation, memory strategies and planning for learning.
Featuring a wide range of ready-to-use activities and strategies, this is great addition to any teacher’s toolkit. It also offers new ideas and insights to ALNCOs, head teachers, parents and carers and anyone else working with a child or young person with dyslexia.
100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Supporting Students with Dyslexia
Designed for busy secondary school teachers, this practical guide features a host of tried-and-tested, ready to use activities to help support and engage learners with dyslexia.
In addition to covering key secondary subject areas (including English, maths and PE) it offers practical advice on personal development - from self-esteem and staying motivated to exam preparation.
This is the perfect companion for teachers and learning support staff who want to ensure that those learners with dyslexia are fully supported to reach their potential.
September 2022
Positive Behaviour Management in Primary Schools: An Essential Guide by Liz Williams
This no-nonsense, easy to read book offers positive and practical advice to assist teachers in promoting positive behaviour in primary schools.
Drawing on a range of theories and approaches, Williams explores how positive behaviour management can effectively support learners with their personal, social and emotional development.
Williams considers a range of factors that can influence positive behaviour, such as environment, mental health, parents and the importance of planning.
This book is a must read for both new and experienced teachers and learning support workers.
Motivating Unwilling Learners in Further Education: The key to improving behaviour by Susan Wallace
This easy to navigate resource provides FE teachers, both new and experienced, with the tools they need to motivate disengaged learners and help them realise their potential.
Drawing on her years of experience as an FE teacher and professor, Wallace identifies the four main barriers than might affect learners: fear, boredom, previous negative experiences and loss of hope. She then goes on to discuss an array of practical strategies and techniques which practitioners can use to re-engage their learners.
And if that’s not enough, there are also tips for practitioners to keep themselves motivated.
July 2022
Developing the Expertise of Primary and Elementary Classroom Teachers: Professional Learning for a Changing World - Tony Eaude
Written by a former teacher, this book argues that effective classroom practice requires teachers to be attuned to needs of individual learners, using their knowledge and understanding to create of inclusive classroom environments. Eaude considers how primary teachers can successfully expand their expertise and develop a flexible, intuitive approach to planning, assessment and teaching.
Regular, contextualised professional learning that allows teachers to relate (and apply) theory to their own practice is identified as being central to the development of key skills and abilities. The book also outlines the role that professional learning communities can play in helping to enhance practice and improve outcomes.
Formalise, Prioritise and Mobilise: How School Leaders Secure the Benefits of Professional Learning Networks
How can schools benefit from participating in professional learning networks and how worthwhile are the relationships that they foster between teachers and experts, such as university researchers? Brown and Flood use a single case study (the New Forest Research Learning Network) to demonstrate that such networks can be highly effective in promoting knowledge, sharing, innovation and helping disseminate new ideas and best practice.
The authors argue that school leaders can play an important role in determining the success of such networks. For example, through linking the work of professional networks with school improvement plans, leaders can help to ‘formalise’ the network at a school level and maximise the effectiveness of engagement. Furthermore, undertaking practical activities within schools, related to the work a professional learning network, can generate positive results for both the individual school and other network members, as well as empowering participating teachers.
June 2022
How to Create Kind Schools: 12 extraordinary projects making schools happier and helping every child fit in – Jenny Hulme
Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Kidscape, this unique book brings together 12 well-known charities (and their celebrity supporters) to share a collection of innovative projects which promote inclusion, tolerance and kindness.
Each individual story provides an insight into the creative and innovative projects taking place in schools to support learners – from a gay role model to a peer mentor, a dance workshop to a gardening club, an autism ambassador to a travelling Gypsy theatre group.
This book will provide inspiration for all educators looking for imaginative, yet practical ways to support those learners who don’t always feel like they fit in.
Teaching Happiness and Well-Being in Schools: Learning to Ride Elephants – Ian Morris
This engaging and thought-provoking book offers useful advice and guidance for educators looking to develop and implement a well-being programme in their setting.
Teaching Happiness and Well-being in School is written by Ian Morris, who worked under Anthony Seldon at Wellington College, which is well-known for its well-being and happiness curriculum.
In addition to an introduction on the theory of positive psychology, the book covers teaching approaches to well-being and provides suggested content to inform your own well-being programme.
May 2022
Measuring Up: What educational testing really tells us – Daniel Koretz
Easy to read and rich with fascinating examples, this insightful book discusses some of the most fundamental issues that that arise in educational testing.
Providing clear and reasoned advice, Measuring Up aims to demystify educational testing. Using everyday examples, Koretz takes the reader through the principles of testing and test design. The book discusses what tests can do well, as well as what their limits are and looks at how easily tests and scores can be misunderstood.
One of the most readable books on testing that you will encounter.
Assessment for Learning: Putting it into practice - Paul Black, Chris Harrison, Clara Lee, Bethan Marshall and Dylan Wiliam
Offering valuable insights into assessment for learning, this book provides pragmatic advice and guidance on implementing new and innovative approaches to improve teaching and learning.
Assessment for Learning – Putting it into practice is based on a two-year project involving thirty-six teachers in schools in Medway and Oxfordshire. The research focuses on four key areas of formative assessment: questioning, feedback approaches, peer and self-assessment and the formative use of summative tests.
This book clearly demonstrates the power of assessment for learning and its impact on student learning and achievement.
This publication is no longer available on EBSCO. You may be able to find it from other sources.
April 2022
This month we’re delighted to share two guest recommendations from Professor John Furlong OBE.
Professor Furlong is an Emeritus Fellow of Green Templeton College and Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Oxford.
He is the author of the 2015 report 'Teaching Tomorrow's Teachers', which helped shape the future vision of initial teacher education (ITE) in Wales. He was also the inaugural Chair of the EWC’s ITE Accreditation Board.
I am recommending two articles that I believe that all colleagues in Wales with an interest in initial teacher education (ITE) should read. They were initially published as part of the BERA-RSA Inquiry into Research and Teacher Education and became central to the thinking underpinning the new model of ITE now adopted in Wales.
The first paper, by Winch, Oancea and Orchard, examines different conceptions of what it means to be an effective teacher: the teacher as ‘craft worker’, an expert in situated knowledge; the teacher as ‘executive technician’, an expert in technical knowledge. They argue that while each of these dimensions is important, genuine professionalism demands something in addition; that is the ability to form critical judgements on existing knowledge and its relevance to particular situations.
The well-known paper by Burn and Mutton then goes on to explore the ways in which innovative ITE programmes around the world have attempted to provide opportunities for beginning teachers to do just that – to bring different forms of professional knowledge together in the development of their own practice. The paper also examines the evidence that what they call ‘research-based clinical practice’ does improve beginning teachers’ professional learning and pupil outcomes.
- Christopher Winch, Alis Oancea & Janet Orchard (2015) The contribution of educational research to teachers’ professional learning: philosophical understandings, Oxford Review of Education
- Katharine Burn & Trevor Mutton (2015) A review of ‘research-informed clinical practice’ in Initial Teacher Education, Oxford Review of Education
March 2022
Creating Learning without Limits - Mandy Swann, Alison Peacock, Susan Hart and Mary Jane Drummond
This engaging and inspiring book tells the story of how a primary school, which was once in special measures, created a learning environment that is ‘inclusive, humane and enabling for everybody’.
Creating Learning without Limits builds on prior research on classroom practice by the authors, and explores how the learning capacity of every child can be enhanced by creating a classroom environment that is inclusive and free from ‘ability’ labels.
A must read for any educator who believes in the limitless potential of all learners and young people.
This publication is no longer available on EBSCO. You may be able to find it from other sources.
Motivation to Learn: Transforming classroom culture to support student achievement - Michael Middleton and Kevin Perks
Whether you’re a newly qualified teacher, or an experienced practitioner, one of the biggest challenges for any educator is how to motivate learners.
‘Motivation to Learn: Transforming Classroom Culture to Support Student Achievement’ provides concrete strategies to help educators create a learning environment that maximises student engagement.
As well reviewing the psychology behind motivation, this book provides opportunities for self-reflection, real-life case studies and practical ideas that can immediately be implemented in the classroom.
February 2022
Leading Futures: Global Perspectives on Educational Leadership – Edited by Alma Harris and Michelle S. Jones
Leaders have always played a significant role in educational success, but as new and greater demands are placed on education providers, the importance of good leadership has grown even more.
Drawing on an ambitious international study, Leading Futures offers a variety of viewpoints on educational leadership from multiple perspectives.
Bringing together academics, policymakers and practitioners from around the globe, Leading Futures presents new ideas and insights that will be relevant and useful to all leaders in education.
Coherent school leadership: Forging clarity from complexity - Michael Fullan and Lyle Kirtman
Coherent School Leadership details the route to successful leadership by providing practical and useful strategies to support individuals in getting the best from themselves, and those that they lead.
By combining proven frameworks such as Fullan's Coherence Framework and Kirtman's 7 Competencies for Highly Effective Leaders, this book supports the reader to change the culture in schools from reactive to proactive.
A must read for leaders at all levels.
January 2022
Teaching Students to Become Self-Determined Learners– Michael Wehmeyer and Yong Zhao
Teaching Students to Become Self-Determined Learners explores the how and why of self-determined learning and provides practical advice to support educators in motivating their students to become self-determined learners.
When adults learn new things, it is usually because they wish to, or because the subject matter is important to them. That option is often not given to children. Throughout this book, Wehmeyer and Zhao explore the importance of autonomy and choice in learning, discussing how the concept of self-determined learning can reach a wider audience of learners.
Designed to assist educators in providing students with the independence to guide their own learning, this book provides strategies and techniques about how the approach can be implemented.
You may also be interested in…
Our annual lecture: Professionally Speaking 2022 with Professor Yong Zhao – Students as owners of learning and partners of educational change
In our 2022 lecture, critically acclaimed international thought leader, educator, and renowned author, Professor Yong Zhao, focussed on bringing the learner back to the centre of practice, discussing the significance of learner diversity, learner intention, and learner engagement in educational changes, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic.
December 2021
A Toolkit for Action Research– Sandra M. Alber
A Toolkit for Action Research is a comprehensive and practical handbook. Suitable for using alone, or alongside other more traditional action research texts, this accessible book provides hundreds of easy to follow frames, tools and templates to support researchers.
Alber’s approach is likely to be particularly useful for less experienced researchers, helping to bridge the gap between theory and real world situations, steering the reader through all stages of their research project- from selecting a topic for study to completing final reports.
A Teacher’s Guide to Classroom Research– David Hopkins
In the latest edition of this accessible and engaging book, David Hopkins, a former secondary school teacher, who is currently Chair of Educational Leadership at the University of Bolton (as well has having acted as Chief Advisor on school standards to three secretaries of state) provides a one-stop guide for anyone interested in improving the quality of teaching and learning.
The book outlines how to get started on classroom research and details key principles and methods (including advice on interpreting and analysing data). Hopkins also advises on how to report findings from classroom research projects and explains how research findings can be applied to teaching and learning.
Featuring a range of insightful case studies, A Teacher’s Guide to Classroom Research offers friendly and practical advice whilst providing a clear framework for carrying out effective classroom research.
This publication is no longer available on EBSCO. You may be able to find it from other sources.
November 2021
Resisting racism: Race, inequality, and the Black supplementary school movement - Kehinde Andrews
In this inspirational book, Professor Kehinde Andrews looks at how the Black supplementary school movement developed in the UK over a 50-year period. He outlines the dynamic nature of the movement and the role volunteers, teachers, parents, churches and community groups played in developing it.
The book explores the history of supplementary schools, and the experiences of those who have been involved with them. It argues that the movement played a key role in combatting educational inequality and improving the life chances of Black children in mainstream schooling.
This publication is no longer available on EBSCO. You may be able to find it from other sources.
It's Not Just About Black and White, Miss: Children's Awareness of Race – Sally Elton-Chalcraft
‘It's not just about Black and White, miss’ focuses on primary school children’s attitudes towards race and cultural diversity in the UK. In the book, Sally Elton-Chalcraft interviews nine and ten year olds from two mostly white schools and two ethnically diverse schools. In recording their views on race and culture, she found that they had ‘internalised the prevailing western mindset – whatever their own ethnicity’.
The author puts the children’s views into context, using both her observations of school life and teachers’ views and practices. The book is enlightening and enjoyable and, whilst it’s likely to interest primary school teachers and trainees, it’s also food for thought for senior leaders.
This publication is no longer available on EBSCO. You may be able to find it from other sources.
October 2021
We’ve selected two books to kick off our Meddwl Mawr recommendations. Both books look at different aspects of pedagogy and they are available for free on EBSCO.
Make it Stick - Peter C. Brown, Mark A. McDaniel and Henry L Roediger
This engaging book on the science of learning offers useful advice to teachers, trainers, students and others interested in lifelong-learning and self-improvement, arguing that 'learning is deeper and more durable when it’s effortful. Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow'.
Drawing on cognitive psychology and other fields, Make it Stick suggests techniques for becoming more productive learners and argues these are often counterintuitive. Brown, McDaniel and Roediger also argue that taking a positive attitude towards one’s own abilities and willingness to ‘tackle the hard stuff’ can play a crucial role in enabling an individual to achieve their goals.
The Expert Learner: challenging the myth of ability - Gordon Stobart
What do Amadeus Mozart and David Beckham have in common? This is the question that that Gordon Stobart poses at the beginning of The Expert Learner. Attacking the ‘myth of ability’, Stobart argues that, like many others who achieve excellence within their field, Mozart and Beckham did so largely as a result of practice and tenacity, rather than innate ability or genetic fortune.
The Expert Learner highlights the importance of good teaching practice in developing ability. Using engaging examples from sport, science, medicine and music, Stobart examines the most effective ways of supporting and developing skills and also addresses how teachers (and leaders) can motivate the unmotivated and stretch their higher achieving students.
This publication is no longer available on EBSCO. You may be able to find it from other sources.
What's your response?
What did you think of this month’s recommendations? How did they help develop your practice? Tweet your response using #MeddwlMawr
Why not try using the tools in the PLP to reflect on the ideas from this month’s recommendations and how you can apply them to your own practice?
Have you been inspired by our recommendations, and want to share what you’ve learnt with your colleagues? Read our guide to setting up a journal club.