81. Dr James Mannion - Director of Rethinking Education, Author and Podcast Host - Brighton

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 learningWhat James makes of the IB's Approaches to Learning frameworkHow his Learning to Learn programme was sequencedWhether Learning to Learn should be tailored to respective subjects or taught through a bespoke classHow much of the Making Change Stick programme would be relevant to middle leadersAnd 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 seminalThanks 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 @chrisjordanhkLinks: James blog post on metacognition and self-regulationJames’ booksRethinking Education PodcastViviane Robinson’s Reduce Change to Increase ImprovementDiffusion of Innovations by Everett RogersThe Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM)