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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 book and journal club designed to support you on your professional learning journey.
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.
Make sure you sign up to our mailing list to hear about recommendations as soon as they’re published.
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
Every child enters the classroom with different skills, habits, values, and expectations. Running the Room is the teacher’s guide to addressing classroom behaviour and treat it as another area of the curriculum.
Classroom management can be complex, however this book offers evidence-informed and practical strategies for all teachers, regardless of their career stage. Bennett offers readers more than just punish and reward and outlines how improvements begin when you address and identify classroom behaviour. Bennett explains the science of behaviour through common metaphors to encourage the reader, and argues that creating a positive classroom culture has to be deliberate and consistent. For Bennett the emphasis is on behaviours being taught rather than told. Running the room addresses common behaviour myths, and offers new and experienced teacher practical tools and solutions in addressing behaviour.
Phil Beadle and John Murphy guide teachers through the dos and don’ts of behaviour management based on their own teaching experience in some of the most challenging schools. They discuss the importance of managing your own behaviour, and how this is essential when understanding the behaviour of students. The authors use humour to highlight how behaviour management is relatable for everyone. Their honest approach allows readers to fully understand behaviour management and appreciate that it is not just about a tick box exercise.
This book is essential reading for any educators working in challenging schools, or who are looking at how to improve their own behaviour management.
This practical, hands-on resource for early years and primary school teachers includes 25 engineering design challenges appropriate for children ages 3–8. There are suggestions for creating a makerspace environment where children can tinker with materials, use tools to make creations, and improve on their ideas. This book encourages STEM-rich exploration and learning, and provides questions and ideas for expanding children’s understanding of STEM concepts. It also equips teachers with a planning template to create their own design challenges to extend children's problem-solving skills and creative thinking.
This book presents a contemporary focus on significant issues in STEM teaching, learning and research that are valuable in preparing students for a digital 21st century. The book chapters cover a wide spectrum of issues and topics using a wealth of research methodologies including
This brief and timely article explores the challenges and pitfalls of AI tools like ChatGPT in schools, for both students submitting work and teachers marking it. It discusses how human input is ultimately crucial to the effectiveness of AI technologies, and how authenticity of school work must be preserved.
Shaun Dellenty is an ex-primary school leader, he has been named twice by the Independent on Sunday as one of the ‘101 most influential U.K. LGBT figures’ and he was named as one of the Top 100 Global Leaders in Diversity and Inclusion.
Celebrating Difference is an inspirational guide for LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools. The opening of the book details the difficulties Shaun faced growing up, with a lack of role models, open dialogue about diverse identities and homophobic bullying at school in the 1980s. The remainder of the text is a handbook for how individuals can facilitate cultural and organisation change, featuring enquiry questions, case studies and testimonials from people who have used Shaun’s methods in their classrooms.
The book serves to tackle internal biases and prejudices in an intersectional manner, and is relevant to contemporary discussions of race and broader concepts of human diversity.
This book takes a highly original approach to improving lesson planning, with an accessible style to help every secondary teacher make the planning process more meaningful, leading to great progress over time.
hether you are planning your day-to-day lessons or a formal observation, planning is a skill that can be refined to ensure your workload is manageable and your lessons memorable. Aimed at committed and reflective teachers who want to develop their practice, this book introduces Tweaks for Teachers: small changes that make a big difference! Unlike a lot of teaching books that assume you need or want to change your whole approach, this book provides simple ideas to implement in your next lesson to good effect.
Organised around real lesson snippets and full lesson plans covering every secondary subject, the book focuses on the key areas you need to plan for every lesson: assessment for learning, questioning, stretch and challenge and commitment to learning, as well as covering the importance of developing a good marking practice.
Being prepared to teach every subject in the curriculum is an essential skill for all primary school teachers, and good lesson planning is a critical tool for coping with the workload.
This book provides a breakdown of lesson planning strategies, plus a range of practical and original ideas to use with your class.
Using real primary classroom anecdotes, as well as helpful diagrams and tips on how to implement planning techniques day-to-day, Lesson Planning for Primary School Teachers is a complete toolbox for primary school teachers who want to develop their key skills and strategies for lesson planning.
The Ultimate Guide to Differentiation explains how teachers already use differentiation in many ways. Bestselling author Sue Cowley encourages readers to understand and appreciate how teachers implement differentiation, as well as exploring new and creative methods.
In this book she outlines the various methods and approaches to differentiation, giving the reader an in-depth insight to each model. This is done by breaking differentiation down into five core areas
Readers will learn over 90 practical and time-saving strategies for the classroom. Sue delivers this by encouraging teachers, practitioners, and support staff to feel confident that they are meeting the needs of all leaners.
The Ultimate guide to Differentiation is a comprehensive guide on differentiation and offers balanced advice all written in Sue’s straight forward style.
It is important to acknowledge the affect that dyslexia can have on behaviour in classrooms, and learners’ mental health. Written from the perspective of an experienced researcher and a special needs teacher in secondary mainstream education, who is also dyslexic, the author uses his personal and professional experience to shed light on the complexities surrounding dyslexia.
This book examines psychological theories and offers guidelines and advice, illustrated with real life examples. It suggests ways to help learners with dyslexia and avoid harmful coping strategies and learn to deal with stress, anxiety, and low self-esteem in more effective and psychologically positive ways.
This practical book provides teachers with techniques and suggestions to help dyslexic pupils. Written by a team of experienced practitioners who work in a specialist school, it offers clear guidance and tried and tested strategies to help those who need support in this area.
The book addresses reading and spelling difficulties and other aspects of pupils' learning difficulties, including:
This book offers an overview of mindfulness as both a personal practice and a classroom methodology, explaining how teachers can create a calmer classroom for their students and for themselves by focusing on the present moment. It explores research findings detailing the positive impacts and practical applications of mindfulness in classrooms and implementation across the whole school culture.
The book describes how mindfulness techniques can be adapted across different subject areas and developmental levels in learning institutions, and discusses responsible ways of teaching mindfulness, free of any religious or political bias.
This book demonstrates that schools can take simple yet positive steps to promote better mental health for their students, without it costing them a huge amount of money or adding to staff workload. Every chapter in this book is packed with practical ideas about what needs to happen for schools to take mental health seriously, clearly written and with real world examples. This book offers a ‘how to' to for all school leaders to support pupil wellbeing and to support mental health in schools.
This book offers an easy to follow, straight forward guide to supporting Mental Health in schools, and notes how incremental change can be made in school communities without excessive funding. The book takes a student-centred approach to making sustainable shifts school communities.
Providing effective feedback is an essential skill for all educators. In The Feedback Pendulum, Chiles draws on both research and his own experiences to demonstrate how efficient and effective feedback can positively impact students learning, and teacher workload. Covering a range of education phases, this books offers a range of practical strategies and engaging accounts of how these might work in practice.
In Questioning for Formative Feedback, Walsh explores the relationship between questioning and feedback, and how effective dialogue can serve as the bridge connecting the two. Providing a range of ideas, tips and strategies, the book is broken down into four sections, which build upon each other to support student learning. Each chapter also contains additional features, including blueprints of key processes and products, tools designed to support the planning and introduction of new strategies, and examples of authentic classroom use.
With over 30 years’ experience of developing and using EdTech products, Al Kinglsey is a passionate advocate for collaboration between school leaders, education systems and the EdTech industry.
In My Secret #EdTech diary, Kingsley draws on his unique experience to create an easy to access resource full of practical advice. With bitesize chapters capturing the experiences and reflections of a diverse range of educators, as well as recommendations for further reading resources, this book provides a one-stop-shop for the most effective EdTech practices.
This publication is no longer available on EBSCO. You may be able to find it from other sources.
In this highly accessible guide, Burns uses her wealth of EdTech experience and expertise to provide clear and practical advice to show how any educator can incorporate the top ten essential EdTech skills and strategies into their learning setting
Covering topics such as navigating online spaces, developing collaboration structures and developing transferable skills, each chapter explains the importance of the skill or strategy. Burns also includes supporting research, practical examples and guidance for planning and reflection.
The use of effective assessment for learning (AfL) to provide meaningful and continuous feedback is an essential skill for any educator.
This book, designed for secondary school teachers, will help you to deepen your understanding of the impact that effective AfL can have on learners, and why it’s so important for improving teaching and learning.
Packed full of quick and easy-to-implement ideas and strategies, this book is a must-read for any teacher looking to support their students to become outstanding learners.
Drawing on his own experiences, Pearsall shares an assortment of practical strategies and techniques for improving the quality of feedback, whilst reducing the time and effort needed to review and correct students’ work.
Divided into six chapter, Pearsall covers:
Supporting Positive Behaviour in Intellectual Disabilities and Autism: Practical Strategies for Addressing Challenging Behaviour by Tony Osgood
This practical and easily-accessible book provides educators with a jargon-free guide to working with learners with intellectual disabilities or autism.
Throughout the book, Osgood draws on his vast experience to offer the reader examples of best practice for analysing and addressing challenging behaviour across a range of settings, whilst ensuring a person-centred approach is maintained.
100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Supporting Students with Autism by Claire Bullock
This book offers educators a range of step-by-step strategies and ideas to help create an inclusive learning environment for students with autism.
Covering topics such as transition, assessment, anxiety support, behaviour, social skills and communication, and teasing and bullying it also includes case studies and links to additional resources, to become the ultimate troubleshooting guide for secondary schools teachers.
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.
If you’re interested in evidence-informed practice, your PLP gives you access to EBSCO, the world’s largest full-text research database for education professionals covering all levels of education and specialities.
EWC registrants have free access to the EBSCO Education Source package and the eBook Education collection. Both resources are constantly expanding and include:
Make sure you sign up to our mailing list (Meddwl Mawr) to hear about recommendations as soon as they’re published.
It takes two simple steps to access EBSCO:
We have created a step-by-step video on how to log in to EBSCO, and how to use it, on our YouTube channel.
There’s a series of online guides to support you in using EBSCO, including how to search for books and articles, and saving previously searched for articles.
Watch our former research group discuss why it’s important to be research engaged.
Having been a Pioneer working on the Curriculum for Wales 2022, I have become increasingly interested in the research behind the comprehensive educational reforms taking place in Wales. As I have begun to read more widely, discovering the EBSCO education source, available via the EWC’s Professional Learning Passport, has been invaluable to my research!
As a Pioneer, I welcomed the opportunity to attend the national ResearchEd conference in London, where I was inspired by speakers from schools in England who had been appointed to newly created posts as “Heads of Research”. One was from Eton and leads their Centre for Innovation and Research in Learning – one can only dream! But the others were from state schools and the descriptions they gave of their roles resonated with me as Wales is committed to supporting teachers to become research informed, evidence-based practitioners. The speakers recommended various online research banks such as BELMAS, BERA, and the Chartered College of Teaching, which offers EBSCO to its members. However, most of these organisations charge a subscription fee which is unrealistic for state school to meet for every member of staff and which represent a significant investment for individual teachers. I began to lose heart.
At the same time, as meeting the Heads of Research, I began to transition into the role of a PL Pioneer for Welsh Government and as part of this process I was required to embark on formal Professional Enquiry for the first time in my career. My PL mentors from Cardiff Metropolitan University alerted me to the availability of EBSCO through the Professional Learning Passport. They enthused about it, not simply because it is a highly reputable resource but also because it is free to use for all EWC registrants.
As my role has continued to develop EBSCO has become ever more useful and valuable to me. I now lead a cluster of secondary schools in Bridgend as they take their first steps into research as part of the National Professional Enquiry Project. EBSCO was the first recommendation I made to that group, so that they could resource their learning. More recently, I have been appointed to lead a series of research projects on behalf of the Central South Consortium and again I have ensured that all participant researchers are using EBSCO to conduct literature reviews and to build reading lists for colleagues who want to follow in their footsteps..
As part of this role I am also carrying out a Professional Enquiry of my own for CSC. EBSCO is the foundation stone upon which I can build that research. Being able to freely access educational research from across Britain, Europe and the wider world enables me to find a wealth of knowledge on a multitude of issues, synthesise what has been learnt from all over the globe and use it to present new conclusions to colleagues in my region. Without EBSCO the same piece of work would be harder to accomplish and expensive for me and my school.
We might never have a Centre for Innovation and Research in my school, but we do have EBSCO. It’s a tremendous resource and I would highly recommend it to any professional seeking to expand their horizons and improve their practice
Jeff Cole is the Humanities Network Lead at Central South Consortium.
Find out more about how you can get started with your research tool, EBSCO and get started with your Professional Learning Passport.
The Professional Learning Passport (PLP) is a flexible online tool that is available to all registrants.
Your PLP is packed with features that are designed to support you to capture, reflect upon, share, and plan your learning with the ultimate aim of improving your practice. We all have different ways of learning and the PLP has been designed to meet a wide range of needs.
Your PLP belongs to you. It is confidential and portable. As long as you’re registered with us, you will have access to any content you have created in your PLP.
Your PLP is available via your MyEWC online account. Our short guide sets out how to create and access your online account. If you have any difficulties accessing your PLP, please
Your working days are full of different experiences, many of which are often learning experiences that can trigger you to consider and potentially alter your practice. These could be part of your normal day to day routine, a discussion with colleagues or attending formal training. Your PLP is can help you frame these experiences.
You may already have lots of information saved in different places and in different formats. You can add all of this quickly and easily to your PLP either by using the upload tool in your PLP, or using the app, Pebblepocket which is available for both Android and Apple devices. Our short guide shows you the features of the app, and how to access it.
You can also connect your PLP to external services like Google Drive or Dropbox and access and use the files you’ve already saved there.
Reflection is the opportunity to stop and think about your experiences, gain value from them and use them to influence your learning, development and future practice.
Templates are available in your PLP that have been structured to take you through the reflective cycle process by asking a series of questions or prompts, allowing you to review the impact of your learning on your practice and then revisit it at a later date.
Your PLP also allows you to share your experiences, work collaboratively and have professional dialogues with your peers.
Within your PLP you will find the professional standards for school and further education (FE) teachers, school and FE learning support workers and work-based learning practitioners.
Your PLP allows you take any item which you have either created or added to your PLP and map this to the relevant professional standards.
Anything you map to the standards will appear summarised in your standards workbook which is available on the dashboard of your PLP. When mapping evidence against the standards you can complete a self-assessment of your progress against that standard using the slider bar option. The standards overview page will give you a visual representation of your progress against your standards. You’ll be able to clearly see your areas of strength and development.
We have developed a series of short videos to show the benefits of using the PLP to support your professional development. More information is also available in the relevant registration categories below.
School and FE teachers will find the PLP useful to support them in capturing and reflecting on their professional experiences and learning. Users can share information recorded in their PLP with others to form the basis of a professional dialogue to help them identify the next steps in their professional learning journey.
The Professional Standards for Teaching and Leadership and the FE standards are available in the PLP to help you consider and review your experiences.
Learning support workers can make use of the passport to reflect on their practice, adding ideas, links, and videos as a way to record successful teaching support methods and evidence for peers, current and potential future employers.
The Professional Standards for Assisting Teaching and FE standards are also available in the PLP.
Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) doing statutory Induction are required to use the PLP. The PLP provides a space where NQTs can record evidence of how they are meeting the Professional Standards for Teaching and Leadership through professional practice.
Youth and youth support workers are able to use the PLP to share and collaborate with others. You’ll also find resources and templates to help you get started.
You have access to EBSCO education which includes a huge range of full-text, peer reviewed research, eBooks and journals.
The Professional Standards for youth and youth support workers are available in the PLP.
The PLP allows you to share and collaborate with colleagues from the work-based learning sectors and you’ll also find resources and templates to help you get started.
You have access to EBSCO education which includes a huge range of full-text, peer reviewed research, eBooks and journals.
The professional standards for work-based learning practitioners are available in your PLP to help you consider and review your experiences.
We are happy to visit your organisation to give your staff a demonstration of the PLP and showcase how its functionality and versatility can benefit you, your colleagues and institution. If you would like to book a demonstration please complete our online booking form or
If you’re interested in evidence-informed practice, your PLP gives you access to EBSCO, the world’s largest full-text research database for education professionals covering all levels of education and specialities.