Mind the Gap, Ep. 26 — MARGE and in Charge: Whole-Brain Learning with Nimish Lad (S2E1)
This episode is the season two premiere of Mind the Gap, and we’re pleased to welcome Nimish Lad as this season’s first guest. Nimish is Curriculum and Research Lead at the Creative Education Trust, a Vice Principal, and author of the new book, Shimamura’s MARGE Model of Learning in Action published by John Catt.
Early in the episode (2:48), Nimish explains why he likes to engage with educational research and participate in the education research community through researchED. He explains the benefits of hearing many different perspectives to find evidence in favor of practices that may not have worked for himself yet, but have proven valuable to others, and also to become aware of brand new practices.
Nimish next discusses Shimamura’s MARGE (Motivate, Attend, Relate, Generate and Evaluate) Model (4:58), which he writes about in detail in his new book. The model is a whole-brain learning approach for teachers and students that links neuroscience and cognitive science. One of the ideas that impressed Nimish the most is the way MARGE can provide a framework to refine the quality of learning aids that educators use.
Tom, Emma, and Nimish also describe why teachers are like museum curators in the way they need to carefully and strategically select the artifacts that will illustrate the necessary story; the things teachers should we wary of when implementing new ideas; the power of the use of “non-examples” (“it is this, but it isn’t that…”); and much more.
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About the participants:
Nimish Lad is Curriculum and Research Lead at the Creative Education Trust, and Vice Principal at Wrenn School in Wellingborough. As a teacher of science, he has always been drawn to evidence-informed practice and contextualising research to use within the classroom. Over the past few years Nimish has enjoyed working on using technology to aid teaching, developing practices around action research across schools, and collaborative curriculum development; he has presented on these topics on numerous occasions at educational events.
Outside of teaching, Nimish is a huge fan of both cricket and football and is an avid reader of comic books. You can find Nimish on twitter at @nlad84
Tom Sherrington has worked in schools as a teacher and leader for 30 years and is now a consultant specializing in teacher development and curriculum & assessment planning. His books include Teaching WalkThrus, Rosenshine’s Principles in Action and The Learning Rainforest Fieldbook. He regularly contributes to conferences and CPD sessions locally and nationally and is busy working in schools and colleges across the UK and around the world. Follow Tom on Twitter @teacherhead
Emma Turner joined Discovery Schools Academy Trust as the Research and CPD lead after 20 years in primary teaching. She is the founder of ‘NewEd – Joyful CPD for early career teachers,’ a not-for-profit approach to CPD to encourage positivity amongst the profession and help to retain teachers in post. Turner is author of Be More Toddler: A Leadership Education From Our Little Learners and Let’s Talk About Flex: Flipping the flexible working narrative for education.
Follow Emma on Twitter @emma_turner75