Five inspiring education podcasts

According to RAJAR research from 2015, 3.7 million UK adults listen to podcasts – which equates to 6.5% of the population. Podcasts’ accessibility and the fact that they’re relatively easily and quickly produced mean that they’re an excellent way of staying up to date with industry news and trends.

There’s a wealth of great education podcasts covering topics such as teaching practices, education technology and educational reform. Here are five podcasts every HE professional can follow to stay in the know about what’s happening in education.

Stories Teachers Share

Launched in January 2016, Stories Teachers Share is produced by MindShift and KQED and explores teachers’ experiences across America. The series was created by MindShift staff members Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz and is inspired by the creativity, dedication and integrity of the educators they’ve met while working for the website.

Sung and Schwartz clearly have a lot of respect for teachers and know it’s not an easy job. As they explain:

“There’s nothing so rewarding as watching a student “get it,” and kids are funny, sweet and thoughtful too. But teaching can also be lonely and isolating. It takes a lot of mental fortitude to continue being upbeat about math or reading, history or science, when some students come to school stressed or tired and others just don’t seem to want to listen.”

Listen for: a first-hand and deeply empathetic look at the education experience for both teachers and students

Recommended episode: this episode features a former student reading from his middle-school journal, recalling how a teacher provided companionship and support at a time it was sorely needed.

The Edtech Podcast

The Edtech Podcast explores how technology is used in places of learning and what the future of edtech may look like. Sophie Bailey launched the podcast in 2016 and explained the idea to us in an interview last year:

“It’s a weekly podcast in which I speak to different people involved in education innovation: whether teachers, investors or startups. [It’s] usually in an interview format. The mission is to improve the dialogue between ed and tech in order to aid better innovation across education. It’s international in scope and looks at case studies and conversations all over the world.”

Listen for: edtech developers, school leaders and teachers discussing how technology is used and classrooms right now and how it could change the way we learn in the future.

Recommended episode: this on-site special from Web Summit 2016.

The Anthill

The Anthill’s mission is to unearth stories from the world of academia. The rotating team of hosts is joined once a month by educators and researchers who have interesting stories to tell. Recent episodes have explored everything from the concept of belief to what happens when scientists operate on themselves.

The Anthill is produced by The Conversation, a website which aims to blend academic rigour with journalistic flair. Accordingly, the podcast’s strength is packaging academic research in accessible ways that everyone can digest.

Listen for: richly detailed and highly accessible explorations of how aspects of modern-day society are impacting the way we live.

Recommended episode: The Future sees historians, future thinkers, designers and sci-fi watchers speak about our love of predicting what’s to come.

Times Higher Education Podcast

THE Podcast has a wonderfully simple premise: the THE editorial team discuss the latest issue of the magazine, exploring the latest industry news and that week’s stories. In addition to the panel discussions, interviews with HE professionals from around the world add distinctive perspectives and different talking points.

Special episodes are dedicated to key events and issues education internationally: examples include the Asia Universities Summit and the World University Rankings.

Listen for: a weekly summation of the most pressing issues in higher ed and how they’re having an impact across the world.

Recommended episode: last year’s Brexit special is a comprehensive and informed dissection of the fallout of the referendum vote.

Re:Learning

Re:Learning is a series produced by The Chronicle of Higher Education which explores the future of education. Host Jeffrey R Young speaks to one guest per episode, and the variety of guests is one of the podcasts’ strengths – as the blurb explains, ‘you’ll meet the renegade teachers, ed-tech entrepreneurs, longtime educators, and others shaping the future of college’.

Since it’s launch last year, the show has covered a wide variety of topics: examples include virtual reality in the classroom, the state of online education and a comedian’s take on academic research.

Listen for: educators speaking passionately and honestly without being afraid to show their workings.

Recommended episode: this interview with Salman Khan sees the educational innovator discuss his vision of the future of the Khan Academy – as well as the future of American higher education.

What are your favourite education podcasts? Leave us a comment or tweet us your recommendations.