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Thoughts and ideas on education, culture, psychology, social science and more from our academics, students, alumni and wider community to create lasting and evolving change. Podcasts brought to you by UCL Institute of Education (IOE), the world's leading centre for education and social science research, courses and teaching, and a faculty of University College London (UCL).
More from us: https://ucl.ac.uk/ioe
IOE announcer
You're listening to IOE insights. The UCL Institute of Education podcast at University College London.
Elaine Long
We are programme leaders on the UCL Early Career Teacher programme. Why are we in the Staffroom? We are here because this is where the best professional learning conversations always take place. This is where problems faced by teachers and leaders today can be explored critically, and where meaningful connections between research and practice can be made.
Mark Quinn
Over the course of this series, we will hear the voices of different colleagues as they come into The Staffroom – from ECTs to academics and executive leaders. We will talk about all things education – the challenges and the joys. So why don’t you enjoy a coffee with us, perhaps even grab a biscuit, and sit down for an hour of Staffroom chat.
Mark Quinn
Welcome to The Staffroom, Wilton Lodge. Wilton, we are so happy that you've found time to join us in the staff room this morning. It's actually a festive occasion. We've got Christmas upon us. It's probably the last week
that we'll be working at UCL, so we've got special mince pies and all sorts of lovely drinks and biscuits ready in our cupboard. So, it's really up to you. I'm going to throw open the doors and ask you, is there anything from our cupboard of biscuits and drinks that I can get for you.
Wilton Lodge
Do you have any port wine?
Mark Quinn
It's 10:00 in the morning and you want some port wine. I'll. I'll. I'll pour a glass for you, Wilton and one for Elaine, and I'll dilute it for myself, because I don't trust myself. Port wine and anything you'd like to nibble on.
Wilton Lodge
Thank you. Yes.
Mark Quinn
And while you're drinking that.
Wilton Lodge
Mm-hmm.
Some mince pie would be nice as well. Thank you.
Mark Quinn
Those are being warmed as we speak.
Elaine Long
Thank you for upping a drinking game in the staff room. Wilton, I'm totally here for the port wine as well. My principles are very much that port wine can't be enjoyed without blue cheese and crackers. So, if you could sort that out for me as well. Mark, that is something I stand by and I can't deviate.
Wilton Lodge
Yes.
I think I think we've got some cheese and it may just have turned blue, but we'll see.
Elaine Long
Quality first in our staff room. Wilton we’re so pleased to have you here because you bring so much expertise from so many different areas. Could you tell our listeners a bit about yourself, what your career journey has been to date and what brings you most joy in your work?
Wilton Lodge
Thank you, Elaine, and thank you, Mark, for inviting me. So, my career began in the Caribbean where I worked as a secondary school teacher in Jamaica and then in Saint Kitts and Nevis sometime after. Those early experiences were incredibly influential and really shaped how I understand teaching and learning and the role of culture in education. So
I came to the UK in 2004 and continued working in schools. First as a science teacher and then a range of leadership roles, I was a head of department, was a deputy head teacher and eventually I was a head teacher working across these roles gave me a deeper understanding of education at different levels from classroom practise, through leadership and whole school decision making.
But then in 2018 I completed my PhD here at the IOE and moved into academia. I now work as an academic and a teacher educator, and I also work on the MA and the PhD programme as well. So over time, my research and teaching have increasingly focused on questions of culture, identity, language and power in education, particularly whose knowledge counts in the curriculum and whose experiences are marginalised. I've worked on projects exploring bilingual identity, decolonization in science education and more recently I've become more interested in culturally responsive, culturally sustaining pedagogy in science education in particular.
So, across all of these, my work is driven by a commitment to equity and supporting teachers to see culturally responsive, culturally sustaining pedagogy as not just an add-on, but as central to good pedagogy and high quality teaching for all students.
The greatest joy for me, the many things. But working with the teachers, particularly student teachers, when they begin to see the pupils differently, there's a real shift that I noticed that happens when teachers start to recognise students’ cultural backgrounds, language and their lived experiences not as a problem to be fixed, but as strengths and assets to be built on.
That shift is deeply connected, in my opinion, to social justice, because it challenges this deficit thinking and the low expectations that often shaped the experiences of marginalised students. So, I find a great deal of joy in us in mentoring and collaboration as well, supporting colleagues and early career researchers to publish developing and with a growing sense of confidence. So, I hope I answered your question from those two perspective, yes.
Elaine Long
It's such a fascinating career portfolio, Wilton, because I don't think there are many people in this university or beyond that have had such a varied experience in different parts of the world and different roles that cross schools themselves and also academia, and I think that unique experience makes your voice really, really compelling. And so yeah, I'm really excited to hear more about it.
Wilton Lodge
Thank you.
Mark Quinn
Yeah, I mean I yeah, both, you know, real experience in schools as well as in academic life. So, you might cycle back to that at some point. Wilton, tell us more about those different experiences. But in your academic writing and obviously you've got a wide range of interests within your academic writing. But I noticed that you particularly address the inequitable experiences of those students of global majority backgrounds, and you've referenced that already in your opening comments. So, if we want to get straight down to it, can you tell me a little bit more about your views on those, those experiences and how they are unequal and inequitable.
Wilton Lodge
So, this is a particularly central to you know my role in academia is to talk about these inequitable, make it more visible, especially as it relates to classroom. So when I talk about the inequitable experiences, especially of global majority students, I'm really drawing attention to the fact that inequality in education is not accidental.
It is produced through curriculum choices, pedagogical practises, assessment systems and institutional cultures, and it's too often the knowledge, languages, histories and ways of knowing that global majority students bring with them are marginalised or treated as irrelevant, particularly in subjects like my own science, science education. To me, this can lead to students feeling alienated from the curriculum and position as learners who are somehow lacking rather than capable young people with rich intellectual and cultural resources.
And I think addressing these requires educators to move beyond the surface level of the ideas of inclusion, it means critically asking questions such as whose knowledge is being taught, whose voices are heard, and whose experiences are centred in our classroom.
It also means recognising how social factors like race, language, class and colonial histories continue to shape educational experiences up to today. So, from my perspective, culturally responsive teaching is a form of social justice, I think. It's about creating learning environments where again, going back to the global majority, students are not just present, but genuinely seen, valued and intellectually challenged.
When we address inequitable experiences, it is in this way. We are not just lowering standards as it seemed to be the case in many, many quarters, but we're raising them by ensuring that our students have meaningful access to high quality learning so you know that's my perspective on when I talk about inequalities.
Mark Quinn
Yeah, that, that's interesting. Just the last thing you were saying there, Wilson, about how there might be a narrative out there which suggests that if you want to address those issues you mentioned about curriculum choices or examination systems, which
might lead you know which, which mean that inequalities or inequitable experiences are not accidental, these are choices that are made, that some people out there suggest, well, what you're arguing for is a kind of easier curriculum or a lowering of standards. Of course that’s not the point you want to make.
Can I just ask you to, maybe, you’re a science teacher right? So I mean, I'm a history teacher and Elaine’s an English teacher. I think both of us can quite easily get on board with this idea because we're teaching culture all the time, right? Cultural experiences are the curriculum in our subjects. Some of our listeners might think science teachers really is. Is this a thing in science?
Do you want to, particularly explain why in science this is an issue or it can be an issue?
Wilton Lodge
I think science is seen as you know what you know to be academic here. Michael Young refers to as powerful knowledge and so it seems, you know in its very nature this nature of science is that subjective, is value free. You know it's powerful knowledge and hence It speaks to one type of knowledge within classroom setting. It has to be that rather than adopting this kind of pluralistic form of, you know, of knowledge that non-Eurocentric science does matter. You know we have indigenous science and that you know that are as important as you know, the kind of westernised science that you know that we're normally exposed to within the curriculum and accepting these kind of multiple ways of knowing, it's vitally important for how we see science because too many of the scientific knowledge is left behind because it doesn't seem like it has a place within classroom discourse, and I totally reject that perception, that position.
Mark Quinn
So, picture a scene for me, a science lesson. I thought there were certain universal rules in science that are unbreakable. You're telling me that my reading of this is I'm naive in this right? There are other perspectives I can't be bringing into my science lessons.
Wilton Lodge
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, absolutely. And there are these universal, you know laws and theories which are accepted, you know., and I'm not saying that there's not a place for those within the classroom. What I'm not arguing for is that, you know, students will come with their own alternative views or alternative ideas of science based on their cultural background, but we don't explore that, you know, in the same way you know, as we focus much more on this kind of westernised way of thinking, you know, for example in if I could draw from a science perspective, you know, you know, there's so many uses of plants as medicines, you know but we tend to focus on the medicines which are, you know, which are from this kind of Western perspective rather than looking at, you know, further out, to other cultures, to other indigenous ways of using. And I think those are as important within classroom discourse as the westernised version of these alternatives.
Elaine Long
It's interesting, Wilton, because you mentioned that the choices we make about the curriculum are not value free and they're often stooped and well, mainly steeped in Eurocentric. But, and we're all teacher trainers here as well and I guess the choices that we make about our teacher training curriculum are not value free, and of course we all follow certain frameworks but it if you were to be given the power to change something about those teacher training curriculums. What might it be? Because it strikes me that in many ways, teachers are a product of those curriculums, and unless those curriculums are challenging, also the Eurocentric knowledge within them that it's difficult for teachers to navigate that tension.
Wilton Lodge
Yes, I agree. You know, and it's a difficult one you know. But I think you know I think what we need to think more about is how we you know how we centre what we you know education around this idea of social just and put in people students at the centre of what we consider to be education, you know, even in science education, I think centre in everything we do on social justice, you know, gives us a different perspective, and we start to take a different stance on how we see things. We bring in the classroom, we're individuals, and we bring in the classroom our own values based on our own lived experiences and so on. So, we do have to, we probably can talk about this a little bit more, you know, question our own kind of biases and what we bring to the classroom.
Elaine Long
It's interesting as well because I think I agree with you that it necessarily involves a different way of thinking about pedagogy. You necessarily have to have certain skills and pedagogical practise to be able to do this as well as challenging your own knowledge base and your own bias, and in reading about your work, you suggest that teachers should adopt pedagogical practises that are culturally sustaining and that you also talk about culturally responsive pedagogy. I wonder if you could just, they are quite complex terms. I wonder if you could just unpack them a bit and tell us what they mean in practise?
Wilton Lodge
So, when I talk about culturally sustaining pedagogy, you know, I'm really building on the work of Jango Paris in particular, who argues that while culturally responsive or culturally relevant pedagogy has been incredibly important. It doesn't go far enough, so culturally responsive pedagogy focuses on connecting teaching to student’s cultural backgrounds in order to support learning, and of course, that that's vital.
But Paris suggests that being responsive can sometimes still means that using student’s cultures as this bridge to get to the dominant norms rather than actively valuing and maintaining those cultures over time. So, culturally, sustaining pedagogy takes a slightly different stance. Its core aim is not just to recognise and respond to student’s cultural or linguistic practises, but to actively sustain them while also giving student access the dominant forms of knowledge and power.
It's about supporting multilingualism or multiculturalism and cultural pluralism as part of a democratic purpose of education, rather than expecting students to leave aspects of themselves at the classroom door.
So here, you know, it means in practise teachers ask deeper questions, not just how can I engage students using their culture? But whose knowledge, whose language, whose histories and ways of knowing are being sustained here, and whose are being eroded, eroded? So, it's just asking those deeper questions. So, for example, in a classroom, culturally sustained pedagogy might look like valuing students home languages alongside their academic language.
Now, in science, that doesn't just seem to be a mismatch there where, you know, people don't think there's a place for home languages, for example, within a science classroom discourse. It means recognising indigenous or community based ways of knowing as legitimate knowledge systems and as I was saying earlier, not just being used as hooks to get students to the real science but this also means acknowledging that culture is dynamic. Young people are constantly creating new cultures, cultural practises and sustaining pedagogy makes space for that evolution rather than fixing culture in this kind of static or stereotypical ways.
Mark Quinn
OK. That's really helpful. Wilton, that helped me a great deal. So, if and please correct me as I go along here because I can get it wrong. If culturally responsive pedagogy is about maybe showing an interest in the cultural backgrounds of the students that come into my room, but I'm doing that, reading the back of my head, I'm doing that because I'm trying to get them to the more important stuff and I've got inverted commas going on here, which is the culturally dominant norms that that you've referenced. I'm trying to get them to the dominant knowledge and I'm just kind of hoodwinking them into showing an interest in their cultural expectations and experiences as a way of getting them to the stuff I really want to teach them, whereas culturally sustaining pedagogy certainly doesn't forbid them access to the dominant.
narratives around knowledge, but it shows it's an actual, genuine interest in the cultural experience and ways of knowing that people have maybe in other parts of the world and it, and I love your phrase “not expecting them to leave aspects of themselves and the classroom door”, they bring them in. They bring those aspects of themselves, all of them, bring all. So, if I've got that right, and thank you for not correcting me along the way yet. What does a teacher do? So to help us with that, how does a teacher achieve that culturally sustaining pedagogy? And is it about, you know, what are the biases or assumptions that a teacher might have which they need to sort out if they're going to be a culturally sustaining pedagogue?
Wilton Lodge
in part, most of what you've said is correct. There is some validity when you talk about culturally responsive, you know and getting students to that dominant norm like, for example, but what it does here is that there is some deficit thinking here that the more dominant culture, the more dominant norms is what people should strive for, you know, and then this whole thing of, of leaving your identity, your culture, your identity is part of that culture. So, we don't just want students to get to that dominant position that dominant norms only, we want their own culture to be sustained over time. You know, those deep rooted historical culture that they bring to the classroom with, we want to kind of sustain that.
So, when we talk about teachers and leaders confronting their biases and assumption about knowledge, we're really talking about recognising that we often treat as neutral or objective knowledge in school is shaped by history, culture and power.
Many of us, including myself, maybe you guys as well were trained, insisting that privilege, particular ways of knowing, speaking and demonstrating understanding. Early in my teaching career, I realised that I was unconsciously valuing certain forms of student participation over others. So, for example, I tend to see students who spoke confidently using formal academic English, you know, in Jamaica, for example, people who are considered to be intelligent are those who can speak Jamaican, Standard English, you know fluently rather than people who speak the dominant social language, Creole, they're just seen as more intelligent.
It was only through reflection and professional dialogue that I began to recognise that there was a narrow view, that's quite a narrow view. Some students demonstrate deeper understanding through storytelling, through collaborative talking or by drawing and experiences from home and community that didn't always fit neatly into that kind of traditional classroom expectations. So, once I became aware of this,
I started to question my own assumptions about what good learning looks like and whose knowledge was being validated in the classroom.
In practical terms, confronting biases requires reflexivity of course, teachers can ask themselves question, and again, we're going back to some of those fundamental ones, whose knowledge do I instinctively trust? And I think that's a really big question, especially when it comes to science. I mean, whose knowledge am I trusting here? Whose contribution do I see as legitimate? Again, as implications for science? Because you know, these same Eurocentric voices are the ones that we trust, and we have to dig deeper. And whose might be disadvantaged by my unexamined assumptions? I think this work isn't about blame, you know, but it's about professional growth and ethical teaching in my view.
Elaine Long
I think it's interesting, Wilton, because you know, if I'm honest as a teacher, as an English teacher, I would say it wasn't until, you know, 10 years into my career that I began to realise I had a lot of unconscious bias in my thinking about literature. I've learned about the traditional Canon because that had been my experience of education at university, and it wasn't until I taught internationally in different contexts that I realised there was a whole world of ideas out there which were, you know, which were fascinating and equally valid, equally valid.
And I'm interested because this isn't a view that I subscribe to, but I hear it a lot. Some people would argue that if you want to do the best by disadvantaged students, you've got to be inducting them in the knowledge of the dominant norms and if you don't do that, some people make the argument that you're actually disadvantaging students, and this does manifest itself in debates about curriculum culture, for example, well, we must have Shakespeare on the curriculum, and we must have romantic poets on the curriculum, and there isn't room for anything else.
How do you how do you feel about that argument?
Wilton Lodge
That's one of the arguments which totally refute that you know, that goes back to this kind of deficit perspective on what learning is and who actually has that you know that that key to knowledge. If we go back centuries where the whole idea of science, you know, and I and I can draw from, you know, from science. Because that's what I'm most familiar with. Many of the perspectives of science only started much recently, and if you speak to people who have this broad understanding of Islamic scholar, you know they can draw so many things from earlier of the discoveries of science which we, which we don't learn about, you know, in science, you know.
And I think the key here for me it's not just to say that one knowledge is better than the other, but it's that the whole idea of this pure verse thinking, you know that knowledge, the ways of knowing matters, different ways of knowing matters. And we're not, you know, privileging one over the other, I'm not saying that Eurocentric knowledge is better than others, but we're saying that there's space within classroom for this kind of pluralistic thinking.
Elaine Long
And where teachers are making space for pluralistic thinking, the pluribus, what are they doing in their in their pedagogy, in their curriculum thinking?
Wilton Lodge
I we just look back for example at culturally sustaining pedagogy and this kind of best practise, you know teachers and leaders are doing, more than simply just including the student’s culture, as we said before, they're working to sustain and value them over time. So in classroom, you know, we see teachers deliberately building student’s, language identities and cultures or practises and legitimate forms of knowledge students, home languages become quite important and their communities become quite important teachers, not just, you know, learn about their communities, but they take up an active role in fostering, you know getting to know the parents, getting to know their grandparents, getting to know this kind of indigenous knowledge. So, it's not just, you know, just asking people about their cultures. But you know, you're integrating within those communities.
Teachers design learning that allows students to be more flexible between the cultural and the linguistic worlds without being asked to leave part of themselves behind, and we see people teachers engaging in what we call trans languaging, you know, and that's an important part, especially within AI, now, you know you don't have to know certain languages to allow that within your classroom, you know? But what? What? We're challenging the dominance, for example, of English within classroom settings. You know, we are allowing people's Indigenous languages and the dialects to be part of that.
In science, for example, this is an interesting one because we often involve explicitly unpacking how scientific knowledge is produced and how it's sometimes misused. So, for example, teachers might explore how so-called race science emerge historically, examining how scientific ideas were shaped by colonialism, power and political agendas rather than objective evidence. This helps students to see science as a human endeavour, and one that can be both powerful but also fallible, rather than a neutral body of facts.
Teachers, also everyday scientific examples, the challenge taken for granted assumptions. A simple but powerful example of this is in physics. So, for example, when we discuss how black is the absence of light, while white light is made-up of all the colours, you know this should open space to question how cultural meaning is attached to for example, black and white and how these are socially constructed rather than scientifically grounded.
So, it's been critical allowing for that critical reflection within classrooms. Asking those you know those difficult questions, how language and science can both reflect and reinforce wider social ideas but I also see at leadership levels best practises involve creating the conditions for the work to flourish, so leaders, some support professional learning that enables teachers to engage confidently with questions of race, power and knowledge in their subjects, and it's something that even in teacher education, we don't see in a lot of, you know, of direct input in, in these kind of discourse, even at teacher education level. Leaders, they encourage curriculum review that goes beyond the surface level and powerful knowledge, instead asking deeper questions about whose knowledge is centred and whose knowledge is marginalised, so at its best, if we go back to what culturally sustaining pedagogy across the curriculum, it's not just a checklist or an add on, and I and I hope your listeners would kind of recognise it. It's a stance.
I was talking to some of my students on Friday, some of my student teachers, and we were talking about the same thing. How do you see yourself within the classroom? Do you see yourself as the captain of the ship or do you see yourself as a facilitator of learning or co-constructor of learning in a way the students contribute to that production of knowledge? And to me in that way the work to sustain cultural, linguistic and intellectual plurality becomes quite important.
Mark Quinn
That's so interesting. It's such a challenge, though, isn't it, Wilton? So obviously, you're talking to your student teachers, and I'm sure they're pushing back, right? I'm sure they're saying things to you, yeah, but, Wilson, it's all very well me having this personal stance, a culturally responsive. I am culturally responsive and sustaining. Hopefully both of the different linguistic cultures and ways of knowing that my pupils will bring it to my class, but I can't do it my own. Right? So, I’ve got to do it with others. I've got to be. I've got to sustain myself as a professional. I've got to continue growing my knowledge and deepening my pedagogy, it's helpful if I can do that within an environment within a school which has leadership which is supporting that and you talked about that.
So, I'm really pleased that you did reference that because it seems to me this isn't this isn't an endeavour for an individual, is it? This this isn't something that, we've got teachers listening to this podcast are probably thinking to themselves, how am I going to do this? And I suppose one of the things you'd say to them is don't try to do this just on your own. You've got to do this with others, right? You've got to speak to other colleagues in your staff room, have a word with the curriculum leads. If you're a new teacher, have a word with your deputy heads and your head teachers about how you can really open up your curriculum in ways which of course don't make anyone suffer, it's not making it easier, it's not meaning that our students are going to start failing their exams, you know you've got to be able to do both. Have i read that correctly?
Wilton Lodge
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. But there's also space because, you know, I think you know, yes, we know what you said matters, but it's also that kind of shift in the way I think about learning and that that has to happen first. You know, how do I see knowledge? Do I kind of welcome this pluralistic way of thinking within my classroom setting, or am I subscribing to this deficit thinking, my students in front of me? How do I see them? Do I see them through this deficit model thinking, or do I see them as capable adults?
Mark Quinn
Yeah, sorry. How does a teacher, you talked about being reflexive and you shared some reflexive type questions, but how does a teacher develop that the realistic habit of mind, if you know if they've left you, if they've come out of the IOE, they've got their PGCE and they're focused on, you know, just cracking through some lessons because that's what their scheme of work tells them they've got to do. How do they acquire that more pluralistic habit of mind or stance that that you'd like them to have?
Wilton Lodge
Yeah, that's a really interesting question and a really difficult one within you know, some of the systems that you know they have to operate you know. And I really don't have the answer to that, because they have to work within a structure.
Mark Quinn
Elaine and I work, as you know, Elaine and I work on the Early Career Teacher programme at UCL. One of the things that we often find ourselves talking about on this podcast is particularly in the second year of that programme, where they conduct the series of enquiries practitioner enquiries, looking at, you know, maybe problems of practise that they have, maybe things in their own teaching which they need to fix or think about or you know, some bit longer on or they look out into their classroom and see your faces and realise that there's things which they need to do differently in their teaching to reach the the students in different ways. So, it does, it does seem that there are, you know, there are, you know and that's a tool isn't it? Inquiry is a reflection, a reflexive tool or where you can continue to improve yourself as a teacher and think about your pedagogy in different ways.
Elaine. I can see you itching. You want to say something?
Elaine Long
I'm just going to say I really liked what you said Wilton about this being a lens or a stance that you take on things rather than we can't give people a checklist for this necessarily, we can't, but it seems to me it's also a lot about dispositions and if you've got that open minded and sort of curiosity, at least about things to ask questions then that's the best starting point. I mean, I was lucky enough to work in a really diverse London School, made-up of lots of different cultures and lots of different perspectives. One of the most valuable things I found was talking to people and listening and asking people, because when I led a department team, I was fortunate that it was made-up of a diverse body of people that came from lots of different cultural backgrounds and actually just the exercise of listening to people and their different ideas about curriculums and making sure, you know, it's a leadership job but making sure that the teams are diverse and that everyone's voices are respected at that level seems to me at least a good starting point and listening to students as well about their experience seems to me a good starting point.
Wilton Lodge
It's absolutely it's absolutely a good starting point. For example, here at the IOE, you know and again you know for the teachers listening, it's small steps, you know, it's been culturally the first thing, I think is to be culturally sensitive being culturally aware and it's small shifts, you know, don't you know expect you know to be, you know, to be, you know, just digging deep into cultural and be an expert in culturally sustaining pedagogy overnight.
But it's changing the whole mindset of what we think knowledge is and the position of where we think, you know, indigenous knowledge, for example, community based knowledge sits within the classroom. But more importantly, you know what I'd say to teachers is start to creating those spaces for critical thinking and questioning, you know, giving students a chance to ask these questions to question dominant norms. Where are these coming from? You know, what are the political, social or cultural assumptions, underpinnings behind some of these decisions that are taken? Where are we not seeing some of these voices? Is there a larger force here at play? And I think you know, all teachers can, in whatever system you know, allow these deeper thinking question. And that to me link kind of change what you talk about that stance, you shift that stance because I'm not accepting these assumptions anymore, but I'm questioning them.
Elaine Long
It's very powerful, I think, and we're not suggesting that teachers change things overnight in their own classrooms. But I agree with you, Wilton, you know culture changes over time in a school and everyone contributes to that culture doesn't happen in a vacuum. But as you as an individual can take responsibility for at least being curious, at least gassing questions at least championing and listening to other voices that would be a very powerful change, and one of the really powerful things you said that really had quite an emotive impact on me. Actually when you said it was, if we don't do this, we're asking some students to leave a little part of themselves behind.
I think that's a really powerful sentence because it's not just about ways of knowing you're asking students to fundamentally leave behind who they are. That's their identity. That's them. That's valid. And that's a whole other conversation I think about cultures and schools. But yeah, I find it really fascinating.
Sadly, we are coming to the end of our time with you, and we ask every guest on our podcast to write something on a post it note. So, I'm going to pass you a post it note, it is quite small, so you need to keep it brief and you can write whatever you want on that post it note and you can choose where you stick.
So what would you like to write on your post it note Wilton and where would you like to stick it?
Wilton Lodge
I'd like to stick it at the front of every teacher's classroom, every teacher's classroom. Whether you're an experienced teacher or a student teacher. Be curious about whose knowledge counts and brave enough to change it. I'll give it to teachers, to school leaders, particularly those in early in their early careers, because I think it's a reminder that teaching is not just about delivering content well, but about continually questioning whose voices, whose histories and ways of knowing are being centred in our classroom and whose are missing. That curiosity paired with the courage to act on it, is we're more inclusive and socially just education begins, I think.
Mark Quinn
I don't know if you can hear the faint sound of Jingle Bells in the background, Wilton, that's that. That's telling us that our lesson for the day is coming to an end. We really need to clear out the mince pie crumbs from the staff room and pack up our last Christmas presents and take them with us. Thank you so much for coming into our staff room today. I hope you enjoyed that port wine and that mince pie. I don't know if Elaine left you any port wine
Elaine Long
I never got much cheese and biscuits though Mark, an improvement for you for next time then.
Mark Quinn
I think the staff room mice got them instead. Wilton, it's a real pleasure. I think we met we barely scratched the surface of that. We'll have to have you back some other day to dig even deeper into really important subject but enjoy the break which I hope you have planned ahead of you and thank you again.
Elaine Long
Thanks Wilton.
Wilton Lodge
Thank you very much Elaine, thank you Mark. Pleasure.
Mark Quinn
Our thanks go to Dr Wilton Lodge for sharing a port wine and mince pie and with us this week in The Staffroom. Wilton is an Associate Professor in Science Education at the UCL Institute of Education. His work focuses on the transformative power science education to promote equ9ry and social justice
Elaine Long
Please do get in touch if you would like to be part of the conversation, click on the link at the bottom of The Staffroom web page.
Mark Quinn
And if you've enjoyed this episode, there's more where that came from, search IOE podcast from wherever you get your podcasts to find episodes of The Staffroom, as well as more podcasts from the IOE.
Elaine Long
A quick favour before you go, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, we'd really appreciate it if you could give the IOE podcast a rating. Five stars would be nice if you're enjoying the show and that will help us to reach more people who are interested in hearing what The Staffroom is all about.
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