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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 our staff room, Jeremy. Jeremy Hayward. Very nice to see you, Jeremy. Please come in, take a seat. We hear you've been extremely busy, so you will need a rest, I have no doubt. I supply coffee and biscuits and cake and whatever else you might possibly want at this stage of our meeting. So what can I fix you, Jeremy?
Jeremy Hayward
I'm a tea drinker, I'm not a coffee person. I kind of resent coffee culture.
Mark Quinn
That's okay, we permit such sacrilege in this staffroom if that's what you want. A tea with...
Jeremy Hayward
Well, I mean, I'm not that traditional because I now have it with soya milk.
Mark Quinn
Okay, it's getting more disgusting the more you speak. Is there a biscuit you want to sort of leaven that with or?
Jeremy Hayward
Well, that's an interesting one. I don't, I'm quite fickle when it comes to biscuits. Yeah, I'd take any biscuit, I think.
Mark Quinn
We can invent almost any kind of biscuit you might possibly want, so I'll just see what there is.
Elaine Long
Jeremy, finally, I found someone that also rejects coffee culture as well, because I found it very hard to get to 47 years old, be a teacher and an educator and not drink coffee. So, I think there needs to be some sort of advocacy group for people like us, because it is very difficult, but I'm happy to celebrate tea drinkers and all that that brings.
Mark Quinn
And that's not all we're celebrating, Elaine, since you happened to mention the magical number there. I'll bring you some birthday cake, Jeremy, as well, coming from Elaine's Fair Kitchen.
Jeremy Hayward
Oh, congratulations. Happy birthday.
Elaine Long
Yes. 47 years of being a tea drinker, long may it continue and long may tea drinking continue. None of that latte, Americano, all those complicated words, we don't understand. A good simple cup of tea is where it is at.
Jeremy, we're so delighted to have you in the staff room talking about something that's very current, very important, and something that you're an absolute expert in. So, we're really lucky to have you here. So we're going to furnish you with the best quality tea, so we can pick your brains on everything related to misinformation and conspiracy theories. But before we do that, please could you introduce yourself for our listeners and tell us what brings you the most joy in your role?
Jeremy Hayward
Thank you very much. Well, I'm a former philosophy teacher in schools. I still keep my hand in a little bit in that arena, but I've worked in teacher education for 20 something years. My current role, what am I doing? I run a master's module called Teaching Controversial Issues at the Institute of Education. And I'm also part of a project which is piloting teacher CPD for whole school in sets and also for initial teacher Education in responding to misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy and dangerous narratives in the classroom. That's funded by the Pairs Foundation and hopefully it will be rolled out on a bigger scale over the coming years.
What gives me the most joy? I still see myself as a teacher. And so, whenever I'm teaching, I think I'm happiest. There's a lot of other stuff we have to do, all the assessment and marking and prep and reports and research, but I think I'm happiest when I'm teaching.
Elaine Long
Makes a lot of sense. Can I ask for a quick definition? What do you see is the difference between misinformation and disinformation?
Jeremy Hayward
Yeah, so misinformation is where you may accidentally share something. Disinformation is things that are fake false that have been deliberately put online. A good example of that, we saw a lot of misinformation during COVID. So, people were putting out these images of 5G masks and how they sort of somehow cause COVID and people were sharing them on Facebook and other things like that. And that would class as misinformation, because you're not, when you're sharing it, you're not deliberately spreading false as you think it's true. Whereas the people possibly creating it were sort of embarked on disinformation, which is a bit more sinister.
You've got, you know, obviously malign actors, sometimes states pushing disinformation, but you've also got a whole new breed now, which is people doing it
purely for profit. People making fake AI videos about Croydon water parks and things are terrible in London and so on. And they're doing it not really for political purposes, not to sort of spread, but simply for profit because they know there's an audience for it.
Mark Quinn
Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting you asked that question, Elaine, about the distinctions between misinformation and disinformation, because I guess it might at some point blur, Jeremy, right? So there might be at the point at which something which is accidentally shared incorrectly becomes commodified in some way, and then it becomes disinformation.
Jeremy Hayward
Yes, I think so. And I think the distinction there, I don't think is massively important in terms of sort of teaching and education. You know, often we just sort of miss slash disinformation and conspiracies. I think these things evolve. They can start out as just sort of misinformation and then it has its own life and then people spread things.
Mark Quinn
Well, since we like a good definition on this programme, I'm going to ask you for another one, Jeremy, which is about conspiracy theory. I think we're going to be talking quite a lot about conspiracy theory in this episode. So how do you define it? When we talked earlier, I also asked you to draw a distinction between conspiracy and conspiracy theory. So you might want to discuss that a little bit as well. And why do you think it matters so much now? Why is it particularly important for teachers to understand these things now?
Jeremy Hayward
I don't think, the definition isn't massively important. I think there are some things that is worth sort of getting into. So, academics don't agree a definition of conspiracy theory. We certainly know how the word is roughly used in everyday cultures. You know what things aren't as they seem. There's an alternative explanation. There's a shadowy group of small people that are secretly plotting. It's something along those lines, things aren't what they seem. But academics disagree as to what counts as a conspiracy or not. I mean, is Father Christmas a conspiracy?
Mark Quinn
Definitely not.
Jeremy Hayward
Well, no, we are all deliberately deceiving young people. Sorry, spoilers there. Whereas some people say we know that isn't because it's not for sinister purposes and so on. So, you get into this debate, there was a moment in my presentations, I get into this definition a bit and I freeze a moment in time in 2003 when Tony Blair was asked a question in Parliament and this is about the second invasion of Iraq.
And someone stood up and said, with the right honourable gentleman, please acknowledge the real reason for the war is control of oil in the Middle East. And Tony Blair stands up and says, I'm not going to listen to conspiracy theory like that. And that would be a conspiracy theory. There's official reason for war, but there's a hidden secret reason. People are doing it for profit. Okay, so that's a conspiracy theory.
Pause for a second, because what was the official reason for going to war? It was the Saddam Hussein was secretly plotting to build weapons of mass destruction, unseen from the weapons inspectors in hidden places. That sounds like a conspiracy, secret plotting for bad purposes. So the official reason, Tony Blair is saying, I'm not going to listen to conspiracy theories, but the official reason for war sounds suspiciously like it.
Now, some people would say, well, that's not a conspiracy theory. That's a theory of conspiracy. We're saying that Saddam Hussein was conspiring. It turns out not to be true. Because the conspiracy theory has to go against the official explanation. And even if the official explanation involves a conspiracy. So, it can't be a conspiracy theory because that's the official explanation. And I think that's quite useful for teachers because on that definition, conspiracy theories are countercultural. They go against the mainstream. They go against official explanations.
And we certainly know that adolescents often have a countercultural phase where they kind of reject it. They want to be listening to bands that no one else is listening to. They want to be edgy. And when you put those together it does coincide quite, not quite nicely, but it's a fit that conspiracy theories are appealing to adolescents and young people because they give a sort of mortality, edgy way of looking at the world.
Mark Quinn
Jeremy, I honestly understand the whole edginess of this and the counter-culturalness of this, that conspiracy theories are almost by definition something which is against the official explanation. But is that always the case? I mean, are you saying that, let's say a government can itself not be guilty of a conspiracy theory. I'll just take you back to your 2003 and I'm just old enough to remember the dodgy dossier.
Is that, where does that fall into your definitions? Is that not a conspiracy theory? There's a theory that Saddam Hussein is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. It turns out not to be the case. How, how, what do we do? Where do we place the dodgy dossier in this spectrum?
Jeremy Hayward
Well, I mean, the conspiracy theorists would say that's a ploy and that was just a ploy for some other planning. So that would be the like traditional conspiracy theory. The theory itself that we're being sold, according to this definition, I mean, that's the official explanation. You know, we're going into war because of this and that. So that wouldn't be a conspiracy theory because that’s the official explanation although it does involve a level of people conspiring.
Mark Quinn
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Hayward
It gets a bit technical, and for this very reason, there isn't an agreed academic definition. That's why I tend to keep it vague, you know, shadowy people, small groups, plotting things aren't as they seem, something like that. But the countercultural nature, I think, is relevant for adolescents.
Mark Quinn
Yeah, and of course, one of the things that counter-culturalists will do is to say that the officials, the officialdom, are, that's, you know, somehow out to get us. So, they're saying that those guys there are the conspirators. Yeah.
Jeremy Hayward
Yes. Yeah, not just them, but all experts, some people, scientists, teachers, the state, what you learn in textbooks. I mean, so depending on the conspiracy theory, we're all a part of it in education for some.
Mark Quinn
So can you, this is an education podcast. It's been an education already, I think, Jeremy, but how do you see this relating to the work of teachers and why is this currently impacting the teachers who might be listening to the staffroom podcast?
Jeremy Hayward
Well, on various levels. I mean, I think if we put the whole thing together, missed disinformation, fake news, videos and conspiracy theories, its impact can be seen on lots of different levels. You know, there's the personal social level. We've seen people sort of making fake sexualized videos of fellow pupils and things like that and circulating that and that's horrible.
I mean, just two weeks ago, we had the red, blue schools war going on across the country and schools having to give warnings and set classrooms out at different times to prevent this.
We saw the Andrew Tate phenomena a few years ago when people came back to school in September. So young people have got this world looking at their phone, looking at these short form videos, this content and it's spilling out. It's spilling out to wider society, but it's spilling out in the classroom. I think at the moment, we're probably more at the beginning of the impact on this. We're seeing attitudes change towards things like feminism. We're seeing, you know, that Gen Z and younger people are less progressive than older generations when it comes to issues around gender equality.
So, we're seeing it on lots of levels. On the personal level, it's impacting schools in terms of bullying and so on. We're seeing it on an attitudinal level as well. And I think we're kind of at the beginning almost of a battle for the war on truth when you've got governments pushing out fake videos, AI altered images.
The question of what really happened and what is happening in the world is going to be a kind of battleground over the coming times. And I think that schools will have a massive role to play, even if it doesn't necessarily impact the school, it's impacting society as well.
Elaine Long
Jeremy, big question, and I may regret asking this. Do you think there is one truth in the 1st place? Would you argue for that?
Jeremy Hayward
No, not necessarily. So, I mean, I want the citizens, the young citizens in our school to be critical, to not accept everything they're here, to question things. And I think, you know, that's what we should be, encouraging young people to actually question things. So, no, I'm not saying that there is one singular truth. You know, if we think about history education, there's lots of accounts, there's evidence, some may be better and more evidence than others but it's hard to say there's a single story or a single narrative.
No, so I'm not advocating that. I'm advocating for critical thinking, but we need to get the appropriate level. You know, conspiracy theories sometimes go off the extreme. You know, all scientists are lying. Everything on the BBC is a lie. All mainstream media is a lie. No, they're not and you're taking sort of a virtue like critical thinking and scepticism and you're taking it to an extreme.
So yeah, I'm not advocating that there's a single truth and it's always there. You must listen to what the governments and big pharma say. I'm not advocating that. I'm advocating that we develop critical thinking in young people so that they do question things, but appropriately question.
Elaine Long
I'm sure we have lots of listeners thinking about how they're impacted by this manipulated sort of digital landscape that we're all living in, whether that's family members thinking certain things or friends thinking certain things. But, you know, probably most importantly, teachers who are facing this every day in the classroom and it's very difficult to know what to do when you're practically challenged with this. So, what does your research suggest about the best ways to tackle disinformation, misinformation and conspiracy theories?
Jeremy Hayward
Yes, well, it's not my research. I've done very little empirical research on this. So, I'm sort of drawing on the research and the studies of others. And I think they need kind of slightly separate treatments. So, the misinformation, disinformation is a separate area that often goes in line with media literacy training. And there is an extensive literature on this.
My only concern about it is it's nearly all out of date because they do things like, you know, when you read a headline, you need to go to alternative sources to cheque that headline. So, you know, that will be called sort of vertical scrolling or horizontal scrolling, looking other places. But people, young people aren't reading headlines. They're watching videos. So, it's changing. And there is literature emerging, you know, the seeing is believing that it's just very powerful when you see video, even if it's fake. And there's a few studies even by one by recently by Lewandowski from University of Bristol. Even if you're told it's a fake video, once you've seen it, the attitudinal change is still there.
So, there are things that we can do. We can make people aware of the sources, validity, trust, send them to reliable sources, make them meta aware of when they're being manipulated and played upon the emotions, you know, how this all works, the sort of the scheme of it, why people push disinformation. So, there's lots of sort of ways we can make people more resilient.
I do worry, though, we're always slightly paying catch up and that the AI generated video is a new phenomena that is kind of we're right on the threshold. So, a lot of the previous training teachers might come in and go to, you know, the Oak Academy and download the media literacy lessons and they're kind of slightly dated. They're talking about some headlines and things like that, which things have moved on a little bit from there.
Conspiracy theories, how do we respond to that? I think that's really interesting. Most of my work at the moment is what do you do when a student raises one? You know, what do you do with, say, if a student starts talking about a Holocaust denial video that they've watched or in some cases talking about the flat earth or talking about 9-11 and things? How do you respond? Proactively.
That's a different question. And that is a difficult question as well, because there are a couple of case studies where schools try to explore conspiracy theories to make people resilient, and they end up actually spreading conspiracy theories.
In terms of responding, what can teachers do? I try and get teachers to think of three lenses. Sometimes the right thing to do is argue and to correct, and there are some tools and things that you can use for that and key phrases. Sometimes you've got to think, am I just spreading? Am I doing the work here? You know,
people are sort of putting anti-Semitic tropes out there, or let's have a big discussion of it. No, let's close that down and have a chat with the student.
And the thing I think that sometimes teachers need to be aware of, if someone is very deep, and it doesn't happen a lot in schools, but sometimes it does, but it often happens with a relative or friend, if they're kind of quite far down the rabbit hole. It's quite existential. This is a real part of who they are and they're really committed to it.
Arguing facts and details may not be effective and you need to, you may even end up pushing them further because they'll just go home and research and next time this comes up in the classroom, I'll have these answers back. And the approach may be different. Again, it's more one-on-one approach. So, my guidance for teachers at the moment is, yeah, you know, how do you respond? Have a think, yes, sometimes argue sometimes take it one-on-one with the student and then try to reach out for them and get them to see themselves as a critical thinker, not just a conspiracy believer.
Elaine Long
It's really interesting because it's almost counter-intuitive, isn't it? Because I think of the media training I received 20 years ago, you know, when I was first a teacher, it would be woefully inadequate now. One of the things I would pride myself on as a teacher is I know the facts, I'm the authority in the room. So I'm going to put down these conspiracies with facts because I have this information, but it sounds like from what you're saying that it's kind of counterintuitive in a way that actually just giving people more facts can cause people to double down on their beliefs rather than question them.
And it's just really, really difficult. I can imagine from your work with teachers up and down the country, they're experiencing some really difficult situations. I wonder if you could just give us a few examples of some of the things teachers might be experiencing.
Jeremy Hayward
Well, yes, I mean, it's sort of explicit conspiracy theories in the classroom, they are raised and so research by Lee Jerome at Middlesex University and my own research at UCL has shown that teachers are experiencing this. You know, in Lee Jerome, it was 62% of teachers. There's a big survey of about 5000 had encountered conspiracy theories. My own research we involved in at IOE was like 90%, but that took place during COVID when conspiracy theories were very common.
Yeah, so it's not always explicit that it is a conspiracy theory. So sometimes it may be, it may be climate scepticism, you know, and whether that's a big conspiracy or not, I'm not sure. Teachers are definitely encountering issues around gender and gender equality. And that's not always a conspiracy theory. Sometimes it is.
So sometimes there's theories such as cultural Marxism, which students may be even gone down that far down the manosphere to think that feminism is a plot to depopulate the West. Ideas of gender equality are a lie that have been propagated for reasons to weaken us.
These are, you know, genuine beliefs that are out there online. And whether the young person holds that deeply or just has a sort of learnt some phrases and negative attitudes towards women, it's not always clear. But teachers are encountering that. They're encountering strange attitudes around gender.
There's some stuff coming out a little bit here and there on diet. A lot of young people got influencers telling them kind of what to eat, what not to eat. So, we know that young boys up and down the country are taking a large amount of protein shakes and things like that and there have been these influencers who are pushing strange ideas about natural diets and raw meats and things like that. And that then starts to sometimes echo into it. People think there's a conspiracy around seed oils. They're being pushed, they're full of hexane, it affects your brain. So that's sort of on the fringes a little bit that schools are having to deal with in the classroom.
I've been speaking to some teachers recently and there seems to be a phenomena of Holocaust denial videos, fake images of like people playing the piano, having a nice time in concentration camps, and they're being circulated on young people's feeds, and they're sort of raising this in the classroom as well. So that's just a sort of a loose spread of some of the sort of more conspiratorial ideas.
But then other ideas are almost accepted as truth now. Like, for example, outside of London, I do sort of polling with teachers and things. You know, many people believe Princess Diana was killed by the royal family, including many teachers.
Most teachers believe that violent crime in London is really high or out of control, even though in violent crime, you're less likely to be a victim in London than you are in the rest of the country. But these videos have just become so ubiquitous online that it's there.
So the misinformation, disinformation is just broad and Yeah, it's hard to know quite how it's impacting individual teachers because it's almost a part of culture now.
Elaine Long
Given the ubiquity of this and the seriousness of it, because, you know, some of the things you said there are genuinely quite horrifying. And I also find it horrifying this week when I found out that a lot of Gen Z males thought you should have obey in the in the marriage vows as well.
I'm pretty horrified by all of that and I recognise that my horror and my moral outrage is going to get us nowhere. But do you think, given the seriousness of this, are teachers are getting enough support to deal with all of this? Because it sounds like you know, the teaching standards and teacher training was designed for the analogue world, right? But now teachers are consistently navigating this manipulated digital landscape. So it's, are they getting enough support for this? Is it prioritised enough?
Jeremy Hayward
No, I would argue absolutely not. And I think we still have, and I know the curriculum view, which we may discuss, is going to address a little bit of this, but we still have a curriculum very much geared for the analogue world. And most people, the information sphere that they're living in is online. And not just their information sphere, this is sort of their reality, how they present themselves is online. And I don't think we are adequately preparing young people for a life online, where that's where they're going to get their information from, that's where we're going to project themselves, apply for their jobs and everything.
I don't think we are preparing at all. And I think, you know, a couple of lessons here and there in PSHE is really not adequate. I think we need a real reform of the curriculum. And every subject needs to talk a lot more about why we believe what we believe. What is our evidence base? What is, you know, reliable authority in our field? And every subject needs to. I've been arguing this, we've had the knowledge turn. Let's learn lots of knowledge, which we need.
We need kind of the epistemic turn, it's a bit of a fancy word, but we need to spend more time thinking about why we believe what we believe. And less time, just memorise these facts, because I don't think that memorising the facts helps you when you see a new video that's been manipulated.
Mark Quinn
Could you just go, sorry, Jeremy, just on that last point about why geography teachers believe in geography, for example, is that what you're talking about? Is that what you're talking about, the epistemic turn for this, that we should be putting into the curriculum why these things matter, why it's important to study geography, why it's important to study drama, why it's important to study citizenship.
Jeremy Hayward
Yes, well, I think it's not just why, but it's also just the evidence base. You spend longer looking at what the evidence base is, rather than making claims about tourism does this or doesn't do this. You spend longer thinking, right, this is the evidence and this is why people make these claims. So, in science as well, you know, obviously perhaps more time on experiments, but also just thinking about why
scientists are making these claims, what, you know, drilling deeper into the data a bit more and looking at what supports the claims.
Mark Quinn
Yeah, so I mean, I remember many occasions when I was teaching, being confronted by a controversial issue in the classroom. It was often, you know, I might be trying to teach them something and the child would directly counter me and then suddenly I would find that at least half of the class agreed with this other person.
And I just had this debate in my hands, which was far from what I actually wanted to get through, you know, because I wasn't going to examine them on that at the end of the at the end of the week. And so I do absolutely feel for, you know, teachers in classrooms now, you mentioned gender equality, for example, you can just imagine a mixed class of 15 and 16 year olds or whatever and quite a few of them, not all of them, but quite a few people in the room agreeing with this very controversial view that women shouldn't be allowed to drive, for example. That came up again this week, I think, didn't it?
I mean, you gave a kind of three steps or three choices that teachers might make in these sorts of situations, but you talked about sometimes you have to argue and correct some facts. Sometimes you've got to close down an argument. Sometimes you've got to take the person aside and kind of try to not argue with them at the fact of the at the level of their facts, but maybe at the level of where they get their facts from. If I'm in a classroom full of 30 kids, Is there a fourth step I can take at that point, Jeremy? What would you advise me to do then?
Jeremy Hayward
Well, I don't know what that fourth step would be, but I mean, I could give more detailed advice in each of those steps in that, you know, sometimes arguing is right. I mean, sometimes these things come up and you want to do it on your terms rather than the students. So, you might want to say, let's come back to that next week, although the curriculum doesn't allow you time for that.
So there's one technique that is quite useful at the moment. I have slight unease about it, but AI, which young people trust, often more than their family, is itself a tool for combating mis and disinformation. So, you can type in, you know, was the US in government involved in planning 911 and it'll give you a detailed response. Most days are saying, absolutely not. There are conspiracies around this, but we blah, blah, blah.
Are seed oils bad for you? You know, long people thinking sunflower oils full of hexane. It'll say, no, there is no evidence that seed oils are bad for you. Some influencers suggesting it causes inflammation or it contains hexane. However, there are no scientific papers. And that's showing that there's some studies that show that's actually very, very powerful when they see AI correct disinformation. So I give this example in my teacher CPD. The teachers have all voted that it's true that crime and violent crime in London is really high. And then I type it into AI. And it just says, you know, crime, violent crime in London has been coming down for many years. It's lower than most of the country. There are exceptions. Other forms of crime, such as mobile phone theft is very high. And it's very powerful.
So that's one technique, something they could draw on, but you want to practise that first. And I have ethically drawing on AI. Can some teachers feel more comfortable than others? The closing down and chatting. I think sometimes, particularly if the student seems to know a lot, yeah, I mean, it can go backwards unless you have a lot of confidence in that field, it's best to sort of give a sort of look, there's a lot of nonsense online. There's a lot of misinformation. People are spreading lots of things online. We're going to have to move on, but I'll come back to it another time. Sort of giving what I call a soft direction away with some, what's called a logic based argument, like lots of people are lying. And then chatting to the student may be better.
And as you say, my advice for that is this kind of thing of same siding, which is if someone is very, many conspiracy theories, misinformation is often about
us and them, London or not London, men and women, different religions and so on. And then, like you say, if you've got a group of boys that think that, you know, women should obey their husbands, going in aggressively, sometimes they'll dig in. It's an identity protective belief. No, I'm going to argue. You're not going to change their mind if they watched 20 hours of an influencer, you're not going to say one phrase and they think, oh yes, I was wrong.
You're better in that one-on-one chat to just say, look, I think along these lines, it's never been as hard as it has to be a man today. You know, traditional jobs have disappeared. There's much more social media pressure about how you have to look and how to exercise and what you need to eat and behave like this and be like me.
Women have always had these pressures, telling them what to behave, what to wear, not what to wear, how to behave, be flirty, don't be flirty. There's always been there. And we're all just trying to make sense of this new world we're living in. We're all struggling. We don't have to see it in terms of the gender war. We're just all humans that want to have a nice life and want the same things. And we're all trying to make sense of the world.
So, it's this thing called same siding, where you don't see it in terms, you try to make them not see it in terms of us and them, but somehow that we're all in the same side. And that's an approach I recommend on the kind of one-on-one conversations. It can work in a class situation as well. But on one-on-ones, it's less identity threatening. And you can hopefully try and puncture the sort of us and them, in-group and out-group way of seeing the world.
Elaine Long
A.
Mark Quinn
Sorry, Elaine, you go ahead.
Elaine Long
I was just thinking, I suppose also, you know, teachers aren't individual actors in this, but it's also about the culture of leadership in the school in tackling all these things, because I'm just thinking about the manosphere and how that will manifest in behaviours and attitudes more widely in schools. For example, female teachers,
may find things more difficult than the male teachers.
And then that requires a significant leadership effort to make sure that female teachers are being treated with as much respect as male teachers in school. There are all sorts of implications for it. And what struck me about what you were saying was
the attitude lingering, even though you might, you might be able to challenge the thing itself. You might be able to say this is misinformation, disinformation, this is a conspiracy theory, but the attitudes lasting and manifesting in the culture of school.
And it seems to me there's an important job of leadership there as well in schools, but a very difficult job because I think back to when I was a sort of leader as well as I will have an assembly on that because, you know, we've noticed that the year 10 boys are thinking this is what we'll do in assembly and that will solve it. And that seems to me woefully inadequate now as well, particularly the challenge of parents as well, because of course parents might be exhibiting these views as well.
I'm just interested in where you have seen that leadership is strong in this in school level. Are there any particular things that you've seen?
Jeremy Hayward
That's slightly, because I don't spend a lot of time interviewing senior leadership. I think schools, they have their hands tied a little bit because of the curriculum that we've got, that this, you know, where is the space to do all this? You know, you've just got to keep going with content. You can't fall behind in any topic, you know, GCSEs are coming, you've got to get the results, you've got judged on standards. So I think schools' hands are tied a bit and some of them are doing good things in the fringes.
But yes, it's hard to say. I mean, I've been a chair of governors myself and I have spoken to some head teachers and often it is the parents that you'll have parents that are pushing difficult beliefs, sometimes conspiracy beliefs. I've encountered
four teachers, including head teachers, who have got flat earthers in their school, genuine. So these aren't kids being edgy. They're people whose parents clearly believe the world is flat. And, you know, if you chat to them, they spend a disproportionate amount of time with these parents, because these parents have kind of got agendas. They're mistrustful.
So it's difficult. So, I think schools are aware of these difficulties, how much time you can devote to it in the current curriculum and our current Ofsted inspection framework, I think they are very, very limited. And at the moment, we're just sort of doing things around the edges.
Mark Quinn
So, you've been, you've mentioned curriculum a few times, Jeremy, as if you want to talk about the curriculum a bit more. So, we've had a curriculum assessment review, we've had a recent white paper, this mentions in that of critical literacy. Do you see the, well, do you see that the policy makers are getting serious in this field? Are you optimistic for improvements in this area? Where do you stand?
Jeremy Hayward
I was broadly welcoming of that aspect of the curriculum review. I don't think it was radical enough. I think it's not quite a curriculum fit for the digital age yet, but they have, it comes out as one of the sort of headlines that we're going to have. There's so many terms for this critical digital literacy, media literacy, critical media literacy. There's so many overlapping terms, but that's going to be sort of embedded more in citizenship in English and they're talking about computer studies as well.
I think it probably, like I've said before, we also need this across the curriculum. Every subject needs to spend some time on this. You know, I would have science do some misconceptions, common misconceptions online in science and, you know, debunk them. Make it very interesting, watch some interesting clips of people thinking they've invented a perpetual motion machine where you get these little things and then they could say why it doesn't work and so on. So, I think it could be a lot more far reaching than it is, but it's a big ask for teachers, isn't it? Because How were you supposed to keep on top of all of this as well?
This is such a changing climate. You know, new things come up and people have got different feeds. I made a joke that I took in my talks that I went on to TikTok to see what all the young kids are watching, but it all seemed to be about IBS and lower back pain. That, you know, we're living in very different information spheres and it's a big ask for a teacher to be an expert in their subject and also an expert in debunking or challenging misinformation and so on.
So, broadly welcoming, I think it lacked a bit of ambition. We always seem to be behind the times because this is the curriculum we're going to have for the next 10 years. And I imagine, I mean, I may be wrong, but I imagine that the issues of AI fake generated videos, which have really emerged only in the last couple of years. And there's some more research coming out from the Commission on Countering Online Conspiracies in Schools going to be published in a couple of weeks.
And young people saying the number of times that they've been fooled online and also the number of times that their parents have been fooled in the last year. And this is growing with the beginning of a real growing problem. So I would want the curriculum and really ask those people writing it to be more ambitious, to think 10 years ahead. What are we likely to be then? And what skills does a young person need to try and work out the truth in highly deceptive environments?
Mark Quinn
It seems to be it's the only game in town though, Jeremy, right? If we haven't got the curriculum right, or the curriculum isn't malleable enough to allow teachers to master their stuff so they can teach, you know, misconceptions in science, for example, as you suggested, then all the teachers are left with are kind of tactics to deal with an event happening in their classroom, you know, and as you were sort of suggesting earlier, you know, those tactics, you know, help you in the moment, but they don't actually correct the mind of the young person, right? It doesn't it doesn't actually put them on a better path. It might, if you're lucky, get them to look at some of their sources and again, they might they might question themselves.
But basically, you're just trying to get through the next 20 minutes of your lesson, aren't you? Or trying to, you know, without losing face too much. But the curriculum gives you an opportunity to get back to the roots of the problem or the roots of these issues and say, no, the earth cannot be flat because, you know, or you know, whatever they choose your conspiracy and prove it from first principles, I guess.
But it seems to me that that's really, really crucial. And so there are obviously massive implications for teachers, initial teacher educators, people like ourselves working in early career teacher development. This is, this is, there's a moving target here and it's very hard to hit it, isn't it?
Jeremy Hayward
Yes, I agree. But I think there's so much talent out there that we could be sort of, at the moment, testing, you know, proactive. What is a really interesting sequence of lessons in history, looking at historical conspiracy? What is a really interesting sequence of lessons in geography, looking at climate change denialism? What is an interesting sequence of lessons in citizenship in in English.
So I think that could exist. It would have to be regularly updated and looked at again. But I think there's potential there, but the curriculum, as you say, needs to change so that it's on the curriculum. And now we can, rather than just be reactive to those moments, we can be proactive and really focus about what are the intellectual virtues that would make a young person resilient? You know, how does the young person recognise when they may be being manipulated? And you can do really interesting lessons, watch some videos and get people to analyse their emotions and then think about and then get them to do checking themselves, work out what websites they've been to, to check. what is reliable, what other things? I think there's some really interesting sequence of lessons we can do that will give people a level of resilience.
Elaine Long
That's good. I'm pleased to hear that. The optimism there, and I really liked what you said about raising meta-awareness, in young people and probably the responsibility for the teachers to, to be kind of referring back to how they know things and how they've learned things themselves. So that sort of re reflexivity in that sense.
So there are things we can do that don't sort of, that are possible even in the face of quite prescriptive curriculums, that there are lots of opportunities there. And it's, I mean, that's super interesting as well to get involved in that sort of curriculum. And maybe actually through doing those things, You do actually strengthen your own knowledge and the quality of your teaching in the classroom as well, I think.
Jeremy Hayward
I think so. And all of it sort of points to kind of critical thinking, isn't it? So it's not just the sort of depositing of knowledge, which teachers don't do. Obviously, they are brilliant teachers, everyone working there, but there's so much knowledge. There's a lot of get this down, memorise this. Whereas now we're doing a lot more, well, hopefully we can do more critical thinking.
And it shows so countries like Finland, that have deliberately moved their curriculum towards critical thinking, specifically, well, one of the reasons is that they get a lot of Russian misinformation where they are. And the research is showing that the young people are there, there's some papers showing that they are more resilient to misinformation. And so it kind of does work, but you need that whole curriculum buy-in.
Elaine Long
It's interesting. One thing that's not a conspiracy, and you heard it here first, is that we do definitely give every guest on the podcast a post-it note. That is the absolute truth. So here is your post-it note. I'm going to pass you it now. What would you like to write on it and where would you like to stick your post-it note?
Jeremy Hayward
I mean, this is education. I can't do it to the Arsenal football manager or anything like that. It has to be education.
Elaine Long
You can't. Well, you can if you want, but yes, but probably education. I think the Arsenal football manager might get enough. Actually, I have no idea how Arsenal are doing at the moment, but I'm sure he gets, I'm sure,
Jeremy Hayward
And we're doing very well. We're doing very well, but...
Mark Quinn
They're doing far too well, far too well.
Elaine Long
Okay, well, I'm sure he gets lots of feedback anyway, so he doesn't need a post-it note
Jeremy Hayward
So it would probably be to the Education Secretary, I think, Bridget, or even the person who was in charge of the teams that are writing the curriculum, because it's happening as we're speaking in rooms around the country, people are starting to write the new curriculum. And just urge, because this is the thing that will shape what teachers are doing for the next 10 years until the curriculum is reviewed again and just give them the urgency that this needs to be a curriculum fit for the digital age.
And you need to think 10 years ahead of what the challenges are likely to be and give that flexibility. So it doesn't all have to be prescriptive. You know, I would put much more in, you know, the epistemic turn, have critical media literacy throughout, but give teachers flexibility in the curriculum so that, you know, we can adapt and we can have those conversations and we can do some really interesting work in developing the kind of intellectual virtues, the habits of the mind that young people need to make sense of the kind of crazy world and the crazy information sphere that we're now letting in.
Elaine Long
Yeah, I really like that. And I really like what you say about, you know, building children's resilience to misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, because it sounds like it is possible, but it's only possible if we have a curriculum that allows space and time in which to do that. And really identifies it as a huge priority. It's a lot for a post-it note, but I like that we're going to stick that on the desks of all the curriculum writers, front and centre, maybe right in the middle of their laptop screens. They cannot open their laptop screens and do any planning without seeing curriculum appropriate for the digital age, I like that.
Mark Quinn
We're not paranoid, that is a bell ringing in the background, telling us that we've come to the end of a completely fascinating chat, Jeremy. Thank you for it. I hope that the soy milk didn't curdle in your tea and that you managed to enjoy a couple of bites of Elaine's birthday cake. Thank you for coming into our staffroom. You'll be very welcome back at any other time. If you think of other anecdotes you'd like to share us or new conspiracy theories you need to lance, we'd be we'd be very willing listeners for that. But in the meantime, thank you very much.
Jeremy Hayward
Thank you and also, thank you all the listeners and teachers out there. It's a really difficult job, and I think you're all brilliant. So, thank you.
Mark Quinn
Our thanks go to Jeremy Hayward for sharing a tea with soy milk and a slice of birthday cake with us in the staffroom this week. Jeremy is a lecturer in Citizenship Education here at UCL.
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
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