This Week with EdSurge

EdSurge Podcast

This Week with EdSurge is the essential weekly podcast that takes you past the headlines and deep into the fascinating, fast-evolving world of education. Hosted by Ira Apfel alongside our talented team of EdSurge contributors, each episode cuts through the hype to explore the human stories shaping our schools—from the rise of artificial intelligence in the classroom to student well-being, shifting policies, and the future of teaching. Whether you are a classroom educator, a district leader, an edtech innovator, or simply a curious mind, this show delivers the rigorous, empathetic, and trusted journalism you need to understand where education is headed.

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494 episodes
Updated Wednesday

Episodes494

Newest first

Jul 25, 2023 · 57 min
How Podcasting Is Changing Teaching and Research
Scholars have taken to podcasting, interviewing each other about ideas and sharing their favorite areas of knowledge. Even when audiences are small, this new way of spreading information to a broader public is challenging traditional notions of what counts as research, and who gets to be an authority.
Jul 18, 2023 · 48 min
Why Class Diversity Can Be ‘Invisible’ at Colleges
As colleges think about diversity on their campuses, they need to consider issues of class as well as race. Because especially among Black students at selective colleges, there are many types of experiences, argues University of Pennsylvania professor Camille Charles.
Jul 11, 2023 · 52 min
Using AI to Test Which Teaching Materials Work
A group of researchers developed a tool that uses AI to test and improve digital course materials. On this week’s EdSurge Podcast, two of those researchers talk about how their project won first place in a $1 million education XPrize competition, and what it says about how to best use AI in education.
Jul 4, 2023 · 36 min
Making Children's Media about STEM More Inclusive
A Drexel University professor has been researching how to make children’s media more inclusive. And lately he’s been putting his ideas into practice as a creative producer of a new animated show on PBS for 3- to 6-year-olds.
Jun 27, 2023 · 50 min
Why Do Some Schools Get Better Quickly and Others Get Stuck?
“Why do some schools get better quickly, and others get stuck?” That question drove MIT professor of digital media Justin Reich to write a new book about what he’s learned as a teacher, edtech consultant and professor about making small regular improvements.
Jun 20, 2023 · 54 min
Should Schools Adopt ‘Cellphone Jails’?
When their school implemented a new policy requiring students to lock their phones in pouches during the school day, the students had some concerns. This week on the EdSurge Podcast, we share an episode of the student-produced Miseducation podcast that looks at the pros and cons of this unusual new approach to managing smartphone use at schools.
Jun 13, 2023 · 55 min
Has It Become Harder to Connect With College Students?
Since the pandemic, more professors are reporting they’re having trouble connecting with their students. That’s according to Bonni Stachowiak, dean of teaching and learning at Vanguard University of Southern California and host of the weekly podcast Teaching in Higher Ed. She shares other trends she’s seeing in teaching, and ways instructors are overcoming them.
Jun 6, 2023 · 52 min
Why Schools Should Teach Philosophy, Even to Little Kids
It’s important to nurture philosophical thinking in kids throughout school and college. So argues a philosophy professor who wrote a book that highlights the natural tendencies of kids to think like philosophers. When big, important questions arise, he says, parents and educators should treat kids like conversational equals.
May 30, 2023 · 31 min
How Instructors Are Adapting to a Rise in Student Disengagement (Encore Episode)
Professors are finding that they can’t just go back to teaching as they did before the pandemic and expect the same result. It takes more these days to hold student attention, and convince them to show up. Check out part two of our series reported from the back of large lecture classes to see how teaching is changing.
May 23, 2023 · 42 min
Will AI Chatbots Boost Efforts to Make Scholarly Articles Free?
For decades, proponents of open access scholarship have worked to make the research in scholarly journals freely readable to all. Will this moment of AI chatbots accelerate the effort?
May 16, 2023 · 31 min
How a Viral Video Sparked an Ongoing Discussion of Police in Schools
In 2015, a video went viral showing a white school resource officer violently flipping over a Black student in her desk and dragging her across the room before arresting her. It sparked a lawsuit against a vague South Carolina law that brings the criminal justice system into schools for minor offenses, and a nationwide discussion about systemic racism in school policing.
May 9, 2023 · 51 min
Is It Time to Rethink the Traditional Grading System?
A growing number of educators are wondering whether the grading system is hindering students rather than helping them learn. A new book explores alternative methods of marking papers in ways that encourage students to continually revise their work rather than quibble over which letter grade they deserve.
May 2, 2023 · 43 min
The Strange Past and Messy Future of 'Gifted and Talented.' (Encore Episode)
Sometime early in elementary school, kids are put on one of two paths: regular or gifted. Where did this idea come from? The answer goes back more than a 100 years, to a once-famous scholar named Lewis Terman. And it turns out his legacy, and the future of gifted programs, are still very much under debate.
Apr 25, 2023 · 44 min
Why All Teachers Need Training in Mental Health and Social Work
These days teachers need some basic training in a number of fields, including mental health and social work, to be effective in the classroom, argues Stephanie Malia Krauss, author of a new book about the importance of teaching holistically in this time of pandemic and social unrest.
Apr 19, 2023 · 27 min
What Does Gen Z Want From Education?
With every new generation of students there’s an effort to understand what’s different about them, and what motivates them as they enter society and the workforce. For Gen Z, a key factor is their skills in organizing on social media and interest in working across traditional partisan divides on issues like gun control, environmental protection and racial justice, argues Timothy Law Snyder, president of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, who calls them the “solidarity generation.”
Apr 11, 2023 · 46 min
Did Liberal Arts Colleges Miss a Chance to Become More Inclusive After the Pandemic?
Two longtime professors hoped the pandemic would reset the small liberal arts colleges where they taught. So they wrote a book-length manifesto laying out a vision for making the colleges more accessible — and true engines of social mobility. Three years into the pandemic, they reflect on how that’s going.
Apr 4, 2023 · 46 min
Is Improving Reading Instruction a Matter of Civil Rights?
A new documentary called 'The Right to Read' follows an educator and activist pushing to require schools to offer reading instruction that has been proven effective, calling it a matter of civil rights. But the main character in the film started out reluctant to participate. Here’s why, and what he hopes comes of the film.
Mar 28, 2023 · 37 min
An Inside Look at the ‘Student Disengagement Crisis’ (Encore Episode)
EdSurge visited large lecture classes to get a sense of what college feels like now that COVID is more under control after years of pandemic disruptions. Students and professors say that years of remote instruction—often referred to as ‘Zoom University’—has left many students more likely to get distracted by their devices, or to place less value on class, thinking they can get whatever is happening in classrooms on their own.
Mar 22, 2023 · 42 min
Inside the Quest to Detect (and Tame) ChatGPT
Even before ChatGPT was released, AI experts were exploring how to detect language written by this new kind of bot. On this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we talk with one of those experts, and others who are seeking to build guardrails to help educators successfully adapt to the latest AI technology.
Mar 14, 2023 · 1 hr 2 min
Lessons From This 'Golden Age' of Learning Science
Experts have described this as a 'golden age' of discovery in the area of learning science, with new insights emerging regularly on how humans learn. So what can educators, policymakers and any lifelong learner gain from these new insights?