In this episode, Brendan Lee speaks with Tom Bennett, the Director and founder of researchED and school behaviour advisor to the UK government. He shares his journey from running nightclubs to becoming an influential figure in the education sector and we find out how teaching saved him. Bennett delves into the challenges he faced as a teacher, how he got into writing about behaviour, and his eventual role as the UK’s Department for Education School Behavior Advisor. He highlights the integral role of setting clear behavioural expectations and embedding routines in creating a conducive learning environment. Tom also discusses the creation and implementation of a behaviour curriculum and the origins of researchED.
Resources mentioned:
- Tom Bennett – Running the Room: The Teacher’s Guide to Behaviour
- Greg Ashman
- Daisy Christodolou: Seven Myths about Education
- Daniel T. Willingham: Why Don’t Students Like School?
- Bill Rogers
You can connect with Tom:
Twitter: @tombennett71
Website: https://tombennetttraining.co.uk/
Substack: https://bennettt.substack.com/
You can connect with Brendan:
Twitter: @learnwithmrlee
Facebook: @learningwithmrlee
Website: learnwithlee.net
Support the Knowledge for Teachers Podcast:
https://www.patreon.com/KnowledgeforTeachersPodcast
About Tom Bennett
Tom Bennett was a teacher in the East End of London for thirteen years.
Currently he is the Director and founder of researchED, a grass-roots, teacher-led project that aims to make teachers research-literate and pseudo-science proof, and Tom Bennett Training.
Since 2013 researchED has grown from a tweet to an international conference movement that so far has spanned five continents and ten countries.
In 2009 he was made a Teacher Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University. From 2008-2016 he wrote a weekly column for the TES and TES online, and is the author of four books on teacher-training, behaviour management and educational research. In 2015 he was long listed for the GEMS Global Teacher Prize, and in that year was listed as one of the Huffington Post’s ‘Top Ten Global Educational Bloggers
In March 2017, Tom published an independent review of behaviour in schools. He recently chaired the Behaviour Management Group for the DfE and is currently their Independent Behaviour Advisor. He coaches teachers and schools internationally in all aspects of behaviour management and research integration. He currently leads the Department for Education’s Behaviour Hubs project, a £10 million program designed to reboot behaviour skills in disadvantaged schools throughout the UK.
In 2023 Tom was inaugurated as a Professor of School Behaviour at Academica University, Amsterdam.
In 2022 he was elected to the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in her final New Year Honours List, for services to education.
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