Sarah Cottingham - Ausubel’s Meaningful Learning in English - London

In this episode I’m talking to Sarah Cottingham. Sarah is Associate Dean at Ambition Institute, author of Ausubel's Meaningful Learning In Action, a Professional Development Consultant and former English teacher.

I was really eager to speak with Sarah after reading her work about Ausubel’s theory and applying it to recent discussions about how English can be approached in a more conceptual manner. Added to this is the requirement that every subject be approached conceptually within the IB framework but with limited practical guidace about how to implement such a curriculum.

We discuss:

- What a subsumer is and how secondary departments should plan with them in mind

- What the subsumers Sarah believes we should teach Secondary school English students are

- What Sarah thinks of the IB MYP 'Key Concepts', 'Related Concepts' and ‘Global Contexts’

- How an English subsumer could be fed with detail over the course of a secondary education

- What an advance organiser is

- And finally, how subsumers interact with retrieval practice

Thanks so much to Sarah for giving up her time to discuss this brilliantly written book in more detail as well as her wider contribution to the conceptual teaching discussion.

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Links:

Ausubel’s Meaningful Learning in Action Book

Sam Gibbs and Zoe Hellman’s The Trouble with English and how to Address It

David Didau’s Making Meaning in English