Every month, Shane Leaning and Chris Scora sit down to unpack what has come up on the Education Leaders podcast, and this live catch-up covers two of the season's most talked-about conversations. The main event is a robust back-and-forth on Claire Badger's episode, "Do Schools Really Kill Creativity?", where Chris admits he needed three listens to get past his initial discomfort with Claire's certainty before finding real common ground. They also revisit Jim Knight's "Stop Telling Teachers What to Do" and discuss why his coaching-over-directing approach has struggled to gain traction in UK schools despite making obvious sense on paper.
You'll hear why Chris pushed back on Claire's definition of creativity as needing to be both "novel and useful," and why he worries that scaffolding can tip into constraint when applied under classroom time pressure. Shane and Chris also work through the tension between aspiration and pragmatism in education, using the IB's diploma programme as a case study, and close with reflections on Jim Knight's ideas about listening, agency and the "helpful bully" trap leaders can fall into. If you've ever wondered whether structure helps or hinders creative thinking in your classroom, this conversation will give you plenty to weigh up.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
Education Leaders Podcast Network
Do Schools Really Kill Creativity? with Claire Badger
Stop Telling Teachers What to Do with Jim Knight
What Can Leaders Learn from Architects? with Phil Idle
Britain's Strictest Head Teacher with Katharine Birbalsingh
Episode Partners
","author_name":"Shane Leaning | School Leadership & Organisational Development Coach"}