Future Learning Design Podcast (Tim Logan)

Dr. Katie Martin is the author of Learner-Centered Innovation and Chief Impact Officer at Altitude Learning. She teaches in the graduate school of Education at High Tech High and is on the board of Real World Scholars. Dr. Martin has worked in diverse contexts to learn, research, and support deeper learning for all students. She has served as a middle school English language arts teacher, instructional coach, and led the district’s new teacher mentoring program.

At the university, district and school level, Katie Aspires to create experiences that empower all learners to develop the knowledge, skills, and mindsets to thrive in a changing world. As a mom, she wants her kids to have learning experiences in school that build on their strengths and interests, and as an educator; she is passionate about making sure we do the same for all kids.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @katie-martin

Twitter: @katiemartinedu

Professor John Hattie is an award-winning education researcher and best-selling author with nearly 30 years of experience examining what works best in student learning and achievement. His influential 2008 book Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement is believed to be the world’s largest evidence-based study into the factors that improve student learning. Hailed by the Times Education Supplement as “teaching’s Holy Grail”, this ground-breaking study involved more than 80 million students from around the world and brought together 50,000 smaller studies.

Since 2011, John Hattie has been Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne. He is also the Chair of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). He is also past-president of the International Test Commission and Associate Editor of the British Journal of Educational Psychology and American Educational Research Journal.

John Hattie was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2011 Queen’s Birthday Honours, is a Fellow of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders and the American Psychological Association, and has published and presented over 500 papers, and supervised 190 thesis students.

John's notable publications include Visible Learning, Visible Learning for Teachers, Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn, Visible Learning for Mathematics, Grades K-12, 10 Mindframes for Visible Learning and, most recently, 10 Mindframes for Leaders.

Social Links

Twitter: @john_hattie

Dr. Samah Karaki is a neuroscientist, and the founding director of the Social Brain Institute. SBI is an NGO based in Geneva and operating in Europe and the Middle East where it implements research-based strategies to support individual and organisational change.

Samah's research focuses on the neuronal basis of stress affecting emotional and social behaviours. She is also interested in the neural basis of memory and unconscious processes, empathy, behavioural change and creativity. Combining scientific outreach and consultancy experience with neuroscience insights, Samah has delivered tailored seminars to over 2000 academics, corporate executives, entrepreneurs, scientific institutes as well as universities, teenagers at schools and consulted on change management programs for leaders in various organisations.

Samah also works on bridging the gender and racial gap in the field of STEM and is active in outreach and public communication of science. She has written about the psychology of empathy, creativity, implicit bias and gendered leadership.

In October, Samah's book Le travail en équipe (Dunod, 2021) was published, which addresses the factors that allow human groups to collaborate effectively, from the perspective of cognitive science.  

Samah received her BA in Biology at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, her Masters in Neuroscience from The University of Lyon, and earned her PhD in Neuroscience in 2011 from the University of Montpellier.

She also holds an Masters degree in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Montpellier and Max Planck Institute.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @samah-karaki

Julie Stern has nearly two decades experience facilitating adult learning, and feels lucky to partner with educators to take their practice to the next level. She is passionate about synthesizing the best of education research into practical tools that support educators in breaking free of the industrial model of schooling and moving toward teaching and learning that promotes sustainability, equity, and well-being. She is a four-time best-selling author of Learning that Transfers, Visible Learning for Social Studies, The On-Your-Feet-Guide to Learning Transfer and Tools for Teaching Conceptual Understanding, Elementary and Secondary. She is a certified trainer in Visible Learning Plus and Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction. 

Julie is also a James Madison Constitutional Fellow and taught social studies for many years in Washington, DC and her native Louisiana. She moves internationally every few years with her husband, a US diplomat, and her two children.

You can find further info and resources at Julie's website is edtosavetheworld.com.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @julieharrisstern

Twitter: @JulieHStern

Wakanyi Hoffman is a storyteller, author, keynote speaker specialized in ubuntu philosophy, a scholar of indigenous knowledge, and narrative weaver of wisdom in AI. She was born and raised in Kenya before embarking on an adventure around the world and has so far lived in 8 countries on 4 continents. 

In response to the limited presence of African stories by African storytellers in children’s literature, Wakanyi founded the African Folktales Project, an ongoing open-sourced resource of indigenous wisdom and knowledge for school children. Her diverse intercultural experiences have enriched her perspective on the human condition, while her commitment to cross-cultural knowledge sharing brings added value to her current academic fellowship appointment at The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. 

She is the author of many stories including Sala: Mountain Warrior (2024) and The Twelve Days of Christmas Safari.

Wakanyi sits on many boards, such as the Kenya Education Fund, an organization dedicated to offering high school education to marginalized, gifted children. Additionally, her advisory role at The Contentment  Foundation underscores her dedication to global well-being. She is also a valued board member at Seeds of Wisdom, championing indigenous elders’ wisdom and knowledge exchange and is also a co-founder of HumanityLink.Org, a global digital communication solutions system for marginalized populations. Wakanyi is a curation partner on the Compassion Bot, a new AI revolution in conversations with compassion.  

Wakanyi is a graduate of University College London (UCL), where her thesis proposed integrating indigenous knowledge into global education systems. She also teaches a summer course at Brooklyn College, and her storytelling Curriculum is used at Presidio Graduate School for teachers training as climate advocates. 

Wakanyi is also a mother to four global nomad kids and together with her husband, they currently reside in The Netherlands. 

Social Links

Website: https://www.wakanyihoffman.com/

LinkedIn: @wakanyi-hoffman - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wakanyi-hoffman-77a9671a4/

Instagram: @waksnl - https://www.instagram.com/waksnl/

“Perhaps the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.” This is a quote from the paediatrician, Rachel Naomi Remen, that my guest this week quotes in her fantastic new book The Impossible Question of Living Well: How do we hold on to what matters, while also knowing how to let go? Dr Helen Street has been banging the drum that living well should be a priority of educational institutions for years, but more importantly, that this is not a question of individual ‘hacks to happiness’ as she talks about in this episode, but a fundamental rethinking of how much context plays a role in enabling or preventing possibilities for living well. It’s Helen’s second time on the podcast and I was so happy to be able to chat to her again about her . She is a social psychologist and educator and has worked extensively with schools around the world since 1999. She holds a position as Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, Graduate School of Education as well as adjunct research consultant for the health department of Western Australia’s Centre for Clinical Interventions. Helen is the Founder and Co-Chair of the ⁠Positive Schools Initiative⁠ (PSI). Since it s launch in 2008, the Positive Schools Initiative has worked with over 26,000 educators from over 6000 schools and colleges; from around Australia and 15 other countries. Positive Schools Initiative is focused takes an evidence-based systems approach to building Contextual Wellbeing, positive mental health and resilience in school staff, parents and young people.

Helen is a bestselling author and speaker and her most recent book is The Impossible Question of Living Well: How do we hold on to what matters, while also knowing how to let go? She is also the author of the bestselling ⁠Contextual Wellbeing: Creating Positive Schools from the Inside Out⁠ (2018). Her work has been met with international acclaim and has been endorsed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama among many others.

Social Links

LinkedIn: ⁠@helen-street⁠

X: ⁠@drhelenstreet

Instagram: drhelenstreet

Web: https://www.helenstreet.com/

Wendy Kopp is CEO and Co-founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent organizations working to develop collective leadership to ensure all children have the opportunity to fulfill their potential.

Prior to launching Teach For All in 2007, Wendy founded and led Teach For America – which has proven to be an unparalleled source of long-term leadership for expanding opportunity for children in the United States – for 24 years. Wendy led the development of Teach For All to be responsive to the initiative of social entrepreneurs around the world who were determined to adapt this approach in their own countries.

Wendy is the author of A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn’t in Providing an Excellent Education for All (2011) and One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way (2000). She holds honorary doctorate degrees from 15 universities and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Wise Prize for Education (2021), Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2008) and the Schwab Foundation’s Outstanding Social Entrepreneur Award (2003).

Wendy holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and resides in New York City with her husband and their four children.

In the news

• Quartz, “The World in 50 Years”
• Diplomatic Courier, “To Remake the World, Let’s Rethink Education”
• NPR’s How I Built This With Guy Raz, “Teach For America: Wendy Kopp”
• The Wall Street Journal, “Copying Singapore’s math homework”
• TIME, “How to help national school systems succeed”
• The Economist, “High fliers in the classroom”
• Financial Times, “Philanthropy must shift its focus to the global education crisis”
• World Economic Forum, “Why it’s time for International Development to Put People First”

Social Links

LinkedIn: @wendy-kopp

Twitter: @wendykopp

Gidion Peters is the co-founder of the Dutch training & consultancy company Organize Agile specialized in organizational change, agile transformation, business agility and Agile HR. They serve their clients; wide-ranging and including Fortune 500 retail, finance, pharma, telecommunications and engineering organizations as well as the public sector. Their offices are located in New York and The Netherlands.

Gidion defines himself as an 'Organizational change specialist and entrepreneur' with a focus on applying Agile and Scrum outside of IT. He leads and consults on Agile transformations worldwide and frequently speak and publish on topics like Agile HR, Agile Portfolio Management, Agile Auditing, Agile Strategy and Agile Marketing & Sales.

He is the co-author of books Agile HR – the (un)missable role of HR in agile organizations, nominated for Management Book of the Year 2018, and Scrum in Actie (2015). In collaboration with HU University of Applied Sciences, Gidion and Organize Agile also published The 1st International State of Agile HR 2020, an overview of innovative practitioners of Agile HR across the globe.

He believes that everyone can be a changemaker, stable teams are the engine of innovation and the future belongs to flexible organizations.

In this episode, we discuss a cultural values map, which you can find here: Inglehart–Welzel cultural map of the world

Social Links:

LinkedIn: @GidionPeters

Twitter: @gidionpeters

Chris Menagé is an interdisciplinary educational leader, consultant, public speaker and the driving force behind e².

Chris has over 20 years’ international experience across private enterprise, government administration and education sectors. For the past 15 years, Chris has successfully applied his critical and systems thinking to educational contexts both in Australia & abroad.

Chris’ wide ranging experience, combined with living with different cultures around the world, is reflective of the transformative competencies educational systems seek to instil in students. He has first had knowledge of how interdependent networks create new possibilities and real opportunities. This unique perspective is ideally suited for our ever-changing world, allowing Chris to bring his fresh insight of future-focused, real world, engaging learning cultures to life – for schools, educators and students alike. His award winning track record at systems level, including a State board, NFP committees and local community groups as well as other practical initiatives, have all contributed to sustained industry wide learning and educational change through collaborative innovative practice.

Through e², Chris now activates partnerships, empowering others to focus on what they do best: co-creating transformative cultures of learning and practice.

Social Links: 

Twitter: @EducationalEco1

LinkedIn: @Christophemenage 

Simply trying to avoid or remove uncertainty and complexity from the lives of our young people (and our own) just isn't a viable strategy anymore! So what do we do instead? How might we intentionally build our adaptive capacity to thrive in the face of these dynamics?

Dr. Glenda Eoyang works with public and private organizations to help them thrive in the face of overwhelming complexity and uncertainty. She is a pioneer in the field of human systems dynamics (HSD), which she founded. Through Human Systems Dynamic Institute, Glenda uses her Models and Methods to help others see patterns in the chaos that surrounds them, understand the patterns in simple and powerful ways, and take practical steps to shift chaos into order. Her clients include Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Oxfam International, Canada School of Public Service, Cargill, Fraser Health Authority (BC), and Roche/Genentech.

Glenda’s latest book, with co-author Royce Holladay, is Adaptive Action: Leveraging Uncertainty in Your Organization (Stanford University Press, April 2013).

https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=21971

You can find out more about the Human Systems Dynamics Institute here: https://www.hsdinstitute.org/index.html

Social Links

LinkedIn: @glenda-eoyang - https://www.linkedin.com/in/glenda-eoyang-795786/

Carol Sanford (⁠⁠https://carolsanford.com/⁠⁠) is one of the most important thinkers of the last few decades. Like no-one else, her work calls out the deeply damaging effects of Behaviourism on all aspects of our lives, especially learning and education, and advocates for a living systems approach to business, education and community.

Carol’s latest book, ‘No More Gold Stars: Regenerating Capacity to Think for Ourselves’ is in some ways a synthesis of many of her most powerful ideas that she has developed through a lifetime of practice and learning from various indigenous and wisdom traditions. But it also calls out the damaging Behaviourist ideas that have ‘become ubiquitous in all our lives and institutions’ and undermined our trust in our abilities to know ourselves and think for ourselves - in all of our various and richly diverse ways. As Tyson Yunkaporta calls it in his amazing foreword to the book, “the sharp and pointy gift that keeps on giving”.

As someone living with ALS, Carol’s voice can be a little hard to understand at times, so if you would like it you will find a transcript link here: ⁠⁠https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wkr31QCA2MO5y9AynAq0L7Qb1bStlk0muFralyIfBeM/edit?usp=sharing⁠⁠ (as well as the automatic transcription on Spotify and some other podcast platforms).

As Carol says in Part One: “I use the 7 First Principles of Living Systems to be rigorous in examination, precise in focus and in order to rise up and venerate life. Otherwise, we fool ourself for the sake of our ego.” (https://carolsanford.medium.com/the-regenerative-education-system-and-practice-part-1-23ffcc86326e)

Part Two: 

Principle 1 - Engage with wholes

Principle 2 - Evoke essence

Part Three: 

Principle 3 - Realise individual potential

Principle 4 - Development of mind and beings

Principle 5 - Work within nestedness

Part Four: 

Principle 6 - Laser focus to nodal

Principle 7 - Regenerate energy fields

(Due to Medium paywall, I am also sharing all of the articles, Parts 1-4, here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12HWRFUbzmWpv4_k7JxLFgn7F99r8UG4o/view?usp=drive_link)

Carol refers to Alice Waters, chef and restauranteur who started the Edible Schoolyard movement at Berkeley.

⁠⁠https://search.worldcat.org/title/Edible-Schoolyard-:-a-universal-idea/oclc/1280875278⁠⁠

About Carol:

For four decades, Carol has worked with great leaders of successful businesses such as Google, DuPont, Intel, P&G, and Seventh Generation, educating them to develop their people and ensure a continuous stream of innovation that continually deliver extraordinary results.

Carol is a founder and designer of ⁠⁠The Regenerative Business Development Community⁠⁠ with lifetime members of almost 500 members, meeting in locations around the world and now online with leaders from multiple companies learning together in bi-quarterly events as well as an Annual ⁠⁠Regenerative Business Summit,⁠⁠ Carol is also a founder and designer of The Regenerative ⁠⁠Change Agent Development community⁠⁠, with members from three regions- Americas, EMEA, Deep Pacific with over 30 events a year in person and online with regenerative change agents learning about and creating change together.

Carol is the best-selling author of No More Gold Stars: Regenerating Capacity to Think for Ourselves, ⁠⁠The Regenerative Business⁠⁠: Redesign Work, Cultivate Human Potential, Achieve Extraordinary Outcomes; ⁠⁠The Responsible Entrepreneur⁠⁠: Four Game-Changing Archetypes for Founders, Leaders, and Impact Investors, ⁠⁠The Responsible Business⁠⁠: Reimagining Sustainability and Success;  and ⁠⁠No More Feedback⁠⁠: Cultivate Consciousness at Work. 

Her books have won over 15 awards so far and are required reading at leading business and management schools including Harvard, Stanford, Haas Berkeley and MIT.

Social Links

LinkedIn - @carolsanfordkeynote - https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolsanfordkeynote/

Instagram - @carolsanfordauthor - https://www.instagram.com/carolsanfordauthor/

Paul Magnuson attributes his progressive views on education to over twenty years of experience working in summer camps. He's done with command and control models that tend to favor conformity and compliance over self-regulation, whether it be for students or teachers. Paul leads educational research at Leysin American School and is a frequent blogger for the international school organizations, The International Educator and ECIS. Opportunities for workshops in innovative teaching and learning can be found at peakchallenges.ch.

In our conversation, Paul draws on inspiration from eduScrum, Agora schools and we talk about NEASC's ACE Learning accreditation protocol.

If you are interested in contributing lessons to Paul's collection (with Nicola Cosgrove) Pulling Agile into Education, please see the template in the link and write to them at pmagnuson@las.ch and ncosgrove@las.ch.

Social Links

Email: pmagnuson@las.ch

Twitter: @zebmagnuson

LinkedIn: @paulmagnuson

Charles Cassidy is the Director of the Evidence-Based Wisdom project. The site translates academic research regarding the science and psychology of wisdom into understandable and helpful resources for the wider public. Charles studied Physics at the University of Manchester in the UK. Following the development of educational research projects with The British Council across South America and Asia, Charles taught Mathematics and Science in London for 15 years. Since the start of the project, he has conducted interviews with many leaders in the field of wisdom research, compiled and translated many of the key papers from the field and created many public-facing resources, including video animations, info-graphics, articles and podcasts. He has also written about wisdom research for publications including Psychology Today and The Huffington Post, as well as appearing on talk radio across the United States.

Igor Grossmann is a social-cognitive scientist and world traveller. Born during the downfall of the Soviet Union on a day of October revolution, and growing up in Ukraine and Germany, ever since childhood he has been wondering about how people make sense of complex social challenges. He is the Director of the Wisdom and Culture Lab at the University of Waterloo, Canada.  He is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, Canada. His work has been published in such outlets as PNAS, Proceedings of the Royal Academy: B, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Psychology, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. His contributions have been recognized through numerous awards (e.g., SAGE Young Scholar award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science, APA Dissertation Award, USERN Prize for Social Sciences). Igor is an Associate Editor of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science and co-hosts the On Wisdom Podcast, disseminating scientific insights from psychology, philosophy and cognitive sciences to the general public.

Social Links

Email: Charles - charles@evidencebasedwisdom.com; Igor - igrossma@uwaterloo.ca

Twitter: Charles - @EBasedwisdom; Igor - @psywisdom; On Wisdom podcast - @onwisdompodcast

LinkedIn: @CharlesCassidy; @IgorGrossmann

There are many myths that hold teaching back. But more than any 'trad' or 'prog' debates about pedagogy, perhaps the most powerful one is the mind-body split. This week we welcome Professor Guy Claxton to talk about his forthcoming book on the importance of 're-membering' our learning bodies and reconnecting our ideas about education!

Guy Claxton is Emeritus Professor at Winchester University and Visiting Professor of Education at King's College London. He has previously taught and researched at Oxford University, Bristol University, and the University of London Institute of Education, and is an internationally renowned cognitive scientist. Guy's books include The Future of Teaching and the Myths that Hold it Back (2021), Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind (1998); Wise Up (1999): The Challenge of Lifelong Learning; The Wayward Mind (2005); and Intelligence in the Flesh (2015). Recent books on education include Expansive Education (2013); What's the Point of School? (2008); Building Learning Power (2002); and, with Bill Lucas and others, New Kinds of Smart; The Learning Powered School (2011); and Educating Ruby (2015).

Guy's Building Learning Power approach to teaching is widely used in all kinds of schools across the world.

You can find more about Guy on his website at: https://www.guyclaxton.net/

The Active Inference paper by Laura Desirée di Paolo et al (2024), referenced by Guy in the conversation, can be found here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377634490_Active_Inference_Goes_to_School_The_Importance_of_Active_Learning_in_the_Age_of_Large_Language_Models

Social Links

X: @GuyClaxton - https://twitter.com/GuyClaxton

Dr. Theo Dawson is the founder and CEO of Lectica, Inc. Since the early 1990s, Dawson's research has focused on developing and building an alternative assessment infrastructure and the technologies to support it. She received her Ph.D from the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Education. Her award-winning dissertation presented a new approach to measuring learning and describing learning pathways. 

She is the author of numerous articles, book chapters and papers on issues related to human development in journals such as Cognitive Development, Mind, Brain, and Education, The European Journal of Developmental Psychology, Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, The Journal of Applied Measurement, and Developmental Review, has contributed chapters to several edited books, has made many presentations at professional conferences and events. 

Dr. Dawson has run several successful organizations, including Lectica, Inc., and its predecessor, the Developmental Testing Service, LLC. She has secured more than $1.5 million in grants from funding agencies like the Spencer Foundation, the NSF, and IES, and has held appointments at the University of California at Berkeley, Hampshire College, the Medical Center at Louisiana State University, and the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Dr. Dawson has also acted as a consultant to institutions like the U.S. Federal Government, Harvard University, the University of Texas at Arlington, JFK University, the University of Ireland, the University of Cyprus, and a variety of businesses and schools, both in the US and abroad.

Social Links

Twitter: @theodawson 

LinkedIn: @theo-dawson

This podcast is an inquiry into the role that education needs to play in navigating the complex times we are all living in. Over the last four years, some of the world's most active entrepreneurs and eminent thinkers have chatted with Tim Logan about "what the world is asking of us" (Biesta, 2021).

If you enjoy listening, do subscribe and share a positive review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Find out more about Future Learning Design at https://www.goodimpactlabs.com/podcast and follow us on Instagram @futurelearningdesign (https://www.instagram.com/futurelearningdesign/) or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/future-learning-design/.

George Couros is an Innovative Teaching, Learning, & Leadership Consultant and speaker and the author of The Innovator’s Mindset and Innovate Inside the Box, co-authored with Katie Novak - and co-owner of IMPress Books. He has worked at all school levels, from K-12 as a teacher, technology facilitator, and school and district administrator. He is currently an Adjunct Instructor with the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. 

George is the father of two wonderful children, Kallea and Georgia, and is driven to ensure that they and every student have amazing experience in their K-12 schooling. He is not focused solely on preparing students for the “real world” but wants them to make the real world better.

George believes that meaningful change happens when you first connect to people’s hearts and then their minds, and he does his best to model this through his speaking, writing, and daily work.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @georgecourosim

Twitter: @gcouros

In this week’s conversation, with Professor Rex Li and Dr Clara Cheng, we take a wide-ranging look at how we can take inspiration and ideas from past educational projects, such as those of John Dewey and Howard Gardner, as we develop education into the future. But also learning from their experience at GT College in Hong Kong, how can we use research and inquiry themselves as practices to enable students and educators to deepen their own learning and growth as individuals, but also as part of a broader learning community. Professor Rex Li (https://www.profrexli.com/ ) is a psychologist and a prominent educator of the gifted in Hong Kong. He is the Founder and Curriculum Director of GT (Ellen Yeung) College, Hong Kong and founder of the Gifted Education Council. He is the author of ‘Rediscovering John Dewey: How His Psychology Transforms Our Education’ (2020): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rediscovering-John-Dewey-Psychology-Transforms/dp/9811579407  and many other books on gifted education and multiple intelligences: https://www.gtcollege.edu.hk/books-publications/  Dr Clara M. L. Cheng is the Head of Research and Training, English Language Panel Head (Senior Form) and Vice Head of International Exchange Group at GT (Ellen Yeung) College: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clara-cheng-632aa7a1/  Social Links GT (Ellen Yeung) College - ⁠https://www.gtcollege.edu.hk/⁠ Contact Prof. Li at https://www.profrexli.com/

Back with another special episode on the status of the AI in education, cutting through the hype (again) with the fantastic Charles Fadel. This is quite a deep dive into the topic, so if you’re early exploring this topic, check out episodes 107 and 108 with a great selection of reflections on AI in education from young people, teachers, leaders, policy-makers and edtech entrepreneurs. 

Charles is a global education thought leader and futurist, author, and inventor, with several active affiliations. His work spans the education continuum of K-12 schools, higher education, and workforce development/lifelong learning. He is the Founder and chairman of the Center for Curriculum Redesign and among many other accolades, he is the author of Education for the Age of AI, with co-authors Alexis Black, Robbie Taylor, Janet Slesinski and Katie Dunn.

Center for Curriculum Redesign (CCR): https://curriculumredesign.org/

Four-Dimensional (4D) Competencies Framework: https://curriculumredesign.org/frameworks/competencies-framework/ 

Tools: https://curriculumredesign.org/tools/ 

Charles is also:

Chair of the Education Committee of the Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), nominated by the U.S. Council for International Business (USCIB). He works with several teams at the OECD, most notably Education 2030, PISA, CERI, and the Expert Group on AI Futures.

Senior Fellow, Human Capital at The Conference Board

Board member at the United States Council Foundation (USCF).

Global Education Lead at Cisco Systems for over a decade.

Founder of Neurodyne, an ahead-of-its-time startup focused on Neural Networks/Artificial Intelligence.

Member of the President’s Council of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.

Founder and President of the Fondation Helvetica Educatio in Geneva, Switzerland. Fondation Helvetica Educatio focused on global education matters.

Product marketing and management in semiconductors for broadband and wireless applications at Analog Devices and M/A-COM.

Visiting practitioner at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education in the Mind, Brain and Education program. He explored curriculum redesign issues in an age of artificial intelligence and taught the first-ever class on “Human Learning + Machine Learning.”

Former Project Director at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education in the Laboratory for the Science of the Individual. There he explored “Machine Learning + Human Learning.”

Visiting lecturer at MIT’s Experimental Study Group (ESG). He taught an innovative “special topics in mathematics” seminar, “Polymathy: The World in 10 Curves.” He then taught the seminar at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education for six years to student acclaim.

Visiting lecturer at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in the Chief Learning Officer Program.

Senior Fellow at the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

Previous books Artificial Intelligence in Education (2018) was translated into Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic. His earlier, highly influential book Four-Dimensional Education (2015) was translated into ten languages, while its framework was translated into twenty-three languages. He co-authored best-selling 21st Century Skills (2009, Wiley).

It’s hard to disagree that critical thinking is an essential skill for young people faced with a complex and uncertain future. And yet, everyone from everywhere on the pedagogical spectrum says that they’re developing it in their students! 

So are they all succeeding?

What are the specific and explicit thinking moves that you are asking and guiding your learners to make? 

How does this also develop metacognition and self-regulation?

Roger is one of the world’s leading authorities on Philosophy for Children (P4C) and philosophical education. Roger trained under Professor Matthew Lipman, the pioneer of Philosophy for Children (P4C), and @DialogueWorks with Nick Chandley to provide P4C training around the world, and developing Philosophical Teaching and Learning. https://dialogueworks.co.uk/philosophical-teaching-and-learning-ptl-pedagogy-for-the-21st-century/

He was a founder and President of SAPERE, the UK charity promoting P4C, and President of the International Council for Philosophical Inquiry with Children. He graduated in Philosophy and Modern Languages at Oxford, and has taught at primary and secondary level.

Roger has spent the last decade developing Thinking Moves A-Z www.thinking-moves.com, a transformative scheme scaffolding critical thinking for both teachers and students.

Contacts

Email: rogersutcliffe@dialogueworks.co.uk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roger-sutcliffe-9557b817/  

One of the things that I enjoy doing on the podcast is problematising various ’school subjects’. In previous episodes, with various guests we’ve questioned maths, languages, economics, history, physical education. But we haven’t yet taken a critical look at science itself, which is not only a set of disciplines, but also an approach and methodology that underpins a lot of the logic of how many like to imagine that we direct education, through evidence-based practice and the sciences of learning. Apparently it tells us ‘what works’ in inverted commas… doesn’t it?

This week, it’s a massive pleasure to be chatting with the delightful and funny Subhadra Das a historian, writer, broadcaster, comedian, curator, researcher and storyteller who looks at the relationship between science and society. She specialises in the history and philosophy of science, particularly the history of scientific racism and eugenics, and for nine years, was Curator of the Science Collections at University College London. She was also Researcher in Critical Eugenics at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation. Subhadra has also appeared on radio and TV as a stand-up comedian. In this conversation we talk about her fantastic   recent book, Uncivilised: Ten Lies that Made the West.

Subhadra Das (https://www.subhadradas.com/) is a historian, writer, broadcaster, comedian, curator, researcher and storyteller who looks at the relationship between science and society. 

She specialises in the history and philosophy of science, particularly the history of scientific racism and eugenics, and what those histories mean for our lives today. For nine years, Subhadra was Curator of the Science Collections at University College London, where she was also Researcher in Critical Eugenics at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation. 

She’s also a prolific writer, broadcaster on radio and TV and stand-up comedian. In this conversation we talk about her recent book, Uncivilised: Ten Lies that Made the West In which she brings the lens of the history of science to bear on Western tropes such as ‘knowledge is power’, ‘time is money’ and ’justice is blind’.

Doreen Kessy is a Chief Business Officer at Ubongo. At Ubongo, she is instrumental in the growth of the organization, innovating, and finding ways to continually deliver fun learning to over 17 million families in Africa. She has expertise in business development and leadership in the edtech and fun learning space. Doreen has an MBA and BSc in International Business and Economics from Liberty University and has worked at the International Justice Mission in Washington DC, Wells Fargo and Smile for Africa in Zimbabwe. She was named “Entrepreneur of the Year in Education” by Women In Africa, is a Global Shaper at the World Economic Forum, and a 2018 Acumen Fellow. Doreen loves to have fun, she acts the English voice of one of Ubongo Kids cartoon characters, Ngedere (a playful monkey).

With the huge number of children across Africa still lacking access to quality learning opportunities, it is so inspiring to hear about what Doreen and Nisha and the team at Ubongo are doing. And Ubongo is a great example of an organization working directly at the nexus between education and social entrepreneurship, not only working to support the learning of children and families across Africa, but also feeding back ideas and support into the education system itself. So I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Doreen, with the Ubongo team, won the Global Education and Skills Forum, Next Billion Edtech Prize in 2019 and, as a result, established The Building Brains Conference on early childhood learning and development.

Dina L G Borzekowski is researching the impact Ubongo is having, which you can read more about here: The Impact of an Educational Media Intervention to Support Children’s Early Learning in Rwanda

Considered one of the founding fathers of Project Based Learning, Thom Markham is an educator by trade, a positive psychologist by training, and a global entrepreneur dedicated to expanding educator mindsets in service to a positive future. In 2015, Thom founded PBL Global, a world-wide partner-based organization offering online courses and onsite professional learning for a transformative strengths-focused model of project based learning that integrates high quality project design, student centered growth, and social emotional wellbeing. Thom has worked with over 400 schools and 6000 teachers in 20 countries.

His previous best-selling books include Project Based Learning Design and Coaching Guide: Expert tools for innovation and inquiry for K-12 educators (2012) and Redefining Smart: Awakening Students’ Power to Reimagine Their World (2015), as well as numerous articles on school transformation. 

Social Links

Email: thom@pblglobal.com

LinkedIn: @thom-markham-phd

Twitter: @thommarkham

Deepak Ramola is the Founder and Artistic Director of Project FUEL. A two time TED Talk speaker & UN Action Plan Executor, he also previously served as the Kindness Ambassador for UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development.

Deepak is a storyteller and artist forwarding the understanding of life lessons of everyone from women of the Maasai tribe to young girls in Afghanistan and sex workers of Kamathipura, earthquake survivors in Nepal to Syrian refugees in Europe.

Founded in 2009, Project FUEL collects life lessons from people all over the world and turns them into interactive and performance activities, to pass on the learnings. The passing on happens by way of workshops, seminars, and sometimes even over coffee.

Every life is important and so is what each person's life teaches them. At FUEL, life lessons are continuously collected, documented, thought about deeply and then turned into performance activities. This ensures that you don't just hear someone's lesson in words but experience it tangibly, and apply it practically in your own life.

One way that the life lessons are shared globally is through the World Wisdom Map - a collation and exhibition of human wisdom that invites people to engage, contribute and learn from everyone's stories in an artistic and interactive way.

Project FUEL's methodology has been recognised as a world's top 100 innovations in education by Finland based organisation HundrED and has also been adopted by the Education Board of Antwerp in Belgium, and schools across Asia and the US.

A celebrated lyricist in Hindi Cinema, Deepak's songs have been voiced by Amitabh Bachchan, Farhan Akhtar, Rekha Bhardwaj amongst others. His first collection of Hindi poetry titled Itna Toh Main Samajh Gaya Hoon received the prestigious Young Writer Award in 2020 at Jaipur Literature Festival. His latest book, 50 Toughest Questions of Life, has gone into a reprint two weeks after its release.

Social Links

LinkedIn: deepak-ramola

Twitter: @deepak1811

Instagram: @deepakramola; @projectfuel

Ed Fidoe is co-founder and President of the London Interdisciplinary School. LIS will provide a fully interdisciplinary undergraduate degree, with students studying complex problems rather than specific subjects. Students will graduate with a BASc in Interdisciplinary Problems and Methods. LIS also runs professional/leadership programmes.

In 2012, with Peter Hyman and Oli de Botton, Ed co-founded School 21, an innovative 4 – 18 school in Stratford, East London, designed for children from all starting points and backgrounds (achieved Outstanding Ofsted in 2014).

Ed has advised leaders at Cambridge University, the London School of Economics along with some of the UK’s most exciting schools that are exploring new ways of teaching students. He has also worked with organisations specialised in working directly with disadvantaged students such as ARK Schools and Teach First.

Ed was also the co-founder of EDSPACE, a co-working space for innovative education companies. Prior to founding School 21, Ed worked at McKinsey & Co and ran a theatre production company.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @Edward-Fidoe; @LIS

Twitter: @weareLIS

Conrad Hughes (MA, PhD, EdD) is Campus and Secondary Principal at the International School of Geneva, La Grande Boissière, the oldest international school in the world. He has been School Principal, Director of Education, International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme Coordinator and teacher in schools in Switzerland, France, India and the Netherlands.

Conrad, who is also a member of the advisory board for the University of the People, senior fellow of UNESCO's International Bureau of Education and research assistant at the University of Geneva's department of psychology and education, teaches philosophy.

His PhD (2008) is in English literature: The Treatment of the Body in the Fiction of JM Coetzee. His EdD thesis (2018), written at Durham University, is on the relationship between prejudice and education with specific focus on how education can reduce prejudice.

He is the author of numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and as Director of Education at the International School of Geneva he led the publication of Guiding Principles for Learning in the 21st Century with UNESCO. He has been chief editor for special editions of Springer’s Prospects Journal with entries by leading academics such as Sugata Mitra, Steve Higgins, Doug & Lynn Newton, Scilla Elworthy, Paul Black, AC Grayling and Juan Carlos Tedesco.

Conrad's most recent books are Elitism and Education: Challenges and Opportunities (2021, Routledge), Educating for the 21st Century: Seven Global Challenges (2018, Brill) and Understanding Prejudice and Education: The Challenge for Future Generations (2017, Routledge).

Social Links

LinkedIn: @conrad-hughes

Twitter: @conradhughes0 

Dr Kevin House is Education Futures Architect at Education in Motion, a growing family of premier education brands, including Dulwich College International and Green School, with more than 11,000 students. As part of this work, Kevin is leading the development of a new and innovative high school concept called SE21. You can find out more about SE21 here. 

Kevin is also Associate Professor in Practice in the Education faculty at Durham University.

Prior to this, Kevin led quality assurance processes for the International Baccalaureate Organisation as the Head of IB World Schools. 

He was Head of High School at the German European School of Singapore, Director of Curriculum at Suzhou Singapore International School and Head of English at the International School of Valencia. 

Kevin completed his doctoral thesis in International Education at the University of Bath and has been working to align programme standards across awarding bodies such as CIS, WASC and IB. Kevin is also a qualified trainer for global safeguarding practices and protocols.

Social Links

Email: Kevin.House@eimglobal.com

LinkedIn: @dr-kevin-house

Twitter: @KevinHo17644986

Steve Peha is the founder of Teaching That Makes Sense, an education consultancy specializing in literacy, student engagement, and instructional innovation. He has written extensively on developing young people’s literacy and his book ‘Be a Better Writer’, written with his wife, Margot Carmichael Lester, was an Amazon #1 “Hot New Release” in teen writing. The book also won a Parents’ Choice Recommended Award, a 2016 Best Book Gold Medal Award in Young Adult Nonfiction. It has also received an award nomination from YALSA, the Young Adult Library Services Association, part of the American Library Association.

Steve’s new novel ‘Jordan's Run’, a near-future dystopic look at American culture, won the 2019 Spark Award at New York's BookCon. He is also working right now on an essay collection for the 2020 election called "We All Breathe the Same Air" based on JFK's famous American University speech.

Since 1995, Steve has written widely on teaching, learning, and writing for publications like The Washington Post, The National Journal, Psychology Today, Edutopia, Education Post, and many others. In 2001, he created The Effective Learning Series for The Seattle Times and received an Innovators in Education from the Newspaper Association of America.

In particular, Steve wrote a very prescient piece for InfoQ in June 2011 entitled, ‘Agile Schools: How Technology Saves Education (Just Not the Way We Thought it Would)’. He has also spoken at Yahoo, Google and Paypal on the topic of introducing Agile strategies into education.

Prior to starting Teaching That Makes Sense, Steve held top management positions with several technology companies. As founder of Music Technology Associates, a multimedia consulting company, he developed Music Mentor, an award-winning music education program for the Windows Multimedia PC platform.

Social Links

Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevepeha

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevepeha/

Andy Hargreaves is Director of Chenine (Change, Engagement and Innovation in Education) at the University of Ottawa and Research Professor in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College. He is Past President of the International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, recent Adviser in Education to the Premier of Ontario and currently to the First Minister of Scotland, and founder of the ARC Education: a group of nations committed to broadly defined excellence, equity, wellbeing, inclusion, democracy and human rights www.atrico.org

Andy has consulted with the OECD, the World Bank, governments, universities and teacher unions worldwide. Andy’s more than 30 books have attracted multiple Outstanding Writing Awards – including the prestigious 2015 Grawemeyer Award in Education for Professional Capital (with Michael Fullan). He has been honored with the 2016 Horace Mann Award in the US and the Robert Owen Award in Scotland for services to public education. Andy is ranked by Education Week in the top scholars with most influence on US education policy debate. In 2015, Boston College gave him its Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award. He holds Honorary Doctorates from the Education University of Hong Kong and the University of Uppsala in Sweden. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His most recent book, Moving: a memoir of social mobility and education, is published by Solution Tree. His two upcoming books in 2020 with Dennis Shirley are Five Paths of Student Engagement: Blazing the trail to learning and success (Solution Tree), and Well-being and Socio-emotional Learning: How to Build Everyone Back Better (ASCD).

Social Links

LinkedIn: @HargreavesBC

Twitter: @HargreavesBC

Carlota Perez is a British-Venezuelan researcher, lecturer and international consultant. She studies the mutual shaping of technical change and society and the lessons provided by the history of technological revolutions for economic growth and development.

In Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages (Elgar 2002), Carlota put forward her theory of the emergence and diffusion of technological revolutions and of the role of finance in the process. She is currently working on a sequel, Beyond the Technological Revolution, funded by Anthemis UK, which will analyse the roles that government, business and civil society play in the deployment of the potential of each revolution.

Carlota is Honorary Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) at University College London, UK and at SPRU, the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, UK; Adjunct Professor of Technology and Socio-Economic Development at the Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation and Governance at TalTech, Estonia. 

Her long career has spanned civil service, consultancy, academic research and teaching, beginning in the 1970s with an investigation into the structural causes of the energy crisis in her home country of Venezuela. After working on international technology transfer at the Institute of Foreign Trade in the 1970s, she became the founding Director of Technological Development at the Ministry of Industry (1980-83) – where, alongside other policy instruments to promote innovation, she created the first venture capital fund in the country.

Carlota has acted as consultant for several Latin American governments and for international organisations and multilateral agencies such as UN Industrial Development Organisation, United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), the Andean Pact, the World Bank, the OECD and the EU, where she chaired the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Expert Group for Green Growth and Jobs.

Social Links

Twitter: @CarlotaPrzPerez

Youtube: @CarlotaPerez

Dr Jo Boaler is the Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education at Stanford University. Former roles have included being the Marie Curie Professor of Mathematics Education in England, and a maths teacher in London comprehensive schools. Her PhD won the national award for educational research in the UK. She is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (Great Britain), and a former president of the International Organization for Women and Mathematics Education (IOWME). She is the recipient of a National Science Foundation ‘Early Career Award’, the NCSM Kay Gilliland Equity Award (2014) and the CMC Walter Denham Mathematics Leadership award (2015). She is the author of eighteen books and numerous research articles. She is a White House presenter on women and girls. 

Jo co-founded www.youcubed.org to give teachers, parents and students the resources and ideas they need to inspire and excite students about mathematics. Her work has been published in the New York Times, TIME magazine, The Telegraph, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal and many other news outlets. Her latest book is: Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead & Live without Barriers, published by Harper Collins. 

She is currently co-leading a K-12 Data Science Initiative and was named as one of the 8 educators “changing the face of education” by the BBC.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @dr-jo-boaler

Twitter: @joboaler

Abby Falik is an award-winning social entrepreneur committed to launching the generation of leaders our world needs now.

In 2010 she founded Global Citizen Year, a non-profit that uses the transition after high school to teach the REAL 21st century skills: resilience, empathy, agency and leadership.  As CEO, she raised and deployed over $65M in scholarships and equipped thousands of diverse, emerging leaders to change the world — for good.

In 2022 she joined the Emerson Collective as an Entrepreneur in Residence to incubate new models to transform how young people learn, launch and lead. Using Global Citizen Year as a blueprint, she is on a mission to reinvent the “gap” year as an accessible, purposeful and transformative rite of passage.

A recognized expert on social innovation, leadership, and the changing landscape of education, Abby has been profiled by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Abby is a frequent speaker and has been featured at forums including the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Obama Foundation Summit, the Fast Company Innovation Festival, PopTech, and The Nantucket Project.  In 2018, Abby was named one of America's Top 25 Philanthropy Speakers by The Business of Giving.

Fast Company named her one of the Most Creative People in Business, and Goldman Sachs has selected her as one of the 100 “Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs” four times.  For her achievements as a social entrepreneur she has been recognized as an Ashoka Fellow, a MindTrust Fellow, and a Draper Richards Kaplan Entrepreneur.

She currently serves on the Advisory Boards of World Learning, Teach for All, and Harvard Business School, as well as on Fast Company’s Impact Council.

Abby received a B.A. in International Relations and an M.A. in International Comparative Education from Stanford University. She received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

She lives in Oakland, Ca. with her husband Joel Segre and their two young sons.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @abbyfalik 

Twitter: @abbyfalik

Instagram: @abbyfalik

Dor Abrahamson is Professor of Secondary Mathematics Education in the area of Cognition and Development at University of California, Berkeley and a member of faculty at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. Dor has been pioneering a design-based approach to research called embodied design. In his Embodied Design Research Laboratory (https://edrl.berkeley.edu ) Dor and his team look at cognition and learning of mathematics through the body. As one of his fascinating articles from 2016 is entitled, Learning is Moving in New Ways. 

A recent book summarising research in this exciting area of embodied cognition to which Dor has contributed is linked here: Macrine, S. L., & Fugate, J. M. (Eds.). (2022) Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning: https://edrl.berkeley.edu/lab-blog-posts/macrine-s-l-fugate-j-m-eds-2022-movement-matters-how-embodied-cognition-informs-teaching-and-learning/ 

Social Links

LinkedIn: @dor-abrahamson

Keeping educational experiences alive, responsive and moving with our young people is a key piece of what the best educators do, even more impressive as it is often in stark contrast to the rigid, static institutions in which they live, work and learn. This week it’s such a pleasure to be talking with Dr Gholdy Muhammad whose amazing work on Historically Responsive Literacies supports teachers in creating spaces for mutual empowerment, confidence, and self-reliance in students. Her elaboration of the five pursuits of curriculum is a fantastic framework for enabling young people to both critically and joyfully read the world and connect with who they are and where they’ve come from.

Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture at University of Illinois Chicago College of Education. She studies Black historical excellence within educational communities with goals of reframing curriculum and instruction today. Gholdy’s scholarship has appeared in leading academic journals and books. She has also received numerous national awards and is the author of the best-selling book, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy. She is also the co-author of Black girls’ literacies: An Edited Volume. Gholdy has previously served as a classroom teacher, literacy specialist, school district administrator, curriculum director, and school board president. Her Culturally and Historically Responsive Education Model has been adopted across thousands of U.S. schools and districts across Canada. In 2022 and 2023 she was named among the top 1% Edu-Scholar Public Influencers due to her impact on policy and practice. She was named the American Educational Research Association Division K Early Career Award and the 2021 NCTE Outstanding Elementary Educator in the English Language Arts. She has led a federal grant with the United States Department of Education to study culturally and historically responsive literacy in STEM classrooms. Her latest book, Unearthing Joy: A Guide to Culturally and Historically Responsive Teaching and Learning, is the sequel to Cultivating Genius and provides a practical guide for putting culturally and historically responsive education into curricular practice. 

More information about Gholdy’s work go to https://hillpedagogies.com/ 

You can also find her on social media at:

LinkedIn: @dr-gholdy-muhammad - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-gholdy-muhammad/

Instagram: @gholdym - https://www.instagram.com/gholdym/

Priya Lakhani OBE is the Founder CEO of CENTURY Tech, the award-winning artificial intelligence education technology company. CENTURY is the global leader in AI-powered learning tools for schools and families, working in dozens of countries across the world.

In 2008, Priya left her career as a barrister to launch a successful cooking-sauce business, which through its charitable foundation provided millions of meals and thousands of vaccinations to the underprivileged in India and Africa, and funded several schools.

Priya was awarded Business Entrepreneur of the Year by the Chancellor in 2009 and Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2014. She was a business advisor to the UK’s coalition government, was appointed to the UK government’s AI Council in 2019 and is a regular commentator on global news for the BBC.

In 2018, Priya co-founded the Institute for Ethical AI in Education. In 2018, CENTURY won a prestigious MIT SOLVE (Education) award, and in 2019, Priya was named Economic Innovator of the Year by The Spectator. In 2020, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Coventry University’s engineering faculty and appointed Honorary Vice President of the Council of British International Schools.

Social Links:

LinkedIn: @priyalakhani 

Twitter: @priyalakhani; @thisiscentury

Will Richardson has an international reputation as someone who effectively challenges traditional thinking about schools. A former classroom teacher of 22 years, Will is the author of six books, most recently "Freedom to Learn," as well as a blogger, podcaster, leadership coach, and serial entrepreneur. Last year, he co-founded The BIG Questions Institute (bigquestions.institute) with Homa Tavangar. [RE]LEARN Session: We're Not Disrupted Enough Yet: Why Real Change in Schools Will Take More Than a Pandemic, Monday, November 9 • 20:15 - 20:45 (CEST)

Kirti Diwan, currently a Skilling and Capability Lead at Google . She's also a research student and a champion of women's diversity, education and wellbeing. Passionate about supporting SMEs, she loves white spaces where she can apply her problem solving and interpersonal skills to drive change, growth and transformation. [RE]LEARN Session: Learn with a latte, not with a blackboard, Monday, November 9 • 12:15 - 12:45 (CEST)

Blessing Akpan is an educator, social entrepreneur and the Founder of The Innovative Child Network, a not-for-profit organization leveraging mentorship, and training to raise innovative children through skill-based learning. As an Ambassador for HundrED.org, Theirworld, and Xtalks.org, she seeks and shares innovation in inclusive K12 education, promotes literacy among children, and amplifies the voices of young people throughout Africa and beyond. [RE]LEARN Session: Reimagining Asynchronous and Synchronous Delivery for Low-income communities, Monday, November 9 • 15:45 - 16:00 (CEST)

Sandy Hooda is a first-generation entrepreneur who has created successful technology and hospitality ventures. To better understand whether anyone had solved the education puzzle, he spent three years travelling around the world, identifying and visiting the most progressive schools, and galvanising some of the superstar education Leaders behind these schools to create Vega Schools. [RE]LEARN Session: Parenting for the future - timeless skills, Tuesday, November 10 • 15:15 - 15:30 (CEST)

Christophe Menagé is an interdisciplinary educational leader with over 20 years’ experience across private enterprise, government administration and most recently education. Chris offers a unique perspective and fresh insight, bringing future-focused, real world learning experiences to reality – for educators and students alike. Having now founded e2 educational ecosystems, Chris activates partnerships, empowering others to co-create transformative initiatives. [RE]LEARN Sessions: Learning about meaning, not things, Thursday, November 12 • 10:30 - 11:15 (CEST) and Unshackling the elephant in the room. Thursday, November 19 • 11:00 - 11:45 (CEST)

A more humane education feels very necessary right now. Our planet and its inhabitants all over the world seem to be crying out for it.  Humane Educators Zoe Weil and Rae Sikora created IHE In 1996 to do precisely this. And so it is a huge pleasure this week to be able to welcome Zoe, and her colleague Julie Meltzer, from the Institute onto the podcast.

Zoe Weil is the co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education (IHE) and is considered a pioneer in the comprehensive humane education movement. Zoe created IHE’s M.Ed., M.A., and graduate certificate programs, as well as IHE’s Solutionary Framework, which guides teachers in bringing solutionary thinking and action to their students.

 Zoe is the author of eight books including Amazon #1 New Release in Social Philosophy and Popular Applied Psychology, The Solutionary Way: Transform Your Life, Your Community, and the World for the Better with a Foreword by Jane Goodall (2024), Amazon #1 Best Seller in the Philosophy and Social Aspects of Education, The World Becomes What We Teach: Educating a Generation of Solutionaries (2021/2016), Nautilus Silver Medal winner, Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life (2009), The Power and Promise of Humane Education (2004), and Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times (2003).

She has also written books for young people, including Moonbeam Gold Medal winner, Claude and Medea: The Hellburn Dogs (2023/2007), about 12-year-old activists inspired by their teacher to right wrongs where they find them, and So, You Love Animals: An Action-Packed, Fun-Filled Book to Help Kids Help Animals (1994).

Julie Meltzer, Ph.D., is a self-described “pragmatic visionary” who is committed to creating schools that truly help students prepare to successfully meet their futures. She is a tireless advocate for literacy, justice and equity which she sees as integrally related. Julie supports teachers and administrators to develop collective efficacy to teach their students how to become changemakers. She agrees with Zoe Weil that our best hope for the planet is to educate a generation of solutionaries. After extensive experience in education including as a teacher, teacher education faculty member, district administrator, consultant, researcher, program evaluator, and project lead, to her current role as Director of K-12 and Teacher Education for IHE. Julie is also a published author, sought-after speaker and editor/reviewer. When not focused on teaching and learning, Julie enjoys hiking, dancing, writing poetry, reading international women’s and children’s literature, traveling, and working for social and environmental justice.

Social Links

In this episode, Ms Liew Wei Li, the Director-General of Education for the Ministry of Education in Singapore shares her insights into the many reasons for this success, including Singapore’s restless commitment to improvement and innovation. 

Ms Liew has been the appointed Director General since April 2022, overseeing K-12 education in Singapore. She had school experience as a Chemistry teacher and school leader, and has headed a division to develop school curriculum for primary, secondary and pre-university levels. Previously, she was Deputy Director-General of Education (Schools) and concurrently Director of Schools for five years, where she led a team of school zonal directors and cluster superintendents with oversight of some 350 mainstream schools.

More information on the Enhanced 21CC Framework and other topics discussed in this episode: https://www.moe.gov.sg/news/press-releases/20230920-more-support-for-schools-and-students-to-shape-the-future-of-learning

Social Links

LinkedIn: @wei-li-liew; @moesingapore

The inspiration for this end-of-year impromptu gathering came from a recent flurry of ‘Collapse'-inspired exchanges in my (un)social media feeds! This was prompted largely by Ginie Servant Miklos’ recently published and brilliant book, Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for The End of The World as We Know It (quoted in the title of the episode) and Will Richardson’s equally provocative and inspiring, Confronting Education In a Time of Complexity, Chaos and Collapse.

As regular listeners will know, this podcast is really focused on the need for radical and systemic change in ways that would be more loving, humanising, nourishing…, not just in education, but in all spheres of our lives. But seeing all of this Collapse chat, the question I was left with was something about the ‘how’ of inviting people towards this change. It made me think of this powerful quote from Adam Curtis:

"We’ve retreated into a sense that there’s always a new apocalypse on the horizon; it’s a terrible teddy bear that the bourgeois greens hug to themselves and say, “We’re all going to die, it’s terrible.” That’s not the way you change the world. In fact, it frightens people, and when people are frightened they don’t want change. It’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. Of course, there are serious issues. And of course, they’re incredibly dangerous. But fear is the last resort of those who’ve failed to mobilise people to transform the world for the better. I get grumpy about this because it’s almost cowardly.” (https://crackmagazine.net/article/profiles/adam-curtis-nathalie-olah-interview/)

So Manda Scott, Raïsa Mirza, Will Richardson, Ginie Servant-Miklos and I gathered yesterday to talk about all of this and more!

Brief bios below, but you can find full show notes here: https://www.goodimpactlabs.com/podcast/a-hopeful-education

Manda Scott - https://mandascott.co.uk/ ; https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandascottauthor/ 

Manda was once a veterinary surgeon and is now an award-winning novelist, smallholder, contemporary shamanic trainer and podcaster (https://accidentalgods.life). 2024 saw the publication of her sixteenth novel, Any Human Power, a ‘visionary’ contemporary political thriller that maps fictional – but plausible and workable – routes toward a future we’d all be proud to leave to the generations that come after us: human and more-than-human.

Raïsa Mirza - https://raisamirza.com/ ; https://www.linkedin.com/in/raisamirza/ 

Raïsa is a Bangladeshi-Canadian photographer, educator, designer, facilitator and social entrepreneur. She is currently Head of Social Impact Initiatives & Lighthouse Changemaker Hub and Systems Transformation teacher (https://www.uwcatlantic.org/learning/academic/systems-transformation-pathway) at UWC Atlantic College, Wales. She is also Founder & Principal of WabiSabiJetty: Design for Resilience (https://www.wabisabijetty.com/). 

Will Richardson - https://willrichardson.com/ ; https://www.linkedin.com/in/willrichardsonbqi/ 

Will is a co-founder of The Big Questions Institute which was created to help educators use "fearless inquiry" to make sense of this complex moment and an uncertain future. In 2024, he authored a "manifesto" titled "Confronting Education in a Time of Complexity, Chaos, and Collapse" aimed at provoking serious conversations about the future of schools. 

Ginie Servant-Miklos -  https://www.clubofrome.org/member/miklos-ginie/; https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginie-servant-miklos/ 

Ginie Servant-Miklos is Assistant Professorship in Behavioural Sciences at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences in Rotterdam and founder and Chair of the Board of the ⁠⁠FairFight Foundation. She co-founded the Bildung Climate School with Prof. Rutger Engels, and is the author of the best-selling book, Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as We Know It (https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781350400528).

Estelle Baroung Hughes is the Founding President of Africa Learning International, focused on SDG 4 (Quality Education for All) in Africa. As a Cameroonian citizen, Estelle is passionate about the cultural wealth of her 250 languages country. The focus of her NGO is to honour the diversity of African nations by supporting culturally responsive education on the continent. ALI provides teacher professional development, Master Teacher programs, shares educational resources and opportunities and organizes conferences and teacher exchanges.

As an educator, Estelle specializes in international education. She is a teacher, a researcher, and an educational coach. She is a teaching and talent development consultant to Enko Education (where she was part of the founding team) and she is also a Language & Literature teacher at the Ecolint: International School of Geneva.

Estelle is also a blogger and a musician.

Social Links

Twitter: @EstelleHughes20

LinkedIn: @estelle-hughes

Liz Nilsen’s passion is for creating programs that nurture the next generation of thinkers and doers, through the development and growth of innovation and STEM education ecosystems.  As the Associate Director at the University of North Alabama Agile Strategy Lab, Liz shepherds the expansion of the Lab’s programming and manages the Strategic Doing Institute on behalf of that organization, including partnerships with other universities interested in deploying Strategic Doing.

Liz was senior program director at the Purdue Agile Strategy Lab; she is also a former senior program officer at VentureWell, where she provided leadership to the Pathways program for the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter), an effort to engage with 50 colleges and universities to redesign undergraduate engineering education.

Prior to joining VentureWell, she led STEM initiatives at the Penn State Center – Pittsburgh, was the southwest regional coordinator for the Pennsylvania STEM Network, and served as Director of Outreach and New Economy Program Development at the Institute of Advanced Learning & Research, a Virginia Tech initiative. She earned her BA from Stanford and an MBA from Northeastern University.

Ed Morrison is Director of the Agile Strategy Lab at the University of North Alabama, and was the founder of the Purdue Agile Strategy Lab. Ed’s work emphasizes the strategic value of focused regional collaborations and open innovation, network-based models in today’s global economy.

Ed is the developer of Strategic Doing to accelerate collaborations, now widely used across the U.S. and is now gaining attention internationally. His work won the first Arthur D. Little Award for excellence in economic development presented by the American Economic Development Council.

Prior to starting his economic development work, Ed worked for Telesis, a corporate strategy consulting firm. In this position, he served on consulting teams for clients such as Ford Motor Company, Volvo, and General Electric. He conducted manufacturing cost studies in the U.S., Japan, Mexico, Canada, Italy, Sweden, and France.

Ed started his professional career in Washington, D.C., where he has served as a legislative assistant to an Ohio Congressman, staff attorney in the Federal Trade Commission, and staff counsel in the US Senate. He holds a BA degree cum laude with honors from Yale University and MBA and JD degrees from the University of Virginia.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @liznilsen; @efmorrison

Twitter: @STEMetc; @edmorrison

Dr. Brad Kershner is a school leader and independent scholar, currently serving as the Head of School at Kimberton Waldorf School. His research, teaching, and writing cover a wide range of interdependent topics, including education, leadership, parenting, cultural diversity, technology, integral theory, meditation, complexity, and developmental psychology. He received his graduate education at The University of Chicago and Boston College, and he is a longtime student of multiple Buddhist lineages. He is a co-founder of The Reconstitution Project, a meta-political think-tank, (www.thereconstitution.com), and his first book is Understanding Educational Complexity: Integrating Practices and Perspectives for 21st Century Leadership.

A recent article Brad has written for Integral Life, which he references at the end of our conversation, is Diversity, Empathy, and Integration: Reframing and Reclaiming a Movement Toward Healing and Wholeness.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @bradkershner

X (formerly Twitter): @bradkershner

With so much talk about 'systems thinking' in education, sometimes it can become framework overload! Which one should I pick? What's the difference between them anyway?! This week, it is a huge privilege to chat to someone who has been doing this longer than most! Professor Ray Ison has been teaching systems practice for the Open University for the last 4 decades. He shares his wisdom to cut through the jargon!

Ray is a cybernetician, systems scientist, and Professor of Systems at the Open University in the UK. He is currently President of the International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR). He was also Professor Systems for Sustainability at Monash University, and fellow at the Centre for Policy Development, and President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences in the year 2014-15. He is known for his work on systems praxeology within rural development,[1] sustainable management,[2] systemic governance and the design and enactment of learning systems.

An incredibly useful and practical overview of many ofthe topics discussed in this episode can be found in Ray's book, Systems Practice: How to Act. In situations of uncertainty and complexity in a climate-change world. (2017): https://oro.open.ac.uk/51143/ 

For a full overview of Ray's life and work you can read his Wikipedia page here: ⁠https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Ison⁠ 

Social Links

LinkedIn: @ray-ison

Sharath Jeevan is one of the world’s leading experts on reigniting our inner drive (intrinsic motivation). He founded and led STiR Education – arguably the world’s largest intrinsic motivation initiative. STiR has re-ignited the motivation of 200,000 teachers, 35,000 schools and 7 million children in emerging countries. 

Sharath is currently the Executive Chairman of Intrinsic Labs, which supports organizations all around the world to solve deep motivational challenges, from governments to leading UK universities and high-profile corporations. He was elected an Ashoka Fellow in 2014 and was recognised as one of the UK’s ten leading social entrepreneurs in 2019.  

His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Economist, NPR, CNN, the Hindustan Times and the Times of India. Sharath holds degrees from Cambridge University, Oxford University and INSEAD. 

Sharath's first book Intrinsic is out now on Amazon and other retailers. It is a book which takes readers on a journey around the world to find practical and inspirational answers to solving our motivational crisis. It harnesses ground-breaking research, from psychology and economics to philosophy and behavioural science. Sharath helps us to see how we can achieve more lasting fulfilment and success in our work, careers, relationships, parenting, and as citizens. Intrinsic has received glowing testimonials from global thought leaders, the CHROs of leading companies and bestselling authors.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @sharathjeevan

Twitter: @sharathjeevan_

In this episode, Tim Logan is joined by Ulrike Suwwan (from Guide and Lead) and Graham Brown-Martin to talk about the challenges and opportunities of rebuilding something different and more regenerative in our current situation. How can we lead our teams through a great depression, or enable a great transformation? 

Graham is a hugely inspiring and restlessly innovative thinker and leader who has challenged and disrupted many industries, years before it was cool and mainstream to do so (check out his epic bio here - it’s well worth a read!). He continues to evolve his fascinating career in the education, technology and entertainment sectors and contribute to the human project of preparing ourselves for the future by bringing together social, economic, political and technological trends and adding a bit of his own unique and anarchic take to keep everybody on their toes! He is the author of Learning {Re}imagined, the best selling book on global education published by Bloomsbury. He is the founder of Learning Without Frontiers (LWF), a global community bringing together renowned educators, technologists and creatives to share provocative and challenging ideas about the future of learning. He is the founder of BeyondTomorrow.Global a growing international intelligence network of interdisciplinary thinkers designing a blueprint for society to thrive beyond the 22nd century. He is co-founder of regenerative.global with William Rankin, a transformative learning consultancy based in London and New York using circular economy principles to inform innovative learning and design practices.

Today he runs a strategic insight and leadership coaching practice to help organisations and their leaders navigate the future, achieve their goals and maintain resilience.

Generative advanced artificial intelligence (AI) has made significant developments in recent months, confounding all expectations of how quickly its capabilities and access will progress. In this episode Tim Logan speaks with people from across the education system to create spaces for conversations in which we can understand how people are responding and what the longer-term implications are for the way we teach and learn in schools, universities and beyond. Joining him in conversation in this episode are:

• Martin and Rosetta - 13/14yr old students from the American international section of a public school in Bordeaux [starts at 01:54]
• Chantelle Love - Grade 5 teacher at Australian International School of Phnom Penh, Cambodia [starts at 11:19]
• Raj Bolla, Vice Principal at International School Ho Chi Minh City and Dr Tosca Killoran, Deputy Head at International School Ho Chi Minh City [starts at 33:26]
• Bodo Hoenen - Co-Founder and CEO of edtech company Nolej AI [starts at 01:01:02]
• Lord Tim Clement-Jones - Co-Chair All-Party Parliamentary Group on AI, Chair of The Institute for Ethical AI in Education and Chair of Council at Queen Mary University of London [starts at 01:24:33]

Julia Middleton is passionate about helping people from all backgrounds to develop as leaders and make an active and tangible contribution to their communities and to wider society. Julia is the author of two bestselling books: Beyond Authority: Leadership in a Changing World and Cultural Intelligence: The Competitive Edge for Leaders Crossing Boundaries. In the autumn of 1989, Julia founded Common Purpose, which has grown to be one of the biggest leadership development organizations in the world. Julia stepped down from the position of Chief Executive in 2019. In 2015, Julia gave a very well-received talk at TEDxEastEnd on Cultural Intelligence: The Competitive Edge for Leaders. In April 2020 she launched Women Emerging from Isolation which she now leads. Julia is also a member of the Advisory Group of Common Purpose in Pakistan and is a Patron for Common Purpose of the Europe101 initiative. She is on the board and chairs the investment committee of Alfanar (delivering Venture Philanthropy in the Arab World), is on the International Advisory Council for Fundação Dom Cabral, business school in Brasil, is a Senior Fellow of Babson College, is a trustee of The Wren Project and is a Goodwill Ambassador of the Aurora Forum. Julia was born in London and educated at French Lycées around the world. She worked for the Industrial Society after receiving an economics degree from the London School of Economics. Social Links Twitter: @JuliaMiddleton LinkedIn: @juliamiddleton

This episode will hopefully give you a sense of where the most promising organisations in the world who are innovating around assessment are at, and what the prospects are looking forward for significant assessment change.

You can also check out Episode #72 with Sandra Milligan.

I am joined by Prof. Sandra Milligan from Melbourne Metrics, Bill Lucas from Rethinking Assessment and Mike Flanagan and Patricia Russell from Mastery Transcript Consortium.

Melbourne Metrics Website: https://education.unimelb.edu.au/melbourne-assessment New Metrics Partner Schools: https://education.unimelb.edu.au/melbourne-assessment/our-research/new-metrics#aboutThe International Big Picture Learning Credential: https://www.bigpicture.org.au/what-international-big-picture-learning-credential Sandra's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandra-milligan-223b384a?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_miniProfile%3AACoAAAp9jjsB5xVeP0Ygvbn2XC33I-bcL0ACsCY&lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_search_srp_all%3BOaCWQPVdS%2BKv0N3bE64NYw%3D%3D Melbourne Metrics on X: https://twitter.com/MelbMetrics 

Rethinking Assessment

Website: https://rethinkingassessment.com/

Rethinking Assessment in Education - The Case for Change: https://rethinkingassessment.com/assessment-around-the-world/

Blueprint for Change: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NoyUc3P-wFi_LCJS0SlzzUrQxkLC2WsG/view?usp=sharing

Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC)

Website: https://mastery.org/

ETS and Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC) Join Forces to Scale Skills Transcript: https://www.ets.org/news/press-releases/ets-mastery-transcript-consortium-mtc-join-forces-scale-skills-transcript.html

MTC on X: https://twitter.com/MastTranscript

MTC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masterytranscript/

Gert Biesta is Professor of Public Education in the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy, Maynooth University, Ireland, and Professor of Educational Theory and Pedagogy at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh, UK. He holds Visiting Professorships at the University of Agder, Norway, and Uniarts, the University of the Arts, Helsinki, Finland. Gert is a prolific author and has written many books on the theory of education and educational and social research, and his work has appeared in 20 different languages. He has particular interests in national and global education policy, curriculum, teaching and teacher education, democracy and citizenship education, religious education and arts education. His latest book is World-Centred Education: A View for the Present (2021) and this is a good overview of the key ideas in this seminal book. A selection of his previous books are The Rediscovery of Teaching (2017); Beyond Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future (2015); The Beautiful Risk of Education (2015); Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics, Democracy (2015) and Complexity Theory and the Politics of Education [edited with Deborah Osberg] (2010) Gert is co-editor of the British Educational Research Journal, co-editor of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, and associate editor of Educational Theory. He co-edits a two book series with Routledge: Theorizing Education (with Stefano Oliverio), and New Directions in the Philosophy of Education (with Michael A. Peters, Liz Jackson and Marek Tesar). Social Links LinkedIn: @gert-biesta Twitter: Gert suspended his Twitter account only to return when Donald Trump was no longer on the platform!

Dr. James Mannion is an education researcher and consultant who worked as a Science teacher for 12 years, and spent 8 years in school leadership roles. James has an MA in Person-Centred Education from the University of Sussex, and a PhD in Learning to Learn from the University of Cambridge. James’s doctoral thesis is an evaluation of Learning Skills, a whole-school approach to teaching and learning that led to significant gains in subject learning, with accelerated gains among students from disadvantaged backgrounds. James works part-time as a Bespoke Programmes Leader at the London Centre for Leadership in Learning at the University College London Institute of Education. In this role, he works with teachers and schools throughout the UK to promote research-informed approaches to professional development and school improvement. James is a passionate advocate of practitioner inquiry as a basis for professional development, and he regularly presents at educational conferences on this subject. He is also a member of Oracy Cambridge, a study centre and think tank dedicated to promoting effective speaking and listening skills in schools and the wider society. 

James runs research-informed training and consultancy through Rethinking Education with Kate McAllister.

In 2020, James co-authored Fear Is The Mind Killer: Why Learning to Learn deserves lesson time - and how to make it work for your pupils with Kate McAllister.  

Social Links

Twitter: @RethinkingJames

LinkedIn: @james-mannion

Email: james@rethinking-ed.org

Carl Honoré is a bestselling author, broadcaster and the voice of the Slow Movement. His two main-stage TED Talks have been viewed millions of times. His TED Course is entitled How to slow down.

Carl travels the world to deliver powerful keynotes that put time and tempo in a whole new light. His counter-intuitive message is simple but game-changing: To thrive in a fast world, you have to slow down. 

Carl’s first book, In Praise of Slow, chronicles the global trend toward putting on the brakes in everything from work to food to parenting. The Financial Times said it is “to the Slow Movement what Das Kapital is to communism.”

Carl’s second book, Under Pressure explores how to raise and educate children in a fast world and was hailed by Time as a “gospel of the Slow Parenting movement.” 

Carl’s third book, The Slow Fix, explores how to tackle complex problems in every walk of life, from health and relationships to business and politics, without falling for superficial, short-term quick fixes.

Carl’s latest book, Bolder: Making The Most Of Our Longer Lives, explores ageing – how we can do it better and feel better about doing it. It’s a spirited manifesto against ageism.

Carl recently published his first children’s book: It’s The Journey, Not The Destination.

Published in 35 languages, his books have landed on bestseller lists in many countries. In Praise of Slow was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and the inaugural choice for the Huffington Post Book Club. It also featured in a British TV sitcom, Argentina’s version of Big Brother and a TV commercial for the Motorola tablet. Under Pressure was shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust Award, the top prize for non-fiction in Canada. Bolder was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and a Reader’s Digest (UK) Book of the Month.

Carl featured in a series for BBC Radio 4 called The Slow Coach in which he helped frazzled, over-scheduled people slow down. He presented a television show called Frantic Family Rescue on Australia’s ABC 1. He also spent three years on the Board of Trustees of Hewitt School in New York City. 

Carl is a father of two and lives in London.

While researching his first book on slowness, he was slapped with a speeding ticket.

Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs is an author and internationally recognized education leader known for her work in phenomena-based learning, learning structure design, curriculum mapping and integration and developing 21st century approaches to teaching and learning.

Heidi is the Founder and President of Curriculum21, Curriculum Designers, Inc. and Executive Director of the Curriculum Mapping Institute. She works as an education consultant with schools and districts K–12 on issues and practices pertaining to: curriculum reform, instructional strategies and strategic planning.

She has taught in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching, at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, from 1981 to the present. She is a co-founder of The Hollingworth Center also at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Heidi has written many inspirational books including:

• Bold Moves For Schools: How We Create Remarkable Learning Environments, ASCD, Alexandria, VA 2017. (with Dr. Marie Hubley Alcock)
• Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World, ASCD, Alexandria, VA. January, 2010. (with Jaimie Cloud)
• The Curriculum Mapping Planner: Templates, Tools, and Resources for Effective Professional Development, ASCD, Alexandria, VA. 2009. (with Ann Johnson)

And many more...

Heidi collaborates with Allison Zmuda and has recently launched the transform.curriculum21.com intiative in order to support learners, families and teacher leaders adapt to the demands of the COVID pandemic and breathe life back into a lifeless curriculum.

During our conversation, Heidi shares a useful resource for schools making vital decisions about what to cut, keep and create in physical, hybrid and home learning scenarios.

Social Links:

Email: heidi@curriculum21.com

Twitter: @heidihayesjacob

LinkedIn: @heidihayesjacobs

Greg Curtis is an author and independent education consultant.  He is currently based in Beijing and has spent much of his career working with international schools around the world in all-school capacities. Greg has been a technology director, a curriculum and professional learning director and a strategic planner for schools in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia.

Greg has been heavily invested in deep, systems-focused school improvement efforts for his entire career. With over 27 years of experience working from early years through high school programs, he has developed considerable experience in leading curriculum revitalization, 21st century learning, technology infusion, assessment shifts and change initiatives.

Greg is the author of the three books: 

• Moving Beyond Busy: Focusing School Change on Why, What, and How (Student-Centered Strategic Planning for School Improvement) (2019)
• Leading Modern Learning: A Blueprint for Vision-Driven Schools (foreword by Jay McTighe) (2015)
• Learning Personalized: The Evolution of the Contemporary Classroom (co-authored with Allison Zmuda and Diane Ullman) (2015)

Greg has recently been working with the Mastery Transcript Consortium as they develop their alternative to the High School GPA-focused transcript to one which "authentically and holistically captures student learning, progress, and interests."

Greg is also the creator of LearningBoard® - a software solution that supports schools make the shift to a focus on transformational learning. It enables schools to plan curricula and collect, organize, analyze and report evidence of student learning against performance indicators for transformational learning goals such as leadership, creativity, and critical thinking, as well as against academic standards. 

Social Links

Email: greg@gregcurtis-consulting.ca

Twitter: @jgcurtis

LinkedIn: @greg-curtis

⁠Yong Zhao⁠ is a Foundation Distinguished Professor in the ⁠School of Education at the University of Kansas⁠ and a professor in Educational Leadership at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne in Australia. He previously served as the Presidential Chair, Associate Dean, and Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon, where he was also a Professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy, and Leadership. Prior to Oregon, Yong Zhao was University Distinguished Professor at the College of Education, Michigan State University, where he also served as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology, executive director of the ⁠Confucius Institute⁠, as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence. He is an elected member of the ⁠National Academy of Education⁠ and a fellow of the ⁠International Academy of Education⁠.

In this conversation we chat about why the US should abandon PISA - the "nonsensical global academic horse race": https://dianeravitch.net/2024/02/12/yong-zhao-why-doesnt-the-u-s-scrap-pisa/

"If ChatGPT had taken the 2022 PISA, it is highly likely that it would outscore all the students in the world.”

We also discuss why countries generally should stop comparing and borrowing from each other, and why diversity and localisation and personalisation are Yong’s keys to how the educational landscape needs to develop in the future.

Recent books and articles:

Duck and Cover: Confronting and Correcting Dubious Practices in Education with Rick Ginsberg (2023)

'Shifting the Education Paradigm: Why International Borrowing is No Longer Sufficient for Improving Education in China' (2018).

'“Testing treats students as enemies and are often launched against them in an ambush”, wrote Mao in 1964, “It works against the active and lively development of youth morally, intellectually, and physically”'

Learning for Uncertainty: Reach for greatness (2023) 

Social Links

LinkedIn: @yong-zhao

X: @YongZhaoEd

Will Richardson has an international reputation as someone who effectively challenges traditional thinking about schools. A former classroom teacher of 22 years, Will is an author, as well as a blogger, podcaster, leadership coach, and serial entrepreneur. Last year, he co-founded The BIG Questions Institute with Homa Tavangar, which was created to help educators use "fearless inquiry" to make sense of this complex moment and an uncertain future.

Will has spent the last 15 years developing an international reputation as a leading thinker and writer about the intersection of social online learning networks, education, and systemic change.

In 2017, Will was named one of 100 global "Changemakers in Education" by the Finnish site HundrED, and was named one of the Top 5 "Edupreneurs to Follow" by Forbes. He has given keynote speeches and provided coaching services in over 30 countries on 6 continents. He has also authored six books, most recently Freedom to Learn, that have sold over 200,000 copies worldwide, and given TEDx Talks in New York, Melbourne, and most recently Vancouver.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @willrichardsonspeaks

Twitter: @willrich45

Prof. Sugata Mitra is Professor Emeritus at NIIT University, India. He retired in 2019 as Professor of Educational Technology and Principal Research Investigator in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK. In 2012, he was Visiting Professor for the MIT Medialab in Massachusetts, US.

In 1999, Sugata began the now world-renowned ‘Hole in the Wall (HIW)’ experiment, when a computer was embedded within a wall in an Indian slum at Kalkaji, Delhi and children were allowed to freely use it. The experiment aimed at proving that kids could be taught computers very easily without any formal training. Sugata termed this as Minimally Invasive Education (MIE). The experiment has since been repeated in many places around the world.

Sugata is the recipient of many awards from India, the UK, USA and many other countries in the world and has conducted research that has pushed the boundaries of many disciplines including electrical engineering, medicine and computer science.

He has a PhD in Physics and is credited with more than 25 inventions in the area of cognitive science and educational technology. He was conferred the prestigious Dewang Mehta Award from the Government of India for Innovation in Information Technology in 2003. Amongst many other awards, he was also awarded the 1 million dollar TED Prize in 2013.

In 2006, Sugata invented Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs), now in use throughout the world. In 2009, he created the Granny Cloud, of teachers who interact with children over the Internet.

Since the 1970s, Professor Mitra’s publications and work has resulted in training and development of perhaps a million young Indians, amongst them some of the poorest children in the world.

Sugata published hundreds of ground-breaking academic papers, and in 2019 pulled many of his ideas together into his book, The School in the Cloud: The Emerging Future of Education.

Social Links

Twitter: @sugatam

Web: www.cevesm.com

Sir Michael Barber is a world leading expert on government delivery, education systems, systemic innovation and education reform.

Sir Michael led the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit for the Blair administration in the UK from 2001-2005. Since then, he has worked on delivery and system-wide reforms in more than 50 countries. He personally leads high-stakes engagements with political leaders, such as quarterly cabinet retreats in Canada with PM Justin Trudeau, to help them adopt the delivery approach.

Michael held the first Chair of the Office for Students in the UK from 2017 to 2021, and prior to that as Chief Education Advisor at Pearson, Michael led a worldwide programme delivering Pearson’s strategy for education in the poorest sectors of the world, especially in fast-growing developing economies.

Michael was a Partner at McKinsey & Company and Head of McKinsey’s global education practice. He is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Exeter. Before joining government he was a professor at the Institute of Education at the University of London.

Sir Michael has written extensively on education at all levels, government delivery and innovation. His most recent publication 'How Seventeen Secretaries of State for Education, through Thirty Years of Constant Change, Enabled the System to Improve' was published this month and is a synthesis of the reflections of the UK education ministers since 1986.

Michael's book Accomplishment: How to achieve ambitious and challenging things was also published earlier this year and sets out the ingredients for success based on the stories of many inspirational people and Michael's own experiences of delivering success for governments and education systems around the world.

Other books he has authored are Deliverology 101: A Field Guide For Educational Leaders and How to Run A Government: So that Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers Don't Go Crazy.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @sirmichaelbarber

Twitter: @MichaelBarber9

Alison Clark is an Professor of Early Childhood Education and visual artist. She is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Thomas Coram Research Unit, UCL Institute of Education, London, UK. Her main academic work is currently in Norway where she is Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of South-Eastern Norway (USN).  

Since 1999, Alison has been interested in the theoretical, methodological and ethical aspects of young children’s co-construction of knowledge using visual, participatory methods. This research theme has centred on the development and adaptation of the Mosaic approach with her colleague Professor Peter Moss - a multimethod qualitative research approach for working with participant perspectives that has contributed to a ‘listening to young children discourse’ in the UK and internationally.

Cross-national collaboration and exchange is central to Alison's work. She co-founded the Special Interest Group on Children’s Perspectives, as part of the European Early Childhood Education Research Association in 2004 (with Professor Deborah Harcourt). She has also contributed to the exhibition Remembrance of Swings Past - a collaboration between the University of South-Eastern Norway, early childhood centres in the municipality of Horten, and Preus Museum, the National Photography Museum of Norway.

Alison's recent two year research study, Slow knowledge and the Unhurried Child was funded by the Froebel Trust and published in 2022 by Routledge as the book Slow Knowledge and the Unhurried Child: Time for Slow Pedagogies in Early Childhood Education.

Alison's Blog: Slow Knowledge https://alisonclarkinthemaking.wordpress.com

Alison's artist website: http://www.alisonclark.co.uk

Social Links

LinkedIn: @professor-alison-clark

Twitter: @WestrayAlison

Email: alison.clark@ucl.ac.uk

Oluwatosin Olowoyeye-Taiwo is an activist and social entrepreneur campaigning for equity and access to education for at-risk children in Nigeria. She founded her organisation Street to School Initiative in 2009 to sponsor out-of-school children back to school. Through her educational sponsorship programs and school support scheme, Tosin has been able to support more than 20,000 vulnerable pupils into schools. In 2015, she established a tuition-free school in Alimosho, strictly for out-of-school children in Nigeria.

She has also supported children's entries into national examinations such as IGCSEs, A-levels, West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination, Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.

Tosin is a 2013 recipient of the United States Consul General Award, and a 2014 alumnus of the US government-sponsored International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP). In 2017, Tosin received the Yemisi-Ransome Kuti Leadership Award.

At the Street to School Centre, children are taught, mentored & provided learning materials & free school meals, this is to boost school attendance and improve learning outcomes. In 5 years of establishment, 78 children have transitioned into high school, with 198 children currently enrolled and in various classes. Street to School Initiative is being supported by terrific individuals, and corporations such as Stanbic IBTC Bank, United Parcel Service, the Embassy of Japan in Nigeria, and the US Embassy. Tosin is a graduate of Computer Science from the University of Lagos and Social Sector Management from Pan-Atlantic University. 

Social Links

Twitter: @Street2SchoolNG

LinkedIn: @Oluwatosin-Olowoyeye-Taiwo

Facebook: @Street2SchoolNG

Jennifer Groff, PhD is an educational engineer, designer, and researcher, whose work focuses on redesigning learning environments and systems. Currently, she is the Innovation Fellow at WISE (Qatar Foundation), where she is leading the development of their Global Innovation Hub--a platform helping schools transform for our modern world. Previously, she was the Chief Learning Officer for Lumiar Education, a network of innovative, redesigned schools. She has spent much of her career doing leading-edge work at the MIT on new learning pedagogies and game-based assessments, and recently earned her PhD from the MIT Media Lab. Previously, she was the co-founder of the Center for Curriculum Redesign, an international NGO dedicated to redesigning the general curricula for the 21st century. 

Previously, she was the Vice President of Learning & Program Development for the Learning Games Network—a non-profit spin-off from the MIT Education Arcade, where she led the national Playful Learning initiative. She also served as the technology expert on the OECD Innovative Learning Environments project, and was a Fulbright Scholar to the UK, at Futurelab Education in Bristol, United Kingdom.

A former K-12 educator, Jennifer was named one of 12 Microsoft Innovative Teacher Leaders in 2005, one of the Top 100 Influencers in Ed Tech (2017-18) by Ed Tech Digest.

Social Links

Twitter: @jsgroff

Linked: @jennifersgroff

Website: http://learningfutures.global

Professor Deborah Eyre is a global educational leader, academic researcher, writer helping good schools become world class through a focus on student performance. Using her 25 years researching into how gifted students think and learn and then creating frameworks to help schools and enrichment providers to enhance provision for these students, she created High Performance Learning with the aim of enabling all students to reach that same advanced performance. 

As well as being a widely published author, Deborah's career has included a variety of senior education roles both globally and in UK and she has advised governments and educational foundations in UK, Hong Kong, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, USA and Singapore. From 2010-2014 she was Global Education Director for Nord Anglia Education and prior to that served as Director of the UK government’s innovative National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY), based at the University of Warwick, where she published Room at the Top: Inclusive education for high performance (2016).

Deborah holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of Warwick and Professorship from Oxford Brookes University. She is a practical academic and writes for a variety of audiences from policy makers to parents but her first love is teachers and teaching. Deborah had served on many board and is currently is Board Member of the Council of British International Schools (COBIS), a Trustee of the Swan Multi-Academy Trust (Oxford) and the Inspiring Futures Foundation, a Board member at Centre for Talented Youth, Ireland (CTYI) a Freeman of the City of London and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @deborah-eyre

Twitter: @eyre_deborah

Glenn Whitman is a History teacher and Executive Director of the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning (CTTL) at St. Andrew's Episcopal School. Glenn is the co-author of Neuroteach: Brain Science and the Future of Education, the co-designer of Neuroteach Global and Neuroteach Global Student and co-editor of Think Differently and Deeply, the international publication of the CTTL. Glenn earned his MALS from Dartmouth College and a BA from Dickinson College and has shared the work of the CTTL through publications such as Edutopia, ASCD Express and EdSurge and presented around the world at public, private, and international school conferences including: Learning Forward, New Teacher Center, Learning & Brain and SXSWedu.

Social Links

Twitter: @gwhitmancttl

LinkedIn: @glenn-whitman

Gregory Biggs is the Director of Fieldwork Education, the organisation that develops a range of International Curriculum for learners aged 2-14 across Early Years, Primary and Middle Years, known by many as the IEYC, IPC, and IMYC. These curricula are learnt and taught in over 1,000 schools and more than 90 countries worldwide. Fieldwork Education provides schools the International Curriculum, accompanied by their professional learning pathway and their accreditation services to schools working with the International Curriculum around the world.

Prior to leading the team at Fieldwork Education, Gregory was the global product manager for the IB’s Diploma and Career-related Programmes, located in Singapore. Before which he worked with governments and ministries on structuring national education reform efforts across the Middle East and South East Asia, out of Abu Dhabi. With a Master’s from the University of London’s Institute for Education in Education and International Development, Gregory has spent the last 12 years supporting institutions delicately balance global perspectives with local contexts.

Tristian Stobie's career has spanned a wide range of educational contexts. Starting as a teacher, and then Secondary Principal, he has worked in New Zealand, UK, Lesotho, Monaco, Austria and the Netherlands.

He has also worked in a number of roles for the International Baccalaureate Organisation. He was involved in the early development of the International Schools Association Curriculum, which became the IBMYP,  and later he became Head of IB Diploma programme curriculum development.

Tristian joined Cambridge International as Director of Education in July 2011, and was appointed Director of Curriculum & Qualifications Development in February 2020. He leads the design and development of Cambridge programmes and qualifications for learners aged 5 to 19.

Tristian completed a Master’s and a Doctorate degree at the University of Bath with research interests in curriculum and pedagogy. He has written various articles and contributions to books as well as presented widely at educational conferences and events.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @tristian-stobie / @gregory-biggs

Twitter:  @CambridgeInt / @gregory_biggs

Malcolm Parlett has had an active and distinguished career in educational research, training and gestalt therapy. He obtained a first class honours degree in Psychology from the University of Nottingham in 1962. He became a research student working in the Psychological Laboratory at King’s College, Cambridge. His Ph.D research was into memory and selective perception.

Moving from experimental psychology to pursue applied studies in education, he worked in the Education Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an Associate Professor of Teaching and Learning Analysis, before being appointed as a Lecturer in Educational Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. At MIT he developed his innovative qualitative research method, “illuminative evaluation”, to investigate students’ experiences of education. He also conducted a major study for Wellesley College, and became a colleague and friend of Professor Donald Schön.

Malcolm was Principal research officer at the National Foundation of Educational Research and a member of the Group for Research and Innovation in Higher Education at the Nuffield Foundation. He was also a research associate in the Department of Educational Studies at Oxford University. Later, he directed a consulting group – the Higher Education Study Group – in Newton, Massachusetts and worked for a variety of colleges, foundations, and overseas agencies, including the Exxon Education Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, UNICEF, and USAID. Malcolm was also a Professor at the Open University, in the Institute of Educational Technology.

Malcolm went on to train in gestalt philosophy and methods and then worked all over the world as a distinguished gestalt therapist, consultant and speaker. He was the founding Editor of the British Gestalt Journal, a position he held for 16 years.

In his early research he was the author of several papers and chapters about higher education, qualitative research, and science education, including one in Nature. In 1977 he co-edited Beyond the Numbers Game – A reader in educational evaluation and also Introduction to Illuminative Evaluation: Studies in higher education. 

In 2015 his book, Future Sense: Five explorations of whole intelligence for a world that’s waking up, was published and has been reviewed in the Gestalt Review and the BGJ. In 2016 he edited and contributed to a collection, Contact and Context: New directions in gestalt coaching. 

In 2020 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Gestalt Organisation and System Development Center, in Cleveland, Ohio.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @malcolmparlett

Website: www.wholeintelligence.org

Email: malcolm.parlett@myphone.coop

What would it mean for ALL of our young people to feel safe and that they belong in our schools? This week, it's fantastic to have Dr Emily Meadows with us on the podcast to talk about creating spaces of belonging for everyone, but in particular for LGBTQ+ young people.

Dr. Emily Meadows (she/her) is an LGBTQ+ consultant and published author specializing in international schools. Emily creates an environment that is non-judgmental and engaging for her clients, while taking an intersectional approach that addresses both the why and the how of inclusion so that educators become confident and competent supporting LGBTQ+ students. 

In addition to her doctoral degree, Emily holds master’s degrees in both Sexual Health and Counseling, and has worked as an international school counselor for over a decade. She researches, publishes, and trains school communities on equitable policy and practice, while also teaching for the LGBT Health Policy & Practice graduate program at George Washington University. 

Emily has developed inclusion standards, referenda, and trainings for professional organizations such as the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), The Fulbright Commission, the Association for International Educators and Leaders of Color (AIELOC), the Association for the Advancement of International Education (AAIE) and the American Psychological Association (APA). Having spent more than half of her life in international schools, Emily specializes in culturally-relevant solutions to promote equity and inclusion worldwide.

Additional resources

Supporting LGBTQ students: https://www.cois.org/about-cis/perspectives-blog/blog-post/~board/perspectives-blog/post/preparing-lgbtq-students-for-an-overnight-camp 

"Transgender Student Support Toolkit for International School Counselors": https://iscainfo.com/Transgender-Student-Support

Wheel of Safety and Belonging:

https://www.cois.org/about-cis/perspectives-blog/blog-post/~board/perspectives-blog/post/can-diversity-equity-and-belonging-initiatives-create-division-in-schools-and-a-framework-to-help 

LGBTQ+ Identity Affirmation in International Schools: An Ethical Framework for Educators:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/01614681231194416

Sanjay Sarma is the Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering. From 2012 until 2021, Sanjay led MIT Open Learning, first as director, then as dean, and finally as vice president. MIT Open Learning includes the Office of Digital Learning, the MIT Integrated Learning Initiative (MITili), the Center for Advanced Virtuality, and the Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL). In 2020 Sanjay published Grasp: The Science Transforming How We Learn, which he co-authored with Luke Yoquinto.

Previously, Sanjay co-founded the Auto-ID Center at MIT and developed many of the key technologies behind the Electronic Product Code suite of radio frequency identification (RFID) standards now used worldwide. He was also the founder and CTO of OATSystems, which was acquired by Checkpoint Systems in 2008. Sanjay has authored over 100 academic papers in computational geometry, sensing, RFID, automation, and computer-aided design, and is the recipient of numerous awards for teaching and research, including the MacVicar Fellowship, the BusinessWeek eBiz Award, and InformationWeek’s Innovators and Influencers Award.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @mit-open-learning

Twitter: @mitopenlearning

If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while now, you will know that creating conversational spaces full of possibility as an antidote to polarisation and crisis is something I really value, whether that’s on a podcast, online, or even better, in person! 

So it was such a joy to sit down with Doline Ndorimana to talk about her amazing work doing just that with young people and fellow educators and leaders. Doline’s work centres the courage and humility of trying to get to real connection and mutual learning rather than winning oppositional and propositional arguments.

Born and raised in Burundi, Doline is an international educator, DEIJ workshop leader, and university lecturer with 15 years of experience in international schools. She is also a language acquisition middle years program consultant, part of the TIE editorial committee, and a member of the Association for International Educators and Leaders of Colour (AIELOC) and the International School Services (ISS) Diversity Collaborative.

Kiran Bir Sethi is a designer who became a teacher, a principal who grew into an education reformer and subsequently morphed into a social entrepreneur. A trained graphic designer from the National Institute of Design, she comfortably uses the language of design – iteration, prototype, design specs – to develop not only curriculum innovation, but also community-based social programmes.

Kiran founded the award winning Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India, in 2001. Riverside, is viewed as a laboratory to prototype design processes that uses a systems approach to build a culture of empowerment, graduating young citizen leaders with an ‘I CAN Mindset’ – using their agency for the greater good.

Riverside Learning Centre (RLC) started in 2016, has codified the practices and processes of The Riverside School and designed training programmes around the 6 Pillars of Curriculum, Parent Partnership, Personal & Professional Development, Community, Administration and Leadership that empower more schools to become user centered.

Kiran is also the founder of aProCh—an initiative to make our cities more child friendly, for which she was awarded the Ashoka Fellow in 2008.

In 2009, Kiran launched Design for Change which uses a simple 4 step design framework – FIDS (Feel, Imagine, Do, Share) to cultivate the I CAN mind-set in all children. Today, DFC is the world's largest movement of change - of and by children, and is in 60+ countries—impacting over 2.2 million children and 65,000 Teachers.

Kiran is a judge for the prestigious YIDAN Prize and a Visiting Global Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In 2019, she was awarded the Earth Prize in Luino, Italy, the Lexus Design Award for 2019, in Pune, India, and DFC has been recognised as one of the 100 most innovative educational programmes in the world by HundrED.org in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.

Social Links

Twitter: @kiranbirsethi

LinkedIn: @kiranbirsethi

Sir Anthony Seldon is a leading authority on contemporary British history and education and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham. He is author or editor of over 40 books on contemporary history, politics and education and is the author on, and honorary historical advisor to, Downing Street.

After gaining an MA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Worcester College, Oxford, and a PhD at the London School of Economics, Anthony qualified as a teacher at King's College, London, where he was awarded the top PGCE prize in his year.

From 1993 to 2015, Anthony held headships at St Dunstan's College in South London, Brighton College in E. Sussex and Wellington College in Berkshire. In 2015, he left Wellington College to become Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, a position he held until last year.

Sir Anthony is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and King's College London. He was knighted in the Queen's 2014 Birthday Honours list for services to education and modern political history. He founded the Sunday Times (now Telegraph) Festival of Education and most recently the Festival of Higher Education, and is widely known for introducing and promoting happiness, well-being and mindfulness across education.

Sir Anthony founded, with Professor Lord Peter Hennessy, the Institute of Contemporary British History, and Action for Happiness with Professor Lord Richard Layard and Geoff Mulgan. He is governor of several bodies, including the Royal Shakespeare Company, and is Chair of The Comment Awards.

Sir Anthony also co-founded The Institute for Ethical AI in Education with Rose Luckin and Priya Lakhani.

Some of Anthony's latest books include:

• The Fourth Education Revolution Reconsidered: Will artificial intelligence enrich or diminish humanity? with Oladimeji Abidoye and Timothy Metcalf (2020); 
• Beyond Happiness: How to find lasting meaning and joy in all that you have (2016); 
• May at 10 (2019) with Raymond Newell; 
• Cameron at 10: The Verdict (2016) with Peter Snowdon 
• ...and many others.

This week’s episode is a conversation about the importance of play and playfulness with the fantastic Dr. Jane Hession and Ronan Healy. Based on their extensive research and expertise of the Lego Serious Play method, Jane and Ronan are successfully reintroducing play to learning and work environments as an invitation to qualitatively different modes and types of experiences for teams. We also talk about the way in which play using boundary objects such as Lego, can enable inclusive learning environments. 

Ronan and Jane are the Co-founders of How Might We, a Limerick-based design consultancy. Jane is a published author whose book ‘Women In The Modern Workplace’ examines how family, finance, networking and mentoring affect women’s decisions to establish a business. Jane and Ronan are also the hosts of the Seeking Play podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/42Rp28RCD0DmyjjA1vQQIU?si=620ca36a318a413b

Social Links

Web: www.howmightwe.ie

Email: jane@howmightwe.ie / ronan@howmightwe.ie

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/how-might-we-service-design

X: https://twitter.com/howmightwe

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/howmightwe.ie/

Systems change, or in fact any change, in formal education systems is notoriously hard. Research and innovation across the sector has been historically weak. But as the stakes get higher for much-needed change, we have to get better at harnessing the collective intelligence of what we know, from young people to practitioners in classrooms everyday to parents and leaders. This week’s guest has been working at the heart of this issue since the 1990s. Sir Geoff Mulgan is a Professor at University College London (UCL), in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Policy team (STEaPP) in the engineering department.  Before that he was Chief Executive of Nesta, the UK's innovation foundation from 2011-2019. From 1997-2004 he had roles in the UK government including director of the Government's Strategy Unit, director of the Performance and Innovation Unit and head of policy in the Prime Minister's office. From 2004-2011 he was first CEO of the Young Foundation.  Geoff has been a reporter on BBC TV and radio and was the founder/co-founder of many organisations, including Demos, Uprising, the Social Innovation Exchange, the Australia Centre for Social Innovation and Action for Happiness. He has a PhD in telecommunications and has been visiting professor at LSE and Melbourne University, and senior visiting scholar at Harvard University.

Geoff has advised many governments, businesses, NGOs and foundations around the world. He is currently an adviser to the European Parliament on science and technology and a senior fellow with Demos Helsinki. He was a senior fellow at the New Institute in Hamburg (2020-2022) and a World Economic Forum Schwab Fellow (2019-22). He recently chaired a European Commission programme on ‘Whole of Government Innovation’ and co-founded TIAL, The Institutional Architecture Lab.  

Past books include ‘Good and Bad Power’ (Penguin, 2005), ‘The Art of Public Strategy’ (Oxford University Press, 2008), ‘The Locust and the Bee’ (Princeton University Press, 2012), ‘Big Mind: how collective intelligence can change our world’ (Princeton University Press, 2017),  ‘Social innovation: how societies find the power to change’ (Policy Press, 2019), 'Prophets at a Tangent: how art shapes social imagination' (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and ‘When Science Meets Power’ (Polity, 2023/24).  His books have been translated into many languages.  A summary of the books can be found here.

He is a founding joint editor-in-chief of the journal Collective Intelligence (Sage/ACM). Many of the ideas Geoff has worked on have gone onto become mainstream, from creative economy strategies to social investing, open data to collective intelligence,  experimental and evidence-based government to challenge-driven innovation. Geoff has given TED talks on the future economy, happiness and education. His website is geoffmulgan.com. He has a CBE and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2020. 

Social Links

LinkedIn: @sir-geoff-mulgan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sir-geoff-mulgan-aa1079187/

Website: https://www.geoffmulgan.com/

What does it really mean to have 'agency' and how might we create more opportunities for young people to step into their agency in meaningful ways? Indra Adnan has been exploring this concept in communities around the world as well as in grassroots political organising.

For over twenty years, Indra Adnan has been writing, consulting, network-building and event-organising on the themes of future politics, conflict transformation, the role of the arts and integral thinking.

She is Founder and Co-initiator, together with Pat Kane, of The Alternative UK political platform, which answers the question: if politics is broken, what’s the alternative?

Indra has been writing consistently about soft power, public diplomacy and the power of attraction and relationship in international relations for over a decade, in major UK and US publications.

Indra is also a psycho-social therapist, founder of the Soft Power Network, and a writer and events producer. She has consulted to the World Economic Forum, Indian, Finnish and Danish governments, NATO, the Scottish Executive and the Institute of Contemporary Arts amongst others. Indra is currently Co-Lead in Bounce Beyond, a social enterprise network doing transformative work to cohere and connect the next global economies.

Her book The Politics of Waking Up: Power & Possibility In The Fractal Age is published by Perspectiva Press.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @indra-adnan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/indra-adnan-6b4aa32/

Instagram: @politics.of.waking.up - https://www.instagram.com/politics.of.waking.up/

Alicia Juarrero, is Co-Founder and President of VectorAnalytica and Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Prince George’s Community College (MD).

She is the author of Context Changes Everything: How Constraints Create Coherence, published last year: https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5600/Context-Changes-EverythingHow-Constraints-Create⁠

Her other books are Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System (MIT 1999) and co-editor of Reframing Complexity: Perspectives from North and South (ISCE Publishing, 2007), and Emergence, Self-Organization and Complexity: Precursors and Prototypes (ISCE Publishing, 2008).

Alicia was named the 2002 U.S. Professor of the Year by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; in 2003 she received the Edward T. Foote Alumnus of Distinction Award of the University of Miami; in 1995 the Distinguished Humanities Educator Award of the Community College Humanities Association. In 1992 Alicia was appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to the Advisory Board of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) where, from 1992-2000 she served as NEH’s Chair of Council Committee on State Programs. In that capacity she was responsible for the oversight of approximately $32 million in NEH funds distributed annually to the States Humanities Councils.

Born in Cuba, Alicia has played a leading role in introducing complexity concepts and theory to that island nation and currently serves as Secretary-Treasurer of Friends of Havana’s January Complexity Seminars, a 501(c)3 not for profit organization which supports the work of complexity scholars in Cuba.

Todd Shy has taught for more than twenty-five years in Cary, North Carolina, San Francisco, California, and New York City. He is currently Head of Upper Division at Avenues The World School in New York. His writing has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Raleigh News and Observer, where he was a regular contributor, the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Salmagundi, and numerous other publications. In 2008 he was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. His recent book Teaching Life: Life Lessons for Aspiring (and Inspiring) Teachers was described by the founder of the Academy for Teachers as a “an eloquent love letter to teaching and to life.”

Social Links

LinkedIn: @todd-shy

Twitter: @avenues_org

Nicole Dyson is a multi-award-winning educator and entrepreneur, and a global authority on project-based learning and youth entrepreneurship. With an extensive background in school teaching and leadership in the public education system in Australia, she is the founder of Future Anything, an award-winning education provider that works with 15000+ young people (and their educators) each year. Nicole also founded YouthX, Australia’s only startup accelerator program for school-aged entrepreneurs, and Catapult Cards, a design thinking toolkit for classrooms and corporates that donates 50% of its profits back to providing micro-grants for youth-led startups.

Future Anything was the winner of the Xero Outstanding Micro-Business Award at the 2021 Lord Mayor’s Business Awards and was listed as one of only ten initiatives around the globe realizing the employment and entrepreneurship ambitions of young people in the Prince’s Trust Group’s Report (2021) on The Future of Work. Future Anything was also the winner in the 2023 Business Champion Awards for Oustanding Education Services.

Nicole was listed in the inaugural 40 Under 40 for Queensland in 2023, as well as winning the ‘Gamechanger Award’, recognizing a person who has “re-written the rules of business to challenge, inspire and spark significant change.” She was also recognized in The Educator’s “Most Influential” list for 2023, acknowledging 45 educators significantly influencing culture and reform within Australia’s education sector, and was the recipient of SBE’s ‘Unsung Hero’ Award in 2022.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @nicdyson

Instagram: @nicdyso_ / @Future_Anything

X: @nicoledyson

This episode is a fantastic conversation with 2 brilliant women who have been whipping up a storm this week with the release of their amazing new book The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better! Dr Rebecca Winthrop and Jenny Anderson chat with me about the disengagement crisis facing our young people and what we, as parents and educators, can do about it.
Jenny Anderson is an author and an award-winning journalist who spent over a decade at The New York Times before pioneering coverage on the science of learning at Quartz. She contributes to TIME, The New York Times and The Atlantic, among other publications.
Rebecca Winthrop is a leading global authority on education. She is the director of the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, where she conducts studies on how to better support children’s learning, and is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

Social Links

https://www.thedisengagedteen.com/

Instagram: @jennyandersonwrites - https://www.instagram.com/jennyandersonwrites/ ; @drrebeccawinthrop - https://www.instagram.com/drrebeccawinthrop/

LinkedIn: @jennyandersonnyt - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennyandersonnyt/ ; @rebecca-winthrop - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-winthrop-b36b0617/

Bena Kallick is the co-founder and co-director of the Institute for Habits of Mind with Art Costa and program director for Eduplanet21, a company dedicated to online professional learning and curriculum development based on the Understanding by Design® framework. She is a consultant providing services to school districts, state departments of education, professional organizations, and public agencies throughout the United States and abroad.

Bena received her doctorate in educational evaluation from Union Graduate School. Her areas of focus include group dynamics, creative and critical thinking, and alternative assessment strategies in the classroom.

Formerly a teachers' center director, Bena also created a children's museum based on problem solving and invention. She was the coordinator of a high school alternative designed for at-risk students.

Bena has taught at Yale University School of Organization and Management, University of Massachusetts Center for Creative and Critical Thinking, and Union Graduate School. She served on the board of Jobs for the Future and was a cofounder of Performance Pathways.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @benakallick

Twitter: @benakallick

Daniela Papi-Thornton is an educator, facilitator, and author whose work focuses on systems-led leadership: an approach to social innovation that centers on systems understanding. Daniela has served as a Lecturer at Yale School of Management, Watson Institute, and Oxford’s Saïd Business School where she was also the Deputy Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. She designed an educational tool called the Impact Gaps Canvas used at accelerator programs and social impact education initiatives around the world and launched Map the System, a contest now running at 50+ global institutions. Daniela has served as a consultant, advisor, and leadership training facilitator at a range of enterprises, from public companies to private foundations. Daniela’s work builds upon six years of emerging market entrepreneurial experience in Cambodia, running a hybrid educational organization. She co-authored a book, Learning Service: The essential guide to volunteering abroad and an influential report on "Tackling Heropreneurship" and her TEDx talk on Reclaiming Social Entrepreneurship highlights some of her thinking. 

Social Links   

LinkedIn: @danielapapi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielapapi/  

X (formerly Twitter): @danielapapi: https://twitter.com/danielapapi 

We need to ask ourselves some really tough questions about what our education systems are really doing to support young people to live in a climate changed world of at least 2 degrees of warming. What are the hands-on skills that they will need, but also how are we supporting them to regulate difficult emotions, and build community as we relocalise. This week, Ginie Servant-Miklos is returning to the podcast, this time with her colleague Rutger Engels, to talk about what they are learning through their work implementing critically important ideas in their Bildung Climate School pilots with young people across Rotterdam. 

You can find out more about the Bildung Climate School here: https://www.erasmusmagazine.nl/en/2024/05/29/students-of-all-levels-learn-how-to-deal-with-climate-change-challenges-through-dance-and-philosophy/

https://www.instagram.com/bildung_climate_school/

You can also see an overview of the programme here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vS97am09X7bwtKLZfXZrfq-6LuS59W5E/view?usp=sharing

For further details on Bildung, go to Lene Rachel Andersen's Nordic Bildung: https://www.nordicbildung.org/

And check out previous episodes with Ginie and Lene on the podcast channel.

Ginie Servant-Miklos is Assistant Professor at Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Previously she was a Senior Lecturer in the Humanities Department of Erasmus University College and held a visiting professorship in experimental pedagogics at Tyumen University, Russia. She completed her post-doctoral fellowship at Aalborg University’s Centre for Problem-based Learning in Engineering Education and Sustainability under the auspices of UNESCO. Her research focuses on the intersection between pedagogy, identity and sustainability issues. Her forthcoming book, 'Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for The End of The World as We Know It' is released on November 28th 2024: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/pedagogies-of-collapse-9781350400498/. She is also the founder and Chair of the Board of the FairFight Foundation, a charity that aims to empower girls and women from underprivileged backgrounds through martial arts.

Rutger Engels is professor in Developmental Psychopathology, at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He received his MA in Psychology at the University of Groningen, his PhD at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Maastricht and did a post-doc at Utrecht University. In 2001, at the age of 32, he was appointed as a full professor in Nijmegen. From 2014-2018, he was CEO of the Trimbos Institute, the national institute for mental health and addictions, and distinguished professor in Developmental Psychopathology at Utrecht University in the period 2016-2018. From 2018-2021 he was rector magnificus of the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

His fundamental and applied research focuses on early stages of substance use, depression and anxiety in children, adolescents and young adults. In 2011, he received the Huibregtsen Prize, the annual national award, by NWO and Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW) for outstanding research with evident societal impact. In 2012, he won the Radboud Science Award for top research of the university. He is passionate about taking science to the frontline where it matters most, and developing state-of-the-art prevention programs that will have a far-reaching, international impact on policy and practice.

Contacts

LinkedIn: @rutgerengels - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rutgerengels

@ginie-servant-miklos - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginie-servant-miklos/

Email: rutger.engels@essb.eur.nl; servant@essb.eur.nl

Jessica Cavallaro is an innovative educator and curriculum designer who brings the agile mindset into the classroom. She is a champion of project based learning and creating purposeful educational experiences both in and out of the classroom. Jessica has delved into applying Agile and Scrum to keep students connected, collaborating and creating while teaching in a hybrid setting. She is passionate about developing better systems that put students first in education.

Roslynn Jackson is an educator that believes failures are the stepping stones to success. She is a co-founder of the Agile Mind, which strives to help teachers learn to use an Agile mindset to help students acquire the skills they need to solve real world problems while learning educational concepts. She is passionate about making education engaging and meaningful for teachers and their students.  She believes the best strategies for doing so involve  “organized chaos” and getting your hands dirty- this means using systems that provide opportunities for authentic hands-on learning. Roslynn believes that using Agile skills with students, and helping other educators to do the same, is the way to transform our education framework into one that truly prepares our learners for the real world challenges ahead of them, and gives them the tools to do it.

Social Links

Jessica - LinkedIn: @jessicacavallaro; Twitter: @JesGilbert5

Roslynn - LinkedIn: @roslynn-jackon; Twitter: @RoslynnJackson

Raya Bidshahri is a serial education entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and award-winning educator.

Raya is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the School of Humanity, a revolutionary online high school with a progressive model and skill-based curriculum.

Raya is also the Founder of Awecademy, an award-winning organization offering future-focussed & wisdom-based education. She has served on the founding teams of multiple organizations including SciFest Dubai, and SheWorks.

Raya serves as an advisory board member to multiple EdTech companies and is a member of the Bett Future Education Council. She was named one of the BBC's 100 Women for 2019.

Raya has spoken at many conferences including the G20/Y20 Summit, Global Education Forum, UNESCO Expo-Sciences, GESS Leaders, HR Tech Summit and much more.

She has been sharing her expertise as a keynote speaker for over a decade – since the age of 16 – and brings a much-needed youth perspective to discussions about the future of education.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @rayabidshahri

Twitter: @raya_bid

Ulcca Joshi Hansen is an author, educational thought leader and social change advocate with a twenty-year career dedicated to shifting the foundational values and approaches that underpin America’s education system. She currently serves as the Chief Program Officer for Grantmakers for Education, a partner organization for education philanthropists as they adapt to the changes impacting our world.

Ulcca began her career as an elementary school teacher in Newark Public Schools. Over the last twenty years she has gained experience across the non-profit, public, and philanthropic sectors, in the US and abroad, leading programs, conducting research and crafting policy.

In her most recent roles as Chief Strategy Officer at Boundless and Vice President at Education Reimagined, she built partnerships between schools, districts, non-profits and higher education institutions committed to expanding access to relationship-based, relevant and real-world learning experiences in the K-12 and post-secondary spaces. As Vice President of the Public Education and Business Coalition she expanded the Colorado Teacher Residency to become the first residency-based preparation program in the country to serve both urban and rural districts. She also redesigned the residency curriculum, grounding new teachers in the fields of learning science, human development and human well-being.

Ulcca’s recently released book, The Future of Smart: How Our Education System Needs to Change to Help All Young People Thrive, traces the roots of America’s dominant approach to education, illuminates why so many reform and innovation efforts over the last three decades have fallen short and proposes a path forward.

Ulcca earned her Ph.D. in Education and Philosophy from Oxford University and a JD from Harvard Law School. She has been recognized nationally for her work in education as a Harry S. Truman Scholar; a British Marshall Scholar; and a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @ulcca

Twitter: @ulcca

Professor Keith Davids is Professor of Motor Learning at the Centre for Sport and Exercise Science. Keith uses an Ecological Dynamics framework for investigating skill acquisition, expertise and talent development in sport. He is an applied scientist who researches how processes of learning, development, performance preparation and participation in sport, physical activity and exercise may be facilitated. He reviews implications for coaching and teaching at elite, sub-elite and recreational levels of participants, as part of his work. Ecological Dynamics is an integration of Ecological Psychology, Dynamical Systems theory, Evolutionary Science and the Science of Complex Systems, considering individual athletes and teams as complex adaptive systems, self-organising under interacting constraints. Such systems change over different timescales, which has significant implications for learning, development and ageing in children, adults and elderly people. He has over 30 years experience of teaching and conducting research in Ecological Dynamics with collaborators in UK, Portugal, France, Australia, Germany, New Zealand, Finland, Norway and Sweden in related fields like Sports Science, Psychology, Behavioural Neuroscience, Sports Coaching, Physical Education and Human Movement Science. He has held/holds research positions in the UK (Manchester Metropolitan University: 1991-2003), Finland (University of Jyvaskyla, Finnish Distinguished Professor: 2012-2016), New Zealand (University of Otago: 2003-2007), Australia (Queensland University of Technology: 2006-2014) and Norway (2020-22: Norwegian Sports Science University (NTNU, Trondheim), Adjunct Research Professor). His scientific research is applied in the work of international sports organisations (national and international teams in Association Football, NFL, Rugby Union and AFL) and national Institutes of Sport in Australia (AIS), New Zealand (NZSI), and England (EIS), as well as KIHU (Finnish Olympic Research Committee) and PESTA (Physical Education and Sports Teachers Association, Singapore).

Keith is part of the Constraints Collective with Ian Renshaw, Will Roberts and Danny Newcombe: https://www.theconstraintscollective.com/

Keith is co-author of the 2019 book, The Constraints-Led Approach: Principles for Sports Coaching and Practice Design. You can find links to his other books here and journal publications here.

Kevin Simpson is one of those rare special people who thrive on connecting others And bringing people together around shared causes and visions of a different kind of education system free from injustice and discrimination.

Kevin is founder of the Association of International Educators and Leaders of Color (⁠https://aieloc.org/), and through AIELOC, one initiating partners of the International School Anti-Discrimination Taskforce (https://isadtf.org/). Alongside ECIS, Ecolint and IB, their collective aim is to "make schools truly diverse, inclusive, safe, equitable and welcoming for all students, staff and families".

Kevin owns and operates KDSL Global (http://kdslglobal.com/), an international education consulting company which launched in 2016 in the US and the UAE. He and his team have served thousands of schools, educators, and leaders worldwide in over 60 countries. He is also the Co-Founder of the UAE Learning Network, leads the ASCD Connected Community for the GCC region, and is Co-Founder of Resourceya. 

Kevin Simpson is a native of Flint, Michigan and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education and a Master of Education degree in Curriculum and Teaching from Michigan State University (USA).

As we discuss in the podcast, Shwetangna Chakrabarty wrote a great piece about the 'Leadership for Radical Dreaming' at the AIELOC conference: https://www.tieonline.com/article/3674/radical-dreaming-aieloc-conference 

Social Links

LinkedIn: @kevin-simpson-kdslglobal - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-simpson-kdslglobal/

Instagram: @kdslglobal - https://www.instagram.com/kdslglobal/

X: @GlobalKdsl - https://twitter.com/GlobalKdsl

Faith Abiodun is Executive Director at UWC International bringing a wealth of experience from his time spent as an education and social enterprise leader, international affairs analyst, writer and speaker. 

Prior to UWC International, he spent nearly a decade at the African Leadership Academy (ALA) in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he served as an executive leading the recruitment of thousands of young leaders from all over the world for ALA’s programmes. He also headed the Communications, Marketing, Programme Recruitment and Partnerships departments, helping to build ALA’s global brand and developing strategic partnerships with governments, corporates, foundations, NGOs and schools. He also founded the ALA Model African Union, through which more than 1,500 young leaders from 58 countries participated in a simulation of the African Union.

Earlier in his career, Faith was a journalist with The Guardian in Nigeria; he also founded The Speech Academy, an elocution and public speaking institution and Future Africa, a public sector leadership organization with a network of emerging leaders spread across more than 30 African countries. Previously, he worked in Corporate Communications at the Bi-Courtney Group and served a sabbatical stint with the international secretariat of Catalyst 2030, a coalition of the world’s leading social enterprises working with national governments to accelerate progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals.  

Faith is a member of the Board of Trustees for News Decoder, a Paris-based global education news service. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Geography from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Syracuse University, New York. He is also an alumnus of the World Innovation Summit for Education’s (WISE) Learners Voice Executive Education programme.

UWC Harvard Impact Study: https://www.uwc.org/impactstudy

Social Links

Instagram: @UWCint

Facebook: @UWCint

LinkedIn: @UWC International @faithabiodun⁠

Twitter: @UWCint

Kirstin Coughtrie is the Founder & Chief Innovation Officer of Gaia Learning. Teacher & tech lover passionate about SEN, accessible learning and creating scalable solutions to global challenges. As an ambassador for teaching the UN SDGs and as a mum of children with additional needs and challenges, Kirstin has seen first-hand how important personalised learning is to their wellbeing and how vital flexible learning is to supporting families.

Kate Longworth is the Co-Founder & CEO of ⁠Gaia Learning⁠. Experienced 'startup' tech entrepreneur and Marketeer. Passionate about education and in particular working with SEN primary school learners. Kate is a marketing entrepreneur on a mission to help children around the world learn what they love and love what they learn.

Social Links

Linkedin: Kirstin Coughtrie - @kirstin; Kate Longworth - @katecarneyuk

Instagram: @gaialearningonline

Professor Barbara Oakley is a Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Oakland University. Barbara’s research has been described as “revolutionary” in the Wall Street Journal. She is New York Times best-selling author who has published in outlets as varied as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Her book A Mind for Numbers, on effective learning in STEM disciplines, has sold over a million copies worldwide.

Together with Terrence Sejnowski, the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute, Barbara co-teaches Coursera’s “Learning How to Learn,” one of the world’s most popular massive open online courses with some four million registered students, along with a number of other leading MOOCs.

Barbara has adventured widely through her lifetime. She rose from the ranks of Private to Captain in the U.S. Army, during which time she was recognized as a Distinguished Military Scholar. She also worked as a communications expert at the South Pole Station in Antarctica, and has served as a Russian translator on board Soviet trawlers on the Bering Sea.

Barbara's latest books:

Uncommon Sense Teaching: Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn

Learn Like a Pro: Science-Based Tools to Become Better at Anything

Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens

You can find others here: https://barbaraoakley.com/books/

Social Links

LinkedIn: @barbaraoakley

Instagram: @barb_oakley

This week it was a huge pleasure to be able to welcome Carl Mika, Professor of Māori and Indigenous Philosophies from Aotearoa, the country now known as New Zealand. As you can probably guess from the title of this episode, this conversation with Carl went pretty deep pretty quickly! That's because underlying the most apparently basic concepts like learning or logic that people use all the time are some pretty fundamental assumptions about the way the world is. And they're certainly not universal to all humans. So what does educating our young people in how to read their worlds mean in this case?
Carl Mika is from the Tuhourangi iwi and is Professor of Māori and Indigenous Philosophies, and Head of School of Aotahi: School of Māori and Indigenous Studies, University of Canterbury. His published work includes Indigenous Education and the Metaphysics of Presence was published in 2017, Routledge), along with many articles and chapters, on the issues of colonisation and reductionism; Māori concepts of nothingness and darkness in response to an Enlightenment focus on clarity; mātauranga Māori and science. Carl teaches and researches in educational philosophy and mātauranga Māori, the law, and global studies, as well as aspects of Western philosophy.
In 2024, Carl was awarded the University of Canterbury Research Medal. Also In 2024, he was recipient of the University of Canterbury Faculty of Arts Kairangahau Māori Award for research in Māori philosophies (both traditional and contemporary) and Māori methodologies. He is also a Fellow of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA). You can find further links to Carl's work here: https://profiles.canterbury.ac.nz/Carl-Te-Hira-Lewis-Mika

Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner are internationally renowned social learning theorists and consultants. Their pioneering writing and consulting is influential in diverse fields including learning theory, business, government, international development, healthcare, and education. 

They founded the Social Learning Lab to host events on theory, practice, and leadership. Their more recent writing updated the theory in Learning in landscapes of practice and in the first volume in their new book series: Learning to make a difference: value creation in social learning spaces. 

I can also highly recommend their Communities of practice guidebook as a really useful resource.

Bev and Etienne's website - https://www.wenger-trayner.com/

Communities of practice within and across organizations: A guidebook (2nd edition) - https://www.wenger-trayner.com/cop-guidebook/

Learning to make a difference: value creation in social learning spaces - https://www.wenger-trayner.com/learning-to-make-a-difference-book/

This week is a really special episode where we get to hear from some incredible students and teachers from around the world with one thing in common! They are all doing amazing work to explore the possibilities that come when we invite learners to be much more involved in who directs the learning process, what gets learned and what the role of the educators is in our schools. 

We will hear from Amalia, Mehrbanoo, Bruno and Ollie at International School of the Hague, Natalia, Bryant, and Mark at Avenues School, New York, Michaela, Lauren, and James at Northern Bay College in Geelong, and lastly Charlie, Josie, Dylan and Nathan at Prahran High School in Melbourne.

Despite working in very different contexts and being at different stages of the process, what you'll hear is that many of the challenges and successes are the same! How much structure is the right amount to give learners freedom but also support at the right time? What skills and approaches to learning do students need and quickly develop as part of this work? How do we reduce the 'fear-factor' of these changes among parents, teachers, school leaders and sometimes amongst students themselves? How do assessments and curriculum structures also need to develop to make sure that these shifts are well-supported rather than working against the system? Because when you hear these students tell their stories, there is NO QUESTION about how significant and real the benefits are of giving them more ownership and control over their learning.

For more background on the theory and practices around supporting student agency, you can check out episode 86 with Larissa Raymond and Jayne-Louise Collins.

The schools featured in this episode are:

International School of the Hague: https://www.ishthehague.nl/academic/myp/pathfinder-curriculum

Contact - Pathfinder Programme Lead: Anne Tabak

Avenues, New York: https://www.avenues.org/open-ed/what-do-students-really-learn-in-mastery 

Contact - Global Academic Dean: Mark Gutkowski

Northern Bay College, Geelong: https://www.nbc.vic.edu.au/ 

Contact - Year 9 Learning Community Leader: James Bayard

Prahran High School, Melbourne: https://prahranhighschool.vic.edu.au/  

Contact - Executive Principal: Nathan Chisholm

Dr Helen Street is a social psychologist and educator and has worked extensively with schools around the world since 1999. She holds a position as Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, Graduate School of Education as well as adjunct research consultant for the health department of Western Australia’s Centre for Clinical Interventions.

Helen is the Founder and Co-Chair of the Positive Schools Initiative (PSI). Since its launch in 2008, the Positive Schools Initiative has worked with over 26,000 educators from over 6000 schools and colleges; from around Australia and 15 other countries. Positive Schools Initiative is focused takes an evidence-based systems approach to building Contextual Wellbeing, positive mental health and resilience in school staff, parents and young people.

Helen is a bestselling author and speaker and her most recent book is Contextual Wellbeing: Creating Positive Schools from the Inside Out (2018). Her work has been met with international acclaim and has been endorsed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama among many others.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @helen-street

Twitter: @drhelenstreet

LearnLife's [RE]LEARN festival is coming up on November 9th - you can find out more and register here: https://relearnfestival.com/

Christopher Pommerening is the Founder and Chief Empowerment Officer of Learnlife. Christopher is an entrepreneur and learning visionary on a journey in which he has evolved from an internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist, into a high impact entrepreneur on a mission to change education positively worldwide.

Christopher has engaged a global team of more than 100 learning experts and thought leaders to build an open ecosystem for a new lifelong learning paradigm. His impact goal is to empower 100 million learners to experience the new paradigm for learning that is suited to the rapid and evolving changes in our world and societies by 2030. Learnlife launched the first Learning Hub in Barcelona and is currently in the process of building a 10.000m2 lighthouse for lifelong learning in Germany. In the next 10 years more than 2,000 Learning Hubs will be launched in every country around the world to inspire and show-case the future of learning.

Christopher started his professional career in Spain in 1998, when he co-founded AutoScout24 Spain. In 2002 he founded the venture capital company ACTIVE Venture Partners, one of Europe’s few entrepreneurial-driven VC companies. He has founded 10 companies and organisations and invested in more than 30 start-ups. In 2017, after two years of preparation and research, he started Learnlife, his “once in a lifetime” adventure aiming to change the world's learning landscape.

Dr. Stephen Harris, after 40 years as an educator within existing systems (government & independent), has chosen to work now outside, but alongside, traditional education.

From 1999 to 2017 Stephen was Principal of Northern Beaches Christian School in Sydney. In 2005, Stephen founded the Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning. 

Stephen has completed his doctorate in education focused on the role of collective envisioning in educational leadership and change. He also received recognition at the 2011 Australian Awards for Outstanding Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), as the Australian Secondary Principal of the Year (NSW). Stephen was also recognised in 2017 as a recipient of the prestigious John Laing Award by Principals Australia Institute (PAI) presented to exceptional school leaders.

Social Links

Twitter: @ChristopherPomm; @Stephen_H; @wearelearnlife

LinkedIn: @christopherpommerening; @stephenharris; @learnlife

This is the second conversation that I have had with Prof. Gert Biesta, and it is a special episode reflecting on the current crisis in Ukraine and the wider context of this - that some call the meta-crisis. Our first conversation earlier this year, on World-Centred Education, can be found here: https://anchor.fm/futurelearningdesign/episodes/On-World-Centred-Education---A-Conversation-with-Prof--Gert-Biesta-e1cqcj5. 

For more information on Gert - he is Professor of Public Education in the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy, Maynooth University, Ireland, and Professor of Educational Theory and Pedagogy at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh, UK. He holds Visiting Professorships at the University of Agder, Norway, and Uniarts, the University of the Arts, Helsinki, Finland. Gert is a prolific author and has written many books on the theory of education and educational and social research, and his work has appeared in 20 different languages. He has particular interests in national and global education policy, curriculum, teaching and teacher education, democracy and citizenship education, religious education and arts education. His latest book is World-Centred Education: A View for the Present (2021) and this is a good overview of the key ideas in this seminal book. A selection of his previous books are The Rediscovery of Teaching (2017); Beyond Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future (2015); The Beautiful Risk of Education (2015); Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics, Democracy (2015) and Complexity Theory and the Politics of Education [edited with Deborah Osberg] (2010) Gert is co-editor of the British Educational Research Journal, co-editor of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, and associate editor of Educational Theory. He co-edits a two book series with Routledge: Theorizing Education (with Stefano Oliverio), and New Directions in the Philosophy of Education (with Michael A. Peters, Liz Jackson and Marek Tesar). 

Social Links 

LinkedIn: @gert-biesta 

Twitter: Gert suspended his Twitter account only to return when Donald Trump was no longer on the platform!

Dr Philippa Hardman is a learning scientist and affiliated scholar at the University of Cambridge. She is the creator of the ⁠DOMS™️ learning design engine⁠ - a groundbreaking evidence-based learning design process. She is a thought leader in the world of learning design and has spent 20+ years researching learning science & designing in-person, online & hybrid learning experiences. Phil has designed some of the world's most high-impact learning experiences, including the University of Oxford's first and most successful MOOC. She also successfully led the largest learning design project in history while VP of Learning at ed-tech start-up, Aula. More recently, Phil has started to consider the role of AI in learning design and delivery and recently delivered a TEDX Talk on AI and Education.

Phil's Substack: @LearningFuturesDigest

Connect with Phil on LinkedIn here.

Prof. Yusef Waghid, a leading African philosopher of education, holds three doctorates in the fields of education, policy, and philosophy from the University of the Western Cape and Stellenbosch University in South Africa, respectively. As a tenured professor since 2002 he was honoured with the title of distinguished professor (2014-2023) on the grounds of his research excellence at Stellenbosch University. He has been a prolific author with 419 publications to date of which 54 are academic books and edited collections and, 89 invited contributions to books. He received the Association for the Development of Education in Africa's prestigious Education Research in Africa Award: Outstanding Mentor of Education Researchers (2015). Throughout his tenure, he occupied leading management positions at Stellenbosch University, such as having been appointed Chair of the Department of Education Policy Studies (2003-2007, 2022); and Dean of the Faculty of Education (2007-2012; 2017-2018). In the main, his long-standing relationship with education began as a high school science teacher (1979-1996) before he joined higher education as a senior teaching advisor to advance his professional career in higher education (1996-).  

His published works includeTowards an Ubuntu University: African Higher Education Reimagined (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2023, with Zayd Waghid, Judith Terblanche, Faiq Waghid, Lester Shawa, Joseph Hungwe, Thokozani Mathebula & Foreword by Carlos Alberto Torres); Education, Crisis, and Philosophy: Ubuntu within Higher Education (Routledge, 2022); Democratic Education as Inclusion (Lexington, 2022, with Nuraan Davids); Higher Teaching and Learning for Alternative Futures (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2021, with Zayd Waghid, Judith Terblanche & Faiq Waghid); Academic Activism in Higher Education: A Living Philosophy for Social Justice (Springer, 2021, with Nuraan Davids); Towards a Philosophy of Caring in Higher Education: Pedagogy and Nuances of Care (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2019); Education for Decoloniality and Decolonisation in Africa (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2019, with Chikumbutso Herbert Manthalu); Rupturing African Philosophy of Teaching and Learning (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2018, with Faiq Waghid & Zayd Waghid); and African Philosophy of Education Reconsidered: On Being Human (Routledge, 2014). In recognition of his high quality scholarly works that also appear in many leading education journals, the National Research Foundation in South Africa rated him as an internationally acclaimed scholar who provides exemplary leadership in advancing philosophy of higher education in Africa (B-1).

He pioneered a online course on Teaching for Change, selected by the Sustainable Development Goals Academy of the United Nations: Class Central as a free online international course to learn about the United Nation's sustainable development goals and he collaborated with renowned international scholars on a leading UNESCO pioneered research project, Education for Flourishing and Flourishing in Education initiated by the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development.

This week's episode is a wonderful conversation with Nora Bateson (https://batesoninstitute.org/nora-bateson/). In my opinion, Nora is one of the most important thinkers working today to challenge the dominant paradigm of optimization, separation and machine-like efficiency that pervades our institutions. She does so in her own beautiful style and in deep continuity with the ideas of her father, Gregory Bateson, and her grandfather, William Bateson, among many others.
Nora's work with the International Bateson Institute (https://batesoninstitute.org/) brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems. She coined the term "Warm Data" and, as you will hear in our conversation, this was in response to the disproportionate credibility and authority given to information derived by decontextualizing. I have had the privilege of working with Nora and her team to explore what Warm Data means for the way schooling and education happens. If you would like to find out more, we are hosting some online sessions in early October and also visiting schools to run Warm Data Labs with young people, in partnership with International Baccalaureate.
Nora is the author of Small Arcs of Larger Circles (https://www.triarchypress.net/small-arcs.html), released by Triarchy Press, in 2016. Her forthcoming book, Combining, which she is launching at an event in New York on September 30. You can find out more about the event here: https://nysgs.org/event-5402217

In our conversation you can hear Nora read two excerpts from the book - 'Mama Now' and 'Harvest'.

Nora also wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father, Gregory. http://www.anecologyofmind.com/

Social Links

LinkedIn: @nora-bateson

Twitter: @NoraBateson

Dr. Ginie Servant-Miklos is Assistant Professor at Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Previously she was a Senior Lecturer in the Humanities Department of Erasmus University College and held a visiting professorship in experimental pedagogics at Tyumen University, Russia. 

She completed her post-doctoral fellowship at Aalborg University’s Centre for Problem-based Learning in Engineering Education and Sustainability under the auspices of UNESCO. 

Her research focuses on the intersection between pedagogy, identity and sustainability issues. Her forthcoming book is called 'Pedagogies of Collapse'.

She is also the founder and Chair of the Board of the FairFight Foundation, a charity that aims to empower girls and women from underprivileged backgrounds through martial arts.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @ginie-servant-miklos

Information and connection were once scarce resources. But no longer! So what does this mean for the way education happens? This week, Dave Cormier, author of the fantastic new book 'Learning in a Time of Abundance: The Community is the Curriculum' joins Tim.

https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12862/learning-time-abundance

With 25 years of experience as teacher, researcher and author, Dave is interested in how technologies change what it means to learn and to have learned. He is currently a learning specialist for digital strategy and special projects at the Office of Open Learning at the University of Windsor in Ontario Canada.

Social Links

Website: https://davecormier.com/edblog/

LinkedIn: @davecormier - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davecormier/

Instagram: @cormierdave - https://www.instagram.com/cormierdave/

It is increasingly clear that recruiting, developing and retaining teachers is a very real issue around the world. Dr. Rachel Lofthouse is at the forefront of thinking through how we might be able to address some of these challenges.

Rachel is the Professor of Teacher Education in the Carnegie School of Education at Leeds Beckett University. She has established the Research and Practice hub, CollectivED: Centre for Coaching, Mentoring and Professional Learning.

Rachel’s research interests focuses on the transformation of professional learning through partnerships of scholarship and practice development. She is keen to find out how educational workplaces can both offer, and constrain, professional learning, with a current focus on coaching and lesson study and the inter-relationships between practice, well-being, professional learning and leadership. 

We also talk about Rachel's recent involvement in the Reimagining A Positive Direction for Education (RAPIDE) project designed to understand through narratives underline the enormous energy of educators to adapt to external disruptions.

Social Links

X: @DrRLofthouse

LinkedIn: ⁠@rachel-lofthouse⁠

This week I’m chatting with Jamilah Pitts, whose incredible work challenges us to root our educational practices in activism, healing and love. This is so that we tell the truth about the deep biases and harms that continue to persist within our societies and many of our educational settings. Jamilah’s work follows in the incredible tradition of bell hooks, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin and many others.

Jamilah is an educator, writer, social entrepreneur and yoga teacher whose work centers the liberation, healing and holistic development of communities of the global majority. She has served in various roles and spaces to promote racial justice and healing as a teacher, coach, assistant principal and as a dean. 

As the Founder and CEO of Jamilah Pitts Consulting, Jamilah partners with schools, communities and organizations to advance the work of social and intersectional justice through an emphasis on wellness and educator training. Jamilah is also the Founder of  She, Imprints, an organization designed to support the unique wellness needs of women and girls of color through advocacy, coaching programs, curriculum design, training and wellness retreats.  

Jamilah’s written work has appeared in the Huffington Post, Learning for Justice, and Edweek. 

Jamilah’s amazing book, Toward Liberation: Educational Practices Rooted in Activism, Healing and Love, was published in November.

She can be found at ⁠jamilahpitts.com⁠.