Future Learning Design Podcast

Are we educating young people as consumers? Have educational institutions become service providers in the consumer economy of educational products?  Or are we educating young people as citizens - of their local communities, nations and the planet? If so what does that mean for how we engage them in the  processes of living and working together, making meaningful contributions and learning important things as they go.  I'm not sure that that looks much like what we're currently doing in most schools around the world. Jon Alexander is on a mission to help a new story to emerge about how people all over the world are getting involved in 'citizening' - that is, thinking of citizen as a verb and a local participatory responsibility, rather than citizen as a noun that you claim rights to.Jon began his career with success in advertising, winning the prestigious Big Creative Idea of the Year before making a dramatic change. Driven by a deep need to understand the impact on society of 3,000 commercial messages a day, he gathered three Masters degrees, exploring consumerism and its alternatives from every angle. In 2014, he co-founded the New Citizenship Project, a strategy and innovation consultancy that aims to shift the dominant story of the individual in society from Consumer to Citizen. NCP's client list includes The Guardian, the European Central Bank, and the European Journalism Centre. They have partnered with the BBC, Amnesty International, National Trust, the British Film Institute, Tate galleries, the National Union of Students, YouGov, the Centre for Public Impact, the Food Standards Agency and the Food Ethics Council. Jon is author of Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us - a book that seeks to reframe the moment in time we're living in as one of huge civic opportunity, not just crisis and collapse, and in doing so opens up a world of possibility for organisations and leaders across sectors and across the world.Links to Jon's work:Citizens (Book): https://www.jonalexander.net/How to Citizen, with Baratunde Thurston: https://stories.howtocitizen.com/formNew Citizenship Project: https://www.newcitizenproject.com/Jon's Four Thought lecture, BBC Radio 4: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04md5b0Jon's NCP article on Three Post Covid Futures: https://medium.com/new-citizenship-project/subject-consumer-or-citizen-three-post-covid-futures-8c3cc469a984Jon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-alexander-11b66345/Baratunde on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/baratunde/

Is it possible to unlearn the conditioning of our minds, that many of us who have had traditional educations have experienced, such that we can think differently about what an education could be? This week's guest has seen both sides of this experience, and is weaving incredible communities and new institutions all over India and the world!Manish Jain is deeply committed to regenerating our diverse local knowledge systems and cultural imaginations and is one of the strong planetary voices for de-schooling our lives. He has served for the past 20 years as coordinator and co-founder of Shikshantar: The Peoples' Institute for Rethinking Education and Development based in Udaipur, India, and is co-founder of the Swaraj University, Creativity Adda, Learning Societies Unconference, Walkouts-Walkon network, Udaipur as a Learning City, and Families Learning Together network in India. He recently helped launch the global Ecoversities Network and the global Giftival Network. He is a featured speaker / advisory member of the Economics of Happiness network for localization. He has edited several books on vimukt shiksha (liberating learning) on themes such as learning societies, unlearning, gift culture, community media, and tools for deep dialogue. Prior to this, Manish worked as one of the principal team members of the UNESCO Learning Without Frontiers global initiative. He has also been a consultant to UNICEF, World Bank, and USAID in Africa, South Asia, and the former Soviet Union. Manish also worked as an investment banker with Morgan Stanley. He has been trying to unlearn his master's degree in education from Harvard University and his BA in economics, international development, and political philosophy from Brown University. He and his wife Vidhi have been unschooling themselves with their 15-year-old daughter, Kanku, in Udaipur, Rajasthan. Manish is passionate about urban organic farming, filmmaking, simulation gaming, bicycling, group facilitation, clowning, intercultural dialogue, and slow food cooking.Links to Manish's communities of practice:www.shikshantar.orgwww.ecoversities.orgwww.swarajuniversity.orgwww.udaipurlearningcity.orghttps://complexity.university/ www.jailuniversity.orgwww.farmversities.orgwww.creativityadda.orgwww.creativityconsortium.org

As I often say we radically underestimate young people and what they are capable of. They are asking to be involved in the critical conversations about systems change. And not only that they are also building their own capabilities for and with each other about how to engage with it's systemic issues. So it's a huge pleasure this week to be speaking with Nolita Mvunelo, Matías Lara and Vanessa Terschluse who have taken it upon themselves as the 50percent to gather a collection of insights to enhance young people's understanding of systems and how they move and change. They have published the Young Person's Guide to Systems Change.Nolita Mvunelo is Co-Director of The 50 Percent and Club of Rome Youth Program Manager: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nolita-thina-mvunelo/Matías Lara is Director of The 50 Percent: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milara14/Vanessa Terschluse is Chief Editor of The 50 Percent: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessa-terschluse-915a5b171/Other links:https://the50percent.org/The Young Person's Guide to Systems Change: https://the50percent.org/young-persons-guide/https://youth-talks.org/https://www.clubofrome.org/

There are very different ways of 'doing' education all around the world and my guest this week has spent many years exploring and deeply understanding many of them. As Alex Beard highlights in this conversation really powerfully, "does the purpose match the how or the process?" And how does this align with the values of the communities involved? When there is so much ideological warfare and polarisation around, we need more wise voices like Alex who are deeply expert and evidence-based but also oriented strongly around values and purpose.After starting out as a teacher in a London comprehensive, Alex did his MA at the IOE before joining Teach For All, a growing network of independent organizations working in sixty countries to ensure that every child has access to an excellent education. while building collective leadership and driving systemic changes from within and outside of the education sector. He is the Senior Director at Teach for All (https://teachforall.org/) and leads the Global Learning Lab supporting a global network of leaders working to drive systemic change in the fields of social innovation, school leadership, teacher training and policy-making. He has written extensively about his experiences in search of the practices that will shape the future of learning in publications such as the Guardian, Financial Times and Wired. He is the author of Natural Born Learners: Our incredible capacity to learn and how we can harness it, published in 2018 and he wrote and presented The Learning Revolution, a three part series on the future of education for BBC Radio 4 (2020). I've also had the privilege of chatting to Wendy Kopp, Alex's colleague and founderand CEO of Teach for All in episode 79 so do also check that one out!Alex's website: https://www.alexbeard.org/The Learning Revolution documentary: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000h93c/episodes/playerThe Missing Piece report: https://teachforall.org/MissingPieceBriefSocial LinksLinkedIn: @alex-beard - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-beard-08901915/

As you will know if you've listened to previous episodes, this podcast is really about the central question of the kind of education (formal and informal) that we need to support and enable us all, but most importantly our young people, to transition effectively through this historical period of massive flux and change. There are many people around the world putting language to these shifts and offering guidance to leaders, and organisations for how to navigate them. But few are doing this as prominently and at such a scale as my guest this week. Otto Scharmer's substantial work with MIT, Theory U and the Presencing Institute for the last few decades has been helping leaders embrace cross-sector systems transformation. To quote his 2007 book on Theory U, his work opens up pathways for "dealing with the resistance of thought, emotion, and will; and intentionally reintegrating the intelligence of the head, the heart, and the hand" in the context of leadership, decision-making, and almost any kind of collaborative work.Otto Scharmer, a Senior Lecturer at MIT and Founding Chair of the Presencing Institute, has dedicated the past 20 years to helping leaders embrace cross-sector systems transformation. Through his bestselling books Theory U and Presence (the latter co-authored with Peter Senge and others), Otto introduced the groundbreaking concept of "presencing" — learning from the emerging future. He also co-authored Leading from the Emerging Future, which outlines eight acupuncture points for transforming our economy from egocentric to ecocentric. His most recent book The Essentials of Theory U (2018) summarizes the core principles and applications of awareness-based systems change. He co-founded the MITx u-lab, which has activated a vibrant worldwide ecosystem of transformational change involving more than 250,000 users from 186 countries. In collaboration with colleagues, he co-created global Action Learning Labs for UN agencies and SDG Leadership Labs for UN Country Teams in 26 countries, which support cross-sector initiatives for addressing urgent humanitarian crises. Born and raised near Hamburg, Germany, Otto's early experiences on his family farm profoundly shaped his vision. From his father, a pioneer of regenerative farming, Otto learned the significance of the living quality of the soil in organic agriculture, which inspired his thinking about social fields as the grounding condition from which visible transformations emerge. Like a good farmer who cares for the soil, Otto believes responsible leaders must nurture the social field in which they operate. He emphasizes that shifting our economic operating systems from extractive to regenerative requires innovations in leadership support structures for shifting mindsets from ego to eco. Building that infrastructure is the purpose of the u-school for Transformation. Otto earned his diploma and his PhD in economics from Witten/Herdecke University in Germany. He is a member of the UN Learning Advisory Council for the 2030 Agenda, the Club of Rome and the World Future Council. He has won the Jamieson Prize for Teaching Excellence at MIT and the European Leonardo Corporate Learning Award. In 2021, he received the Elevating Humanity Award from the Organizational Development Network. Useful Links:https://ottoscharmer.com/https://youtu.be/6nAagnY_Hq0?si=5CnM5fT0dp4lKQ50https://medium.com/presencing-institute-blog/a-farmer-who-puts-his-hand-to-the-plow-must-look-forward-402e6960a7d9?source=friends_link&sk=b78b2cd3b346324ba70f217b2175b060https://youtu.be/YB25Bqc0yGU?si=UZ1sPNKLo0ynG9eZ

With the so many prevailing stories of uncertainty around for everyone, our roles as educators supporting young people and colleagues to know how to navigate it can be overwhelming! As Thea Snow said on a recent episode, feeling safe in uncertainty is hard. But this is where perhaps we can all learn from the wisdom of those with expertise in futures work and facilitating spaces to explore desirable regenerative futures. Bill Sharpe (http://www.billsharpe.uk/) is one such expert, who has been helping teams in all sectors of organisations and society find co-ordinated ways of managing innovation, creating transformational change that has a chance of succeeding, and ways of seeing the future in the present. He developed the adapted version of the Three Horizons framework as a method for futures studies and practice with Anthony Hodgson, Andrew Curry and Graham Leicester.Bill was previously a Research Director at Hewlett-Packard's corporate labs in Bristol, UK. He joined HP Laboratories in 1985, becoming one of the first HP Laboratory Directors outside the US. Early work in Bristol provided the impetus for him to set up the Personal Systems Lab that led HP's early work in the emerging world of smart consumer products, mobile computing and digital imaging. Bill then took an assignment in the USA for two years to lead the Internet Solutions Operation of HP's Laserjet Bueiness through the transition to Web. Back in Bristol, Bill set up new mechanisms for coupling HP Labs to the creation of HP's new information appliance businesses. This work led him to co-found the Appliance Studio in 1999 as an independent company, delivering innovation to a wider commercial audience. Having created a range of new product ideas for clients, in particular new business in digital signage for Steelcase Inc, the Studio launched its own start-up Lucid Signs. With the sale of Lucid Signs, Bill moved on to focus entirely on personal research and consulting. Early in his career, Bill took an active role in UK government research through his work with the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) and Advanced IT (Alvey) programs. As a member of the Programme Directorate at Alvey - a programme designed to foster R&D between industry and academia - Bill co-coordinated research into intelligent knowledge-based systems.Bill is a highly accomplished practitioner in futures techniques and systems change, and now works with Future Stewards (https://futurestewards.com/), the International Futures Forum (https://www.internationalfuturesforum.com/) and H3Uni (https://www.h3uni.org/) to pioneer new approaches to futures, systems thinking, and transformative innovation. He is the author of Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope (https://www.triarchypress.net/three-horizons.html) and Economies of Life: Patterns of Health and Wealth (https://www.triarchypress.net/economies-of-life.html).Additional info about Three horizons: A pathways practice for transformation - Three Horizons is a simple and intuitive framework for thinking about the future. The framework explains how people often manage to disagree so violently about their visions of the future and how to achieve them - and it offers a practical way to begin constructive conversations about the future at home, in organisations and in society at large. The three horizons are about much, much more than simply stretching our thinking to embrace the short, medium and long term. They offer a co-ordinated way of managing innovation, a way of creating transformational change that has a chance of succeeding, a way of dealing with uncertainty and a way of seeing the future in the present.Kate Raworth's excellent description of 3H: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5KfRQJqpPUJonathan Rowson's great explanation of the H2 minus vortex: https://perspecteeva.substack.com/p/deactivating-the-h2minus-vortex Social LinksLinkedIn: @bill-sharpe - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-sharpe-6689

As you will have heard on many previous episodes of the podcast, with Marie Battiste, Carl Mika, Wakanyi Hoffman, Vanessa Andreotti and others, understanding the ways in which our colonial schooling systems have propogated one particular way of knowing our world, and excluded and often violently suppressed many others is something that I care deeply about. For me, it has to be a key part of any transformative work that we do to, with humility and curiosity, to reorient education systems. But in order to do this, we need people who are able to gather and convene the critical conversations that put these ways of knowing in dialogue with each other. It is therefore the greatest honour to have Professor Catherine Odora Hoppers joining me on the podcast this week. For her entire career Dr Hoppers has been at the forefront of facilitating these vital conversations. In post-Apartheid South Africa, she designed and enabled the process that led to the first national policy on the recognition, development and protection of indigenous knowledge systems. Professor Catherine Odora Hoppers is a scholar and policy specialist on International Development, education, North-South questions, disarmament, peace, and human security. She is a UNESCO expert in basic education, lifelong learning, information systems and on Science and Society; an expert in disarmament at the UN Department of Disarmament Affairs; an expert to the World Economic Forum on benefit sharing and value addition protocols; and the World Intellectual Property Organisation on traditional knowledge and community intellectual property rights.She got a Masters and PhD in International Education from Stockholm University, Sweden. In South Africa, Professor Hoppers was awarded Professor Extraordinarius in 2019 at University of South Africa (Pretoria). She held a South African Research Chair in Development Education at the University of South Africa (2008-2018). Prior to that, she was a technical adviser on Indigenous Knowledge Systems to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (South Africa) and led the Task Team to draft the national policy on Indigenous Knowledge Systems. She is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf, 2002), and was a member of the Academy of Science Special Panel on the Future of Humanities (South Africa).She was the Goodwill Ambassador for Makerere University in Kampala Uganda; and Ambassador for Non-Violence at the Durban Universities' International Centre for Non-Violence. In July 2015, she received the Nelson Mandela Distinguished Africanist Award from HE Thabo Mbeki for her pursuit of the total liberation for the African continent through the promotion of Indigenous Knowledge Systems of Education and in the same year, Prof Hoppers was awarded “Woman of the Year” by the University of South Africa, and was named as a “Leading Educationist” and was honoured in the Gallery of Leadership as the 63 most influential people who have shaped Unisa since its inception in 1873, in a permanent exhibition in Kgorong Building in UNISA. In 2017, Professor Hoppers received the distinction from UNESCO as an Honorary Fellow in Lifelong learning. She is the Founder and Director, Global Institute for Applied Governance in Science, Knowledge Systems and Innovations (https://www.giagsi-ug.org/the-faculty/). She held a Professorship in Education at Gulu University (Uganda) and is now the Canada Research Chair in Transdisciplinarity, Cognitive Justice and Education as part of the Pluralism Strategy Initiative at the University of Calgary (https://www.ucalgary.ca/pluralism/scholars-educators-researchers).She is the author of many important works including the book, Rethinking Thinking: Modernity's "other" and the Transformation of the University with the late Prof. Howard Richards.https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qWEKG-QAAAAJ&hl=en

Reductionism - the breaking down of complex phenomena into as many parts as possible to make them fully understandable - is everywhere. To some extent the whole enterprise of modern formal schooling is based on the promise of reductionism, as we break life down into subjects, concepts, facts, etc to be digestible by our young people. It has also enabled unbelievable scientific and technological progress. So who could possibly argue with this? And yet, reductionism has become like the hammer that sees everything as a nail. One of its problems is that is renders everything into a mechanistic functioning of parts and nothing more. Our inability to perceive, understand and value complex and systemic patterns and relationships is maybe something that we need to engage with in our education systems. Dr. Roland Kupers is an advisor on Complexity, Resilience and Energy Transition, Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, as well as an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is a global advisor on mitigating methane emissions from fossil fuels for UNEP's International Methane Emissions Observatory.A theoretical physicist by training, Roland spent a decade each at AT&T and at Shell in various senior executive functions, including Group head for Sustainable Development and Vice President Global LNG. He has a long running interest in complexity theory and its impacts.He has published widely, including in HBR, on Project Syndicate, A Climate Policy Revolution: What the Science of Complexity Reveals about Saving the Planet (Harvard UP 2020) and co-authored Complexity and the Art of Public Policy: Solving Society's Problems from the Bottom Up (Princeton 2014), The Essence of scenarios (Amsterdam 2014), and Turbulence: A corporate framing of resilience (Amsterdam 2014).In 2010 Roland was a co-author of a report commissioned by the German Government on a New Growth Path for Europe, applying a complexity lens to climate economics. He has been an advisor to the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Resources Institute and the Rockefeller Foundation.Roland is a Dutch national; his travels have made him fluent in five languages.Useful Links:https://www.rolandkupers.com/Complexity Module for the IB Diploma: https://www.rolandkupers.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/An-IB-complexity-module-for-the-Diploma-Programme-24.10.17.pdfUNEP's International Methane Emissions Observatory, 2022 Report: https://www.rolandkupers.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/IMEO2022.pdf

Everyone involved in education from young people to tecahers to leaders to policy-makers are being asked some really tough questions in these current times. Do the systems and institutions that we are working and learning in still serve us? Did they ever? And what are we being called on to do differently? This week, it was such an amazing pleasure to chat with Zineb Mouhyi who is the co-founder of YouthXYouth, a global organisation that she set up with Valentina Raman, to convene action around transforming education systems but in a way that didn't excluding the core of these systems, the primary constituents that they were seeking to engage and serve: young people. YouthXYouth invited young people around the world to see the COVID-19 pandemic crisis as an opportunity to radically reimagine learning for themselves and their communities. In January 2021, they hosted their first online Learning Festival, which gathered nearly 1000 young people and adult allies from over 80 countries around a central question: What if young people designed the future of education?YouthXYouth has engaged over 2000 youth activists from 80 countries across 6 continents, buliding their capacity and confidence to reclaim their learning and create life-affirming futures within their communities. They are led by and serve youth who are between the ages of 15 to 26—75% of whom live in the Global South, and about 50% live in Africa.Zineb is also one of the co-founders of the Weaving Lab (https://weavinglab.org/), an international NGO and a community of weavers learning together how to interconnect people, projects and places to form thriving systems. Prior to that, she was the Policy & Partnership Development Officer at WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education), at the Qatar Foundation in Doha, where she mainly worked on education development policy research and on bringing different education stakeholders together to bring forth collaborations in education.Useful Links YxY Weavership Messaging Toolkit an opportunity for young people or youth organisations who might consider hosting a Weaver-in-Residence.YxY website: https://www.youthxyouth.com/Weavership Application: https://airtable.com/appYm9UwzGZxELiYA/shrHR2MmpZfVclJP5Authors mentioned during the conversation:Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle Loretta Ross - Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather CancelLinkedIn: @zinebmouhyi - https://www.linkedin.com/in/zinebmouhyi/Instagram: @yxyactivists - https://www.instagram.com/yxyactivists/

In episode 181 with Robert Barnett, Rob and I were discussing the real constraints and difficult conditions teachers find themselves in as they try to prioritise the meaningful learning and growth of their young people. This week, we are taking a broader look at the kinds of institutional structures that might actually help rather than hinder these more generative ways of living and learning - the kinds of institutions suited to the transformative adaptations and systems change that we desperately need. So in this episode I'm really happy to be speaking with Thea Snow and Toby Lowe about taking a Human Learning Systems approach to management and governance of organisations. Thea and Toby in their work at Centre for Public Impact focus primarily on public sector management. However, these principles certainly apply more broadly to institutions in the private and third sectors. This is very exciting work as it feels much more authentically connected to the beautiful and complex realities that we know we live, learn and work in and that we want to prepare our young people to embrace. But we also know that the way we are held accountable for outcomes in our work often feels simplistic and naive and entirely dissociated from these complex realities. Thea is the Regional Director for Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand at Centre for Public Impact. Thea's experiences span the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. She has worked as a commercial lawyer, a public servant, and, prior to joining CPI, at the UK's innovation foundation, NestaToby Lowe is Professor of Public Management at Manchester Metropolitan University and action researcher at Centre for Public Impact. He has also done policy work addressing poverty in neighbourhoods for the Social Exclusion Unit, worked as a public management action researcher developing the Human Learning Systems approach and held the position as Chief Executive of a participatory arts charity in North East England.You can find links in the show notes to a lot of the documents and sources we talk about in the conversation, especially if you'd like to find out more about implementing a Human Learning Systems approach in your organisation. Some of Thea's work includes:“The (il)logic of legibility – Why governments should stop simplifying complex systems”https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2021/02/12/the-illogic-of-legibility-why-governments-should-stop-simplifying-complex-systems/“Once upon a bureaucrat: exploring the role of stories in government“https://thepolicymaker.jmi.org.au/once-upon-a-bureaucrat-exploring-the-role-of-stories-in-government/“Why evidence should be the servant, not the master, of good policy”https://apolitical.co/solution-articles/en/Why-evidence-should-be-the-servant-not-the-master-of-good-policy“Public servants are tired of change-washing — not change”https://apolitical.co/solution-articles/en/public-servants-are-tired-of-change-washing-not-changeSome of Toby's work includes:Human Learning Systems: Public Service for the Real World: https://centreforpublicimpact.org/resource-hub/human-learning-systems-public-service-for-the-real-world/Harnessing Complexity for Better Outcomes in Public and Non-profit Services: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/harnessing-complexity-for-better-outcomes-in-public-and-non-profit-servicesHuman Learning Systems: A practical guide for the curious: https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/assets/pdfs/hls-practical-guide.pdfVarious links from our discussion:https://www.humanlearning.systems/hls-insights-findings-from-our-research-2024/https://centreforpublicimpact.org/resource-hub/storytelling-for-systems-change/https://medium.com/centre-for-public-impact/embracing-ensembles-8e049c40b87fhttps://www.woodleigh.vic.edu.au/events-public-calendar/reimagined-conference

As educators, a great deal of our understandings of what learning is has been dominated by behaviourist (check out previous episode with Carol Sanford) and cognitivist ideas, but what if our decisions about how we design learning environments, and think about pedagogy and curriculum had taken in ecological insights of Eleanor Gibson and James Gibson and the branch of psychology known as ecological psychology. So few educators know that such a sub-discipline even exists!Rather than individual students's brains neatly arranged in rows in intentionally informationally impoverished learning environments to compute information and construct meaning in a meaningless world out there, we might have young people as object-environment systems moving around and exploring informationally rich environments to fine-tune their action-perception through multi-sensory relating to the ecologies that they participate in! Sounds like a pretty different world!This episode welcomes Miguel Segundo-Ortín and Vicente Raja, post-doctoral researchers at the MINT Lab, and research fellows at University of Murcia, Spain. Together, they are the authors of the book Ecological Psychology (Cambridge Elements, 2024) -https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/ecological-psychology/9E79001702D4D8029E19D11CD330149FMiguel Segundo-Ortin is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Philosophy and member of the Minimal Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Murcia (Spain). His research is in the philosophy of the cognitive sciences, particularly embodied cognition, comparative cognition, and human agency.https://miguelsegundoortinphd.com/Vicente Raja a post-doctoral researcher at the MINT Lab, a research fellow at University of Murcia (Spain) and external affiliate faculty of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy at Western University (Canada). His research lies at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive science, neuroscience, and the history of the sciences of the mind, and has appeared in venues including Synthese, Minds and Machines, Physics of Life Reviews, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Scientific Reports, Frontiers in Neuroscience, Philosophical Psychology, Adaptive Behavior, Cognitive Systems Research, and Theory and Psychology, among others. He has also edited/is editing a book for Routledge and special issues for the Journal of Consciousness Studies and Topics in Cognitive Science. https://www.um.es/mintlab/index.php/about/people/vicente-raja/This is a talk given by Vicente In Memoriam: Eleanor Gibson - https://youtu.be/QmV4Iz1jJs8?si=HAScaBYB2RcNKjTaJames J. Gibson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_J._Gibson

Systems change is a big phrase, which can mean a lot of different things to different people. Quite possibly the system doesn't actually change "up there" in the realms of national and trans-national policy-making. Perhaps it changes in individual classrooms with teachers choosing to do something different. I was so happy to sit down with Robert Barnett, co-founder of the Modern Classrooms Project to talk about this and find out how he, and his co-founder Kareem Farah, have made some very specific and not particularly easy choices about which leverage points they were going to work. MCP has developed an instructional model to respond to every student's needs - no matter what or where you teach. You can find out more about Modern Classrooms Project here: https://www.modernclassrooms.org/ Robert's book Meet Every Learner's Needs: Redesigning Instruction so all students can suceed is out on February 5th 2025, and you can find out more about it here: https://www.meeteverylearnersneeds.org/ Here's a way for you to win a free copy of the book! https://meln-form.paperform.co/?podcast=fld Social Links LinkedIn: @robert-s-barnett - https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-s-barnett/ Robert's personal site: https://www.rsbarnett.com/

As Manda Scott's BRILLIANT podcast suggests, "another world is possible… we have the power of gods to destroy our home, but we also have the chance to become something we cannot yet imagine." This week's special episode is a joint podcast with Manda on her Accidental Gods podcast (https://accidentalgods.life/). In all of her shamanic work, bestselling novel-writing, podcasting and convening, Manda Scott is gathering people around the vital question, how we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations to come? Manda's new novel 'Any Human Power' is out on May 30th: https://linktr.ee/anyhumanpower And you can find more of Manda's extensive and amazing work on her website here: https://mandascott.co.uk/ Other things we talk about in this conversation: Nick Mulvey's performance at COP26: https://youtu.be/x-GBl6DeA50?si=8RgDivREYKZTa9I1&t=1273 Beautiful! The Substack Manda reads from:  ⁠https://theconcernedbird.substack.com/p/elon-musks-and-xs-role-in-2024-election Systems Transformation Pathway at UWC Atlantic College: https://www.uwcatlantic.org/learning/academic/systems-transformation-pathway https://sites.google.com/uwcatlantic.org/transformingsystems/centre?authuser=0 Green School Bali:  https://www.greenschool.org/ School of Humanity: https://sofhumanity.com/ Festival of Hope: https://ibo.org/festival-of-hope/ Social Links LinkedIn: @mandascottauthor - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandascottauthor/ BlueSky - https://bsky.app/profile/mandascott.bsky.socialandMastodon - https://mastodon.scot/@Eceni Or you can write to Manda here: https://mandascott.co.uk/contact/

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

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/

It's a strange thing that the concept of school has become almost universal over the last few hundred years. If you ask anyone almost anywhere in the world, they will be able to describe something that looks roughly like a shared concept of school. But maybe it didn't have to be this way. Maybe it could have been different. This week the amazing professor of anthropology Susan Blum Joins me to talk about 'schoolishness' which is her latest fantastic book, based on decades of research into the cultural development of the dominant ideas around formal institutional education. Susan D. Blum is a cultural, linguistic, and psychological anthropologist specializing in the study of China and the United States. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and also has two MAs—in Anthropology and in Chinese Language and Literature (both from Michigan)--and a BA in Human Language from Stanford University. Professor Blum is the author and editor of 10 books and dozens of articles, as well as public-facing writing. Her latest book, Schoolishness: Alienated Education and the Quest for Authentic, Joyful Learning (Cornell, 2024), is the third in a trilogy about higher education. The other two books are "I Love Learning; I Hate School": An Anthropology of College (Cornell, 2016) and My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture (Cornell, 2009). She also edited a widely read book calling into question the centrality and necessity of grading, Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) (West Virginia, 2020). She has taught at Oklahoma State University, The University of Colorado Denver, The University of Denver, The University of Pennsylvania, and The University of Notre Dame, where she is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology. At Notre Dame, she has served as Director of the Center for Asian Studies and Chair of the Department of Anthropology. She is a Fellow of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, a Fellow in the Institute for Educational Initiatives, a Fellow of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, a Fellow of the Eck Institute for Global Health, and a Fellow of the Shaw Center for Children and Families. She received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for her book, Lies That Bind: Chinese Truth, Other Truths (2007), and has received the Delta Kappa Gamma Educator's Award, 2010, for her book My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture (2009), which was translated into Chinese in 2011. Blum has also received an Excellence in Teaching award from The University of Colorado Denver (2000) and the Reverend Edmund P. Joyce, CSC, Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from The University of Notre Dame (2010). Social Links LinkedIn: @susan-blum - https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-blum-aba01212/ Instagram: @susandblum - https://www.instagram.com/susandblum/ Threads: @susandblum - https://www.threads.net/@susandblum

We're ending this final epsiode of 2024 in a beautiful place with Karima Kadaoui sharing in some co-reflections with me about the trustful and humanising society that she is seeing emerge in Morocco and beyond. It became really clear to me during this conversation with Karima, that the way that we talk about the work we are doing is a really important choice. This is because it sets up frames and expectations that really affect how we do the work. So for that reason, I'm not going to say much about the incredible work that is happening across communities, schools and government ministries across Morocco through the Tamkeen process as Karima describes it much more beautifully than I ever could. Karima co-founded Tamkeen Community Foundation for Human Development in Morocco in 2009 and holds the responsibility of its executive presidency. She refers to her organisation as a facilitating-dissolving structure living, with all its partners-in-flourishing, the answer to the question "how can our schools, communities, organisations, societal systems and societies be the expression and manifestation of our humanity; the shared essence that defines us and connects us to each other, to our natural world and the whole beyond our conscious grasp? Karima's Tamkeen process weaved and was woven with the threads of her 25 years experience working in private, public and social sectors. She worked with top tier companies in a big 5 management consultancy and as the associate senior consultant of a territorial development consultancy she co-founded.  In the Moroccan government, she worked on public policy and governance in quality of the advisor to the Minister of Employment, Vocational Training and Housing.  Her experiences in NPOs working with women suffering infra-human conditions in industries and with a community in a major shanty town have profoundly marked her. Karima is a full member of the Club of Rome. She is also a board member and advisor to Imal Initiative for Climate and Development the first independent non-profit North African climate think tank, as well to Africa Voices Dialogue "a space where the voices of Africa's educators and learners are seen, heard and loved". As we discuss in the conversation, the paper written by Karima and Louis Klein is entitled ‘Realising metamorphic transformation in the mirror of Tamkeen: Growing a shared understanding from co‐reflected lived experiences'. It can be found in the journal, Systems Research and Behavioral Science 41(5):738-749, August 2024 and is linked here. Karima also mentions the poem, Sept saisis par l'hiver', by René Char: Extract: ‘Ma Feuille Vineuse: Les mots qui vont surgir savent de nous ce que nous ignorons d'eux. Un moment nous serons l'équipage de cette flotte composée d'unités rétives, et le temps d'un grain, son amiral. Puis le large la reprendra, nous laissant à nos torrents limoneux et à nos barbelés givrés.' From Chants de la Balandrane, Gallimard, 1977, p. 16. - https://www.gallimard.fr/catalogue/chants-de-la-balandrane/9782070298303 Website: https://tamkeencommunity.org/ LinkedIn: @karima-kadaoui - https://www.linkedin.com/in/karima-kadaoui/

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).

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/

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'.

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).

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

“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/

Something we often forget is how powerfully language shapes how we view each other and the world and how we interact as part of it. For that reason, it is a key part of how we help young people to understand their experiences, Both as a means of relating and communicating and as a set of skills that they acquire. This week it is a huge privilege to be able to welcome Kevin Belin onto the podcast who is the Director of the Diné Bizaad Institute and Navajo Language teacher at Navajo Preparatory School, in Navajo Nation in what is now known as the United States. Kevin is also owner of Hashké – Hozhó Design and Collaborative.  Tódích'íinii nilį́įgo, Tł'ógí yashchíín, Ta'neeszhahnii dah bicheii, Chishí dah binálí. He is currently serving as Board member for Saad Kidilyé Language nest in Albuquerque. He also served as Adjunct Instructor with Diné College Navajo Cultural Arts Program.  Kevin has been in the education field for over decade working with fellow teachers, consultants, and language instructors to perpetuate the Navajo Language and Culture through curriculum building, trainings, and presentations. Throughout the year, Kevin is consulted to work with youth and demonstrate hands on workshops in historical and cultural knowledge. “I don't consider myself an expert, but I am the bridge that connects the knowledge banks that come from our elders, to the young and discouraged learners, using modern approaches to language learning and scaffolded instruction, to understanding the complex concepts of Sa'ah Naaghei Bik'eh Hozho.”  Kevin has been featured on Native America Calling, American Indian Republic, 21st Century Native leaders podcast and Indian Country Today as a cultural representative and is a Billy Mill's Running Strong Dreamstarter.  “Teaching the Navajo Language to our young leaders and helping them understand the complexity that is the Diné way of life is a lifelong endeavor” (Kevin Belin).

As you will have heard in previous episodes for example with Ray Ison, Mette Böll and others, there is a lot of interest currently in systems thinking approaches in education as a key competency for our young people. But what systems thinking means once you scratch the surface is a question that we need to ask. And if we're supporting our young people (as well as teachers and leaders) to navigate complexity, Dave - from his background in Anthro-Complexity (https://cynefin.io/wiki/Anthro-complexity) - will definitely have something to say about that!  Dave is the creator of the Cynefin Framework (https://thecynefin.co/about-us/about-cynefin-framework/) and originated the design of SenseMaker®, the world's first distributed ethnography tool. He is the lead author of Managing complexity (and chaos) in times of crisis: A field guide for decision-makers, a shared effort between the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission's science and knowledge service, and the Cynefin Centre. He divides his time between two roles: founder and Chief Scientific Officer of The Cynefin Company and the founder and Director of the Cynefin Centre. His work is international in nature and covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy and organisational decision-making.  He has pioneered a science-based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience, and complex adaptive systems theory. Using natural science as a constraint on the understanding of social systems avoids many of the issues associated with inductive or case-based approaches to research.  Dave holds positions as an extraordinary Professor at the Universities of Pretoria and Stellenbosch as well as visiting Professor at the University of Hull. He has held similar positions at Bangor University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Canberra University, the University of Warwick and The University of Surrey. He held the position of senior fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang University and the Civil Service College in Singapore during a sabbatical period in Nanyang. Social Links Great thinking on the Cynefin blog: https://thecynefin.co/our-thinking/ LinkedIn: @dave-snowden - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-snowden-2a93b/ X: https://twitter.com/snowded

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/

Too often simplistic arguments against educational change are that providing more opportunities for increased agency for young people (following their own questions, inquiries, cares etc) means less rigour, depth and intellectual stretch. Anyone who has been involved in these approaches in sustained ways knows that this isn't the case. However, the myth persists. This week it is my great pleasure to be in conversation with Michael Strong who has had an extensive career in many different educational systems and approaches, but with a fascinating mix of classical practices such as Socratic Dialogue and entrepreneurial skills. Michael Strong is one of the most experienced innovative school program designers in the U.S. He is the Founder/CEO of Socratic Experience (an online academy blending Classical and entrepreneurial education), Flourishing Adolescent Cultures Initiative at the University of Austin, and the Academy of Thought and Industry (ATI), a network of Montessori-aligned high schools with campuses in Austin, San Francisco, New York City, and St. Louis. His projects include Montessori secondary school program design for Montessori schools in San Antonio, Palo Alto, and Pleasanton, California prior to launching ATI. He also created The Winston Academy, where middle school students passed AP exams, and Moreno Valley High School, a Paideia charter high school in Angel Fire, New Mexico, ranked the 36th best public high school in the U.S. by Newsweek in its 3rd year of operation and continued to outperform other New Mexico high schools.  He is the author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice and lead author of Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World's Problems. He introduced the expression “Startup Cities” in a 2013 Voice & Exit talk which has led to a vibrant “Startup Societies” movement around the world. He is also a co-founder of FLOW, Peace through Commerce, Conscious Capitalism, and Radical Social Entrepreneurs. He serves on the boards of Radical Social Entrepreneurs and Social Evolution. He is the only “Michael Strong” married to the powerful and beautiful Senegalese entrepreneur Magatte Wade. Michael writes and can be found in the following places, Substack: https://substack.com/@michaelstrong  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.strong.144/  X: @flowidealism - https://x.com/flowidealism  LinkedIn: @michaelstrong1 - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstrong1/ 

This strange thing called ‘knowledge' has always been a battleground in educational conversations - for example, in lots of loud calls for “knowledge-rich” curricula! Personally I'm very much in favour of knowledge and knowing, part of the buzz of following curiosity and inquiries! It's just the KIND of knowledge and knowing that we have been conditioned to value over others that I have an issue with! Minna Salami has been deeply challenging this hierarchy of knowing through her extensive work and amazing concept and book of the same title, Sensuous Knowledge. Her work coming from the tradition of African Feminism is to trouble the hierarchies, not simply invert them. Minna Salami is a Nigerian-Finnish and Swedish feminist author, social critic and currently Program Chair at THE NEW INSTITUTE. She is the author of Can Feminism Be African? (forthcoming Harper Collins) and Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone (Bloomsbury 2020) which has been translated into multiple languages.  Minna has also co-authored children's books and written content on feminism for numerous anthologies as well as educational textbooks. A leading voice of contemporary feminism, she has drawn over a million readers to her multiple award-winning blog MsAfropolitan.com. Her writing can be found in the Guardian, Project Syndicate, Al Jazeera, and The Philosopher, and many others. She is a frequent speaker and lecturer including at some of the world's most prominent institutions such as the UN, EU, Oxford Union, Cambridge Union, Yale University, and the Singularity University at NASA. She has worked as a Research Associate and Editor at Perspectiva, consulted governments on gender equality, written school curricula, and curated cultural events at The Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Minna is a Full Member of the Club of Rome, a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader and sits on the council of The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the boards of The African Feminist Initiative at Pennsylvania State University, The Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of the Sahel, and is an associate with Perspectiva. She has served as chair for the House of Beautiful Business, a judge for the One World Media Awards, a nominator for the Prince Claus Foundation and the Princess of Asturias Foundation. An alumni of Lund University and SOAS University, Minna has lived in Nigeria, Sweden, Spain, and New York and now lives between London and Hamburg. Social Links: Minna's blog: https://msafropolitan.com/ Linkedin: @minnasalami - https://www.linkedin.com/in/minnasalami/ Instagram: @minnasalami_ https://www.instagram.com/minnasalami_/

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

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.

For new parents and early years educators, there's a wealth of guidance and support for how to understand what's happening for our babies and toddlers, but when it comes to the stories we tell about adolescence, an equally important period of significant change, sometimes it's more just get your head down and get through it! As millions of young people make the big transition to Middle School, I was very curious to learn from one of the real experts, not only of the patterns of change and development at this time, but also of how to create educational environments that really take these young people seriously!  Chris Balme is an education leader, writer, and school founder, passionate about helping young people discover more of their human potential. He is the author of Finding the Magic in Middle School: Tapping Into the Power and Potential of the Middle School Years, which was published in 2022.  Chris currently serves as Founding Principal at Hakuba International School. He is also the Founder & Director of Argonaut, an online advisory program for middle schoolers around the world. Prior to this, Chris co-founded and served as Head of School at Millennium School, a highly successful lab school in San Francisco. Chris has received the Ashoka Fellowship as a leading changemaker in education, and regularly speaks, trains, and writes for parents and teachers around the world. For more, see Chris's newsletter, Growing Wiser. Social Links LinkedIn: @chris-balme - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisbalme/ Instagram: @chrisbalme - https://www.instagram.com/chrisbalme/ 

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/

As you will have heard on previous episodes with Sandra Milligan, Yong Zhao, folks from Mastery Transcript Consortium and Rethinking Assessment, standardised tests and assessments are often one of the biggest barriers to change in education as these credentials and school-leaving certificates often hold the key that opens up the next door or higher education for many young people. This week I'm so excited to share an amazing success story of someone who decided that this compromise was just unacceptable for their young people.  Viv White AM is CEO and co-founder (with John Hogan) of Big Picture Learning Australia (BPLA) - https://www.bigpicture.org.au/ - a non-profit company established in Australia in 2006. Building on the work started by Dennis Littky and Elliot Washor in the US in 1995 (https://www.bigpicture.org/), Big Picture Learning Australia's design for personalised, student-driven learning is being implemented in over 50 schools around Australia. Viv has also pioneered a new non-ATAR credential known as the International Big Picture Learning Credential (IBPLC) that is warranted by the University of Melbourne, and accepted by 17 universities around Australia. In 2018 Viv was appointed to the Order of Australia for her services to education and to the reengagement of young people in learning for life. Prior to leading BPLA, Viv was CEO of the Victorian Schools Innovation Commission and CEO of the Australian National Schools Network. She has a thirty-year history of international work in educational reform, research, policy and practice. Viv taught primary and secondary education for 13 years, worked in tertiary research for five years as a research fellow at Macquarie University and Victoria University, and served as an adjunct professor at the University of Western Sydney. Viv is a Fellow of the Australian Council of Education and was admitted, in 2014, to the Australian Businesswomen's Network Hall of Fame. Viv was also named one of The Australian Financial Review 100 Women of Influence in 2019. Find out more: LinkedIn: @viv-white - https://www.linkedin.com/in/viv-white-am-297642142/ Instagram: @bigpicture.edu.au - https://www.instagram.com/bigpicture.edu.au/  @bigpiclearning - https://www.instagram.com/bigpiclearning/ (US) Website: https://www.bigpicture.org.au/

Welcome back to the first episode in the new series of the Future Learning Design podcast. The podcast now has a lovely new home at Good Impact Labs (goodimpactlabs.com).  The first guest in this new series is the social philosopher and internationally best-selling author, Roman Krznaric In his book, The Good Ancestor, Roman challenged us all to consider the rights of future species and future citizens in the face of our current catastrophic obsession with short-term thinking. Now, Roman is leading us into the past to ask what can we learn from history in his fantastic new book History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity. His internationally bestselling books including The Good Ancestor, Empathy, The Wonderbox and Carpe Diem Regained, have been published in more than 25 languages. He is Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University's Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing and founder of the world's first Empathy Museum.  After growing up in Sydney and Hong Kong, Roman studied at the universities of Oxford, London and Essex, where he gained his PhD in political science. Particularly known for his work on empathy and long-term thinking, his writings have been widely influential amongst political and ecological campaigners, education reformers, social entrepreneurs and designers. An acclaimed public speaker, his talks and workshops have taken him from a London prison to the TED global stage. Over half a million people have watched his RSA Animate video The Power of Outrospection Roman is a member of the Club of Rome and a Research Fellow of the Long Now Foundation. He previously worked as an academic, a gardener, a conversation activist and on human rights issues in Guatemala – the subject of his book What the Rich Don't Tell the Poor. He is also a fanatical player of the medieval sport of real tennis, whose history he explores in The First Beautiful Game. Social Links X: @romankrznaric - https://x.com/romankrznaric  Website: https://www.romankrznaric.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/

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/

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/

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/

What does it mean for those in culturally Eurocentric school systems around the world to learn from and with indigenous peoples about the role of education in community and connected with place? Should we even, after the horrors inflicted upon indigenous communities by settlers? These are delicate but important questions and it was a huge privilege to be able to sit down with Dr Marie Battiste to discuss them. Dr Marie Battiste is a citizen of the Mi'kmaq Nation of Potlotek First Nations and of the Aroostook Band of Micmacs in Maine. She is professor emerita in the College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan. She is a widely published author and editor, an officer in the Order of Canada, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Among her multiple honours are a National Aboriginal Achievement Award, a University of Saskatchewan Distinguished Researcher Award, a Distinguished Academic Award from the Canadian Association of University Teachers, and the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Medal for Service to Canada. Dr Battiste's new book is out in November 2024: 'Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Canadian Obligation', co-written with James Sa'ke'j Youngblood Henderson. https://www.ubcpress.ca/protecting-indigenous-knowledge-and-heritage-new-edition

In this mini-series, Tim Logan and Ewan McIntosh talk about some of the most interesting bits (to us) of intriguing guests on the show so far, followed by a bitesized excerpt. This last episode in the series gets us all thinking about how we might slow down a little and create more space for our young people to explore, play, and... well, be bored sometimes! Check out the full episode here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/futurelearningdesign/episodes/On-Slow-Education---A-Conversation-with-Carl-Honor-e24ndrf

What are the 'future skills' our young people need, and will the university of the future be unrecognisable from the universities of today? Laura Eigbrecht and Professor Ulf-Daniel Ehlers have gathered some of the top thinkers around the world who are creating the university of the future. They join Tim this week to share some of these powerful ideas. 'Creating the University of the Future: A Global View on Future Skills and Future Higher Education' - https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-42948-5 Laura Eigbrecht is a senior researcher at the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University at the Chair of Educational Management and Lifelong Learning. As a doctoral candidate, she conducts research in the field of transformative and participatory future skills in higher education. After her binational bachelor's degree and her master's degree in children's and youth media, she worked at the children's channel of ARD and ZDF as well as in teaching and consulting in the field of migration, language and education. Professor Ulf-Daniel Ehlers is the founder of mindful-leaders.net and a serial social entrepreneur. He is a full Professor of Educational Management at Baden-Wurttemberg Cooperative State University. In 2011, he launched Germany's first Cooperative University, now serving 35,000 students. In 2017, Ulf founded NextEducation (https://next-education.org/), focusing on the future of education and Future Skills. He served as Scientific Director at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology until 2023. Ulf has collaborated with over 30 universities globally and held leadership roles in EURASHE and EDEN. He has delivered keynotes in 45 countries and authored over 20 books and 300 scholarly articles. A trained systemic coach, Ulf integrates Future Skills into education for sustainable development. Social Links LinkedIn: @laura-eigbrecht - https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-eigbrecht-60a586171/ @ulfehlers - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulfehlers/ X: @uehlers - https://twitter.com/uehlers

In this mini-series, Tim Logan and Ewan McIntosh talk about some of the most interesting bits (to us) of intriguing guests on the show so far, followed by a bitesized excerpt. This third episode in the series features a recent conversation about coaching and mentoring for teacher professional learning with Professor Rachel Lofthouse. Check out the full episode here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/futurelearningdesign/episodes/Transforming-Professional-Learning---A-Conversation-with-Prof--Rachel-Lofthouse-e2f24km You can also find more information about Rachel's fantastic work with CollectivED: Centre for Coaching, Mentoring and Professional Learning⁠⁠ - https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/research/collectived/

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/

In this mini-series, Tim Logan and Ewan McIntosh talk about some of the most interesting bits (to us) of intriguing guests on the show so far, followed by a bitesized excerpt. This second episode in the series features one of the most mlistened episodes from last year with the amazing Professor Jo Boaler. Check out the full episode here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/jhbCnZxznKb And do check out Jo's latest book, released last month, Math-ish: Finding Creativity, Diversity, and Meaning in Mathematics - https://www.harpercollins.com/products/math-ish-jo-boaler?variant=41226038083618

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

In this new series, Tim Logan and Ewan McIntosh talk about some of the most interesting bits (to us) of intriguing guests on the show so far, followed by a bitesized excerpt. This first short is centred on a brilliant interview with one of the world's foremost educators, Gary Stager, originally released in January 2024. Check out the full episode here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/NLQ93mV9aKb Gary's a dear friend of NoTosh, and is running the last ever Constructing Modern Knowledge event this summer. If you care about students learning the skills to design their own learning I can imagine no better place to be in July.

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

With the recent release of her book 'Every Child Can: Riverside School's Design-Led Approach to Empower Children', the wonderful Kiran Bir Sethi is joining us again on the podcast this week. 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 won the T4 Education 'World's Best School Prize' for innovation in 2023: https://t4.education/worlds-best-school-prizes/the-five-prizes/innovation/. 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 man times as one of the 100 most innovative educational programmes in the world by HundrED.org. Social Links Instagram: @kiranbirsethi - https://www.instagram.com/kiranbirsethi/ Twitter: ⁠@kiranbirsethi⁠ - https://twitter.com/kiranbirsethi LinkedIn: ⁠@kiranbirsethi - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiranbirsethi/

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/

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

All the talk about systems change in education is great, and a topic we cover lots on the podcast. But the current reality for many educators might feel very removed from such visions. And yet, when you get into the details of what really deep and energised inquiry looks like with curious and questioning young people in classrooms, the two worlds feel a lot closer. And there are few people that know the specifics of what great inquiry-based learning looks like in theory and practice better than Trevor Mackenzie, so it was fantastic to be able to sit down with him this week to chat about it. We talk about teacher dispositions, question routines, provocations, levels of structure, and also the way that an inquiry stance can show up in all cultures in different ways as humility and curiosity. Trevor MacKenzie (https://www.trevormackenzie.com/who-i-am) is an experienced teacher, author, keynote speaker and inquiry consultant who has worked in schools throughout Australia, Asia, North America, South Africa and Europe. Trevor's passion is  supporting schools in implementing inquiry-based learning practices. He is a highly regarded speaker known for his heartfelt storytelling, kind demeanour, and student-first philosophy.   Trevor's graduate research focused on identifying and removing the barriers to implementing inquiry-based learning in the K-12  setting. He has three publications: Dive into Inquiry, Inquiry Mindset Elementary Edition, and Inquiry Mindset Assessment Edition all published by Elevate Books Edu. He has vast experience supporting schools across several years in implementation strategies in public schools, international schools, and International Baccalaureate programmes (PYP/MYP/DP). As a classroom teacher in Victoria, BC, Canada, Trevor brings a unique lens to authorship, consultancy, keynoting, and research. He is in his own classroom working with scholars in inquiry and he visits schools around the world supporting them in their inquiry implementation. This provides rich context and experience, a holistic approach to the work, and authentic and refined resources to be shared. Trevor is the best selling author of three publications: author of Inquiry Mindset Assessment Edition (2021), co-author of Inquiry Mindset Elementary Edition (2018), and the author of Dive into Inquiry (2016) all published by Elevate Books Edu. Trevor's new book Inquiry Mindset Questions Edition will be published later this year: https://www.trevormackenzie.com/posts/2024/4/14/announcing-inquiry-mindset-questions-edition Social Links LinkedIn: @trevor-mackenzie - https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-mackenzie-37103b261/ Instagram: @trev_mackenzie - https://www.instagram.com/trev_mackenzie/ X: @trev_mackenzie - https://twitter.com/trev_mackenzie