Future Learning Design Podcast

How do we as educators respond in times of urgency and conflict? Not just in teaching, but also in exploring potentially transformative ideas and practices; in such moments of great challenge but also lots of opportunity. I had the huge privilege this week to talk with 3 amazing young people who doing just that in the context of the on-going conflict after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine just o...

Educational leadership is a tough challenge at the best of times, with many pressures from all sides. But particularly now, with so much shifting, high levels of uncertainty, and polarising issues at play, it’s arguably an even rougher sea to navigate. In such a context, my guest this week has done an amazing job of gathering vital insights from 67 amazing education leaders around the world, herse...

This is the first part of a 4-part series exploring the ways in which artificial intelligence is impacting the lives of teachers and young people around the world, through the lens of Anthropic’s recently announced partnerships. In this episode, I talked with Þórdís Jóna Sigurðardóttir, the Director of the Directorate of Education and School Services in Iceland who is exploring the implications of...

This is the second part episode in this mini-series looking into the ways in which artificial intelligence is impacting the lives of teachers and young people around the world, through the lens of recently announced partnerships with Anthropic.  In this conversation, I explored with Karishma Galani the way that Pratham Education Foundation, one of the largest NGOs in India, is integrating AI capab...

This is the third episode in this 4-part series exploring the ways in which artificial intelligence is impacting the lives of teachers and young people around the world, through the lens of recently announced partnerships with Anthropic. In this episode, I explored Teach for All’s thoughtful approach to these big questions with Global Head of AI and Edtech, Stephen Jull. How is collective leadersh...

This is the first part of a 4-part series exploring the ways in which AI tools are impacting the lives of teachers and young people around the world. In this episode, I talked with Kavi Ramburn and Stefan Coetzee from ALX Africa about their amazing work bringing professional foundational competencies programmes to young people across Africa through in-person hubs and online course offerings. They...

This week on the podcast we’re time travelling with the fabulous Professor Keri Facer. How we think about the future or futures makes a difference to the decisions we make in schools today, and Keri has been asking critically important questions about educational futures, pasts and presents for the last 20 years, that are still as important today as they were when she published her brilliant 2011...

I've always been fascinated by questions of religion and spirituality and what they have to offer the educational conversation. Clearly on the big questions of life generally, transformation, meaning, values and purpose they have a lot to say, but educationally we can very quickly find ourselves in the territory of indoctrination. And surely indoctrination is the opposite of good education Thi...

One of the best things about this job is that I get to find out about and share some of the most exciting new developments in education all over the world, sometimes in the most unexpected places. My guest this week, the writer, human rights activist, turned educational entrepreneur Ben Rawlence and his amazing team are building just that in a small market town called Talgarth in mid-Wales. Black...

There aren't many things that prompt widespread agreement from people on all sides of the various educational debates. But whatever your educational stripes, young people becoming better critical thinkers usually gets unanimous support. And, arguably, it's being recognised as increasingly important in a world full of AI-generated content and chatbots pretending to be your friend! So I was...

The following conversation is definitely a wild ride*! It's not an argument often made, but I believe that one of the effects of our industrialised education systems is to create the illusion that the world is full of somewhat fixed and ordered things, that don't move or change much. Of course, we teach our children about orbiting planets, the water cycle or change in historical periods. B...

It's pretty clear from the statistics that there is a huge youth demographic bulge on the continent of Africa. 40% of its population is aged 15 or younger (as of 2021). The population of young people aged 15-24 in Africa is projected to reach 500 million in 2080. But as Prof. Kingsley Moghalu from the African School of Governance said at Harvard University’s African Development Conference in April...

In the current context of ubiquitous digital tech and runaway generative AI, you'd think that a book calling out our collective delusions about digital tools in relation to learning wouldn't make much of a splash! But Jared Cooney Horvath's latest book 'The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning -- And How To Help Them Thrive Again' ( https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/t...

In this final episode of 2025, you'll hear about some of the most exciting things happening around the world for pathways through the upper end of high school from the voices of the young people involved in them. The final years of high school is often the 'business-end' of formal schooling, where we often demand that young people just knuckle down and suffer the "rigours" of...

In this first episode in this Innovative Student Pathways mini-series, I had the huge pleasure of chatting with Monty, Eliza and Lydia, three amazing graduates of the International Big Picture Learning Credential. There are few, if any, other new pathways and credentials that have been as successful in obtaining university recognition for such radical alternatives to the standardised exam factory...

In Episode 2 of this Innovative Student Pathways mini-series, I chatted with Olivia, Farrah and Chrissa, current students at Green School Bali about their learning through their Greenstone projects. Greenstone are a capstone project that is a key part of the ‘living’ curriculum at Green School Bali that is educates young people for sustainability through community-integrated, entrepreneurial learn...

In Episode 3 of this Innovative Student Pathways mini-series, you'll find a fantastic overview of all of the amazing work happening at African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa to build the next generation of young African leaders, innovators, laureates and artists. I had the pleasure of meeting with Ayira, Katleho, Mohamed, Fatima and Maimouna Régina to hear all about the core...

In this fourth episode on exciting global innovations in student pathways, I chatted to Sara, Anisa and Entong from UWC South East Asia and Gabi and Satya, alumni of UWC Atlantic College about their experiences on the new IB Systems Transformation Pathway (STP). This is a really exciting pilot of the IB's 16+ review, pioneered with United World Colleges to enable transformative change, systems...

In the last of these 5 mini-series episodes on innovative and emerging student pathways, I chatted with Malna, Nikk and Belen from American International School of Budapest, American International School of Bucharest and American School of Lima respectively. These are 3 of the more than 100 international schools who were represented in the cohort of passionate educators and leaders who co-create t...

On 7th November, the OECD published a very significant statement of intent on Education for Human Flourishing (available here: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/education-for-human-flourishing_73d7cb96-en.html ). It is a conceptual framework that they say is helping to shape the international conversation about the future of education, national education policymaking, as well as the development...

As we think about systems change, it's all too easy to get caught up the technical design of new institutions and 'system architecture'. But if we are being asked to consider a qualitatively different way governing, convening, educating, distributing resources - all of the fundamentals of society -then perhaps we can start by asking: What has LOVE got to do with any of it? As I share a...

The idea of rewilding is now a common topic of conversation in response to the depletion of biodiversity and natural habitats for local wildlife and widespread industrialisation and globalisation of food production. What about if we asked the same question in relation to the industrialised and standardised education system? What would it take to rewild education, as my guest this week asks? Profes...

As many regular listeners to the podcast know, on this channel we have been exploring the new kinds of educational institutions that are emerging in response to the challenges that our legacy institutions are facing. For the last 250 years we've gotten used to compulsory standardised schooling being provided at scale by either the state, as public government schools, or by the market, as priva...

There are a lot of people searching right now, including me, including this podcast, searching for different ways in and through many of the global challenges that we are facing. And as many people will conclude, education and learning are central to these questions of how we find our way! How do we learn together, across generations, in communities in ways that will enable the capacities of our y...

One of our main roles as educators is to support and help our young people figure out who they are and how they want to contribute to the world. Given our current context of rapid technological change with social, technological and ecological challenges, questions about decisions for university, training and future options for young people is becoming increasingly challenging. Similarly, for educa...