FreshEd

School systems worldwide are struggling to figure out if, when, and how to re-open schools. Educational planning during a pandemic is no easy task, especially when there is little evidence that can be used to guide policy. My guest today is Karen Mundy, Professor of International and Comparative Education at the University of Toronto. She is a leading expert on education in the developing world an...

What does citizenship education look like in a country affected by armed conflict and economic crises? My guest today, Bassel Akar, has closely examined citizenship and history education in Lebanon. Some of his research focuses on the ways in which teachers demonstrate their agency for curricular and pedagogical change through innovative approaches inside the classroom. Bassel Akar is Associate Pr...

Can Sesame Street’s Big Bird help fight terrorism? And what does a children’s television show tell us about the challenges and paradoxes of multicultural education? My guest today is Naomi Moland, Professorial Lecturer at the American University in Washington D.C. In her new book, entitled Can Big Bird Fight Terrorism?, Naomi explores a children’s television show in conflict-affected Nigeria that...

It takes about 15 minutes to drive from Edgewood to Alamo Heights in San Antonio, Texas. Yet the schools in each neighborhood are worlds apart. The student body at Alamo is roughly 52 percent white and 40 percent Hispanic. Only about 20 percent of students are classified as economically disadvantaged. At Edgewood, less than 1 percent of students are white and 97 percent are Hispanic. Nearly 95 per...

In our fast-changing word, how should we think about curriculum? For what macro competencies should education aim? And has the COVID-19 pandemic revealed any failures in our education systems worldwide? These are difficult questions to answer and dependent on context. To help make sense of these questions, UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education has recently published a set of normative documen...

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended higher education internationalization. Many universities are worried the pandemic will cause a huge drop in international student enrollment and their associated fees, which account for a large part of many university budgets. My guest today, Kalyani Unkule, says the pandemic is an opportunity to re-think internationalization away from the short-term financial int...

The Minneapolis police officer who knelled on the neck of George Floyd and killed him was training new recruits. One of the trainees was on his third day on the job. That got me thinking: How are police trained? What type of education do police officers receive? And are there any connections between type and quality of education and training to the excessive police force so common in black communi...

The murder of George Floyd has ignited a global outcry against racism and police violence. How can we understand the meaning of George Floyd while not forgetting Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Kelly Thomas, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Laguan McDonald, Antown Rose II, and Ahmaud Arbery to name just a few Americans killed for the color of their skin? To help process the protests and riots, racism and polic...

Protests over the murder of George Floyd have erupted across the United States. Police have responded with acts of violence caught on camera and spread across social media. What we are witnessing seems to be a confluence of centuries of systemic racism and injustice with the frustration towards the government in action during this pandemic. I think it is important to think through some of these is...

Today is the 200th episode of FreshEd! To celebrate this milestone, we take you behind the scenes to meet our talented team: Lushik Wahba, Sherry Yang, Hang Doung, Fatih Aktas, Injung Cho, Iveta Silova, Yuto Kitamura, David Edwards, Arathi Sriprakash, and Keita Takayama. These are the people who edit and produce episodes; the people who manage FreshEd’s social media; and the board members who prov...

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an emergency situation for most education systems worldwide. Schools are closed. Students are at home. Stress and anxiety are high. Domestic violence and food insecurity are on the rise. And we are uncertain when this emergency will end. Luckily, there is a large body of research on education in emergencies that can help guide us through this unprecedented situati...

Today the famed anthropologist Arjun Appadurai joins me to talk about the current pandemic and its impacts on globalization and education. We were supposed to speak in March at a Live Event during the annual conference of the Comparative and International Education Society in Miami, but like most things in life, the pandemic got in the way. In our conversation, Arjun thinks through the pandemic us...

There’s an urban legend that Winston Churchill, near the end of World War II, once said “never let a good crisis go to waste.” President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahman Emanuel, certainly said similar words in 2009 after the Global Financial Crisis. Is the crisis in education today caused by the coronavirus an opportunity to make lasting and positive change? How can we be sure not to waste this mom...

Today we talk about a television show that was hugely popular in Latin America called El Chavo del Ocho. The show crossed borders across Latin America, taking on a multiplicity of meaning. My guests today, Daniel Friedrich and Erica Colmenares, have a new edited collection that explores how the show worked and produced particular visions of Latin American childhood, schooling, and societies. They...

Ted Dintersmith is not your normal Silicon Valley venture capitalist trying to save the world through technology. He’s much more complex. After producing the film Most Likely to Succeed, which premiered at Sundance in 2015, Ted embarked on a trip across America. For nine months he visited school after school, meeting teachers in ordinary settings doing extraordinary things. Today Ted joins FreshEd...

Most children are now out of school because of the pandemic. How should we think about teaching and learning during the crisis? How can we ensure the basic needs of students continue to be met out of school? And can digital learning teach the whole child? My guest today is Armand Doucet, one of the world’s foremost pracademics and teachers in education for the Digital Age. He has recently co-writt...

Today I speak with Claire Maxwell about school internationalization. Together with Laura Engel and Miri Yemini, Claire has recently co-edited a new book entitled The Machinery of School Internationalisation in Action. Beyond the Established Boundaries. In our conversation, we discuss internationalization in terms of elite education, privatization, and racism. We even discuss the implications of th...

Today I talk with Prachi Srivastava about educational planning in a time of coronavirus. Over 1.5 billion children are out of school. What does that mean for educational delivery and assessment? And are there issues of equity we need to consider? Prachi Srivastava is an Associate Professor specializing in education and international development at Western University in Canada. In our conversation...

Today I talk with Rebecca Tarlau about her new book, Occupying Schools, Occupying Land, which was published last year. The book details the way in which the Landless Workers Movement transformed Brazilian Education. Rebecca Tarlau is an Assistant Professor of Education and Labor and Employment Relations at the Pennsylvania State University. She is affiliated with the Lifelong Learning and Adult Ed...

Blaise Pascal, the 17th Century French mathematician and physicist, once wrote “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” As people and governments around the world are wondering whether or not to self-isolate to stop the spread of covid-19, Pascal’s adage has become more pertinent than ever. As we grapple with our new world, I wanted to bring you a spec...

Today we talk about digital education and the future of learning. My guest is Ben Williamson, a Chancellor’s Fellow in the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. He wrote the book Big Data in Education: The digital future of learning, policy and practice (Sage, 2017), and is an editor of the journal Learning, Media and Technology. In our conversation, Ben talks ab...

Today we talk about tax as a way to fund education systems worldwide. My guest is David Archer, Head of Participation and Public Services at ActionAid (www.actionaid.org). David leads ActionAid’s work on civic participation, tax justice and gender responsive public services. He has written about domestic taxation and education for the Education Commission and is edited a special issue for NORRAG o...

Today we talk about education and conflict in Burma. My guest is Rosalie Metro, an Assistant Teaching Professor in the College of Education at the University of Missouri-Columbia. As an anthropologist of education, she is interested in the conflicts that arise around history, identity, and language in the classroom. Her latest commentary in the Compare Forum argues that we need to consider the Thr...

Today we talk about powerful knowledge, a concept that has sparked a major debate about what should be taught in schools. My guest is Michael Young, a professor of Sociology of Curriculum at UCL’s Institute of Education. Michael’s work in the sociology of education has been criticized by both the Right and the Left. That’s why I wanted to sit down with him to unpack what he even means by powerful...

Today we explore affect theory in comparative education. With me is Irv Epstein, the Ben and Susan Rhodes Professor of Peace and Social Justice at Illinois Wesleyan University, where he chairs the Department of Educational Studies and directs the Center for Human Rights and Social Justice. Irv’s new book is called Affect Theory and Comparative Education Discourse which was published in Bloomsbury’...