Future Learning Design Podcast

In 1981, the UN established the International Day of Peace to commemorate and strengthen the ideals of peace. In a time when both the influence of multilateral institutions like the UN is being questioned, and the peace we need is in rapidly shortening supply as violence becomes the norm, my guest this week is doing amazing work with communities to find more peaceful paths through questions of con...

I've been so looking forward to sharing this conversation as it is an area that I am particularly passionate about. I feel very strongly that the way we think and talk about learning, teaching and education is so rooted in Behaviorism and Cognitivism and the dominant language of training and metaphors of the brain as a computer. And there is a still a widespread lack of awareness of the emerging i...

To mark the moment and celebrate the release of Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti's new book 'Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating Complexity, Complicity, and Collapse with Accountability and Compassion', we are so happy to be able to bring you this fantastic episode! It is the sequel to Vanessa's 'Hospicing Modernity', which was published in 2021 and in 4 short years has b...

What it means to be an educated person or have an educated population as a country is a big part of what informs the decisions around industrial, economic and education policy. But built into these questions are some fundamental assumptions about what it means to make progress or be developed as a society. And beneath that particular values about what it means to know and be in the world. My guest...

As I explore different aspects of the education transition that we need globally, and is emerging, it is increasingly clear that schools (or what might replacement them) won't be the only thing required. There is a huge amount of possibility and power in a broader ecosystem of organisations and networks taking different roles in enabling a more creative, meaning-rich, relational educational ex...

If we are going to radically rethink and perhaps replace schools as the dominant institutions of education, what are the first principles questions that we should be asking? And what is the cultural rootedness and traditions that might provide a sense of guidance for these questions? I can't think of a better person to be exploring this with than Dr Kapono Ciotti, whose work in leadership and coll...

In the business of education someone telling you that something doesn't make sense is usually the moment to step in and explain, support and resolve the confusion. Helping young people make sense of the world Is our job isn't it? But what if making sense sometimes gets in the way of making meaning?! What is our job as educators in creating opportunities for young people to cultivate meaning in the...

“Are we valuing what we measure or measuring what we value?” It's probably a familiar question to many of you. And this week we're taking a detailed and reflective look at the role of measuring complex competencies in our schools, as this is often a big part of the discussion about what needs to change in formal education. In previous episodes (Ep72 and Ep148), I have chatted with folks from Melbo...

This week it is a huge pleasure to be able to bring you this cross-over episode with Kwame Sarfo-Mensah and his fantastic channel, #IdentityTalk4EducatorsLIVE (https://www.identitytalk4educators.com/podcast). Kwame's work is full of insights gained through his own practice as a maths teacher and educational coach and consultant, and through his over 200 conversations with amazing educators and lea...

Which places might be the first movers in a radical educational shift? And by radical in this conversation we're not talking about small tweaks in the types of individual competencies and credentials we optimize for in our current version of schools. But a completely different set of logics, values, meaning and purpose for what education could be, set in a broader context of the transformation...

This week, we're diving deep into a conversation that bridges ancient wisdom and modern learning. Joining Tim are two incredible thinkers and practitioners, Satheesh Namasivayam and Bade Kucukoglu. We explore how ancient wisdom practices—from dance, to creative arts, ritual and community performance —can inform and inspire us to create different kinds of spaces in our schools and communities and h...

This week, it's a huge pleasure to welcome Adam Kahane onto the podcast to talk with Tim about the everyday habits and radical engagement that young people as well as educators and leaders, at all levels of our education systems, can learn in order to do the coordinated and constant work of transforming systems. Adam Kahane is a Director at Reos Partners, a global social impact company dedicated t...

This week we're exploring embodiment science in education with some of the worlds leading embodiment practitioners and cognitive scientists! We believe that this is one of the most important shifts happening in education globally, which is simultaneously so simple, and yet so hard to budge given the depths of the tendencies towards disembodiment, especially in the Western tradition, that we ex...

The idea that schools simply deliver objective and neutral knowledge and skills to our young humans is a complete myth. In fact, with the amount of time that we spend in them over the course of our early lives, schools are incredibly good at conditioning us into particular sets of assumptions about the way the world works. My guest this week, Dr Ida Rose Florez is calling this out in amazing and v...

After learning about the amazing work of my guest this week, I had an idea that I wanted to test out. Perhaps our current obsession with Large Language Models is revealing of our historic obsession with a narrow cognitivist view of how human learning happens (and, therefore, how schooling is structured)?! Memorise the largest possible bank of static data and then output plausible propositions, in...

This week, we're thinking about how change happens, or more often doesn't happen in formal education! What are the practical approaches that education leaders and policy-makers sometimes miss when they are initiating change management and innovation processes. This week we welcome back Dr James Mannion to the podcast, in light of the recent publication of his book 'Making Change Stick&...

A huge part of the shifts we want to see in schools and in education more broadly is more agency, choice-making and self direction for young people. There is an increasingly compelling story about why this is important for them, as well as for the kinds of challenges we're facing in local communities and national and global society. But sometimes what isn't highlighted is the impact of not having...

This week, we are celebrating 5 years and 193 episodes since going live with Episode 1 in April 2020! You can hear Tim's reflections, as well as clips from previous episodes with Marie Battiste (Ep154), Nora Bateson (Ep116), Roland Kupers (Ep 185), Wakanyi Hoffman (Ep 157), Carl Mika (Ep179), Nolita Mvunelo & Matias Lara (Ep190), Zineb Mouhyi (Ep184) and Zoe Weil (Ep171). Please share your...

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 importan...

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 d...

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 Van...

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...

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 an...

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 desirabl...

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 tr...