FreshEd

Children are inundated with technology. Video games, smartphones, and computers are common in the lives of today’s digital generation. With school closures from the covid-19 pandemic, learning from home only added to the screen time overload for many children. How do children and young people use and are affected by technological transformations in their everyday lives? How are schools and educati...

World Teachers Day is next week, on Monday, October 5th. This year, the event is being held entirely online because of covid-19. With me is David Edwards to talk about the online event and some of the key people who will join. We also talk about some of the big issues that teachers face worldwide because of coronavirus. David Edwards is the general secretary of Education International, the global...

Covid-19 disrupted school systems worldwide. Many children are still out of school. One of the issues impacted by school closures has been education assessment. How should students be assessed on their learning when school buildings are closed? Is it fair to hold tests when online learning has patchy coverage? And what happens if high stake tests can’t be held? Today I speak with Mary Richardson a...

Today we explore the idea of degrowth. With me is Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist, author, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in the United Kingdom. He is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics, and Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London. He recently published a book entitled Less is More: How Degrowth wil...

Today we explore educational privatization in Brazil and Portugal. With me is Rui da Silva, a researcher in the Center for African Studies at the University of Porto in Portugal. Together with Theresa Adrião, Rui has recently published a new article in the journal Globalisation, Societies and Education entitled “Public funding to private providers of compulsory education: crossed looks between Br...

Today we continue our exploration of Teach for All. Two weeks ago, we explored Teach for All counter-narratives. Now we look at empirical research evidence across contexts where Teach for All operates. With me are Matthew Thomas, Emilee Rauschenberger and Katy Crawford-Garrett who have recently co-edited Examining Teach For All: International Perspectives on a Growing Global Network. The collectio...

Today we talk about the complexities of private higher education worldwide and how some private universities and colleges responded to and have been impacted by the coronavirus. My guest is Daniel Levy, a professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He’s recently co-written a report entitled: “How Covid-19 puts private higher education at especially high risk – and not: ear...

Today we look at counter narratives to Teach for All, the global network of affiliate organizations that recruit people to make 2-year commitments teaching in high-need schools. An outgrowth of Teach for America and Teach First in the United Kingdom, Teach for All advances a one-size fits all solution to educational problems in over 53 countries. It is funded by powerful corporations and organizat...

Today we take a critical look at numbers. Think about it: numbers are everywhere in education, from grades to impact scores to rankings. My guests today, Nelli Piattoeva and Rebecca Boden, have recently co-edited a special issue for the journal International Studies in Sociology of Education that looks at the “ambiguities of the governance of education through data” (read their open access introdu...

Are we heading towards another economic crisis? The stock market plunged last week; private debt is at an all-time high; speculative markets are on the rise; wealth remains concentrated at the top; and workers are stuck in precarious low-wage jobs. My guest today, William I. Robinson, says that the Transnational Capitalist Class is facing a crisis of over-accumulation. But what is to be done? Prof...

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...