Future Learning Design Podcast

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...

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...