Future Learning Design Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

As Manda Scott's BRILLIANT podcast suggests, "another world is possible… we have the power of gods to destroy our home, but we also have the chance to become something we cannot yet imagine." This week's special episode is a joint podcast with Manda on her Accidental Gods podcast (https://accidentalgods.life/).

In all of her shamanic work, bestselling novel-writing, podcasting and convening, Manda Scott is gathering people around the vital question, how we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations to come?

Manda's new novel 'Any Human Power' is out on May 30th: https://linktr.ee/anyhumanpower

And you can find more of Manda's extensive and amazing work on her website here: https://mandascott.co.uk/

Other things we talk about in this conversation:

Nick Mulvey's performance at COP26: https://youtu.be/x-GBl6DeA50?si=8RgDivREYKZTa9I1&t=1273 Beautiful!

The Substack Manda reads from:  ⁠https://theconcernedbird.substack.com/p/elon-musks-and-xs-role-in-2024-election

Systems Transformation Pathway at UWC Atlantic College: https://www.uwcatlantic.org/learning/academic/systems-transformation-pathway

https://sites.google.com/uwcatlantic.org/transformingsystems/centre?authuser=0

Green School Bali:  https://www.greenschool.org/

School of Humanity: https://sofhumanity.com/

Festival of Hope: https://ibo.org/festival-of-hope/ Social Links

LinkedIn: @mandascottauthor - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandascottauthor/

BlueSky - https://bsky.app/profile/mandascott.bsky.socialandMastodon - https://mastodon.scot/@Eceni Or you can write to Manda here: https://mandascott.co.uk/contact/

This week it was a huge pleasure to be able to welcome Carl Mika, Professor of Māori and Indigenous Philosophies from Aotearoa, the country now known as New Zealand. As you can probably guess from the title of this episode, this conversation with Carl went pretty deep pretty quickly! That's because underlying the most apparently basic concepts like learning or logic that people use all the time are some pretty fundamental assumptions about the way the world is. And they're certainly not universal to all humans. So what does educating our young people in how to read their worlds mean in this case?
Carl Mika is from the Tuhourangi iwi and is Professor of Māori and Indigenous Philosophies, and Head of School of Aotahi: School of Māori and Indigenous Studies, University of Canterbury. His published work includes Indigenous Education and the Metaphysics of Presence was published in 2017, Routledge), along with many articles and chapters, on the issues of colonisation and reductionism; Māori concepts of nothingness and darkness in response to an Enlightenment focus on clarity; mātauranga Māori and science. Carl teaches and researches in educational philosophy and mātauranga Māori, the law, and global studies, as well as aspects of Western philosophy.
In 2024, Carl was awarded the University of Canterbury Research Medal. Also In 2024, he was recipient of the University of Canterbury Faculty of Arts Kairangahau Māori Award for research in Māori philosophies (both traditional and contemporary) and Māori methodologies. He is also a Fellow of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA). You can find further links to Carl's work here: https://profiles.canterbury.ac.nz/Carl-Te-Hira-Lewis-Mika

“Perhaps the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.” This is a quote from the paediatrician, Rachel Naomi Remen, that my guest this week quotes in her fantastic new book The Impossible Question of Living Well: How do we hold on to what matters, while also knowing how to let go? Dr Helen Street has been banging the drum that living well should be a priority of educational institutions for years, but more importantly, that this is not a question of individual ‘hacks to happiness’ as she talks about in this episode, but a fundamental rethinking of how much context plays a role in enabling or preventing possibilities for living well. It’s Helen’s second time on the podcast and I was so happy to be able to chat to her again about her . She is a social psychologist and educator and has worked extensively with schools around the world since 1999. She holds a position as Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, Graduate School of Education as well as adjunct research consultant for the health department of Western Australia’s Centre for Clinical Interventions. Helen is the Founder and Co-Chair of the ⁠Positive Schools Initiative⁠ (PSI). Since it s launch in 2008, the Positive Schools Initiative has worked with over 26,000 educators from over 6000 schools and colleges; from around Australia and 15 other countries. Positive Schools Initiative is focused takes an evidence-based systems approach to building Contextual Wellbeing, positive mental health and resilience in school staff, parents and young people.

Helen is a bestselling author and speaker and her most recent book is The Impossible Question of Living Well: How do we hold on to what matters, while also knowing how to let go? She is also the author of the bestselling ⁠Contextual Wellbeing: Creating Positive Schools from the Inside Out⁠ (2018). Her work has been met with international acclaim and has been endorsed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama among many others.

Social Links

LinkedIn: ⁠@helen-street⁠

X: ⁠@drhelenstreet

Instagram: drhelenstreet

Web: https://www.helenstreet.com/

Gregory Biggs is the Director of Fieldwork Education, the organisation that develops a range of International Curriculum for learners aged 2-14 across Early Years, Primary and Middle Years, known by many as the IEYC, IPC, and IMYC. These curricula are learnt and taught in over 1,000 schools and more than 90 countries worldwide. Fieldwork Education provides schools the International Curriculum, accompanied by their professional learning pathway and their accreditation services to schools working with the International Curriculum around the world.

Prior to leading the team at Fieldwork Education, Gregory was the global product manager for the IB’s Diploma and Career-related Programmes, located in Singapore. Before which he worked with governments and ministries on structuring national education reform efforts across the Middle East and South East Asia, out of Abu Dhabi. With a Master’s from the University of London’s Institute for Education in Education and International Development, Gregory has spent the last 12 years supporting institutions delicately balance global perspectives with local contexts.

Tristian Stobie's career has spanned a wide range of educational contexts. Starting as a teacher, and then Secondary Principal, he has worked in New Zealand, UK, Lesotho, Monaco, Austria and the Netherlands.

He has also worked in a number of roles for the International Baccalaureate Organisation. He was involved in the early development of the International Schools Association Curriculum, which became the IBMYP,  and later he became Head of IB Diploma programme curriculum development.

Tristian joined Cambridge International as Director of Education in July 2011, and was appointed Director of Curriculum & Qualifications Development in February 2020. He leads the design and development of Cambridge programmes and qualifications for learners aged 5 to 19.

Tristian completed a Master’s and a Doctorate degree at the University of Bath with research interests in curriculum and pedagogy. He has written various articles and contributions to books as well as presented widely at educational conferences and events.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @tristian-stobie / @gregory-biggs

Twitter:  @CambridgeInt / @gregory_biggs

Wendy Kopp is CEO and Co-founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent organizations working to develop collective leadership to ensure all children have the opportunity to fulfill their potential.

Prior to launching Teach For All in 2007, Wendy founded and led Teach For America – which has proven to be an unparalleled source of long-term leadership for expanding opportunity for children in the United States – for 24 years. Wendy led the development of Teach For All to be responsive to the initiative of social entrepreneurs around the world who were determined to adapt this approach in their own countries.

Wendy is the author of A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn’t in Providing an Excellent Education for All (2011) and One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way (2000). She holds honorary doctorate degrees from 15 universities and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Wise Prize for Education (2021), Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2008) and the Schwab Foundation’s Outstanding Social Entrepreneur Award (2003).

Wendy holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and resides in New York City with her husband and their four children.

In the news

• Quartz, “The World in 50 Years”
• Diplomatic Courier, “To Remake the World, Let’s Rethink Education”
• NPR’s How I Built This With Guy Raz, “Teach For America: Wendy Kopp”
• The Wall Street Journal, “Copying Singapore’s math homework”
• TIME, “How to help national school systems succeed”
• The Economist, “High fliers in the classroom”
• Financial Times, “Philanthropy must shift its focus to the global education crisis”
• World Economic Forum, “Why it’s time for International Development to Put People First”

Social Links

LinkedIn: @wendy-kopp

Twitter: @wendykopp

Michele Dal Trozzo is currently in charge of the Montessori department of GAM Gonzagarredi Montessori.

GAM Gonzagarredi Montessori is an Italian company based in Gonzaga, Mantua. GAM Gonzagarredi Montessori is well known worldwide for its unique history in the manufacturing and marketing of Montessori materials and furniture. Its origins in the early twentieth century are strongly connected to the presence of Maria Montessori in Gonzaga, as a friend of Maria Maraini Guerrieri Gonzaga, who started one of the first Casa dei Bambini. Nowadays GAM designs, manufactures and markets furniture for nurseries, schools, libraries and cultural centers.

Michele started working for Gonzagarredi in 1996, right after graduating in Business and Economics at the University of Parma.  In more than 25 years, he has been involved in several different areas of the company business - sales, customer care, logistics, purchasing and manufacturing, product development, classroom design, including the design of the Montessori Museum located in the company headquarters. He also has been attending conferences, trade shows, visiting schools meeting teachers and customers in more than 30 countries, keeping constantly in touch with people deeply committed to provide excellent education to children.

Social Links

GAM Gonzagarredi Montessori

Professor Deborah Eyre is a global educational leader, academic researcher, writer helping good schools become world class through a focus on student performance. Using her 25 years researching into how gifted students think and learn and then creating frameworks to help schools and enrichment providers to enhance provision for these students, she created High Performance Learning with the aim of enabling all students to reach that same advanced performance. 

As well as being a widely published author, Deborah's career has included a variety of senior education roles both globally and in UK and she has advised governments and educational foundations in UK, Hong Kong, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, USA and Singapore. From 2010-2014 she was Global Education Director for Nord Anglia Education and prior to that served as Director of the UK government’s innovative National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY), based at the University of Warwick, where she published Room at the Top: Inclusive education for high performance (2016).

Deborah holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of Warwick and Professorship from Oxford Brookes University. She is a practical academic and writes for a variety of audiences from policy makers to parents but her first love is teachers and teaching. Deborah had served on many board and is currently is Board Member of the Council of British International Schools (COBIS), a Trustee of the Swan Multi-Academy Trust (Oxford) and the Inspiring Futures Foundation, a Board member at Centre for Talented Youth, Ireland (CTYI) a Freeman of the City of London and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @deborah-eyre

Twitter: @eyre_deborah

Todd Shy has taught for more than twenty-five years in Cary, North Carolina, San Francisco, California, and New York City. He is currently Head of Upper Division at Avenues The World School in New York. His writing has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Raleigh News and Observer, where he was a regular contributor, the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Salmagundi, and numerous other publications. In 2008 he was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. His recent book Teaching Life: Life Lessons for Aspiring (and Inspiring) Teachers was described by the founder of the Academy for Teachers as a “an eloquent love letter to teaching and to life.”

Social Links

LinkedIn: @todd-shy

Twitter: @avenues_org

Teddy Pahagbia is the founder and Chief Executive Druid of BLVCK PiXEL, a design-led strategy firm that bridges the gap between technology & business, merging the realms of virtual and real worlds. As an expert in emerging technologies like AR/VR, Blockchain, AI and advanced data management, he designs new disruptive experiences based on the way we interact with technology. Teddy has been identified as one of the Top 30 most influential people in the metaverse. Known by many as Mr Metaverse, he is one of the "leading voices helping to evangelize, educate, advise, develop and create the successor to today’s mobile internet."  Teddy is a former Consulting Manager and has worked for mid to large size companies from various industries and government agencies in Western Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa.  Social Links LinkedIn: @teddypahagbia Twitter: @mr_metaverse; @blvck_pixel 

This is the second conversation that I have had with Prof. Gert Biesta, and it is a special episode reflecting on the current crisis in Ukraine and the wider context of this - that some call the meta-crisis. Our first conversation earlier this year, on World-Centred Education, can be found here: https://anchor.fm/futurelearningdesign/episodes/On-World-Centred-Education---A-Conversation-with-Prof--Gert-Biesta-e1cqcj5. 

For more information on Gert - he is Professor of Public Education in the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy, Maynooth University, Ireland, and Professor of Educational Theory and Pedagogy at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh, UK. He holds Visiting Professorships at the University of Agder, Norway, and Uniarts, the University of the Arts, Helsinki, Finland. Gert is a prolific author and has written many books on the theory of education and educational and social research, and his work has appeared in 20 different languages. He has particular interests in national and global education policy, curriculum, teaching and teacher education, democracy and citizenship education, religious education and arts education. His latest book is World-Centred Education: A View for the Present (2021) and this is a good overview of the key ideas in this seminal book. A selection of his previous books are The Rediscovery of Teaching (2017); Beyond Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future (2015); The Beautiful Risk of Education (2015); Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics, Democracy (2015) and Complexity Theory and the Politics of Education [edited with Deborah Osberg] (2010) Gert is co-editor of the British Educational Research Journal, co-editor of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, and associate editor of Educational Theory. He co-edits a two book series with Routledge: Theorizing Education (with Stefano Oliverio), and New Directions in the Philosophy of Education (with Michael A. Peters, Liz Jackson and Marek Tesar). 

Social Links 

LinkedIn: @gert-biesta 

Twitter: Gert suspended his Twitter account only to return when Donald Trump was no longer on the platform!