Reinventing Education

EP 24 : The US College Admissions Fraud Case - Traditional, Mainstream & Progressive Perspectives

How should colleges go about filtering who gets in and who doesn’t?
At what point does a competitive advantage for an applicant become cheating?

We discuss the current college admissions scandal in the US through the 4 values that inform what education looks like.

Standardized tests which have been of great value seem to be losing favour due to the numerous ways students and parents can gamify or cheat the system. In this case, parents were paying for students scores to be enhanced and even paying for other people to go write the tests for their kids.

Will a scandal like this or others in the future lead to us abandoning standardized test scores as entrance criteria or will they simply compliment other criteria deemed worthy?

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/13/us/what-we-know-college-admissions-cheating-scandal/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/us/sat-act-cheating-college-admissions.html?fbclid=IwAR1eOMmp_ZZ6hjiiS_NrJfupriPPL5GolQ50JseUQqImrGpfoZmzfYn6Htc

EP 23: Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom - Traditional, Mainstream & Progressive Perspectives

Facial recognition AI used to track your child’s attentiveness and mood in school.

On what grounds would you be OK with it?

Is it supporting teachers or putting fear into students? Or both?

Would you feel comfortable having AI mark your child’s work?

China is piloting practices like these in over 60 000 schools. Will this lead to innovation in education or a doubling down on more traditional pedagogy with the help of new technology?

In this episode we explore how compliance, ambition, sensitivity and development driven schools might try to bring AI into the classroom.

Article:

https://newatlas.com/china-ai-education-schools-facial-recognition/54786/

EP 22 : Understanding Different Perspectives on Education using the Integral Quadrants Tool

It’s easy for others to understand us incorrectly.

At times this is because we’re speaking from different quadrants or perspectives.

In this episode we introduce Ken Wilber’s quadrants as an analytical tool to help us specify which particular aspects of school we are addressing in our discussions. Simply put it helps us navigate whether we are addressing a topic from a 1st person 2nd person or 3rd person perspective.

Distinguishing which topics must be addressed in each quadrant will help us distinguish nuance from noise in future episodes.

In this episode we make distinctions between discussing school in terms of the:

upper left quadrants: Response & Beliefs

lower left quadrants: Culture & Communities

upper right quadrants: Resources & Activities

lower right quadrants: Environment & Systems

EP 21 : Student Climate Protests - from Traditional, Mainstream & Progressive perspectives

New features on our show. We take stories about education from the news.

We look at the issues from the perspective of the 4 different values at play in education.

We tease apart how compliance, ambition, sensitivity and development focused schools might respond to the story. 

Today we begin with the current student climate protests.  

EP 20 : What should a teacher in a developmentally minded school be?

Should everyone be taught in the same way? How should we measure progress in learning?

How much of their “real” self should teachers bring into the classroom?

Recently we’ve interviewed 6 leaders on the cutting edge of education.

In the last episode of this season we complete our exploration of the shared themes in these discussions and the patterns they revealed in the roles of students, teachers and parents in development-focused schools.

We discuss: Philosophies on differentiation; Assessment and valid measurements of progress in learning & Teachers as authentic people.

How the role of the teacher is beginning to encompass elements of the mentor, coach & facilitator.

Creating meaningful connections between school, home and the wider community.

EP 19 : What should be taught in a developmentally minded school?

What should be taught in school? If you sat down and made a list of 10 things, what would be on it? Recently we’ve interviewed 6 leaders on the cutting edge of education.

In this episode, we attempt to connect the dots between the discussions to reveal patterns in how development-focused schools view learners and what should be taught in their schools.

We discuss: 
-Beliefs about learners
-How different values prioritize certain things over others in curriculum
-How to balance the school’s requirements with student agency and autonomy
-How self-organizing leadership fosters a community capable of inquiry and self-direction

EP 18 : Leadership in a developmentally minded school

What does leadership look like in a developmental school?

According to our interviews with leading-edge educators, in terms of leadership, it...
-dissolves the traditional hierarchy pyramid of a school 
-brings students into the structure in an authentic way
- is built off a sense of purpose and self-organization
-must reflect the adaptive characteristics required to navigate the VUCA world

 

EP 17 : How do we organise a school around development & integration?

What is a developmentally or integration minded school?   
We tried to answer this in a single episode. We had a lot to explore. 

In pt1 we discussed the concept of personal development through stages in schools. 

In pt2 we begin to explore the practical side of how a Development or Integrated (teal/integral) school organizes itself.  

 

EP 16 : What makes an Integrative or developmentally minded school?

What is a developmentally minded (aka integration minded) school?   

Recently we've interviewed 6 people who are living this inquiry.

We scan through our interviews to connect the dots and articulate what these educators have in common. It takes a lot to unpack what makes a development-centric approach to education unique and different from what we know.  

Enjoy our attempt to put words to this emerging leading edge of education in part 1. 

 

 

EP 15 : Joran Oppelt - Unschooling & Options when school isn't serving a child

We often talk about children failing school. What about when a school fails to be what's needed for a child?  
In this episode we discuss:
-differences between unschooling and homeschooling
-the diversity within the unschooling movement
-how unschooling can enrich life within a family
-how children taking responsibility for their learning can serve transformation
-how a fear of leaving the conventional school system weighs on parents
-how there is no one right option for school, and how choosing from a range of options given what is present in a child's life may be a better way forward

https://joranslane.wordpress.com/