Silver Lining for Learning

Silver Lining for Learning, Episode 100: Celebrating 100 episodes with guests Dodzi Amemado, Lydia Cao, Gerald Fussell, John Heffernan, Robert Nelson, Priyank Sharma & Danty Yin

Mechanisms for achieving educational vision with Barbara Means & Jeremy Roschelle

New Zealand North Island: Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogical approach that can hook students into science. In this session, Sutapa Mukund will explain how PBL allows students to explore real-world authentic problems. The problem often drives the learning process as learners are motivated to think about various solutions to the problem. To solve the problem, students are encouraged to work in collaboration with others such as in building and maintaining a communal garden within a school campus. This allows learners to share diverse skills within a team environment. PBL ties in well with project-based forms of learning as learners often work over extended periods of time on a specific project to either solve a problem or design an outcome like a tyre garden, hanging gardens, or hydroponics units. Both problem- and project-based learning approaches are intertwined and encourage learners to master 21st-century skills towards future-focused learning. These approaches allow learners to be bold and curious while challenging them to move outside their comfort zones and adapt to a rapidly changing world. Her chapter in the new book, Transformative Teaching Around the World Stories of Cultural Impact, Technology Integration, and Innovative Pedagogy, edited by Curt Bonk and Meina Zhu, offers a snapshot of both these approaches in a science context.New Zealand South Island: An Urban Concept Farm was established at a Years 7 to 13 college in the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. In this session, the teacher driving the Farm’s establishment and learning programme, Simon McMillan, will detail his development as an educator and the bases for why the Farm has been created. Project-based learning and applied learning in different contexts have seen success in student motivation and engagement. As detailed in this literally ground-breaking chapter in the new book, Transformative Teaching Around the World, this approach also provided the chance for metacognitive experiences to flourish. Moreover, the success of the Urban Concept Farm space underscores the need to challenge how learning traditionally happens in schools. A recent article by Sharon Fowler in Daily Encourager (March 1, 2022), “Urban farm reaps active rewards,” details the program and its successes.

The hosts discuss the most recent episodes and continue the conversation while trying to reflect on the topics that were covered by various guests from around the world.

Personalization of learning has become a major goal of educational transformation. But very few schools have actually achieved true personalization, which Yong Zhao calls personalizable education in his book Reach for Greatness: Personalizable Education for All Children. Personalizable education requires flexible curriculum, flexible leadership, flexible facilities, flexible scheduling, and a number of other flexibilities. It also requires schools to give students autonomy for self-determination. In this episode, we invite two school leaders from Australia Peter Hutton and Michael Ha to discuss how they have achieved personalizable education in their schools.

It is clear that the field of education faces significant challenges today. We live in a world that is increasingly interconnected even while national and global tribalism tears it asunder. A world that is riven by systemic inequities and injustices that deprive many learners of the opportunities they are their due. The accelerating pace of technological change brings with it immense opportunities to expand educational access across space and time and within and outside of standard educational spaces. But we know that these innovations function within historically messy contexts: histories and contexts that have privileged some and marginalized many. Further, we are under-prepared for the disruptions of climate change and the emerging world of work, even as we deal with the personal and societal ravages of the COVID19 pandemic.It is imperative that we as educators build on our expertise, passion and commitment to develop a more human-centered, future-focused view of education and learning.An important and critical role in this will be played by colleges of education. The challenges though are immense and the pandemic has only made the situation more dire with fewer teachers entering the profession and many teachers leaving due to the day-to-day challenges they face.In this episode we will speak with two deans of Colleges of Education (Dr. Carole Basile at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University; and Rick Ginsberg at The School of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Kansas) to share with us, broadly, their vision for preparing future educators, and specifically how they are leading their colleges to respond to these challenges.

Over the past two years, schools have been battling with the pandemic in many different ways in order to provide high quality education to all children. They have responded creatively to the many disruptions COVID-19 has posted to schooling. In this episode, we invited two superintendents, Dr. Christine Ackerman from Chappaqua Central School District in New York and Dr. Chris Kennedy from West Vancouver, British Columbia, to share with us their actions, innovations, and their perspectives on where schools can and will go after the pandemic. More about our guests after the video:

Education is highly valued in Palestine--a ccording to a data report by the United Nations in 2018, nearly 95.4 percent of children attend schools. Yet, access to a high quality education is the point of contention. Students’ access to quality education is an ongoing economic, social and political upheaval. The arrival of the pandemic compounded to these challenges causing an unexpected disruption to the education system. Despite this fact, people were to find alternative ways to continue learning while socially distanced. In this episode we discuss how schools in Palestine were able to cope with the pandemic disruption. How did their remote learning model(s) look like? What are the opportunities that these models were able to offer? What are the associated challenges? What was the administration role to deal with the ongoing challenges, such as limited electricity, devices, and internet? And, how teachers were able to overcome these challenges?  

Hosts Curt Bonk, Punya Mishra & Yong Zhao gather to reflect on the past three episodes (#89 - #91) and provide commentary. Tune in to our past episodes!Episode 91 | Innovations during the COVID‑19 Pandemic around the WorldEpisode 90 | Technology Education Innovations, from 1 to 1,000 Schools and BeyondEpisode 89 | Learning Losses or Learning Gains: The Sky is the Limit When Youths Take ActionConversation topics include citizen education, Wordle, and the potential and passion of our youth.

This conversation gives an overview of educational innovations which emerged during the pandemic, examined through the framework of educational change proposed in the recent OECD book: How Learning Continued during the COVID-19 Pandemic and the UNESCO report on the Futures of Education https://en.unesco.org/futuresofeducation/Diving into the entrepreneurial use of existing resources, to meet the emerging needs created by the social distancing which was adopted in many jurisdictions as a way to contain the spread of the pandemic. These innovations tackle challenges that predated the pandemic and, as such, have value beyond the conditions created during the emergency.