Coconut Thinking

Jennifer D. Klein, an expert in global education, and Jill Ackers-Clayton discuss rewilding learning spaces, trusting observations over grades, and embodying teaching practices. They emphasize the importance of flexible, collaborative environments that support project-based learning and cultural inclusivity.

How might we come together around a WHY rather than a HOW? Might the HOW sort itself out if we share purpose?In this episode, I speak with Kevin Bartlett. Kevin is the Founder of the Common Ground Collaborative. He has held leadership positions in the UK, Tanzania, Namibia, Austria, and Belgium, where he was most recently Director of the International School of Brussels from 2001-2015. Kevin has co-designed accreditation systems for the European Council of International Schools (ECIS), the Council of International Schools (CIS) and the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) and is currently engaged with a small team developing ACE, an innovative new accreditation protocol for NEASC. He is a writer and trainer in the field of curriculum design and leadership for learning for the Principals’ Training Center. As a curriculum designer, he was the initiator and early leader of the IB Primary Years Programme. We discuss:🥥 How we might challenge schools to describe what they're doing as a process, in order to avoid getting stuck in outcomes;🥥 How conceptual transfer opens up spaces for learning and action, how goes beyond the the here and now to make a difference in now and then.🥥 How feeling inspires action, not academics; feeling is what connects us, not cognitive understanding (though that can nourish feeling).Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com

How might AI create both utopian and dystopian futures all at the same time? What does this mean for education and for learning?In this episode, I speak with Darren Coxon. Darren is Founder of CoxonAI, a worldwide strategic advisory specialising in K-12 AI implementation. An educator for 25 years, Darren has most recently managed the operation of schools’ groups, notably Brighton College’s international schools, Forfar Education, and Britus Education, Bahrain, where he was COO. Darren has been at the forefront of educational technology for many years, including leading the first 6th form college in the UK to move to an iPad 1:1 model. He is now a major thought leader on AI in education, has delivered training for COBIS and the National College, as well as more recently delivering keynotes and workshops for HMC, GESS Dubai, and the Cottesmore AI Festival. We discuss:🥥 How generative AI is only the beginning, yet there is nothing new in how we use technology to enhance ourselves, our learning, and our abilities;🥥 The connections between AI and our response to ecological breakdown... maybe this is also an opportunity to connect non-virtually;🥥 How we might prepare learners, no matter their age, to be useful, not in an extractive way, but rather one that helps all life thrive, and this is the re-purposing of schools.Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com.

How might we free ourselves from the bondage of data to tell different stories of learning?In this episode, I speak with David Penberg, Ph.D. David is an urban and international educator, teacher and writer with 40 years of experience. His work is place-based and intergenerational. He supports communities seeking to become more vital, joyous and integrated places of learning. He has held leadership and teaching roles in non-profits, community-based organizations, independent, international and charter schools, and in higher education. His love for learning and interest in people are rooted in a belief in agency and democratic practices. We discuss:🥥 How intentionality can lead to greater well-being and deeper learning;🥥 How to amplify stories of care, ones that connect and inspire us;🥥 How schools can find their place within the community, as places of learning for all generations.Check us out www.coconut-thinking.com

How might learning be flow between structure and emergence? How might we measure impact quantitatively and qualitatively?In this episode, I speak with Michael Bunce. Michael is an educator, researcher, and interdisciplinary sound artist, with wide-ranging international experience across education and the arts. As an educational researcher, he specialises in interdisciplinary learning design and innovation, working in leadership, teaching, research, and consultancy roles in schools, arts and community organisations, regulatory and advisory bodies, and universities.You'll want to check out http://www.learningmap.education/ for the visuals. This isn't a light conversation, yet Michael's work provides valuable insights into pedagogy and the cyclical and dynamic nature of learning, going from structured, to semi-structured, to emergent, to embedded forms of learning. Michael challenges us to reconsider how we might conceptualize learning. We discuss:🥥 Emergent learning as an unpredictable process that arises when learners have agency and are the source of knowledge creation;🥥 How content, capacity, and context find different value depending on the learning experience we have and need;🥥 How we can tell different narratives of learning that include stories of impact.Check us out on www.coconut-thinking.com

What might flourishing look like as collective and individual experiences entangled in environment?Eri Mountbatten-O'Malley is a Senior lecturer in education policy at Bath Spa University and is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. His research is philosophical in nature and helps us to better understand social problems and social research. Eri’s central pedagogical interest is in nurturing critical thinking and complex concept development in students. Eri’s research interests are at the cross-roads between epistemology and ethics. In particular, he is interested in using philosophical skills to better understand social problems. His interests in concepts such as ‘well-being’ and ‘happiness’ led him to focus his PhD research on a conceptual analysis of ‘human flourishing. He has had the opportunity to share his research and read papers at numerous international conferences on the problems of reductionist accounts of normative concepts such as ‘wonder’ and ‘human flourishing’, and will be reading further papers over the coming year on related topics. We discuss:🥥 How flourishing happens where the inner and outer worlds inter/intra-act;🥥 How empiricism requires conceptual understanding that cannot easily be measured; 🥥 The dynamic nature of language as encounter.Check us out on www. coconut-thinking. com

How might we tell new stories open up our imagination to what is possible?In this episode, I speak with Cindy Forde. Cindy’s career has been dedicated to transforming how we understand and act as human beings towards Earth. She works globally with leaders across sectors in education, communication and sustainability including University of Cambridge and the UN, and believes the biggest impact we can have in making change is how we, as a global community, shape the mind-set of our children. In 2022, her children’s book “Bright New World” came out. Cindy is the founder of Planetari, an organization that sets out a new vision for education, to enable all children to understand our planet as a living system and to have the capacity for creativity and innovation to be able to live successfully here. Prior to  Planetari, Cindy led the Cambridge Science Centre as CEO and the Blue Marine Foundation as Managing Director. We discuss: 🥥 The importance of storytelling for us to imagine and then create possibilities for new a new worlds; 🥥 How healing ourselves (including the planet) begins by listening to one another with open hearts and minds;🥥 How ecological breakdown finds its roots in colonialism and our spirit of extraction.Check out our website: www.coconut-thinking.com. You'll find our articles and resources.

How might we transform our relationality with the world, as the world, especially the non-human world?In this episode, I speak with Rūta Žemčugovaitė. Rūta is a writer, artist, and researcher, working with mycelium for regenerative futures. With a background in Psychology, she learned to facilitate trauma healing and shadow work in Costa Rica and now works with technology, mycology (and trying to build things out of mycelium), affective computing, spatial sound design, creating art, regenerative practices, and writing. Rūtais a philosopher, flirts with post-humanism, and asks how we can design with the living world in mind. We discuss: 🥥 How humans are embedded in the ecosystems around it, meaning that if we increase the thriving of the non-human, we increase the thriving of the human;🥥 How de-centering the human opens up spaces to changing our relationality [with/as] the living world, toward more regenerative approaches to life. 🥥 How we can re-draw the boundaries of our identities and idon'thave to stick to "human."Check out our website: www.coconut-thinking.comCheck out Rūta's consultancy: https://www.sympoiesis.world/

What might happen when the landscape is our place of learning?In this episode, I speak with Luis Alberto Camargo. Luis was named the 2023 Richard Louv Prize recipient, in recognition of his life’s work, which has impacted 130,000 children and youth across Colombia. Luis is Founder and Executive Director of Organización para la Educación y Protección Ambiental (OpEPA - Colombia & USA), Co-Founder of The Weaving Lab, Core member of Regenerative Communities Network and Founder of Colombia Regenerativa, and Director at Thundra Outdoors. Global Change Leader, Young Global Leader (2008), Ashoka Fellow. Prior, he held a number of roles, including Adviser to the Vice-Minister of Environment of Colombia, Adviser to the Department of National Planning, Researcher at Universidad de los Andes and WWF, Wilderness Medicine Instructor at the Wilderness Medicine Institute of the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) as well as wilderness educator in the US. We discuss:🥥 Listening to the silence as means of connecting and convening;🥥 Ways in which schools in urban settings can re-connect with/as Nature within their context;🥥 How if we want to live as Nature, we must learn as Nature.Check out our website: www.coconut-thinking.com.

What might it be like if we approached education and business as if we belonged to the living world?In this conversation, I speak with Gil Friend. Gil, a systems ecologist and business strategist, is widely considered a founder of the sustainable business movement. He is noted for inspiring, challenging, and supporting business, policy, and investment leaders to rethink business in light of the challenges posed by climate change and sustainability. Joel Makower describes him as "one of the most thoughtful and creative thinkers I know in the area of sustainable business, adeptly bridging the scientific and technical aspects of sustainability with the practical realities of the business world and its impact on people and the systems in which they operate." Gil is the founder and CEO of Natural Logic Inc., a strategy boutique advising the world's leading companies on building "massive value" through business-integrated sustainability strategies. He is an inaugural member of the Sustainability Hall of Fame and was named "one of the 10 most influential sustainability voices in America" by The Guardian. He is also recognized as one of the Bay Area's "top 25 movers and shakers" in CleanTech. Our discussion includes:🥥 How can we reconsider capitalism to be reciprocal, not extractive; caring, not alienating; regenerating, not just generating for the few?🥥 What would happen if we went to school to learn in order to contribute to all life, rather than simply attending prestigious institutions like Oxbridge?🥥 Approaching capital (of all kinds, not just financial) in ways that meet the needs of all life, re-evaluating even what those needs are systemically rather than individually.Check out our website: www.coconut-thinking.com