Coconut Thinking

In this episode, I speak with Giles Hutchins, pioneering practitioner, keynote speaker and executive coach at the forefront of regenerative leadership and organizational development. Through his executive leadership coaching he applies advanced adult developmental psychology, regenerative leadership practices, consciousness raising techniques, deep-dive nature immersions, embodiment work, ancient wisdom tradition insights, and cutting edge research on leadership consciousness. He is currently Chairman of the Future Fit Leadership Academy, Lead Partner of The Natural Business Partnership, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation, co-founder of Regenerators.co and partner/associate with a number of pioneering organisations, such as The Global Leaders Academy, Renewal Associates and The Laszlo New Paradigm Research Institute. In this episode, we discuss:🥥 How we can open ourselves up to greater receptivity, responsiveness, and reciprocity;🥥 How sensing into our own essence and into that of the living organization will inform how we and the organization adapt and evolve through emerging processes;🥥 How a new world view based on life, on living systems (what Giles calls quantum complexity) can emerge only by moving beyond today's dominant, but increasingly fragile, mechanist worldview.Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.

In this episode, I speak with Dawn Kau'i Sang. Kau'i is the first-ever director of the Office of Hawaiian Education, which is charged with planning for the implementation a new policy,  Nā Hopena Aʻo (Ha). Ha is a Department-wide framework to develop the skills, behaviors and dispositions that are reminiscent of Hawaiʻi’s unique context, and to honor the qualities and values of the indigenous language and culture of Hawaiʻi. One of the goals is to strengthen six outcome in every student over the course of their K-12 learning journey: Belonging, Responsibility, Excellence, Aloha, Total well-being, Hawai'i... which spells BREATH. In this episode, we ask: 🥥 What is belonging in a system that seeks to homogenize and separate? 🥥 How might stories allow us to see each other and our community in different ways, beyond quantitative measures?🥥 How might indigenous ways of knowing inform who we are as individuals, communities, and education systems?Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.

In this episode, I speak with Gary Chapin of Educating for Good and Seed + Spark. Gary is the co-author of 126 Falsehoods We Believe About Education (2021). He has been working in education since 2000, first as a teacher, then as a curriculum director, then as a Dept. of Ed. researcher, and most recently as an advocate and supporter of equity based practices such as competency-based learning, performance assessment, adaptive leadership, and collaborative cultures. He is deeply fascinated by questions like: What should kids learn? How do we decide what kids should learn? How do we learn what they learned? How can learning what they learned help them learn more? We discuss:• How we can tell the story of learning in ways that bring in the voices of all stakeholders, not just the numbers in quantitative assessments;• Belonging as a relationship that cannot be undone;• How we might need to build something new so that the traditional system doesn't subvert new ideas.Read Gary's article in Education Reimagined entitiled Talking Story: Embracing our Humanity on a Deeper Level: https://education-reimagined.org/talking-story-embracing-our-humanity-on-a-deeper-level/Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.

In this episode, I speak with Gary Stager, Ph.D. Since 1982, Dr. Gary Stager has helped school educators around the worldembrace computational technology as an intellectual laboratory, vehicle for self-expression, and window onto a world of possibilities for amplifying the potential of each student in preparation for an uncertain future. All of his work is rooted in the Piagetian notion that “knowledge is a consequence of experience.” His activities with teachers and students are guided by a focus on learning-by-doing. He is also the founder of Constructing Modern Knowledge. In thie episode, we discuss: How schools have an obligation to introduce kids to things they don't yet know they love, but then that becomes their project, and it's not driven by the curriculum;How a good a prompt that can fit on a post-it note is sometimes all you need for creativity to thrive;How we have oversold instruction;How the only thing we ever have to justify are the things kids love.Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.

In this episode, I speak with Bo Stjerne Thomsen, Chair of Learning through Play, Vice-President at The LEGO Foundation. Bo Stjerne advises executive leadership on how children and adults learn through play. He is a spokesperson representing the LEGO Foundation and the LEGO Brand Group internationally and advises leadership teams across the LEGO entities, in order to attain the overall LEGO Brand Vision of Learning through Play. Bo Stjerne has published widely on Creativity, Play and Learning and, he has been a visiting scholar at the MIT Media Lab, and an advisor to various international research organizations, including the University of Cambridge PEDAL Research Centre, the Torrance Centre for Creativity, Design for Play in Denmark and the Lifelong Learning Lab at Tsinghua University. We discuss:How learning and play operate dynamically through embodied and social experiences;How the Metaverse will continue to blend virtual and physical worlds of play;How connections toward deeper learning often begin in the natural world.Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.

In this episode, I speak with Andy Middleton. Andy is Founder Director of the TYF Group, an innovative and visionary social enterprise. TYF’s mission is to train revolutionaries – giving normal mums, dads & kids, business teams and community groups the confidence, skills and reason to revolutionize the way they play, think and connect with nature. TYF’s goal is to reach 100,000 people face to face in the next five years through with experience in education, adventure, retail and consulting. Andy is also a Founding Partner of the Do Collective, where he connects and orchestrates the potential power of a virtual consulting team of hundreds of the world’s best thinkers and doers. In this episode, we discuss: How often people who say it's not possible just lack imagination (including when we talk of creating new paradigms for learning);How when learning is place-specific and contextualized, there is unpredictability, and that's what allows the experience to be magical;How we can bring together groups that don't always talk to each in order to reach the tipping point necessary for change.Listen to the episode and check out our articles, presentations, and resources on www.coconut-thinking.design.

In this episode, I speak with Stephanie Pace Marshall, author of The Power to Transform. Stephanie is a speaker, author, writer and advisor, she illuminates the inextricable connections between the future of learning and the future of humanity, and offers a fundamentally new story of learning grounded in the principles of living systems and how life creatively organizes itself to thrive. Her work has helped shape the re-imagination and redesign of learning. Stephanie’s career and life’s work has been dedicated to a singular truth: “Learning must liberate the goodness and genius that resides within each child; and its design must ignite and nurture the power and creativity of the human spirit for the world.” In this episode, we discuss:How the old lexicon will never allow us to write a new story because it traps us in the old paradigmWhy asking the question "what will it take" gets us toward a living systems framework better than the Newtonian "how?"The differences between reform and transform, so critical when thinking about learning ecosystems.Check out our website www.coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presenations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.

In this episode, I speak with Rob Houben, from the Agora School, in the Netherlands. Agora is a school without using timetables, courses, or age groups. They teach students to manage their own learning process, starting each day with a simple question: What do you want to make, do or learn? This is a network of 20 schools that gives children "the opportunity to play, because when children are playing, they get interested." In this conversation, Rob and I discuss:How it's not about learner-centered, it's about growth;How you can design learning experiences based on what kids need and are interested in in that moment, not what the "curriculum" tells them;Liberation as culture-building for deeper learning.You can find out more about Agora in this article. Check us out on www.coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, presentations, and resources. Get in touch!You can also find our articles and those of some fantastic thinkers and doers in education on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com

In this episode, I speak with Josie Warden, Head of Regenerative Design at the RSA—the royal society for arts, manufactures and commerce. Josie is particularly interested in the intersection between design, environment and economy and is currently leading the RSA’s work on circular and regenerative economy and manufacturing. She originally trained as a textile designer, and holds a Master's degree in Leadership for Sustainable Development.This is part of our series to bring in the voices of those calling for more regenerative frameworks. What will it take to shift the conversation away from "school" and toward learning ecosystems, which are themselves living systems? In this conversation, we discuss:How we can thrive in a world of complexity because we are built for an interdependent world, which is itself nonlinear and thus complex;How our designs and actions need to be place-sourced and contextualized, because one size doesn't fit all;How regenerative design draws on assets, not fixating on what people need.Check us out on www.coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, presentations, and resources. Get in touch!You can also find our articles and those of some fantastic thinkers and doers in education on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com

In this episode, I speak with Sal Gordon, Head of Teaching and Learning and Principal at Green School, Bali. Sal is an ‘education revolutionary’ and he believes that Green School as a new model of what a school of the future needs to do and be, is well-placed to drive the revolution that this planet needs. Sal is passionate about how humans need to adapt (to bend like bamboo) - and how life-skills and values need to be the foundation of all learning experiences for all students. In this conversation, we discuss:Education models as drivers of culture, as the central core of what a community is;How relationtionships blend from global to local and back again;How sometimes you need to set yourself up to fail.Join us for another episode and check out our website on www.coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our blog, podcasts, presentations, and resources, all centered around learning and action to contribute to the thriving of the bio-collective.You can also find us and some great thinkers and doers in education on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.