Professional Activism?

What comes to mind when you think of ‘profes­sional activism’? (Inspired by Tara Goode) Images of picket signs and strike lines? Press confer­ences and letters to the editor? Politics? Social justice? Environ­men­talism? What about manage­ment meetings, commit­tees and workgroups and education?

Freedom as Motivation for Learning

In the following blogpost, I outline my understanding of liberty as the primary leitmotiv for education. I illustrate the essence of freedom as fundamental motivation for education by exploring the meaning of taking care of oneself, and the concept of finding inner and external liberation. While I do not believe that the proposed motivations need to be made explicit in all learning projects and practices, we should promote their essence in everything we do.

Higher Education is Key to Building Back Better

To drive the post Covid-19 recovery and sustainable development new global commitments by governments and the international community to protect and transform higher education are welcome. Engaging with and supporting the higher education sector will be essential to the success.

UNESCO demonstrated their global leadership in education. Their meeting was attended by heads of state, numerous ministers and representatives from across the UN system and civil society. All calling for a renewed commitment to meeting Sustainable Development Goal Four (SDG 4), highlighting the need to invest in inclusive and equitable lifelong learning and to reinforce global cooperation in education.

Thrive in a VUCA World

How could you deal with uncertainty in an entrepreneurial way to help you thrive under VUCA? What happens if you walk into a meeting with an uncertain idea that might have a positive impact on the business? Chances are high that they will ask you to provide a viable business case before you get the ‘license to act’. But what if you just can’t provide reliable data, because both idea and context are highly uncertain? Most likely, your proposal will be dismissed.

Reflection on Higher Education

A fundamental change is needed to curricula based on national restrictions or we do a disservice to students. I would say that higher education needs to teach students a wider understanding of the world they’re growing up in rather than just teaching skills for future employment and cramming their heads full of facts. Higher education has become a bit joyless as a result of the’ mostly narrow competence models which are information heavy and traditionalist. We need to start doing things very fundamentally differently or we are going to do a disservice to the present generation of students as well as those from years to come.

How to Become Relevant in the Future

Technology is almost ready, but are we humans ready? Imagine unlimited processing power, global access to real-time data, machines that can move around like we do. Quantum leaps in battery technology, and even more breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and deep learning. When this will be reality, nobody knows. The future is here, but not evenly distributed.

Reverse Outcome Oriented Education

Our students need to be content creators, not memorisers. We diagnose college students as ‘excellent sheep’ who are ‘spoon-fed by Google and parents that they can no longer cope with difficulty or perform complex mental operations. 

Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Design Theory For Our Futures

We need new ways to think about our world in transition. Fortunately, half a century ago Paulo Freire gave us a way of thinking. He stated: ‘there is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the ‘practice of freedom’, the means by which men and woman deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world’. 

From Delivering Courses to Facilitating Learning

The first important point to make is that the education system, in most cases, is designed to resist change as much as possible. The system has for nearly a hundred years become very fixated on efficiency and the belief in a one best way to do something for all people. Rees (2001) states: ‘as curricula standardizes around high-stakes exams, teachers become, in essence, educational delivery systems rather than skilled professionals’. Happily, this is slowly beginning to change. 

Higher Education Needs Strategic Investment in Learning Design

Digital learning has leapt from an often secondary concern to a core strategic issue for higher education over the past six months. COVID-19 has been the catalyst for the potential digital transformation of higher education. Sparking an intense period of reorganisation that will surely be followed by necessary innovation and investment.