Future Learning Design Podcast

• Making Meaning and Making Sense - A Conversation with Sam Crosby

  In the business of education someone telling you that something doesn't make sense is usually the moment to step in and explain, support and resolve the confusion. Helping young people make sense of the world Is our job isn't it? But what if making sense sometimes gets in the way of making meaning?! What is our job as educators in creating opportunities for young people to cultivate meaning in their lives, however that might happen for them? I absolutely loved this comversation with Sam Crosby this week, as we explored his work around the role of ancient myth, story and elders in responding collectively to the times we're in, that many see as a crisis of meaning.There are so many ways that Sam describes the work he does in the world, so here are a few:– Motivational speaker: Three words have followed him through his journey as a speaker: peace, wisdom and courage. Sam helps people to realise they have everything they need inside them. All it takes is clarity.– Workshop host: After accessing ancient myth (particularly for the first time), there is a rare moment of connection with colleagues, friends, community, and Sam takes heart in holding spaces which have been described as ‘safe enough to share what was really going on for me’.– One-on-one guide: The main body of Sam's work is in groups, but he has always maintained a one-on-one connection with a handful of people. These opportunities to go deeper are always matched by those willing to ‘go there’.– Traditional oral storyteller: founder of Recalling Fire: the organisation bringing the oral tradition back to the modern west. Sam has facilitated immersive weekend-long events, hosted storytelling evenings and been guest speaker on stages and at rallies.– A ‘cryer’: a once guarded and proud man, Sam is now open and willing to model the vulnerability he accessed in coming to terms with the birth of his son with a profound brain disorder.– Well-versed in organisational environments: Sam has worked for over 10 years as a marketing and communications expert, representing agencies around the world before opening my own consultancy.– Sure-foot: He is a wild camper and a trainee mountain leader. He habitually practices ‘nature solos’ as guided by The Bio-Leadership Project, spending 24 hours alone in a wild spot without food, book, phone or anything else to ‘do’ as he focuses his energy on purely ‘being’.– Group guide: Sam has developed and facilitated events to bring the people of organisations and groups closer together, including conservationists with The Wildlife Trusts, activists with Right to Roam and social prescribers with Newquay Orchard.– Mentor, A Band of Brothers: the charity mentoring young men at risk of the justice system.– Fellow: The Bio-Leadership Fellowship.– Alumni: Dartington College of Arts, Dr Martin Shaw’s The Westcountry School of Myth and Advaya’s Rewilding Mythology– TEDx SpeakerSam also has a fantastic podcast called Drop the Map (https://open.spotify.com/show/6U3NnuKxk1zG4BYdMcahZa), and you can find out more about him at https://www.samuelcrosby.com/ and https://www.recallingfire.com. Other links:https://recallingfire.substack.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/campfiresam/

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• Evaluating Competencies to Go Beyond Education - A Conversation with Michaela Horvathova

  “Are we valuing what we measure or measuring what we value?” It's probably a familiar question to many of you. And this week we're taking a detailed and reflective look at the role of measuring complex competencies in our schools, as this is often a big part of the discussion about what needs to change in formal education. In previous episodes (Ep72 and Ep148), I have chatted with folks from Melbourne Metrics, Rethinking Assessment and Mastery Transcipt Consortium. This week we're particularly pleased to be able bring you this conversation with Michaela Horvathova from Beyond Education. Personally I have some real questions and tensions about this topic, and it was so useful to be able to discuss them in a really open and collaborative way with Michaela, who has deep expertise in this area. She and her team at Beyond Education are being incredibly thoughtful and rigorous about ho w they proceed in bringing these approaches into schools.As the co-founder and Chief Education Officer of Beyond Education and co-founder of Beyond International School in Portugal, Michaela is an international education policy expert focused on the future of education and skills for the digital age and the 4th Industrial Revolution. She has been a policy analyst at the OECD, Education Advisor to the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic, researcher and curriculum expert at the Center for Curriculum Redesign and worked as a consultant with UNICEF, International Baccalaureate and many other organistions. She has extensive global experience in curriculum design and reform for 21st century skills & competencies, learning outcomes, evaluation & assessment. Links:https://beyondeducation.tech/blog/https://beyondeducation.tech/assessment/https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaela-horvathova-b548378/

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• Learning to Relearn - A Conversation with Kwame Sarfo-Mensah

  This week it is a huge pleasure to be able to bring you this cross-over episode with Kwame Sarfo-Mensah and his fantastic channel, #IdentityTalk4EducatorsLIVE (https://www.identitytalk4educators.com/podcast). Kwame's work is full of insights gained through his own practice as a maths teacher and educational coach and consultant, and through his over 200 conversations with amazing educators and leaders. Kwame Sarfo-Mensah is the founder of Identity Talk Consulting, LLC, a global educational consulting firm that specializes in developing K-12 teachers into identity-affirming educators. Additionally, Identity Talk Consulting, LLC is licensed as a DESE-approved professional development provider and a Minority Owned Enterprise within the Commonwealth for Massachusetts. Prior to starting his firm, he served as a middle school math teacher in Philadelphia, PA and Boston, MA for nine years. Kwame holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics and a Master’s Degree in Elementary Education from Temple University.As a staunch ambassador and advocate for teacher empowerment, Kwame has spoken at numerous national education conferences and worked diligently to support the recruitment and retention of teachers of colour in the education system. In January 2019, he was one of 35 Massachusetts teachers of colour selected by Commissioner Jeff Riley to be in the inaugural cohort of the InSPIRED (In-Service Professionals Increasing Racial and Ethnic Diversity) Fellowship, an initiative organized by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE) for veteran teachers of colour to recruit students of colour at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels to teach in targeted districts within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As an InSPIRED Teaching Fellow, he facilitated professional development workshops for aspiring teachers at universities such as Boston College, UMass Boston, and Worcester State University and has served as a guest speaker for non-profit teacher pipeline programs such as Teach Western Mass, Generation Teach and Worcester Public Schools’ Future Teachers Academy.Throughout his 17-year education career as a classroom teacher, author, and consultant, Kwame has earned numerous accolades for this work, which include being honored as the 2019 National Member of the Year by Black Educators Rock, Inc. and being recognized as a Top Education Influencer by brightbeam, Inc. in 2021 and 2022. His work has been featured in Education Week, WGBH News, Edutopia, Ed Post, The International Educator (TIE), Teaching Channel, and The Tavis Smiley Show. His latest book, "Learning to Relearn: Supporting Identity in a Culturally Affirming Classroom" (https://learning2relearn.com/), received the 2025 IPPY Awards Gold Medal for Education (https://ippyawards.com/blog/2025-medalists-categories-35-65) and the 2024 Foreword INDIES Award for Education Book of the Year (https://www.forewordreviews.com/awards/finalists/2024/education/)! Kwame has also authored 'From "Inaction" to "In Action": Creating a New Normal for Urban Educators' (2020) and 'Shaping the Teacher Identity: 8 Lessons That Will Help Define the Teacher in You' (2018).Connect with Kwame: https://www.identitytalk4educators.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/kwame-sarfo-mensah/https://www.instagram.com/kwam_the_identity_shaper/

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• Shifting the Dark Matter of Education - A Conversation with Indy Johar and Adam Purvis

  Which places might be the first movers in a radical educational shift? And by radical in this conversation we're not talking about small tweaks in the types of individual competencies and credentials we optimize for in our current version of schools. But a completely different set of logics, values, meaning and purpose for what education could be, set in a broader context of the transformation of systems and radical democratic renewal. This might all sound pretty grand but I believe, like my guests today, that building for this transition is the work we all have to do! I've been a huge admirer of the work of Dark Matter Labs for a long time and so it was an incredible opportunity for me to be able to sit down with Indy Johar and Adam Purvis to explore these massive and important issues.Indy is an architect and co-founder & Mission Steward of Dark Matter Labs. He is also a founding director of open systems lab, seeded WikiHouse (open source housing) and Open Desk (open source furniture company). Indy's work is focused on the strategic design of new super scale civic assets for transition - specifically at the intersection of financing, contracting and governance for deeply democratic futures.Indy is a non-executive international Director of the BloxHub, the Nordic Hub for sustainable urbanization. He is on the advisory board for the Future Observatory and is part of the committee for the London Festival of Architecture. He is also a fellow of the London Interdisciplinary School.Indy was 2016-17 Graham Willis Visiting Professorship at Sheffield University. He was Studio Master at the Architectural Association - 2019-2020, UNDP Innovation Facility Advisory Board Member 2016-20 and RIBA Trustee 2017-20.He has taught & lectured at various institutions from the University of Bath, TU-Berlin; University College London, Princeton, Harvard, MIT and New School.He was awarded the London Design Medal for Innovation in 2022 and an MBE in 2023.Adam Purvis has spent over a decade building mission led movements and networks. His primary role at Dark Matter Labs is holding the team and driving internal clarity. Previously, Adam was cofounder of FutureX, a major influence on how the Scottish Government supported entrepreneurship, startups and innovation. Adam served as the convener of the CAN DO Forum, on the MSc E&I Innovation Board of University of Edinburgh Business School, and the Advisory Board of Napier University Business School.  Since then Adam's focus has moved to the systems in which business and entrepreneurs operate, taking everything he learnt from the greatest doers on the planet who have humanity in their heart, and applying that to the systems that we all operate in today. Links:https://darkmatterlabs.org/⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/indy-johar-b440b010/https://www.linkedin.com/in/adampurvis/

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• Ancient Wisdom Practices in Education - A Conversation with Bade Kucukoglu and Satheesh Namasivayam

  This week, we're diving deep into a conversation that bridges ancient wisdom and modern learning. Joining Tim are two incredible thinkers and practitioners, Satheesh Namasivayam and Bade Kucukoglu. We explore how ancient wisdom practices—from dance, to creative arts, ritual and community performance —can inform and inspire us to create different kinds of spaces in our schools and communities and help us address the growing disconnection young people feel in modern education.Satheesh and Bade left their lucrative careers to pursue their passion to work with adolescent children. Over the last 15 years, they have co-founded two organizations - MindVISA and the Center for AWE (Ancient Wisdom Engagement) - that build adaptive capacities in adolescents to face the uncommon challenges of the fast-evolving world. Exclusively focusing on handholding young people both in embracing their inner selves and in connecting with the outer world, their work draws extensively from wisdom practices of ancient civilizations. Prior to co-founding these organizations, Satheesh advised corporate boards on leadership and governance, across the world. He has spoken at prominent international institutions, and is the co-author of "Leading without Licence". Satheesh holds a Masters degree with a major in leadership from Harvard University's Kennedy School. Bade, after graduating from Brandeis University with a master's degree in sustainable international development, was a development economist working with MIT faculty directing a team of researchers; and was also the Secretary General of Women Entrepreneurship Association of Turkey. To begin their educational experiments, they first traveled in about 40 countries - on a listening tour - learning from the wisdom of local people in varied cultures and civilizations to help young people build adaptive capacities to face their unknown futures. Through their work they pioneered the concepts of "Ancient Wisdom Engagement" (AWE) and "Ways of Seeing".Links: Centre for AWE website: https://www.centerforawe.com/MindVISA website: https://www.mindvisa.com/Article: Opinion | India’s ‘AWE’ Factor: Ancient Wisdom In The Age Of AI: https://www.news18.com/opinion/opinion-indias-awe-factor-ancient-wisdom-in-the-age-of-ai-9238780.html LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bade-kucukoglu-26871110/Email: [email protected]

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