FreshEd

Today we think about the power of ideas and imagine what life might look like after capitalism. With me is Tim Jackson. In his new book, Post Growth: Life after capitalism, Tim shows the limits of the dominant metaphors used to explain our current world and argues for new metaphors to help imagine a sustainable, just, and creative future. Tim Jackson is the director of the center for understanding of Sustainable prosperity and professor of sustainable development at the university of Surrey. https://freshedpodcast.com/jackson -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Special Note: Check out FreshEd's new Portuguese-language podcast called Eduquê, which launched today! https://freshedpodcast.com/eduque/ -- Climate change and its effects aren’t some future possibilities waiting to happen unless we take action today. No. The effect of climate change is already occurring. Today. Right now. Around the world, people have been displaced, fell ill, or died because of the globe’s changing climate. These effects are uneven: Some countries and classes of people are more affected by global warming than others. Still, the United Nations estimates that catastrophic consequences from climate change are only a decade away. That’s the year 2029. [Editor's note: The IPCC report is from 2018 and gave a 12-year prediction, so it should read 2030, not 2029.] What is the role of education policy in an era of detrimental climate change? My guest today is Marcia McKenzie, a professor in the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Saskatchewan and director of the Sustainability Education Research Institute. She recently has been awarded a grant to research UN policy programs in relation to climate change education and in June will release a report for the United Nations that reviews country progress on climate change education and education for sustainable development. In our conversation, we talk about what countries are doing or not doing in terms of education and sustainability, and we reflect on some of the existential questions that climate change brings to the fore. www.freshedpodcast.com/McKenzie -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Today we explore the response of the Finnish education system to the Covid-19 pandemic. Unlike many countries with children out of school, the narrative of “learning loss” never emerged. In fact, as Pasi Sahlberg tells me, the opposite happened. Pasi Sahlberg is a professor of education policy at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He’s been a regular on FreshEd for the past five years. His latest books include Finnish Lessons 3.0: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland (2021), and In Teachers We Trust: The Finnish way to world-class schools, which was co-authored with Tim Walker (2021). Today we discuss these books in relation to the pandemic. freshedpodcast.com/sahlberg-2 -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Today we explore the relationship between UNESCO and the World Bank from the 1960s through today. My guest is Maren Elfert. She has recently published in the International Journal of Educational Development an article entitled “The power struggle over education in developing countries: the Case of the UNESCO-World Bank Co-operative program, 1964-1989.” Maren Elfert is a lecturer in education and society in the school of education, communication and society at King’s College London. freshedpodcast.com/elfert -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Today we explore the global education architecture and its failures to ensure quality education. My guest is Girindre Beeharry. In a new article in the International Journal of Educational Development, he calls on the international community to focus on foundational literacy and numeracy and says it is high time for the global education community to hold itself accountable. His article is entitled "The pathway to progress on SDG 4 requires the global education architecture to focus on foundational learning and to hold ourselves accountable for achieving it." Girindre Beeharry is a senior advisor on Global Education at the Gates Foundation. He advises on the foundation’s efforts to support partners that focus on improving foundational literacy and numeracy in sub-Saharan Africa and India , having initiated and led the program for four years. freshedpodcast.com/beeharry -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Today we flip the script. Susan Robertson interviews me as part of her weekly Ideas Lab seminar at Cambridge University. We discuss the creation and evolution of FreshEd and what the podcast’s impact has been on higher education. We recorded this interview in front of a live Zoom audience. freshedpodcast.com/brehm -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Does more schooling always lead to a better life? Is this optimistic view a certainty everyone around the world can expect? My guest today, Fran Vavrus, has recently written a new book that weaves together her 30 years of work in Tanzania with her own biography as an academic, mother, and development practitioner. She details the tension between the certainty and uncertainty inherent in education. Fran Vavrus is a Professor of Comparative and International Development Education at the University of Minnesota. Her new book is Schooling as Uncertainty: An ethnographic memoir in comparative education. https://freshedpodcast.com/vavrus/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Shadow education is private supplementary tutoring. East Asia is often assumed to be the center of private tutoring. But it’s actually a global phenomenon. Today Mark Bray joins me to talk about shadow education in Africa. Mark Bray is the Director of the Centre for International Research in Supplementary Tutoring (CIRIST) at East China Normal University in Shanghai, and UNESCO Chair in Comparative Education at the University of Hong Kong. His latest book is Shadow Education in Africa: Private Supplementary Tutoring and its Policy Implications. freshedpodcast.com/markbray-2/ ‎ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

What does it mean to be both an activist and an academic? With me today are Colette Cann & Eric DeMeulenaere. They have spent their careers wearing both of these hats. They’ve found ways for their activism to create social change in the academy and for their academic pursuits to inform their activism. In their new co-written book titled The Activist Academic: Engaged Scholarship for Resistance, Hope and Social Change, they present their own journeys as a guide for merging activism and academia. Colette Cann is an Associate Dean and Professor in International and Multicultural Education in the School of Education at University of San Francisco. Eric DeMeulenaere is an Associate Professor in Clark University’s Education Department. https://freshedpodcast.com/cann-demeulenaere/ ‎ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Vietnam has been herald as an education superstar. In just a few years, it both increased access to education and improved student learning outcomes. What explains Vietnam’s success, and can other countries learn anything from the Vietnam experience? My guest today is Jonathan London, Associate professor of Global Political Economy at Leiden University. He has a new working paper for RISE, which stands for Research on Improving Systems of Education, entitled “Outlier Vietnam and the Problem of Embeddedness: Contributions to a critique of the political economy of learning.” In our conversation, he details the history of Vietnam, its system of decentralization, and the process of household co-payments to education. www.freshedpodcast.com/london -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate