Post-1997 Hong Kong Education Reform Timeline

Okay, here’s my attempt to track the changes that have happened post-1997 in education reform – these are the broad strokes that are often mentioned in books and articles, so it doesn’t have everything. I think I’ll do a timeline that focuses on civic education next. Context leading up to 1997: lots of dissatisfaction with…

21st Century Skills and Neoliberalism

We’ve all heard the story: the world is rapidly changing, technology is transforming our jobs and our schools are failing to prepare students for the Future.  Only a third of students think they’re graduating with the skills and knowledge to be successful in the workplace, while less than 42% of employers believe that recent graduates…

Education as Freedom with Freire and hooks

Here’s a digesting sort of post that brings two authors into conversation.  I’ve finally read one of the books that’s been on my list for a while: Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  I had mentioned him in a previous post in relation to critical curiosity and the Hong Kong anti-extradition protests, but reading him…

Designing for Inclusion and Impact – the official edition

I’ve just finished a whirlwind week-long workshop at the Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design and wanted to capture some ideas while fresh. The course helped answer some questions around the design process that I’d been carrying with me – mainly, who gets left out in the hype to create the next life-changing product or service,…

[Half Baked Idea #1] Sparking Critical Curiosity in Adolescents

By now everyone’s seen the drone shots of millions of people streaming through the streets, the CBS reporter who was handed a helmet and umbrella while on air and the reports of how the protesters, many of whom were young, mobilised themselves like it was second nature. Whether you approve of their methods or not,…

Stories of Self-Us-Now

One of the most valuable experiences I had was the opportunity to sit in on the Capstone Leadership Project presentations of the 2018-19 cohort from the Perrone-Sizer Institute (PSi). Now in its fourth year, PSi aims to “develop a network of adaptive leaders who champion racial justice and equity, and integrate artistic and design thinking,…

[June] Meta-Learning Madness

At the end of every month, I’d like to do a round-up of what’s worked for me and what hasn’t, and a few actions that I want to take going forward. This has been my first full month after finishing the Camino de Santiago where I’ve pretty much been up to my own devices, and…

[Pinned] What are you doing, exactly?

On April 2019, I started a year of learning to explore the future of education and whole person development. I wanted to design a sabbatical that would serve as a self-directed masters program, bringing together my desire to grapple with theory and participate in projects on the ground.​ This is a place to dive into the research behind the buzzwords,…

Quakers and Clearness Committees

In previous iterations of the sabbatical, the term ‘soul care’ struck a chord with me. I was looking for a way to respond to the feelings of dissatisfaction and unease that I had been seeing among my friends and acquaintances – their jobs were okay, their friends and partners were fine, but everyone described this…

Mapping the Sprawl of Learning Theories

The first challenge I faced was how to get as much of a comprehensive overview as possible of the  education landscape – and that led me to a Coursera called “What Future for Education” by the University of London (materials are free, unless you want the certificate).  It was useful in that it provided a…