Freshed

Today we talk about confronting settler colonialism in higher education. My guest is Leigh Patel, Professor of Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh, and President of Education for Liberation. In her new book, No Study Without Struggle, Leigh shows how the ability to study has always involved some form of struggle by groups historically marginalised in the USA. Her book is a love letter to study groups around the world. https://freshedpodcast.com/patel2/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

When foreign militaries withdrew from Afghanistan on August 31, hundreds if not thousands of researchers and civil society members were left behind. In the UK, many of these people were prioritized for evacuation under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy, known as ARAP, but they never got out. What has happened to those who were left behind? Today Brad Blitz joins me to talk about his work on the Afghan Solidarity Coalition. Brad details this unfolding human tragedy as well as reflects on his own work on migration and forced displacement. He questions the meaning of equal university partnerships when one side does not protect the other, and encourages listeners to donate to the International Civil Society Action Network, which is trying to evacuate thousands of Afghans who are currently in danger. You can donate here: https://icanpeacework.org/2021/09/15/help-at-risk-afghans-with-your-donation/ Brad Blitz is a professor of international politics and policy and head of the Education, Practice and

Today we explore what it means to decolonize education. My guests are Riyad Shahjahan, Annabelle Estera, and Kirsten Edwards. Together with Kristen Surla, they conducted a literature review of 207 articles about the topic. They show that the very idea of decolonizing takes on diverse meanings and subsequently is put into practice in different ways. They argue there is no one way or best practice to decolonize curriculum or pedagogy. They also detail some of the challenges of actualizing decolonization. Riyad Shahjahan is an associate professor of higher, adult, and lifelong Education at Michigan State University. Annabelle Estera is an Advisor and Instructor in Graduate Education at Endicott College. Kirsten Edwards is an Associate Professor in educational policy studies at Florida International University. Their new co-written article is “‘Decolonizing’ curriculum and pedagogy: A comparative review across disciplines and global higher education contexts” published in the Review of Educational Research. ht

Today we talk about how to teach about and beyond September 11th. My guest, Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher, says 9/11 is often taught in American schools as a one day event, focused on loss and mourning, heroes and first responders. Together with a global team, Ameena has launched the Teaching Beyond September 11th curriculum to change the narrative. Ameena Ghaffar Kucher is a Senior Lecturer in the Literacy, Culture, and International Education division at the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania and the director of the international educational development program. She also hosts the podcast, The Parent Scoop, which she started with her family during the Covid-19 lockdown. https://freshedpodcast.com/ghaffar-kucher/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Today we celebrate the life and work of Paulo Freire, who was born on September 19, 1921. Freire has had an enormous impact on education around the world, from his concept of freedom and praxis to this understanding of oppression and liberation. I’m sure many listeners have read his famous book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” With me today is Alma Flor Ada who knew Freire and was deeply influenced by his work and friendship. Alma is Professor Emerita at the University of San Francisco and author of children’s books, poetry, and novels. https://freshedpodcast.com/ada/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Today we take a critical look at the idea of competency-based education. Not only is the term hard to define but also it has various political agendas depending on which organization is promoting it. With me are Kathreyn Anderson-Levitt, a Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of Michigan–Dearborn and Meg Gardinier, who teaches at the School for International Training’s (SIT) Doctorate in Global Education Program. They’ve recently co-edited a special issue of Comparative Education entitled “Contextualising Global Flows of Competency-based Education." https://freshedpodcast.com/Anderson-Levitt-Gardinier/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Today Mari Casellato joins me to talk about her FreshEd Flux episode, which aired last week. I recommend you listen to her Flux episode before listening to this interview. It’ll make a lot more sense! In our conversation today, we talk about the history of environmental education and how it is different from education for sustainable development. Mari details youth conferences in Brazil in more detail and explains how they impacted her. She also talks about the way she approaches audio story telling from a collective standpoint. Mari Casellato recently graduated with her master’s degree from Teachers College, Columbia University. https://freshedpodcast.com/casellato/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Today we air the third episode of Flux, a FreshEd series where graduate students turn their research interests into narrative-based podcasts. This episode is by Mari Casellato, a recent graduate of Teachers College, Columbia University. Mari takes us on a journey through time, revealing the potential of youth participation in environmental education in Brazil (and beyond). You might be thinking Brazil – where the Amazon was on fire just last year and the current Bolsonaro government has been routinely criticized for doing too little to prepare for the climate crisis. But back in the 1990s and early 2000s, Brazil spearheaded this idea of environmental education, which brought together a diversity of voices through national conferences and was seen as a political act. Mari was personally involved in this history. freshedpodcast.com/flux-casellato -- Today’s episode was created, written, produced, and edited by Mari Casellato. Johannah Fahey was the executive producer and Brett Lashua and Will Brehm were t

Next week we will air another episode of Flux, our series where graduate students turn their research interests into narrative-based podcasts. In fact, it’ll be the last episode of Flux for the year before we launch the application period for the next round of fellows. Next week’s episode will be about environmental education in Brazil. Environmental education is different from education for sustainable development, the common phrasing used by UNESCO and others today. So, in preparation for the Flux episode, I’m going to replay an interview about education for sustainable development. It’ll be good background for next week’s episode. -- 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 gl

Today I’m going to play an old episode that has taken on new meaning now that we’ve aired Yardain Amron’s Flux episode, “Education is not the silver bullet.” If you don’t remember or haven’t listened, Yardain brought together multiple stories of student activism in India and Puerto Rico to paint a picture of how the privatization and marketization of higher education is a violent act. Back in 2017, I interviewed David Harvey, the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York. In that episode, our 100th, Harvey gave a Marxist interpretation of higher education. He touched on student debt, living through contradictions of capitalism, and resistance movements internal to our neoliberal system. Much of what he said provides excellent background to Yardain’s episode. It’s also nice to think that Yardain is studying Geography and Harvey is a Rockstar in the field. They make for an excellent pair of FreshEd episodes. So here it is, David Harvey on Freshed from December 2017. https:

Today Yardain Amron joins me to talk about his FreshEd Flux episode, which aired last week. I recommend you listen to his Flux episode before listening to this interview. It’ll make a lot more sense! https://freshedpodcast.com/flux-amron/ In our conversation today, we talk about his process of creating podcasts and telling stories. He says he dwells on contradictions that often go unnoticed. Yardain also talks about the connections and tensions between his approach to storytelling as a journalist and his approach to academics as a master’s student. He worked through some of these tensions developing his Flux episode, which brought together many different stories into a coherent narrative connected to theory. Yardain Amron is a freelance journalist and master’s student at the University of British Colombia. www.freshedpodcast.com/amron/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Today we air the second episode of Flux, a FreshEd series where graduate students turn their research interests into narrative-based podcasts. In this episode Yardain Amron crafts a narrative that shows complex theories in action. He doesn’t simply tell his listeners what these ideas are or name them explicitly. He takes us to disparate places–from universities in India and Puerto Rico to Occupy Wall Street–and makes a connection between them by embedding stories within stories. Through this nested narrative, he shows us how the streets are schools by exploring spaces of activism as educative sites, while leading us to the core idea at the heart of this episode: the relationship between debt and violence. Yardain Amron is a freelance journalist and master’s student in Geography at the University of British Columbia. freshedpodcast.com/flux-amron -- Today’s episode was created, written, produced, and edited by Yardain Amron. Johannah Fahey was the executive producer and Brett Lashua and Will Brehm were t

Today we explore the language of instruction in refugee education. Although learning in a home language is important, often it’s impossible for refugee children. Such tensions have important implications for refugee futures which are often unknowable. My guests are Celia Reddick and Sarah Dryden-Peterson who have recently co-written a new book chapter entitled “Refugee Education and Medium of Instruction: Tensions in Theory, Policy, and Practice.” Celia Reddick is a PhD Candidate in Education at Harvard where Sarah Dryden-Peterson is an Associate Professor and Director of REACH. www.freshedpodcast.com/reddick-dryden-peterson/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Today we look at some of the tensions implementing Sustainable Development Goal 4, which aims to “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” My guest is Antonia Wulff who has closely followed the development, adoption, and implementation of the SDGs for nearly a decade. She even edited an open-access book about it, which was published last year. That book is Grading Goal Four: Tensions, Threats, and Opportunities in the Sustainable Development Goal on Quality Education. In our conversation today, she details some of the tensions in the SDGs, from its lack of an accountability framework to limited financing to problems balancing a broad and inclusive conception of quality with one that is narrow and based on global learning metrics. Antonia Wulff is the Director of Research, Policy and Advocacy at Education International (EI), the global federation of teacher unions. She coordinated EI's advocacy and engagement in the intergovernmental negotiations

Today we take stock of the first human rights guiding principles for education, known as the Abidjan Principles. Adopted in 2019, these principles provide guidelines for State obligations to provide quality public education and the role of the private sector in education. My guest is Frank Adamson, Assistant Professor at California State University, Sacramento. Together with Sylvain Aubry, Mireille de Koning, and Delphine Dorsi, he’s recently co-edited the open-access book, Realizing the Abidjan Principles on the Right to Education: Human Rights, Public Education, and the Role of Private Actors in Education. www.freshedpodcast.com/adamson/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Today we look at the way in which dissertations in the early 20th Century produced and governed the emerging field of education and how these new knowledges moved across the world. Our focus is on Teachers College, Colombia University. My guest is Daniel Friedrich, an Associate Professor of Curriculum and Director of the Doctoral Program in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. Together with Nancy Bradt, he recently published in the latest issues of Comparative Education Review “The Dissertation and the Archive: Governing a field through the production of a genre.” www.freshedpodcast.com/friedrich/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

Elite schools help reproduce the capitalist class. The sons and daughters of the wealthy go to elite schools to gain networks and receive education that helps maintain their social status in the future. My guest today, Karen Lillie, has looked at this process in an elite school in Switzerland that enrolls children from around the world. She finds that students are in the process of becoming part of the transnational class while also maintaining their national identities in interesting ways. Karen Lillie recently finished her PhD at University College London, focused on the processes of transnational class formation. Starting in October, she will be a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany. Her latest article is “Multi-sited understandings: complicating the role of elite schools in transnational class formation,” which was published by the British Journal of Sociology of Education. www.freshedpodcast.com/lillie/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshE

Today I replay my conversation with Julie Mead from August 2019. We speak about her co-written report with Suzanne Eckes for the National Education Policy Center entitled: How school privatization opens the door for discrimination. In our conversation, we touch on a range of issues related to voucher programs and charter schools. Julie reminds listeners that the dictionary definition of discrimination is not the same as the legal definition. Julie Mead is the Associate Dean for Education and Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is a member of the Education Law Association. Julie Mead is the Associate Dean for Education and Professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her latest report is How school privatization opens the door for discrimination. www.freshedpodcast.com/juliemead/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donat

Today we celebrate the life and work of Aziz Choudry, who died suddenly on May 26, 2021 at the age of 54. Aziz was a scholar-activist who fought injustice worldwide. He appeared on FreshEd twice, so to honor his legacy here is his first appearance from February 8, 2016. -- Social movements produce a huge amount of intellectual knowledge. Yet, in many academic circles, this knowledge is overlooked. My guest today, Aziz Choudry, has spent most of his life working with social movements around the world. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University and visiting professor at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation at the University of Johannesburg. His newest book Learning Activism: The Intellectual Life of Contemporary Social Movements was published in 2015 by the University of Toronto Press. All book proceeds will be donated to the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal. Learning Activism is designed to encourage a deeper engagement wi

Today the journalist, author, and academic, Gary Younge, joins me to talk about race, identity, and education. Our conversation starts with his reflections on the UK Government’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which published its report in March. We then touch on a range of issues from across his career. Gary Younge is a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester. He worked for the Guardian newspaper for two decades and has written five books. His book Who are We – and should it matter in the 21st century? was recently re-released with an updated introduction. In May, he released his latest BBC radio documentary called Thinking in Colour. https://freshedpodcast.com/younge/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate