Quality Affordable Schools Lift Up Marginalized Children
Joseph Barak, a 14-year-old from Koru, Kisumu County, western Kenya walked five kilometers through sugar plantations every day to attend his low-cost school. His parents, a small-scale farmer and a domestic helper, shared in Joseph’s struggle to get him to a high-quality school. Their efforts have paid off. Joseph’s high score in the Kenyan national […]
Higher Education is Getting Digital
There has been “digital” in higher education for a very long time. From the earliest computers to the beginnings of the internet, higher education has always found ways to use technology to capitalize on the power, scale, and efficiency of digital. When I was an undergraduate student at university, email was an emerging digital technology. […]
How Do We Make Higher Education More Equitable?
Higher education should be at the forefront of attempts to navigate a route through the confluence of disruptive forces affecting the world in the early 21st century. There are numerous examples of how higher education contributes to the common good – from innovative ways in delivering higher education that are reaching those displaced by the […]
We Have to Rethink What It Means to be “Educated” in a Post-Truth World
It used to be fairly easy to explain what it means to be educated. Education involves schooling, and as a general rule, the more schooling you have, the better educated you become. Unfortunately, as I will argue below, that answer may no longer be sufficient; there is evidence to suggest that the causal link […]
Lessons From Africa: Local Impact, Global Promise
For nearly five years, I lived in Mumbai, India, during a period that overlapped with the financial crisis in Europe. For a little while, at least, observers looked to India to glean lessons from its jugaad innovation approach (a term denoting “work-around”), which came to signify creative improvisation and frugal management. Increasingly, global innovation and education communities […]
Bringing the Power of Play to Refugee Children
As part of the WISE Learners’ Voice Program, our team volunteered with Metadrasi and Organization Earth, both of which are organizations in Athens. They are working tirelessly to meet the needs of refugees living in camps and housing accommodation. As volunteers, we were often tasked with engaging the children who constitute approximately half the […]
Effects of Career Planning Courses Across Schools and Colleges
Numerous Qatari students enroll in preparatory programs after finishing high school or during their first year of university. Known as foundation programs or bridges to university, the programs help students to reach university-level competencies in terms of achieving admission requirements and choosing majors. Students in the programs learn skills that help them to earn higher […]
Can Computers Perform Workplace Tasks Better Than People?
Digitalization is connecting people, cities, countries and continents, bringing together a majority of the world’s population in ways that vastly increase our individual and collective potential. Yet the same forces have also made the world more volatile, more complex and more uncertain. The rolling processes of automation and the hollowing out of jobs, particularly for […]
The Path to Sustainability for Partnership Schools for Liberia
Dramatic learning gains for students in Partnership Schools for Liberia (PSL) suggest that the Liberian Ministry of Education is on the right track with its reform program “Getting to Best.” These learning gains, the equivalent of 60% more learning for PSL overall, and more than an additional year of learning for students in schools operated […]
How to Design Future-Proof Education Systems?
In different moments of the 20th century, we have witnessed various trends in technology that promised to “revolutionize” education. Nothing can be more charming than watching children learning by themselves only with the use of technology. This techno-enthusiasm is connected with good intentions such as reducing inequalities, enhancing learning opportunities, enabling self and lifelong learning, […]