Coconut Thinking Benjamin Freud, Ph.D.

What if we decided to do things differently?
I speak with Clover Hogan. Clover is a 24-year-old climate activist and the founding Executive Director of Force of Nature - the youth non-profit turning climate anxiety into action. She has worked alongside the world’s leading authorities on sustainability, consulted within the boardrooms of Fortune 50 companies, and counseled heads of state. Clover has spoken alongside Jane Goodall and Vandana Shiva, and interviewed the 14th Dalai Lama. Her TED talk, 'What to do when climate change feels unstoppable', has been viewed over 2 million times. At 22 she was recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and has featured in countless media outlets. And she is a Green School Bali graduate! We discuss:

🥥 How the real problem isn't that youth is climate anxious, it's that people in power are not;

🥥 How Departments of Defense might consider defending our rivers, mountains, forests, and air—where preserving the peace becomes about climate;

🥥 How social justice and climate justice are the indissociable, and how transforming education has to take this into account.

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How might our stories be as unique as the place from which they unfold?
In this episode, I speak with Jenny Andersson. Jenny is the founder of The Really Regenerative Centre. She works as a strategist, facilitator and educator, supporting organizations and communities to create visions for the future they want – together – and to find the energy, will and approaches to sustain long-term change. She also leads the cohort Power of Place, which is collective learning  journey in regenerative placemaking. The aim of the course is to provide a living systems and regenerative thinking approach to how we design our places so that they can become places in which humans can fulfill their potential and true roles and all life thrives in harmony – so that the places that are precious to us become Places For Life. We discuss:

🥥 How place provides an entry point into understanding the enormous complexities of systems and the dynamic relationships within them;

🥥 How understanding your bioregion is critical to education because it connects us to place, but also appreciates the uniqueness of every system and our place [within/as] it;

🥥 The nestedness of all things, or rather, the rhizomatic relationships that we have with all aspects of society and life.

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How might we re-think higher education to be about our ability to discern the world and take action, not the diplomas we receive?
I speak with Ronald Barnett. Ron has spent a lifetime in higher education as a scholar, institutional leader and manager, researcher, and writer. He is recognized as having introduced and developed the philosophy of higher education as a field in its own right (and he is the President of the recently established Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society, and co-editor of two major book series. Since 1990, he has been on the staff of the Education Faculty of University College London, where he is now an Emeritus Professor. Over the years, Ron has written and edited more than 35 books and over 150 papers has been cited in the literature over 25,000 times. There are about 3 million words of his in the public domain. He continues to act as a consultant to individual universities around the world on higher education matters, and also with his work in examining, reviewing, editing, and mentoring. We discuss:
🥥 Higher education as a process, not an institution;
🥥 The conspiracy that involves all stakeholders in grade inflation and the degradation of standards;

🥥 Ethics as the platform from which the critical thinker seeks to make the world a better place.

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How might we create the conditions and spaces for learning to be wild? Or maybe we need to un-create them for wildness?
I speak to Jennifer D. Klein and Jill Ackers-Clayton. Jennifer has a broad background in global education and global partnership development, student-centered curricular strategies, diversity and inclusivity work, authentic assessment, and experiential, inquiry-driven learning. She has facilitated workshops in English and Spanish on four continents, providing strategies for high-quality, globally connected project-based learning in all cultural and socioeconomic contexts, with an emphasis on amplifying student voice and shifting school culture to support such practices. Jennifer has worked with organizations such as the Buck Institute for Education, the Center for Global Education at the Asia Society, The Institute for International Education, Fulbright Japan, What School Could Be, the Centre for Global Education, TakingITGlobal, and the World Leadership School, to name a few. Jennifer’s first book, The Global Education Guidebook: Humanizing K–12 Classrooms Worldwide Through Equitable Partnerships, was published in 2017, and her second book, The Landscape Model of Learning: Designing Student-Centered Experiences for Cognitive and Cultural Inclusion, was released in 2022.
Jill is an influential educator with nearly three decades of experience across a broad spectrum of the educational sector. Her journey began as a mathematics teacher, evolving into a technology expert after achieving her CCNA & MCSE certifications in Denver, Colorado. Her skills in managing school networks and teaching K-8 technology led her to significant roles in educational leadership. Her publication, "Developing Natural Curiosity through Project-Based Learning: Five Strategies for the PreK-3 Classroom," highlights her dedication to innovative education. As the Director of Education at VS America, her current role focuses on transforming learning environments, a crucial aspect of impacting student lives daily. This role involves collaborating with architectural firms, interior designers, and furniture vendors globally to create adaptable, flexible, and dynamic learning spaces.

We discuss:

🥥 How learning experiences might be gatherings rather than collaborative efforts, to allow for possibilities and emergence;

🥥 How we might consider physical and non-physical spaces in different ways to promote learning, not simply to hold learning and learners;

🥥 How place-based learning flourishes when communities gather to solve problems.

Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com

How might we come together around a WHY rather than a HOW? Might the HOW sort itself out if we share purpose?
In this episode, I speak with Kevin Bartlett. Kevin is the Founder of the Common Ground Collaborative. He has held leadership positions in the UK, Tanzania, Namibia, Austria, and Belgium, where he was most recently Director of the International School of Brussels from 2001-2015. Kevin has co-designed accreditation systems for the European Council of International Schools (ECIS), the Council of International Schools (CIS) and the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) and is currently engaged with a small team developing ACE, an innovative new accreditation protocol for NEASC. He is a writer and trainer in the field of curriculum design and leadership for learning for the Principals’ Training Center. As a curriculum designer, he was the initiator and early leader of the IB Primary Years Programme. We discuss:
🥥 How we might challenge schools to describe what they're doing as a process, in order to avoid getting stuck in outcomes;
🥥 How conceptual transfer opens up spaces for learning and action, how goes beyond the the here and now to make a difference in now and then.

🥥 How feeling inspires action, not academics; feeling is what connects us, not cognitive understanding (though that can nourish feeling).

Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com

How might AI create both utopian and dystopian futures all at the same time? What does this mean for education and for learning?
In this episode, I speak with Darren Coxon. Darren is Founder of CoxonAI, a worldwide strategic advisory specialising in K-12 AI implementation. An educator for 25 years, Darren has most recently managed the operation of schools’ groups, notably Brighton College’s international schools, Forfar Education, and Britus Education, Bahrain, where he was COO. Darren has been at the forefront of educational technology for many years, including leading the first 6th form college in the UK to move to an iPad 1:1 model. He is now a major thought leader on AI in education, has delivered training for COBIS and the National College, as well as more recently delivering keynotes and workshops for HMC, GESS Dubai, and the Cottesmore AI Festival. We discuss:
🥥 How generative AI is only the beginning, yet there is nothing new in how we use technology to enhance ourselves, our learning, and our abilities;

🥥 The connections between AI and our response to ecological breakdown... maybe this is also an opportunity to connect non-virtually;

🥥 How we might prepare learners, no matter their age, to be useful, not in an extractive way, but rather one that helps all life thrive, and this is the re-purposing of schools.

Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com.