This podcast features a really interesting conversation about educational change, educational conferences and professional learning between Marco Cimono, host of Oh, The Humanities (and Social Sciences) and Summer Howarth, director of Learning Design & Events at Education Changemakers. 

Trying to design professional learning that creates conversations has led to more and more thinking about “what is effective professional learning”? What are the attributes of effective andragogy? How can we design teacher learning that is all about sharing practice and collaboration?

Howarth and Cinimo talk at length about “what makes a good edu-conference – the good the bad the ugly”. According to Howarth, a good edu-conference “needs to be a celebration as well as a provocation and the genius of the participants needs to be not only acknowledged but also unleashed. I think too often the things that have sucked about the education conferences for me in the past have been I turn up and actually no one really cares if I am there or not … the most important people hold microphones and I am just there to take it in.”

She talks about the “magic” of good edu-conferneces, where you say “I think the keynotes were great but I met all of these really cool people … and we’ve decided that we are going with this idea … The magic in those connections and really connecting into the vibe of something is very important.”

Howarth’s view that these experiences can be deliberately designed and that it’s key to balance big-name “thought leaders” and profiling the “anonymous extraordinary” (“people getting on with job every day who might never have taken the stage before”) resonates with me.

What do you think makes great professional learning? What are the best strategies to design it? How can we amplify the rockstars in the room? 

Image: Guitar Hero, Dani Vázquez, CC BY-SA 2.0