62. Rethinking What We Value in Education (Dr Alison Clark-Wilson)
What we value in education greatly informs both the kind of research that takes place and the technologies that are developed in support. Globally there are countless important skills that people learn, or should learn, that are not currently valued as part of a good education. Educational research findings and the tools offered by learning technologies can contribute to more effective and engaging learning design. But are there important skills that are not being developed because they are ignored by the researchers and the EdTech sector? Does what we value hinder our potential to improve important skills needed in the future of work? My guest has spent her career immersed in both the research and practice of learning, and has been addressing this issue in terms of designing both research and learning technologies.
Dr Alison Clark-Wilson is Professorial Research Fellow at the UCL Knowledge Lab at University College London (UCL) Institute of Education. Her research focuses on school mathematics education, particularly on the design and use of digital technologies and the related professional development for teachers. She also co-ordinates UCL's founding partnership within the European EdTech Network (www.eetn.eu) that brings together EdTech experts, innovators, higher-education professionals and students, in order to connect the best specialists with the most creative minds from all over Europe, providing them with the most relevant EdTech content, to foster innovation in the field of higher education. Among her extensive publications, Alison also edited and authored three books, the most recent of which isThe Mathematics Teacher in the Digital Age. This continues to be the most successful book in the series Mathematics Education in the Digital Era published by Springer Nature.