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Educating for a Regenerative Future w/ Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann · IB Unplugged

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Welcome to IB Unplugged, a Kognity podcast for IBDP
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educators that tackles your submitted challenges and questions
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by connecting you with experts and peers who share their ideas and stories
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Hi everybody!
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Welcome to another episode of IB Unplugged.
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This week we're talking about teaching for regeneration,
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economic system, sustainability and empowering future thinkers.
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Our guest, Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann,
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is going to share how we can shift the conversation in IB
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economics toward regeneration, interconnection, real world applications.
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So if you've ever wondered how to make your economics or your global
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politics class feel more authentic, more impactful,
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this conversation is for you.
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Cort, tell us a little bit more about Jennifer.
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Yep. So Jennifer, she has over 30 years of experience working as a teacher.
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She's been in the IB world,
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teaching
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a lot of basically all of, the individuals and societies courses.
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She's also been working with Kognity for a really long time.
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She's been one of the authors and one of the lead authors in business
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management, economics and even ESS so we are really excited.
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She, a couple of years ago,
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has actually stopped teaching to be full time working on,
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building a course for regenerative economics and really
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being able to spread this mission and this vision that she has
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for how to teach not just economics, but, education in general.
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So, yeah, really excited to talk to her about this.
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She's got a lot of great ideas on how to improve your IB teaching
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and economics and different ways that you can explain the different systems
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thinking and all the different parts of the syllabus
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in a really modern and fresh way.
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Thanks for joining us and we hope you enjoy the show
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with Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann.
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Hi, Jennifer, welcome to IB Unplugged.
2:13
Hi, Courtney. Thanks for inviting me. Thanks for being here.
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Great to work with you again and excited to have this conversation,
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around economics. Yeah.
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Do you want to first kick off, talking a little bit about maybe
2:26
giving a background on how you've been working with Kognity,
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how you've, what you've been doing in the past?
2:30
Yeah, sure.
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I've actually got quite a funny story around that because,
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our school, the school where I used to work start off
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international school, was a fairly early adopter of the Kognity books.
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And, I was really excited when they came out
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and started using it in my economics class.
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And one of the things that I just loved was the feedback.
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And, I gave lots of feedback, on the book.
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And, this was in the early days when the feedback wasn't anonymous.
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So, so everyone who saw it knew it was coming from.
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And I remember a few years after, we started
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using the book I was in, I think it was at one of the IB conferences.
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I can't remember where it was, but I went over to the Kognity table
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because I wanted to introduce myself and say, say hello.
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And I introduced myself and they said, oh, it's you, oh, it's you.
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You've done all these things.
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And, yeah, I had several colleagues
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standing around at the time and they thought that was hilarious.
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And yeah, so I didn't I didn't hold back on the feedback.
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But anyway, yeah, I really, really enjoyed
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using the books and obviously providing the feedback as well, but then,
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yeah, later.
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Was just really grateful to be involved with textbook writing.
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And I think you and I, Courtney, we, we worked on the economics book.
3:59
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
4:00
Yeah. First and then later.
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So I was a, coauthor for that one and then, later went on to be the lead
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author for the business management book, the most recent one, and also lead
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author for
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ESS, environmental Systems and Societies and, yeah.
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Just so grateful for that opportunity to work on this book,
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because actually, the work
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that I'm doing now in regenerative economics would not have been possible
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without the experience that I had, writing this book with Kognity.
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So, you know, everything from, you know, knowing what,
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what a manuscript looks like and what goes into a manuscript
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and how long it should be and how it should be written,
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and the importance of a hook at the beginning. And,
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and also just the, the size
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of the work, like how massive, a piece of work it is.
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And that knowing going into this project about regenerative economics that
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knowing how big that work would be and how much it would take
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was actually just really good to go in with open eyes that way.
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So anyway, yeah, thanks for the opportunities and getting all the,
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all the returned feedback that you're giving is now coming full circle.
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Now I'm on the other side of it.
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Yeah.
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I don't have I don't have anybody who's quite
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so assertive about being back as I was at the time, which is good.
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But we do have a feedback button.
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And that was something that I learned from, from you
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about the importance of that saying, you know, I'm such a super grateful
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for those opportunities.
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Now, Jennifer, you kind of alluded it alluded to it just now.
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You've got a pretty strong experience in social studies in general.
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And obviously things like economics you mentioned, the ESS
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and some of this as well.
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But I wonder if you could kind of give us a bit of a background in terms of
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like what first drew you to that intersection
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of economics and sustainability and this idea of regeneration?
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Where's that?
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Where did that come from?
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I mean, I can go back to,
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I guess I
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have to go back to the financial crisis, honestly, because before that,
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I wasn't really even aware that there were other schools of thought in economics.
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You know, I've been teaching and, you know, it had very mainstream education
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in economics and had been teaching the IB course for many, many years.
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And, but around
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the time of the financial crisis and then there was all this discussion
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about equity inequality, economic inequality, especially,
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I found that same time I also had some time out
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from teaching for a year, and so was able to really step back
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from the syllabus at the time that there was this big upheaval
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and then discussions about, like, you know, economists getting it all wrong and,
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and that really for me started
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to, to get me to call into question what we were teaching, just generally.
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So it wasn't even so much about
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environmental sustainability as such, but kind of like my first sort of,
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intellectual disconnect with the discipline was around,
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economic inequality and how little time we spent on it in the course.
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I mean, I remember at the time, the course this was not,
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this is like two syllabi ago, but we would we I would spend something
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like seven weeks on theory of the firm and one day on equity.
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And I just thought, there's just not something not right here about,
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the balance in the course between different ideas.
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And so I actually that experience then prompted me to read more widely
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in the discipline to become more acquainted with heterodox,
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thinking in the discipline.
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And, but it was really, in 2018, in the spring, I read donut economics.
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Right.
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We talked about that a lot when we were doing the the last economic syllabus.
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Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
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Because of that syllabus, we were doing that
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not long after that book came out.
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And it was it was really to late to get those ideas
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into the syllabus because the syllabus was just too far along at the time,
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although it was mentioned in the the teacher support materials. But,
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yeah, that book for me was really paradigm shifting.
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So because it,
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it just brought together so many of the different things
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I had been reading from several different sources.
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And because it's
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the seven ways of thinking, like a 21st century economist,
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it was really laid out like, this is the old way of thinking.
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This is a new way of thinking.
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And for me, that was just super helpful to make that shift.
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And then after I read that book, I was looking for
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all kinds of opportunities to start integrating
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this kind of thinking into my own teaching and to teach others about it.
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And that's what drove me actually to try to write for Kognity,
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because I thought, okay, it's too late to get this stuff into the syllabus.
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You know, the syllabus design processes years and years and years long.
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And it was too late for that.
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But if I could get involved with writing the book,
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then we could bring it in anyway.
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John, Jennifer actually taught when we started working together.
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I was the only time that I've ever
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actually been given a homework assignment by an author.
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She was like, you need to go read this book
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and then come back to me and we can work together.
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In my head right now, I'm just like,
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what I like about you already, Jennifer, is you strike me
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as somebody who doesn't just put up with the status quo.
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You see something that needs shifting and needs to be changed,
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and you just take action on it, whether that's
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okay, there's clearly something we're missing in in this curriculum.
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Let's make it happen or I really appreciate that.
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And I think that's great.
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The idea is like, let's take action on something
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and let's make something better
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than it was, because otherwise who else is going to take action on it?
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And I think that's a super inspirational thing.
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Yeah, I appreciate that a lot. Thanks.
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Yeah.
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I mean, actually I can build on this a little bit.
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So like because that book and then, you know, working for Kognity on,
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you know, the economics book and
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and being able to weave some of that in that was really empowering
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and that kind of like really got the ball rolling as well.
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And because of the work that I had done and
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two student
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organizations in the UK, Students Organizing for Sustainability
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and Teach the Future approached me back in
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2022 to work on a project that they were running.
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It was called,
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yeah, they called it the Track Changes Project.
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And basically what they wanted to do was to get academics and teachers
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to rewrite the entire national curriculum for England, to include sustainability
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in every single subject and every single year level.
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And there are thinking is that if you can rewrite all those documents,
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I mean, each syllabus is only like seven, eight pages long,
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but if you can structure it and you can get the sustainability in there right
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then when it's time for a curriculum review,
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they would have all these documents ready and be like, okay, here, look, we've got
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we've done all this work for you.
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This is how you can get sustainability, into the entire national curriculum.
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So I was asked to work on economics and also business and,
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you know, when you're trying to integrate sustainability
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into other kinds of courses, it might not be that difficult.
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Maybe you can just change wording here and there, you know, slide in a few things.
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But economics needed a complete rethink, from the ground up.
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And so I asked Kate Raworth is the author,
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whether she would help, and she agreed, and she brought in a few more academics,
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and that brought in a few more teachers.
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And then together we rewrote first of all, the GCSE syllabus
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for economics and then later the A-level syllabus.
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And we also worked on the business studies
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syllabus as well.
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But that, believe it or not, is not as hard to to fix to be honest
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economics though, because it is grounded in so many models
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that have really damaging assumptions behind them.
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It's just, you know, needed a complete rework.
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So we wrote that and we published that syllabus in May 2023.
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And then, that, month, I also left my job as a full time
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teacher to work full time on trying to,
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bring this project to life.
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So not just leaving it as a piece of paper somewhere on somebody's
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desk, but really trying to bring the,
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curriculum to life, develop materials,
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start trying to campaign and support
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education institutions, to make curriculum reform,
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but also to support teachers on the ground
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and so that's what I've been working on basically since May 2023.
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I mean, you spoke earlier about the importance
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of of writing good hook at the beginning of a chapter in the book.
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And I think this is sort of a great hook into what
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we want to be talking about today.
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I mean, obviously you've got this wealth of experience
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and somebody who's been kind of right at the foundational aspects
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of embedding regenerative,
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economic systems thinking into curriculum.
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And I know that's really what we want to talk about today.
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So let's let's dive in to effectively kind of the first segment of the first part
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that I think we want to talk about, which is this
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idea of just like rethink economics through that regenerative lens.
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So I have to admit, this is one of the first times I've heard about this,
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but I am also a biology teacher and not so close to economic theory as well.
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Can you just help me understand
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what is regenerative think or regenerative economics?
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How is it different than, I guess, traditional models of economics?
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I think first is probably helpful to have a view
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on what our current courses look like, because then I can sort of,
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you know, give you the contrast with that with this different approach.
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You know, you mentioned as a biology teacher
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that you don't have this background,
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but you know what's really interesting, actually, the approaches to regenerative
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economics are really all about thinking
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about how our economies can function more like nature.
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And, and, you know, there's
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there are segments in it that refer to biomimicry.
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So looking at, at, at the way nature functions and making sure
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that our economies function like nature because we are living organisms,
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like every other living organism on the planet.
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We're not special in that regard, and our economy is the way we go about meeting.
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Human needs have to function
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within planetary boundaries and within systems limits.
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Yeah.
13:41
Within the limiting factors of ecosystems like we're not special.
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And so that requires like a real rethink.
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So you would be very familiar with all this as a biology teacher.
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Yeah.
13:52
This because you mentioned the donut economics.
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That's the general idea of we we're consuming or we're taking
13:57
on more than we can actually
14:00
work with.
14:00
Right.
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That general idea of like there's there's two we're
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consuming more than we can actually replace.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I mean, I'll go
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I can talk about this, the donut economics model, maybe in a few minutes.
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But I want to
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I'll be talking about it's actually a different model
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called the embedded economy model. First.
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But I'm going to back up even further actually now and go into the
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the way we view the problem with our current, economics courses.
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And the IB course is somewhat better than many economics
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courses around the world, which we can be thankful for.
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But it still has the same problems that I'm going to talk about now.
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So the basic problem with these courses is that they draw,
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a very narrow systems boundary around markets.
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So if you can picture like a circle with big word markets in the middle,
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we treat markets
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in these courses as the markets are the economy.
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Yeah.
14:57
And when we draw this narrow system's boundary around it,
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what it means is that we either marginalize or completely ignore
15:06
a lot of non-market activity that is really important for the economy.
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So, if you can think again about that system's boundary around their, the state,
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the state is something that we talk about and, and cover in, in our courses.
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But this is outside that system's boundary.
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So we even, we even use words that make this very clear
15:27
that this is the mental model
15:28
that's being used, like the state intervenes in the economy.
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We use this word intervention is actually one of the key concepts of the IB course.
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So the word intervention seems to suggest that it's somehow out here
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they're disconnected.
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There's just disconnected somehow. And it intervenes.
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We talk about the
15:46
state imposing taxes or that taxes are a burden.
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Right?
15:50
There's all this language
15:52
that shows that the state in these courses is quite a marginalized figure, right?
15:56
It's not a a provisioning institution in its own right.
16:00
Yeah.
16:00
It's out there correcting market failures and like,
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you know, messing things up, you know, for markets in some sense.
16:07
But there's there's competing entities.
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There's things that are separate from one another as opposed to I, I'm,
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I'm assuming now that you're
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going to go to thinking with my biology hat, things are obviously interconnected.
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So one thing obviously impacts the next thing.
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And therefore to treat them
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isolated is to not recognize the whole systems, I'm guessing.
16:25
Yeah. Is that where we're going okay. Exactly.
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So so the state is marginalized.
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We also marginalize the rest of society and and our systems.
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Right.
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In fact, we even have a word for these in our courses.
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We call them externalities. Right.
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Again, this language of separation
16:43
that these things are external to what we think about as being the economy.
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And we we don't even have
16:50
a language to talk about society
16:53
and the natural world, except through the lenses of markets.
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We talk about them as market failures.
16:59
Yeah, right.
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They're not even like their own thing.
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They're failures of markets to address these things.
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It's just crazy to then again, thinking about this,
17:08
the systems boundary around markets,
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society, earth systems, the state marginalize.
17:14
But they are at least addressed.
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But there are two really important provisioning institutions
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that are completely ignored.
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And one is all the unpaid household care and domestic work.
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So households are themselves a provisioning institution.
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They provide for human needs and the commons.
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So this is all the self-organized,
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community organized,
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sharing, managing and sharing of of resources,
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the co-creation of rules around managing resources that is happening
17:44
in every single community around the world.
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It's particularly important in indigenous communities.
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It's been the main way of human organizing for most of human history.
17:56
Right?
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But we barely touch on it.
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And when we do,
18:00
we only talk about the tragedy of the commons as though it's not possible
18:04
for human beings to actually organize to to share resources.
18:07
Right? Yeah.
18:08
So, so this is this marginalization and sort of ignorance
18:13
of other provisioning institutions is a huge problem in these courses.
18:17
A very, a very limited, a huge limit in the,
18:21
the, the, the way we, teach economics, like the models, very isolating.
18:26
Right?
18:26
All these things are isolated and they don't the if they interact, it's
18:30
it's typically coined with negative terminology
18:33
or some form of like interruption to the ideal.
18:36
Right. Yeah, exactly.
18:37
Markets are the default.
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But then
18:39
even when we look inside that system and we look at how markets are taught,
18:44
the assumptions behind the models are incredibly damaging,
18:48
in fact, that I don't think I would argue that they don't line up
18:51
with the values that most parents are teaching their children.
18:55
Right.
18:55
So the models that we use rely on the assumption
18:59
that human beings are selfish, only
19:03
that we are utility maximizing individuals.
19:08
That price is the only metric of value that matters
19:11
and that businesses should be maximizing their profit,
19:15
which when you peek behind the curtain there, what that means is businesses
19:18
should be using their power to basically like, take as much as they can
19:22
possibly can from, you know, customers and the rest of society.
19:26
Right?
19:26
That's what it means to maximize your profit.
19:29
That endless and aimless economic growth
19:32
is both desirable and possible on a, on a limited planet.
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And we even start the course like day one, maybe they two or day three.
19:42
We teach students that the,
19:45
about the concept of scarcity that we actually teach them that
19:49
resources are limited, which is true, but that human needs and wants are unlimited,
19:54
humans are insatiable, and that therefore there is never enough.
19:59
Right.
19:59
And this sets up a totally kind of competitive mindset
20:04
where we're kind of setting kids out into the world
20:07
thinking that they should just be grabbing
20:09
as much as they can for themselves because there's not enough right.
20:13
That's so interesting to put it that way.
20:14
Because, yeah, there's like broad stroke assumptions
20:18
that we're now almost implanting into students minds to think in this way.
20:22
When you approach these economic theories. Right.
20:25
Yeah, it's kind of fascinating, really, when you recognize like,
20:27
oh, we're just assuming that everybody's going to think these ways as well.
20:30
Yeah, I mean, fascinating is one word.
20:33
I mean, I think it's just awful.
20:35
I just heard it's really disturbing, to be honest.
20:40
But you know, I mean, the cool thing about it,
20:43
if you want to, like, painted with a, like,
20:45
a really interesting, like, fascinating brush is that,
20:48
it gives you, like, a, a really great..
20:50
I’m feeling the feedback, Jennifer.
20:56
It gives you some great opportunities for TOK.
21:00
Because, I mean, honestly, like the way these theories are taught
21:04
and the models because there's math in it
21:06
and they're these nice graphs and it all looks really factual.
21:09
And it's it goes unchallenged.
21:12
Like this scarcity assumption goes unchallenged.
21:15
Nobody asks kids to think critically about whether it is true
21:19
that human needs and wants are unlimited.
21:21
This is a real thing that you've experienced as well. Right?
21:23
Yeah. And,
21:25
so, you know, that's a great opportunity for a theory of knowledge lesson.
21:29
We've got actually some nice teaching materials around the scarcity assumption.
21:32
And what, what it would mean
21:34
if you started your course with the concept of sufficiency instead,
21:38
like how that would reshape the entire way economics is taught.
21:44
So anyway it so the good news
21:46
is that there's like really some cool opportunities for theory of knowledge.
21:49
If you are open to these different ways of thinking.
21:54
Yeah.
21:54
So anyway this is,
21:56
this is the problem that we're dealing with this narrow systems boundary.
21:59
And then what it does to thinking
22:01
about all the other provisioning institutions to society, to nature,
22:04
and then these damaging assumptions that we're kind of implanting into kids
22:07
head at a very, it's a sensitive moment there in adolescence and growing up
22:12
and these are not really the values that really match up, I think, with
22:15
what most parents want or what we would or would educators would want.
22:19
Okay, so you've kind of set the scene a traditional model
22:21
of looking at economics would be very much of all these factors are isolated.
22:25
The markets.
22:26
The key thing we need to be focusing in on here
22:29
is assumptions that you have to have in order
22:30
to access these facts that we're going to be discussing around this course.
22:34
All right.
22:35
How does regenerative what's different.
22:38
How do how do we address all those sort of assumptions.
22:42
Usually I dive in now by talking about the embedded
22:44
economy model, which is how we've framed this.
22:46
But recently when I've spoken to teachers, we did this recently in a workshop
22:52
in in Amsterdam, I've tried to back up even further and,
22:57
kind of present what I think are two, two truths.
23:00
If you were that, if you accept this,
23:03
then it really helps you understand why we need to reshape discourse.
23:06
One of those truths is that human beings are part of nature.
23:10
We're not separate from it.
23:11
We are.
23:11
Like I mentioned earlier, we are a living organism.
23:15
I think you said we're not special
23:16
a few times.
23:22
We have to end because we are part of nature.
23:26
It means. And we are totally dependent on nature.
23:28
This is something
23:28
also like a kind of fun activity to do with kids, because they don't.
23:31
Most people actually don't understand exactly how dependent we are.
23:35
Like every breath you take comes from oxygen
23:40
that is produced by by ecosystems.
23:43
Every cell in your body, you know,
23:45
like every material that you're made of, it all comes from nature.
23:49
Every item that you use, the pencil on my desk, the paper, the desk, everything.
23:54
Right.
23:55
And, so we have to understand this, right?
23:58
And once you accept or if you accept this truth that human beings
24:02
are a part of nature, then it becomes clear
24:05
that our economy is the way we go about meeting human needs.
24:08
Have to function within nature's limits
24:11
and in accordance with nature's processes.
24:15
That's the first truth part of nature.
24:16
That means our economies have to function like nature.
24:19
We have to be, you know,
24:20
living in harmony with natural processes and not constantly undermine them.
24:26
So that's one truth.
24:27
The other truth is human beings are dependent on each other.
24:30
There is no such thing as like individual human thriving, flourishing or whatever.
24:36
We all need each other from, you know, like,
24:38
I wouldn't be on this planet if it weren't for somebody giving birth to me
24:42
and then caring for me for the first x number of years of my life.
24:47
None of us could survive
24:49
very long without the presence of other human beings.
24:52
And so it's critically important that we understand our own individual
24:57
embeddedness in society and social systems and the care of other people.
25:03
Right? So care,
25:06
also has to be kind of at the center
25:08
of our thinking about what it means to have a healthy economy.
25:13
So those are the kind of, like two big truths.
25:15
And like, once you accept that those two things, then
25:18
you can start looking at your course and thinking, okay, like
25:22
what are the assumptions and the approaches that are not in line
25:26
with those two things.
25:30
I mean, right away, the scarcity and care are not exactly aligning.
25:34
Are they? No.
25:35
Exactly. Yeah.
25:37
Yeah. So on that basis.
25:39
So one of the, the, the donut economics book.
25:42
So there's a very famous donut economics model which you might have seen
25:46
which is a ring. And on the inside it has the social foundation.
25:48
So human needs in the middle.
25:52
And then on the outside it has planetary boundaries.
25:54
And the goal is to meet human needs within planetary boundaries.
25:58
So the donut represents what's called the safe and just space for humanity.
26:02
So that that runs through the entire book.
26:05
So we're constantly coming back to that model and thinking about,
26:09
both the tensions and opportunities between these social foundations and,
26:12
planetary boundaries.
26:14
But the book itself and all the work that we're doing
26:17
is actually structured on something called the embedded economy model
26:21
and that embedded economy model,
26:25
as it's drawn, in the center,
26:27
you have the economy and the economy, has markets in it still.
26:32
So we haven't given up on markets completely, but we've kind of reduced
26:37
them, to make space for households, the commons and the state.
26:44
So each of these we call these provisioning institutions,
26:47
these are ways of organizing for human needs.
26:51
And, they have different logics to them.
26:54
So the profit logic of markets is different from the care
26:56
logic of households. Right?
26:58
So the the relationships in those institutions are different.
27:02
And behaviors of human beings are different.
27:06
But we
27:06
give them roughly equal airtime in the course.
27:09
So, you know,
27:10
we don't pretend that markets are the center of everything,
27:12
and we're just going to touch on the other stuff.
27:14
We give them equal airtime, and we actually start with households.
27:18
After the introduction to the course, the first thing we talk about
27:21
is households,
27:21
because without all the unpaid household care and domestic work that happens,
27:26
nothing would happen in any other part of the economy.
27:30
Yeah, it's absolutely foundational and again, shows the importance of care,
27:35
in our economy.
27:37
So we have these four provisioning institutions.
27:40
And then those institutions are then embedded in social systems.
27:45
And so we include in this course, which is very different from the course,
27:50
the IB course or any other economics course is that we welcome,
27:54
the discussion around values, around power,
27:57
the role of narratives, history,
28:01
law, politics, culture, social norms.
28:03
These things are really woven through the course, which makes it a much
28:07
more interdisciplinary, endeavor than it currently is at the moment.
28:13
And then
28:14
the economy and society then are embedded in Earth systems.
28:18
So, again, showing our complete and total dependance on energy and matter,
28:24
from those systems and processes, from those systems.
28:28
And the fact that, you know, as we meet human needs, everything we do
28:32
also has an impact on those systems in terms of generating heat and waste.
28:36
That then can disrupt them if, those systems if, if they're too great.
28:40
So, yeah.
28:42
So the course basically instead of being oriented on microeconomics
28:47
and macroeconomics, and international,
28:51
has kind of more sections to it, there's an introduction
28:54
that kind of helps students understand this embedded economy.
28:58
And then, it goes into each of the provisioning institutions.
29:02
So households, markets commons and state.
29:04
So there's topics on each of those.
29:07
And these are not treated as isolated topics.
29:09
So everywhere it's all about the relationships between them.
29:13
The role of power inequalities. Right.
29:15
Woven through the whole thing.
29:18
And then we have a topic on money and finance,
29:21
and then a seventh topic on, international exchanges.
29:26
And we also have a separate topic on systems,
29:28
not because systems can be treated as separate.
29:30
Systems thinking is woven throughout the whole course.
29:34
But we wanted to make sure to provide some distinct resources to help,
29:39
to help teach systems thinking as a part of that too.
29:41
So that's, that's, broadly speaking, how it's different.
29:46
Becoming a better IBDP educator is a daily practice
29:49
informed through reading, research, personal experience, and episodes
29:53
from IB Unplugged, like the one you're listening to right now.
29:56
But sometimes the show can go a bit too quickly,
29:58
or we simply forget some of the key points once
30:00
we're out of the car or back from our walk.
30:02
So to revisit the content in a condensed version, you can download
30:06
the episode summary at kognity.com/ibunplugged.
30:10
You'll find useful links to other resources and exciting
30:13
bits of information that you can use immediately in your daily practice.
30:18
So now back to the show.
30:20
All right Jennifer, thanks.
30:21
That helps really to understand I guess the key differences here.
30:24
And you can see where the regenerative economics course really helps
30:28
for better systems integration.
30:30
I know you mentioned that you've got the system.
30:32
So that's sort of
30:33
you mentioned it almost like it was outside.
30:35
But obviously it's not. It's it's very much integrated.
30:38
You can see how it is with all of those
30:39
provisioning institutions and how they all relate
30:41
against one another to create that embedded economics model.
30:44
So you can see how this now we with just the IB educator
30:48
hat on, I'm seeing so much more critical thinking going on.
30:51
I'm seeing so much more like what knowledge do we have here
30:55
and what assumptions are we making on that knowledge?
30:56
What truth is in that knowledge.
30:57
So there's so much IB style stuff that's present here.
31:03
And this I think provides a really nice segue,
31:06
I guess, into our next segment here, really talking about
31:08
like the classroom strategies
31:09
for how we're developing a deeper understanding of that.
31:13
So talk to us how how can you make these like strategies
31:16
or how can you make economics a little bit more relevant
31:19
and more inquiry driven for students?
31:21
You mentioned,
31:21
like a previous model would be like, oh, we're going to just talk about it.
31:24
But now with this regenerative model, you invite discussions about power,
31:28
you invite discussions about different perspectives and where people are from.
31:31
What are the strategies that you have that really help
31:33
to make this more relevant and inquiry driven for your students?
31:36
Yeah, I mean, I guess first of all, it would be good to kind of tap
31:39
into the whole systems thinking element, right?
31:42
Because this,
31:43
I don't want to imply that the current course
31:46
has no system thinking in it because it does.
31:49
And when you kind of dive into what systems thinking is
31:54
and there are lots of different definitions about systems thinking,
31:57
that kind of gives you an overview, so you can understand,
32:00
how we've presented it in this piece of work.
32:04
We've highlighted,
32:07
the work, of a few educators, the Cabrera's,
32:12
in the United States, actually, who, do a lot of work on systems
32:16
thinking all the way down to kindergarten with kids.
32:19
And they have developed a framework, that's called DSRP,
32:24
and that stands for distinctions.
32:27
Is the D.
32:29
S is for systems, which is a little bit odd,
32:31
but it's really about seeing wholes and parts, so parts within holes.
32:36
And this enables you to have this ability to zoom in or zoom out.
32:39
Because when you zoom in on a part, you see that the part,
32:42
that part can also be a whole and that can have more parts or you can zoom out.
32:47
So this allows a kind of zooming in and zooming out on an issue.
32:52
So the DSR is relationships.
32:54
So seeing how things are connected to one
32:56
another through different kinds of relationships.
32:58
And then the P stands for perspectives.
33:02
And what I think is interesting about the way they frame perspectives
33:06
is that a perspective is a particular view
33:10
on what distinctions are visible, like, at what point
33:15
you've zoomed in or out on the issue and what relationships you see.
33:19
And I find that just really intriguing,
33:23
to think about perspectives in that way.
33:26
And what I like about this framework, and it was new to me
33:29
when I started this work, actually.
33:31
So, so I'm still like, fishing around in it,
33:34
but we've written quite a bit about it in the, in the work.
33:40
What I like about it
33:41
is that so they describe systems thinking as an emergent property
33:46
of these four simple moves they call them.
33:50
Yeah.
33:51
And because these individual moves are so simple,
33:55
you can be doing these explicitly with children from a really young age.
34:00
I mean, kids from a very early age are making distinctions.
34:03
They're seeing relationships.
34:05
They see parts and holes and they can already see perspectives.
34:09
Right.
34:10
And so kind of fostering these four moves in, in the way they're combined,
34:15
you know, brings about the systems thinking is a kind of emergent property
34:19
from this, from this four elements, which, yeah, I just I find that
34:24
just a really attractive way of thinking about about systems thinking and, Yeah.
34:29
So we've we have included that and some exercises around that.
34:33
And it's not to say that there are, you know,
34:36
there are other ways of teaching systems thinking.
34:38
And we have, you know, we also go into some of the,
34:41
kinds of
34:42
systems thinking models and stock and flow models and causal loops
34:46
with feedback, network models and agent based models.
34:50
So those are all there as well.
34:52
And you could teach some of those without doing this DSRP.
34:56
But we thought it was really important to put that in there just because it helps
35:00
teachers and students both see that they're already doing systems thinking,
35:05
but just to kind of make it a little bit more deliberate in a way.
35:09
Yeah.
35:10
So if you're an IB teacher teaching systems thinking,
35:12
but you want to take on this lens like, could you give an example
35:16
of the kind of proposed shifting ways of teaching this?
35:21
Yeah, I mean, I would just say that most of the time when teachers
35:24
teach about systems, they will define what a system is,
35:29
right, that it has parts, relationships and a function.
35:32
And then
35:34
they don't do much more than that.
35:36
Right?
35:37
So there's not very often what I have seen anyway.
35:40
And as I've seen, persistence is a key concept in the IB.
35:45
It's everywhere.
35:45
It's one of the ones that stretches, I think, across most, if not all of the,
35:51
the subject areas.
35:52
Right.
35:53
So, but it's very often treated in this really kind of superficial way,
35:58
like once you've defined what it is and then you might occasionally
36:01
make reference to a part or a relationship
36:05
or a function, but a lot of times it doesn't go deeper than that.
36:08
But this DSRP model invites you to kind of constantly be,
36:14
you know, thinking deliberately
36:16
and explicitly about these distinctions.
36:20
Zooming it, let's zoom in, let's zoom out, let's see what are the
36:23
what are the parts?
36:24
If we zoomed in a little bit more, then what would be the parts, you know,
36:29
or the different kinds of relationships.
36:31
So like in the regenerative economics, for example,
36:35
like even the embedded economy model.
36:36
I mean, let's look at that for a second, right?
36:38
So, you know, the old model of economics identifies markets as like the economy.
36:44
So there's this like one main piece.
36:46
And then, you know, they draw their systems boundary.
36:49
And then there's all this kind of other stuff that's sort of outside of it
36:52
that either we're going to like not touch on much or
36:56
you know, we're going to completely ignore like the households.
36:58
Right?
36:59
But, once you bring in more and deeper
37:01
systems thinking, then you realize that there are more parts involved.
37:04
Basically, what we've done with this course is we have zoomed out.
37:09
Right?
37:10
So instead of zooming in only on markets and trading,
37:14
all this other stuff is peripheral.
37:16
We have zoomed out now to see the bigger, more complex picture.
37:21
And that opens up a much more, complex set of relationships
37:26
between these provisioning institutions, understanding much more deeply.
37:29
For example, our connection like how like the role of energy
37:33
in the economy and matter in the economy, etc..
37:35
So, and then distinguishing between these institutions quite well, right.
37:40
Because even though they're overlapping,
37:41
because they're all providing for human needs,
37:44
they're different from one another.
37:46
The household operates differently from a market, right?
37:51
And this is an interesting conversation also for like,
37:56
education authorities right now who are reimagining economics
37:59
because we typically talk about like, cost benefit analysis and,
38:03
you know, rational thinking being to maximize personal utility and,
38:08
an individual, you know, my own, benefits.
38:12
But the logic, the care logic
38:15
in households doesn't operate that way very clearly.
38:18
Right.
38:18
And so being able to distinguish between these two provisioning institutions
38:22
then opens up this possibility for exploring different motivations
38:26
for human behavior and different ways of making choices, for example,
38:29
and then I guess, like just from a very practical perspective.
38:32
And one of the things that we've done in this course
38:35
is we've taken out all the supply and demand diagrams
38:38
and anything that even remotely looks like that old paradigm way of..
38:43
Wait, wait, you took out the graph? Like, The economics graph?
38:47
That's the one graph John remembers from economics.
38:51
That's all I know.
38:52
When my students are studying economics, I'm like,
38:54
do you know the graph that you know, the one with the.
38:56
Yeah. So the graph is gone. Okay.
38:59
How, how? What we've done instead is we've used
39:03
causal loops with feedback to talk about the same processes.
39:07
So instead of having, you know, price on the vertical axis and quantity
39:12
on the horizontal axis and sharing supply and demand
39:14
and then shifting these curves like, like a lever, you know, in the economy
39:19
with like and then showing one move where then
39:22
the price rises in the quantity rises, etc., right.
39:25
Instead.
39:25
But if we can use causal loops of feedback, we can show this
39:29
similar dynamics between supply and demand and price.
39:32
But if there's just movement like both of these things can be moving
39:36
at the same time,
39:37
you can introduce that other factors that then play into the systems.
39:41
It's just a much more dynamic, complex picture,
39:44
and it doesn't give students a false understanding of how,
39:51
precise the impacts are.
39:53
Right?
39:54
It just because, you know, when you shift the demand curve out, and price rises
39:59
and quantity rises, then students kind of stop thinking there. Right?
40:03
Yeah.
40:04
They think it's one thing affects the other without recognizing the multiple
40:07
sort of scattered effects that can happen from this and that.
40:11
Yeah.
40:11
And no, now I can reconnect with this now because that's obviously very biological.
40:15
Right.
40:15
One sort of action here is going to ripple all sorts of things elsewhere as well.
40:19
So yeah, you can definitely see now where you're getting into not just one
40:23
variable facts, another variable, but multiple things are now integrated.
40:28
And here's I guess, where this system's thinking is very clearly embedded
40:31
across all of these different things that we might be considering.
40:35
Right. Yeah, absolutely.
40:39
These causal loops with feedback, you know, also have their limitations.
40:43
You know, anytime you have a model and you're working with a model,
40:47
there are things that you've left out and not included.
40:49
And you have to be aware of the limitations of it.
40:54
But,
40:56
these causal loops with feedback are just a much more,
40:59
I think, effective way of getting across the idea
41:03
that markets are a complex, dynamic system, adaptive system,
41:09
that there are many factors involved. And,
41:13
yeah, it just it can also
41:15
be much more effective at trying to capture.
41:19
And this is one of the points of having these diagrams to begin with,
41:22
is capturing students mental models of how things work.
41:26
Right, right.
41:26
That's the main advantage of it.
41:28
You put it on paper not because when you put it there, that's what it is.
41:32
It's just
41:32
this is the way I'm thinking about it, and then it invites other perspectives.
41:37
Oh, I didn't think about it that way.
41:38
I thought about it this way and this is how I would draw it.
41:41
And these are the factors that go into it.
41:43
Let me adjust my mental model because that totally makes sense.
41:47
Right. So it's just it's an invitation.
41:50
Yeah. Much more than the supply and demand diagrams are.
41:52
It's a it's an invitation to a dialog
41:55
and an understanding of the complex adaptive systems involved.
42:00
Yeah. And I, I like that because I think,
42:04
even if you are teaching a,
42:08
curriculum that you do have to teach supply and demand, it's like what
42:11
we were talking about before of like, how do you make this into a conversation?
42:14
How do you challenge it, making it whether you're bringing in TOK
42:18
for teaching the IB or whatever,
42:19
but not just saying, here's the diagram, remember how to make it
42:23
and be able to explain what happens when you shift an access.
42:28
It's no like, let's break down what's missing here and what we can add.
42:32
And really making that the conversation.
42:34
So even if you still have to teach supply and demand, which I would imagine
42:38
a lot of teachers do still have to teach these graphs, it's
42:43
how do we have a more constructive conversation around them as well?
42:47
Yeah.
42:47
I mean, look, I, I wouldn't suggest necessarily
42:51
that IB teachers like throw out everything.
42:54
Yeah. And start using causal loops.
42:57
Because actually,
42:59
it's it challenges
43:01
students way of thinking like, you know, I'll just give a concrete example of this.
43:05
Like if you have, let's say you have this question of like
43:09
a Taylor Swift comes to town,
43:12
she announces that there's going to be a concert in Frankfurt where I live.
43:16
What's going to happen to the demand for hotel rooms?
43:19
Right.
43:19
So this would be kind of like a typical the question for economics students.
43:22
So the demand increases for the hotel rooms.
43:26
This makes the price go up
43:28
and the quantity demanded and supply of hotel rooms prices.
43:31
Right.
43:31
You get this nice new equilibrium point.
43:34
You get the graph, you get the graph. Yeah.
43:36
But one of the things that I find really problematic about
43:42
doing supply and
43:43
demand that way is the way these graphs
43:47
make it seem as though that's a law of nature,
43:50
almost that like demand rises and therefore price rises.
43:53
It's just the market, right?
43:56
But there are real human decisions and choices,
44:01
that cause if the price does rise for hotel rooms, that causes that to happen.
44:05
Right? It's not a law of nature.
44:07
It's not necessarily
44:09
the case that if demand rises for hotel rooms, that prices have to rise.
44:13
There are choices involved.
44:15
Even if you've got an algorithm set up for, you know, what is it?
44:19
The, dynamic pricing rates of when demand rises and these hotel rooms
44:23
suddenly become more expensive.
44:24
Somebody programed the algorithm to do that, right?
44:27
Right. It was a deliberate decision.
44:29
And these decisions about whether or not to raise price
44:32
in the face of rising demand are related to power and how power shifts.
44:36
So when Taylor Swift comes, it announces a concert
44:39
and more people want to come to Frankfurt and need hotel rooms,
44:43
then this shifts the power balance towards the providers of the hotel rooms.
44:47
They have more pricing power.
44:50
They can choose to use that power or not.
44:54
Yeah.
44:55
If we then plant in everybody's minds that
44:59
firms should be always profit maximizing, then they're going to use that power.
45:04
Right.
45:05
And but there are, there are consequences for that
45:08
because it means that, you know, consumers who want those hotel rooms
45:13
then have to pay more. Right.
45:14
So you're shifting,
45:17
you know, you're shifting the power and you're shifting who gets what
45:21
in the economy based on this.
45:22
Now, we might not care that much about
45:25
this kind of dynamic and prices rising for hotel rooms.
45:29
When Taylor Swift comes to town.
45:31
Maybe that doesn't matter so much,
45:33
but it does matter when you start finding markets, determining
45:37
who gets what, and things that are much more consequential, like water, right?
45:41
Or baby formula, or things that are not luxury items or like on non-essential.
45:48
Yeah, exactly.
45:49
And you know, part of the issue that we've had with this focus on markets
45:53
and this kind of dominance of this way of thinking about the economy,
45:57
is that we have seen markets then moving into ever more areas of our lives,
46:04
and, and, and governments being willing to sort of like
46:07
give up what had been state provision before then is now privatized
46:11
and whatnot, with huge consequences then for the population.
46:14
And, and therefore we have to we have to make these power relationships
46:19
and the ethical choices around pricing and markets then visible.
46:22
And I just do think that using these causal loops with feedback
46:27
then opens up much more of a possibility for integrating discussions
46:31
around how power might shift and and what that might mean.
46:34
And it's just,
46:37
yeah, it's just a much less limited,
46:41
framework for, for understanding markets.
46:44
And it really enhances those two truths you were talking about before.
46:47
Because if you are stuck just on that market thinking, you do continue
46:51
to think that humans are separate from nature.
46:54
You do tend to think that humans are divorced
46:56
from their ability to care for other things.
46:58
But as you've been described by this model, in this approach
47:02
to thinking about economics differently,
47:04
costing in the back of my head is the submission, you know,
47:06
to develop inquiring, knowledgeable,
47:08
caring young people who are committed to creating a better, more peaceful world
47:11
through intercultural understanding and respect.
47:13
When we talk about intercultural understanding, that's systems thinking.
47:16
When we talk about care, it's what you're mentioning here with the idea,
47:20
like, I don't have to respond based off of the market model.
47:24
I can respond based off of a systems oriented approach, recognizing
47:28
that I can zoom in or I can zoom out on this particular systems thinking.
47:32
I can keep ideas relatively distinct to understand them,
47:36
but they're ultimately connected, and I have to see these relationships to,
47:39
to use that DSR
47:42
P, perspectives
47:43
and perspectives to keep those things all together.
47:46
So even, you know, as an IB educator, and I think for any IB educator
47:50
that's listening to this right now, and they may be thinking, right,
47:52
but I still have the the curriculum, I still have to get through it where it is.
47:55
You can see how even just dripping some of these things in like,
48:00
what you've just discussed
48:01
can really help to actually achieve the mission of the IB.
48:04
It can really help to develop truly critical
48:07
thinking individuals who evaluate their own positions.
48:10
What are the assumptions I'm making in order to understand this model?
48:13
And are those assumptions true?
48:14
And what other truths can exist in this space?
48:18
This is just a very exciting way, I think, to approach economics
48:23
instruction, to approach, you know, getting students more engaged with,
48:27
you know, an inquiry driven model to really dive into what are the
48:30
all the other variables, not just the one that might have affected
48:33
this particular price or this particular response?
48:36
What are all the variables that are playing in here?
48:40
Today's KogTip
48:41
comes from Alyssa Garcia at Ideo College Preparatory.
48:45
If your students rely too much on explanations
48:47
and avoid their reading, try using Kognity’s interactive features.
48:51
The mix of engaging videos, apps, and self-paced content
48:55
has helped motivate my students to take more ownership of their learning.
48:58
Thanks.
49:01
Yeah, what we've discussed so far, Jennifer,
49:03
this has been really inspirational.
49:04
And I'm not even an economics teacher, but it's just something that I'm just like,
49:07
yeah, all these things line up with what the IB is trying to do
49:11
and what we as educators, I think want to do.
49:13
We want to create a better world. That's why we got into education.
49:16
And you can see we're just shifting the mindset a little bit here and going
49:19
more into this regenerative economics approach can achieve those things.
49:23
No, I agree, and I think that luckily for not luckily,
49:26
but by choice, the IB curriculum, like you said, it's
49:31
not the worst by any means when it comes to like where it falls on that spectrum.
49:36
And I think that there are what I remember
49:38
when we were talking about the last syllabus, then obviously,
49:40
hopefully the next syllabus will move even further into that direction.
49:43
But it's it gives you space to even push the boundaries a bit more.
49:49
And I'm wondering if you've seen any good ways that IB
49:52
teachers have been taking this regenerative economics framework and
49:56
pushing the boundaries even more in the syllabus to be like,
50:00
are there any strategies you've seen anything project wise
50:03
that has kind of come to light as you've been doing this project?
50:08
Yeah.
50:08
So I first just want to be clear that this is relatively new.
50:13
Yeah. So
50:15
and so basically I'm like, what I can talk about is like,
50:18
how so, you know, teachers have the mandated syllabus.
50:21
They have a high stakes exam at the end.
50:23
The syllabus is quite full already.
50:25
Right? A lot of what we do in regenerative economics
50:28
actually challenges the approaches.
50:30
So teachers have to use them carefully.
50:33
Particularly like, you know, if you might have some really high
50:37
flying students who, like, can deal with the cognitive dissonance.
50:41
But many teachers also have a, have
50:44
students who are just barely going to pass.
50:46
Right.
50:47
And so you have to be quite careful about what you, what you're doing
50:51
and how much of that dissonance you're introducing.
50:54
But it is what we've done to try to help teachers bring this in
50:59
as much as possible is we've done a mapping of the IB syllabus.
51:03
So we have a spreadsheet.
51:03
And then the first column is the IBDP economics syllabus,
51:08
all the content. In the second column are
51:11
links to the book that we've written, which I can talk about in a few minutes.
51:14
We haven't really gotten to that yet, but the links to the book,
51:19
so areas and content that allow like the current syllabus
51:24
allows like a foothold for, you know, this bit of regenerative economics.
51:28
If you feel like you've got time and, and want to do it.
51:31
And then in the third column there's some notes.
51:33
So, just some explanations about the links or why
51:37
it might be important to do this with students, etc..
51:39
And we've also included the TOK material from the syllabus at the bottom.
51:43
So to try to give some suggestions for the TOK questions
51:46
that are actually in the syllabus and how you might be able
51:48
to use regenerative economics to address some of those questions that are there.
51:52
And that also in the Kognity book.
51:56
So this is one way that we're helping because teachers can't,
51:59
you know, they don't have time to like, look through the whole work
52:02
that we've created. I mean, it's a massive piece.
52:05
So it's enough teaching material probably more than enough for two years
52:08
worth of teaching. Right?
52:09
So it's a huge piece of work.
52:12
So what we're doing is like trying to do, like, little things that, you know,
52:16
help people find things really quickly that they can integrate.
52:19
And we're doing that not just with the IB, but also like slowly as I have time.
52:23
I'm doing that with many other syllabi as well.
52:26
So we've done Cambridge IGCSE.
52:29
We've done the At Excel syllabus for A-levels.
52:32
We've done the Dutch syllabus, the Dutch economics syllabus.
52:37
And we're just going to be doing more of the AP macro syllabus.
52:41
We've also done that was really hard because it's just so completely different.
52:47
There's not that many footholds for what we're doing in that course.
52:51
And then, you know, I hear from teachers all the time
52:53
who are just trying little bits and pieces.
52:55
And, the feedback we've gotten so far has just been great.
52:57
I mean, I found teaching really rewarding,
53:00
and it was great, and I had good relationships with students
53:02
and teachers and, and other teachers and parents and, and whatnot.
53:06
But I just, I get, I get emails almost every single day
53:11
from people saying, oh my God, we love the work.
53:15
We've done this with kids. You know, we did the same with kids.
53:17
It was great.
53:18
Thank you so much. Looking forward to the next topic.
53:21
Like it's just yeah, a lot of really positive.
53:25
Have a lot of really positive feedback.
53:26
It's just super exciting time to be doing doing the work.
53:30
One of the things that I'm really excited about right now
53:32
is that the International School of The Hague decided to,
53:36
drop their NYP 4 or 5 economics course, and they're going to do regenerative
53:41
economics now. Oh, wow.
53:43
It might be 4 or 5. Yeah.
53:44
So I'm working with them to develop a comprehensive plan for the two years,
53:49
and help them figure out, because I can't do everything that's there.
53:52
So we're kind of, like, working on
53:54
mapping it out and doing what we're going to do all the MYP unit plans.
53:57
So we're going to make everything publicly available,
54:01
for any other school that might that might want to do it.
54:03
So it sounds like there's a wide range of resource available
54:07
and as you say, beyond two years worth of stuff
54:10
if you want to get into the regenerative economics.
54:12
But if I've understood correctly, I think probably the most powerful perspective
54:16
shift that any economics teacher
54:18
could have right now is, I guess, kind of moving away from that older style
54:21
model of the market is isolated and these other factors play into it.
54:25
Think about the systems and how all these things are interconnected,
54:29
and then really inviting that critical thinking element.
54:32
And even if you just kind of adopt that perspective yourself, perhaps
54:36
that would then come out across all your teaching as well.
54:39
Is that a fair kind of
54:40
do you think that's kind of the the crux here,
54:43
what you would hope people are hearing from this particular episode?
54:45
Yeah, absolutely.
54:46
I mean, and also just the embeddedness,
54:49
obviously of the economy in society and, and earth systems.
54:53
I mean, it's a huge blindspot
54:55
actually, in the current syllabus, even though sustainability is a topic,
54:59
there isn't kind of there's this explicit knowledge about the, the,
55:02
our dependance on, energy and material resources
55:06
and that needs to be made much more explicit because,
55:10
I just don't think you can understand
55:13
you can't be an economist really properly unless you have some understanding
55:17
about how nature works and the origins of all the things that we depend on.
55:21
So, yeah, that would be the, you know, the care, the embeddedness in nature.
55:26
These things are really critical.
55:28
And I just think it's really worthwhile also just making students aware
55:31
that households are part of the economy and that they're we're not just consuming
55:36
things from markets.
55:37
It's actually really funny. Like one of the,
55:40
interesting things that I found
55:42
is how households are discussed, if they're discussed at all in curriculum.
55:46
And, the Luxembourg national curriculum actually has a statement in it
55:51
that says the main function of households is to consume things from markets.
55:57
So there's
55:58
there's an embedded assumption as well that that's kind of been put out there.
56:02
Yeah.
56:02
I mean, but when you have this perspective that it's just monetary flows
56:06
that we're talking about and you've got the,
56:08
you know, your,
56:09
circular flow of income model that most people have in their, in their heads.
56:12
Then you've got households here who are providing their labor to the businesses,
56:16
and the businesses are making stuff and then selling it to households.
56:19
Then, then that makes sense.
56:20
But I mean, come on, really,
56:23
I think I it just it just makes me giggle every time when I think about it.
56:27
I mean, if it weren't so tragic.
56:29
This has been so informative for me and a really valuable, chat.
56:33
I really appreciate you taking the time to discuss this and to clarify
56:36
this idea of regenerative economics and just seeing the ways that it can be,
56:39
you know, that it already embodies IB learner mindset
56:43
sort of things and approaches to learning in that way.
56:46
And, you know, I think it's a very inspiring discussion
56:49
as we've, as we've just said.
56:50
So thanks so much for taking the time to to talk about this with us.
56:53
Really, really appreciate it.
56:54
Jennifer, I think that we've talked a lot about different models.
56:57
You've started going into a bit of the, the book that you're making and
57:01
some of the different resources, the crosswalk between the IB and between
57:04
their generative economics courses, things like that.
57:08
What if you could give these next steps
57:12
for IB teachers, like what resources do they have available for them?
57:15
What could be some ways of getting started here?
57:19
I've mentioned already this mapping that we've done and just to
57:24
to kind of explain briefly what this maps to.
57:26
So we've in addition to the syllabus and specifications that we've written,
57:30
we've also been working on a book.
57:32
So there's a book online,
57:35
and users of Kognity will be like, they'll be quite familiar
57:39
with the structure of it because, I've used kind of a lot of my experience
57:44
with the Kognity book in the way this is, is organized. So,
57:49
the book, it's not quite finished yet.
57:51
We're still working on it,
57:52
but we're publishing everything as we go so that teachers can already be engaged
57:56
with it.
57:56
So we've got five out of the seven topics published,
57:59
plus the systems thinking, topic as well.
58:03
The work is all in the Creative Commons.
58:05
And so that means that students and teachers they can use,
58:08
they can do whatever they like with it.
58:10
They can copy paste, they can make presentations, they can adopt it
58:14
wherever they like they can share it on,
58:17
so it's all there for them.
58:18
And you've got basically a text and then you've got
58:22
activities are also embedded in the book.
58:24
So and we've tried to be very practical.
58:27
So there's like classroom activities that are, that will work in inside one period.
58:33
So we've tried to be very packed.
58:34
So anywhere from one to 4 or 5 possible activities
58:38
depending on the, the section that has been covered,
58:43
there is like other marked questions
58:45
for students, there are further further exploration links.
58:49
Have students really interested in a particular topic?
58:51
There's other things they can explore.
58:53
We've got all the sources that we use.
58:55
So if you're interested as a teacher and exploring
58:57
like where the information came from, we've included that as well.
59:01
And then we've got terminology lists, that we've created Quizlet lists
59:05
to go with every single one of them so that there's a possibility also
59:08
to learn new terminology with all that gaming.
59:11
You’ve kept busy, Jennifer.
59:12
Yes, it's a big it's a big piece of work.
59:15
But then, at the end of every topic,
59:18
we're also putting together a list of project ideas.
59:21
So if, teachers or students want to do more in-depth projects
59:26
or creative projects around the material, that there's some ideas for them. So
59:31
we're, you know, we're talking about CAS projects or, service action projects.
59:37
These this is all really helpful for that.
59:39
So, and the really creative so like, it's not you know,
59:42
these are not like typical economics projects.
59:44
We've got art projects and we've got citizen science in there, John, as well.
59:49
And all kinds of things for students to ideas for them
59:52
to kind of like get the creative juices flowing.
59:55
So we've got all that there.
59:57
And, you know, teachers are picking it up and using it.
1:00:00
But I'm also working with teachers and students,
1:00:03
in quite a few schools around the world who need help trying
1:00:06
to figure out how to get it into their, into their programs.
1:00:10
And so,
1:00:11
yeah, teachers are contacting me all the time to get some advice.
1:00:14
And we do calls with them or whatever to help.
1:00:16
And so teachers can be embedding this stuff into their courses,
1:00:18
but they could also run like an extra curricular program.
1:00:21
Kids could also do it like a self-study group as a part of CAS if they wanted to.
1:00:26
TOK
1:00:27
are always opportunities, of course, to weave this stuff in.
1:00:30
But then really, the big prize and what we're really hoping for
1:00:33
is to get change at the institutional level.
1:00:36
So we're hoping that the work that we're doing, the book, the syllabus,
1:00:41
all the work with the teachers and everything will also then have an impact
1:00:44
on what happens with the syllabus revision in the IB.
1:00:48
But not just there in Scotland.
1:00:51
We're engaging with Scotland right now in the Netherlands as well.
1:00:54
And the, the big hope is that if we can kind of shift these institutions
1:00:59
in this direction, that we're going to set off
1:01:01
some social tipping points and then we're just going to see school
1:01:04
systems across the world, starting to, to go in this direction as well.
1:01:09
So I would just say to the teachers, if you have any opportunity
1:01:12
to get involved, if you find these ideas interesting
1:01:15
and you like these approaches to get involved with that IB,
1:01:19
process, that that's really helpful or just telling us what you're doing,
1:01:23
it helps us then make it visible to the people
1:01:26
who are involved, with those processes as well.
1:01:30
So amazing.
1:01:31
I love being able to, to and these episodes with actual next steps
1:01:35
that people can take will make sure that we have all of the links
1:01:38
in the description for the podcast and be able
1:01:41
to, yeah, make it really easy for people to kind of jump into this and see
1:01:45
see what they can do with their with their IB classes.
1:01:48
Thank you.
1:01:49
Thanks for for giving time to it. I appreciate it.
1:01:51
Of course.
1:01:52
Thank you.
1:01:53
And yeah, I know, this is the most John's expressed
1:01:56
interest in, individuals and societies and his entire biology career.
1:02:00
That's not fair.
1:02:02
All right.
1:02:02
It's a little bit fair, but no, it's
1:02:04
you know, Jennifer, this has been, really, really fruitful discussion.
1:02:08
Thanks so much for for outlining all these really cool things and obviously
1:02:11
some great ways that we can be approaching the economics course.
1:02:14
IB Unplugged is a Kognity podcast hosted by John Patton
1:02:17
and Courtney Marline and produced by Katilina Gaffney.
1:02:20
Be sure to subscribe or follow and share with your fellow IB educators.
1:02:24
If you'd like to submit a topic, request, or question, please do
1:02:27
so on kognity.com/ibunplugged.
1:02:30
Let's keep the conversation going
1:02:32
and support each other in teaching with confidence, creativity, and joy.
1:02:36
See you next time.