Educating for Peace - A Conversation with Dr Nandini Chatterjee Singh

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

We really need to put more funding and effort in education which puts relationships at the center. To take away some of that defense budgeting and put it into education, maybe the world might look like a very different place.

Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Future Learning Design Podcast with me, Tim Logan. This week I'm speaking with Dr. Nandini Chattopadhyay Singh, who is a cognitive neuroscientist and currently the Senior Project Officer at the UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development in New Delhi, India. MGIEP focuses on achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 towards education for building peaceful and sustainable societies across the world by developing programs that promote social and emotional learning, innovative digital pedagogies, and empower youth. Their mission is to build kinder brains. After receiving a PhD in physics from the University of Pune in India, Nandini studied auditory learning mechanisms in songbirds at the University of California, Berkeley. She returned to India in 2002, the first cognitive and neuroimaging laboratory in India at the National Brain Research Centre, where she set up SALI, the Speech and Language Laboratory. Using behavioural and functional neuroimaging experiments, her lab sought to understand neurodiversity, especially children with autism and dyslexia. Since 2017, Nandini has been at UNESCO MGIUP, where she has led the development of EMC², a neuroscience-based framework that builds social and emotional learning competencies of empathy, mindfulness, compassion, and critical inquiry. She is focused on designing new interactive curricula using innovative digital pedagogies like digital games and digital dialogue to cultivate social and emotional learning, and she conducts cross-cultural research to assess their efficacy in school education systems. Hello. Hi. How are you?

I'm very well.

Well, it's brilliant to talk to you. Thank you for joining me on the podcast.

Thank you so much, Tim Logan, for inviting me. I'm looking forward to this.

Fantastic. Well, so you're just back from France, which unfortunately we didn't see each other in person, would have been great, but you're just back from the conference with UNESCO, right? So maybe you could just start there briefly, just how was the conference? And they were making some big claims about transforming education. On their to-do list. So, um, how was it for you?

So it was very exciting, and I must say the weather was simply brilliant, which added to the whole experience. But just to put the record straight, it was really the pre-summit to the Transforming Education Summit that has been called by the Secretary-General of the United Nations in September in New York, okay? And UNESCO is the secretariat for that summit. So what UNESCO was trying to do was to, and something that UNESCO is really well known for and good at is because UNESCO seeks to put humanity at the center of education. And so UNESCO had brought together a number of education ministers from various member states to engage with them in dialogue on, of course, one, the commitment to transform education, but also to sort of engage actively across member states to see what are the critical components that are going to drive this transformation. And I was delighted to hear from some of the ministerial dialogues the whole notion of science and evidence come to the fore, you know, and that was actually something that excited us at MGIP very much in lieu of the IC report that we just published. So many ministers clearly committed to the need for transforming education, particularly in lieu of, you know, the changing role of skills at work future work. And of course, probably the biggest sort of transformation for us in this decade has been the role of digital learning. So how is digital learning going to be at the center of it, but also to bring in youth as more active voices in transforming and setting the agenda for this transformation.

That's great.

They no longer want to just be told what to do, but they want a voice at the table. And so what are the skills we're looking for? How do they think we should transform education? Is, is clearly going to be driven actively by youth. And it was delightful to see a number of young people at the conference, very, very actively engaged and really advocating for change. So I think that's going to be an important message that's going to come about. And I hope is reflected at the final summit too. So I was excited to be part of it. And, um, as always, I had a brilliant experience in Paris.

Good. Oh, fantastic. Well, glad to host you in France, but, um, yeah, as you say, it was great that they— I agree, great that they had the Global Engagement Day with all of those young people. I mean, there were some really inspirational young people speaking. Yeah, really interesting. And we have fingers crossed for the big summit in September.

Yes. And I think one, you know, the whole notion that it has to be transdisciplinary, hands-on approach, It has to be supported by science and evidence, and the fact that we have to now focus on learning outcomes, you know, there has been a massive increase in school enrollment, but that impact and learning outcomes is something that's not visible yet. And therefore, how do we need to rethink the whole transformation process is, I think, going to be at the heart of it. And that's really, I think, one place where some science and evidence can play a great role, you know.

Yeah, good.

Start going back to studies that have replicated again and again what practices work, what skills work, how to build them in. I think that's going to be a critical feature that's going to make a change, or in quotes, as we say, transform education.

Yeah, yeah, brilliant. No, I'd love to talk to you specifically about some of those things later, but just to set the context, you mentioned MGIEP, so that's Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Education for Peace and Sustainable Development, right?

That's it.

Long, lovely name.

Yes, it's quite a mouthful.

With an amazing inspirational figure at the head of it, Mahatma Gandhi.

Absolutely.

So maybe could you just give a little bit of background to what you do there at MGIEP? Because you're, you're a big part of that team and as a cognitive neuroscientist yourself, bringing in the science into that, but specifically with a focus on peace and sustainable development, right?

Absolutely. So delighted to share a few thoughts around that. So MGIB is UNESCO's first Category I institute focused on education in the Asia-Pacific region. And, you know, given that it's named after Gandhi, it of course makes sense for it to be located in New Delhi in India. And I think it's really trying to bring back our focus again to the fact that peace is at the center of harmony and a sustainable planet. And somehow peace needs to become at the center of education too. But I think what's very interesting and a conscious effort that MGIP is trying to do is also going back to something that is part of UNESCO's primary mandate to cultivate peace in the minds of men, women, and children. Now, the word cultivation clearly has a lot of meaning for us today, given that the fact that we know that education is training the brain, it essentially brings to fore the fact that peace can be cultivated in the brain, okay. And the notion that peace is a mindset, a way of life which relies on a set of basic skills or competencies which really stem from social and emotional learning, or as popularly as it's called today, SEL. SEL is at the heart of MGIP's work on cultivating peace. Yeah, so mainstreaming social emotional learning is central to MGIP's work and mandate, and recognizing the power of change that can be brought about by the digital medium, we want to use the digital medium to try and scale that message. So MGIP's vision really is to build kinder brains. Okay, it's a very simple mission, but what's exciting about this now is that we have the science and evidence to tell us how to go about doing it.

Okay.

And that's maybe something that we didn't know 100 years ago. But today, we do know with the advances in neuroscience, brain research, cognition, developmental psychology, neuroanatomy, all of those techniques have now provided that evidence, which has been replicated in a number of studies worldwide, that you can cultivate these competencies in the brain. And what MGIP's mission now is to bring that science and evidence to the center of education, education programs, and to make sure this is integrated and embedded in educational policy across all member states.

Yeah, yeah.

So, but the science and evidence is a very important part of what we want to drive to in terms of designing education systems, and that's not always been the case Across the world. And so how important it is to bring this in and to look at education now as a transdisciplinary purpose, you know, so there's input coming in from learning, from cognition, from brain development, from neuroscience, from curricula. All of those have to come together to inform policy. It cannot be somebody's whim and fancy that decides what children should learn. It has to be a larger purpose. And I think we recognize that education is probably the best way to try and do that. So something that I love to talk about often is, for the first time in history, I think we are poised and equipped with enough information to design our own future. Okay, so far, we have often responded or reacted to events in history that have happened for various reasons. But today, we know enough about the fact that we have only one planet, which we all inhabit together. And how do we go about making sure that this is a sustainable planet? How do we make sure as human beings, we can live together? We know the competencies that will allow us to do this. So I think we really have a shot at preserving this. And that's backed with science and evidence. If we don't do something about it, that's our fault. So far, we didn't know about it, we were ignorant. But now that we have that information, if we don't use it, that's just being foolish. That's where the action is a little different.

Yeah, no, interesting. Well, there's loads in there that you said I'd love to pick up on. I love the word cultivation. So I'd love to come back to that. And I would love to focus on the brain, that brain discussion a little bit more as well. But before that, I mean, obviously, the context that we're living in right now, especially for me in Europe with the war in Ukraine, and the lack of peace has really come to the fore, right? So the urgency of that purpose is really key. And one of the quotes from Gandhi I love is, "Education which does not mold character is absolutely worthless," right? So there is a big part of what you are doing, and we'll get into some specifics with the framework and some really interesting work, but there is this urgency now, even more so now that puts the emphasis on the work that you're doing to really, you know, make a big impact, right?

Couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more. In fact, something that we were discussing on the sidelines of this pre-summit was that it might really be worthwhile to begin to seriously think of ways that we can begin to convince countries and member states to take away some of that defense budgeting and put it into education. Maybe the world might look like a very different place today. We really need to put more funding and effort in education, which puts relationships at the center. And it cannot be economic development that is going to be at the center, but it has to be human flourishing at the center. And once that change in focus begins to happen, the purpose of war should be completely lost. And that's the change that we need to bring about. So I I couldn't agree more that education for peace has to be at the center today and should be emphasized first when children go to school or any higher institution.

Great. And so that idea of the focus on the brain, and as you said, there's a huge amount of understanding we have now that we'd be foolish if we didn't use. But one of the things I just wanted to ask you about was the more kind of expansive view. So one of the things that doesn't sit completely comfortably with me now is that just focusing on the brain, because it feels like the science is also, and, and this is one of the things that seems to be a big principle for you, that all learning is emotional. And therefore there is a, there is a really strong interconnection between neural processes and what you could call the mind and the kind of the extended mind, the embodied mind, the way that we are not just brains, right? We are much more of an expansive entity than that. So I don't know, as a cognitive neuroscientist, what's your take on that kind of view of— I've heard Annie Murphy-Paul call it, we're quite brain-bound when we focus in our language and, and actually maybe that idea of the brain as a machine that we know more about, and therefore we can use that to solve the problems, maybe that's part of the problem somehow.

So there are, there are a number of questions in what you've, you've just referred to, and I'm going to be very honest here. I have some answers, maybe not all of them, and I will attempt to, to share my take on all of this. As, as somebody whose thinking and research has been embedded a lot in the sciences, the whole notion that learning is biological has made a very big impact in the way I began to look at education and the brain. So rather than get into what our thoughts are, or the contents of those thoughts, let's look at something which is a little more tangible, and that is behavior, something that we see around us. And behavior is clearly an external manifestation of how we feel. And increasingly, as people have peered into the brain using magnetic resonance imaging techniques, what has emerged is that all learning and all behavior is cognitive and emotional. Okay, yet at no point in time have any of us been taught how to navigate this emotional space. Okay, we have primarily learned this by observing others, which is through imitation, which is something that we do as human beings. And the fact that our notions of others are often reflections of our own identity. And I often go back to this beautiful line I read about when Michelangelo painted, and that was that God created man in his own image. Okay, so he had already imbibed the idea that even your notion of a superior being is essentially a projection of how far you can push your own self. Whether you believe in God or not is a different matter, but even that projection is somehow determined by what you are seeing in yourself and around you. So it is influenced by a physical manifestation of some kind, because as human beings, concrete objects inform our learning and inform our development. So therefore, going back to the brain and the biological evidence in terms of measurement, gives me some amount of rootedness and groundedness to have belief in that data and those findings and the fact that these get replicated. So whether I do those experiments in India or somebody else does them in Paris or in Sweden or in New York or in Australia, and you find the same findings essentially tell us that there is a replicability in the way human beings think that is emerging out of brain data. And that's what gives me confidence to go back to the way brain explains behavior as something that I feel more comfortable to talk about. So that's probably simplifying what we are as human beings much more, but it's a notion that I find comfortable to go back to. I find there's the fact that I can support whatever I say with some data gives me some amount of support. So that sets my stage on wanting to use the brain as my organ to try and study human behavior. And that has told us now that unlike what we thought earlier, that the brain was modular, it's clearly a set of networks. And those networks, whether they're involved in learning or they're involved in behavior, are cognitive-emotional in nature. And therefore, at any point in time, every decision that we are making is governed by the way we feel at that point in time, and the amount of information that we have at that point in time. It's a combination of those two. How I use those two bits of information determines everything that I do, starting from how strong I want my cup of coffee in the morning, or whether I want to smile at the person who's walking next to me on the street. All of that is determined by it. And all said and done, that's what ultimately life turns out to be— managing relationships with people around you, whether it's at the workplace, in the outside environment or in the world. If that is indeed the case, then why cannot education focus on teaching children how to cultivate relationships? Okay, so given that context, the role of social emotional learning getting combined with cognition is something that I feel forms the heart of, of education and learning today. And here I want to take a little break to try and say When we're talking about cognition here, I want to separate it from academics. We want to talk about cognition in the context of, you know, paying attention, looking at pattern recognition, looking at working memory, looking at flexibility, and from a social-emotional angle, looking at empathy, looking at kindness, looking at grit. So how about looking at education as a means to building these sets of cognitive and emotional skills? And letting the information acquisition, which is which formulas to use when you're doing calculus, which poems to learn, which books to read, as secondary processes that will happen once these basic processes which are important for navigating life and humanity are in place. And the evidence from the neuroscience again provides great support for this, that even when I'm learning to read, I am learning to form new networks in the brain across different regions. And at the same time, because of the social connections I'm able to make, activating areas associated with emotion. So even when I go on to learn these academic processes, it's a combination of cognition and social-emotional processes that are going to come into play. So when I look at this in totality, I feel that combining our findings from neuroscience, brain research and the behavior we see around us, it makes complete sense to put, uh, understanding of the brain at the center of learning and education, even though we might be moving away from broader and bigger concepts of the philosophy of the mind, so on and so forth. But I think that the notion of the thoughts that we develop will ultimately be determined by the circuits that we activate when we engage in that thought. This may sound a little abstract as of now, but that's the way I want to try and link, uh, mind, brain, and education, if I may.

Yeah, no, that's good. And I've got another conversation coming up with Glenn Whitman from the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning, and they use a lot of mind, brain, and education as well. So it will connect nicely with that conversation. So that's interesting. But if I'm understanding you correctly, there's a kind of a foundation of relationships and caring in a broad sense. And then that provides the basis on which we care about the information and then the, you know, the behavior that we may be replicating or imitating, et cetera. One question I had was how far do you feel that, because you said that, so the brain determines the behavior in the world, but then how far do you see it coming back the other way? So then the behavior and the feedback loop of the behavior then informs the way the brain develops.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a, it's a feedback loop. And therefore behaviors that are rewarding, that activate reward networks of the brain are clearly behaviors you often want to go back to because they make you feel good.

Yeah.

Okay. So there is clearly a feedback effect there, and it's impossible to kind of separate the two. They will always work, you know, sort of hand in hand. Brain will determine behavior and behavior will determine brain. Next steps to be taken, because decision-making is a feedback process. You know, I'm watching you as I speak. And when I see recognition on your face, which is— I'm able to do that because I'm able to read facial emotions, maybe reasonably accurately. I know that without explicitly saying it, there are things that we are agreeing on. And at times you will just shake your head and I will know that you have a different point of view. Okay, so the emotion and the information exchange is happening even as we're doing this conversation. And that's what we do most of our lives. So how about trying to understand the coding behind this a little better, and therefore navigating this whole space a little better. And I think that might help in preventing some wars too. And this is something that I've even, where I once discussed with His Holiness, and he had a good laugh about it. And he says, yeah, maybe that's where I look at it in terms of compassion. You know, if I'm going to be compassionate, the chances of receiving compassion back are quite strong. That's what my experience in life has shown, and that's what I promote. I said I couldn't agree more.

Amazing. Yeah, I mean, educating the heart first and then the brain later, maybe.

Yeah, though we know that it's the brain even doing the job of the heart.

But the other, the other principle that we discussed prior to this was, so first one being all learning is emotional and the second one being that all learning is personal. And I think this is also something really interesting that is obviously coming up a great deal in the way that we talk about education. Personal, individual, personalized, individualized. There's different meanings around those different things, I think. But so we've, we've talked about it slightly in the abstract, but also in the general, in the way that the, the emotional networks combined with the, you know, neural networks to help us to care about the things that we're learning. But what about how does my individual kind of network of self and who I am and identity and what my experience, etc., how does that and how do you think that should more inform the way that learning is thought about and designed?

So great question, because in addition to the personalized, there is another factor that is playing a role in forming those those personal individual networks is also genetics. Okay, we know it's, it's a combination of genetics, the environment in which you've grown up, and what you've been exposed to that enables you to learn in a particular way as opposed to another individual. But to some extent, there's also a richness of learning, the paradigms as a consequence of it, that we learn in our specific ways. We focus on, on specific things. And that's why that combination of nature versus nurture is so unique to all learning. But a thought that we often miss out on and probably neglect in that element to be personalized is that there is a common humanity at play here. Okay, so there are things that we might do a little differently or think a little differently. If we are able to agree on the fact that there is a common purpose to our being, and that's where the fact that we are all part of one planet, we are part of one humanity, is at core. We can make allowances for those differences amongst us and allow for that flexibility of thought such that we may allow your thought and my thought to persist. They will not necessarily be radically different. If they are radically different, then there is certainly cause to sit down and try and find why they are radically different and arrive at a, at a solution. But to do that via dialogue and not through war is, is really the difference we are trying to make, because we want to preserve that larger humanity which we agree upon. So then whilst we focus on providing or designing education such that it is personalized and meets the needs of each learner. An equally important component of that whole process is to build not just theory of mind, but also to recognize the fact that as a human being who is part of a society, you are part on— you are responsible for also the well-being of another. We do not live in isolation, but we live in society. That societal structure is a common humanity that binds us has to be at the core of education too. So the fact that somebody else, somebody can flourish at the cost of another is something that a societal structure just will not be able to sustain, then that society will break apart. And that's something that we often lose sight of, you know, that it's the the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. So we are all those parts, but the whole is going to be much bigger. And that's why I think as we understand more about the brain, we also realize it's amazing to see how much of brain tissue is allocated to forming social networks. I mean, if it's that much of brain tissue, that much is devoted to social networks, only that much is devoted to mathematics, only that much is devoted to reading, but so much more is allocated to social networks. So biologically, it's almost as if the brain was set up so that you could persist and survive in a societal structure. And you see this across, you know, mammalian evolution, that the societal structures are the ones that have persisted. Whereas a couple of others have kind of, you know, died away. So there is something that certainly promotes sustainability the moment you're able to look at a larger sort of societal structure, which is connected, that connection is equally important. And I think that's where one always has to be cautious when one goes at or talks about personalized learning, or as you love to call it, the dark side of personalized learning. It cannot all be about me.

Yeah.

It has to be about us.

Yeah, exactly.

That's, that's something we should never lose sight of.

Yeah. No, that's great. And I mean, that's one of the things we were talking about previously that I think actually we are in danger in many societies of incentivizing precisely that individualized atomized kind of structure and prioritizing this, this one against all and, you know, competing with each other. And education does the same thing in this accrual of different capital to get the place at the university or to get better than other people in order to mark yourself out to get a better career, et cetera, et cetera. I think we are in danger. Maybe this is—

Couldn't agree more.

So obvious to say, you know, we really are, have moved past in many situations that social network now just means social media and something, you know, something much more instrumental. We do a lot of strategic communication to build our own social network, but actually the thing that grounds us, the thing that we are fundamentally biologically is part of that network. And I think that's a big challenge for us in education. And as you said, that kind of dark side of personalized learning is that we take education to be purely an individual enterprise that I just want to be more efficient at finding a learning pathway through this content that connects with me and my distinct prior knowledge, my distinct neural networks, and therefore I will be more efficient and successful in this particular pathway of learning. I think the way you say it, learning is personal, not personalized, is, is, is interesting because it's, of course it's personal. We are unique entities, but it's personal in the sense that I also have to respect you are a unique entity and your 'Your right to be here and your right to engage in this learning is just as important as mine, and therefore that brings responsibility with it.' So I think there's something— absolutely, there is a dark side to the personalized learning conversation.

And I think it's time that education systems began to emphasize collaboration over competition. We have to start doing that, and this has to be something that we consciously bring into classrooms. Until we make this explicit, and I'm— it's very sad, but one of the things that we have learned over the years is that reward is very strongly associated with learning and motivation. And if we are able to see the rewards that emerge out of a collaborative effort, how you are able to do so much more than what you did by yourself, you know, I think that message will begin to drive home, which comes back to a point that you and I have talked about in the past. Education so far, or lately, has been so bookish in nature, you know, we have to take it out of the books and into life. It has to result in changes in attitudes and behaviors and in flexibility. It has to become experiential. And I like to think a little bit, in fact, as I've been watching the crowds at airports, as I've traveled myself, that whilst there is revenge travel happening, people have also rediscovered the joy of being with human beings again. You know, it was great to be able to do all these things online. But the joy that I felt when I met the person was of a completely different nature, the reward network that activated was completely different. And I want to go back and experience that again. So we have some of that proof emerging. Okay. We have to make, make this explicit in the classroom and make it come alive for students. I think if we do this, if you'd see kids, they miss school, not for the classes or the academics, but for the social connections that it brought them to the fact that they played together, they ate together, they laughed together. It was for that, that they missed it. So it already exists. I think we just have to provide it the right kind of nurturing and this will soon become a very central part of learning.

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? It's almost flipping it because it makes me think of the hidden curriculum from my sociological background.

Yes, absolutely.

It's always been hidden. It's always been there. It's never not been there, but it's never been prioritized and it's always been almost kept hidden. But those things exist, you know?

Yes.

Those interactions and the depth of reward that comes from those social interactions. Has always existed in school and it's been quite pathologized in very hierarchical ways and different, you know, different things you could say, of course, but it's always been there. But maybe it's just about bringing those things that were in the hidden curriculum much more into the explicit kind of designed curriculum.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. That's one of the reasons why. So by next week, when I'm going, I'm traveling to the United States for Games for Change. It's something that we are advocating very strongly for in game design too, you know. You spend so much time and effort designing games that help you shoot just at the target, you know, and that's what gives you your reward. How about trying to design games where you get points for helping somebody and encouraging reward to emerge out of that? And soon that would become a way of life because that's where children will get reward. So if we can prime or nurture that feeling of collaboration that exists to become a way of life, I think education can, you know, feel quite optimistic about the future.

Yeah, no, definitely. I would love to ask you specifically about the LIBRA framework because I know you've done, you know, these are all great ideas and they're all big ideas, but actually sometimes we need something quite tangible and concrete to help us as teachers to make the next step to, you know, what do we do when we go back into the classroom next week or after the vacation? The LIBRA framework sets this out in a really interesting way with the four domains of mindfulness, empathy, compassion, critical inquiry, which just starts to take some of those ideas that we've been talking about and put them into really quite specific and tangible buckets that you could then act on. You can do something with in the classroom.

So I don't mean to be rude, but I'm gonna make a small correction to what you said. The LIBRA framework is really more in terms of designing digital pedagogies. Okay, okay, sorry. Okay, that looks at how you want to use reflection, inquiry, gaming, podcasts, videos, all of these to be able to cultivate learning. Okay, in terms of modalities. But I think what you're referring to really is MGIP's SEL framework, which is the EMC² framework, capitalized rather on Einstein's formula of EMC², But given how much he valued peace too, and especially in his dialogues with Gandhi, to now give it a slightly different twist and to say that you want to build empathy, mindfulness, compassion, and critical inquiry as the foundational skills in, in children and nurture them as they grow. So they have to be central to all the learning that you do, and the academics is peripheral. It's more in terms of the information that is required for you to probably get into the depths of different disciplines. But in terms of education, the focus really should be on cultivating these specific competencies, which all, by the way, are part of a distinct circuit in the brain. And one of the things we find is if you cultivate each of these competencies, you actually are able to nurture the whole brain. And therefore we think this is a whole brain approach to learning, not a modular approach to learning. Okay. And we think that as a consequence of building these competencies, we will be building kinder, compassionate, more peaceful citizens for the future. And that is probably our best bet at ensuring a happy, sustainable, flourishing planet. So that's sort of the larger goal here. And we're trying to do it with teacher training, we're trying to do it through the games we design, we're trying to build ways to embed this in whether you're teaching geography, whether you're teaching history, whether you're teaching mathematics, by the examples that you would use also, how you can bring these in and thereby also enable children to be able to stay connected with their learning, whether it's happening externally in terms of doing assignments, as well as how they are feeling about themselves as they are doing this learning. So connect between the inner and the outer self, which we clearly recognize is an important part of having the child feel safe and grounded during his learning.

Yeah, and the thing I particularly liked about it was I think often we talk about competencies and we talk about these, you know, transdisciplinary competencies, lots of different language around it, and we end up with these big long lists of things, you know, we've got to be covering all of these different things. And the thing I particularly liked about it was its focus, because you can see within those 4 things the individual, the personal, the learning is personal, but you can, you can obviously see that learning is emotional, it's in there as well. You can see the collaboration because it's about empathy and compassion. You can see the the critical cognitive part, cuz we're not saying that that is not absolutely essential, you know, that kind of rational engagement with the world.

Absolutely.

Decision making, et cetera, that comes from critical inquiry. And then also that ability to, as an individual, stop and reflect and be present and be mindful.

So I, for me, beautifully summarized, Tim, I must say. Very, very impressive the way you summarized it.

Thank you so much.

Lovely.

Good. Well, I, I just, it struck me that it was a nice, very concise, focused way to talk about some really important fundamental ideas. So yeah, no, it's very interesting. So just then to finish with, just perhaps you could give some examples of some of those games and the courses and the things that you're trying then to do to bring this to a teacher audience and to, to schools and policymakers.

Sure. So I'll keep it really short in the interest of time. One course that's really important and relevant these days for teachers that we've built is called SEL for Schools. That's to build teacher competencies for their own social-emotional skills. And then an SEL for Classrooms, which now enables the teacher to find ways to build these skills in the children in their classroom. So again, for teachers to put relationships as central to being cultivated in the classroom, which enables not just classroom management, but a space where learning can be fun, engaging, and meet the needs of all learners. We, we often get too caught up with the information that has to be conveyed rather than the peripherals, but the peripherals set the stage for that information acquisition, and they are now emerging to be very, very critical in learning. In terms of games, there's one very interesting game that we built recently on— rather, we build game-based courses. We take games that might be available commercially or otherwise, and use the power of the narrative of the game to emphasize the EMC square skills. So we did that recently for a game called Bury Me, My Love, about which is a young girl who's escaping from Syria into Europe, and navigating the space. So looking at the whole question of migration, but now through the eyes of this young lady, And so how you— she needs empathy, she needs compassion, she also needs critical inquiry as she's navigating this process. But the narrative of the game helps make the case so much more effectively in the classroom. Then we've done a very interesting course which is now becoming quite popular, is looking at climate change with an inclusion of emotion and recognizing that some of the resistances to climate change are because of the emotional dissonance or the cognitive dissonance it can bring about in your brain because of the change in lifestyle that needs to be made. So you know, it's the right thing to do, but your emotions are not yet ready to go about doing that. So how do you navigate that space to be able to make that change? Because to drive some of those changes, you will need changes in behavior, and a change in behavior, as we discussed earlier, comes from cognition and emotion. So until they are both addressed, those changes in lifestyle will not begin to happen.

Yeah.

So those are some examples. There are many more on our website, which is called framerspace.com, which is our learning platform that hosts all the courses that we make. They are all free, and I hope they can be useful to teachers, parents, students, wherever they are in the world. And if there are specific courses that you would like us to focus on, we'd be very happy to have you write to us, and we'd be happy to make those courses too.

Fantastic, amazing. Thank you, Nandini. I mean, the work you're doing is amazing and so important, I really feel, particularly right now, as we said, but in general, it's just brilliant. So thank you so much for taking the time. Just, I said I would come back to the word cultivation, but you used it there again, and I think that's just such an important concept. I've talked to other people about the kind of the metaphor of gardening and cultivating.

Oh yes.

And as you said, the teachers need to be in a cultivating environment as well. So the leaders need to be cultivating and all levels of the system so that we can actually allow some of these competencies to develop and emerge rather than, you know, forcing them in a much more instrumental or, or, you know, aggressive way that we have done in the past. The cultivation is the, the interaction with the reality, the brain and the environment and the body.

Keeps getting honed. It's never complete. It just keeps getting better. You know, it's like carving a piece of art, which just gets better and better as you work more on it, or a piece of music. And I think that's what makes cultivation so real. You cultivate plants, you cultivate good relationships, you cultivate good friendships, and you can cultivate kindness too.

So brilliant. Yeah, exactly. And you can't cultivate things in your own head. You've got to cultivate things in relation with reality, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. So nice talking to you, Tim Logan. Thank you. You made my day today. Thank you.

Amazing. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. We hope you've enjoyed this episode. Please feel free to continue the dialogues with our guests with us on our blog or on social media or within your own networks.