Tag: Lessons

  • Lessons to Prospective International Students About Policing of Black Men

    Lessons to Prospective International Students About Policing of Black Men

    Last week, I was talking with a young man, Pinot, during my time in another country. He told me that he really wants to visit America, but one thing seriously frightens him: the possibility of police officers stopping, harassing and potentially inflicting violence on him. He asked me if these situations really happen as often as it seems. Pinot is Black. That conversation made me wonder how many talented, Black prospective international students share the same fears and ultimately opt out of applying to U.S. universities.

    Yesterday, I was scrolling one of my social media timelines and saw this CBS News video of police officers in Jacksonville, Fla., terrorizing William McNeil Jr. I felt my blood pressure and anxiety rising as I watched. I had not previously seen it, but maybe Pinot had. It is plausible that others around the world have as well. Videos like these teach young people across the U.S. and abroad a set of heartbreaking, inexcusable truths about crimes committed against Black men in America.

    As was the case in last week’s conversation with Pinot, I would not be able to tell a talented young Black male prospective college applicant from Africa, Jamaica, London, Paris or anyplace else that what he has seen on television or social media are rare, isolated occurrences. I would be lying. Truth is, racial profiling and police brutality happen far too often. As I said to Pinot, “What you see and hear about this is not not true.” There is far too much evidence that it remains pervasive.

    I have often told a personal story to audiences comprised of hundreds (sometimes thousands) in the U.S. that I decided against sharing with Pinot because I did not want to deepen his fears about what could happen to him if he ever visited America. I am recapping the incident here.

    In July 2007, I became an Ivy League professor. I also purchased my first home. I was a 31-year-old Black man with a Ph.D. Three friends and I went out to a nightclub to celebrate my new job at the University of Pennsylvania and my home purchase. Bars and clubs close at 2:00 a.m. in Philadelphia. My friends and I were hanging on a corner saying our goodbyes after the nightclub closed. Several other nearby establishments also had just shut down. Hence, there were lots of people on the other three corners and along the streets.

    A cop drove past my friends and me and said something that we did not hear because it was very crowded and noisy around us. We were doing nothing wrong and therefore had no reason to believe he was talking directly to the four of us. Seconds later, he jumped out of his patrol car, put his hands on his baton and yelled to us, “I said get off the fucking corner!” We were shocked and scared. The situation also hurt and angered us, but we were collectively powerless in the moment. We put our hands up and peacefully walked away. I cried uncontrollably during my drive home.

    I mentioned that I was an Ivy League professor with a Ph.D. My three friends also worked in higher education at the time (and still do). They also are Black men. Each of them has a Ph.D. No one, regardless of educational attainment, socioeconomic status or professional accomplishments, deserves to be treated like we were that night. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that our doctorates and university affiliations afforded us no immunity from police misconduct. To that cop, we were just four harassable Black men standing on a street corner.

    I wanted to tell Pinot that being stopped, undeservingly terrorized and potentially murdered by police officers in America for no reason would be unlikely to happen to him. But I could not. Upon reflection, I wonder how many other young Black men from other countries say “no, thanks” to visiting the U.S. or applying for admission to our universities because of the fears that Pinot articulated to me. If they saw the McNeil video and others like it on social media, YouTube or elsewhere, they would be right to doubt my or anyone else’s insistence that interactions with American law enforcement agents are generally safe for citizens, visitors or international students who are Black.

    By the way, perhaps it is good that Pinot did not ask me how the police officer who smashed McNeil’s car window, punched him in the face, threw him to the ground and attacked him was ultimately held accountable. According to an NPR article published this week, that cop was recently cleared of excessive force charges. Surely I would have lost all credibility with Pinot had I attempted to convince him that he would somehow be absolutely safe from similar acts of police brutality as a Black man in America.

    Shaun Harper is University Professor and Provost Professor of Education, Business and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership. His most recent book is titled Let’s Talk About DEI: Productive Disagreements About America’s Most Polarizing Topics.

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  • Lessons for Students on Imperialism

    Lessons for Students on Imperialism

    I have spent 12 of my 28 years in higher education working in top business schools—three in graduate admissions and nine as a tenured professor. I especially love teaching and mentoring MBA students, in part because I know that most of them are going to ascend to leadership in corporations, government agencies and other organizations in the future. I want them to leave my classrooms with the practical skills required to solve complex contemporary business problems.

    Importantly, I also want students to enter leadership roles with the right values. Prioritizing profits over everything at all costs is not one of them. I do not teach students to misuse their power to take things that do not belong to them. To be absolutely sure, I have never instructed them to hate or in any way despise America. But I also have not taught them that America is so exceptional that it can, should and must snatch other people’s land and oil just because our elected officials feel entitled to or desire ownership of those things.

    Students in K-12 schools and on college campuses are receiving a different lesson right now from our federal government. Specifically, it is an instructive lesson on imperialism—the act of a powerful nation exerting control over less powerful countries, often leading to the violent seizure of land and other valuable material resources.

    After capturing and arresting Venezuela president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, U.S. president Donald Trump declared that the U.S. would be “running” the country. In business, a CEO of one company kidnapping and imprisoning the top executive of another, then grabbing that company’s assets and proclaiming oneself the new leader “for years” (as Trump said of the “only time will tell” period of self-appointed U.S. leadership in Venezuela) would be gangster. It seems like a dramatized fictitious saga that students would see in a movie. They are now witnessing it in real life. And they are learning from it.

    Beyond Venezuela, the Trump administration shamelessly has its sights on Greenland. President Trump seems determined to take it. The imperialist lesson for students is that people’s homelands can be bought or forcibly conquered by a greedy superpower. In history courses, many students have learned about this occurring in various parts of the world centuries ago. Others have seen and engaged in critical analyses of it happening more recently in other geographic regions outside of North America, which has resulted in devastating wars and tremendous losses of life. But they have not seen firsthand or read in their courses about the U.S. recently engaging in such selfish demonstrations of imperialism—until now.

    Between them, my two younger brothers have nine children. At this point, all the kids have been two-year-olds. Uncle Shaun would teach his beautiful nieces and nephews the same lesson that Professor Harper would impart to his impressively smart graduate students: You cannot just snatch other people’s stuff because you want it. An adorable two-year-old may not understand or comply with this lesson, but business and government leaders most certainly should. I am not suggesting that educators treat collegians like toddlers. But perhaps we should not take for granted that they understand what imperialism is, how it harms people and why they must resist it when they amass power and someday ascend to leadership.

    Shaun Harper is University Professor and Provost Professor of Education, Business and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership. His most recent book is titled, Let’s Talk About DEI: Productive Disagreements About America’s Most Polarizing Topics.

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  • Lessons on Renee Good’s Death and the Politization of Facts

    Lessons on Renee Good’s Death and the Politization of Facts

    Darnella Frazier received a Pulitzer Prize for capturing Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd in May 2020. The then–17-year-old Black girl was not pursuing journalistic acclaim; instead, she instinctively reached for her cellphone to document unspeakable police misconduct.

    There is a chance that without Frazier’s footage, the facts concerning Floyd’s death might have been disputed. There are many reasons why this tragedy ignited protests around the world—one of them is that we all saw with our own eyes how Chauvin pressed his knee on an unarmed Black man’s neck, ultimately killing him. We saw it. Personally, nearly six years later, I remain incapable of unseeing it.

    A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis last week. The tragedy occurred just blocks away from where Floyd died. Like Frazier, several eyewitnesses recorded the incident involving Good; her wife, Becca; and ICE agents. Videos have since emerged capturing the shooting from multiple angles. One seems to potentially show that Good’s vehicle may have struck an ICE officer, a claim that President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem made just hours after the tragedy occurred. These leaders declared this to justify the killing, absent a formal investigation.

    Millions of people around the world have seen the videos of Good’s killing on television and social media. Doing so compelled thousands across the U.S. to take to streets in protest. Presumably, they decided for themselves that they saw what they saw, that it was real and that an egregious crime had been committed that resulted in the loss of a mother’s life. Despite this, the Trump administration continues to cling to and articulate an alternative set of facts.

    Just as people around the world are listening to dueling interpretations of what happened to Good, so too are students in K–12 schools and on college campuses across America. Those who have scrolled social media platforms or watched news with their families in recent days have likely seen at least one video showing the ICE agent firing his gun into Good’s vehicle. Their government leaders are telling them that they don’t see what they see. This is noteworthy for at least three reasons.

    First, it teaches students how to heartlessly politicize the loss of life. Defending the federal government’s actions is seemingly more important than is empathy for Good, her wife and children, and those in her community who witnessed what happened on a snowy Minnesota street that day. The lesson for students is that partisan loyalty and the advancement of a White House administration’s policy agenda (in this case, the mass deportation of immigrants) justify cruel responses to a citizen’s death. Also, they are learning that just about anything rationalizes the relentless pursuit of a partisan mission, regardless of who gets hurt and what crimes are committed.

    Students also are learning that investigations and rigorous analyses of facts are unimportant. Eyewitnesses who were there saw what they saw. They did not need an investigation. Videos that they subsequently released present their versions of what happened.

    Even still, Good and the ICE officer who killed her deserve a nonpartisan, uncontaminated investigation; that is what our laws and policies have long specified. Notwithstanding, the second terrible lesson from last week is that it is seemingly acceptable for elected officials and other leaders to stand on politics in defense of a crime—in this case, one that resulted in the loss of a citizen’s life.

    In recognition of its one-year anniversary, I published an Education Week article in which I insisted that educators teach facts about the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection (including the truth about the demographic composition of the rioters who committed crimes that day). I predicted then that in future years, there would be efforts to rewrite history and minimize what happened. Because it was just five years ago, many Americans and people around the world remember what we saw. Notwithstanding, because of politics, we have been repeatedly told that something different happened on Jan. 6 and that it was patriots, not criminals, who stormed the Capitol.

    Similarly, because of politics, students are being taught that it is acceptable to gaslight people who saw what they saw on videos emerging from Minneapolis. They are learning that facts and what will eventually become the historical account of Good’s death matter less than do partisan commitments.

    Some of these students will someday become U.S. presidents, congresspersons, governors and leaders. All of this is dangerous for our democracy because it is guaranteed to exacerbate political polarization and result in additional betrayals of our nation’s justice system.

    Shaun Harper is University Professor and Provost Professor of Education, Business and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership. His most recent book is titled Let’s Talk About DEI: Productive Disagreements About America’s Most Polarizing Topics.

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  • 5 lessons learned from top school administrators in 2025

    5 lessons learned from top school administrators in 2025

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

    In 2025, K-12 Dive’s conversations with school and district leaders covered best practices, challenges overcome and lessons learned on a variety of topics, from providing remediation to students to engaging with school communities. As 2026 gets underway, we’re taking a look back at those conversations to spotlight five key takeaways that offer guidance and insight as you enter the second half of the school year.

    Keep an ear out for the voices that aren’t always heard

    “I am responsive to the community I’m serving, a true public servant. And in our community here, the historically marginalized populations are sometimes not invited and, in certain cases, are just simply invisible. What I try to do … is not to put them to the side — because that would be inappropriate as well — but I hear them loud and clear.

    This is a headshot of Alex Marrero, superintendent of Denver Public Schools in Colorado.

    Alex Marrero

    Permission granted by Denver Public Schools

     

    “I’m concerned about the community member who may not be the fifth-generation Coloradan but is in Colorado because they migrated here. I’m concerned about those who have a different way of seeing education. The cultural component plays a major part.

    “There’s certain cultures where they don’t feel like they should say what the school system should do, because where they’re from, the school system is usually right and ‘Who are they to impose their thoughts?’ How can I empower them to say, ‘That’s not how we function here?’ That’s the hardest part.”

    – Alex Marrero, superintendent of Denver Public Schools in Denver, Colorado

    Remediation doesn’t have to feel like ‘baby work’

    “Sometimes, people think middle school students will feel embarrassed that they are lacking in some skills. And you do have some students that do feel that way.

    This is a headshot of Thelma Ramsey-Bryant, principal of John L. Costley Middle School in East Orange, New Jersey.

    Thelma Ramsey-Bryant

    Permission granted by Thelma Ramsey-Bryant

     

    “We find that sometimes students have behavior issues, and when you get to the root of what the behavior issues are, it’s because they have difficulty reading, and they don’t want other students to know, so they act out.

    “We started talking to students about, ‘We want to help you with your reading, and these are the ways that we’re going to do it.’ I had a teacher here who was able to reach the students in a way that didn’t make it feel like it was baby work. We presented them with things that were on their level, but helped them understand that this was going to make them better readers, and they actually gravitated toward it, and they appreciated it.”

    – Thelma Ramsey-Bryant, principal of John L. Costley Middle School in East Orange, New Jersey

    When adopting new tech, think first about schools’ needs

    “The biggest thing is just not to be scared, but to ask specifically, ‘What is it that we need? What need are we trying to address?’

    This is a headshot of Scott Langford, director of schools for Sumner County Schools in Tennessee.

    Scott Langford

    Permission granted by Scott Langford

     

    “I think [artificial intelligence] is best suited right now to meet needs that are defined, like individualized or niche needs that a school might have. … If you identify the need, there are plenty of great AI companies out there. 

    “You also need to talk to not just a sales rep but the CEO or someone fairly high up in the company. In the past, it was just, ‘You can have whatever you want as long as it looks like this, and then you bend what you’re doing to what we produced.’ Now, the best AI companies will almost custom-build a product to meet the needs of your school or district.”

    – Scott Langford, superintendent of Sumner County Schools in Gallatin, Tennessee

    Some forms of communication cross language barriers

    “Graphs and charts are universal. It’s really helpful to show a family the picture of [a student’s] growth trajectory, to show them the growth line of other students in that grade level in that school versus the national average versus their own student.

    This is a headshot of Heidi Sipe, superintendent of Umatilla School District in Umatilla, Ore.

    Heidi Sipe

    Permission granted by Heidi Sipe

     

    “It’s really helpful to drive home the point of ‘Look how much they’ve grown’ or ‘Wait a minute. We have real concerns.’ … Especially when we can see those positive growth trajectories, that’s just really comforting to parents to see that their child is on track.

    “And even if they’re not where they need to be for achievement yet, if they’re growing at or above their peers, we know they’re going to hit that growth trajectory or that growth target, and they’re on the right trajectory. That’s good for parents to hear.”

    – Heidi Sipe, superintendent of Umatilla School District in Umatilla, Oregon

    Every role matters in a district turnaround

    “I mean, we were growing [academically] before the pandemic, and it kind of gets lost in the mix, because a lot of districts haven’t grown much since the pandemic. Some haven’t even returned to their original scores they had pre-pandemic. We rebounded very fast.

    This is a headshot of Darin Brawley, superintendent of Compton Unified School District in California.

    Darin Brawley

    Permission granted by Compton Unified School District

     

    “There’s a lot we need to credit to that. First off, we have a fabulous teaching staff, and we also have great administrators and great students who work toward the common goal of continuous improvement. We have a process in place that really is modeled after Malcolm Baldridge’s performance excellence standards, where we’re constantly benchmarking our performance against our surrounding competitors — aka surrounding school districts — and identifying those districts that we want to perform better than.

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  • Global lessons for the UK: how Singapore and India are embedding AI in education

    Global lessons for the UK: how Singapore and India are embedding AI in education

    This blog was kindly authored by Dr Karryl Kim Sagun Trajano (Research Fellow, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Dr Gayatri Devi Pillai (Assistant Professor, HHMSPB NSS College for Women, Trivandrum), Professor Mohanan Pillai (Pondicherry University), Dr Hillary Briffa (Senior Lecturer, Department of War Studies, KCL), Dr Anna Plunkett (Lecturer, Department of War Studies, KCL), Dr Ksenia Kirkham (Senior Lecturer, Department of War Studies, KCL),  Dr Özge Söylemez (Lecturer, Defence Studies Department, KCL), Dr Lucas Knotter (Lecturer, Department of Politics, Languages, and International Studies University of Bath), and Dr Chris Featherstone (Associate Lecturer, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of York).

    This blog draws on insights from the 2025 BISA-ISA joint Workshop on AI Pedagogies: Practice, Prompts and Problems in Contemporary Higher Education, sponsored by the ASPIRE (Academic Scholarship in Politics and International Relations Education) Network.

    As the UK continues to work out how best to regulate and support the use of AI in higher education, other countries have already begun to put their ideas into practice. Singapore and India, in particular, offer useful contrasts. Both link technological innovation to questions of social inclusion, though they do so in different ways: Singapore focuses on resilience and lifelong learning, while India emphasises access and the use of vernacular languages. Comparatively, their experiences show how education policy can harness AI to advance both innovation and inclusion, making technological progress a driver of social cohesion. British tertiary education institutions have, for a long time, drawn international lessons mainly from their close western neighbours, but it would be wise to broaden their horizons.

    Singapore: AI for resilience and lifelong learning

    Singapore’s approach to AI in education is rooted in its Smart Nation 2.0 vision, which emphasises the three goals of “Growth, Community and Trust”. The government aims to develop a digitally skilled workforce of 15,000 AI practitioners by 2027, linking education reform to national capability-building. Within this framework, AI pedagogy is closely tied to the idea of social resilience, which is understood in Singaporean policy as the capacity of society to remain cohesive, adaptable, and functional in the face of disruption.

    This vision is implemented through a coordinated ecosystem connecting local universities, AI Singapore (AISG), and the SkillsFuture programme. SkillsFuture uses AI-driven analytics to personalise re-skilling courses, design decision-making simulations, and encourage collaboration between government, industry, and academia. The Centre for Strategic Futures extends this agenda by promoting “AI for personal resilience”, framing digital competence as part of civic participation and collective preparedness.

    Even so, workshop discussions highlighted persistent challenges. Access to elite universities remains uneven, and foreign workers are largely excluded from many lifelong-learning initiatives. Participants also noted that AI training tends to focus on technical ability, leaving less room for ethical debate or critical reflection. To some extent, the drive to innovate has moved faster than efforts to make AI education fully inclusive or reflective.

    Singapore’s experience nonetheless illustrates how AI can be built into the wider social purpose of education. For the UK, it offers a reminder that digital innovation and civic responsibility can reinforce one another when universities treat learning as a public good. Graduates who understand both the capabilities and the limits of AI are better equipped to navigate complex socio-political, and technological environments. When built into lifelong-learning systems, AI education helps create the networks of knowledge and trust that make societies more adaptable and resilient.

    India: AI for inclusivity and vernacular access

    If Singapore shows what is possible through tight coordination in a small, centralised system, India demonstrates how the same principles are tested when applied across a country of continental scale and diversity. India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 sets out a comprehensive vision for transforming the education system to meet the demands of a rapidly changing global economy. It aims to raise the higher education gross enrolment ratio to 50% by 2035 and introduces flexible, learner-centred degree structures designed to encourage creativity and critical thinking. Artificial intelligence is central to this reform, “catalysing” both curricular innovation and system-wide modernisation.

    The National Digital Education Architecture (NDEAR) and the AI for All initiative embed AI within educational design and delivery. The University of Kerala’s Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUGP), implemented under the NEP in 2024-25, is demonstrative of how these reforms are taking shape. AI tools now support continuous assessment, effectively and efficiently enabling educators to tailor material to individual learning needs and diverse assessment methods. These developments signal a wider shift in pedagogy, from one-off examinations toward continuous and formative evaluation that prioritises understanding and reflection.

    At the heart of the strategy lies India’s focus on linguistic and cultural inclusion. NEP 2020 mandates the use of regional languages in instruction and assessment, aligning with government programmes that promote vernacular content and accessible digital platforms. This multilingual approach helps extend higher education to students previously marginalised by linguistic barriers, while AI-assisted translation and adaptive interfaces further improve access for learners with disabilities.

    As with Singapore’s efforts, however, India’s reform agenda is not without its shortcomings. The NEP reflects the aspirations of a growing middle class and the logic of global competitiveness, raising concerns about commercialisation and uneven implementation, particularly at scale. Still, it represents one of the most ambitious efforts worldwide to connect digital innovation with social justice through deliberate policy design. For the UK, the lesson is clear: technological efficiency must be matched by cultural understanding and genuine inclusion, ensuring that advances in AI expand participation in higher education rather than deepen existing divides.

    Comparative insights for the UK

    Singapore and India approach AI in education from very different starting points, and each offers lessons worth considering. Singapore demonstrates the impact of close coordination between government and universities, supported by steady investment in applied research. India, meanwhile, is emblematic of how digital inclusion can extend beyond elite institutions when policy design takes account of linguistic diversity and regional inequality.

    For the UK, these examples point to a shared message: progress depends on coherence. Many initiatives already exist, from Joint Information Systems Committee Jisc’s advancement of the digital capabilities framework to Advance HE’s support to prepare for an AI-enabled future and the Russell Group’s guidance on generative AI, but they remain generally disconnected to date.

    Learning from Singapore and India could help the UK move towards a more consistent approach. That might involve:

    • developing a national framework for AI in higher education that sets clear expectations around ethics and inclusion;
    • funding staff training and digital literacy programmes inspired by Singapore’s emphasis on lifelong learning;
    • supporting multilingual and accessible AI tools that mirror India’s focus on linguistic and regional diversity;
    • building evaluation mechanisms to understand how AI adoption affects equality of opportunity.

    In the end, the challenge is less about technology, and more about governance. The UK has the capacity to lead in responsible AI education if policy connects local innovation to a national vision grounded in fairness and public trust.

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  • Lessons Learned from Students Using AI Inappropriately in My Class – Faculty Focus

    Lessons Learned from Students Using AI Inappropriately in My Class – Faculty Focus

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  • Gender disparity in university leadership: what lessons can East Africa learn from the UK and Europe?

    Gender disparity in university leadership: what lessons can East Africa learn from the UK and Europe?

    This blog was kindly authored by Naomi Lumutenga, Executive Director and co-founder of Higher Education Resource Services (East Africa).

    Despite commendable interventions in recent decades, a gendered leadership gap persists at varying levels within higher education institutions. In 2024, women led 27% of the top 200 universities in the US; 36% in the top UK universities; 55% in the Netherlands’ top 11; and 29% in Germany’s top 21. In contrast, female leadership was far less common in Sub-Saharan Africa: only two of Ethiopia’s 46 universities, two of Tanzania’s 60, and six of South Africa’s 26 public universities were headed by women. While some may argue that comparisons with Western institutions are unfair due to their longstanding systems, the disparity highlights persistent structural barriers to gender parity in university leadership. Shifting focus from individual to organisational transformation can deliver change. As an example, long-standing financial systems have been leapfrogged. Currently, it is quicker to wire money to and within many African countries, compared to Europe or the USA. Linear comparisons along time periods, to effect change, do not, therefore, tell the full story; the real focus should be on the political will from within universities to acknowledge the value in and shift leadership towards gender parity.

    Our organisation, (Higher Education Resource Services East Africa) addresses gender equality in universities, as these institutions shape future leaders. Prestigious institutions like the University of Oxford have produced multiple prime ministers and policymakers across the globe, as the recent HEPI / Kaplan Soft Power Index demonstrates. In East Africa, notable alumni of Uganda’s Makerere University include past and serving national leaders like veteran Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and Benjamin Mkapa (Tanzania); Mwai Kibaki (Kenya); Paul Kagame (Rwanda); Milton Obote (Uganda); and Joseph Kabila (Democratic Republic of Congo). However, Makerere University (unlike the University of Oxford) has never had a female Vice Chancellor.

     The structure and landscape of such institutions matter because they model frameworks and practices for the communities they serve. The persistent unequal representation triggered the work of HERS-EA that culminated, in part, in our recent publication.

    Findings from our unpublished study conducted in 2024 across 35  universities in East Africa illustrated the situation starkly.  This study was conducted by Makerere University in collaboration with HERS-East Africa, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The aim was to analyse the underlying barriers that prevent women from progressing into leadership and, for those who advance, from thriving. While some of the findings might be culturally unique to East African contexts, the majority were acknowledged, at the annual Engagement Scholarship Consortium conference in Portland, USA (October 2024), as being relevant to any higher education institution. In Japan, for example, there is evidence of cultural pressure exerted differently when women seek promotion; as Kathy Matsui asserts, women decline promotional offers for fear of how they might be treated when/if they get pregnant.

    Our study of premier universities in East Africa found that, despite gender equality policies, female leadership remains rare: only two of seven top universities had a female Chancellor (a ceremonial role), none had a female Vice Chancellor, and just one had a female Deputy Vice Chancellor (who was nearing retirement). With respect to enrolment, while most institutions claimed gender parity at admission, few tracked or reported gender disaggregated data at graduation or PhD completion, and evidence of tracking progress was limited.

    PhDs, research leadership, and grant management are important for university leadership, so we highlighted these areas and addressed implicit institutional norms.   Drawing on these lived experiences, we concluded that gender discrimination in university leadership persists through biased job criteria, age limits, and interview questions. Other barriers include a lack of accountability, inadequate strategies against sexual harassment, and poor support for women to complete PhDs.

    Co-created recommendations included trialling an adapted equivalent of the non-punitive Athena Swan Charter, which develops a culture of self-assessment while mitigating potential backlash. The Athena Swan Charter was initiated in the UK in 2005, and it is gaining global traction. It provides a sliding scale of progression towards gender equality, from bronze to silver and gold. Other proposed interventions included providing writing bootcamps with childcare and research advisors present, away from family and other distractions. Aspects of the quota system and structural frameworks in Scandinavian countries were discussed, but while lessons can be learnt from these transformational shifts, the real stumbling block is the lack of political will for changing norms rather than individual women within East African institutions. However, change is possible. Rwanda’s post-1994 Genocide national policies include quotas, and they are revised every three years to assess progress towards gender equality in all sectors. Currently, women hold 61.3% of the total seats in parliament, and they occupy 66% of the total seats in cabinets. Overall, Rwanda is now considered one of the best achievers in the world for gender equality. Perhaps lessons can be learnt from Rwanda’s progress that can give us all reason to hope.

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  • Colleges build environmental lessons into degrees

    Colleges build environmental lessons into degrees

    by Olivia Sanchez, The Hechinger Report
    November 5, 2025

    LA JOLLA, Calif. — On a Thursday this fall, hundreds of students at the University of California, San Diego, were heading to classes that, at least on paper, seemed to have very little to do with their majors. 

    Hannah Jenny, an economics and math major, was on their way to a class on sustainable development. Angelica Pulido, a history major who aspires to work in the museum world, was getting ready for a course on gender and climate justice. Later that evening, others would show up for a lecture on economics of the environment, where they would learn how to calculate the answer to questions such as: “How many cents extra per gallon of gas are people willing to pay to protect seals from oil spills?”

    Although most of these students don’t aspire to careers in climate science or advocacy, the university is betting that it’s just as important for them to understand the science and societal implications of climate change as it is for them to understand literature and history, even if they’re not planning to become writers or historians. UCSD is perhaps the first major public university in the country to require all undergraduate students to take a class on climate change to earn their degree. 

    The requirement, which rolled out with first-year students last fall, came about because UCSD leaders believe students won’t be prepared for the workforce if they don’t understand climate change. Around the globe, global warming is already causing severe droughts, water scarcity, fires, rising sea levels, flooding, storms and declining biodiversity; leaders at UCSD argue every job will be affected. 

    And even as President Donald Trump dismisses climate change as a hoax and cancels funding for research on it, other colleges are also exploring how to ensure students are knowledgeable about the subject. Arizona State University began requiring that students take a class in sustainability last year, while San Francisco State University added a climate justice class requirement to begin this fall. 

    “You can’t avoid climate change,” said Amy Lerner, a professor in the urban planning department at UCSD. “You can’t escape it in the private sector. You can’t escape it in the public sector. It’s just everywhere.” Students, she said, must be made ready to engage with all of its likely consequences.

    Related: Want to read more about how climate change is shaping education? Subscribe to our free newsletter.

    UCSD, a public university that serves roughly 35,000 undergraduate students, is not demanding that everyone sign up for Climate Change 101. Instead, students can fulfill the requirement by taking any of more than 50 classes in at least 23 disciplines across the university, including sustainable development, the course Jenny is taking. 

    There’s also psychology of the climate crisis, religion and ecology, energy economics, and several classes in the environmental science and oceanography departments, among others. And leaders at the university are working to develop more classes that satisfy the requirement, including one on the life cycle of a computer.

    Bryan Alexander, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and author of a book on higher education and the climate crisis, said that while colleges have long taught about climate change in classes related to ecology, climatology and environmental science, it’s only been in the last decade or so that he’s seen other disciplines tackle the topic. 

    Climate change, Alexander said, “is the new liberal arts” — and colleges should take it seriously. 

    K. Wayne Yang, a UCSD provost who served on the original group that advocated for the requirement, said every industry and career field will experience the effects of climate change in some way. Health care providers need to know how to treat people who have been exposed to extreme heat or wildfire smoke; psychologists need to understand climate anxiety; and café owners need to know how the price of coffee changes in response to droughts or other natural disasters in coffee-growing regions.  

    Jenny, the senior taking a class on sustainable development, is eager to get answers to a question that has, in their three years as an economics and mathematics major, become difficult not to ponder: How can economic growth be the silver bullet of societal change if it has so many negative consequences for the planet?

    “It’s definitely my hope that this is a class that will teach me something new about how to consider humanity’s path forward without destroying this earth, without destroying each other, without sacrificing quality of life for any person on this planet,” Jenny said. 

    Jenny isn’t subject to the requirement because they entered college before it rolled out. But they said they like the idea of encouraging students to step outside their comfort zones and fields of study and, in many cases, consider their future career paths in the context of the changing climate.

    Other students, like junior Pulido, don’t see a specific link between climate change and their future careers. Pulido, who has spent the last few years working in the visitors center at San Diego’s Balboa Park and aspires to work in museums, said she signed up for the gender and climate justice class simply because it sounded interesting to her. She believes climate change is important, and she’s hoping that taking this class will help give her a better idea of how its role in history and might play into her career.

    Related: How colleges can become ‘living labs’ for combating climate change  

    Colleges are taking different approaches to teaching their students about climate change, with some requiring a course in sustainability, a broad discipline that goes beyond the specific scientific phenomenon of climate change.

    At Arizona State, sustainability classes can cover anything about how human, social, economic, political and cultural choices affect human and environmental well-being generally, said Anne Jones, the university’s vice provost for undergraduate education.

    Dickinson and Goucher colleges have had such requirements since 2015 and 2007, respectively. 

    At San Francisco State University, leaders said they instead chose to require climate justice for all students, beginning with the class of 2029, because of the urgency of understanding how climate change affects communities differently. 

    Students need to understand broader systems of oppression and privilege so that they can address the unequal effects of climate change for “communities of color, low-income communities, global south communities and other marginalized communities,” said Autumn Thoyre, co-director of Climate HQ, the university’s center for climate education, research and action.

    Yang and other UCSD leaders believe that, despite the increased politicization of climate change under Trump, they’ve received little pushback on the new requirement because of the university’s reputation as a climate-concerned institution. (It descended from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, initially founded in 1903.) But this model may not work as well on other campuses. 

    In communities where people’s livelihoods depend on activities that contribute to climate change, like coal mining or oil production, educators may have to modify their approach so as to not come off as offensive or threatening, said Jo Tavares, director of the California Center for Climate Change Education at West Los Angeles College. 

    “Messaging is so important, and education cannot be done in a way that just forces facts upon people,” Tavares said. 

    Related: One state mandates teaching about climate change in almost all subjects — even PE

    At UCSD, to meet the graduation requirement, a course must be at least 30 percent about climate change: For example, a class that meets twice a week for a 10-week term must have at least six of its 20 sessions be about climate change. And the course syllabus must address at least two of the following four categories: the scientific aspects; human and social dimensions; project-based learning; or solutions.

    The first time Lerner, the urban studies professor, applied for her sustainable development course to count toward the requirement, in July 2024, the committee told her she needed to better explain how the class addressed climate change. It wasn’t enough to simply have “sustainable” in the course name, committee members told her; she had to better articulate the role of climate change in sustainable development, a course she’s been teaching some version of for nearly 20 years. 

    Her students helped her go through the syllabus and identify all the points where she was teaching about how development contributes to climate change, even if she wasn’t explicitly putting those words to paper. After Lerner revised the descriptions of the class topics and made a few additions, the class was approved, she said. 

    On that fall Thursday, Lerner walked around her large glass-walled classroom while discussing development and globalization with the 65 undergraduate students in her sustainable development class. They covered how to balance equity, economy and environment in development, as well as various ways to measure the well-being of societies, including gross national income, food security, birthrate and infant mortality, happiness, fertility, education and lifespan. Lerner peppered her lecture with jokes and relatable examples, asking, for example, how many siblings students had before explaining the role of fertility and birth rate in a healthy society. (One student had 12, but the average was closer to two.)

    Lerner, who now chairs the committee that decides which classes meet the requirement, said most of her students come in with the understanding that climate change is caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere, and some have even used an online tool to calculate their own carbon footprints. Often, their education has been focused on the hard science aspect of climate change, but they haven’t learned about what society has experienced as a result of climate change, she said. 

    When she asks them what can be done about climate change, she said, “they’re deer in the headlights.”

    Related: Changing education could change the climate

    Across campus, economics professor Mark Jacobsen teaches a lecture class every Thursday night on the economics of the environment. It meets the climate change requirement, but it also covers a core economics idea, he said: achieving efficiency. 

    Jacobsen is teaching students the formulas and methods they’ll need to answer questions like whether it’s worth it to spend $1 billion now to build renewable energy sources to avoid $10 billion in natural disaster cleanup in 30 years.

    Though Jenny hasn’t taken Jacobsen’s class, this is exactly the type of dilemma they’re worried about. 

    Jenny, a public transit enthusiast so dedicated that they got a commercial driver’s license just to drive for Triton Transit, the campus bus system, said the requirement encourages students to face the climate crisis rather than shy away from it. 

    “It can be easy to kind of put your head down and be like, ‘That is too big for me to think about, and too scary,’” Jenny said. But it’s imperative, they added, that students be “forced to reckon with it and think about it and talk about it, to have that knowledge kind of swirling around in your head.” 

    Contact staff writer Olivia Sanchez at 212-678-8402 or [email protected]. 

    This story about climate literacy was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our climate and education newsletter and for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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  • Do screens help or hurt K-8 learning? Lessons from the UK’s OPAL program

    Do screens help or hurt K-8 learning? Lessons from the UK’s OPAL program

    Key points:

    When our leadership team at Firthmoor Primary met with an OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) representative, one message came through clearly: “Play isn’t a break from learning, it is learning.”

    As she flipped through slides, we saw examples from other schools where playgrounds were transformed into hubs of creativity. There were “play stations” where children could build, imagine, and collaborate. One that stood out for me was the simple addition of a music station, where children could dance to songs during break time, turning recess into an outlet for joy, self-expression, and community.

    The OPAL program is not about giving children “more time off.” It’s about making play purposeful, inclusive, and developmental. At Firthmoor, our head teacher has made OPAL part of the long-term school plan, ensuring that playtime builds creativity, resilience, and social skills just as much as lessons in the classroom.

    After seeing these OPAL examples, I couldn’t help but think about how different this vision is from what dominates the conversation in so many schools: technology. While OPAL emphasizes unstructured play, movement, and creativity, most education systems, both in the UK and abroad, are under pressure to adopt more edtech. The argument is that early access to screens helps children personalize their learning, build digital fluency, and prepare for a future where tech skills are essential.

    But what happens when those two philosophies collide?

    On one side, programs like OPAL remind us that children need hands-on experiences, imagination, and social connection–skills that can’t be replaced by a tablet. On the other, schools around the world are racing to keep pace with the digital age.

    Even in Silicon Valley, where tech innovation is born, schools like the Waldorf School of the Peninsula have chosen to go screen-free in early years. Their reasoning echoes OPAL’s ethos: Creativity and deep human interaction lay stronger cognitive and emotional foundations than any app can provide.

    Research supports this caution. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health advises parents and schools to carefully balance screen use with physical activity, sleep, and family interaction. And in 2023, UNESCO warned that “not all edtech improves learning outcomes, and some displace play and social interaction.” Similarly, the OECD’s 2021 report found that heavy screen use among 10-year-olds correlated with lower well-being scores, highlighting the risks of relying too heavily on devices in the early years.

    As a governor, I see both sides: the enthusiasm for digital tools that promise engagement and efficiency, and the concern for children’s well-being and readiness for lifelong learning. OPAL has made me think about what kind of foundations we want to lay before layering on technology.

    So where does this leave us? For me, the OPAL initiative at Firthmoor is a powerful reminder that education doesn’t have to be an either/or choice between tech and tradition. The real challenge is balance.

    This raises important questions for all of us in education:

    • When is the right time to introduce technology?
    • How do we balance digital fluency with the need for deep, human-centered learning?
    • Where do we draw the line between screens and play, and who gets to decide?

    This is a conversation not just for educators, but for parents, policymakers, and communities. How do we want the next generation to learn, play, and thrive?

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  • Some social emotional lessons improve how kids do at school, Yale study finds

    Some social emotional lessons improve how kids do at school, Yale study finds

    Social emotional learning — lessons in soft skills like listening to people you disagree with or calming yourself down before a test — has become a flashpoint in the culture wars. 

    The conservative political group Moms for Liberty opposes SEL, as it is often abbreviated, telling parents that its “goal is to psychologically manipulate students to accept the progressive ideology that supports gender fluidity, sexual preference exploration, and systemic oppression.” Critics say that parents should discuss social and emotional matters at home and that schools should stick to academics. Meanwhile, some advocates on the left say standard SEL classes don’t go far enough and should include such topics as social justice and anti-racism training. 

    While the political battle rages on, academic researchers are marshalling evidence for what high-quality SEL programs actually deliver for students. The latest study, by researchers at Yale University, summarizes 12 years of evidence, from 2008 to 2020, and it finds that 30 different SEL programs, which put themselves through 40 rigorous evaluations involving almost 34,000 students, tended to produce “moderate” academic benefits.

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    The meta-analysis, published online Oct. 8 in the peer-reviewed journal Review of Educational Research, calculated that the grades and test scores of students in SEL classes improved by about 4 percentile points, on average, compared with students who didn’t receive soft-skill instruction. That’s the equivalent of moving from the 50th percentile (in the middle) to the 54th percentile (slightly above average). Reading gains were larger (more than 6 percentile points) than math gains (fewer than 4 percentile points). Longer-duration SEL programs, extending more than four months, produced double the academic gains — more than 8 percentile points. 

    “Social emotional learning interventions are not designed, most of the time, to explicitly improve academic achievement,” said Christina Cipriano, one of the study’s four authors and an associate professor at Yale Medical School’s Child Study Center. “And yet we demonstrated, through our meta-analytic report, that explicit social emotional learning improved academic achievement and it improved both GPA and test scores.”

    Cipriano also directs the Education Collaboratory at Yale, whose mission is to “advance the science of learning and social and emotional development.”

    The academic boost from SEL in this 2025 paper is much smaller than the 11 percentile points documented in an earlier 2011 meta-analysis that summarized research through 2007, when SEL had not yet gained widespread popularity in schools. That has since changed. More than 80 percent of principals of K-12 schools said their schools used an SEL curriculum during the 2023-24 school year, according to a survey by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and the RAND Corporation. 

    Related: A research update on social-emotional learning in schools

    The Yale researchers only studied a small subset of the SEL market, programs that subjected themselves to a rigorous evaluation and included academic outcomes. Three-quarters of the 40 studies were randomized-controlled trials, similar to pharmaceutical trials, where schools or teachers were randomly assigned to teach an SEL curriculum. The remaining studies, in which schools or teachers volunteered to participate, still had control groups of students so that researchers could compare the academic gains of students who did not receive SEL instruction. 

    The SEL programs in the Yale study taught a wide range of soft skills, from mindfulness and anger management to resolving conflicts and setting goals. It is unclear which soft skills are driving the academic gains. That’s an area for future research.

    “Developmentally, when we think about what we know about how kids learn, emotional regulation is really the driver,” said Cipriano. “No matter how good that curriculum or that math program or reading curriculum is, if a child is feeling unsafe or anxious or stressed out or frustrated or embarrassed, they’re not available to receive the instruction, however great that teacher might be.”

    Cipriano said that effective programs give students tools to cope with stressful situations. She offered the example of a pop quiz, from the perspective of a student. “You can recognize, I’m feeling nervous, my blood is rushing to my hands or my face, and I can use my strategies of counting to 10, thinking about what I know, and use positive self talk to be able to regulate, to be able to take my test,” she said.

    Related: A cheaper, quicker approach to social-emotional learning?

    The strongest evidence for SEL is in elementary school, where the majority of evaluations have been conducted (two-thirds of the 40 studies). For young students, SEL lessons tend to be short but frequent, for example, 10 minutes a day. There’s less evidence for middle and high school SEL programs because they haven’t been studied as much. Typically, preteens and teens have less frequent but longer sessions, a half hour or even 90 minutes, weekly or monthly. 

    Cipriano said that schools don’t need to spend “hours and hours” on social and emotional instruction in order to see academic benefits. A current trend is to incorporate or embed social and emotional learning within academic instruction, as part of math class, for example. But none of the underlying studies in this paper evaluated whether this was a more effective way to deliver SEL. All of the programs in this study were separate stand-alone SEL lessons. 

    Advice to schools

    Schools are inundated by sales pitches from SEL vendors. Estimates of the market size range wildly, but a half dozen market research firms put it above $2 billion annually. Not all SEL programs are necessarily effective or can be expected to produce the academic gains that the Yale team calculated. 

    Cipriano advises schools not to be taken in by slick marketing. Many of the effective programs have no marketing at all and some are free. Unfortunately, some of these programs have been discontinued or have transformed through ownership changes. But she says school leaders can ask questions about which specific skills the SEL program claims to foster, whether those skills will help the district achieve its goals, such as improving school climate, and whether the program has been externally evaluated. 

    “Districts invest in things all the time that are flashy and pretty, across content areas, not just SEL,” said Cipriano. “It may never have had an external evaluation, but has a really great social media presence and really great marketing.” 

    Cipriano has also built a new website, improvingstudentoutcomes.org, to track the latest research on SEL effectiveness and to help schools identify proven programs.

    Cipriano says parents should be asking questions too. “Parents should be partners in learning,” said Cipriano. “I have four kids, and I want to know what they’re learning about in school.”

    This meta-analysis probably won’t stop the SEL critics who say that these programs force educators to be therapists. Groups like Moms for Liberty, which holds its national summit this week, say teachers should stick to academics. This paper rejects that dichotomy because it suggests that emotions, social interaction and academics are all interlinked. 

    Before criticizing all SEL programs, educators and parents need to consider the evidence.

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about SEL benefits was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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