The Harvard EdCast

Social psychologist Geoff Cohen says a crisis of belonging is destroying us. One in five Americans suffers from chronic loneliness. Young people are struggling with high levels of anxiety and mental health issues at times when they desperately need a sense of connection and belonging.

Although most of us know what it feels like to be excluded or question our belonging, Cohen says we don't do the greatest job of recognizing that feeling when it happens to others. In fact, we often threaten other people's sense of belonging, he says. It's having a serious effect on our wellbeing.

The good news is there are small ways we can change and even nurture belonging as educators, parents, and citizens. In this episode, he shares what we need to do to truly create places of belonging.

What can happen when parents challenge a curriculum? How can movements against curriculums take hold? There's a lot more to it than you might think, according to University of Hawaii at Manoa Assistant Professor Ethan Chang. Chang's research explores how a group of white parent activists challenged ethnic studies in California, catching the attention of news media nationwide. Although the movement didn't eliminate ethnic studies as part of the curriculum, it had good and bad repercussions. In this episode of the EdCast, Chang details the strategies activists used to challenge the curriculum in California schools, and why it behooves us to better understand the tactics made by counter-curricular movements.

The upcoming election has the potential to greatly shift the landscape many superintendents are working in around the nation. The work of superintendents has never been more challenging, say Senior Lecturer Jennifer Cheatham and Claremont Graduate University Professor Carl Cohn, given the ongoing polarization today. That divide is impacting superintendents day-to-day work, making it incredibly hard to focus on key things like teaching and learning, equity, or even relationship building. “There've always been challenges working with the typical political characters, board members, unions, the stress of the job, supporting communities through crises,” Cheatham says. “These are not necessarily new for them. They're just amplified putting even more pressure and stress on superintendents and resulting probably in even more personal sacrifice.” Superintendent turnover is at an all-time high, with one in every four superintendents considering leaving the job, they say.

In this episode of the EdCast, Cohn and Cheatham examine the current state of the superintendency and share ideas on how to manage in fraught times.

Despite growing concerns about generative artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, in education, Harvard's Chris Dede isn't overly worried. As a researcher on emerging technologies, he's seen many decades where new technologies promised to upend education. Instead, Dede knows artificial intelligence requires educators to tweak how they teach in order to truly take advantage of what AI has to offer. As the associate director of research for the National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education, Dede says AI raises the bar and it has the power to significantly impact learning in powerful ways. In this episode of the EdCast, Dede talks about how education needs to get smarter to work with artificial intelligence.

When it comes to making an impact on school outcomes, Harvard Professor Ebony Bridwell-Mitchell says we often overlook the power of relationships within the school.

“I think the complexity of how relationships work is one of the reasons why the first place we often go when we're trying to improve schools is to something like policies and procedures,” she says. “It seems very concrete. Put the policy in place. Something's going to happen. Have a new procedure. People are going to follow it. Cross your fingers.”

But the real lever of change is in people. Bridwell-Mitchell studies the intricate dynamics of relationships within schools and how they shape outcomes for students, teachers, and institutions.

“So all the time in organizations, we are shaping the interactions, the relationships people develop. And so from my perspective, we need to be much more intentional about what those efforts are accomplishing in terms of relationships and what impact they might be having on the outcomes that we desire,” she says, pointing out how seemingly innocuous decisions like where to put an office and what time to schedule a class can impact the social dynamic of an organization.

Relationships in schools are nested, where connections among individuals can ripple through classrooms, schools, and the educational system. However, figuring out how to more intentionally develop relationships can be challenging amid time constraints and policy demands.

Still, Bridwell-Mitchell attests it is well worth the investment if schools want to transform for the long run. “Whatever great idea you think you have to make things better in your context, in your classroom, in your school, in your district-- how much you're going to get out of that -- the bang for the buck you invest,” she says. “What you get out of it will be so much greater if you can leverage relationships in the right way.”

In this episode, Bridwell-Mitchell shares how leveraging social networks can spark meaningful change, and why schools must embrace both the complexity and the power of human connection to achieve lasting success.