Leslie-Ann Noel: Design for Change

How can educators balance the need for structure in the classroom with the importance of fostering student agency and creativity?

In what ways can design thinking be leveraged to challenge and dismantle oppressive systems within our education systems?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel is an esteemed educator and designer known for her work on equity, social justice, and the inclusion of underrepresented voices in design education. Currently transitioning to OCAD University in Toronto, she previously served as a professor at North Carolina State University and held leadership roles at Tulane University and Stanford's d.school. Dr. Noel's work is deeply influenced by Paulo Freire and bell hooks, focusing on how design can be a tool for liberation and social change.

In this episode, Louka Parry and Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel dive deep into the transformative power of design education. Dr. Noel discusses her journey from Trinidad and Tobago to Brazil, the U.S., and now Canada, and how these experiences have shaped her views on education, equity, and design. They explore the importance of agency in both students and educators, the role of emotional intelligence in design, and the critical need for education systems to support diverse identities and perspectives.

Listeners will gain insights into how to challenge the status quo in education, the significance of cultivating emotional and social awareness in design, and practical approaches to fostering more inclusive and equitable learning environments. Dr. Noel’s reflections on her own positionality and how it informs her work provide a powerful reminder of the importance of self-awareness in creating meaningful change.

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Louka Parry (00:07.31)
Okay, just checking the mic.

Louka Parry (00:31.95)
Ha ha.

Louka Parry (00:42.286)
Hello. Hi, how are you, Louka? I'm good. Thank you, Lesley-Ann Ann. How are you? I'm doing well. Today has been like a day full of a lot of distractions, but in a good way. It's a good day. My computer fan is going and I don't know if you can, if it will bother you, if you can hear that.

It's not loud enough to really be audible in my headphones anyway. So, all right, perfect. Good to go. I'm just going to make sure I've got all my notifications off. I don't know if I, let me see if I can try to do that. No problem at all.

Louka Parry (01:31.63)
It's been a big day because I'm changing jobs. say more. And yeah, well, I'm going to OCAD University in Toronto. wow. And they made an announcement today. congratulations. Thank you. But it means that my phone and my.

Instagram and my LinkedIn and everything has just been kind of been blown up. Yes. that's amazing. Good for you. That's a, it's a shift from North Carolina, which is where you currently are. Is that right? Yes. Yes. So it's a big shift. it's a good shift. Yeah. Right. and, and I actually love North Carolina, which people do.

They wonder why. They wonder why. They always think it's a little surprising, but yeah. Great accent. North Carolina. I reckon. Well, yeah. Yes. North Carolina. Yes. I can't do it really justice, but you know. And where's your accent from? Australia. I'm in Sydney this morning. you're in Sydney. I'm in Sydney. It's nice and early. I haven't had no distractions so far today. I'm sure there'll be many. Yes. But,

I've just been sitting with your book and it's fabulous. I mean, in all honesty, you're the last of the 10 for me to interview. So it's been such an honor to go through all of the D school guides and speak to each author as we've gone through. But yeah, it's so wonderful. And I just love that your background is the art from Che as well. I guess I'm guessing.

Cause it's, yeah, yes. She love this. yeah. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. Yeah. Super cool. So, well, it's been a busy day for you and you've got lots of things to do. So I guess, you know, divining, divine timing always, cause there's an opportunity for you to just reflect.

Louka Parry (03:51.438)
Really on your work as a designer, on what you're bringing to the world in terms of supporting designers and educators to become social change makers. Really the learning future podcast is about all things to do with the transformation of education. And I was very taken by your ideas and reflections on bell hooks and Paulo Freire, two authors that I follow and read. And the idea that education is for liberation itself. It's an act of freedom and transgression.

against injustice that very much resonates with my own view as a work really as an educator. Now I'm afraid because you're probably going to be like, no, you're going to have a better handle on the theory than I do. But no, I don't at all. Really? I'm just, I'm kind of someone that reads widely, but I began my career in a, in a first nations community in central Australia.

And as a Greek, Welsh, first generation Australian, you know, when you're living alongside Australians that have had thousands of generations of continued connection to country and educational practice and cosmology and ontologies that have very distinct, from the Australian Western dominant paradigm. I was like, that was my best, you know, I've traveled a lot.

And I just love in the book as well, how it starts with your own self knowledge, your own self concept. And then from there, everything expands kind of outwards into who am I? What do I care about? What might be mine to do? Those are three questions that I think about most days in my way. And it's something that of course we, we, we must create the conditions in which young people can do precisely the same. Who are they? Like, you know, I'm so much more interested in.

the level of identity and the social and the emotional dimensions of learning. And I run a nonprofit in my spare time as well, which is around convening the community in that space. How can we kind of challenge directly the dominant academic paradigm, which favors particular types of people and solidifies power? So all that kind of stuff is in my constant way of trying to think through what my role is.

Louka Parry (06:18.254)
as the end, you know, like as a communicator and we, you know, I keynote at all over the shop and do all this kind of stuff, but I'm just like, Hmm. Yeah. What, what are we, what's all this for? I'm a pretty philosophical. It is that. And, and, you know, like, I mean, we talked about Freya, right. And, you know, that idea that the world is not fixed and we can change it.

It's almost like I think that that's my mission to support people to understand that, you know, that nothing has to stay the way that it is, which does mean that sometimes I can be maybe promoting a certain amount of chaos and disorder, you know, not intentionally, but it is that, you know, I'm always asking people, yes, to,

look at the world and see what they think needs to be changed. I mean, sometimes I'll ask directly what's wrong with the world, but sometimes I'll be a little more gentle and say, well, okay, what is the thing that is bothering you that you think needs to be changed and then make that your mission, right? And so in this book, this book is very short. Students have to sit with me for like 13 weeks and we talk about,

Yes. So you get off easy reading this book. Yes. Yes. So the students have to think about these questions for much longer time. Wonderful. And hopefully I do leave them with the excitement of wanting to change something. And I try not to dictate what it is that they have to change. Yeah. We're just going to jump straight in, Lesley -Anne.

Okay. Yes. You, you tell me what kind of in, what kind of in now, but do you want to step back and I don't know, do a formal something. I'll do a formal something. And then I'll ask you a question, which is what, what's something that you're learning at the moment? What's in your field of awareness? And that's the starting point. And then we'll come to the main idea of design, social change, and unpack in all the different elements, which would be great. Yeah. It's very free flowing. There's no.

Louka Parry (08:42.183)
you know, the other thing just to prime you for is at the end, I'll say, what's a take home message? I've got something that you want to resonate in the, in the minds of our listeners. And our listeners, by the way, are pretty well all educators and school principals, largely in Australia, but also in the U S and across Europe, in the Anglosphere at least. because I don't speak a lot of French.

Okay. Great. Looking forward to the chat. So good. Thanks for your time. All right. Have fun.

Hello friends and welcome to the learning future podcast. I'm your host, Louka Parry. And today it's my absolute delight to be speaking with Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel. She focuses on equity, social justice, and the experiences of people who are often excluded from design education, research, and practice. She currently teaches at North Carolina State University and formerly was the associate director of design thinking for social impact.

at Tulane University as well as a lecturer at Stafford and the University of the West Indies. I currently have in my hand the wonderful d .school guide that she has authored. It's entitled Design Social Change. Take action, work towards equity and challenge the status quo. Lesley -Ann, it's wonderful to have you with us.

Thank you, Louka. And I told you just a few minutes ago, my bio has to change again. So good. We can do that. I'm going to do that. I'll be moving to OCAD University in the fall. So that's Ontario College of Art and Design, where I'm excited to continue the work that they've been doing on decolonizing design and making change. And I think it aligns with my values and my work.

Louka Parry (10:39.342)
Congratulations on that. I mean, I, there's so many wonderful, deep concepts here in, in this, in kind of this book that you've put together, which clearly is, is a reflection of the work that you've done over many years. You know, this idea about like, how do we know ourselves really well? How do we use and deepen our emotional intelligence? How do we cultivate critical awareness? And then of course, envisage the future that we want. You know, it really kind of got a lot in here, but.

My first question always to the wonderful guests is what's something that you're learning at the moment? Like what's in the forefront of your mind as you do this work towards liberation, abolition, a whole range of other design principles? Well, when you ask me this, I think about two things. So the first thing that's really in the front of my mind is learning this new city that I'll be moving to, right? Which is Toronto. And Toronto as they say. And their accent. Yes. Yes.

But actually, for the last few years, I've been very interested in gardening, which people might think, okay, what does that have to do with design? But some years ago, a friend of mine who's a professor in South Africa, he said to me, hey, you with your pluriverse stuff, which is a philosophy that I talk about, right?

He said, you cannot really be decolonizing design if you're not teaching about the land and about gardening and about growing your own food. And, you know, if we're not bringing it down to that level. And so I think for the last three years, I've really been interested in questions around food, where food comes from. Can we really make our own food? And then wider than that, because I had a lot of failed experiments in planting food.

and some successful ones, but I've actually also moved on to food for others. So I have really maybe decolonized my backyard. So I have a very messy backyard with no lawn and lots and lots of native plants. And it is full of birds and animals and yeah, insects. And yes, that's what I'm into. Yeah. I love it. And I mean, I, I,

Louka Parry (12:56.782)
Two things come to my mind. One, it now makes sense why this book, you know, says was almost a cookbook, you know, the one you said in the intro. But the other piece, and I hadn't thought about it so much as decolonization, that makes complete sense. I think of it as rewilding, but you kind of think about the way that we, as human beings, try to restrict and control the natural world so intensely and not really allow it to take its normal course. I mean, you think about the manicured lawns and that you can't walk on.

Instead of like, what is the kind of the local flora of this place that's representative of this place, you know, and the kind of place making, that can come from that. It's such a, it's such a great reflection. man, that's, I mean, well, you have to start the garden again. Yeah. That's actually the thing that's like, that's, that's driving me. I don't know. And it's really killing me that, my goodness, I'm going to have to start over, but actually.

That's also part of it, you know, letting things go, letting the next homeowner decide if they want to keep the wild garden or not, or, you know, so it's like the circle continues and I get to start again. That's beautiful. Again, that's a very kind of life centric way of thinking. We talk a lot at the learning future around about regenerative education, you know, this idea of regeneration, you know, there is this kind of maturity and then there's this natural destructive process, you know, creative destruction into

you know, renewal and then into birth and growth once more. It's kind of what might it look like if we thought of our organizations as a living system? This is a question that we pose often. and it's kind of the idea of bringing a lot like life back into a human system, but also in an, into a local ecology. yes. Yes. And I wonder about like the role of.

Yeah. Cause in this, I mean, design social change, everybody is a change maker, even if we don't realize it, we're kind of either reinforcing or breaking down particular levels of oppression or our own biases. Take us into some of the big ideas in this work. Yeah. So I'm going to add to what you just said. You said everybody's a change maker. And I also like to emphasize everybody's a designer. And I mean, the two roles are overlapping and.

Louka Parry (15:19.63)
So people who are more formally trained in design sometimes ask me things like, you're gonna let everybody in? Is everybody gonna let you in? Yeah, it's not our little gated community that we're gonna shut some people out, right? Everybody actually has these skills and abilities. And so the book is very inspired by the work of Paulo Freire in particular, but many other people who have read like Bell Hooks and...

I don't actually think I quote Toni Morrison, but sometimes I do. But you know, it's very Freyrian and the book starts off asking people to look at themselves, right? And it actually starts, it's based actually on the PhD work that I did where I worked with young children and asked them to critique the world around them. And then.

take action through design. So that's actually where it really, really, really started about six years ago. I did this six, maybe seven years ago. I did this intervention during my PhD field work with children. And since then I've been kind of modifying the same method over and over and over where I'm always asking people, start with yourself, think about who you are and the things that are important to you. And you can even,

Not you can even, I've really asked people to think where is the world not good enough? And then what is the change needed to fix that? Right? And so we start off then identifying, starting learning to see the world around us. and also understanding that that world can be changed. And that's a very frarian notion. You know, the idea that the world doesn't just happen to you. You also happen to the world, right? So we have a lot of agency, right?

So that first big idea, learning to see the world around us, learning to see ourselves, learning to see the world around us, learning to understand oppression, right? And then figuring out what we need to change. So that's like the first thing. The second big idea is about emotional intelligence, where I don't know about everybody's design education, but I know in my design education, we were often kind of encouraged to be a little bit neutral.

Louka Parry (17:44.718)
yeah, we could have passion about some things, but you know, when we, when we think that we're doing research, we present things in a very neutral way. Yeah. Objective. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And that's supposed to be good. Yeah. And emotions are bad. And actually I'm asking people then to really build their emotional intelligence in the second part of the book. So learn to listen to anger.

learning to listen to joy, anger in particular, because when people want something to change, they become angry. And then what happens? The world, the dominant group or the group just below the dominant group, right? Like the middle classes or, you know, we'll be like, my God, those people got so angry. Let's stop what they're doing. Right. And so we try to suppress people's emotion rather than trying to listen to it.

And then the next section is about joy, where we're asking people, okay, I'm asking people to reflect on what are the things that make people happy? What are the things that make you happy? And can we bring that into the design processes and solutions that we create? And then there are a few other ideas there, but also there's this idea of community, because...

this modern world that we live in, you know, very often is telling us to be very individualistic. You do this thing alone and you're successful alone and all that. But actually, as many of your educator colleagues would know, we need communities to thrive, right? So we have to build communities around the change that we want. So I'm interested in native plants. I have to find.

other native plant people and build a community around that so that I can actually survive some of the pushback and that I might get in the world. Right. And then the next big idea is about dreaming and dreaming about the world that you want and actually taking action. Right. And that's why then this is really a design book because designers learn to take action, right? Not every profession.

Louka Parry (19:59.406)
is active, but certainly creative people, designers, chefs, musicians, you know, we take action, we do things. And so that's what I'm nudging people in the last section to do. Think about what is the action that you think is needed and do something about it to make the world better. I love that it kind of starts. I mean, there's so many beautiful things there. I found the anger and joy parts of it really profound.

You know, because there is this idea that your knowledge should be, should acquire knowledge in some way, sometimes a neutral kind of way as well, like within school context or education context, instead of using the things that make us the most human, which of course is our kind of our emotional journey and our social connectedness. I was really, and I was, you know, this idea that anger becomes internalized sadness is one that I think is so interesting. yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And this piece towards the future, like how do we dream? yeah. There's a question you say, it's like, how do we learn to see? I just love that question. Cause it's, you know, such a piece of, if you can't notice you're not able to design well because you kind of, we're always answering the wrong questions. Yes. Yes. Yes. And it's pretty hard to notice I find in the modern world. Cause everything's so fast and it's kind of bombarding, a lot of our kind of cognitive load.

I got a question for you, Lesley-Ann, like, and you started so beautifully in the book and I feel like to be a designer and a change maker, there is this know yourself, that begins cause not, you know, none of us are neutral. None of us are kind of beige. Got a position and you talk about positionality and so I'd love you to just tell us a bit more about who you are because clearly your journey to this moment.

is why you do the work you do and how you've chosen to show up in the world. So give us a bit more of that journey. My positionality, right. So there are many facets like everybody else, you know, I'm multifaceted, but I'll start off, you know, your audience is listening. I'll start off with my accent, right? So I'm from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean.

Louka Parry (22:24.238)
And I was born in the 1970s, like just at the time when there was a lot of like political action. So I think that I grew up in a home where people were asking questions, right? And when I talk with my parents, they're still asking questions. So I can definitely see how their positionality affected me. You know, the time that they were born in the moment, you know, the,

they were like in their first generation of people in the Caribbean who went to the university. And so that kind of intellectual questioning and all that did affect me. And I grew up then with a certain amount of openness and freedom and kind of knowing that this world was mine in quotes, air quotes, but maybe that also is the post independence kind of movement that I grew up in.

I was born 10 years after independence in Trinidad. And so that's a time as well when people are thinking, okay, we own this place, right? And that then gave me a certain amount of confidence to be able to move in the world, right? Yes. And so what else can I share? I moved to Brazil afterwards.

I spent six years in Brazil.

Louka Parry (24:13.038)
Okay. But, okay. Sorry. Just internet just dropped from a sec. That's my side. I think you keep going. So we got six years in Brazil. Okay. Good. All right. So I lived in Brazil for six years where I studied industrial design and I think my parents must have been.

out of their minds to say, okay, go off into this foreign country and we don't even speak the language and you're gonna spend six years there. But then that also gave me a certain sense of power, you know, and that awareness again that, okay, we can actually go through life and make mistakes. Cause when I was choosing to go to Brazil, a friend of mine from the Brazilian embassy said to me, you know what, just go. And if you don't like it, you come back.

And I thought, wow, we can do that. Is that interesting? Yeah, you have agency the whole time. wow. Yes, yes. So I guess my whole life has then been about this agency. And all of that, you know, if we fast forward 30 years now to my PhD in North Carolina, I was interested in seeing how we could use design. I've been in design since middle school and I've

was interested in seeing how can we use design to create a better sense of agency. And then how do we get people to use design to design systems, design the world around them, because we're using the same abilities that we use when we design a poster or we design a chair. And maybe we could bring that into just designing these worlds around us. So that was like a really, really quick around the world, 50 something years. But yeah, and here we are.

Right. I'm trying to get people to change the world through design. It's interesting. Cause I feel like your answers to that question and this, this idea of positionality, which might be a new word for some of our listeners, by the way, is, you know, like what, what are the kind of multiple identities that we hold? It's like, we are trying to change the world through design, but as, we also have to change ourselves, you know, and that this is, I think the big interesting thing that you often place here is that.

Louka Parry (26:31.662)
Everything kind of begins with your own, like how do you learn to see another person more fully? Yeah. You know, and we always just kind of seeing through our own lens. So that ability to take perspective, to step out of one's own thing. I'm not at all surprised you spent time in Brazil and, you know, kind of travel with a man, you know, and kind of live in the U S moving to Canada. All of that means that you have these multiple lenses, which I think is a gift that.

if we can give that to young people, then they can see possibility in different ways rather than being stuck in a worldview, which is kind of starts to calcify and solidify across the course of a lifespan. You know, how do you cultivate open -mindedness really is kind of another question. Yeah. Yeah. So like even before we get there, the thing about the positionality bit, right, is

I learned to write about my positionality while I was doing my PhD. And I hadn't, I mean, I'm very aware of my identities, you know, I'm very aware of my blackness, my Caribbean -ness, my woman -ness, but what I've really learned in that part of the doctoral program was really how to see that actually I'm,

always carrying my identities with me. And so I need to be very aware of them. And I had a little light bulb moment in that class where I thought, that's interesting. I'm from the world of design and I've never really had to reflect on my identities as I design something. But design is so subjective that obviously I'm always carrying my identities with me. So there's a reason that I might make my water bottle blue.

or that I did, you know, so every design that I make actually is impacted by my identities. And so what I've done in that section and then what I've done in the classes that I teach is really encourage people to see their identities so that they're aware of what agendas they might be carrying with them, right? And you don't have to be afraid of your agendas. Sometimes we have to.

Louka Parry (28:54.03)
But it's that we have to see them, right? And we have to know that we're going in with a certain kind of agenda in the work that we're doing. A question, Lissie, and all of your experience in working with design students in the higher education sector, you know, my work, our work really is at the K to 12 space. And I'm really curious about even kind of the willingness to change and have those conversations. I mean, this year, for example, happens to be

like they're calling it, I think a super political, whatever. There's some from him because there's more elections happening this year. 50 % of the world's population goes to elections or something this year, or countries of the world. It's just all aligned as it tends to do every couple of decades. So there's a lot of kind of change in the air, if I can put it that way. Like what is it that you find other ways to disarm some of the resistance we have to change?

Cause I feel like in all the work that we see in this moment of rapid transition, emerging technologies, et cetera, social community aspects, what is it? Like, how do you become a better designer? I guess is another question for me. Cause a good designer is someone that can hold multiplicity to kind of go down into your, into some of the other work that you do. So, you know, like when I ask people to change,

sometimes they come back with the question of, or they come back with that kind of phrase, well, if it ain't broke, why are we trying to fix it? Right. And - It's a favorite, that one. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like, okay, everything is good enough as it is, let's not do anything. And then I have to move into other conversations and say, well, actually it might be good enough for X group of people.

But maybe it's not good enough for a wide group of people and we have to learn to be able to see that. Right. And so sometimes when I start off with that conversation, it gets a little bit better. But sometimes it's still, you know, people are still kind of stuck in their mood. But, you know, if when I start to also point out things like change that has happened over a certain lifespan. Right. It depends on the audience that I'm speaking with. I might change the examples that I give, but.

Louka Parry (31:15.278)
I often like to think about my mother who is 78, I believe. I can't remember. I'm supposed to know. And my mother tells me that when she was born, she knew of people who had been born into slavery. And that's not then that long ago. So, you know, if we look at her lifespan and then maybe the lifespan of a few people older than her,

they would have seen things like the end of slavery, voting rights, the civil rights movement. And we started to think about all of the changes that happened throughout that lifespan. And a lot of those things that changed, somebody at some point would have said, you know what, actually it's good enough and we don't need to change things. But then eventually the way that the society thinks changed and that caused another change to happen. And so,

That's another thing that I talk about. And very often I break it down to people and they ask, well, what is social change? I'll say, well, social change is when an entire society changes the way that they think about an issue. And as a result of that, we change laws and structures and all of these other things have to change because we've changed the way that we think about the issue. And that's what we're trying to get to. And if they still don't respond to that, actually here's the really simple example I give. It sometimes gets to people.

I ask if they have any people in their life who are left handed. Obviously, are you left handed? No. Okay, okay. Because I said this the other day to somebody who was left handed and they said, my God, I feel so triggered. Right. But, but you know, I opened with that and say, do you know anybody who is left handed? Yeah. And they'll say, yeah. And say, well, do you know that? I mean, I've created a tomb.

Well, I don't know if I've created it, but I talk about left -handed oppression, right? And the health outcomes for left -handed people are lower. The life expectancy is lower. We could kind of go through life kind of saying, that's just a coincidence and we're not gonna do anything about it. But when you start to see ordinary, ordinary people in your life being affected by things like that, then maybe you start to ask, huh?

Louka Parry (33:42.958)
okay, we could do something about this. Maybe we could just make sure there's one left -handed scissors in the room, right? Or, you know, and that's when it's kind of simple like that, because people are afraid to talk about race. They might be afraid to talk about gender. They might be afraid to talk about pronouns. They might be, but I can talk about left -handedness without offending people normally. And then that's what it kind of starts to make some sense. It's such a great.

Exactly. It's such a simple one, but it's, it's, yeah, the left -handed scissors. I've seen a video of someone being gifted left -handed scissors and they use them for the first time. They just start crying because there's something so profound about being designed for, or something, you know, actually in going like, I feel so seen and valued. And I guess that's the issue. I think with the kind of the efficiency paradigm of, of the world, but certainly of education is that it kind of designs for nobody.

actually the kind of the, the mass educational model kind of designs for this archetype of a compliant academic, you know, brilliant, brilliant single person instead of, you know, and this is, what Todd Rose calls the myth of average, you know, which is great. The average actually represents nobody because he's actually completely that person. So it's this really interesting idea of thinking about the beautiful diversity of, of like, of the human expression.

just as you would see in the garden, you know, not just metaphor, but literally that you're, you're cultivating that. And then how do you think about designing for the extremes designing for all and equity is such a massive theme in all education systems and every single school. We always talk about equity, Leslie Ann, and, but I just, but you look at the data and you just see like glacial change, you know, and, and it's just, and it's, I'm just curious about.

some of the ways you would reflect on what might be needed when you think about transformation in education. And I point to things like, what should we abolish? Like your abolitionist mindset thing, I think is really, how do you shift power? How do you repurpose? How do you move to co -design doing things with people rather than to them? I mean, what are some of your reflections on this moment? Because clearly we're all in this state of...

Louka Parry (36:08.526)
disruption and flux. I have so many things to say and so many reflections. I'm going to go back to the positionality bit for just for a little while and say part of why I emphasize that positionality bit is because I don't want people to try to be average and to try to fit in and you know and I'm asking people to kind of come

as they are with the issues that they think that are important, bring them to the table so that other people can understand them. Right? Because when you just talked about that myth of average, that's really actually part of the crisis maybe that we're in, right? That we're trying to just design this world for...

for this imaginary group of people, but if we are designing the world for real people with real issues and real problems and people who really need left -handed counter openers, then we'll get to things that make a lot of sense, right? So, that is one of the questions that I'm interested in changing in education where we can see more.

clearly what are the issues that are important to people and ordinary people at all levels. So we're not just trying to have people hide their economic challenges or their, you know, whatever challenges they might have, you know, bring it, bring them so that we understand them and then we can design around them. The other theme that I'm very interested in is agency. So that people know that the,

have the power to influence the world. And so the way that I design a curriculum is about that. There's a certain amount of the curriculum in every classroom actually sometimes more uncomfortably than others. I'm giving up control and putting some agency into the students' hands, right? And I think that,

Louka Parry (38:28.59)
I'm sure a lot of your listeners will relate to that. It can feel frightening as the educator giving up this power, right? But when you've done it, you can really see the students growing, right? You can see them making these choices. So like when I teach design, I might give this very open -ended,

class, I know that my design prompts might not be fully worked out. And the students have to work through trying to make the design challenge clearer with me and with their colleagues. And I know it's a big lift. And sometimes it's that I just haven't figured out where we should be going.

but we are working together and giving the problem or the problem frame some clarity. And I think that that's a very important part of the learning process, right? And then I know I I in these long boosts, but the other thing is, yeah, the other thing is I think it's really as an educator, I'm excited to learn with the students. So,

I don't want to be the expert in, I mean, obviously there's some things I'll be an expert on, but I don't want to be like the only expert in the room when I'm working with students. And I'm very often trying to draw on their own expertise or knowledge about what, let's find the thing that you're an expert on. So, you know, the class that I'm working on now,

they're the experts on TikTok, or, you know, like, I have my social media, but they're the experts. Yes. Yes. So, I mean, I am giving over that expert space to them and letting them really expand and fill that role in the work that we're doing together. That's beautiful. I feel like this theme of agency is something that is woven throughout all the work that we do, all the podcasts that we have, there's always this idea. yeah.

Louka Parry (40:49.326)
of like shifting power in some way. And in what that, what that kind of brings up for us as educators is of course, like how, how do we do that? Well, with the constraints we have, and how do we move away from a control over paradigm or power over paradigm to a power with. And I think what, I think your example there is just a really good one because it kind of, it reinserts a novelty into a learning process.

Because you're, cause no longer, and I think the shift I think across the board by the way, is, you know, the knower's like trying to be the best knower is actually problematic today. It's you need to be the best learner. And even like you think about, you know, cognitive augmentation and AI tools, et cetera, et cetera. Like, and so we talk about our, I love you have this beautiful designers, critical alphabet, which I was looking at before, which I love Lesley-Ann. So cool.

we have ours called the learning future alphabet, which is kind of, it's kind of like, what are the key principles for the future of education? And, you know, just at the beginning is agency, belonging, creativity, discernment, embodiment, flourishing. Right. And so all of those, we think of the design principles for learning experiences, the way schools, you know, and it's kind of how do you bring these principles and imbue them into the way that a school function in the way that a classroom operates?

And to do that well, we have to create the right cultures and support the really hardworking educators in their emerging practices. that's, that's really what I'm interested in. Cause there's the, this whole idea of letting go of the way I thought I was so that I could become who I could be, you know, paraphrasing some quote, I'm sure. Do you know? Yeah.

Yeah, but I definitely want to get your alphabet, right? That really sounds very good. I think I'm struggling to find sometimes examples of systems where this really works, but I know that it works in the design classroom. I'll say that. But I also want to see in general education where many of these linear centered practices are really

Louka Parry (43:08.142)
being supported. I hope that your network has examples of this. But I think that it's beautiful that there are examples of learner -centeredness. Well, obviously I'm from creative teaching, and in the creative arts, I think that people have embodied this agency and learner -centeredness. So with my PhD, it was...

me trying to, I was trying to figure out how to capture what I felt with the strengths of art and design education and somehow put it in somewhere else in the school curriculum. So I was with elementary school children actually in my PhD. Yeah. I mean, and I have to say like children seem to be pretty...

You know, pretty good divergent thinkers. I always, I always like the research that actually they often outperform MBAs on divergent thinking assessments because they're so creative. and so in some ways it's just kind of cultivating that further to become designers. My, I think the reason I have so loved talking to all, of the Stanford D school guide authors and my time there at the D school is because I've just realized that

Education is so much a process of design and as educators, we are designers, but I, as a teacher, I never would have framed myself like that. I was a teacher. And so this idea of how do you evolve your own role in this kind of, so that it's as contemporary and impactful and powerful and emancipatory as possible. And I think that's the question of design. It is design. Now I kind of knew at some points like,

I used to be an actual, like a real designer. Actual designer, pro designer. I used to design the furniture and stuff like that. But I remember somebody asking me at one point, so what do you design now? And I looked at them in shock and I'm like, but I'm always designing, you know, I'm designing new classes, I'm designing new curriculum, designing, you know, so actually, yes, we're designing all the time, but really, like you, the, the

Louka Parry (45:30.638)
time that I spent at the d .school made me think more explicitly about the design, you know, where, okay, we plan the class and we think of the arc of the experience of the user who's the student, right? Or we're thinking of, okay, how is the user going to be engaged in the process? So all of that is, is really, it's nice to see explicitly where someone is thinking about,

education as designed because it in fact is and we have to be thinking about the experience of the people who are going through this, this education process as well. Yeah. With the hope that they are going to leave this experience so energized that they're going to want to again, change the world. Such a great conversation. I've, I've got two final questions for you. One, one comes straight out of the book. Cause you say, you know, there's a beautiful,

So many beautiful quotes here, but there's this idea that, in the idea of designing equitable futures, you talk about a focus on utopia opens up the frame for people to dream and imagine without the constraints of the current times. And I feel like, I feel like that ability to kind of use futures is such a powerful way to then become an action based

change maker, you know, like someone that's really moving to it. So my question is like, what is, what is the utopia that you are hoping we are designing towards? my. And you can talk, you can take about, and it was a huge question, but you can take it to any level of society, you know, even if it's like the way that universities function or the way that a community operates, like what is, or education systems, which is the one that I focus mainly on.

Yeah, there's so many things. So actually, I'm also very invested in education. And that's part of why, you know, that became the focus of my research, where in a lot of places, there is a high stakes exam. well, there are a lot of places where there's high stakes testing, right. But I was thinking particularly about the high stakes exam moving from

Louka Parry (47:50.446)
elementary school into secondary school, which exists in a lot of places, not everywhere, but in the Caribbean where I'm from, this exam is still very prevalent. And I think that having such a high stakes exam so early in life really then means that your success in life depends on your parents and your class and your, you know, so you really lose some of the agency and you're affected by all these

external factors. So one of my utopias is where there is more equal access to good educational experiences across class, across country, across, you know, and I mean, sometimes when I say it, I think, that is really, really utopian, right? That's not just because I am poor and I'm from

a little speck in the middle of nowhere that I'm going to have a mediocre educational experience or less than satisfactory educational experience. I really imagine then a world where none of these things are going to affect the kind of education that you have. Because I think that we have so many examples of

good education that can happen without resources. So again, if I go back to like the Freirean work or the work that I've seen in Brazil or other places in South America, there are lots of little experiments all over the world where there's fantastic education that's happening without a million dollars. So maybe more of us could have that. And like there are a whole lot of other things, but I think that education is...

really, really important. And so people's access to good education and good education that is not just about someone, banking model of education. That's what we, Frey would talk about, you know, where someone is just putting facts in your head, but education that's going to open up your mind and make you ask a lot of difficult questions. Right, questions. Yeah. I love that. You know, the ability to frame the problem or frame the question.

Louka Parry (50:06.926)
Again, it seems to be to me this idea of discernment, you know, which questions should we be asking? Which are the best ones? Especially as kind of facts become more readily available. In fact, even synthesized facts and eventually like, you know, generated, created AI agent element kind of conversation starts to take place. It's a fascinating time. And the thing is, while you just talked about the facts, if the facts are so easy to find,

then we don't need to memorize them, right? And so it's really a different kind of education paradigm that we need to be moving into. Which some places have gotten already, but yeah, a lot more. It's underway. Leslie-Ann my final question for you is, across all this work that you've done, your decades of experience across different parts of the world and the Americas in particular, what's the take -home message that you would have for educators that are working, listening to this, leaders that are listening to this conversation of ours?

Louka Parry (51:09.966)
that one is a difficult question, but let me see if I could find an answer for it. I think one takeaway is that there is more expertise in many more places that you might expect. So I talk about learning to listen and learning to see, you know, so maybe that as an educator, we have to figure out, OK.

how are we listening to the children who have their own level of expertise, right? How are we listening to parents? How are we listening to communities? How are we, you know, and how do we open the space for all of this expertise in the education process so that it's not just the educator coming and saying, well, this is the curriculum and this is what we have to be doing.

but we could somehow co -create some learning experiences that are useful for everyone. So yeah, the message is that there is expertise everywhere and we have to learn to see it and figure out how we're going to work with that expertise everywhere. Yeah, it feels like to me, it's just, it's such more of a life -giving process to do that in that way, you know? Yeah. And it's exactly, it's also more rewarding for us.

Right. Because we learn more, we gain more in the process when we're open to this kind of, again, to quote Freire, Freire would talk about dialogic, experience. And so if we're open to that dialogue of, of learning with people and listening and having that conversation, then it's, it's a much richer experience for everyone. Beautiful. Leslie- Ann, thank you so much for spending your time with us today on the Learning Future podcast.

Thank you so much, Louka. I enjoyed this conversation.