How do you help and support your precariat colleagues? At Research Whisperer, we engage a lot with issues of precarity and casualisation. We think it’s a huge issue that needs urgent address in academia, and it’s a global problem. We were recently invited to speak to casuals at an NTEU Victoria event where I talked […] … learn more→

Often when I speak with students who are majoring in computer sciences, many of them tell me that they have never taken a computer science course until college. This is especially true for the female, black, and Latino students I’ve spoken with as a computer science professor. But newly released data from the College Board suggests […] … learn more→

National security concerns make headlines in the US every day: the crisis at our southern border, data breaches, cyberwarfare and unpredictable international actors, just to name a few. But for those of us whose professional lives have positioned us around the globe, it’s clear that another national security issue looms large. Our educational system is […] … learn more→

When it comes to learning, especially at exam time students try to cram. There is so much to learn that we struggle to take it all in, we fill ourselves to overload and we try to find ways to filter what we need most. Technology is helping the world master the ability to learn but […] … learn more→

Yes, many college degrees are worthless, but even among those supposed fields where a degree is of value, there’s an issue that I only touch on from time to time: grade inflation. Suppose you’re an employer, and you’ve already restricted applicants to some very job-specific degree. Can you narrow it down further than that? Well, […] … learn more→

Dehumanizing language often precedes genocide. One tragic example: Extreme dehumanizing language was a strong contributor to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. As I have written, the Hutu majority used a popular radio station to continually refer to Tutsi tribal members, a minority in Rwanda, as “cockroaches.” As support for this characterization grew among Hutus, it essentially […] … learn more→

Are you happy when you go to class? This is the question we usually ask at the beginning of our subject Education for Happiness. Four years ago we detected an important gap in the initial training of future teachers of Teaching in Early Childhood Education and Primary Education. We had not included an interdisciplinary space for reflection […] … learn more→

How often do we hear that libraries aren’t just about books anymore? They are makerspaces with 3-D printers, scanners, laser vinyl cutters and routers. They provide green rooms, sewing machines, button makers, and tools like drills, saws and soldering irons. They are places to borrow seeds, fishing rods, cake making supplies, binoculars, laptops and tablets, radon detectors, musical instruments, bicycles and take-home wifi hotspots. They are important sites for […] … learn more→

Science and democracy are concepts that have contributed to the common good after a process based on the pillars of Greco-Roman culture. The two have followed sinuous paths, sometimes adjacent, throughout history. And both are in danger. Inspired by a recent text by José María Izquierdo we launch the following question: do we know what democracy really consists of? Sometimes […] … learn more→

Large wildfires in the Arctic and intense heat waves in Europe are just the latest evidence that climate change is becoming the defining event of our time. Unlike other periods that came and went, such as the 1960s or the dot-com boom, an era of unchecked climate change will lead to complex and irreversible changes in Earth’s life support systems. Many […] … learn more→