About Jeremy

So I’m a Welsh-born, dual national British-Australian, former resident of Singapore and India, currently living in Dubai, UAE. 

Professionally speaking, I am a recovering economist.

Starting out as a high school teacher in the UK in the early 1980s, and then in universities in Australia during the 1990s, I taught thousands of students how to pass economics exams, until my conscience finally got the better of me.

At the turn of the new millennium, I started teaching courses in sustainability in various business schools around the world and, at first, faced a lot of resistance.

Now, of course, it’s all very mainstream, unless you happen to have an investment portfolio dominated by fossil fuel stocks.

The great thing about teaching a subject you have a deep conviction about is that helping students to pass an exam makes no sense.

What you want is deep learning and a change in behaviour. This is where my interest in connectivist learning theories and technology-enhanced education comes in.

Knowledge is not something a learner absorbs, but something a learner creates. Presented with the opportunity to be co-contributors to the curriculum through blogs and other forms of social media increases learner engagement by several orders of magnitude.

This is an approach I have successfully employed at several institutions including QUT and Griffith University  (Australia), the Asian International College (Singapore and India), the NEOMA Business School (France), and most recently at MODUL University (Dubai).

I’ve also spent a large part of my professional life in the corporate world, working for private education companies like Knowledge Universe, a US-owned business based in Singapore, and the UK-based, Canadian-owned, Busy Bees Group.

My main project at these organisations was  to deliver flexible, innovative, and affordable teacher education programmes to practising and aspiring early childhood educators in Singapore and India. As an economist, I know that few investments generate higher returns to society than investment in early childhood education.

My other great passion is a sustainable enterprise called Green School for Girls (GS4G) which has been in development for an unconscionably long time. It ticks all the sustainability and education boxes and operations started in India in mid-2015.

The baby steps that have been taken so far have been very rewarding, and future plans are audacious.

Authentic Learning Blog

As the title suggests, the primary focus of this blog is authentic learning. Commencing in 2005, there is a distinct bias towards the use of the various information and communication technologies and how they can harnessed to create authentic learning environments. Another (less distinct) bias is the focus on tertiary education, but k-12 and early childhood education also feature.

The future of learning: Five trends that could change the face of Indian education

30th January 2017

The education system in India is in trouble and everybody knows it, not least of whom is the Government, whose inputs to the National Education Policy 2016 — currently in draft form — do not shirk away from the scale of the problem. In this preliminary document it is acknowledged that learners are disengaged, teachers are untrained and unmotivated, school leadership is lacking, and infrastructure is poor; factors which contribute to learning outcomes that fall a long way short of those required if India — soon to have the largest working population in the world — is to fully exploit its demographic dividend.

5 minute read >>

Teacher education in the developing world: Why it’s time for educational technology to live up to the promise

17th March 2016

© flickr.com/photos/irex/7421138946

Image source: flickr.com/photos/irex/7421138946

Followers of Audrey Watters and her essays on the ‘History of the Future of Education’ will know that there has been a tendency to over-hype what technology can deliver, with 20th century notions of the future closer to science fiction than present day reality.

So why did the education futurists of the 20th century get it so wrong? …

[Please click here for a 7-minute read on Medium.com]

 

#IWD2016: India’s untapped reservoir of talent

8th March 2016

IMG_0805

How online teacher education can be a boon for stay-at-home mums … and society at large

Today is International Women’s Day, and the media will be chock full of articles bemoaning the plight of women the world over, trotting out the usual string of platitudes about the pressing need to address the deep-seated structures in society that contribute to gender inequality.

[Read more here.]

Realising the demographic dividend: Why India needs a new paradigm for early years teacher education

25th February 2016

2016-02-06 10.59.05

Image: SAIBSA Workshop, 6 February 2016: ‘What is the professional responsibility of an early childhood educator?’

Even those who do not follow the education industry closely will be aware that all is not well in the higher education sector right now. Type the words ‘disruptive innovation in higher education India’ into Google and you get 390,000 results. Type in ‘crisis in higher education India’ and the number of results rises to 22 million.

[Read more here …]

Read More Authentic Learning Posts

Ruminations Blog

This blog started started in 2003, and is quite broad in focus with an underlying theme being the international political economy, and its response (or lack thereof) to climate change and other sustainability related issues.

There is another sustainability related blog linked to a postgraduate course I have convened for many years at NEOMA Business School in France (and elsewhere) entitled Sustainable Development & Competitive Advantage. The course materials housed at this blog are available under a Creative Commons licence.

The future of learning: Five trends that could change the face of Indian education

30th January 2017

The education system in India is in trouble and everybody knows it, not least of whom is the Government, whose inputs to the National Education Policy 2016 — currently in draft form — do not shirk away from the scale of the problem. In this preliminary document it is acknowledged that learners are disengaged, teachers are untrained and unmotivated, school leadership is lacking, and infrastructure is poor; factors which contribute to learning outcomes that fall a long way short of those required if India — soon to have the largest working population in the world — is to fully exploit its demographic dividend.

5 minute read >>

Abbott’s G20 agenda: climate still the elephant in the room

17th October 2014

By Jeremy Williams, Griffith University

News emerging from Washington last week suggests climate change may amount to more than an FAQ in the appendices of this November’s G20 leaders’ summit agenda. President Obama’s deputy national security adviser for international economics, Caroline Atkinson, has made the point that, as the G20 economies generate 80% of the world’s carbon emissions, the group should give a political push to “specific steps” to address climate change.

Read More
Read More Ruminations Posts

Speaking Engagements

Enquiries regarding availability for keynote addresses, panel discussions, or workshop facilitation in the areas of education or sustainability (or both) can be made through get in touch below.

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