System Design, AI and the Future of Education with Tracey Burns S9E5 (125)
What are we at risk of losing in our pursuit of efficiency, innovation, and AI-driven transformation in education?
Are we designing systems for resilience—or are we unintentionally reinforcing inequality through the paths of least resistance?
📘 Episode Summary
In this insightful conversation, Louka Parry is joined by Tracey Burns—Chief of Global Strategy and Research at the National Center on Education and the Economy, former OECD leader, and international systems thinker. Speaking from Paris, Tracey draws on her global experience to explore how education systems are evolving—and what we risk losing in the process.
Together they dive into the accelerating impact of AI, the legacy of the OECD’s Four Future Scenarios for Schooling, and the urgent need for wisdom, not just innovation, in navigating complexity. From learning models to system inefficiencies, Tracey unpacks why we must be more intentional in preserving what matters—especially the deeply human relationships at the heart of learning. This episode is a call to anticipate, adapt, and interrogate the uncomfortable truths shaping our futures.
About Tracey Burns
Tracey Burns is Chief of Global Strategy and Research at the National Center on Education and the Economy in Washington, DC. Tracey joined the NCEE from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), where she was Chief of Research for the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation.
Tracey is also a member of a wide variety of Advisory Boards. She is currently a member of UNESCO Santiago’s High Level Technical Council for their Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (ERCE). She has additionally served as an Expert for UNESCO’s Future of Education Commission and Broadband Commissions. She is a member of TeachAI’s Advisory Committee, advising education leaders on the safe, effective, and responsible use of AI in education. She is a member of the US Alliance for Learning Innovation (ALI), and additionally serves on the Informal SUMMA-OECD Advisory Group to improve evidence use in policy in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Tracey’s most recent publications include Education as a Social Determinant [with Charles Ungerleider, 2025], The NCEE Blueprint: Designing Systems that work [2024], The evolution of evidence informed policy and practice: An international perspective (2023), The History and Evolution of Brokerage Agencies in Education [with Tom Schuller, 2022], What Schools for the Future? Leadership for Uncertainty (2022); Trends Shaping Education 2022; Back to the Future of Education: Four OECD Scenarios for Schooling (2020); Education in the Digital Age: Happy and Healthy Children (2020).
Tracey began her career researching language acquisition in children and newborn infants. She holds a B.A. from McGill University, Canada, and a PhD in experimental psychology from Northeastern University, USA.
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[Transcript Auto-generated]
Louka Parry (00:00)
Hello everybody and welcome back to the Learning Future podcast. I'm your host, Louka Parry. And today it's my delight to be speaking with Tracey Burns. We've just had the most delightful pre-conversation as well. I wish we had also recorded, I have to say. But she is joining us from Paris today, although she's actually based in Washington, DC as the chief of global strategy and research at the National Center for Center on Education and the Economy.
She does a lot of work across the world and formally she was the Chief of Research for the Center for Educational Research and Innovation at the OECD, which is based in Paris, funnily enough. Tracey sits on a wide variety of advisory boards. She has a phenomenal CV that you can find in our show notes. Suffice to say, she's had some pretty significant impact in terms of articulating the Future of Education Commission work for UNESCO, the Broadband Commission work.
Also, she's a member of UNESCO Santiago's high level technical council for their regional comparative and explanatory study. What I read from that, Tracy, is that you love what you do. And certainly the number of publications you have put forth, you know, education as a social determinant, the NCE blueprint, designing systems that work a lot of this systems thinking future of education, future of technology work and
And I only discovered this. You you began your career researching language acquisition in children and newborn infants. And it's also close to my heart as a Plagglinguist with a BA from McGill University and PhD in experimental psychology from Northeastern. So thanks for being part of this, Tracy. It's great to finally get to talk to you.
Tracey (01:30)
It's my pleasure, Luca. It's wonderful to be here. Thanks for the invite.
Louka Parry (01:34)
Let's just start with the first question, and you can take this anywhere you like. But what is something you're learning right now, Tracy, as someone that has quite a unique vantage point in the educational ecosystem?
Tracey (01:43)
Well, I'm learning lots of things actually. You know, I guess one question is what aren't I learning is maybe how I would answer that question. ⁓ But the, would say, I mean, I'm so I'm reading this book, The Empire of AI, which came out about a year ago, I think, actually, I don't remember when it came out recently. And it's more of a personal so it's, you know, it combines sort of the technical with
Louka Parry (01:49)
Ha
Good luck.
Interesting.
Tracey (02:07)
with the story of sort of the development of AI itself, covering open AI. And it's a really interesting kind of intersection of the technical, the historical, and the personal. And I think it's really, it's been fascinating to think about on multiple levels, because it's a vantage point I don't have, it's an experience I don't have, and it certainly is a historical perspective I don't have, and I've been really enjoying it.
Tracey (02:32)
I recommend it to the listeners.
Louka Parry (02:32)
Let's just, yeah, no,
I've written down to put them to my long list of books to read. I'm sure others have done so. I'm curious, like what is your read on the AI space now? Cause I'm really curious and I would almost say sometimes I feel schizophrenic between seeing kind of the potential and actual use cases that are emerging with also some of the kind of, and sometimes the hyperbole or hype.
With also, to your point, what do we need to hold onto? And is AI actually, are the premises built into it accurate, as the latest Apple research kind of puts into question? So what's your current read, knowing that it's constantly in flux as we update our own mental models and understanding it? What's your view on it? And then perhaps on how it pertains to education and the learning process.
Tracey (03:25)
yeah, mean, how much time do we have? I would say, you know, there's...
Louka Parry (03:27)
Hahaha.
Tracey (03:31)
I'm kind of schizophrenic might be a good word because on the one hand there are use cases that I can see that are extremely impressive and useful and being able to just help take, help just compress things very quickly and deliver things is really useful. So I'm a fan in a limited way.
On the other hand, I do think there's just been a huge amount of hyperbole. I'm not convinced that, well, I'm definitely not convinced that it's going to be able to do all the research in the world and be able to replace scientists and all the sort of biggest claims that are being made. But I'm also not convinced that it's able to...
Louka Parry (03:57)
Mm.
Tracey (04:13)
in its current state at least, that it's really able to do a lot of the things that people are saying it's able to do. it's extreme. you know, I don't want to take away from what it can do. So I don't want to be too negative. But I do think that the Apple paper is an example, the critiques of the World Bank paper, of the work they did in Nigeria. I think if you look at
Louka Parry (04:22)
Hmm.
Tracey (04:32)
the research, if you look at the quality of the research and whether or not basic preconditions are being met for whether you're able to have faith in the results or not, there's clearly some limitations that we're not necessarily very able to understand or when we're talking or when we're selling it super well, we're not really taking those limitations into account. So I, for one, am a little, you I'm excited about the possibility, but I'm a little bit uncomfortable with how far...
Louka Parry (04:52)
Mm.
Tracey (04:59)
it's being promoted. And that's just on the use front, right? On the regulatory front, on the governance front and all that. Then I actually have serious concerns because we don't have the guardrails in place and it's really hard to put guardrails in place for something that's moving so fast.
Louka Parry (05:01)
Mmm.
Yeah,
yeah, there's a lot of lag, I think, and there's an interesting, know, you know, the move fast and break things culture of the late nineties, early noughties, perhaps even still to this day. It has moved, you know, there's claims made that moving fast and breaking things also means breaking things like social connectedness or cognition itself. If you look at some of the interesting evidence on the role of a subset of technologies on human.
cognition, our ability to concentrate, pay attention and think well. I'm really, I'm really interested in the role of schooling in this as this continues to shift the way society and work functions. What's your, and I just want to shout out to you because you've done some fantastic work on the four OECD scenarios for schooling, which came out in 2020.
And this is work that we cite all the time, because of course we're trying to enable futures literacies to increase across the educators here in Australia primarily. What is it that you see across those scenarios now five years later as starting to play out? And maybe you might need to articulate what those four scenarios are for everybody as well, I guess.
Tracey (06:18)
⁓ sure, yeah, of course.
So the four, yes, with my co-author Mark Foster, we wrote the four OCD scenarios for the future of schooling and the four were, this is like a pop quiz, Lugat, and I'm like, no, I'm not gonna remember them. ⁓ Yeah, the first one was basically the status quo. it's kind of, things continue a bit more digitalized, a bit more interconnected.
Louka Parry (06:32)
I can get them off as well.
Tracey (06:42)
The second one was sort of a market-driven scenario, was sort of much more a fragmented system that was much more focused on sort of meeting users' needs. The third one was schools as learning hubs, which was a very sort of locally-based network structure of education institutions that were kind of embedded in communities. And the fourth one was kind of the...
learn as you go scenario was no schools, no teachers, things have broken down. The system has broken down itself, but that doesn't mean learning doesn't take place. It's just taking place in other forms and through other vehicles. So it's been very interesting. As you said, that came out, was October 2020. So it was, we were here in Paris and it was, you know, pandemic-y, but a little bit post pandemic. Kids were back in school. ⁓
Louka Parry (07:29)
Mm.
Tracey (07:30)
It was extremely well received. It was really interesting. And when we use the scenarios with people, because when you produce, as you know perfectly well, look at...
When you produce this kind of book, it's not because all the knowledge is contained in the book. It's that it's designed to be used and it's designed to ask questions that you get to interrogate and answer as you use it. So it's a tool actually. And so we did a ton of work with, you know, here as part of the OECD, different countries, different systems, different groups, everyone from parents to teachers to student unions to ministers themselves.
Tracey (08:05)
just kind of working them through, you know, how would you use this? Are you prepared? You know, this is a scenario which may happen. Are you prepared for it? What would you find challenging? What do you think you are actually ready to work on? And it was very interesting how people reacted to scenarios. Some of it was cultural, so some systems found some of the scenarios much more appealing than others.
Tracey (08:28)
at the time nobody liked scenario four, which was like the learn as you go scenario, know, nothing, really education formally is really not there anymore. And that I would say is the biggest shift is that the nobody, very few people still like, you know, I I'm talking to education people, so people don't like the scenario where education doesn't exist. Yeah, yeah.
Louka Parry (08:31)
Mmm.
Yeah. Saying that your, your, your power is going to diminish in some way. ⁓ honestly. Yeah.
Tracey (08:52)
But it's very, it's much easier to get, because I mean the point is when you present scenarios for people, people always want to work with the scenarios they like. You we want to work on the future we want, right? But one of the point of the exercise is to anticipate things you might not like.
Louka Parry (09:03)
100 %
Tracey (09:08)
to sort of build the anticipatory muscle to say, well, if this is happening, what would I do to either prevent it or to turn it around? And so one of the things you do is you start saying, are there any signals that this could come to pass? And whether they're weak or strong. more and more now when I sit down, nobody wants to be in the fourth scenario group, but you're randomly allocated, you don't get to choose. And what ends up happening is they are
much quicker to say this signal is happening, this signal is happening, this could happen. So they start unpacking it and realizing, this stuff is actually already in motion and it's not inevitable. There's nothing about futures thinking that means a future is inevitable. But it does mean that if you're seeing a set of signals, both weak and strong, about whether something is potentially likely to happen, that
it kind of behooves you as an actor in the system to think about, if I don't want this to happen, what do I need to do? And that's the conversation I think that we should be having more of. I think that, you know, obviously we wrote it in 2020, it would need to be updated to be more aligned with what's actually happening with today's tech, but it's...
Louka Parry (10:09)
Mmm.
Tracey (10:22)
the way you focus on the signals and the way you think about whether or not schools exist, whether or not teachers are there, what does it mean to, you know, who owns the data, who's governing a system where it's effectively platformed and there aren't actual national players. All of those questions are extremely valid today. And those are the questions that I would say if we want to, you know, if we want to be sort of diligent about protecting our public education systems,
We need to be interrogating those questions from a practice point of view, from a sort of personal point of view, a community point of view, regulatory point of view. There's a lot of pieces of the puzzle that need to be thought through and connected because there is great work going on. It's bit fragmented too at the moment.
Louka Parry (11:06)
Yeah, I'm really curious about, I mean, it strikes me when you talk about the point of scenarios, future scenarios, and even exploring what world building is to do the strategy part, which is not just the foresight, but the strategic foresight, which is, well, how strategically would we respond to this particular shock or shift? And, the signals and trends are really all we have to try to look at how our world in a
very complex ways navigated in a certain direction through different actors, all playing certain different roles. I wonder when, you were to update them as of right now, because I'm curious about that fourth one, and even as me as an educator, there's something about like our own mental model, like clinging to that for safety in a world that's so uncertain and deeply unsafe for many of our.
fellow human beings.
Like what would you, if it's 2025 now, which of those scenarios do you think has progressed in a particular way where the probabilities may have shifted as well? Especially when we think about the more uncomfortable conversations we don't want to have as teachers or principals and we have them all the time. know, we're a high academic school and we're doing great, but we need a little bit of, you know, it really is kind of so nested within the frame of just that first scenario of schooling extended.
Tracey (12:24)
Yeah, I think, I mean, you the question we were always asked when we worked with the scenarios was, you can we combine them? Is a hybrid possible? And in fact, actually, yes, right. I mean, the scenarios are there to sort of push thinking, but the reality can be a combination. you know, I actually think they stand the test of time.
Louka Parry (12:31)
Haha.
Tracey (12:42)
in quite an interesting way. mean, on the one hand, it's 2025, it's been five years, so it's not actually that long. They were an update of a set of scenarios, larger set of scenarios, which had been issued 10 years before, maybe more. yeah, so, you know, it was, they've, I mean, they were reworked, et cetera, but the original scenarios for the future of schooling were...
Louka Parry (12:56)
I see. I didn't know that.
Tracey (13:07)
would say 2010, although probably should check that. And there were many more of them. So we did quite a bit of conceptual work trying to make them more usable and more tractable, I think, to really push on things. So on the one hand, I think they still, they have aged well.
Also because they ask questions rather than answer them. So a lot of the technology questions, you can still ask the same kind of question. The answer is what's different because tech has changed. But the kinds of questions still remain the same. I think, you know, we've seen a huge amount of anchoring in scenario one. There really is still...
an attachment to our system and you know that's not to say that that's bad right there's elements of our system which are which are really meaningful and which we want to make sure we can hold on to.
There's isolated pockets of both scenarios two and three. There's a lot of market-driven solutions. Certain systems are going heavily towards market-driven solutions. Others, you know, the push towards a more communal kind of localized version. see that's always that used to be the favorite scenario. used to tease different people because they always wanted to just talk about that one. It's like, well, you can't pick a scenario. That's not how it works.
Louka Parry (13:57)
Mm-hmm.
I
Tracey (14:15)
You know, so it's a hard, it's, not sure I'm giving you a great answer to that question. I think, I think what, if I'm to step away, what I would say is, as we're, you know, the way we think about...
People care deeply about education. Education isn't just learning some things in books. It's a social institution. Schools are community institutions. There's ties, there's relationships. We learn facts and figures, but we also learn about relationships and tolerance and trust and societal norms. There's all sorts of things that go on in traditional schooling, which we value and which we rightly want to maintain.
And so one of the questions is how do we shift, if we want to shift education into sort of a different way of, a different style or different ways of teaching and learning, how do we hold on to what it is that we treasure and keep that unchanged or evolve it?
but transform the parts we want to transform. And I think that's sometimes what gets us stuck is because people see transformation, they want transformation, but then they don't want to change this bit, or they see this bit and they don't want to change it, so then they don't want transformation. And so I think that question of that tension and who gets to decide what has changed and what has not changed is one which is really, really meaningful.
Louka Parry (15:26)
Hmm. Hmm.
I think that's really interesting in terms of the system design piece. And I'd love you to talk a bit about that too, because I know that's a huge focus and you've got a lot of expertise in that, especially at NCE and OECD roles. You know, a system that works. Obviously there's got to be a particular view on what matters in a system like that. And so I'm really curious for you to just take us on, especially right now, know, there's evidence informed or data driven, which is my least favorite.
articulation because my favorite is purpose driven, evidence informed, which I think is a far better way to think about our work. And shout out to Martin Westwall, who always talks about that, who I heard it from first. But I think there's like, like, what is it about the system design piece, because you're a piece around power, and the redistribution of power, we can see this taking place in, you know, corporate sector in a big way, you know, the whole kind of hierarchy pyramid, shifting for holocracies or
Agile teams, a whole range of different things happening. What's your view on education systems and how to design them better?
Tracey (16:27)
Well, they're clearly complex systems. So did a lot of work on sort of governing complex education systems. And the NC blueprint is really sort of a distillation of what we've seen over many, years of working with high performing countries. And one of the things that really stands out is that the design of the system is
intentional and holistic. So what you're thinking about what should be learned is connected to what should be taught, is connected to who's leading it, is connected to who are the actors and who do you work with and what are the kinds of partnerships that you need. And so that kind of drawing the through line from, you know, the very basics and nuts and bolts of a system to the big anticipatory pieces of a system
is what we see done in the most successful systems. It's not easy, it's incredibly hard, right? There's a lot of moving pieces and a lot of people with very different and vested interests. But I think that the ability to sort of step back and see the wholeness is actually incredibly important.
The one thing I will say, and we acknowledge this very clearly in the blueprint, is when you do that, it's important to step back, but it sometimes means that people don't know where to start. So it's like, well then I can't do anything because I have to change everything. And so one of the things is to sort of understand what the whole might look like, but then choose a starting point.
And it's okay to start anywhere. I mean, it's just about being intentional, about being systematic, about thinking about the ways it connects. You know, if you're working on teacher prep, how does that connect to all the other pieces? If you're working on what are the skills that students need to learn now for the future, how does that connect to everything? And so any of those are very valid entry points.
and the key is to be working on them in connection with understanding where they're going and how they connect to all the other pieces.
Louka Parry (18:24)
I'm really interested in the...
in what I've noticed happening in some of our global systems, especially here in Australia, which is a kind of in some ways like a shift in narrative away from let's call it innovation or collective autonomy towards improvement or, yeah, I'm just interested in the efficiency improvement paradigm versus or integrated with the transformation.
paradigm. my sense is wonderful things like the learning sciences are somewhat being co-opted into programmatic responses. So that, and I hear this from school leaders say, where are sites of learning school, which for me is, is, is nonsense because every school is a learning sciences school. So it's a claim that you are on ought to be, you know, so this kind of like some ways I really
positive movements are saying let's look at the best evidence and bring it together but in somehow that being captured within a particular frame we've lost the wholeness what's is do you have a reflection on that because it's something I'm really sitting with and trying to understand
Tracey (19:25)
Yeah, and it's an important question, I think, how these pieces work together. I mean, you will be completely unsurprised to know that I'm a big fan of evidence. And that worked for many, many years on sort of strengthening evidence-informed policy and practice, and still do, for example. And I'm concerned about sort of a diminishing...
trust in science and a whole conversation around that, right? What does that mean and what do we construe as evidence and how do we use it? There is a conversation and there's a conversation in education but in many other sectors including medicine around whether or not words like evidence informed or
Louka Parry (19:45)
Mmm.
Tracey (20:02)
evidence-based are being used for vested interests, right? So that there's an intention behind the creation of terms and then they can be veicled by different people for different purposes. I'm not against actually...
You know, I do think we're in difficult times. There's difficult budgets. There's difficult questions. I'm all for efficiency, genuinely all for efficiency, right? I don't think this is the moment to be wasteful. On the other hand, I think the way we want to define efficiency is worth interrogating.
Louka Parry (20:21)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Tracey (20:31)
Because
if you want to think of resilient systems, for example, what they do is they work together well. It's a sort of a seamless system with all the nodes connecting. But their agility depends on, this is just complexity science. The reason they're agile is because you have nodes that are repeated. So if one node goes out, you've got another one.
Which in a real like efficiency paradigm, you never have a repeated node, right? Because that would just be wasteful. So there's a tension there in the sense that when we talk about efficiency, you can take it in a really narrow reductionistic way to mean streamline, you know, no extra pieces. But if you want to talk about efficiency in sort of a flexible agile way, what you need is really strategic smart systems with some repeating nodes so that they have that
Louka Parry (20:58)
Yes.
Mmm.
Tracey (21:21)
ability and they can respond to shocks. And that's a different way of thinking about, you know, what efficiency means. And I, there's a lot of great work on this, by the way. So it's, think, orienting the conversation rather than either or, think, orienting the conversations towards, yes, we can all agree that we need to be, you know, careful with budgets and time and we need to be efficient. We need to be effective.
And what does that look like in a strategic sense? I think that that's the conversation that I love having. Because you push people, you end up with a solution that can satisfy many more people because you're not choosing between two points of view.
Louka Parry (21:53)
Mmm.
Hmm. It's a, you know, what it makes me think about is some of the, the models, the learning models, I'll call them that, that we see around the world that are emerging, especially with tech, tech enabled. And I think your point on how some of that language has been captured. think you're very diplomatic on that. I would, I would be very crude and blunt about how it's becoming a completely marketing based medical model and marketing based education model, which I think it both we need to be very cautious of.
and go back to what gold standard actually means. But I'm curious too, like about that piece on the repeating notes, because in some ways it comes back to an earlier point in our conversation, like what are we, as change is always happening and you you've really spent a lot of time interrogating change and leadership for uncertainty and other pieces of work, Tracy. It kind of seems to me as like, where do we intentionally choose inefficiency? Because for example, if I can replace a teacher,
with a learning platform. If I have a particular view of success in a program logic, I would make that decision. But what do we, what do we not want to change? What will we hold onto from Horizon One where we are as we embrace the other. And that, that tension is just so live, I think in schools, know, as mobile phone bands, you know, the impact of technology, you know, the
anxious generation, all of that work, which has its critics, of course. Um, but at the same time, you know, the, incredible power that you have from having a, a tutor, an AI tutor when you can't afford one in any other setting. Um, I'm just, it's just so interesting to see how the, the kind of, which now I saw the HBR article and we've spoken about this in the podcast before. was only about a month ago, but the number one use case for AI today is companionship.
And there's something so interesting and yet kind of strangely terrifying about that instead of a you know, a lubricant for social connection and human connection, a replacement of human connection. And I don't know if it's the deep humanist in me or whatever it is, but I kind of, think, hmm, I don't know if the kind of tech, you know, the...
Transhumanism, post-humanism world is actually the scenario that I'm fighting for. It seems to be one that's a bit more like a remembering, hence the First Nations sciences and systems that we must remember rather than having to invent. It comes to me like a call for wisdom, not just knowledge. Well, again, you're right at the forefront of this. What do you think?
Tracey (24:30)
I I would agree with the call for wisdom, not just knowledge. Nothing wrong with knowledge, of course, but it all needs to be contextualized, it needs to be understood, it needs to be made sense of. I am a critic of the anxious generation. There's a lot of hyperbole around sort of where we are and...
the intersection between sort of big trends in sort of wellbeing and also aging and technology. these big, big mega trends which are intersecting and there's also, you know, been a lot of work over many years talking about what we do and we don't know about those trends. And it's pretty clear, we actually wrote a book on this in...
2019, think we put something out. So some of it's dated because again, the technology is changing. But the basic strength of the evidence there and the observation that was made was that there was really a disconnect between the available research and the policy discourse on cyber risks, example, that was the term at the time. Now it can be other things. And I do think that
Louka Parry (25:30)
Mm-hmm.
Tracey (25:37)
I think with the best intentions, by the way, there's no blame assigned to this. But I think that there is a real desire to sort of jump to solutions before we actually have investigated the problem. And so the conversation that generated by the Angsters generation I'm not against. I think it's very important to have the conversation. But we can't take those data.
for granted because they don't exist, right? Like those causal data do not exist. And so one of the questions I have is not only, so if we take this premise, what do we want to do about it? And what makes sense to do about it? And bans in general don't tend to work. So given that we know that, what do we really want to do about it? And then the second question is, you know, what kind of evidence would we actually need to be really comfortable understanding this?
Louka Parry (26:03)
Mm-hmm.
Tracey (26:24)
And what kind of evidence do the students themselves want to have? Because I'm missing in a lot of this conversation, I'm missing the voice of the student. I'm missing trust, trust in the strength and empowerment of those young people who are pretty fantastic actually. And so I'm sort of...
Louka Parry (26:35)
Mm.
Tracey (26:42)
You know, I'm glad it's caught attention. I'm glad people are talking about it. But I think we need to be much more inclusive about defining the problem and bringing solutions to the conversation that come from young people themselves, that come from a place of empowerment and a place of hope. And that's something I'd like to see us do more of.
Louka Parry (27:00)
Mmm.
That's fantastic. I've got a couple of last questions for you. One just on that. I just want you to speak about leadership today and tomorrow. Because again, I feel like I could just go through book after book. I'm looking at them all. But this, know, what schools for the future leadership from uncertainty? what does it mean to be an education leader today? And is it different from what it used to be? And if so, what do we need to pay attention to in terms of the development of our leaders?
Tracey (27:28)
Yeah, and I know you've had people on to speak precisely for this, thankfully, that's a huge topic. I mean, I think, you know, when I look at what's going on, think on the one hand, not much has changed, right? You need people who are strategic. You need people who are...
confident, capable leaders who are able to use evidence, are able to interpret and sort of manage things. And you also need to really be able increasingly to sort of think about the future, you know, not just the now, but as you said, Horizon 2 and maybe even Horizon 3.
And there's a really interesting new set of work that I think is actually just calling out ancient wisdom. But saying, mean, this capacity to self master the capacity to know yourself as a way to know others, the capacity to tap into those skills is also an increasing, increasingly spoken about leadership quality. So all the things we're used to doing and a whole bunch of new ones where you are taking it to the next level and thinking about what does that look like?
Louka Parry (28:06)
Hmm.
Tracey (28:28)
for today's challenges and tomorrow's need. And that interplay between sort of all the external skill sets we expect in leaders and the internal skill sets we see increasingly as really powerful. That I think is a super rich conversation.
Louka Parry (28:37)
Mm-hmm.
Mm. I love that. That is so great. I heard from Peter Senge recently and he just talked about how leadership development is largely personal development. It's who am I? You know, know yourself as the Greeks would say, my ancestors. But of course, you can go to any of those kind of ancient traditions and it really is the wisdom orientation. I'm just, so curious. think we've kind of...
Tracey (28:50)
Mm. Yeah.
Louka Parry (29:02)
We've lost the space for wisdom in some ways as the acceleration has continued. Even the Socratic seminar, we're all just so busy because we're kind of bombarded continually with, you know, things that are about commercializing attention and that's because the incentives are there. So I'm just really interested in how this plays out and our role in all of it. My last question for you, Tracy.
Tracey (29:10)
Hmm. Yeah.
Louka Parry (29:27)
is actually if I have two more if I can be so bold. One is if you were to talk about a preferred future. And so I'm calling on not just the researcher here but kind of in some ways the activist. It's like what is your preferred future for education systems in 2035? Knowing that you will I'm sure part of the 2030 work that the OECD put together and others. So like how would you articulate that vision? Knowing what you know now.
Tracey (29:51)
So I'm a bit allergic to the term preferred future. I mean, just because I think it's one of the things we as humans are bad at is thinking about things we don't know, right? Like, I mean, it's just really hard to sit with uncertainty. And that's what we see time and time again in any of our futures work. I know you experienced the same thing. So it's very exciting to talk about preferred futures and, you know, but I feel like...
Louka Parry (29:54)
You
Tracey (30:16)
I actually want to stick down there in the ground and be like, no, let's sit with some of the discomfort, discomfort. Let's push on the things we don't want to push about.
Louka Parry (30:23)
Mmm.
Tracey (30:26)
Because if we look at, if you're looking at those weak signals of you've got this AI tutor and we don't have a teacher, so why don't we actually, it's more cost effective, it would be more efficient, all these things, then I mean, there's clear pushes that are many incentives driven by budgetary incentives, but also sort of staffing shortages, a number of different things, difficulty with rural, distant communities, all of those things, which do push us to a place where we actually,
Louka Parry (30:45)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tracey (30:53)
don't want to be. And so having a preferred future where we sit over here and talk about like, I actually do think relationships are super important. I think being able to connect to identity and sort of local grounded knowledge is super important. But I don't want to talk about that without flagging the fact that increasingly what we are
Louka Parry (30:55)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Mmm.
Tracey (31:16)
in danger of sort of having that rich teacher knowledge and presence being augmented by, in some, you know, in communities where it's hard to get teachers in, it's hard to, like it's very clear what the drivers are of the inequality that is embedding itself in the system, right? And just reproducing the inequality that's already there. And so I don't want us to...
Louka Parry (31:31)
Yeah.
Tracey (31:38)
I don't want us to forget the hard stuff because I think the hard stuff is where we need to be paying attention now because we still have super earnest, excited teachers who are there and giving everything for us. We still have people who want to enter this extremely worthwhile profession. My father was a teacher. I'm biased, but you know, so.
Louka Parry (31:57)
My mum is,
Tracey (31:58)
And
I think we need to be really careful to maintain that and not sort of little by little let things slip away and starting with the poorest communities or those hardest to reach. So I actually want us to sit with some of the uncomfortable questions. I know I didn't answer your question, but.
Louka Parry (32:01)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Mm.
That's, that's your prerogative. ⁓ No, that's powerful, Tracy. It's a really beautiful, beautiful answer. That's got me really kind of pensive and reflective actually. Yeah. It's, it's that wonderful mantra. It's like a easy choice is hard life. Hard choice is easy life. And I know it's truism throw away, but there's something quite profound about that insight. Are we willing to do the hard things now for the things later in kind of every aspect of our.
Tracey (32:18)
A little push back, yeah.
Louka Parry (32:41)
life certainly now. Kind of our the way we contribute to the world I think is also part of that. My last question which you can choose to ignore is what is your take home message for people listening to this? You know the teachers, communities around the place, education leaders, innovators, people that are really if they're listening, if you're listening and thank you for listening.
You're listening because you're curious, deeply curious about the future of learning and schooling and your role in it. So thank you. And Tracy, what would you say to them?
Tracey (33:11)
Let's see.
keep on keeping on. think the, really, I think the work that they do, the work that we see, you know, every single person has a story of a teacher that made a real difference in their life. And that kind of poignant connection.
That kind of intersection at key moments in people's lives is meaningful in a way that we can't capture with most of our metrics. And yet we know in our hearts that this is true. And so I think the importance of remaining hopeful, of remaining...
optimistic, I call out the empowerment of young people, I also will call out also the empowerment of our elders, increasing parts of our population, 80 plus years, etc. There's power there. And there's an optimism there that I really want to attach to and I want to be able to lift up and amplify.
Louka Parry (33:50)
Mm.
Tracey (34:02)
So that would be my call to action and the kind of keep fighting the good fight.
Louka Parry (34:07)
Just beautiful. Tracy has been such a great conversation. I know that we could go in so many directions. ⁓ But just thank you for making the time in a very busy schedule with you there in Paris and soon to fly back. And thank you for keeping on. You know, I personally have been quite influenced by your work and even work that I didn't even realize was your work until much later.
Tracey (34:10)
Thank you, Luca.
That's true.
It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
Louka Parry (34:31)
And so that's the impact you've had on me and I'm sure many others. So thank you for what you do and for being with us on the Learning Future podcast.
Tracey (34:38)
It's very nice to hear. Thank you and thank you for the invitation.
