S2E6: Donald Clark on 2500 years of learning theory - from the Greeks to the Geeks

Donald Clark is a man of many hats. He’s an EdTech entrepreneur who was formerly the CEO and one of the original founders of Epic Group, a pioneering company in online learning, and he is now the CEO of Wildfire Learning, an AI company. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Derby. And he is the author of at least two books - Artificial Intelligence for Learning, and Learning Experience Design. But today I am speaking with Donald about a different writing project. Over the last 20 years or so - and gathering pace in recent months - Donald has been collecting learning theorists. He has written an incredible series of blogs on 2500 years of learning theory - from the Greeks to the Geeks. When we recorded this conversation a few short weeks ago, there were 160 blogs in the series. At the time of publication, he is now up to 200. Helpfully, Donald has created an index, where you can see a list of all 200 learning theorists grouped under different headings - the behaviourists, the assessors, the vocationalists and so on. There’s a link to this index below - you may find it useful to refer to it now and then as you listen to our conversation. This was a conversation from which I learned a huge amount. It is also an episode that made me think harder than I’ve had to do in a long time. And it’s also one of the most political discussions I’ve had on the podcast to date. I’ll try not to make a habit of it. LINKS The index to Donald’s series of blogs on 2500 years of learning theorists: https://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/2021/09/these-were-written-as-quick-readable.html The Rethinking Education conference 2022 - tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-rethinking-education-conference-2022-tickets-226415834857 The Rethinking Education conference 2022 - speaker application form: https://rethinking-ed.org/conference/ The Rethinking Education Mighty Network: www.rethinking-education.mn.co/feed Mighty Network Welcome Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=47xZ73YPTNs Rethinking Education Campfire Conversations playlist: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ…WX9gMBCQJtHxoGNh2 Become a Patron of the Rethinking Education project: www.patreon.com/repod Buy James a pint, a coffee - or perhaps even a pint of coffee: www.buymeacoffee.com/repod The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at rethinking-ed.org/contact, or twitter.com/RethinkingJames.