Welcome to the 7th episode of PedPod by EX-PED-LAB. In this episode, I had a conversation with Mathias Urban, the Desmond Chair of Early Childhood Education and Director of the Early Childhood Research Centre (ECRC) at Dublin City University, Ireland (DCU). His research interests lie in answering questions of policy related to diversity and equality, social justice, evaluation, and professionalism in education and care systems for young children, families, and communities in diverse socio-cultural contexts.

In this episode, Mathias talked about some of his projects where they ask: What is it that makes early childhood systems resilient, responsive to disruption, but also leads to them, well, ensuring more just and more equitable outcomes for all children? Further, he shares that we "can talk about innovation in a way in a technical sense and can say actually sort of what kind of new programs do we need or should we talk about artificial intelligence and the benefits of it. I would say that the critical task of, and you might want to call it innovation, you might find other terms for that, is to actually fundamentally rethink the purpose of education in our times, as I said, in the second quarter of the 21st century, and to look at whether the purpose of education can still be preparing children for a future that we think is largely known in terms of this is what you need to learn now in order to be able to cope in 20 years time."

Find out more about Mathias' thoughts on pedagogical innovations--click on this link to listen to the podcast!