“Learner flourishing” is a wholistic concept that reflects current concerns that education must cultivate the whole person for the turbulent times ahead. A special issue dedicated to how this intersects with AI has just come out…
There is growing emphasis on flourishing as a fundamental concept for our times, possibly more helpful than “sustainability” as argued by John Ehrenfeld: “flourishing — the attainment of the full potential of living creatures.” When it comes to learners, Frank Martela argues that flourishing is the central aim of education. UNESCO have published Education for Flourishing and Flourishing in Education, and the OECD have published The New Flourishing Agenda in Education.
The UNESCO Mahatma Ghandi Institute of Education for Peace & Sustainable Development publishes The Blue Dot magazine, dedicated to “the relationship between education, peace and sustainable development and education for global citizenship”. The theme for the July 2025 issue, is AI for learner flourishing — grab the PDF of the whole issue, which has been beautifully designed.
CIC’s Simon Buckingham Shum was honoured to be invited to contribute, with an opinion piece sketching his current thoughts on how we may think of AI for learning in these turbulent times, when it often feels like both human and natural systems are unravelling:
CIC PhD alumnus and collaborator Antonette Shibani (now UTS TransDisciplinary School) also contributed to this issue, drawing on her long-term research program into Writing Analytics that started with her CIC PhD:
