CTTL to Lead Workshop in South Africa

The Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning’s global footprint will expand this week when Glenn Whitman and Dr. Ian Kelleher travel to South Africa to lead a historic workshop on Mind, Brain, and Education Science.
 
Whitman, Director of the CTTL, and Kelleher, Head of Research for the CTTL, are headlining Africa's First Conference on Mind, Brain, Education & Technology, which is sponsored by ITSI, the leading eLearning provider in South Africa.
 
Dr. Jacobus “Lieb” Liebenberg, the CEO of ITSI, said he was inspired to bring a conference on MBE home to South Africa after attending Whitman and Kelleher’s workshops at Learning and the Brain conferences and last summer’s Science of Teaching and School Leadership Academy at St. Andrew’s.
 
“This event is the launch of a new local South African community of practitioners and researchers dedicated to bringing the insights from the international community to South Africa, but hopefully also contributing to the wider conversation through our own action research initiatives,” Liebenberg said. “When it came to organizing our own event, it simply was the obvious choice to ask Glenn and Ian if they would be willing to participate - and luckily they both agreed.”
 
Kelleher and Whitman agreed that bringing their workshop to South Africa presents both a design challenge and a cross-cultural challenge that they’re excited to take on.
 
“The CTTL was founded with this public purpose,” Kelleher said. “Part of it is, can you make MBE research-informed teaching work in a school that is not like St. Andrew’s?”
 
“I like the challenge of seeing how (MBE science research) can translate across cultures and nations,” Whitman said. “We think about how to make learning and teaching better; what does that look like in Johannesburg? I think we’re modeling a lot of the mission-driven elements of our school.”
 
Whitman said he is looking forward to sharing the work of St. Andrew’s teachers, including their articles in the CTTL’s research publication “Think Differently and Deeply,” with the 150 conference attendees.
 
“We have an amazing privilege to be able to represent this school and our colleagues,” he said. “The (CTTL) would not exist without the everyday work of our faulty and the great stories they generate and the stories our students generate.”
 
Kelleher is hopeful that the way they “transport” the workshop can be a model for future CTTL presentations, with the possibility of training St. Andrew’s teachers to become workshop facilitators.
 
“We knew we had something really special that’s been going on at St. Andrew’s for the past 40 years,” he said. “I think it’s great when other places in the world know this, too.”
 
The conference will take place on May 23 and May 24 in South Africa. Follow @thecttl and @saes on Twitter to see photos from the event. Click here to learn more about St. Andrew’s Episcopal School’s academics and our research-informed teaching and learning.
Back
St. Andrew’s Episcopal School is a private, coeducational college preparatory day school for students in preschool (Age 2) through grade 12, located in Potomac, Maryland.