A really interesting conversation on the Huberman Lab podcast with Joe Liemandt, a technology entrepreneur and principal of Alpha School, a K-12 model that uses AI and individualized learning. There is so much in this episode, anyone who works in education/learning should listen.
Just one of the highlights is that Alpha seem to have cracked the AI personalised learning approach – allowing students to learn at speed. However, motivation is mentioned as still the key element and there are some interesting (and controversial ideas) included in the pod. In addition, the role of teachers is still mentioned as essential – but as a coach or guide. Apparently 100,000 people applied for such roles with Alpha last year!
Some other interesting points include having kids dream board on what they want to do in the future as well as inclusion of building (an enterprise, sport, design, etc) in engaging beyond just the cognitive domain.
The focus on skills, in the learning industry and beyond, continues. Every time I hear discussion on the topic I can not help but think of the Beastie Boys…
Skills to pay the bills Skills, y’all, I got skills to pay the bills Skills, y’all, skills to pay the bills What skills? Skills, skills to pay the bills Yeah, yeah, skills to pay the bills
Recent pods and reports on skills
One of the more interesting recent conversations on the topic was over on the Mindtools podcast and I enjoyed some of the points made. One point was that businesses are too often thinking about skills as tasks and that’s something I need to keep in mind given previously working with models where knowledge, behaviour and skill combinations allow for the completion of tasks. It is worth a listen (Becoming a skills-based organization):
My question/comment in the webinar was if this is really new – for example, information literacy courses (such as one I taught 20 years ago) have argued for many of these points for a long time. Yes, SCONUL 7 Pillars and other models may have brought an information lense to the skills but they librarians have always looked to make people critical thinkers and ethical researchers, who are able to synthesize information and produce original thining via different communication methods. Seemingly because I mentioned the word “librarian” in my question to the webinar panel, the reply focused on books which, in 2026, was a bit depressing to say the least (albeit showing it is hard to put across a detailed question in Zoom’s Q&A tool). The Non-Negotiable Human Skills report seems to be based on extensive research and, at times, the webinar presenters seemed to admit the outcomes were not revolutionary but perhaps more confirming/articulating what others have said. Indeed the World Economic Forum, as one example, has talked about some of the same/similar skills being “on the rise“, their list:
Creative thinking
Systems thinking
Analytical thinking
Al and big data
Technological literacy
Motivation and self-awareness
Curiosity and lifelong learning
Talent management
Resilience, flexibility and agility
Service orientation and customer service.
Over on the “Change It” podcast, guest Dara Simkin discussed their work and book – Full Stack Human. The podcast descibes the book’s five “human capabilities”:
Serious Play
Strategic Hope
Intelligent Optimism
Radical Curiosity
Embodied Adaptability
I will not go into this list in too much detail either but I have been a critic of the corporate world’s Lego powered “play”. Little in the podcast engaged me on that point. Side note – I even got into a slight argument with a pre-school educator once as they were using “play” to mean something very different to what it means in the corporate world so it is worth remembering that as well when discussing more broadly.
However, I did quite like Simkin’s “perfect, panic, or play” as responses to uncertainty, in this regard I would tend to say I do “play”. In other words, I will experiment around uncertainty rather than just panic or look for an immediate perfect solution.
What do I mean by mentality?
Personally, I have not been a big fan of the recent focus on skills, I commented on this trend back in 2022 including one of my favorite gifs from this blog:
For me, just talking about skills ignores too much of the human element (as identified by behaviors or other language in ‘traditional’ competency models) not to mention deep technical knowledge that sits behind, for example, skills in domains such as healthcare and engineering. Indeed I have discussed this a few times lately with professionals worldwide, including whilst in China, around if mentality is actually what matters.
By using “mentality” I am trying to articulate the mindset we bring to a problem. In other words, an IT professional, L&D professional, sales professional, etc. will all approach a problem differently and use AI (and more traditional tools and methods) differently as a result. Thus much of the skill focus in conversations, which seems in part born from the long standing consultancy approach of building engagement teams based on skills, still applies – but my point would be that you should bring different mentalities together for their skills and foundational knowledge.
That all said, perhaps I am saying much the same thing and just getting worried about the semantics. Another way to consider this would be to combine the professional identity with curiosity and other traits to develop your mentality. When it comes to semantics on the topics we can look at high profile examples like Google’s Project Oxygen and see characteristics and behavioursused to effectively mean the same thing. Ultimately it reinforces the point that the first thing to crack is your vocabularly so people understand what they mean.
All of this in the same year as Arsenal’s winning Premier League title, one where the importance of be mentality monsterswas talked about like never before. Few people would say that top-flight footballers lack football knowledge or skills. Therefore, mentality should certainly be considered in any attempt to make sense of a world of skills – be you in a more or less AI-impacted field.
Some reflections are included in this post, including after some research following the call.
What Is SkillsFuture?
SkillsFuture is Singapore’s national approach to lifelong learning, skills, and workforce agility. It provides Singaporeans with opportunities to develop and reskill, with the aim to build (or indeed maintain) their highly skilled, future‑ready workforce. This national effort involves individuals, employers, training partners (including universities), industry bodies, and government working together to build what appears a robust upskilling ecosystem.
The UK versions?
In many ways, the UK’s attempt to build job profiles and reskilling via apprenticeships is similar but you suspect the Singapore model is more robust (it at least sounded that way on the webinar). That said, I do quite like the UK’s “Occupational Maps” that are in public beta. The contradiction there seems to be the demand to move apprenticeships away from reskilling to early careers.
Conclusion
Back to Singapore and The SkillsFuture portal, looks impressive in breadth of programmes and tools available for learners and employers. For individuals, initiatives include discounted training for Singaporeans as mentioned on the webinar.
A few weeks back I had the joy of attending the book launch of Intellectual Cooperation at the League of Nations. It has been a while since I attended an event like this, I used to sneak into them quite often due to the volume of universities in London, so it was quite a nice change.
At the event, one interesting aspect of the research was mentioned – that part of the League’s work in the area of intellectual cooperation was investigating if common textbooks could be created for global use. In the post-WWI environment, this was an idea to help tackle global issues but the idea can clearly be seen today – for example in the desire to decolonialize curricula, provide global resources via OERs and related topics such as open access publishing. Whilst the LoN’s “Committee of textbook experts” had little success, more success was had in areas including student exchange, again, something in the 2025/2026 news given the UK’s possible reentrance to Erasmus.
Overall, worth a read (or at least a podcast listen) for anyone with an interest in the history of international organizations and/or education.
Dr Guieswende Rouamba’s reflections on the podcast, including why they have written “The Instructional Designer’s Guide to Project Management” were very interesting so I thought I would share some reflections:
My MSc covered project management for instructional design in quite a lot of detail so I would say I have a different experience to that described as the norm.
An approach of having two levels of PM (as described by Dr Rouamba) between instructional designer as project manager and a higher level person performing portfolio management is certainly similar to a lot of my organizational experience.
The challenge and vagueness of “engaging” learning and the need for clear expectations. This resonates due to some recent experience in considering engagement vs outcomes vs brevity vs constraints.
How can ID work best given the challenge of shifting priorities and SME availability challenges? This has certainly been my experience and, again, makes ID (in my opinion) unlike some other areas – for example, common business tools like RACI, KPIs and SMART goals can be tricky in ID.
The importance of clarifying roles. I am increasingly viewing this as the major challenge in many projects (not just ID ones) as the professional profile and mentality of different people can be quite different to what you expect.
Whose Education Is It Anyway? 
