Beyond Neurodiversity as a Label: How “Inclusive” Design Fails Every Learner
No. 11 May 7, 2025 Learning Environments

Beyond Neurodiversity as a Label: How "Inclusive" Design Fails Every Learner

By Dr. Parul Minhas · Director of Research, EDI

Every time we install a "quiet room" or hand out ear-loops, we label a handful of students as exceptions — and leave everyone else to endure the same harsh lighting, echoing corridors, and static seating. Framing these moves as accommodations for "special" learners lets us off the hook: the real problem — the baseline environment — is never touched. This essay asks whether we have mistaken targeted inclusion for universal design.

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Designing for Epistemic Humility
No. 12 May 29, 2025 Learning Environments

Designing for Epistemic Humility

By Dr. Parul Minhas · Director of Research, EDI

What does it mean to design a school for not-knowing? Most learning environments are built around the certainty of curriculum delivery — but the most generative classrooms hold space for questions that haven't been answered yet, and for learners who are still working out what they think. This essay explores how the architecture of a school can quietly teach humility, curiosity, and intellectual courage.

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Can Structure and Freedom Coexist?
No. 13 June 16, 2025 Learning Environments

Can Structure and Freedom Coexist?

By Dr. Parul Minhas · Director of Research, EDI

The debate between structured instruction and student-directed freedom has shaped education for more than a century — and is usually framed as a choice between two opposing camps. This essay argues that the dichotomy is false: the best learning environments hold both at once, using structure to make freedom legible and freedom to make structure meaningful.

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Why Paying Attention in Class May Be Overrated
No. 14 August 6, 2025 Teacher Practice

Why Paying Attention in Class May Be Overrated

By Prakash Nair · President & CEO, Education Design International

For generations, "pay attention" has been the first instruction every child hears from every teacher. But what if compliance attention — eyes forward, hands folded, mouth closed — is one of the weakest signals of actual learning? This essay reconsiders what attention in school really tells us, and what we lose when we mistake stillness for understanding.

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The Beautiful Tension of Being Human
No. 15 August 26, 2025 Wellbeing & Health

The Beautiful Tension of Being Human

By Dr. Parul Minhas · Director of Research, EDI

We design schools as if children are problems to be optimized — sorted into the right ability group, fed the right curriculum, measured by the right rubric. But being human is not an optimization problem. It is a series of tensions held in balance: between belonging and individuality, between safety and risk, between certainty and wonder. This essay asks what schools would look like if they honored those tensions instead of trying to resolve them.

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Why Educators Must Be Spatially Aware
No. 16 August 29, 2025 Teacher Practice

Why Educators Must Be Spatially Aware

By Dr. Parul Minhas & Afua Ameley-Quaye · EDI Research

Teachers are trained in pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment — but rarely in the one thing they spend every working hour inside: space itself. The way a room is arranged, lit, and acoustically tuned shapes who speaks, who listens, who feels safe, and who feels invisible. This co-authored essay makes the case that spatial literacy must become a core teaching skill, not an afterthought left to architects.

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Designing for Diversity: Creating Inclusive and Adaptive Learning Environments
External Publication
No. 17 October 1, 2025 Mentor Magazine

Designing for Diversity: Creating Inclusive and Adaptive Learning Environments

By Prakash Nair · Published in Mentor Magazine

Inclusion in schools is too often treated as a checklist — ramps, signage, a sensory room tucked behind the gym. But genuinely inclusive design is structural: it begins with the question of who the building is for, and answers it without exception. This essay, published in <em>Mentor Magazine</em>, lays out a framework for designing schools that are inclusive and adaptive by default, not by accommodation.

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The Freedom Paradox
No. 18 October 7, 2025 Wellbeing & Health

The Freedom Paradox

By Dr. Parul Minhas · Director of Research, EDI

We all want freedom — to think, to choose, to live as we are. But we forget that others want the same, and love often turns into quiet control. This essay sits with the paradox that the hardest freedom of all may be letting the people we love be free, and asks how freedom and belonging can be held at once.

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Education at the Edge of Awakening
No. 19 October 27, 2025 Education Policy

Education at the Edge of Awakening

By Dr. Parul Minhas · Director of Research, EDI

Everyone is asking what AI will mean for teaching and learning. But the deeper question is being missed: what does it mean to be human when machines can outperform us at almost everything we once called mastery? This essay offers a new compass for learning — Doing, Becoming, Being, Benevolence.

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Why Maslow Might Be Unhappy With What Schools Have Done to Human Potential
No. 20 November 22, 2025 Wellbeing & Health

Why Maslow Might Be Unhappy With What Schools Have Done to Human Potential

By Dr. Parul Minhas · Director of Research, EDI

Everyone in education talks about helping children reach their “full potential.” But the phrase, used with the best of intentions, may be quietly exhausting children rather than empowering them. This essay traces how Maslow’s idea of self-actualisation drifted into a checklist of outward achievement.

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