Sandra Abegglen, Tom Burns, Richard F. Heller, Rajan Madhok, Fabian Neuhaus, John Sandars, Sandra Sinfield, Upasana Gitanjali Singh
This #Take5 is brought to you by the editorial team of Stories of Hope: Reimagining Education, an open book made possible by the contributions of authors from across the globe. These educators all had a positive and innovative approach to education, and have given much needed hope for a better future for both learners and teachers in these challenging times. Here we hear from the team and what they are doing now. We wanted to share this update because if Learning Developers are not hopeful – who is?
Reimagining education: Stories of hope
Higher education is at a crossroads. Across the sector, students are disengaged, educators are stretched thin, and institutions often feel more focused on performance metrics than on people. Yet amidst these challenges, there are powerful examples of hope—innovations, collaborations, and everyday acts of care that show what education can become.
The open-access collection, Stories of Hope, brings together educators and practitioners from around the world to showcase real innovations that challenge the ‘alienated academic’ and ‘hopeless university’ status quo. Each chapter offers a glimpse of what a more humane, imaginative, and inspiring educational future could look like—from rethinking systems and curriculum design to fostering creative collaboration and exploring meaningful uses of technology.
Rather than a catalogue of problems, the book is an invitation to reimagine what education can be. The contributors share practical, hopeful interventions that demonstrate how small, intentional changes can transform classrooms, empower teachers, and inspire students.
For academics, teachers, administrators, and anyone committed to educational change, Stories of Hope serves as both encouragement and a call to action. It is a living ecosystem of ideas—grounded in practice, fuelled by possibility, and rooted in radical hope.
| Stories of Hope: Reimagining Education tackles the current crises in higher education: slash and burn downsizing, sidelined students and burnt out staff – not by constructing a list of complaints, but by presenting a collection of real-world innovations that serve as practical, hopeful interventions, globally challenging the status quo with radical hope. Contributors propose fostering a humane perspective by running co-created professional development (CPD) sessions for staff, implementing self-care, embracing compassion amidst chaos, and integrating professional services staff expertise into programme design. Students-as-partners innovations illustrate where bringing the students into the conversation creates systemic changes, inverting power structures to be student-led. Adopting a playful approach to teaching and learning reveals how to implement a pedagogy of joy and engaged presence, fostering autonomous critical learners. The book promotes imaginative collaboration through the “Better Together” mindset for co-creation, uses technology to create a sense of global community via online quiet study rooms, and advocates for focusing on “the whole human” (head, heart, and hand). Stories of Hope is designed to be both a source of inspiration and a definitive call to action. Our next step, the LinkedIn group, is a step from and towards that evolving ecosystem of ideas, inviting academics, facilitators and administrators to continue the conversation about how we are implementing meaningful changes to create the more inspiring educational future we wish to see. |
Better together: Stories of Hope to Reimagine Education
So much time, effort and love from all concerned went into putting together this book that we could not let the story end there. This is not a dusty tome designed for a virtual shelf. We wanted this to be a living breathing document that continued to have a life—a place—a voice… So, building on the spirit of the open-access book Stories of Hope, we’ve created a new LinkedIn group: Stories of Hope to Reimagine Education.
This space brings together educators, practitioners, researchers, and anyone passionate about shaping a more humane, imaginative, and inclusive future for education.
Here, we continue the work started in the book:
- Sharing real-world practices that challenge the status quo
- Spotlighting small but transformative shifts in learning and teaching
- Fostering dialogue across disciplines and contexts
- Nurturing a community grounded in creativity, courage, and radical hope
- Collaborating on actions and advocacy to transform education.
Whether you’re an academic, teacher, administrator, student, or simply someone who believes education can be better, you’re warmly invited to join us.
This is a living, evolving ecosystem of ideas—rooted in practice, rich with possibility, and driven by collective imagination.
Now is the time to shape the change we wish to see.
Join us and be part of the conversation: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/16296030/
Book Note and Editor Bios:
Suggested Reference: Abegglen, S., Burns, T., Heller, R. F., Madhok, R., Neuhaus, F., Sandars, J., Sinfield, S., & Singh U. G. (Eds.) (2025). Stories of hope: Reimagining education. Open Book Press. https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0462
Sandra Abegglen, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary, where she explores online education and learning and teaching. Sandra has extensive experience both as a social researcher and lecturer/programme leader. She is the project lead for TALON, the Teaching and Learning Online Network, and Playful Hybrid Higher Education. Sandra has published widely on emancipatory learning and teaching practice, creative and playful pedagogy, and remote education. She has been awarded for her work with the Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE) 2022 by Advance HE, and the Team Teaching Award 2020 by the University of Calgary. Find her personal website at: https://sandra-abegglen.com/
Tom Burns (1959–2024) was an Associate Teaching Professor in the Centre for Teaching Enhancement at London Metropolitan University, developing innovations with a special focus on praxes that ignite student curiosity, and develop power and voice. Always interested in theatre and the arts, and their role in teaching and learning, Tom developed theatre and film in unusual places, set up adventure playgrounds, events and festivals for his local community, and fed arts-based practice into his learning, teaching and assessments. Tom was a University Teaching Fellow and has received a Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE) 2022 for #creativeHE. He co-authored Teaching, Learning and Study Skills: A Guide for Tutors and Essential Study Skills: The Complete Guide to Success at University (5th Edition, 2022). https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/essential-study-skills/book278189
Richard Heller, Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University of Newcastle, Australia and of Public Health, University of Manchester, UK, has a medical degree and doctorate from the University of London, United Kingdom. He was Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Community Medicine at the University of Newcastle, Australia and Professor of Public Health at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. Richard was also the founder and coordinator of the People’s Open Access Education Initiative (Peoples-uni, https://www.peoples-uni.org/), which aimed to provide Public Health capacity building in developing countries at low cost, through e-learning using open-access resources on the Internet and leading to an MPH degree. He is author of The Distributed University for Sustainable Higher Education (2022, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-6506-6).
Rajan Madhok is a public health doctor who worked in senior medical management positions in the NHS. Alongside his service work he took a major interest in capacity building throughout his career. He is retired and lives in North Wales, and is keen to share his own learning with others. Rajan was Chair of the Trustees of Peoples-uni—https://www.peoples-uni.org/—holds honorary academic appointments at the University of Salford, UK, and Indian Institute of Public Health, Shillong, India, is a non-executive director of Llais (https://www.llaiswales.org/dr-rajan-madhok) and a governor on the Council of Coleg Cambria. He is the author of RaMa Reflections (https://www.ramareflections.com/).
Fabian Neuhaus, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the University of Calgary in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. His research in the urban environment focuses on the topics of habitus, type, and ornament. He has worked in Switzerland, Germany, Canada, and the UK. He is passionate about the scholarship of learning and teaching, and design pedagogy. He is the Principal Investigator for the Richard Parker Initiative and its associated projects, including NextCalgary (https://nextcalgary.ca/).
John Sandars: After training in hospital medicine, John entered the world of general practice. John was also a GP trainer, GP tutor, Macmillan GP Facilitator in Palliative Medicine, and part-time lecturer in general practice at the University of Manchester. He developed his academic career in medical education as Associate Professor in the Leeds Institute of Medical Education, University of Leeds and was appointed Professor in Medical Education at the University of Sheffield before moving to Edge Hill University in 2016 as Professor of Medical Education. John is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Educators and Higher Education Academy. He has received major funding for national and international projects and has over 200 peer-reviewed publications and was a Visiting Professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is an Associate Editor for Medical Teacher and a member of the editorial board for the International Journal of Medical Education. Find out more about John via: https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/person/professor-john-sandars/staff/
Sandra Sinfield is an Associate Teaching Professor in Education and Learning Development in the Centre for Teaching Enhancement at London Metropolitan University and a co-founder of the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education. Sandra is a University Teaching Fellow and has received a Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE) 2022, for #creativeHE. She has co-authored Teaching, Learning and Study Skills: A Guide for Tutors and Essential Study Skills: The Complete Guide to Success at University (5th Edition, 2022), https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/essential-study-skills/book278189 Sandra is interested in creativity as a liberatory and holistic practice in Higher Education; she has developed theatre and film in unusual places—and inhabited SecondLife as a learning space.
Upasana Gitanjali Singh, PhD, is the Academic Leader and Associate Professor in Information Systems and Technology at UKZN and holds academic appointments in Australia and Malaysia. She is an NRF C2-rated researcher in Educational Technology, achieving this distinction on her first application. With over fifteen years of teaching experience, she specialises in IT and has a strong passion for digital teaching and learning. Her prolific research includes four edited books and over sixty scholarly outputs, with numerous international keynote addresses. She founded and chairs the digiTAL2K conference, promoting global collaboration in digital education innovation. Prof. Singh has received several awards and led UKZN’s global engagements through MoUs with institutions across three continents.