 So I'm here this morning with Claudio Dundee who is our official reporter during the Eden conference this year and Claudio is a long-term member of Eden and a senior fellow. Claudio, from the interactions that you've had, you've had an opportunity to engage with our keynote speakers, with the speakers within the different presentations, with students and with participants in the conference, what are some of your impressions and what do you think are some of the issues that arose during the conference? Well, the conference is very rich in terms of points of view that are expressed and also in terms of the ambition that is posed in the title. Exploring the macro, meso and micro level is a good way to think because it's not focusing only on policies, not focusing only on institutional changes, focusing only on the learning process, learning interaction and that has always been a richness of Eden conferences being able to address from policy to teaching in the classroom. There are so many challenges at the moment in the world and all of them are affecting education in a way or another and the conference has proposed quite interesting contributions in how some of these challenges can be faced, particularly the challenge of globalization and commodification of education, the challenge of technology coming into the life of every citizen and having a massive influence on how people in principle could learn, also in how education could be administered and how credentialization can be restructured. So a lot of quite interesting stimulus, what I find a little bit less complete is the system view. It seems that each challenge is coming alone and this is not good. We need to see the whole of the challenge then of course we can act one by one but first we need to think globally and have the full view of all the challenges that are coming. We have to look at technology but we also have to look at the issue of peace of demographic change. We have to look at the issue of climate change as well as we have to look at globalization as a phenomenon that is bringing certain consequences on the world of education and makes the life of an educational institution very much different from how it used to be particularly in Europe up to just a few decades ago. I'm glad you mentioned the challenges because we are dealing with some very serious global challenges. How do you see these impacting Europe specifically and how do you see the conference addressing some of those specific European issues? Well on the European issues you know Europe is in a delicate moment in its integration process. Some people say we started our disintegration process with Brexit and with the conflicting position between European groups of countries on different aspects. One of these aspects is certainly welfare and so the role of education as a business or as a public good. Another is migration. We should treat the emergency of refugees first of all but also of migrants from poor parts of the world and threatened parts of the world. I think the conference contains elements on each of these aspects. I would say it's mature in its view. It's not yet mature in its conclusion. But I would say that if we have to use a synthesis expression to say where we are the celebration last night of the best paper gives us a hint because we are stuck in the middle. We are in the middle of several celebrated innovation processes that have a huge potential to transform education but none of these processes has really gone to the consequences that we are expecting. And of course we can ask ourselves whether this is due to the fact that the innovation were finally not so good and not so relevant or whether they didn't produce the effect because education system is resistant to change in its roles, in its management but also in the opinions of the stakeholders including the students and the parents who don't like to change too quickly and to do something that they don't know. My thesis is that the innovation didn't change so systematically because there was not a system view and each of the innovation was taken for itself. And that is in my view what this conference is starting to help people to reflect. If we don't have a system view we will be always stuck in the middle. We will always convince a few people but not convince a lot of other people and generate self-protective dynamics in institutions but not only in institutions also in political systems but also at individual level, teachers, students. They will tend to defend from an innovation that is not perceived as completely positive from their point of view. And when we hear people who are proposing great horizon of innovation stressing only the positive aspects and at the same time threatening if you don't change you will be lost, education will be obsolete, people will learn along with media without any need of education. We will certify ourselves by social systems, our progress. This I don't like. I'm sorry. This would compromise my role as an institution giving certificates. It will compromise my role as a teacher assessing and giving a systematic view of what has been learned and what has not been learned. So all this amount of innovation that we mutuate from other sectors of society doesn't necessarily apply to education. Education is a very delicate system that not by chance has been resisting to change more than many other systems including health, including also other publics services not only business. Where do you see opportunities for us to move in that direction? You've mentioned we need to have more of a systemic view of the issues that we're dealing with. How do we move people into that direction? What do we do so that as a teacher I don't only think about the pedagogy and the teaching and the learning and take more of that system view. And as an administrator to look at what are the issues that our teachers are dealing with and how does technology impact us. So how do we move people into that direction? In our society the dominant force has been leading us to specialize more and more on one aspect. If you look at the research world you get a career if you specialize more and more and publish more and more in a narrower and narrower field of interest. This is not good for society, it's not good for research and it's not good for society because we have lost the humanistic view of many forces that are affecting many drivers of change and each of these drivers of change is not acting alone but is interfering on the other. So when we think we are doing a progress in one area we may create a negative impact on other areas. Learning to think systemically is possible, many people do, but I think the best thing is to organize also the conference in this way. So my suggestion for the next year is to reflect on this dimension and move an additional step in the direction of systemic thinking and also view from different disciplinary societal view what is changing in education and how we can. There is always a risk in a close and family community like Eden is. It's probably the best forum in Europe where to discuss these things but there is still a certain risk of self-referentiality that can emerge since we all have believed in open education, in distance education, in technology contribution to improve education and so on. We think that the world is going as we think. Now for four years I have not been in this specific area, I have been in education but from a different policy perspective and it was extremely surprising for me to observe how much lack of confidence still exists about the use of technology in education, about the pedagogy of distance education, about the credibility of institutions that accept to operate in this way. They can accept that the small side contribution can be given by mainstream institutions but when you try to innovate the whole system these are not serious things and this is how we are perceived. So there is still a lot of path to walk and we can only walk if you are able to understand the multiple views that are affecting our discourse on the potential role of technology and the flexibility in learning. What role do you see leadership playing in realizing these goals? Leadership is exactly the place where a system view should influence the behavior of organizations, of individuals, etc. Unfortunately much of the management in education doesn't come from system view understanding. They come from specialized education in a given field from teaching practice that is good but before becoming managers in this domain and so leaders I think they have not gone through the necessary multi-disciplinary, multi-perspective training. One possibility to do is systematically to involve stakeholders, policy makers together with educational actors and that's where I see, at another point I will raise in the conclusion, the privilege position of Eden. Eden is a place that could legitimately participate in the policy debate on innovation in education. Not just inviting here some members of the European Commission, some civil servants of high level that can sympathize with our ideas and then bring them back, but really proposing a different policy definition context in which it's not compartmentalized. At the moment it's the Commission which is the center of initiative. They debate on one table with the member states, on another table they debate with the stakeholders at European level that are part of the normal Brussels bubble and occasionally they also ask the view of other people in places like Eden or through online consultations on what should be done. But the reality is, and then of course there is the Brussels scene with the parliament, the council etc. But the real issue is that each of these tables is independent from the other and the only point of contact is the Commission and we all know that the Commission is not a purely policy making organization and it needs more briefing possibilities. So our idea is to establish policy dialogues in which European networks not only those that are the normal lobbying group existing in Brussels are able to interact with member states in the same table because it is important that education is too important to be left only to the bodies that are by definition in charge of its policy. It's affecting every citizen, it's affecting every family. So we need to have a voice, we need to organize voices and networks like Eden I think are absolutely crucial for this but we also need to improve the way we interact with the rest of the world. We are very good with our members, we are very good in creating pleasant and informative environment, we are very good in stimulating debates but I think what happens after the conference? Well, we are not sure and I think it's important to reflect on it and also bring our research contribution, the Barcelona workshop coming soon into this order of ideas not only what is interesting to study but what is more important to study in order to have an impact on positive change in education. So we need to carry the conversation forward. Exactly. Just as a final question, as a reporter you've attended many. Although I tend to inspire myself to God, I'm not as upbeat as that. Of the sessions that you attended, which topics struck you the most or which sessions struck you the most? Struck or impressed you. The blockchain of course is an issue that poses some question. I think of course it has important application in education but it raised me the doubt if this is a way to remove the intermediary role in the credentialization. But much of the education system is perceived as a credentialization system so if you remove, there is a high risk that people can learn autonomously, can credentialize mutually and so that is a very risky approach for educational institutions as we know we may like or not like because of course educational institutions are not all good. There are some elements that make us think well to a certain extent they deserve that someone else is proposing a different model that is more liberal etc. But I think there is an issue. We need to remember that education is mostly about learning and secondly about assessment and credentialization and only thirdly about quality assurance and accreditation that is in your business that is dominating the scene and dominating the behavior of educational institution that seem to be concerned just to get up well in accreditation, ranking etc. So learning at the center, learners at the center of organizational innovation more in universities I think is the point and in other education institutions we are not talking much about school that is possibly the other conference, the Italian conference that is going in parallel is more focused on school education we are as seen in this conference also a little bit more focused on higher education. Those are all the questions that I had for you this morning I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us and it was a pleasure having you with us. Thank you very much.