Empathy, forgiveness, hope: values examined as education research.
Amina talks with developmental psychologists, peacebuilders, and educators about qualities such as empathy, self-regulation, gratitude, and a sense of belonging. Many of these conversations tie back to IIIT's Mapping the Terrain study, so the values are discussed as things to research in education as well as ideals to admire.
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Third Space Thoughts to Policy is the interview podcast of IIIT's Advancing Education in Muslim Societies program, known as AEMS. Its guiding idea, repeated in every sign-off, is holistic human development. That premise shapes the guest list. Amina interviews developmental psychologists, peacebuilders, social and emotional learning specialists, and scholars of teaching, and asks each one to explain a single value or capacity in depth. The 2019 titles repeatedly pair well-being with a second field: teacher training, philanthropy, ethics, youth, data, the future, and even podcasting. One of them is titled 'Well-being in the War Zone'. The 2020 titles turn to individual values, including hope, a sense of belonging, meaning making, forgiveness, empathy, self-regulation, critical thinking, and gratitude, and several are tied to IIIT's Mapping the Terrain study. The conversations reward close attention. Across two episodes, Dr. Carolyn Zahn-Waxler traces empathy back to infancy and reports concern for others in some three-month-olds. She also names a darker counterpart, active disregard for others, which she links to later antisocial behavior. She speaks openly about growing up with a depressed mother, and the research interview becomes something more personal. Dr. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl cites a New Zealand study that followed children into adulthood, and she treats self-regulation as a foundation for empathy rather than a separate skill. Dr. Gregory Light distinguishes deep learning from surface learning and urges people to question a source before passing information along. Dr. Mohammed Abu-Nimer resists a tidy picture of forgiveness. He separates a victim's personal pardon from the accountability a legal system may still demand, and he weighs justice and timing as obstacles to reconciliation in Northern Ireland, South Africa, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Meena Srinivasan connects gratitude to mindfulness and social and emotional learning, and she shares small daily practices such as three-breath hugs drawn from Thich Nhat Hanh. The interviewing is warm and affirming. Amina often reflects a guest's points back before moving to the next question. Each episode opens with a substantial account of the guest's background, and some interviews run across two parts. One opening explains that a conversation was simply too absorbing to cut. Closings carry a disclaimer that the views are the speakers' own and an invitation to email questions for a season finale. For a place to begin, one closing points listeners to episodes 25 through 37 as a set on these values and their link to the Mapping the Terrain study. Heard together, that stretch works as a guide to the study's vocabulary.
Made for: Suits a listener interested in social and emotional learning or values-based education who wants researchers to explain their findings at length. It also fits someone who prefers a warm, appreciative interview style to combative questioning.
What sets it apart: Its interviews are tied to a specific research effort, IIIT's Mapping the Terrain study, so values such as hope, belonging, and gratitude are treated as subjects of education research rather than slogans. The guest range is also unusual, running from infant empathy research to interfaith peacebuilding.
Third Space Thoughts to Policy is the official podcast for the Advancing Education in Muslim Societies (AEMS) program at IIIT, the International Institute of Islamic Thought. The purpose of our podcast (Third Space Thoughts to Policy) is to hear from experts and stakeholders in the field of education policy reform including policy advisors, governmental officials, academics, teachers, and parents. For IIIT's Mapping the Terrain Research Department, education is not just about mastering arithmetic and literacy, but improving community mindedness, moral reasoning, forgiveness, and empathy so that learning is a transformative process improving society as a whole by advancing each individual spi…
A classroom stress study uses cotton swabs; your own teacher voice gets a second look.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A warm, grounded conversation about gratitude as attention, practice, and a force that can move through relationships.
Gratitude lands here as a practice of attention during the pandemic, starting with presence beside a son and opening outward to essential workers, health workers, family, friends, and colleagues.
A thoughtful look at empathy across family conflict, public leadership, and institutional life.
Empathy is framed as a demanding social capacity, shaped by circumstance as much as temperament. The episode follows that idea across schools, communities, police departments, and prisons, then brings it closer to the pressures of poverty, conflict, crisis, depression, and…
A grounded developmental review of empathy, early concern, and the risks of active disregard.
Empathy is treated as something with a developmental history, visible from the first years of life and shaped by genes, temperament, family life, and socialization. Dr.
A thoughtful bridge from inherited university habits to the ways study abroad can reshape how students understand experience.
Dr. Gregory Light's second conversation on critical thinking and problem solving is strongest when it sits with the distance between good intentions and inherited educational practice.
A grounded look at how assumptions, evidence, authority, and communication shape stronger problem solving.
Dr. Gregory Light frames critical thinking as something concrete: a discipline learners can use to test assumptions, weigh perspectives, sort what matters from what does not, and connect knowledge to real problems.
Jewish ideas with cultural nerve.
Oklahoma policy, framed as executive action.
Singapore markets, policy, and daily dilemmas.
School choice policy, close to the ground.
Episode 37 of Third Space Thoughts to Policy centers on gratitude during COVID-19 and the 'dual pandemics' of COVID-19 and racial justice with educator Nina Srinivasan.
Third Space Thoughts to Policy continues its interview with Dr.
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Third Space Thoughts to Policy episode 34 features Dr.
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Third Space Thoughts to Policy interviews Mary Gordon, founder of Roots of Empathy, about using babies, parents, and classroom observation to develop empathy in children.
Third Space Thoughts to Policy host Amina interviews Dr.
An interview with Mara Kronenfeld, regional director at International Youth Foundation, discussing youth education and empowerment programs in the Middle East and North Africa.
The host introduces the podcast and guest Walid Darab, discussing his popular podcast 'Greed for Edim' which promotes personal awareness through religious and non-religious knowledge.
An interview with Dr.
An interview with Dr.