Director of Hesscairn Learning Design

Stuart is a learning designer, author, researcher and school leader who works across sectors on progressive educational projects. Stuart also consults with governments and third sector organisation, and is currently supporting Education Scotland and the Scottish Government.

Stuart is a doctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge PEDAL centre, where his research is on the conceptualisation of learning goals, and focused on Education Scotland’s Curriculum Improvement Cycle.

Stuart is currently Principal of Middle and High School at the International School of Aberdeen. Previously he has worked as a Senior Director of the technical team at the LEGO Foundation, Founding Principal of the Green School New Zealand, Founding Director of Education at Amala (was Sky School) and Director of Teaching and Learning at the United World College of South East Asia, in Singapore.

Stuart’s book The Hesscairn Guide to Learning is an essential guide for parents, educators and policy makers on how to design for learning. .

Ben Mardell is the atelierista and pedagogista at Newtowne School. He is also a research affiliate at Longlong Kindergarten at the MIT Media Lab.

Ben has over twenty years of teaching experience with children birth through six. He has also been a principal investigator at Project Zero, a research organization at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, leading the Pedagogy of Play and Children are Citizens projects, and a professor of early childhood education at Lesley University.

Ben is a co-author of Visible Learners: Promoting Reggio-Inspired Approaches in All Schools,Making Learning Visible: Children as Individual and Group Learners, Children at the Center: Transforming Early Childhoods Education in the Boston Public Schools, and A Pedagogy of Play: Supporting Playful Learning in Classrooms and Schools.  He is the author of From Basketball to the Beatles: In Search of Compelling Early Childhood Curriculumand Growing Up in Child Care: A Case For Quality Early Education. 

His new project is The Remake (theremake.org), an online newsletter for educators about playful learning in an era of rapid climate change. Ben enjoys playing with his family (hiking and games) and participating in triathlons.