Hiroo Kato, Educational Designer/Entrepreneur

Teacher Vision and School Success

I envisioned myself as a school teacher since the age of 8. I would constantly catch myself helping my classmates who were struggling in mathematics. Having moved between Japan, U.S., and the U.K. in my formative years, I would graduate from a U.K. secondary (high) school with the highest school UCAS score, leading to an undergraduate position at Oxford. After graduating from Oxford with a B.A. in Mathematics and Philosophy, I entered into a teacher certification program, teaching at a variety of public schools to become a mathematics teacher.

Struggle as a Teacher

Despite my success as a student, I struggled in teacher training because I could not relate to those who found mathematics challenging. Mathematics was always something that came naturally to me, and I realized that for many people, mathematics was a ‘boring’ subject that they could not derive any pleasure or meaning from, and that subject knowledge alone would not help student learning.

Making Math Engaging

From this point, my mission was to find as many ways as possible to make mathematics engaging; I spent much of my time creating original curricular content and innovative setups using technology that would get students to ‘want to’ learn. Having taught multiple curricula (IB, AP, A-Levels, GCSE) and having developed curricular content and technology expertise in a variety of areas, I moved into educational research to discover more about recent trends in learning technologies.

Research and Community

Having taken a research coordinator position, I managed multiple educational research initiatives and international/inter-institutional collaborations, many of which involved the use of technology. I also built online teams and communities that pushed research projects forward, and this again, came back to the same question of: how do you get people engaged in work; how can work and learning become an irresistible activity that you want to partake in?