How Might We Lead With a Set of Common Beliefs (about learning!)

 

While exploring the Education Leadership group on Linkedin I came across this:

•  "A competent curriculum leader is able to clearly articulate their philosophy on 'how students learn best.' They and their team need to lead with a common belief."

This jumped out at me as I've been spending some time delving into what seems to be the most important factors/principles that determine whether a school is effective or efficient (see previous post). What I have discovered to be one of the most important principles is no surprise as it has driven my work as an educational leader and has been the area where I have been focusing most of my work with schools and organisations with my consultancy HMWLead.

The number one principle seems to be that effective schools have clearly articulated and shared beliefs about learning that are lived in every classroom (Modern Learners). The simple bit might be determining what the shared beliefs about learning should be. Often, the harder bit is ensuring that they are lived in every classroom. The Education Leadership quote above, in my view, is pointing the way towards this happens - it is, in fact, by everyone leading with these common beliefs. If this happens then the practices to ensure it is happening in every classroom will emerge.

The quote also points to the fact that it is important that the core beliefs that drive a school should be about learning and about how people learn. It is all very well to have a set of core beliefs and values that are largely behavioural (eg respect, honesty, integrity etc) but learning beliefs and values should be front and centre in a school.

Determining what these shared beliefs about learning are should start with answering the question:

• "How do children and adults learn most powerfully and deeply in their lives?" (Modern Learners).

The investigation I am carrying out certainly supports the assertion made by Will Richardson and Bruce Dixon from Modern Learners that without a collaboratively created/developed belief system about what makes learning powerful that is lived each day through classroom norms for learning and a common language, schools cannot develop each child to their potential as a learner.

If we accept that being a self-directed and self-determined learner is the most important skill to develop within our learners then it is vital that we take the time to discuss how we can create the conditions in our schools for these skills to develop. And when we have settled on the principles/beliefs that we believe create these conditions we have to make sure that they are visible everywhere in our school, in the language we use and the classroom practices we adopt.

Based on what we see in the research about what makes for powerful learning for today's students what are examples of some elements that could be the core of our beliefs about learning? Here are a few:

• Know your students (Education Leadership, Bishop)
• Learners at the centre (OECD, Innovation Unit)
• Student agency (Education Leadership, Wenmouth)
• Connect learning horizontally and to the real world (Innovation Unit, OECD)
• Inquiry based approaches (OECD, Innovation Unit)
• Experiential learning (Centre for Strategic Education, Innovation Unit)
• Promote collaboration and interaction (Fullan, Education Leadership, OECD)
• Measure what matters/A4L (Innovation Unit, OECD)
• Stretch and support all learners (OECD, Education Leadership)

This is by no means an exhaustive list and cleverer people than I will be able to add to it. It is a good starting point for discussion as groups of teachers interrogate their beliefs and the beliefs of others about what makes for deep learning.

The key, of course, is then to discuss and agree what impacts these beliefs would have on our teaching practice. For example:

• truly knowing my students and how they best learn will mean I'd have to adopt a relationship based approach to my pedagogy and implement culturally sustaining practices
• knowing my students would mean I'd be aware of their needs, interests and passions and would incorporate them into my learning design, and my belief in student agency would have me co-constructing learning and assessment programmes with individual learners
• belief in connected learning (across subjects and with the real world), inquiry-based approaches and experiential learning would have me exploring a relevant project-based learning model
• promoting collaboration and interaction would mean incorporating appropriately organised and structured co-operative group work throughout my learning design
• a belief that we should measure what matters will require me to search for ways to track how well my learners are collaborating, showing self-determination, being resilient in their learning etc. I will also need to ensure that all learners know what is expected of them and why that is expected
• if I'm wishing to stretch and support all learners I will need to be designing learning according to the principles of Universal Design for Learning

In the end, it doesn't matter too much what the core beliefs about learning are (though I'll cover that in another post). What matters is that the core beliefs about learning are known, understood, shared and drive the learning in all classrooms.

I wonder if all schools can say they have a set of clearly articulated and shared beliefs about learning. If they do, I wonder if they know that they are truly lived in every classroom. I also wonder if all leaders lead with those common beliefs. I know that I couldn't have answered 'yes' to those questions throughout much of my leadership.

Once again, this looks like demanding work, but it also looks like rewarding and exciting work.

Tuesdays with Maurie: Warm and Demanding to start the year

 

Every second Tuesday I get to host a morning Kitchen Table (Staff Hui) for our staff from 8 30 - 9 00am so obviously it's called Tuesdays with Maurie. Tomorrow is our first day with the whole school and we have a full day of Learning Hub based activities planned focusing on whanaungatanga and building relationships. As well, we have 14 new or returning staff so such a focus is crucial. The last thing they need to hear from me is 30 minutes of "do this, do that" so I've decided to leave them with one message.

I've never believed in the "Don't smile before Easter" advice many of us used to get when setting out on a new year. I am, however, a firm believer in setting the foundations of an effective and positive teacher/student relationship right from the first minute. So, I thought I'd just speak to these two slides to build on my message at our Noho to start the year and what I covered in my last post.

Right from the very beginning when we are building relationships and then when we move into delivering our curriculum, both academic and dispositional, and while we interact throughout our kura and building in so many ways we have to ensure we are warm AND demanding. Russel Bishop describes this as teaching to the North-East - high relationships AND high teaching skills. He calls upon us to create a family- like context for learning, interact in that environment in ways that we know promote learning and monitor learners' progress. This is a great model of pedagogy for all schools to adopt.

We don't kick off with academic classes until the end of the week as we concentrate on building relationships. But the advice is the same - be warm AND demanding even as we are focusing on whanaungatanga. The Thorsborne and Blood model below is my go-to and is similar to Bishop's. This model supports the operation of restorative practice principles in a school when dealing with misbehaviour or, more accurately, harmed relationships, but is valid for all interactions in a school.

The optimal place to be, on both models, is the top right corner (the north-east). It's too easy to sit in the bottom right corner and go soft on the high expectations and the demandingness. It is my view that staying there is just as ineffective as being in any of the two left quadrants.

My message is that by starting and staying with being warm and demanding is the best strategy, is fairer on the students, and gives them the best opportunity to engage effectively with you. Starting anywhere else makes it tougher to get to the north-east later.

Have a great start to the year.

Coherence and Cohesion: Driving Innovation at HPSS

I don't know why I was a bit nervous prior to our ERO visit near the end of last year. I think it was down to me not being confident that a team of people with little knowledge of what we were trying to do would be able to "get us". Would they be able to accept that there's more than one way to skin the NZC cat? Would they really understand our determination to broaden the definition of success for a school well beyond academic measures?

At their final meeting with us they stated that when they first arrived and met with us they struggled with the seeming complexity of our approach but that they very quickly realised there was a strong thread of coherence and cohesion throughout; that all participants in our school were strongly aware of the key frameworks that supported our learning design and our pedagogy. They referred to what they called our 'Founding Documents' as underpinning and driving learning design at our school. After seeking clarification from them we realised that they meant the Vision, Pathways of Excellence, Mission, Principles, Values and Dispositions, which are perpetually visible throughout our school (both on walls and embedded within planning documents and a wide range of templates).

It was hugely affirming to be told that these key frameworks, which we had all help create and to which we are all committed, were clearly the drivers of effective innovation at our school. See our ERO Report here.

HPSS 'Founding Documents'

Our Vision

Like a lot of statements like this it could also be seen as just a bunch of words with little actual meaning and I agree that you have to work hard to ensure such statements are continually brought to life in a school. I love this statement because the last bit describes the graduate we wish to aspire to. For us to achieve our vision we need to develop and support young people to be true life-long learners and who have the dispositions and skills to make the world a better place and to thrive in the rapidly changing environment ("to contribute confidently and responsibly in our changing world.")

Two Pathways to Excellence

As soon as we commit to the above vision we need to move beyond just academic excellence as our sole major focus. The best academic students in the country would not help us achieve our vision if they did not know how to, or even want to, contribute to a world in which everyone of us can thrive. This is why, early on, we settled on 2 Pathways to Excellence.

While there exists some strong frameworks for Academic Excellence (NZC and NCEA), we could not discover any such frameworks for what we meant by Personal Excellence.We have spent 7 years progressing this work and, while we still have much to do, we are proud of the work we have done so far in building these frameworks.

I used to profess that the development in the areas of Personal Excellence was as important as in the areas of Academic Excellence. I now firmly believe that they are more important.

Hobsonville Habits

We settled on the above 10 dispositions, known as the Hobsonville Habits, to be the core elements of Personal Excellence in much the same way Learning Areas are the core elements of Academic Excellence.

It is our view that if young people are strong in these dispositions, as well as developing their Academic Excellence, then they are more likely to be empowered learners who "contribute confidently and responsibly in a changing world."

To be true to this aspiration we have been determined to devote the same commitment and rigour to the exploration of each of these dispositions as we do to the Learning Areas of the NZC.

Mission and Principles

We have also worked hard to bring our Mission Statement Innovate  Engage  Inspire to life as well, as we didn't want it to be just a collection of words that fade into the background. We did this by fleshing them out to a set of Principles; principles that drive all decision-making in our school.

For a secondary school, which is largely a one-size-fits-all, to always be looking to personalise learning then, in our view, that would be innovative. So we continually test that aspect of our Mission by checking how personalised learning is.

As well, we believe that students become more engaged if their learning is as authentic, to them, as possible. We find a great way to do this is to continually seek partners beyond the school for students to connect their learning with. I have certainly seen levels of engagement and accountability rise when others, in the real world, are relying on learners for their learning.

In reflecting on the 3rd aspect of our Mission, Inspire, it wasn't difficult to flesh that out into the principle of deep challenge and inquiry. In my 39 years in the profession I haven't seen many young people truly inspired by surface learning and chasing credits. However, every young person I have come across has been truly inspired when they have the opportunity, and the skills, to delve deeply into issues of relevance and concern to them.

Values

Once you pronounce a set of Values it is vital that they become the most important thing you focus on as you are declaring them to be the most valuable thing. Too often institutions profess a set of values that are not evident in the operation of that institution. We were and are determined to keep our values at front and centre.

Because we say we value these we have included them in some key elements of our school. First of all, they are the means by which we assess our Big and Impact Projects. We have developed rubrics for students and teachers to use to see how strongly the values are developed in their project learning. Secondly, the top level of awards at our annual prizegiving are awarded to those who have developed these values the most throughout the year. And thirdly, in the development of our Graduate Profile we have decided that our Values will be the key elements of that Profile.

Our current work on Graduate Profile with Values at the centre

And of course none of this is rocket science. Research around effective schools and effective leadership talks about the importance of a strong, clear and shared vision. Bit it's been real affirming to see that the elements captured in the first visual are driving the innovation at our school and resulting in a strong and effective learning and teaching environment.

Where, I think, our school has been quite unique is with our strong focus on the dispositional curriculum (Hobsonville Habits) and our Values. Our experience has convinced me that if our graduates develop strength in our Habits and Values then the Academics largely look after themselves.

I hope this is useful in your thinking about how to drive innovation and disruption in your own setting.

What will replace secondary schools?

Ka pū te ruha ka hao te rangatahi

What will replace secondary schools?

We've long past the time when we can still be asking if secondary schools need to change.

"There's no longer a good fit between the education we are currently providing and the education we need" MOE 2012! As well, we need only to look at the transformational change that is sweeping through every industry and profession at an accelerating rate (music production, newspaper and the media, health care, public transport, private transport, retail, finance and banking, service provision etc). Why would we think secondary schooling will be bypassed?

As well, we have no excuse to be unaware of what skills seem increasingly necessary for people to thrive in not only the working world, but the world itself.

This graphic shows the top 10 skills important in the workforce. While the two groupings are quite similar, which you would expect as they are only 5 years apart, it’s interesting to note that Complex Problem Solving remains at the top but big movers are Critical Thinking from 4th to 2nd and Creativity from 10th to 3rd. And new entrants on the list are Emotional Intelligence racing into 6th and Cognitive Flexibility moving onto the list at 10th.

Are our schools consciously developing these skills within our learners or are we still putting all of our eggs in one basket - academic qualifications?

I've been hugely motivated by Valerie Hanon's book, Thrive, which sets out a blueprint for how secondary schools could adapt and respond to the pressures for change. Her vision for schools is to have a vision which focuses on students learning to thrive in a transforming world.

Students need to be able to thrive at 4 levels:

Thrive as a planet

Our young people need to know how to live sustainably, how to protect earth's biodiversity and to develop respect for and empathy of other cultures. This needs to be at the centre of our curriculum.

Thrive at societal level

She notes that in the most equitable countries of the world there is a higher level of thriving. Our young people need to be equipped to navigate in a fast changing job landscape, to learn and unlearn, and they must love learning. How can democratic values and values of equity be explored in our schools

Thrive at interpersonal level

Schools need to be places where young people can explore how to have and create great relationships. Schools must create learning environments where young people can develop respectful and caring relationships.

Thrive at intrapersonal level

Schools need to create environments where young people can discover who they are. Students must be able to explore their identity, find personal meaning and be valued for whom they are.

What will replace secondary schools?

Right now I'm thinking we could start with a vision similar to:

Learn to thrive in a transforming world

and then develop a curriculum focusing on the 4 levels of Thrive outlined above.

My view of what secondary schools of the future need to concentrate on is as follows:

• Secondary schools must place student well-being at front and centre of every thing they do
• This means the end of billboards skiting about achievement and attendance rates (imagine how this feels for those students who, despite their best efforts, can't achieve or attend at that level who see that reminder every day)
• This means the end to archaic rules and punishments, including those in relation to personal appearance
• This means an end to assessment and homework practices that detract from deep learning and lead to distress
• Secondary schools of the future must reject being institutions of measurement and embrace being institutions of engagement and deep learning
• Secondary schools of the future must embrace new definitions of success for them as an institution, for their staff and for their students.
• Ask parents to describe the graduate they want from your school! Their answers won’t surprise you. Does your school really focus on these things? How much does the front half of the NZC feature in how your school goes about its business and considers its effectiveness?
• Secondary schools of the future will invite students to be partners in the learning design process.
• Own the important bits of content, knowledge, concepts and skills of your specialist subject but relinquish control over the context for the learning to occur in and even how students might evidence their understanding.

At Hobsonville Point Secondary School we're trying to explore these ideas. Our foundation principles of:

• personalised learning
• powerful partnerships
• deep challenge and inquiry

are driving our practices in these areas.

Our focus at the moment is on exploring different definitions of success which has resulted in the work we are doing on developing a graduate profile. The current prototype has our school values of innovation, inquiry, collaboration and connectedness as the key elements of this graduate profile. Sally gives a full description of this work in the last section of her latest post

We're looking forward to discussing this work with ERO in Week 8.

A Step Forward: Knowledge and Skills, Capabilities and Competencies: the Chicken and the Egg

I'm loving the kōrero flying around about the hierarchy of skills, knowledge, competencies and capabilities. Much cleverer people than me are making strong contributions to the kōrero but I'm doing my best to make sense of it for me. I got a bit confused observing the kōrero between @briarlipson and @ThomasHaig (and the others who contributed) because I couldn't quite understand the equation knowledge = skills, or was it the other way around, or if you couldn't have knowledge without skills, or skills without knowledge, or if you were allowed to have both, or if one was more important than the other.

This morning I listened to Valerie Hannon on RNZ and I must admit it created some clarity for me, though I do suspect her views are those that are quite prevalent in my echo chamber so I have to watch out I don't get caught up in an "unstable consensus of experts." I loved the three emphases for schooling and learning that have emerged from the Innovation Unit and are most probably evident in Hannon's book Thrive which I'm about to purchase:

1. Well-being at the centre
2. Competencies not content
3. Learner Agency

And I like the 4 levels of Thriving she touches on in the broadcast (she doesn't get to finish them because the interviewer talked too much):

1. Thriving at the Global level
2. Thriving at the Societal level
3. Thriving at the Intrapersonal level
4. Thriving at the Interpersonal level

Most of all I loved how she argued for the place of knowledge and skills. She claims what are most important are Competencies and that to be strong in them you need to build knowledge, learn and develop skills and explore attitudes and values. This makes more sense to me and is helping me grapple with the kōrero that is circulating.

I think Valerie Hannon and Elizabeth Rata might disagree on the actual 'what' of knowledge in the type of learning we need to create the world we want. In The Basic Flaw in our Education System  she argues for the English Curriculum to be standardised. I wasn't sure what to make of it as I am not an English teacher but I did enjoy Gillian Hubbard's response in her article English teaching not perfect, but it works. Her observations are certainly what match my experience of working with and observing English teachers and learners in English classrooms over many years.

And amongst all this I have personally been grappling with my dissatisfaction and frustration with how we measure achievement. This long-simmering frustration was spurred along by some recent input from Dr Ann Milne who has focused the light quite clearly on the total cultural inappropriateness of how we traditionally measure achievement.

I desperately want to find another way of measuring a different, but more appropriate, both culturally and for-the-sake-of-our-planet-and-future-for-our-kids, type of success. I made the mistake of mentioning this at our last BOT meeting so this challenge has now been formalised into my appraisal!

A couple of days ago I sent out the following tweet:

I have been inundated with suggestions and support with many wanting to be part of the conversation. I'm collecting all of the responses with the hashtag #gradprofile  and would welcome more contributors.

Then amongst all this excitement I wake to read in the NZ Herald a story under the headline Wellington School to completely drop NCEA in favour of Cambridge exams. The principal's comment that her school would be "the first in Wellington to drop NCEA" reminded me of the Monty Python 100m dash for people with no sense of direction when one of the competitors headed off in the opposite direction. (Go on! Watch it!). She was also quoted as saying that amongst her students she "saw lethargic practice" and that her learners were often saying "achieved is enough." I respectfully suggest that it is not the qualification that determines practice or learning motivation, it is the culture of a school and it's approach to the design of learning. At the conclusion of the article she states she is "pretty confident they will do really, really well." I'm sure they'll do really, really well in Cambridge. I hope they'll do really, really well in the world described so well by Valerie Hannon.

At least the principal claims she's "not afraid to take a step forward"! I suppose it's all about what you are moving forward to.

Great conversations!

Sabbatical Implications for HPSS - Part 1 - Strong Affirmations

What Are The Implications for Hobsonville Point Secondary School?

Affirmation

During my sabbatical I attempted to visit schools that would challenge my thinking and provide direction for further development and innovation for our school. In choosing the schools I consulted with Grant Lichtman, an internationally recognised thinker on innovative schooling, colleagues who had visited schools for the same reason as me, and searched lists such as “100 Most Innovative Schools”.

While my thinking was challenged in many ways, I cannot escape the conclusion that our school is at the leading edge of innovation. What was most pleasing was that the principles that we had decided on to drive learning design - Innovate by Personalising Learning, Engage through Powerful Partnerships, Inspire With Deep Challenge and Inquiry - were very similar to the common principles I saw in the schools I visited - Personalisation, Authenticity, Connection, Inquiry.

Our school is still very early in its development journey and we are certainly disrupting the conventional schooling model. The affirmations I received do provide the confidence to continue  to build on our foundations and to persist with our approach to learning design. This view was reinforced by a staff member’s comment on one of my recent blog posts:

This "They could then invite students to suggest which example of migration from across history, or in the present, they (individuals, small groups) would like to explore to increase their understanding of this concept." is very motivating for students I believe. This term we have had students carry out the generic research process into a biological issue. This started broadly with students collectively exploring what makes something an issue in general, with examples and some debate, ultimately ending in a challenge of could there actually ever be anything that wasn't an issue or potentially an issue!! Students were then given a very large list of biological concepts and ideas and were able to pick one of these or some other of their own design, in which they were intensely interested, to research. This is a Q1 course with students being assessed on their biological understanding of the issue (for bio) and also their research capabilities (for eng and bio). The teaching and learning and assessment of these ideas have been carried out over a period of 6-7 weeks, with multiple checkpoints along the way. We insisted that the students chose something they were intensely interested in, so they felt motivated to manage their time effectively throughout this extended time and work purposefully throughout. Anecdotal student voice around this suggests that students have enjoyed having choice in what they are researching and have been motivated to continue through the process. Currently students are seeking feedback on their work...I am pushing them to add more depth and to refine for deeper understanding. Students think this is to ensure they meet the standard at Level 1. Ha...some of the work is what I would have seen from L3 students in the past.... So choice, I believe is intensely motivating, as is investigating into something that an individual is intensely interested in. Previously in another school the bio is taught and assessed in one context only eg should NZ use 1080? Fine if this floats your boat but not fine if you are not interested in this particularly. Students in this class have chosen topics such as "Should we be concerned about the bees?", "Should abortion be funded by the state?", "Should smoking be banned?" "Should society allow designer babies?", "Why is ocean acidification a problem?", "What is the impact of endangered animal trafficking?, "What is the impact of habitat destruction?", "What is bioaccumulation?", "Is Donald right about global warming? and so on....I am really looking forward to finding out what the students have found out!!

In an earlier blog post I published a draft Elevator Statement in an attempt to capture the essence of what I found was common across the innovative schools that I visited. This is what I came up with:

If we want learning to be personalised, authentic, and connected and to be preparing students for their lives in the 21st century, learning must be centred on high-interest projects, drawing on a range of specialist subjects, with opportunities for hands-on application and partnering with the community. There should be a genuine outcome from the learning and students must be partners in designing the learning.

After writing this I revisited the Elevator Statement that we wrote in December 2014 in an attempt to capture the particular essence of our school:

The HPSS model of learning truly engages learners by drawing on their interests and has deep challenge and inquiry at its centre at a time when our country and world need people who are engaged learners, able to work in teams of diverse people, solve complex problems and who enhance their own well-being by contributing strongly to the betterment of their communities.

While there are many similarities, I like, in the more recent iteration, the more overt statement of connected learning (“drawing on a range of specialist subjects”), the partnering with the community, rather than “contributing to the betterment of the community”, and the identification that “students must be partners in designing the learning”.

A further area of affirmation was for the work we are doing in developing a dispositional curriculum. All schools had a form of Learning Advisory (ours is known as Learning Hubs) but none had the same allocation of time or the planning scaffolds and rigour that we are working on developing. Any investigation of the way to best prepare young people for their rapidly changing world identifies the importance of certain dispositions.

As well, while I saw processes of learning design, time did not allow me to delve deeply into each school’s model. I did come away proud of our model. The way our Learning Design Model drives Learning Objectives linked to each Learning Area’s key concepts, skills and content and draws on student voice to determine learning contexts which all determines the framework for identifying progression is sound and rigorous.

Teaching as Inquiry is second-nature in New Zealand schools and it drives teachers to continually inquire into our practice and to be continually asking about our impact on student learning. My main focus during my visits was on cross-curricular, inquiry learning, and I did not come across a similar emphasis on teaching as inquiry during my visits,  which is not to say it was not there. School leaders I met with were impressed with our model of critical friend and spirals of inquiry.

Implications

• Work collaboratively with a range of groups to design an amended Elevator Statement that captures the essence of what sets Hobsonville Point Secondary School apart.
• Use this work as a platform to work with BOT to revisit Charter
• Continue the ground-breaking work on developing the dispositional curriculum so it is very clearly part of the learning “we do around here.”
• Keep our Learning Design Model at the centre of teacher and student collaborative design processes and activities.
• Ensure the teaching as inquiry processes are resourced so that they continue to be central to teacher development and growth.

In my next post I will present what elements I see as ongoing challenges for us and areas on which we might need more focus to continue our development.

What Could Schools Do To Promote Personalisation and Authenticity

In this next post on my sabbatical I provide suggestions on what schools could do to explore PBL and make learning more personalised and authentic and forming connections between learning areas.

What Could Existing Schools Do To Reflect These Principles?

• Explore models of Project-based learning. A clear model that all staff understand and commit to and through which students are scaffolded is essential to provide rigour and prevent low quality experiences and outcomes. The following links could be a good place to start:
• Best brief introduction to current thinking I’ve seen for a while
• Buck Institute for Education is very useful not only with the ‘why’ but awesome for the ‘how?’ - great, easy to use tools
• Wiggins’ model of Understanding by Design used by the Science Leadership Academy
• The Stanford Model driven by Design Thinking and used at High Tech High, Nueva High School and DesignTech.
• Make every effort to provide opportunities for learning to be connected across subjects. Even with a traditional, single-subject timetable it’s not difficult to change mindsets and school practices to enable students to establish connections.
• Schools could start by determining common themes that could drive learning contexts across the whole school or particular year levels. This would, at least, allow all subjects to connect to the common theme.

  

  Grade level Themes at SLA

• Meeting structures could be turned on their head and regular meetings for the common teachers of each class to discuss how learning could be connected across more than one subject. Students could work on high-interest projects which they have had a say in creating in classes timetabled for 2 or 3 of their subjects. Completing one piece of work, drawing on several subjects and being supported by several teachers will not only result in a quality outcome and deeper learning, but reduce workload for students and for  teachers. Perhaps Departments could be required to find times to run their meetings when necessary, rather than having them scheduled. This reinforces that the focus in our school is on collaborative practice rather than subject silos.
• Teachers in all classes could share with their students the responsibility of determining the context in which learning could take place. Teachers would still take responsibility for developing the important learning/achievement objectives but invite students to be design partners in determining the context.
• Rather than informing a class that they are studying Migration and that they would do this by learning about Victorian English people and their migration to and settling in New Zealand, a Social Studies teacher could explore with students the concept of Migration and establish its worthiness of study. They could then invite students to suggest which example of migration from across history, or in the present, they (individuals, small groups) would like to explore to increase their understanding of this concept. Teachers and students would design activities together which allowed the important learning objectives to be met.
• Wherever possible, provide multiple opportunities for students to provide evidence of their learning.
• If all students have to write an essay to show their understanding of an important science concept, then those who are poor essay writers will not do well, despite perhaps having a high level of understanding of the science concept. As long as the learning objectives can be met allow students to show their understanding, whether it be by essay, piece of art, spoken word etc.
• Include some contact or experience with the community or expertise from beyond the school in all planning of learning programmes.
• At the very least, this could be a guest speaker/facilitator but can include off-site visits, individual/small group mentor relationships, on-line communication and connection with expertise, or a client relationship.
• Encourage the public sharing and discussion of student work.
• At the very least, this could be presenting findings back to the class with high expectations of how to make a quality presentation and how to provide quality feedback but can include presenting to students from outside the class or at another school, parents, and mentors and clients who have been involved in the learning.
• Think about where these presentations should take place.The school might be appropriate but so might a community space (library, parks, malls), a conference or place of work.

I hope these suggestions show how schools, no matter their context, can bring life to the principles of personalisation, authenticity, connection and collaboration.

Common Principles That Guide The Design of Learning in Furure-Focused Schools

What I Discovered From My Visits on Sabbatical

The purpose of my school visits was to find out if the principles that drove the design of learning in other innovative, future-focused schools were similar.

Please access a fuller blog post for each of the schools:

• DesignTech High School
• Nueva High School
• High Tech High Point Loma
• High Tech High Chula Vista
• Science Leadership Academy
• NYC iSchool

I’ll attempt to provide some observations by referring to my three focusing questions.

What Principles Have Guided The Design of Learning?

• Learning should be personalised

“At DesignTech, we believe that students are most successful when their education is personalised to their needs, and they are asked to use their knowledge to improve the world around them.”

“High Tech High teachers practice a learner-centred, inclusive approach that supports and challenges each student. Students pursue their passions through projects, and reflect on their learning.”

• Learning should be authentic

“At Nueva, Learn by Doing, Learn by Caring permeates everything we do. Nueva teachers craft curricula that enables students to bring classroom learning to life by designing original experiments, running simulations, and solving real-world problems.”

“The NYC iSchool program is designed to offer students opportunities to engage in meaningful work that has relevance to them and the world.”

“[At High Tech High] students engage in work that matters to them, to their teachers, and to the world outside of school.”

• Learning should be connected

“High Tech High school projects integrate hands and minds and incorporate inquiry across multiple disciplines, leading to the creation of meaningful and beautiful work.”

“With a focus on developing collaborative and cross-disciplinary thinking, the d.tech curriculum is designed to engage students in finding and developing their passions.”

• Learning and design of learning should involve collaboration (between teachers and with students).

“High Tech High teachers collaborate to design curriculum and projects … while seeking student experience and voice. With students as design partners, staff function as reflective practitioners.”

• Learning should address dispositional development.

“We [d.tech] also believe that students must learn not only academic skills such as literacy and mathematics, but the transferable success skills of collaboration and persistence.”

“[Nueva High School] gives students essential tools that enable them to: develop ability to self-regulate, managing their attention, focus and learning; take risks that enhance their growth, both personally and academically; overcome setbacks, both big and small; develop supportive relationships and embrace diversity; collaborate successfully.”

Why Were These Principles Decided Upon?

Julie Abraham from DesignTech High School spoke of her experience in previous, more traditional schools where she witnessed stressed students, university dropouts, conflicted parents, subject siloisation and conveyor belt schooling. She used the analogy of students as cyclists biking faster and faster, competing with the rest of the field, but getting no nearer the finishing line.

Davion from The Nueva High School shared with me that universities had been telling them too many students arrive without being able to write competently, having mental health issues (anxiety around schooling) and little resilience and self-regulation.

Isora Bailey from NYC iSchool was adamant that high school could no longer be about learning a defined set of concepts - that high school for the 21st century needed to emphasise the learning process and thinking skills.

At Nueva, as at all schools, it is a recognition that the rapidly changing world requires a different curriculum:

“Our inquiry-based curriculum develops students who are resilient, thoughtful leaders and collaborators with robust problem-solving skills, and the creativity required for success in a rapidly changing global environment.”

Chris, at The Science Leadership Academy, was of the view that deeper learning required subjects to be viewed as lenses and not as silos. Students saw learning as more relevant when it was connected across learning disciplines.