Future Focused Education

Marlborough EdVenture | 1 February 2016

Improvement makes changes by looking back at the past

Transformation designs the future and invents ways to achieve it

What do you think of when we say Future Focused Education?

- how is the learner viewed?- how is knowledge viewed?- where does compliance and

improvement fit?

The Creative Potential Paradigm

Why Future Focused Education?

Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, 2013

At Nao robotların bir gösteriSpain'Jaume I Üniversitesi 2011.

Team working

Communication

Entrepreneurship

Critical Thinking

Numeracy

Creativity

Digital literacy

Leadership Literacy

Emotional Intelligence

Problem solving Foreign Language Skills

“Wicked Problems” Complex Challenges

● can’t be addressed using simple problem solving

● can only be addressed with “clumsy” solutions by bringing together disparate perspectives on the problem in ways that all voices are heard and responded to

Rayner, 2006; Verweij et al, 2006 in Bolstad, 2011

http://schoolingtheworld.org/film/hd-trailer/

No other generation in history has ever been more thoroughly prepared for the Industrial Age as the current generation

David Warlick

Who or what is deciding the future?

What do you think all this means for education?

http://bit.ly/23Bszoa

CommunicationCollaborationCritical ThinkingProblem SolvingCreativity & InnovationInformation & Media Fluency

Claire Amos, Nov 2013

Explore, deconstruct and reconstruct the New Zealand Curriculum

Inquiry - how can we learn more about what to do?

A Framework for Transforming Learning in Schools: Innovation & the Spiral of Inquiry

Developing collective professional agency: collaborative inquiry matters

Grounded in learning science knowledge

The involvement of learners & whānau & communities - underpinning and permeating each of the phases

Consultation versus Partnership

A shift from learner voice to learner agency

“Letting” versus Letting go

Go around looking for more questions - not answers:

1st horizon: Involving others in the long game● Uncover the deep-rooted

contextualised/community-based problems.● Drill into everything you do!● have “ideas sessions” - like think tanks!

Design Thinking for Innovation

2nd Horizon: Getting there● prototyping, ● testing out your idea with as many different people

as possible to see how that idea fits with as many people in the community as possible

● sharing, seeking feedback and input

Design Thinking for Innovation

3rd Horizon: Reaching for the Stars● ideation● working out what you’re not● strategy● solutions● achieving the vision

Design Thinking for Innovation

“Run numerous experiments”

Synthesis / Empathy

Immersion/Exploration/Discovery

Ideation / Divergent & Convergent

Prototyping - sharing ideas for improvement,

seeking feedback

What might it look like to be prepared for the future?

Alright stop! Collaborate & listen...Common signs that a network of schools is effectively collaborating include:

• commitment to a common, needs-based goal/focus

• use of inquiry and knowledge-building cycles

• the presence of challenge and critique practices

• a focus on evidence-based needs, and

• the presence of role clarity and relational trust among

network members.

Collaborate

build relational trust

Build skills & knowledge

to learn, improve and transform

Common issues seen in clusters or networks

- the ECE elephant in the room- the secondary elephant in the room- not knowing each other’s contexts at all- resentment of or by informal network leaders- lack of role clarity and/or trust between networks

leaders/members- overwhelming plans full of unmanageable actions and

unachievable goals- no space for innovation, vision work or creativity

How might your Community of Learners operate if you are to be innovative, transformative, future focused?

Making room for new practices

Socially-engineered assembly lines:

- rigid- highly controlled- repetitive- creativity-killing- building-block thinking, tweaking

List all of the socially engineered, assembly line behaviours and actions in your school/service:

➔ bells➔ timetables➔ age-separated classroom-type setups in ECE & schools➔ auxiliary rooms instead of learning spaces➔ traditional assemblies➔ rewards for outcomes instead of the learning process➔ WILTs & WALTs➔ uniforms➔ subjects & achievement are seen as the process for learning

Making room for new practices

Schools as evolving, natural ecosystems versus factories

- dynamism- adaptability- permeability- creativity- self-correction

(Thomas & Seeley Brown, 2011, Lichtman, 2014)

What do innovative school structures look like?

senior management sits back and let innovation teams work with real autonomy

“Sometimes the teams fail; they miss deadlines; their ideas are unrealistic; their proposed innovations are flashes-in-the-pan...Management does not step in and direct the team to reach a different solution” (Lichtman, p. 79)

Set broad goals...get out of the way; help to repair

Conditions for innovation & change“We have an incredible staff who want to be at

school and enjoy learning from each other”

- have a mindset that you will always grow and change- refine teaching practices & programs all the time- reduce teacher courses, increase time for collaboration in

teams- reduce administrative drag, play down red tape

Melissa Kapeckas, Middle School Director (in Lichtman, 2014)

Characteristics of a culture of innovation

“Act Small”- promote a culture that can evolve without express permission from the

top at every step- bottom-up or multilateral planning- open access to planning and information- collaboration across more permeable, flexible departmental boundaries- allow natural leaders to emerge and claim a spot in the decision chain- flatten the organisational chart

Lichtman, 2014