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Understanding HīAko

Posted on March 2, 2021 by Rahera Ormsby

From a young age, Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga was a nanakia visionary, inquisitive and he accomplished a number of great feats helping others to live better lives. HīAko aims to enable Māori learners to discover their potential, ‘te pitomata’ and promote kaupapa Māori ways of engaging with self, others, and knowledge.

The HīAko challenge itself is fast paced, high energy and fun and uses kaupapa Māori approaches to find solutions to real life, localised problems that matter to ākonga and their whānau as speakers of te reo Māori. HīAko provides ākonga with the opportunity like Māui, to think, explore and find solutions to real life issues in order to enrich the lives of others. Māui was far from perfect and he was a great disruptor, which is what is needed also in this space.

HīAko

HīAko is founded within pūrākau, demonstrating a unique approach to learning based on four Māori medium learning approaches:

  • Kia hīanga te ako – discover as you play, play to learn
  • Kia tamaiti te tū, kia Māori te tū – being a child whilst standing in your Māoriness
  • Mā te tamaiti tōna ao e hanga – the child will create his or her own world
  • Ko te tamaiti ko tōna whānau, ko te whānau ko tōna tamaiti – each child brings with them whānau, whakapapa, stories and knowledge that are unique.

What is HīAko?

  • HīAko is a learning programme which believes that whilst playing, huge learning is taking place.
  • HīAko encompasses learning reciprocity, learning enjoyment, learning discovery, learning creativity, and learning collaboration.
  • HīAko endeavours to awaken the potential within, so that new ideas and innovations may occur.
  • HīAko is Māori-centric, fun, and fast paced.
  • HīAko includes time for ākonga to collaborate together in teams to inquire, uncover problems that matter to them, which they would like to try and solve.
  • HīAko encourages teams to research and query solutions to their problems and link with whānau, kura, hapū and the wider hāpori to assist ākonga with their solutions.
  • HīAko is designed so ākonga get to play, tutu, learn, create and harness transformational change within a total immersion te reo Māori environment.
HīAko – powered by CORE Education – Tātai Aho Rau is a kaupapa Māori driven event for tau 6 – 8 ākonga from Māori medium and reo rua kura. Three HīAko events will be held during 2021. More information about the upcoming HīAko events and how to enrol your ākonga coming soon. Visit the website for more!

 

We would like to acknowledge Whare and Hohepa Isaac-Sharland, past facilitators of CORE who designed and delivered the HīAko programme and this content.

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Young innovators rise

Posted on August 18, 2020 by Suzi Gould
young-innovators
Photo by Mark Fletcher-Brown on Unsplash

We don’t have to look too far to see the swell of global crisis and a surge of young people responding with calls for action and innovative solutions. From global activist Greta Thunberg skipping school and inspiring an international climate change movement to Burnside High’s Thomas James inventing a wheelie bin robot for his elderly neighbour.

Young innovators are more visible than ever, and we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. To thrive at a time of global change we need to tap into values-based innovation and support it in our schools, kura and learning communities. We must think more broadly about how young people are valued and the ways they are enabled to participate in society. What skills do we need to nurture, what spaces could we create, so that all young people can develop innovative mindsets to build better futures?

The time is right

With Covid-19 pressing pause across the globe and impacting our daily lives, we have a chance to slow down, examine our vision, be guided by our values, and develop equitable, inclusive solutions for building healthier communities.

We can draw on the gifts and talents of learners to help problem solve and lead the change we need to see. We can also learn a lot from a Te Ao Māori view of giftedness – that we are all born with our own unique gifts and talents, and that it is our collective energies that unleash these for the good of all.

Renzulli (2002) identifies or expresses a call to leverage “socially constructive giftedness” describing six components that give rise to this:

  1. optimism
  2. courage
  3. romance with a topic or discipline
  4. sensitivity to human concerns
  5. physical/mental energy
  6. vision/sense of destiny

In the national Education Conversation | Kōrero Mātauranga online survey (2019) one young person reminded us how important it is to leverage skills and passions: “Someone who is passionate about something can use that passion in the real world to make a positive impact on society.”

That we have to have people thinking about the future and using their gifts and talents to address wicked problems* and create positive social change sounds sensible. However, AUT University Professor of Education, Jane Gilbert (2015), says “In simple terms, if you want to produce innovators – as we claim we want to – everything you would do is the opposite of what we are currently doing in the education system”.

*A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve for as many as four reasons: incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems. Poverty is linked with education, nutrition with poverty, the economy with nutrition, and so on. (“Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving – Wicked Problem”, n.d.)

 

In order to teach innovation, we have to innovate in our own teaching. Below are some suggestions and tools to support teachers and young people develop innovator mindsets.

Make space (for influence)

While there is a rise in gathering learners’ voices, it is not enough. Would it have been enough for Greta to have her voice gathered? Gathering student voices can perpetuate previous expectations of student leaders. Student voices can perpetuate the norm – those who are involved become more involved, those who aren’t become more discouraged or disengaged.

We need to make space for all young people to identify problems that matter to them and participate in decision making. Seventeen-year-old Jason’s quote in this UNICEF resource guide on the rights of the child, makes the best job of explaining this point, “If you had a problem in the Black community, and you brought in a group of White people to discuss how to solve it, almost nobody would take that panel seriously. In fact, there’d probably be a public outcry. It would be the same for women’s issues or gay issues. But every day, in local arenas all the way to the White House, adults sit around and decide what problems youth have and what youth need, without ever consulting us.”

Participation leads to better decision-making and outcomes. Even our very young learners have ideas and views to be listened to and acted on. The Lundy model of child participation offers a useful framework and checklist that ensures all children have the “space to express their views; their voice is enabled; they have an audience for their views; and their views will have influence”.

Participate and problem solve

“Like that it was our ideas and not something we just had to work on, it was something we were interested in and we got to meet new people. iNVENTIONATOR Student

When diverse groups of people come together to share problems that matter to them they develop an understanding of the different perspectives and values of others and are more innovative. Much of the learning is about how to work with other people, holding your ideas lightly, and experiencing different working models than your own.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) takes a people-first approach to planning learning. It asks us to think about who we will teach and what those learners bring with them before we think about what we will teach. UDL strategies support inclusion and offer a framework for equity and innovation.

“Without a systematic way to interrupt current practice in the classroom the impact of these barriers is repeatedly faced by each generation without significant forward motion to break the cycle once and for all.” Bae, S., Ofiesh, N. S., Blackorby, J. (2018)

“UDL has allowed people to see inequity in places and spaces where they hadn’t considered it before. That has given us a doorway to talk about inequities for Māori.” Janelle Riki-Waaka, CORE Education.

 

Māori innovators are on a rise, with record numbers engaged in research and development in 2019. Māori innovators also and made up nearly half the finalists in the 2020 New Zealander of the Year Awards.

Callaghan Innovation CEO Vic Crone (2019) cautions “the levels of participation are [still] not where they need to be. We’ve got to .. make sure pathways for Māori innovators are clear and compelling.” How might we unleash the powers of innovation in Māori ākonga, so we can cultivate, nurture, and channel their natural gifts for the betterment of everyone?

“Our gifted Māori are not only agents of change in our world, but they possess a sense of identity and mana that contribute to all societies; indigenous or otherwise. Therefore it is our duty to give them the tools to manifest positive change within both worlds.” (Whānau interview, Russell 2013)

Focus on how not what

How do you lengthen your stride and become an innovator? As Scott Doorley of Stanford’s d.school says, “The only way to learn it is to do it.” But there are some powerful frameworks and learning opportunities available to support you in this quest:

Te Tukanga Hoahoa Whakaaro

This framework for possibility and design takes a Te Āo Māori perspective capturing the essence of innovation in the stories of creation; Te Po, Te Whaiao, Te Ao Marama (From out of the Darkness, the World of Being, to the World of Light)

The Liberatory Design process

Liberatory design is a riff on Stanford d. school’s design thinking process to promote equity in design work developed in partnership with the National Equity Project. The goal is to provide a design process that develops one’s self-awareness as an equity-centered designer. You can download a liberatory design card deck to support everyone’s practice.

Make a start with iNVENTIONATOR

You can support your own young innovators to rise through iNVENTIONATOR, a team-based challenge powered by CORE in partnership with the Ministry of Education. It has been designed for students to co-create innovative solutions to real-life problems.

This year CORE and the Ministry of Education are offering two events FREE for gifted learners who want to PLAY. THINK. DREAM BIG!

Virtual event
6-9 September 2021 – four half day sessions

Spaces are limited, so register your gifted learners now! Find out more >

 

“I would like to be a part of INVENTIONATOR because I think it is important that my generation has innovative ideas to solve real-life problems as we’re going to be the ones who have to save our earth.” Student, age 11

References

Bae, S., Ofiesh, N. S., Blackorby, J. (2018) A Commitment to Equity: The Design of the UDL Innovation Studio at the Schwab Learning Center. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://slc.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj10231/f/udl_innovation_studio_white_paper_final_2.pdf 

Callaghan Innovation. (2019). Tech, Science and Mātauranga Māori a Powerful Force. Callaghan Innovation. Retrieved 18 August 2020, from https://www.callaghaninnovation.govt.nz/news-and-events/tech-science-and-m%C4%81tauranga-m%C4%81ori-powerful-force. 

How to Start a d.school — Stanford d.school. Stanford d.school. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://dschool.stanford.edu/how-to-start-a-dschool. 

Gilbert, J. (2015) Educating for a future we can’t imagine. Idealog. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://idealog.co.nz/issues/2015/03/educating-future-we-cant-imagine.

Kōrero Mātauranga. (2019). The voices of young people [PDF]. Kōrero Mātauranga. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://conversation.education.govt.nz/conversations/education-conversation/what-you-told-us/voices-of-young-people/.

Ministry of Education, N. Why UDL is valuable. Inclusive Education. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://www.inclusive.tki.org.nz/guides/universal-design-for-learning/why-udl-is-valuable. 

Renzulli, J. (2002). Emerging Conceptions of Giftedness: Building a Bridge to the New Century. Exceptionality, 10(2), 67-75. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327035ex1002_2

Wallace-Tidd, M., Strang, E., McCall, C., Edwards, M., & Barnett, A. (2015). Educating for a future we can’t imagine. Idealog. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://idealog.co.nz/issues/2015/03/educating-future-we-cant-imagine.

Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving – Wicked Problem. Wickedproblems.com. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://www.wickedproblems.com/1_wicked_problems.php. 

Resources  

Dumas, J. (2019). NZ’s Maori innovators are on the rise. bizEDGE. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://bizedge.co.nz/story/nz-s-maori-innovators-are-on-the-rise. 

European Union. The Lundy model of child participation [PDF]. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/lundy_model_of_participation.pdf. 

Lansdown, G. (2011). Every child’s right to be heard – A resource guide on the UN committee on the rights of the child general comment no.12 [PDF]. Save the Children UK. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://www.unicef.org/files/Every_Childs_Right_to_be_Heard.pdf. 

Liberatory Design — Stanford d.school. Stanford d.school. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources-collections/liberatory-design. 

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Auahatanga | Innovation

Posted on April 2, 2019 by Derek Wenmoth

innovation

When Māori first made their way to Aotearoa they used a variety of innovative ways to navigate to places they’d not previously visited. Once on land, their challenge came in finding ways to meet their everyday needs using what was available in this new landscape. Over the ensuing years Māori became adept at using the local flora and fauna to build shelter, make clothing and provide food and medicines to sustain themselves.

Centuries later, the European settlers came, bringing a post-industrial approach to building a life in this new land. These early settlers also had to adapt and improvise to meet their needs – including finding ways of fixing and maintaining the industrial age tools they’d brought with them. Number 8 wire, brought with them for fencing, was readily available and often used as a substitute for the parts that were missing or not working well. Out of this grew the myth of the Number 8 Wire mentality; otherwise known as Kiwi ingenuity.

From these early times both Māori and Pākeha have been identified as practical, problem-solver types, able to invent, fix and create solutions, often through improvisation and clever thinking rather than having access to the level of resourcing available to others. New Zealanders are recognised on the global stage for this number 8 wire mindset, from Rutherford’s work towards the splitting of the atom to Rocket Lab’s launching of a rocket into space.

While we may have grown up thinking of ourselves as the nation with the Number 8 Wire mindset, in our modern world we have become increasingly accustomed to having our problems addressed for us by others who have the knowledge, skill and resources to do this. The Number 8 Wire may have been useful in fixing a mechanical tractor or milking shed machinery, but it’s unlikely to be of use on one of today’s electronically controlled cars or ‘smart’ building systems for example.

Reimagining Aotearoa’s future will require us to innovate in different ways. We will need to connect and strengthen our communities; to disrupt what we’ve known and innovate to find solutions that meet new challenges and effect change. This will be a challenge in a world of increasing complexity and exponential change where our problems won’t only be about how to address our immediate physical needs, but will extend to how to address issues and concerns that affect the way we live and survive as a society, locally and globally.

In the modern world, education becomes even more important for developing the next generation of innovators, problem solvers and creative thinkers. It can ignite a passion for learning and provide students with the tools they need to thrive and succeed in the innovation economy.

Innovation in education requires:

  • Risk taking – valuing the ability to push the boundaries, to think outside the square and to try things even when there’s no guarantee of success.
  • Failure – giving learners permission to fail, to learn from failure and to persist with ideas.
  • Open-mindedness – not limiting one’s thinking to the conventions that exist, but being prepared to embrace new ideas and new thinking.
  • Collaboration – while individuals may be acknowledged for their original ideas and creativity, bringing new thinking to the fore requires the effort of a team.
  • Support – learners need to know that their efforts are supported, that they won’t be penalised for something that doesn’t work but instead encouraged to try again.
  • Resources – innovative activities will require things to get messy at times, with learners requiring access to things that will enable them to experiment with their ideas. Often these resources will exist outside of the school, kura or centre, so community relationships and global connections will become important here.

Innovation is one of the CORE uLearn conference themes this year, The focus questions developed for this strand provide some provocations for participants to consider how they create a climate of innovation in their educational communities:

  • How can we prepare our young people to be innovators and change agents?
  • How might we intentionally teach in ways that promote creativity, innovation, wonder, joy, and a passion for learning.
  • What is the role of inquiry in learning? In teaching? How does this lead to innovation?
  • How do we bring new ideas to fruition in our schools/kura/organisations?
  • How might innovation look and occur from different perspectives and through different cultural lenses?

edSpace is CORE Education’s online network for educators to connect with others, discuss strategies, and share information – join edSpace here. Once you’re there, head to our uLearn discussion forum, and join the discussion about Innovation.

As young people around the world begin to mobilise in response to the growing concerns they have about the problems they see looming on the horizon, we need to think about how we prepare this generation of learners, through developing an innovator’s mindset, so that they become the solution builders.

References
The Genius of Kiwi Ingenuity https://www.motovated.co.nz/genesis-kiwi-ingenuity/
Innovation in the Classroom: Why Education Needs to Be More Innovative  https://philmckinney.com/innovation-classroom-education-needs-innovative/

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Instigating sprints to support transformational change and innovation in schools

Posted on March 13, 2019 by Fionna Wright

learning-sprints-transformational-change

Change is the new black

Educational change is inevitable and it’s all the rage (although some may argue with the second half of that sentence). A rapidly evolving and turbulent world, our growing understanding of the nature of learning and, in New Zealand, the need to change how our education system performs so that Māori students enjoy and achieve education success as Māori (Ka Hikitia – Accelerating Success 2013–2017); all mean that educational evolution is here to stay.

The challenge with educational change these days seems to be the amount and sometimes exponential pace of it. This volume and speed creates a need to look past previous iterative approaches to improving teaching and learning, and instead, become transformational as we strive to evolve our own practice in both a rapid, and meaningful way.

However, effectively managing transformational change is a change in itself. Transformation calls for innovation, risk-taking and creativity; and engaging in mahi where the outcomes may be unknown. Without resources, time and support, this form of change can feel overwhelming, laborious and like it’s ‘on top of’ an already saturated workload.

In a previous post I co-authored with my colleague, Rachel Westaway, we suggested that school leaders explore Agile values and principles to support transformation and innovation in schools.
In this post, I will delve deeper into an agile tool called ‘sprints’ that supports teams to work through transformational change; hopefully experience some creative freedom; and provides a framework and process that promotes embracing uncertainty while minimising risk. This way, managing change and innovation should not be overwhelming and may actually be enjoyable.

What are sprints?

The concept of sprints originated in the IT/project management world where they are one of the key components of the scrum framework, supporting people to work collaboratively to address complex problems and unpredictability. Scrum is founded on agile principles, with an emphasis on creating value, and making progress through regular reflection, adaptation and teamwork.

Sprints enable teams to work collaboratively to tackle large problems or significant change by breaking down the work into small, time-boxed, increments (a.k.a sprints) and focusing on what is most important.

In the education world, the sprint approach can be used to manage, improve and innovate on practice to support our learners’ needs, allowing educators to be more adaptable, creative and flexible in working through significant change. Sprints can be anywhere from one to three weeks long (as a guide only). Put simply:

Using a sprint approach can break down and simplify what can seem to be an overwhelming, long-term challenge, into smaller manageable parts.

Agile Schools has developed Learning Sprints; a programme that provides tools, resources and professional learning. They recommend 3 key phases in a ‘learning sprint’:

1. Prepare

a. Define: What student learning outcome do we want to focus our practice improvement on? For which students? What evidence justifies this decision?
b. Design: What small, specific actions can we take in our classrooms to improve student learning?
c. Assess: What evidence of student learning will we collect?

2. Sprint

a. Teach: In what ways are we deliberately improving our teaching practices?
b. Monitor: How are we collecting evidence of student learning? What is it telling us?
c. Support: How are we harnessing peer and expert feedback?

3. Review

a. Analyse: What progress did students make and how did our actions contribute to this?
b. Transfer: How can we transfer what we’ve learned into future practice and ways of working together?
c. Reset: What professional learning could we engage in next, in order to help us maximise our impact on student learning?

Implementing sprints in a teaching inquiry

The sprint process is strongly underpinned by evidence-based practice and therefore aligns closely with the Spiral of inquiry. Used as an approach within a longer-term inquiry, sprints can provide an opportunity to evaluate the impact of our actions over many cycles within the wider inquiry space. Not only does this allow new learning to become embedded in the way we work but the speed (velocity in ‘scrum speak’) at which the team can move and adapt is accelerated.

However, before contemplating the use of sprints within an inquiry, it is important to discover and define what is going on with our learners. The scanning and focusing phases of a teaching inquiry will support us to create collective learner statements about targeted students in a particular educational community. We can then explore how these challenges relate to the nature of learning (OECD 7 principles of learning) and the Key Competencies in the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC). The NZCER Remixing the Key Competencies: A curriculum design deck is useful for this. In developing a hunch we look at our own practices attached to any challenge/s.

This work might look something like this:

stthomastlif_june27recap

Diagram: Fionna Wright – CORE Education, (CC BY-NC 4.0)

When working collectively through the inquiry phases we should discover overarching themes, for example:

“Our learners are engaged in learning activities outside of school and are far more engaged at school when learning is personally meaningful to them.”

The challenge for us therefore is to design learning activities that are more meaningful for students with a diverse range of cultural backgrounds, interests and learning needs. (The creation of User stories to support this thinking is another useful agile approach but this will need to wait for another blog).

So, what do we need to learn and how will we take action, and check that we are making enough of a difference for our students?

Using sprints to manage, improve and innovate on practice in a collaborative, structured, iterative way; whilst collecting relevant evidence to measure the impact of our ideas and actions, helps us figure out what to learn and the necessary actions to take in an adaptive way. It helps us therefore to develop adaptive expertise–the ability to apply new knowledge ideas and skills flexibly and creatively. (Dumont, Istance and Benavides 2010, 3).

This is the approach that Agile Schools has taken with a range of activities in their Learning Sprints toolkit. Amongst these in their Define phase is Boulder, Pebble, Sand. This activity allows us to break down our learner challenge into bite-sized chunks of practice that we can then review, transfer and adapt new learning and ideas before going into another sprint.

It is important to note that, whilst I believe the outline of this activity is useful, I would lean more towards ‘doing with’ students and possibly whānau in identifying and developing learning outcomes. That is to say, if our challenge is to design learning activities that are more meaningful for students with a diverse range of cultural backgrounds, interests and learning needs, it would seem to be reasonable to co-design learning outcomes and activities with the students rather than for them. I also wonder if we should change the language from ‘learning outcome’ to ‘student-valued outcome’. This places more emphasis on designing a response to challenges or opportunities around the nature of learning and the key competencies in the NZC. It also supports the design and implementation of learning experiences that are more human-centred. The Guide to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is useful for this.

Reviewing a sprint

The review of a sprint can look a little bit like a SCRUM meeting in which teams review the evidence collected during the last sprint. Using the Learning Sprints Check-in Tool teams ask questions like:

  1. What learner progress did we see?
  2. What did we learn?
  3. What worked well?
  4. What didn’t work well?
  5. Where to next?

Recording individual ideas on post-it notes to move around and look for patterns, positives, needs and gaps is helpful when answering questions. For example:

fionna-sprints

Images: Fionna Wright – CORE Education, (CC BY-NC 4.0)

This process leads to a collective, in-depth examination of practice that supports the transfer of new learning and consideration of next steps.

So, if the concept of breaking down large, often long-term challenges into a small, structured, incremental steps appeals to you, then sprints might be a process that is worth considering. I’m in my early days of exploring this approach but I believe that, in education, sprints can:

  • support collaboration and innovation
  • provide a clear, simple process that is easy to manage
  • promote rich discussion and deeper learning
  • allow for flexibility, adaptability and innovation
  • encourage evidence-based practice and provide accountability
  • provide structure to more effectively measure the impact of actions
  • inform future practice.

As an aside, a useful consequence of implementing an ongoing sprint process is the development of a growing portfolio of robust evidence that reflects the Code of Professional Responsibility and Standards for the Teaching Profession (NZ Teaching Council).

If a sprint approach to managing challenging change can help us to continuously measure, adapt and improve our practice, it would be great to consider how it could also be used with our students.

Featured image by Will H McMahan on Unsplash

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It’s better to be on the bus than on the road!

Posted on February 22, 2019 by Derek Wenmoth

“If you feel overwhelmed and confused by the global predicament, you are on the right track. Global processes have become too complicated for any single person to understand. How then can you know the truth about the world, and avoid falling victim to propaganda and misinformation?”

Yuval Noah Harari, introduction to part IV of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

on-the-bus

In response to my indecision about how to face a particular challenge in my career, an old friend of mine once suggested, “it’s better to be on the bus than on the road!” I took that to mean that it is better to be a part of the change than simply allow it to ‘run over’ me and be overwhelmed by it all. An unfortunate consequence of the current state of relentless, exponential change, both locally and globally, means many of us feel we’re ‘on the road’ at times, simply watching everything pass us by and feeling helpless in what to do about it.

Being ‘on the bus’ holds much more appeal for me than being on the road – for a start, from the bus you get a different perspective of the challenges you face. You get to see more of the other things going on – from the various sights you’re passing to a view of the horizon. In addition, you do all of this with others – realising that you’re not alone in facing these challenges and that together, you’re in a better place to both appreciate the good and to find solutions.

In times of accelerating change it’s easy to fall victim to a ‘stable state’ mentality, thinking that if we simply wait a while everything may return to a state of ‘normal’ again. In a world where developments in technology, climate change, threats of war and political uncertainty all contribute to feelings of anxiety and indecision, it is more important than ever before that, as educators, and as responsible citizens of the world, we need to understand a return to ‘the stable state’ isn’t a likely scenario. We need to see ourselves as being ‘on the bus’, engaging our collaborative and critical thinking capabilities to help us make sense of it all, and to find solutions to the challenges we face.

Being ‘on the bus’ doesn’t imply a physical place to be – it’s a mindset. It involves resilience, fore-sight and critical thinking. Resilience because we need strategies that will allow us to cope with the feelings of uncertainty and threats to our personal comfort and security. Fore-sight because we need to be able to see beyond the present and be aware of what is on the horizon, and of the actions that are likely to make these things a reality. And critical thinking because we are living in a ‘post truth’ world, where what we are being exposed to through the media and other channels, requires us to be able to exercise the ability to critically examine and evaluate the factual evidence to form views and change our behaviours based on that.

Fundamental to this is ensuring we are well informed, that we have access to the information required, and that we view it from multiple perspectives. It doesn’t require too much searching in the popular media to find that for every opinion claiming a certain ‘truth’ or certainty, there is an equal and opposite point of view. Our view of foresight shouldn’t be based simply on what the latest guru or ‘influencer’ tells us we should believe. Our response requires us to draw on our ability to delve beneath the headlines and their simplistic message. We must take a critical stance that weighs multiple perspectives and tackles issues of complexity with an appropriate response.

There’s another benefit of being ‘on the bus’ – we are with other people. This is critically important, as our journey into the future must increasingly be regarded as a collaborative one, not something we’re left on our own to contend with. The strength of the collaborative group is that we’re able to debate and discern things as a collective – to challenge the status quo and at the same time, be there for each other as the change impacts us differently. Of course, this will work best if our ‘team’ doesn’t consist solely of like-minded individuals forming a sort of ‘echo chamber’ that reflects simply what we want to hear and what we feel comfortable with. Authentic change will require us to learn to work collaboratively in settings where we feel uncomfortable, and where a part of the solution will lie in being able to resolve differences and work through multiple perspectives.

Engaging with resources such as CORE’s Ten Trends provides a useful way of starting this journey. They have been developed with the intention of providing information about some of the things that are currently challenging educators and the contexts they work in, providing some insights into the things that are driving these changes and offering prompts to begin the process of reflection and action at the local level. Importantly, the trends link back to a central core of five key themes that apply across the whole of society, so that these changes and their impact can be seen in a wider context than simply education.

My challenge to readers of this blog is to use the Ten Trends as a way of ‘getting on the bus’, to understand more of the things that are impacting the work we do, and combine with others to critically engage in forming a response that is appropriate in the contexts in which you work, in particular, a response that will ensure you are preparing the learners you are working with for their future, not just as ‘workers’ but as citizens who themselves will be able to influence and shape what happens in this world we all inhabit.

CORE’s Ten Trends 2019 have been released.

Read them online or download the document now!

 

Photo by Pau Casals on Unsplash

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© 2022 CORE Education Policies
0800 267 301
© 2022 CORE Education
0800 267 301