Learning Futures - Creative Events

Learning Futures - Pedagogic Change Themes

Outcomes of the two Creative Events held on 20th and 21st May 2008

• Introduction
• Background
• The context for pedagogic change
• Change themes
• A call for school reform
• Session reports
• 20th May sessions
• 21st May sessions

Introduction

This report offers a synthesis from the two creative events described below. The practitioner reports arising from the process are detailed below. If you would like to see a particular report please click on the relevant link.

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Background

In May 2008, more than one hundred of the country's most innovative leaders, attended two one-day Creative Events. Their invitations followed the submission of Expressions of Interest to participate in the Learning Futures programme - a programme designed to stimulate radical field trials in the field of alternative pedagogies and promoted by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and The Innovation Unit in partnership.

Many of those attending had already demonstrated a willingness to innovate by piloting innovative educational initiatives (eg RSA's Opening Minds Curriculum, Futurelab's Enquiring Minds, Building Learning Power, Studio Schools, etc). In addition, a number of senior representatives from innovative third sector agencies were also invited to participate, in order to act as creative catalysts. The days were intensive and dynamic, and featured a range of activities designed to:

    a) provide further examination of the Learning Futures conceptual framework
    b) advance thinking by utilising creative practitioner ideas
    c) explore concerns and obstacles to radical innovation
    d) employ a 'charrette'-style process of collaborative design.

The most striking finding from the two days was the high level of consensus about two things. The first was the feeling that schools as we understand them today represent an out-of-date model, one which constrains student learning as much as it promotes it. The second was the strength of commitment to the formation of a movement for change. This spirit is reflected in the findings outlined in the following two sections, the first a brief analysis of contextual factors, the second a series of interrelated change themes emerging within the creative workshops and from across the session reports.

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The context for pedagogic change

There were a number of common characteristics displayed by senior leaders:

• A hunger to innovate - and to do so using collective disciplines
• Despite managing often high-achieving schools, a strong sense of dissatisfaction with the limitations of the current schooling system
• Frustration at the current perceived constraints to innovation (see below)
• A broad consensus of the need for more progressive solutions based upon improving pedagogy, not test scores
• A clear desire to work more closely together as peers - and to generate a movement for change.

These positive characteristics were also tempered by constraints felt by many through:

• Teacher attitudes and skills (particularly the guarding of subject expertise and identity) and resistance to change
• The tyranny of the timetable and school day
• Parental expectations
• The unsuitability of school physical environments to innovative pedagogy
• The spectre of high-stakes accountability.

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Change themes

Delegates were asked to participate in a range of design sessions around transformation of the learning environment. More than 40 of these were written up, and constitute a rich resource of practitioner insights - the subject of a separate publication. Relevant for this paper, a number of change themes emerged through these processes. In broad terms, they were:

1. A desire to move away from a model of pedagogy dominated by the subject-based curriculum. This included a wish to incorporate problem-based learning, project-designed learning, learning driven by student passions and interests, vocationally-based and situated learning. Together they represent a powerful desire to achieve greater relevance and a focus for co-construction.
   
   
2. A view that the ‘timetable' and the ‘school day' are constraining architectural features. There were many ideas about flexing the ‘units of learning'. For some this was 24/7 schools, for others flexible shifts, or three period days (morning, afternoon, evening), or whole-day and whole-week learning. For others it extended to ‘attendance in learning' rather than 'attendance at school'.
   
   
3. A perception that the age-structured cohort is unhelpful. ‘Stage not age' has recently become a mantra among innovative schools, but ideas went much further than this, to include family learning groupings, the use of students as teachers across ages, and ‘open' learning pathways containing students of various ages.
   
   
4. A belief in more holistic assessment. The perceived centrality of assessment to our model created some debate. Some felt that assessment should be serving learning and therefore less prominent; others felt that it should drive pedagogy and learning in creative ways involving assessment by exhibition, by portfolio, by group presentation, by research evidence etc.
   
   
5. An acknowledgement that simulations, gaming theory, social networking (and e-communication generally) are beginning to transform the learning landscape. Proposals and ideas in this area took a number of forms, but three clear strands of thinking emerged:
   
   a) Virtual environments have demonstrably been very effective in re-engaging many young people deemed ‘lacking ability or motivation', as well as having appeal for a wide range of learners.
   
   b) Effective technologies and collaborative tools can move us towards long-held pedagogic aspirations - learner-designed pathways and routes, just in time learning and anytime engagement, all-age peer learning, etc.
   
   c) Beyond these virtual tools, the learning models and principles underpinning their design have much to offer schools more generally.
   
   
6. A look towards foundation stage pedagogies. The desire to incorporate quality primary pedagogy in a secondary context was frequently raised. At its most simple, the consistency of tutoring and more thematic learning was cited. More ambitiously, there were calls for 0-19 schooling across families of primary/secondary schools.
   
   
7. Unlearning and relearning for teachers There was a widespread view that some teachers have little experience of or appetite for pedagogical and curriculum innovation. There was a desire for an approach to learning that enshrines within it unlearning and relearning for staff. The elements of unlearning, some of which echo earlier themes, were perceived to be:
   
   
   • teachers as the ‘authority', the one who ‘knows'
   • teachers' concept of what learning is
   • the ubiquitous ‘good teacher' model and the nature of teachers' ‘work'
   • subject identity rather then identity as pedagogy designer
     
     
8. A shift towards a more democratic and participative model of schooling. Underpinning all the above change themes is a desire to create a model of schooling in which learning is owned and directed by students, and where the existing power-relationships enshrined in schools and classrooms are challenged. This goes significantly beyond the student voice initiatives commonly seen in schools. It involves participatory schooling, where young people ‘own' their learning and act out that ownership in the responsibility they take for their own and others' learning and for the contexts in which it happens.

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A call for school reform

When put together, these eight themes speak much more to a school reform movement or model, one able to be facilitative of more engaging and more integrated pedagogies.

They imply that Learning Futures might well need to address both the pedagogical conditions for engagement and integration, and the organisational and wider system conditions able to sustain such pedagogies.

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Session reports

The list below provides details of the various creative and workshop sessions ‘hosted' across the two days. At the conclusion of each day, those who hosted were expected to write and submit a session report. Those who participated had the option of doing the same. More than 40 were received and the title of each of the sessions is in the grid. Should you wish to access any of the reports click on the relevant link.

What more will be done with them now, other than making them available? Well, the above synthesis is the first step. The next will be a report for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation using ideas from the sessions to make proposals about the shape of possible next stages to the Learning Futures programme. Beyond that, we anticipate that a publication will be created and made available, contain vignettes and snapshots from the reports - practitioner ideas that might ‘carry' and serve to stimulate innovation.

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20th May sessions

• 1 Using problem-based learning to engage students
• 2 To discuss negotiation of curriculum content by the learner
• 3 Engaging students through learning and coaching
• 4 How do you really co-construct a curriculum?
• 5 Students with their own laptops - what works and what doesn't?
• 6 Discuss the relearning arrangements across a ‘family of schools' 0-19 plus yrs with the learner at centre
• 7 Massively serious scenarios and simulations in MySpace / virtual reality (no report available)
• 8 A successful design must have a specification. What are the essential and desirable things these learning arrangements must do? (no report available)
• 9 Develop learning beyond the curriculum
• 10 How can we create meaningful/worthwhile assessment/quality assurance
• 11/13 Project based learning - the way ahead?
• 12 Negotiation by stages. Moving to an open ended curriculum model with relevance
• 14 What should/could a 21st century learning environment look like? How could we remodel schools?
• 15 What would happen if we advertised and appointed ‘good teachers', not specific subject teachers, and we organised teaching teams and the curriculum accordingly?
• 16 Using assessment to produce optimistic engaged learners
• 17 Student passion
• 18 Students as teachers
• 19A Learning outside the classroom
• 19B Learning outside the classroom
• 20A Student navigated routes - a 
• 20B Student navigated routes - b
• 20C Student nativaged routes - c
• 21 Enquiry and project-based learning
• 22 Mixed age learning
• 23 Grow teachers' skills sets

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21st May sessions

• 1A Design a curriculum which incorporates student passions and interests throughout
• 1B Design a curriculum which incorporates student passions and interests throughout - b
• 2 Design a curriculum whose core principle is that the students navigate their own learning routes
• 3A Design a learning environment that systematically involves students as teachers - a;
• 3B Design a learning environment that systematically involves students as teachers - b
• 3C Design a learning environment that systematically involves students as teachers - c
• 4A Design a learning environment that has learning outside the classroom as a core component
• 4B Design a learning environment that has learning outside the classroom as a core component
• 5 Design a learning environment that doesn't have teachers
• 6A Design a learning environment where teachers students and community learn in mixed age configurations - a
• 6B Design a learning environment where teachers students and community learn in mixed age configurations - b
• 6C Design a learning environment where teachers students and community learn in mixed age configurations - c
• 7A Design a learning environment that's driven by enquiry and project-based learning
• 7B Design a learning environment that's driven by enquiry and project-based learning
• 7C Design a learning environment that's driven by enquiry and project-based learning
• 8A Design a model that incorporates unlearning and relearning for staff
• 8B Design a model that incorporates unlearning and relearning for staff
• 8C Design a model that incorporates unlearning and relearning for staff
• 9 Retrain all staff with a skills focus
• 10 What is it that hooks/fascinates young people about computer games that engages them, gives them stickability, problem solving skills, creativity and can it be imported into learning spaces?
• 11 Development of all-through learning campuses with freedom to fund learning differently and according to local need
• 12 Flexible day (no report available)
• 13 How to convince parents that the innovations we are discovering are an acceptable risk for their children
• 14 Students' own course and teaching it for ‘others'
• 15 How do you turn a school into an oasis? (no report available)
• 16 How do we influence the policy makers so they understand what we are tying to achieve? (no report available)
• 17 To explore organising learning across different age groups, ie vertically organised learning curriculum groupings
• 18 Subject abandonment to provide space, time and capacity to improve learning

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