Innovation in Schools - Canada/ USA 2015

Part One: What does Innovation Look Like in Schools?

Don McLean's Tour of schools in Canada and the US in May 2015.

Background: 

As Principal of Hampden Street School I have been part of the journey our school has taken to increase student engagement, their ability to collaborate and to manage themselves and their learning. Like many educators, Ken Robinson's 2006 TED talk about "Schools killing creativity," got me thinking and questioning our practice and whether we were truly catering for the 21st century students. Subsequently I have heard a large number of educationalists speak on different aspects of this new paradigm in education that we are facing. 

Many schools globally have attempted to address these challenges and changes with varying degree of success. In New Zealand schools demonstrating the level of innovation in all aspects of their practice to fully address this paradigm shift are few and far between so when Hampden Street School went down the road of Modern Learning Environments (MLE) the first thing we learnt was how much we didn't know. We were very much entering new territory by the seat of our pants and there weren't a lot of local experts to draw on. 

We quickly found that the actual physical innovative learning spaces were only a part of the bigger picture and most importantly teaching and learning pedagogy needed to be addressed and defined. With the assistance of CORE Educations, Mark Osbourne we started looking at what the research was telling us. John Hattie's ground breaking research into effective practice made us question many of our "tried and trues" and ask why. We were also part of the Ministry of Education's ALIM project and as part of this we researched the "Best Evidence Synthesis" this again made us look at our practice. One of the key aspects we discovered was we needed to look carefully at the role of the teacher and the importance of students having ownership of their learning and the ability to drive it themselves. Initially, our focus has been to develop our senior syndicate (Year 5/6) area as that was where our MLE was first developed but pretty quickly we realised this will be something we need to roll out across our school, with or without MLEs in place. Last year our Senior and Middle syndicate leaders, along with the Senior DP, attended the Edutech conference in Brisbane. This was a big picture conference with some of the world’s leading minds in education presenting. It was a great way for the leaders in our school to really gain an understanding big picture of Future focused learning. They came back buzzing with a commitment to ensure our school as a whole, embrace paradigm shift.  

The big picture is great but the "How to" always brings challenges. As a school we are embarking on a teacher-led inquiry into what our future focused pedagogy will look like across the school, how we will implement it, and how will we ensure that all staff have some ownership. As part of this I have focused my sabbatical investigation on the following questions: What is an Innovative Learning Environment (ILE)? What do innovative learning environments do differently, and how do they ensure and know that this innovation is improving student outcomes? This is a broad topic and ILE should not be confused for a MLE, although I believe to be truly innovative the right physical environment is important. I have based my study around an OECD report on Innovative Learning Environments released in 2013. The report was part of a project which began in 2008 which was to "analyse how young people learn and under which conditions and dynamics they might learn better. By identifying concrete cases of innovative learning environments from all over the world, ILE aims to inform practice, leadership and reform through generating analysis of innovative and inspiring configurations of learning for children and young people." 

To help sharpen my focus in my observations and discussion with schools I will be visiting I will use the seven transversal principles identified in the ILE project:

1. Learners at the centre - 

2. The social nature of learning 

3. Emotions are integral to learning 

4. Recognising individual differences 

5. Stretching all students 

6. Assessment for learning 

7. Building horizontal connections

These seven principles are expanded on page 6 and 7 in the Paper, "Nature of Learning - Practitioners Guide," (Hanna Dumont, David Istance, Fransico Benavides- 2010)

The OECD team also developed a model of  ILE which demonstrated well the relationship between these seven principles, pedagogy and key elements and dynamics around them.

I am particularly interested in the four key elements in this diagram- Educators, Resources, Learners and Content, their roles in the ILE and their relationship with the dynamics shown around the outside. My version of these elements would be Educators, Learners, Environments, and Curriculum but basically the same intent. This will also help frame my observations and discussions.