Centre stage papers – Days 3, 4 & 5: Extending the vision

Building capacity for learning - deep support for the 21st century learner

 

Introduction

It is a given that that we are living in an era of great change and all the predictors indicate that the pace of change will accelerate over the coming years. Traditionally, schools have prepared their students to work locally and with things that are physical; things they can touch. Today we see the emergence of two new additional worlds: the global world and the virtual world. The internet has already transformed the lives of billions of people. It has delivered a ‘global village’ and has begun to redefine how learning takes place, and what skills are valuable for living and leading these new worlds. Access to knowledge is now almost instantaneous – how do we develop new practices and structures to support these new learning opportunities and the learners of today?

Thomas Friedman, the New York Times international columnist, argues that the world is now flat:
‘in this flat world, economies are intertwined; people and ideas move frequently and globally, geographical boundaries are erased. Globalisation is not a prediction, it is a reality now. The new world order requires us to rethink the ( … ) formats of education that are preparing global citizens’.
Professor Yong Zhao, 2005

All children now need new forms of advice, guidance and support to help manage, and navigate through, the new complexities of life, to negotiate differences and to develop cross-cultural literacy. They also need to access the knowledge society with integrity, through a framework of values. These new purposes of education in the global and virtual worlds requires us to rethink how we support today’s learners for the society in which they are about to enter, the knowledge society.

Perhaps a useful perspective is to start with the learner.

The 21st century learner

Jan Robertson, Associate Professor, University of Waikato, New Zealand claims that the best way to approach developing new support systems for the learner is to approach the problem from a learner’s perspective. She maintains that:
‘Re-thinking pastoral requires a transformation in the relationships within a school to those that are built through partnership and reciprocity in the learning journey’.

So what does the 21st century learner look like?
‘An articulate, autonomous but collaborative learner, with high meta-cognitive control and the skills of learning, gained through educational experiences that engage, with opportunities and challenges, and supported by various people, materials and ICT linked to wellbeing but crucially focused on learning, in schools where the culture and structures support co-construction through distributed leadership’.
(A new shape for schooling – deep support 1, Sue Williamson)

The key words that relate to the wellbeing of an individual are highlighted and give us a clue as to the key components of creating deep support for our learners.

Deep support in the global and virtual worlds

Key questions

• What skills and support will students need and require to learn, live and lead in this new global and digital world?

• In what ways can the internet enable students to become autonomous learners and how should schools design their support structures to facilitate this learning?

By 2015, current trends indicate that most students will have a hand-held personal learning device and that most content for learning will come from digital libraries and online communities. These trends mean that young people today are faced with a complex global community. They need new forms of support to help them develop their view of the world and their interaction within it. In particular, they need to learn how to manage their living, working and ongoing learning in this community of global, social and economic networks.

These trends force us to consider learning beyond the school as a basic unit to work with, and to focus on the individual learner. Perhaps a staring point from moving from the school (as a basic unit) to the learner is through agreeing upon a set of principles from which to plan and design support from, and within. These principles are set out below and are produced through the work of the iNet Australia Futures Vision Principals Group.

• The learner is central to all that happens.
• The learning process is adapted to suit all learners.
• Society creates schools as communities of learning.
• Curriculum is relevant to each individual, to their need for collaboration and the global community in which they live.
• Change is part of the culture of schooling.
• Outcomes from schooling reflect the learners’ and the society’s needs.

These principles provide the basis for schools to design deep support for learners – one aspect of which will be the use of the new technologies in order to personalise learning.

Deep support in schools – the implications of personalising learning

Key questions

• How can schools transform their response to the learner, from a largely standardised to the profoundly personalised, by providing deep support for learning?

• How far do schools need to rethink conventional academic and pastoral structures? What are the alternatives and are they transferable?

• How can support systems cater for both the learning and the welfare needs of their students?

• What are the demands for schools in terms of managing change?

Zuboff and Maxim argue in their book, The support economy, that people are changing faster than the organisations in which they work. This line of argument leads me to challenge how schools, as organisations, have adapted to abandon old practices and adopt new ways of working that are flexible and responsive to need. In England, we often see the evidence in schools of two distinct domains – the pastoral and the curricular. In the drive to personalise the learning of students, these hitherto separate domains must become totally integrated and advice, guidance, coaching and mentoring must be part of a seamless offering of support for students in their learning.

‘Personalising learning demands that schools transform their response from the largely standardised to the profoundly personalised … If students are to engage in deeper learning, they will require new forms of enriched support …’
Professor David Hargreaves, A new shape for schooling?

Schools need to rethink or abandon pastoral systems and structures to bring about personalised learning through a range of support methods and structures. This is transformational work – it requires a successful vision that encompasses, learning, experience, support and, of course, leadership.

This transformational thinking is evident in Boston, USA. Here, the Small Schools Movement has embraced personalisation. Leadership structures have been flattened, the new technologies integrated into learning, pedagogy and school design. Fundamentally, guidance classes are scheduled as part of the curricular offering – the core components of deep support have been truly integrated to enable personalisation and individual support for learning. Interestingly enough, one thing all international visitors noticed during the visits to these small schools was their ethos and culture and the mature and respectful relationships between educators and learners. A climate for co-construction of learning, one in which peer tutoring and vertical and horizontal structures were functioning.

Some concluding thoughts

If the core of deep support is pupil wellbeing, and the condition of learners is fundamental to their being in the right frame of mind to engage meaningfully, then learners must be healthy, feel safe and secure, and derive enjoyment from learning and the positive contribution their learning makes. They must also have a sense of how important learning is to their own personal economic wellbeing; this helps them derive a sense of purpose and an understanding of why their learning is important. Pupil wellbeing must not be the preserve of one person but the responsibility of the community. By this, I mean educators, peers, parents, agencies and other adults. It is through shared values and consistency of message that an ongoing dialogue about learning can be established. The maturity of this conversation, supported by the intelligent use of data, helps to create a sense of wellbeing and to raise aspirations and expectations. Through meaningful conversations co-construction can take place, where the learner becomes empowered and advice, guidance, coaching and mentoring are not something that is ‘done’ to you but a collaborative experience. Schools and educators must be at the centre of this support so that there is the provision of materials and tools to facilitate this type of support. The new technologies have a role to play here, as long as the information and data that is provided is user friendly and accompanied with appropriate explanation.

Personalisation demands that the student becomes the most important unit of the organisation – it requires a rethink about traditional forms of pastoral care, demanding a more integrated approach that defines the nature of the support needed and the delivery of it. In addition, it requires resources in their widest sense, so that schools can mobilise to provide the support. 

The resourcing implications for schools in personalising learning is a question that Professor Brian Caldwell and Jim Spinks have been researching. They have, and are, studying schools that are leading the way in resourcing personalising learning, looking at the challenges these schools face in resource management. Their research highlights how effective resource deployment is more than a focus on funding, but additionally, requires an analysis of intellectual capacity, quality of teaching, knowledge management and building capacity for leadership. These seem to me to be the foundation on which deep support for students can be effectively built.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr Tony Bloxham is Head of iNet, and Leadership and Innovation Networks, at the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, in the UK.

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