Education for Empowerment

Passport: An official document that allows travel. A certification of identity and citizenship. Something that ensures admission to, or the achievement of, something.

Do our children feel supported enough to achieve their full potential? Not just the sense of care and general expectation that should come as a standard benchmark when we open the school doors. But a deep sense of understanding around who we are as learners and as people equipped for building a lifetime of education? Are we fully aware of what our young people are interested in and are capable of when they come to us as educators? Do they have a sense that there is someone, anyone, who truly believes what they could be capable of and who is willing to do anything to help them to achieve that?

This last element is crucial when considering the idea that our mindsets can grow and flourish if we have the sense of possibility in anything that we attempt to do.

“To believe in ourselves, sometimes we need someone else to believe in us first.” Dr Salome Thomas-El

What is the one thing that, if you could have it running through the building and propping up your culture, you could not do without? Belief. If we don’t believe in ourselves and the children that we work with, you are hamstrung before you start. If I wanted to get a sense of what an educator thought about their role I would simply ask them to consider this. “Our aim is for our academic standards to be 100%. Across the board.” Look for their reaction. A challenge, no doubt. Impossible? Never. I’m increasingly of the feeling that the key to our success in education stems from the attitudes of the educators first and foremost in building a positive culture.

So, how do we get to the heart of what our children need in building this sense of belief?

I was first made aware of the concept of Spirals of Enquiry through a series of local networked courses and initiatives run by Whole Education. The idea itself began some 20 years ago through the British Columbia Ministry of Education who enabled the creation of NOIIE (Networks Of Inquiry and Indigenous Education) as a means of creating a network of schools to improve the quality and equity of education, with the ultimate purpose of assisting learners to take greater ownership of their learning.

As educators we should take the time to reflect on our practice and insist on the need to listen to our students and, by default, each other. Learning is fluid and a process that at times can be messy and disorganised and we should have the ability to be both proactive and reactive to the vagaries of a situation. By continuously asking questions and displaying the principle of curiosity we can create a cycle of learning that is both individualised and purposeful to all of our young people.

If we imagine learning as a cycle that is continuous we can start to picture the idea that when we attempt to innovate, tackle a new problem, strategically plan or implement new policy we must begin with an understanding of where we are and this is where our four key questions for learners appear.

Can you name two people in this setting who believe that you will be a success in life?

What are you learning and why is it important?

How is it going with your learning?

What are your next steps?

The potency of these questions never fails to stagger me. They drive to the very heart of what our learners need to think and believe in order to have a sense of self-regulation and ownership over their learning. Simply being able to answer the questions demands a sense of clarity and regard for learning. To answer them in a way that can direct and drive where our enquiry might lead us shows an emotional grasp of thought that can unlock the key to our future thinking.

These questions should be asked whenever a new situation arises. As educators we tend to build hunches around what we think is happening for our children. We develop experience, we’ve seen similar situations before. But the danger lies in following this without taking the perspective of the person that we are there to support. A student is finding a particular subject tricky? Ask them. Relationships on the yard are difficult? Ask them. Behaviour for learning in the classroom is problematic? Ask them. Let the answers guide you on a journey to finding a solution. Become part of the cycle of enquiry that aims to foster a culture of honesty, openness and resilience and gives our children a sense of belief in themselves and in the fact that someone is there to listen to them and act on what they say.

Within the cycle itself there are six key stages to the process and these consist of scanning, focussing, developing a hunch, new professional learning, taking action and checking the difference that has been made.

Scanning

Be genuinely curious about our learners and unafraid to ask them questions where we don’t know the answer. We need to ensure that our own judgements and biases don’t cloud the issue that we may be trying to get to the heart of. Allow yourself the time to simply watch our children when they learn or play. We want to know and understand the motivations and drivers for our student’s behaviours and create a sense of ownership and engagement.

Focussing

Where are we going to focus our energies so that we can make the biggest difference to the experiences and outcomes for our learners needs? What issues have the answers in the scanning phase highlighted? Don’t be afraid of answers that you weren’t expecting – in many ways, that’s the point. The key in the focus phase is to reflect upon this, take your time with what the next step should be and to build a focus that can be implemented for effect.

Developing a Hunch

Our hunches and our experience combined with research and evidence can be invaluable to the process. Allow yourself to be surprised and even taken back to the start of the process when something new arises. Bring your experience to the fore in this stage and consider how our own behaviours can influence the direction of a strategy or a solution. We may be correct in our thinking or completely wrong but we are open to the possibility that what we think can direct the process and change.

New professional learning

How and where will we learn more about what we do? As educators it is our duty to be open to the concept of continued development and learning. What does the research and evidence tell us that can inform our thinking? Do we require further training in a particular field? Rather than someone on the outside dictating what is required, we as educators can look for development in the areas where we understand that it is needed the most. It is relevant and purposeful.

Taking Action

Something has to change in the learning environment in order to positively impact upon our children’s learning experiences. What informed actions can we take that will make enough of a difference? Can we put our new ideas into focussed and informed practice? By taking action we ourselves will learn from the experiences in order to further develop our strategies and experience.

Checking the difference

Have we made enough of a difference? This question is not fixed and will actually be a key element to different stages of the process. We are continuously asking ourselves if what we are doing is working. The key is to determine what ‘enough’ actually is. What were the answers from our initial questions? What are the answers to those same questions now? Do we need to revisit stages within the process or look to begin again? Have we uncovered other areas that require us to explore and develop our understanding? As teachers we tend to look for solutions to problems and as we know, learning is a complex process that is never linear and straightforward. We need to trust the process and embrace the fact that we may need to undertake the cycle again.

Each stage, and the process as a whole, has three key questions attached to it for greater depth and understanding of where we find ourselves:

What is going on for our learners?

How do we know?

Why does this matter?

As the phases of the cycle move, these questions can be referred back to the point where we check for the difference that has been made in our enquiry. And then the process may begin again. Continuous and fluid and essential for a learning journey that involves all stakeholders in a meaningful and direct way.

I’ve attached a presentation that I used to explain to colleagues at a network event, about an enquiry created at school whereby we found that children were struggling to answer our initial question surrounding people who believed in us. The process informed much of what we felt was required culturally in order to motivate and engage learning and also led to the development of passports for the children to reflect and consider who they were as learners. I’ve added a copy of what this could look like for the children to use. A document that is carried throughout their educational journey as a means of reminding ourselves of who we are and where we are currently at. And the cycle begins again.

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