The power of evolving thinking

In a previous life, what feels like many centuries ago, I was responsible for creating a curriculum for over a thousand young people. I was the Head of English in a secondary school, and the national curriculum, the SATs and the GCSE examinations suggested I should be teaching texts (well, extracts of texts) and how to read and write them.

I was responsible for these learners for five years. A secondary school's standard spiral curriculum suggests you teach the same thing every year but get progressively more sophisticated with your choice of texts and techniques explored. For those learners not inspired by English Literature or Language, this approach always felt a little like death by a thousand paper cuts.

I decided to do something different with Years 7 and 8. As a teacher, you are trapped by the demands of examinations in Years 9, 10 and 11, and only the foolhardy risks doing anything other than teaching the test. The consequences are too high to do otherwise, and the skill required by my team to do both was too significant. Still, we had Years 7 and 8 to build a foundation of critical thinking, curiosity, and creativity to superpower their learning across the school.

I joined forces with the Head of Science, and we created a series of projects that allowed the learners to connect what they were learning to what might be expected of them in their future careers.

Of all the schemes of work we devised, the “What if” unit was my favourite. It was as simple as the title suggested. Eleven-year-olds were prompted to think of something probable or wildly improbable and wander down the rabbit hole to see where it took them.

What if we could travel anywhere that we wanted in an instant?

What if we lived on Mars?

What if children were wiser than adults, and you grew sillier as you grew older?

The teachers taught questioning, research, collaboration, project management and presentation skills. The students thought they were having the time of their lives building models and being curious and creative, and in reality, they were learning some of the most vital work-readiness skills in demand today.

At the end of our ‘What if’ unit, we invited parents to celebrate the best ideas brought to life. While there were many letters of protest throughout the year worrying about the relevance of such projects to English and Science, there was no cynicism at the end of the presentations.

The Head of Science was happy because there had been deep conversations about physics, biology and chemistry without the learners thinking they were doing Science. I was pleased because the reading and writing skills we taught now felt relevant across other subjects. The learners didn't realise they were being taught punctuation or spelling, word choice or writer's techniques because it was all completely relevant to their desire to succeed in the projects.

We didn’t teach these young people knowledge, though they learned some along the way. We didn’t tell them how to do things and have them do what they were told, though we did act as role models in the behaviours required for success. We taught them how to think. We drew back the curtains on how to undertake the task and forefronted how the thinking they were doing empowered them to succeed.

In my work with the Head of Science, Rachel Higgs, as she was then, and Rachel Wilson, as she is now, I learned what it meant to develop learners. We took our different subjects, stepped out of our comfort zones, and did something to give agency to the learners, and it still inspires me today.

Why do I tell you this story?

Well, it is the genesis of the ideas I hold close while evolving a model of learning to develop adults in work. In the ever-changing workplace, more than anywhere else, learners need agency over their development. Learners in the workplace need support to know how to think about the world around them, reflect, and work with others to make it better.

When developing the 'discover, explore, action, reflect, achieve' mode of learning delivered in the Entelechy experience, it is not too far away from asking someone "What if you did XX to make your work better?" The outcome might not be a model and a presentation to parents, though it is likely to result in the delivery of more impact in the workplace.