Food for Thought: Challenge from the 3E's conference

Dear all,

What a wonderful two days of professional development! There is no way that you could have attended these two days and not learned something about teaching or yourself and taken another step towards mastering our profession. A huge thanks to our external consultants, Lana, Jason, Dominic and Malcolm; to all our in-house talent who shared their passion and expertise for empowering the learning at ISHCMC and to those members of our community who certainly inspired us with their talks . It takes a lot of work on top of ones normal work to arrange an event over two days that runs so smoothly and involves so many people so a huge thanks most also go to the primary SLT and their committee of teachers who ensured the success of this conference. I thought the atmosphere was amazing throughout the two days and the buzz created from our professional learning could be heard around the region.

This post will be the first of three parts which will provide Food for Thought as we develop a skills scope and sequence across ISHCMC. The first part will focus on how naturally our mission, vision and the 3E conference fits with Student Centered Learning. The second and third parts will look at the skills we might want to be considering and the definition/ job role of a teacher in a student centered skills based curriculum. Lots to think about arising from our conference.

One of the key areas we are focusing on for growth this year is inquiry across the whole school and the development of techniques that encourage students to ask and search for the answers to big questions that are relevant to their learning. The majority of you would have had a session with Jason, the Philosophy Man, from P4C. In his opening address Sir Kevan Collins referred to work undertaken by the Education Endowment Foundation on the impact of P4C on learning. I do suggest that you take some time to visit this site and take a look at some of the reports that are relevant to your teaching as they will certainly, like the work of Hattie, show you what might or might not work in your classroom.  Here is the link to the executive summary report on P4C showing its impact on learning.

Whilst visiting and listening to conversations about the workshops there was certainly a huge connection between empowerment, skills and appropriate teaching for Generation Z students. A large amount of what was being discussed throughout the two days supports our mission and in particular pedagogy that creates a student centered learning environment. This short video provides reinforcement of many of the principles enshrined in our mission and vision at ISHCMC. If you listen carefully you will note the emphasis on constructivism, inquiry, learning that is relevant to student lives, a personalized approach and the deliberate development of learning skills.

The approach to teaching and learning that we are developing is also one that Cognita intends to develop through the Cognita Way and the work of the Educational Advisory Board. It is clear that changing our focus from content to skills and concepts is the right direction for future learners. But as Sir Kevan pointed out we do have an obligation to ensure we are collecting data on the impact of our work on the learning of our students. By doing this we can contribute to the greater educational debate, helping other schools to make the changes that they know must be made for the future well-being of students. It would be negligent of us not to have evidence that our students are better equipped for the future than they would have been had we continued to focus purely on content and examinations. This will not be an easy task but is a challenge that I believe we should take on board as a school. Here is the report from the  work undertaken by the EEF on the impact of meta-cognition and self-regulation. This comes under the section on Character that covers many other interesting topics such as peer tutoring, P4C, healthy minds etc.

Part 2 will focus on the skills that we think students might need for their future.

Wishing you a relaxing long weekend,

Yours

Adrian

Follow on from last week:

“There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” Seneca

As a follow up to last week's Food for Thought about stoicism and a philosophy to enshrine the empowerment of our students I thought that some of you might be interested in this article from Brain Pickings. The focus of this article is Seneca's thinking about anxiety and his antidote to this way of being.