Inspiring Change, Engaging Potential

My travels this year have taken me to many countries in the Western world, which has led me to engage in numerous conversations with educators about formal education and education reform.  It transpires that the same issues we face in our schools and communities are the same issues faced by educators and other professionals across the Western world.  It raises the question why we all experience the same problems and why hasn’t the problem been recognised by those who have the potential to make a real difference.

Listening to Sir Ken Robinson speak recently about changing education paradigms made me reflect on my conversations with those educators on my travels.  How are we going to affect change when the purpose of education, as Ed De Bono states ‘is to make two thirds of people believe they are stupid’?  We are failing to provide an education system that inspires our children to reach their full potential.

We are entering a decade where legislators, politicians and educators alike are realising that education reform is necessary, but are we making innovative reforms that reflect the changing 21^st century, or are we rehashing the same old models and expecting different results?  Since August 2011 state education in the UK has been under the spotlight.  Following the riots that escalated throughout England, politicians and community leaders have been trying to understand where it all went wrong.  Politicians keep coming back to the failures of state education for what has been termed as ‘Broken Britain’ by the media and our leaders. In the past few days we have seen a wave of discussions from leading politicians referring to the reform of education.  But have they got it right?

We are seeing the introduction of free schools, an increase in academies and more recently discussions to make parents more responsible for their children’s attendance at school by cutting state benefits.  Are these reforms really the answer?  Children will still be attending establishments that are geared to achieving academic success rather than achieving potential, regardless of academic ability, and they still encourage children to study subjects that are chosen for them and not by them.  Forcing parents to either send children to school or lose benefits does not engage children in their learning, it simply means that they are in the school environment.  These recent discussions about education appear to be knee jerk reactions to incidents that revealed the problems faced by communities.

We are seeing a generation of children who are failing to be stimulated to recognise the potential within themselves by those who educate them.  When are we going to realise that all children are different, they have different abilities, different passions and different expectations, and as such learn differently and want different things from education.  Only when we understand and realise this will we make a real change.

We need education systems that inspire change in individuals and engage their true potential.

Building Social Capital

Interesting research presented in the Stanford Social Innovation Review talks of the ‘missing link’ in education reform, (The Missing Link in School Reform; Leana, 2011). The writer suggests that the current focus on improving individual teacher effectiveness misses a crucial component in improving overall school and student effectiveness. The current emphasis on what the research presents as “human capital”, i.e. teacher qualification, skill, experience, and length of service (equalling an increased level of proficiency in the classroom) does not necessarily improve student results. Indeed, research suggests that increased teacher qualification does not yield any significant increase in student achievement.  It is suggested that instead of improving the individual teacher and increasing human capital, we should focus on the creation and development of “social capital”. Leana writes, “social capital is not a characteristic of the individual teacher but instead resides in the relationships among teachers.”

Developing social capital has been found to have a direct correlation on the improvement of student test scores and academic proficiency – the act of teachers reaching out to one another, collaborating and connecting to develop peer learning and mentoring to better meet the needs of students can surely only help. One would hope that this act of collaboration and connection between staff would also develop an overall climate of relationship. What appears to be missing from this article, or goes unsaid, is the crucial importance of relationship in general, not just to raise student scores.  If a teacher has built a relationship of some depth with a child, there is a greater likelihood that the child (and his parents) will feel able to reach out for help and support, ask questions, be less afraid to make mistakes or try something which feels risky – all important components for achievement. This child develops a formative relationship of crucial importance – in his early childhood this teacher represents a major role model and life coach. The teacher-student relationship also helps children to build an overall relationship with learning, fostering what we would hope would be a lifelong connection to the process of learning and growing, for the pleasure and satisfaction of doing so, not just for the process of acquiring knowledge and facts. When children develop this relationship with learning they begin to initiate self-led education, discovering far more and developing critical thinking skills.

Not only is student-teacher relationship important, but also student-student. Issues of poor behaviour, relationship breakdown and bullying all speak of the poor emotional climate and lack of focus on relationships across the school. When any incident of behaviour occurs, it is relationships that are affected.   Schools that fail to see the importance of relationships or fail to invest time and resources into them will feel the effects as they struggle to continually deal with the fallout.

This building of social capital and relationships across the school will only help to develop well rounded students, not only knowledgeable and able to pass tests, but emotionally literate and socially aware. At Full Circle we believe in the importance of developing emotional climate and relationship based learning. All of our programs, training and support for schools is underpinned with this philosophy of supporting the whole to create individual change. Contact us at info@myfullcircle.org to learn more.