World Class Learners (Zhao)

Making World Class Learners - reflection on Zhao (2016)

4th March, 2018

Transform our education to develop individuals who seize new opportunities, solutions and innovations to solve our complex global problems

Kelley and Kelley (2013) also see the importance of providing global, and diverse learning environments, so that innovation and creativity can be interspersed into our own lives. This personal connection drives intrinsic motivation and positive change. Furthermore, Wagner (2012) as cited in O'Brian (2016) highlights the relevance of passion and purpose, in not only developing key skills but ‘sustainable happiness’.

What Zhao emphasises the most, is that education must be transformed where students strengths and diversity are celebrated, and education is tailored to students passions and learning needs. Our current educational models produce what Zhao calls ‘boomerang kids’, students who return to the ‘norm’ and see only the standard and expected opportunities for career paths. Zhao asserts that we must develop individuals, who seize new opportunities, solutions and innovations so that they can solve our complex global problems. I strongly support Zhao’s claim that student agency and choice is a recipe for success and active engagement, and that there is a need for more autonomy in schools so that the curriculum can reflect students diverse strengths. Schools have unique communities, and therefore our curriculum should not be standardized, but dynamic and responsive to the rich diversity of its students.

There is no denying that these are Inspirational ideas, but the difficulty is ensuring that educators design deep thinking meaningful and challenging learning experiences. This is a massive challenge for educators. Providing ‘personalized’ curriculums also means that the curriculum framework must be broad, and this leaves a wider scope for misinterpretation.

I also admit to being a little critical of the term ‘product-oriented learning’, which is in stark contrast to process-based learning. Product-oriented learning indicates a greater focus on the finalised product, rather than the process, and perhaps this is incorrect, as a lot of websites identify the need to provide a wide range of assessments. It is clear that real life innovation requires failures, and subsequently, the assessments must to be geared towards the journey of the meaningful inquiry.

There are many links and similarities between ‘Problem-Based Learning (PBL)’ and ‘inquiry’. Both require strong, critical thinking skills for students to formulate meaningful inquiry questions, which can be very challenging for students. Both also require students and teachers to focus on the process, as the outcome is never clear beforehand and most often, the inquiry generates many, many more problems and questions to solve later. An exciting, but overwhelming reality....

I see that both Product Oriented Learning (POL) and PBL develop creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship, but I would still like to see more practical, realistic examples and frameworks that teachers and school communities can use. Again, I see a lot of parallels of this learning with inquiry in the IB, and after 6 years, I still have a lot of challenges facilitating genuine inquiry, such as lack of resources, logistical legal obstacles, paperwork, time and community support or networks. As we all know, real problems require all of us to work together to solve them and is a massive undertaking to facilitate. It is apparent that schools must have strong, strategic plans in place, and all of the community must be committed to this ideal.

Fostering an entrepreneurial mindset

One way that I am trying to instigate a stronger entrepreneurial mindset through my teaching practice, is through my math teaching. We always try to integrate math into our curriculum, but invariably, math is often taught as a standalone. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes the ‘integration’ is simply too artificial, or we struggle to fit the logical sequence in with our units. For example, incorporating ratio authentically doesn’t work if students haven’t learned fractions and fraction equivalence. Problem-Based learning really fosters student agency and participation, and using ‘prompts’ is a fantastic way to differentiate, develop collaboration through sharing of different strategies and innovation, and communication skills. This is one website below that I find extremely useful in helping me to do this on a tight schedule.

Zhao is an inspirational innovator who puts the student at the centre of all education - their passions, diversity, creativity and well being. His ideas are very transformative, and help develop sustainability as it brings our communities problems into the classroom - or in fact, takes our ‘World Class Learners’ out into the community, so that they develop networks, and become more active citizens and decision-makers about the world in which they live. Despite there being many limitations and strengths in Zhao’s transformative educational paradigm, there is no doubt that children can only benefit when they are given agency in their learning, and creativity and innovation will flourish if we can give them the opportunity to express their own ideas, and grow. I am eager to continue exploring his ideas of leadership and education.

References:

O'Brien (2016). Education for sustainable happiness and well-being. New York: Taylor & Francis/Routledge].

Kelley, T., & Kelley, D. (2013). Creative confidence. Unleashing the creative potential within us all. New York: Crown Business. K

Zhao, Y., Tavangar, H., McCarren, E., Rshaid, G., & Tucker, K. (2016). The take-action guide to world class learners. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin