Of all the attempts at school improvement, many have struggled to answer this question effectively!
When the team at Excellent Schools first began to create our integrated package to provide leaders with unique solutions to the four core school improvement questions, we shared among ourselves many examples of how schools had not reached their goals because they had lost focus on accelerating the learning.
This sounds a little strange of course, yet it is clear that many attempts at school improvement don’t have a clear enough focus on what will accelerate successful learning. This is because schools have not clearly articulated their learning goals, or they have not landed on a consensus with stakeholders, or they have chosen an incorrect destination. In all cases, this results in deep frustration when, after a period of time the team has to reframe their goals or reconsider their strategies to be able to achieve what they ultimately desire.
Excellent Schools has researched a huge range of contemporary thinkers and come to understand that it doesn’t matter whether a school has a focus on literacy or numeracy improvement or a broader improvement goal within a curriculum framework, they often overlook the aspects of learning that are going to accelerate achievement. In this sense, many schools still view successful learning only through the lens of content knowledge – “learning through content acquisition”. While this is vital to success, a one-dimensional focus can underestimate the huge importance of approaches such as “learning by having a go”, and/or “learning through application to new scenarios” and/or “learning through reference points”.
This is why we have developed our Confident Agile Reflective Learning model to enable schools to focus on those areas that will give their students the greatest boost. Through our model, schools can ensure their students are confident to embrace the discomfort of challenging learning and conceptual stretch + agile enough to look deeply into contexts and apply innovative approaches + reflective enough to reference what quality looks like in their endeavours, gauge their progress and be open to feedback.
By providing learners with the opportunities to develop strengths in these three areas, incorporating them into learning and assessment activities, and creating the classroom environment that fosters their collaborative use, teachers can ensure that their students are learning in the “excellent zone”.
The team at Excellent Schools can help leaders to embed improvements for students in these crucial areas and accelerate their learning!
