A-Lab Series: Lesson Two - Capabilities & Agency

How do we be more on purpose, and less on point and create learning with rigour but not rigidity? How do we elevate voice, choice and initiative knowing that as we do so we create more freedom and more responsibility?

In this second episode of our 10-part special series on Learner Agency we discuss capabilities and agency. This is the second lesson for agency shared by global education expert Charlie LeadBeater in conversation with educators from three different schools across South Australia. In our conversation we blend the conceptual with the concrete, exploring philosophy, practice and product and hear how schools have journeyed towards activating agency in their community.

Four brilliant teachers join us for our conversation today: Sandra Barry from Endeavour College, Jacqui Lovett and Heidi Scriven from Southern Vales Christian School, and Carrie Phillips from Youth Inc. We discuss what purposeful learning looks like and how identity meets intent - when who we are powerfully intersects with what we want to achieve. As our educator colleagues share their learning journeys, both inner and outer, we discuss the connection between values and achievement, how they endure and evolve, and how if we connect purpose, commitment, and reflection we can create high agency learning experiences that lead to increased growth and mastery.

This series is a special collaboration between The Learning Future and AISSA: The Association of Independent Schools of South Australia. Each of these ten podcast episode correspond to one of 10 lessons on Learning Agency from the soon to be published Centre for Strategic Education Paper authored by Charlie LeadBeater. We hope you enjoy our second conversation, Capabilities and Agency.

See more: https://www.ais.sa.edu.au/events/student-agency-lab-three-year-project/

Transcript available upon request. Email us: hello@thelearningfuture.com

Transcript [Auto Generated]:

00:00:00:22 - 00:00:29:06
Student
I've been involved in the innovative agency's signature experiences for the last three years, and these six added my space and upcycled clothing, which develops skills in synthesizing and generating solutions. In year seven, I took part in the best project working in a team, connecting with a local winery to pose questions and engage with experts. I made it through to the finals of the Innovate Project with my book Call to Design, which taught me skills in problem seeking, prototyping and refining.

00:00:29:18 - 00:00:38:03
Student
I really enjoyed these projects and I feel that they have helped me to develop my agency skills and changed my attitude towards how to approach projects that are different and innovative.

00:00:39:01 - 00:00:59:05
Louka Parry
Welcome to this special series on an Agency, a defining feature in the emerging future of schools. I'm your host, Luca Perry. And in this collaboration between the Learning Future and the Association of Independent Schools of South Australia, we but ten lessons shared by global education expert Charlie Leadbeater. This is episode two Capabilities and Agency.

00:00:59:22 - 00:01:27:21
Charlie LeadBeater
Thanks, Luca. Well, I think we all know that rote learning of superficial content in siloed subjects is not going to prepare children for a world their world now, which is volatile, uncertain, which demands constant adoption and creativity. It just doesn't prepare you for what that world is going to be like to think that learning is about providing the right answer at the right time under very artificial conditions.

00:01:28:04 - 00:01:59:01
Charlie LeadBeater
So young people need to learn how to make a difference to their world, not just to cope with it, not just to get by, but to make it fresh and to learn how to make an impact, how to make a difference. So where does that capacity for agency come from? What are the underlying capabilities that are needed for it so that you can act on purpose in conditions of uncertainty, where you don't know what the outcome is going to be and where there might be many possible outcomes.

00:01:59:13 - 00:02:27:18
Charlie LeadBeater
Well, knowledge is clearly absolutely vital for this, but it's more than knowledge of just subjects math here. English language. There are science here. It's the ability to assemble and reassemble knowledge from several disciplines and to apply it in several different contexts. That matters not just in one context. And to do that, you need an understanding of the underlying principles the concepts, the strings, the theories.

00:02:27:24 - 00:03:07:02
Charlie LeadBeater
So you can take knowledge and apply it in different ways. So that kind of knowledge that you require to tackle complex challenges that doesn't come from one person usually ever. It comes from collaboration, it comes from understanding our own limits and seeing the case for collaboration to work with other people. So collaboration is absolutely critical. And the the capabilities and the attitudes to feed that empathy, cooperation, self regulation, knowing how to listen, knowing how to contribute, knowing how to take responsibility for what you do with others.

00:03:07:02 - 00:03:35:04
Charlie LeadBeater
And that means embracing ambiguity. It means not sending off uncertainty, but stepping into it not yearning for there to be one right answer, but to learn that there could be many good answers depending on the circumstances. So uncertainty is a condition for creativity. It's not knowing what might be possible. That opens up all the things that could be possible.

00:03:35:14 - 00:04:12:14
Charlie LeadBeater
And so agency is not a specific thing. It's not a a class, it's not a program, it's not a project. It's an underlying set of capabilities to be applied in many different settings. And of course, critical to that is resilience, the ability to pick yourself back up, to reflect and learn, to use setbacks, to push you forward. And we know that that kind of resilience is a kind of team capability, does reside in individuals, but mostly it resides in teams and in groups of people who help one another.

00:04:13:02 - 00:04:39:21
Charlie LeadBeater
So if you want to support agency C, I think in a way you have to see where it happens. And where it happens is where knowledge and capability come together with skills in a context where young people are learning how they can make a difference. And it's that sort of dynamic combination of knowledge, skills and capabilities encounter with a purpose that then creates the agency.

00:04:40:02 - 00:05:04:17
Charlie LeadBeater
And all of that is fed by quite specific sorts of building blocks about cooperation and being self regulation, resilient, so on and so forth that build up over time to create this really quite complex but powerful sense of dynamic learning. So it's about those things coming together, I think agency and the capabilities that underlie that are really critical.

00:05:05:05 - 00:05:36:15
Louka Parry
Hmm. So I'm really interested in this idea of the capabilities being a foundation for almost one's capacity to learn. And you speak about in some ways the different capabilities and how they function both at individual and relational levels. You know, not the idea, of course, of the economic, creative, civic and moral aspects of those capabilities. This isn't just, for example, so that we can have great innovators or, you know, an economic activity that seems to be part of it.

00:05:36:15 - 00:05:49:04
Louka Parry
It's this idea, I think, of our capabilities for learning for life. So just take us a little bit deeper into the in the interwoven connection between those elements and how how you see the capabilities as this foundational piece.

00:05:50:22 - 00:06:17:09
Charlie LeadBeater
Well, I think we in this project that we've been working on have thought about agency is operating across different domains. And so it's about can you create value? So can you create things which are helpful and useful for other people? So that might be economic value, but it might also be value in other senses. Can you be creative?

00:06:17:09 - 00:06:38:21
Charlie LeadBeater
Can you bring new things into the world? Can you be a creative agent? Can you be moral? Do you know what the right thing is? Do you have a sense of acting to do the right thing? And can you kind of be civic? Can you govern with other people? Can you take responsibility for decisions and agency in the most powerful projects?

00:06:39:18 - 00:07:06:10
Charlie LeadBeater
I think we see in the practices that embody this bring together the senses of agency. They don't compartmentalize them. You can have a C in here or an ethics class over here. It's about ethics and economics going absolutely hand in hand or ethics and creativity or civics and creativity or what have you. It's how they all combine really, and that has to be both an individual journey.

00:07:06:17 - 00:07:41:19
Charlie LeadBeater
So I'm reflecting on myself, but it has to be also powerful, collaborative and even collective journey. So a journey for a whole school, a journey for a group of students. So you build up this picture of the experiences that young people will have with these different dimensions of agency at different sorts of scales and how they feed one another and build up through a process of reflecting on the kind of initiatives they've taken, what they've learned through that, how that feeds back in.

00:07:41:19 - 00:08:09:16
Charlie LeadBeater
And gradually, I think what you see is, you know, it doesn't mean throwing everything out. It means that many of the things that we have been doing to build up knowledge, skills, capabilities, they still matter, but they matter in a different way. And most importantly, how they matter is they have to be combined. They don't they're not kept in separate compartments, because if you keep them in separate compartments, they're inert.

00:08:10:02 - 00:08:34:13
Charlie LeadBeater
It's when they're combining in that they become dynamic. And that skill of learning how to combine them and daring to combine them is the skill of really skillful learning practitioners, designers, facilitators, teachers, principals. And that, I think, is what you see in the schools that are really motoring with this. They create that dynamic and that dynamic is kind of infectious.

00:08:35:22 - 00:08:55:15
Louka Parry
Oh, that's a wonderful place to start, Charlie. And as you can see, and as you know, we have four amazing practitioners from three different schools here who are both daring and building that skill to kind of integrate these dimensions of agency. And so I'd love for the four of you to introduce yourselves and a little bit about, you know, the work that you're doing.

00:08:56:16 - 00:09:04:10
Jackie and other guests
Jackie Lovitt from seven this pitching coach and we're an instinctively small school in the southern region.

00:09:05:16 - 00:09:07:01
Louka Parry
Right. Thanks, Jackie. Good to have you here.

00:09:07:11 - 00:09:15:06
Heidi 
I'm Heidi also from Southern Vales Christian College and on it of science and aquaculture as a family.

00:09:15:19 - 00:09:17:19
Louka Parry
And how interesting. Thanks. I think I tell you.

00:09:18:14 - 00:09:34:02
Carrie
I'm Carrie I reckon you think which is a school in the city here in Adelaide. We cater for 17, 24 year olds who previously disengaged from education and have chosen to reengage time once.

00:09:34:02 - 00:09:35:18
Louka Parry
Wonderful context. Thank you very.

00:09:36:20 - 00:09:54:24
Sandra Barrett
My name is Sandra Barrett from Endeavor College. We're a 7 to 12 school in the north of Adelaide. We're in Leeds when school as well and I guess we've been involved in the projects since its inception three years ago and it's been a really positive experience in terms of what was an intense that comes.

00:09:56:01 - 00:10:15:18
Louka Parry
Great to have you all here with us to really again just share the lived experience of how how do you take these ideas and make them real for learners, for educators, for communities. Sandra, I want to start with you. Tell us a little bit about this, this idea of capabilities and agency and where you started on your journey there at Endeavor.

00:10:16:05 - 00:10:35:13
Jackie and other guests
So we started on our journey probably with that and what we were calling our vision for what we do, collaboration for land and settlements. And that was a teaching statement. It was that document to the teachers that was based on what we would be, does our teaching like graduate qualities. And it was guys very much on the west coast of Chile.

00:10:35:13 - 00:10:58:04
Jackie and other guests
When you talk about being independent, land is being interdependent and also being able to take collective action in the world. So that's where we we started and then we looked because that was a teacher friend that we went into well. So it is actually about the students. What are we going to get students to be doing such that they are taking this agency and we have them?

00:10:58:05 - 00:11:21:12
Jackie and other guests
We are really blessed in our community in that the students are exceptional, they are the loveliest students and they're really compliant. We can ask them to do lots of things and they would do them. And I guess that that was that challenge and that's why we are starting with is that you can't be compliant. You need to know this work has to come from from within.

00:11:21:12 - 00:11:42:21
Jackie and other guests
And that I guess that's where we were really trying to develop these students. That idea of the intrinsic notion of that notion of their own agency and being active in that it's not something that they were looking at from the inside or someone's asked me to to do something, therefore I'm going to work in a group. So I guess that's where we've been working at the moment.

00:11:43:04 - 00:12:01:21
Louka Parry
And yeah, that idea of compliance is a really interesting one actually in the way that we've spoke about this in the previous podcast. Charlie, the idea of, you know, the education system is kind of the way that it's been designed is really for this idea of a very long journey towards a few answers that are already known by somebody in the room.

00:12:02:01 - 00:12:12:05
Louka Parry
So it's this really interesting idea of how do we move from compliance to unlocking agency carry. Give us a bit of sense as well, you know, with you and your work that you think what did you start on this journey?

00:12:12:23 - 00:12:42:18
Jackie and other guests
And our school has been operating with students for four years. So coming into this projects three is yes excellent because that really created a framework for us to do some work that we already wanted to be doing and we were already trying to do. So the purpose of using as a statement almost is to provide transformative experiences for our students to live lives that matter to them.

00:12:43:08 - 00:13:23:22
Jackie and other guests
And the premise is that they're not living minds that matter to them at the moment, and they're young adults struggling to find that last, that matters and purpose. And so the word agency in our context is always interchange to. But with that phrase I like that matters to them. So they need agency to do that. So for us in our infancy as a school coming into this project, we took this framework, we already had our own capability framework that we were challenged by articulate and fleshed out and we ran a capability based curriculum.

00:13:23:22 - 00:14:01:02
Jackie and other guests
So all our learning is filtered through the lens of a capability and growing confidence in that capability. So we've got a framework with 18 capabilities which are all stemming from the lessons social capability that space and the Cora run with. They've just fleshed it out a bit more because they realized that's what our students needed. And so then once I can ask framework and then use Charli's framework of agency in those four domains to create a fairly solid base for our curriculum.

00:14:01:02 - 00:14:24:01
Jackie and other guests
And now we use both of those concepts to kind of for ourselves in what we share with our students and what our students bring to lessons that they want to explore. If we if it doesn't fit into one of our capabilities which align with Chinese, then it's not something that we do. We kind of use that as a real DNA base for what we're doing.

00:14:24:21 - 00:14:31:09
Louka Parry
That's that's great. Yeah. Keeping it really in scope. You know, this is this is who we are. And owning that capability approach.

00:14:31:09 - 00:14:56:03
Jackie and other guests
And compliance is not something we external, which is because of the age of our students and our previous experiences. And so we really value co-design with our students, which we kind of treat as a continuum as well, that sometimes our students design a lot and we do very little. Other times we design more and they give us a smaller input.

00:14:56:03 - 00:15:03:16
Jackie and other guests
So it's always sliding back and forth. But yeah, so we're kind of looking at agency as that life that matters to you on set.

00:15:03:23 - 00:15:08:20
Louka Parry
That's fantastic. Thank you so much, Heidi. Jacqui, what about your experiences, Jacqui?

00:15:08:20 - 00:15:34:23
Jackie and other guests
You give a bit more about the change of culture and so on might possibly change based on online glasses, right? So we we set out on this project thinking we were going to have a product that would come up with a lot of personnel. And because we know is it would really need that as a school somewhere. So we'll need to have some articulated qualities that we want to see students graduate with.

00:15:35:23 - 00:16:06:14
Jackie and other guests
But what we didn't expect was to have to really deep plans to student agency and then to to really dabble in that space of, okay, well, what are the enablers of agency and what's the future of the agency right on really. And so we've we've done a lot of deep thinking as a school and we I guess we've already created this culture of change where we implemented understanding the science thinking curriculum.

00:16:06:24 - 00:16:28:01
Jackie and other guests
We thought about really, really well when we came into this project with, Oh, this so much more that we need to understand. And I think what we've done, it's foundation in terms of its thinking on culture change with agency and so that's great.

00:16:28:03 - 00:16:45:05
Louka Parry
Now it's, it's really it's this idea of and we picked this up as well from Sandra, the idea of having an articulated graduate profile learner, I felt like that's our shared destination. And then the question is, what's the vehicle to get us there? And that will manifest differently depending on contexts perhaps. I do want to add to Jacqui's thoughts.

00:16:45:07 - 00:17:18:15
Jackie and other guests
We want to say that to develop quite a lengthy hypothesis, which is still remained quite lengthy, some of this rate that at first it was students engaged in meaningful, real world problems in familiar and new contexts within schooling by the science projects and understanding once on units that would develop as curious, ethical, collaborative. We have climates and grades and just recently I was given a coffee cup by Eat 12 and my mom shared a little story with me about coffee and, and that's what helped me understand capabilities a bit more.

00:17:18:21 - 00:17:41:00
Jackie and other guests
And so it was in a coffee shop. If someone comes and bumps you, slight interruption bumps you, what comes out and and obviously coffee and if it's not actively taken to comes out and so I helped me to reflect on what is it that's inspired of you inside of me and what comes out when we're faced with these problems.

00:17:41:00 - 00:18:04:05
Jackie and other guests
And certainly climate is an example of that. And, you know, you find out the richness and you get to reflect on where your strengths and your weaknesses are so that you can not only work on them individually, but working on them as a collective, that you might become stronger. And then as a result, you can achieve great things.

00:18:04:05 - 00:18:15:16
Jackie and other guests
And so I saw this as being a much deeper, richer experience for my students and and the importance of that. So I'm saying future students.

00:18:16:19 - 00:18:50:01
Louka Parry
I think we we won't talk much about the pandemic because it's so impactful. But and yet we know that for one child you may have a comment here as well. You know, the capabilities that we've all had to utilize during this really significant period of dislocation and disruption, coupled with the idea that we've never been had a sense of being so connected, because actually we're all in this together, particularly in kind of local communities and schools that have had to rapidly change overnight, you know, in time models.

00:18:50:15 - 00:18:56:02
Louka Parry
Charlie, any any reflections here about hearing, you know, the genesis across three different school contexts you may want to contribute.

00:18:57:03 - 00:19:20:12
Charlie LeadBeater
A few things strike me the first is you never start from a blank sheet to you. So there's always stuff going on. And so if an idea comes along, it's always about how it merges with combines with what you already doing. And so that's the that's the first thing is that you'll never even you think in a way designing from scratch new school.

00:19:20:12 - 00:19:44:20
Charlie LeadBeater
But there was a sort of framework and then something else came along. So it is this constant process of combination and building. The second thing is this really powerful sense that Heidi in particular talked about that everyone else did, which is this sense of what we're trying to do here is unlock some things to get some things which are sort of hidden in these containers, get them out.

00:19:45:16 - 00:20:12:09
Charlie LeadBeater
And that sense of unlocking, which I think is unlocking for teachers as well as students, that the unlocking has to happen on both sides. If you wait and then this sense that someone started by talking about, which is you can get a sort of superficial success, which is compliant, ticks the box, gets the right answer, but it doesn't have deep rings.

00:20:12:22 - 00:20:40:19
Charlie LeadBeater
And this is something about planting deep ring so that there's a stronger, deeper sense of success or strength or sense of achievement or capability, just confidence. And that has to come from putting yourself in different situations where you're testing what you know, what you can do with different people so that you'll see that in a kind of more diverse kind of way, I suppose.

00:20:41:01 - 00:21:28:16
Charlie LeadBeater
But there's this sense of wanting to be stronger as a result of this deeper because it's got deeper foundations, deeper roots. And I'm really struck by the difference between I mean, in a way, the difference between career. You think working with young people who are slightly older in that journey and co-creating with them and Sandra working with people who are young people and slightly younger, but in a sense this sort of the same story, which is learning the sort of structured relationship isn't a relationship structured to be co-produced and co-created, and it's when that dynamic works that you really get to this deeper sense of what we what we can do, what we can, what

00:21:28:16 - 00:21:31:05
Charlie LeadBeater
capabilities we have to to make a difference.

00:21:32:19 - 00:21:54:06
Louka Parry
So that's great, Charlie. Sandra, maybe let's let's go to you and and just build on on that insight. So, you know, we're seeing this shift in the ambition. The new learning ambition is to, you know, unlock agency rather than kind of continue with compliance. And that's really the education system we've all inherited. So tell us a bit more about the journey.

00:21:54:06 - 00:22:05:22
Louka Parry
You know what, over the last couple of years, have you how have you journey together as a as a group of educators to try to shift the way that that agency is expressed in the school?

00:22:06:19 - 00:22:29:02
Jackie and other guests
And I think that one of the things that we did very early on and that was part of your direction, chatting on the set of the project was about definition. And I think that that is was one of our key things at the beginning that and I guess part of what I think you was saying as well, that we didn't really we realized the fear that we went on in the project.

00:22:29:04 - 00:22:52:15
Jackie and other guests
We actually really understand a great deal about what agency was. And and I guess when we are hearing people coming from our own communities saying, you know, the agency wisdom choice then and we had a we've just formulated a new strategic plan for this years and and working with the board about student agency. That's one of the key strategic goals.

00:22:52:18 - 00:23:16:04
Jackie and other guests
And so and and that was part of the process that the people all we just got have changed the language. We don't understand what agency is is they to call it something else. And that really struck me, as you know, that I hadn't done my job because if we didn't is not everyone was on the same page in understanding truly what authentic agency is.

00:23:16:04 - 00:23:36:14
Jackie and other guests
You know, people would then you've got all choice and choice, so it's only voice and choice. Then we've really undersold what it is and we haven't done our jobs and we haven't really developed that that understanding. So I guess the other we looked at that definition task with staff, but we also looked at up with students. So we had a series of different student focus groups.

00:23:36:14 - 00:23:57:09
Jackie and other guests
They looked at, what do you think agency is? How do you see yourself taking agency? What level of agency would you like to see yourselves taking or do you feel that you can and that was obviously a very, very enlightening discussion that you would have and I guess that you would discuss with your students would be significantly different in outcome than them than what I have students are saying.

00:23:57:09 - 00:24:17:22
Jackie and other guests
But yes, it was it was really interesting. And it was part of that journey of getting everybody to understand that a student agency is not just having a voice and being had to choose a few things. It's much more fundamental than that. And that, that, that we needed to make sure that we were coming from a very authentic level.

00:24:17:22 - 00:24:58:01
Jackie and other guests
And I guess that's where we tried to lay some of the general capabilities. And like I think we looked at the entire capabilities underpinning that as well with the students. And the tool was and what was a connection not what's that peer group connection like high school programing, students, their parents and great teacher nature. Usually it's about once a year and we aligned that with Education Celina's and the Agency Project, saying that students were coming in year seven to entry points at the very beginning.

00:24:58:14 - 00:25:20:23
Jackie and other guests
That was seven and year ten. And so these divisions had any timing and they spoke about it dependencies, building independence. They had that because their hypothesis was about students being able to select on like their capabilities. And those students who could do that have a great sense of agency. So that's what we were working on. And that's and then the next entry point was year nine and year 11.

00:25:20:23 - 00:25:31:17
Jackie and other guests
And I it's my focus is interdependence. And then here, it's here, and then you will then focus is going to be because that's a next step in collective action.

00:25:32:11 - 00:25:36:21
Louka Parry
Look fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. That idea of progressing from yes.

00:25:36:21 - 00:25:54:16
Jackie and other guests
I think getting back to your original question, I think it was more about that very early on. It was that definition of that. And you know, we knew as a team if we weren't really clear of that and it's always like that as a team, it was going to be very difficult to articulate that to the group convincingly.

00:25:54:18 - 00:26:13:08
Louka Parry
Yeah, I mean, that really picks up some of the comments from lesson one, which is around language. You know, what's the what is the language we're using? And of course, the idea of the philosophy as well, meeting the practice, meeting the product. Carri, take us into into your world a little bit here as well. Just, you know, piggybacking off what Sandra's spoken to.

00:26:13:08 - 00:26:42:17
Jackie and other guests
So it's interesting because choice and that students face even in that completely different context is still a common and that's the challenge for us in that not having a content based curriculum, we teach capabilities. My idea is that's against the cross disciplinary suite of subjects. So we we have everything out on the table reasoning what we do with our students.

00:26:42:17 - 00:27:04:23
Jackie and other guests
So what they choose to engage with are they don't know what to choose. And when we started in the early days and say, what do you want to do? I don't know. I didn't I was so passionate about. But then we can't quite design there's they don't tell us that. And then if you're not passionate about something, then obviously you have no capability and passion and you're a terrible person.

00:27:05:05 - 00:27:37:00
Jackie and other guests
Maybe so this whole tension just sounds voice. But then we found a lot of meaning when Charlie spoke with us about that tension between knowledge and purpose. And does knowledge drive purpose or just purpose create the need? Some knowledge, which then gave me personally some clarity around that design issue. And then I mentioned before we kind of think of that as a linear can like a sliding scale.

00:27:37:00 - 00:28:07:14
Jackie and other guests
Now rather than saying we co-design everything with our students. Yeah, sometimes the students have that purpose and they come asking for their knowledge. So I'm like, well, I'll, I'll build a project or something around knowledge. And then the design has come back to me and then we went, that didn't sit to because they're like, No, no, the students need to be more involved, but they it's given us the purpose that we have with the knowledge.

00:28:07:14 - 00:28:41:13
Jackie and other guests
And then sometimes it does work the other way around where they get a little bit of knowledge, which then drives a much bigger purpose, and then the design slides back down to the student who is who comes to us and says, This is my purpose, how we get there. Great, excellent. Let's go with that. So it's been a real journey of of understanding in that language stuff and the concept and the say and then us being okay with what our actual vision and purpose as single tenants who is.

00:28:41:19 - 00:28:42:02
Louka Parry
Yeah.

00:28:42:15 - 00:28:54:03
Jackie and other guests
And understanding that difference between choice and agency and growing agency isn't just about having choice. So yeah, it's been challenging for sure.

00:28:54:09 - 00:29:12:15
Louka Parry
I love I love some of the tensions that Jolly might want to pick up in a moment around, you know, the idea of rigor, but not rigidity. I think it's so interesting. You know, you had, you know, and young people don't know what they don't know. And so this is the role of us as learning designers potentially is how do you move across that co-design spectrum from, you know.

00:29:12:18 - 00:29:30:22
Louka Parry
Yeah, and driving enough knowledge insight so that the purpose then also builds alongside it. Jacqui Hardy, a little bit more around your own journey as well. I mean, a wonderful, articulated vision of this is where we want to go take us a little bit across. You know, the last three years of development.

00:29:30:22 - 00:30:10:02
Jackie and other guests
So we're really interested in understanding, understanding and agency understanding the situations, bringing urgency to occur as to what enables agencies like this, three teams and building as a team before that so and saying what is our curriculum and I guess we landed in space. We woke up and saw them and tried to come up with this understanding what's authentic and building and standing in that space and then what enables that to happen.

00:30:10:02 - 00:30:50:11
Jackie and other guests
So we actually ask you to come in painting a design, thinking and hoping that that would be that we were putting something within the slide instead of in what centricity can and should we do to embed things deeply in units which can instigate understandings and societal understandings and and issues like that, like some other. It was opportunistic moments for our couple.

00:30:50:12 - 00:31:20:07
Jackie and other guests
Something interested in that connection between what American students students want to say. So yeah. And we had that very much to recommend to students like that. You know, what strengths and what other design agency say as such? Tell a story. So we had a dissertation really to switch.

00:31:20:16 - 00:31:20:20
Louka Parry
On.

00:31:21:05 - 00:32:17:10
Jackie and other guests
At the moment and listen to the Dennett. I didn't get campus available literally at the school, so basketball scholars building, so and so the huge grateful break and new teachers said, why don't you take this opportunity to do some design thinking, let's use this and work out something with some sense of urgency. You know, they walk into that space and so interesting and for some professional development things like not reciting many interesting, complex ideas, but this whole idea of being ethical and standing, so realizing that actually students do manage not naturally for reasons for wanting to create and build their capacity within them.

00:32:17:21 - 00:32:53:20
Jackie and other guests
So in the kitchen, then and other things. But you know, the most incredible ideas like what sort of seeds like you said, that was interesting. And also the smells make a difference. And so it's interesting going back to the science of your work as students who really want to solve this problem. All the students who just sort of since they teachers and students say, you know, it's interesting just exploring this.

00:32:53:23 - 00:32:58:21
Louka Parry
It's such a wonderful example as well. So imagine this is like every.

00:32:59:16 - 00:33:04:20
Jackie and other guests
Single that you shut the doors and just managed to teach.

00:33:04:20 - 00:33:22:00
Louka Parry
But since they're so interesting, it's like what learning is happening outside the window. It's such an interesting thing to consider, you know, and making it so authentic. You know, this is a real world problem that they can see and solve and try to your point around creativity coming from uncertainty, you know, how do you what do you want to contribute to that at all?

00:33:22:00 - 00:34:13:03
Jackie and other guests
Yeah, in the last three years, spent lots of time in this washing machine which Charlie spoke of Councilor Gregor for. You told us at the start, but it's very much the design process isn't that. That we, we are constantly redesigning, make harder designing, we are constantly researching and changing our ideas and so that to be a culture change in a school that needs to be a part of everybody's experience, for that to be an authentic way, working together, we all need to understand that design for fashion, and then we're able to work collectively on these these problems together, such as the bird issue or any other issue that we might be sides with now and

00:34:13:03 - 00:34:34:24
Jackie and other guests
people future sign so that that experience some of us thought about okay well sometimes I think some things might provide design slightly the students and saying some of that but how can I make that bigger. I can actually I teach a number of classes. Why can't I make a big project that all of them are working collectively on?

00:34:35:13 - 00:35:05:00
Jackie and other guests
So we then come up with a problem, solve that problem, address that problem, find that washing machine and and yes, we'll see lots of things, capabilities needing work and monitoring. So we can learn together. So that was, I think the process that Charlie put us through has been one of the most important things from this project for me and looking at how that could look for my students.

00:35:05:00 - 00:35:30:24
Jackie and other guests
But it's not never a ticking of the box. It's always an experience. And at the end of that experience, it becomes a part of who you are. And because you each write it, each right as you write, it becomes you and so it doesn't matter what you're faced with that becomes that's natural. And it will, just like I said, come out that coffee cup when when you are disrupted, that will be what comes out of that coffee cup.

00:35:31:18 - 00:35:43:04
Louka Parry
Gosh, so many wonderful things to pick up there, Charlie. What what how do you want to tackle? And before you say it, too many good things.

00:35:43:04 - 00:36:07:14
Charlie LeadBeater
You know, there are so many different things in that. So the first thing is this washing machine idea, which Heidi talked about, which was, you know, just just describing this world where, you know, a lot of a lot of organizations are kind of, you know, they need ironing, they need the creases ironing out. And that does matter. But you've got to have clean clothes.

00:36:07:14 - 00:36:27:21
Charlie LeadBeater
So this idea of the washing machine that your things are moving round and round the whole time. And what what strikes me about these schools is that the process they're talking about is not a straight line process. It's not an A to B process. It's more like a spiral or a vortex or something that's sort of gathering momentum by picking things up.

00:36:28:23 - 00:36:56:10
Charlie LeadBeater
One of the things that strikes me is how pragmatic everyone is. So, you know, both Sandra and Carrie have talked about, okay, we've got this capabilities thing, a car, we've got these capabilities. We can work with that. You know, we're not going to reinvent the wheel. We're not going to be doctrinaire. We'll we'll use that. That's fine. And then so Jacqui and Heidi talk about, okay, situation comes along.

00:36:56:13 - 00:37:40:01
Charlie LeadBeater
Okay, we can use that stuff happens. We'll take that opportunity. So it's not really likely to the way you said it's not about being rigid, it's about being rigorous. It's not about being doctrinaire. It is about being pragmatic and learning how to assemble these things and sort of make them work together. And very start by Heidi, talking about iterating these things and only sort of like laying down layers of experience that build up over time and become part of you because they are personal experience since they're not just, you know, I did well in this test or, you know, all kind of, you know, I can't remember I can remember so many experiences that are

00:37:40:01 - 00:38:07:04
Charlie LeadBeater
powerful learning experiences, but I can't remember a single moment that I got in any test where when I was at school. So that that very powerful sense of laying down and going deeper, this sort of, you know, laying down foundations that go deeper. And then just finally, this this very important thing that Carrie said about purpose feeds knowledge.

00:38:07:12 - 00:38:25:14
Charlie LeadBeater
But what happens if students aren't clear what the purpose is? They need to find out. It's a sort of process of exploration. So then they need not that there is a way of doing this. There are so many ways of doing this in the wrong way. So one way of doing it in the wrong way. So this is all about choice and choice.

00:38:25:15 - 00:38:41:12
Charlie LeadBeater
Oh, no, it's about choice. And so we give them choice and voice. It's about entrepreneurs. We'll run an entrepreneurship program or we'll do a thing on the side over here. Another way to get it wrong is to say it's all about students and it's all about their purpose. We need to find their purpose and then we'll adjust to that.

00:38:41:16 - 00:39:03:14
Charlie LeadBeater
Well, what if they don't have a clear purpose? You know what if they're trying to find that out? So then the role of the teacher in that and sort of learning design to say, how is this feel or what does that feel like or how did that go? And so then you're sort of feeding this opening now, I suppose, to discover and to learn in that kind of way.

00:39:04:00 - 00:39:17:08
Charlie LeadBeater
So don't go. I suppose that sort of underlying messages don't blind, you know, think of it more like a spiral that it's building from different things, that it's picking up as it's going along.

00:39:18:08 - 00:39:37:16
Louka Parry
I love that. Charlie And it picks up one of the themes from lesson one, a conversation there, the idea of the external and the internal worlds and the interaction between them, you know, the kind identity meets intent and how that, you know, you do interact and then it becomes how do you set this who you are over time and you realize you create your purpose over time.

00:39:37:16 - 00:39:58:15
Louka Parry
Such a powerful reflection. I think schools are really dynamic places. There's lots of challenges. So I would love each of you just to briefly reflect on what's been one of the main challenges that you've encountered or you continue to encounter, and how are you trying to, you know, kind of work through that? Sandra, we'll start with you.

00:39:59:24 - 00:40:28:04
Jackie and other guests
This will about we had a lot of new, large, significant challenges. I guess it was definitely. And we really appreciated the time that was given to the project outside of the school. So our ability to go somewhere and that was at that headspace and being able to just sit back and have a look and reflect on what we had done up to that point, where we were going next, what that was the next was going to look like, what had worked, what hadn't worked.

00:40:28:04 - 00:40:48:21
Jackie and other guests
And so that was really important for us in terms of giving us the space to do that, because often we were trying to grab half lessons of meetings or lessons of meetings and and so when you're doing, you're in that chamber, you're kind of not really being able to use your full attention to have that space, to be able to think through some of those things.

00:40:49:15 - 00:41:18:01
Jackie and other guests
And the next thing we had a challenge with was probably how we were going to bring the next layers on. And, and it was always interesting to me sitting on the team about student agency and, this is something that I feel quite compromised in as well, is that we were we were almost designing some of these areas and the students were always the last ones we were bringing home with us.

00:41:18:15 - 00:41:52:08
Jackie and other guests
And that was a challenge for me because it was about student agency that we had done a lot of the structural design previous to that, and the students were involved in that a little bit, but not really significant on reflection. Now, I don't know that that was a big issue. I think that really worked out fine and it probably was better in eyes because they we were able to articulate to students a lot more clearly about where we were going and why we were doing this.

00:41:52:09 - 00:42:23:03
Jackie and other guests
And then maybe some of the things that we wanted them to say. Yes, another challenge that is always going to be challenging in schools is teacher comfort. We are lucky that we have amazing teaching practitioners at that school and the seven teachers really led the process with coming in to the capability work and student and student and conferencing that was happening with its parents.

00:42:23:03 - 00:42:57:10
Jackie and other guests
But even though we have people were really on board with that, there was also that level of discomfort where loss of control would be probably too strong a term to use. But when we were are students going to be able to do this? Oh, I don't think they are. And the great moment when students were able to do it and in oh, wow, I had no idea that those students really think that deeply about the capabilities of things that were happening to them and responding to them.

00:42:57:10 - 00:43:20:10
Jackie and other guests
So I guess that was a it wasn't a significant challenge, but it was something that we needed to be mindful of and respectful of to because it wasn't the same practice and they just practice in there. Yeah, they did things, but just allowing them to feel comfortable in that space. But yeah, something that I saw as a challenge.

00:43:20:14 - 00:43:40:08
Louka Parry
Absolutely. And again, this idea, you know, creativity coming from, you know, an uncomfortable from uncertainty. And so how do we model that learning pit? You know what? You can you know, the idea of being we're all in this together. We're going to find out what happens as both a terrifying for many of us as educators, but also a very exciting moment as well.

00:43:40:20 - 00:43:43:14
Louka Parry
Carry some of the challenges that you want identified.

00:43:43:22 - 00:44:13:02
Jackie and other guests
Yes, I think for us at the moment, the challenge the big challenge is, is this actually what like our hypothesis was about still is by just looking at drawing everything together to present an answer and sense. And so we started with if we explicitly teach a capability curriculum, students that experience an increasing agency but how do we measure that agency?

00:44:13:11 - 00:44:42:06
Jackie and other guests
And we can assess agency, as you would assess in a traditional school sense so that we're moving into this period at the moment of exploring kind of monitoring and evaluation methods and methodologies and models, and how are we actually going to figure this out for ourselves and for our students, that we're bringing our students on that journey with us as well, because they're the ones we're hypothesizing about.

00:44:42:06 - 00:44:55:11
Jackie and other guests
So they're the ones who need to be able to see all this success of this increase in agency. And some students the like. What does that even mean? I don't know. You tell me your life. What does.

00:44:55:11 - 00:44:56:06
Louka Parry
It feel like for you.

00:44:56:07 - 00:45:39:12
Jackie and other guests
Agency? What does it feel like? Tell us. So we're exploring ways of capturing that by a narrative. And and we do survey the students as well that we've developed a bit of the model of, I mean, based on today's framework. But we've just experiments that a couple of times with that at the moment we're literally saying to students, does this make sense to you understand what does civic an agency at a collaborative level look like that we're literally sitting around with our students having these conversations because there's no point us deciding a method of evaluation if our students don't connect with that.

00:45:39:12 - 00:46:09:05
Jackie and other guests
Yeah. And because of the nature of their school, we, we want to remove that. So on style assessment or anything that's kind of a linear or hierarchical assessment. So yeah, it's a, it's a challenge and that's where we're putting our effort at the moment to try to figure out how we, how we prove this. This is my thing, which is essentially our whole school, as does this model of education produced before years in.

00:46:09:05 - 00:46:12:18
Louka Parry
It's a, it's a wonderful conversation to be having with the students.

00:46:12:18 - 00:46:13:16
Jackie and other guests
Yeah. With the students.

00:46:13:16 - 00:46:27:24
Louka Parry
Yeah. Yeah. And how interesting to see what they would share about their lives experience as well on this. Yeah, right. That's that's good. We can't hide anyway. Thank you, Carrie, Heidi, Jacqui, again, just some challenges and how you've how you've tried to navigate your way through them.

00:46:28:04 - 00:46:53:13
Jackie and other guests
So at the start, and I guess this still is a bit of a challenge is not to reduce the slip ups and the rush to. So you actually just get one idea and have that as a checkbox. I've done agency and in this unit and moving on. So we've certainly come to that realization of how important it is.

00:46:53:13 - 00:47:22:23
Jackie and other guests
That agency is part of everything that we do now. That's part of that design process, and we want it to be embedded as a part en route state, going everywhere throughout the entire school. And so yeah, just recently read that expert spends at least 65% on spanking behind the scenes, whereas notices only spend about 2% on thinking about things before they go and act on this.

00:47:23:05 - 00:48:04:13
Jackie and other guests
And I can say that at the start we were ready to ex Charlie. Tell us the outset we were going to agency. All right. So we've we've certainly found that a challenge but now I can say the richness and I'm so grateful that not only have we had the time over three years to find deeply at that agency needs but also Jenny and wonderful principal has allowed us to time as a staff as a lab group to do further research, to wrestle with those ideas, because you would have rushed into it and happily gone.

00:48:04:14 - 00:48:34:19
Jackie and other guests
I've done that. But now I realize how service that would have been, how it would be impactful, it wouldn't have achieved the results that that we're looking towards. And so it's exciting that we've we've had the chance to do some micro design, but it's actually looking at is that a part of not quite as long. Yeah, we want it to be that critical part of that bigger picture as a whole school, not just each of us doing our own little projects on the side and feeling like we're taking results.

00:48:34:19 - 00:48:49:24
Jackie and other guests
We need it. Asset groups, groups embedded throughout the entire school is easy saying from that that meant hard and so on. Is it a part of that bigger plan than, say, future proof that students are fantastic?

00:48:50:05 - 00:48:57:14
Louka Parry
I love this idea, the micro and macro. Charlie. I'm sure part of it cultures, cultures of organizations. Jacqui And to add.

00:48:57:14 - 00:48:59:08
Jackie and other guests
To that, I think I just said it beautifully.

00:48:59:11 - 00:49:07:23
Louka Parry
Yeah, brilliant. Charlie Maybe just throw to you for a couple of reflective comments before we we go around and get a piece of advice from our practitioner set here.

00:49:09:08 - 00:49:43:24
Charlie LeadBeater
What I'm very, very struck by by Heidi saying, you know, we wanted to act. We wanted to get on with it. I mean, you know, that's a good thing because in a way, it's it's you have to reflect on something that you're learning by making a pro in a way. I mean, what was impressive about what you did was so I will do this, will act, and then we'll step back and think it was like the action was appropriate, open something up and then you reflected on it and you were prepared to go through that cycle.

00:49:43:24 - 00:50:07:06
Charlie LeadBeater
But you know, that cycle being going deeper, you know, not not accepting just a superficial way of doing it. And this combination of doing thinking and to some extent I would say playing in a way, opening up your imagination about what could this be? You know, actually, could I be different? This be different. So this sort of cycle of things do play into play.

00:50:07:10 - 00:50:34:02
Charlie LeadBeater
I do think play is very important and that I think in I mean, I'm really struck by that, you know, in a lot of traditional settings, I suppose the teachers show the students, don't they? And then actually what's happening here a lot of the time is the students is showing the teachers that I think there's a critical moment.

00:50:34:03 - 00:51:03:10
Charlie LeadBeater
A lot of these journeys where they have the teachers having decided to try something, it's actually the students then pick it up and they show the teachers what's possible with it. And there's been a moment of sort of coming back as a confirmation, I suppose, or kind of new energy coming in from the students. It can't just come from the teachers or the staff and the interplay between the teachers showing the students and the students showing the teachers.

00:51:03:10 - 00:51:39:15
Charlie LeadBeater
And that raises questions, doesn't it, about control, but it also raises questions about leadership, who's leading learning? Because actually some of the time the students are now leading the learning and taking responsibility for it. And the final thing I just wanted to mention, I suppose, is this point that some carry and you think have got to, which is, okay, we've got this framework we want to produce agency, but how do we how do the students how the other people know that we've actually achieved something or we've made progress?

00:51:40:00 - 00:52:21:03
Charlie LeadBeater
And there is a moment in a lot of innovation work where you you confront what seems to be a sort of, you know, a complete contradiction or attention, because now you run up against this notion of what do we need to assess it? Well, how do you assess agency? The whole notion of assessment is antithetical to agency. So you've got this contradiction and often in innovation, the point when you get to this contradiction where you get these two things which are at loggerheads, where there's this sort of tremendous not actually that's the point where you get really creative because it's the resolution of that tension going above it, finding the way through it, which then

00:52:21:03 - 00:52:54:22
Charlie LeadBeater
yields something really, really powerful. And I do think that that that this notion of what becomes of what we've called assessment and becomes talking about impacts, talking, learning to make a difference, talking about what you can do, showing it who's accrediting now from what perspectives, so and so how you assemble a different picture of yourself, which is all of that is sort of wrapped up in this in this unpacking of work and moving beyond what assessment should be.

00:52:55:14 - 00:53:21:05
Charlie LeadBeater
And so I think a lot of a lot of innovation that I'm involved with, I suppose would would be how do we fix a problem within the system? And a lot of a lot of problem fixing innovation is about finding problems and correcting them. And they could be issues about in this setting assessment. How do we do assessment?

00:53:21:06 - 00:53:57:01
Charlie LeadBeater
Slightly different, actually, if you want to move something completely different to a different kind of better system, it's not how do we do assessments differently, it's what's a different way to think about, show how learning has impact. It's a different kind of concept altogether. And I think that's the journey that these schools are now on, is that the students would leave, be able to tell a completely different story about themselves and what they've learned and the impact that it's had on them and that they could have on the world.

00:53:57:03 - 00:54:23:12
Charlie LeadBeater
That's really where we want to get to. And so then you also seem to be realistic about it, the interaction between schools and these larger frameworks of curriculum assessment, so on and so forth. And there's an interplay there. And, you know, there's a limit to what schools can just do on their own. You know, there's got to be some conversation there between these larger frameworks and what the schools are doing.

00:54:23:20 - 00:54:55:17
Charlie LeadBeater
But in the sense of opening up is each time you're doing something, you're opening up a new horizon of a new possibility and a new challenge. It's never, oh, we've we've arrived now, you know, this is it. There's there's always some new horizon of possibilities. Now, it's really, I think, really impressive the way that in the midst of the pandemic, you know, we we started this journey with face to face sessions in the midst of the pandemic.

00:54:55:17 - 00:55:05:06
Charlie LeadBeater
We moved all of this work on to zoom that the schools have managed to keep this going, this journey and be committed to it is really impressive, I think.

00:55:06:03 - 00:55:25:05
Louka Parry
Thank you so much, Charlie Tame. We'll just close out with one piece of advice that each of you might give to another school. An educator, you know, a team that really want to undertake this work around capabilities and agency in their unique setting. Sandra, what's your your advice?

00:55:25:11 - 00:55:50:03
Jackie and other guests
So I guess my advice from a leadership perspective is about sitting in as a strategic go. So by having a summit while as much a student agency is very much about groundswell, unless it's a commitment by leadership that that's the direction of the school and that's very hard to do to lose. I it's very straight in the school.

00:55:50:03 - 00:56:09:22
Jackie and other guests
So I guess that be it. And the other thing is just jumping. It was a piece of advice that Charlie gave very early tally in one of your sessions that was at was probably the most confronting piece of advice that you gave me was just jump in and start anywhere. And that was terrifying that we just went, all right.

00:56:09:23 - 00:56:23:13
Jackie and other guests
Charlie said it was alright, let's do it and say and we didn't. I guess it gave us a lot of things to start with and be able to draw other people in and see where we would be able to take it.

00:56:23:16 - 00:56:31:08
Louka Parry
Right. I love that. Set it strategically and jump in your act and then reflect with that feeling. Thank you so much, Sandra.

00:56:31:14 - 00:56:55:11
Jackie and other guests
Karen and I would say bring the students along with me. We're talking about agency of the students or the students agencies. So there's no point just making decisions or deciding things. And I guess in my case, what I'm really dealing with young adults, that becomes even more relevant. So yeah, bring the students along.

00:56:55:14 - 00:56:57:08
Louka Parry
Accessing one semester.

00:56:57:22 - 00:57:46:14
Jackie and other guests
At a time on clay to be willing to go through that design process self to for it to be authentic and to enable to develop those capabilities, we have to be willing to develop the skills and it'll feel forced. It will feel fake if we don't have those skills. So if you really see those as important, you will be continuously working on those planning strategies, on what works for you and may work for someone else, and then obviously open up that door for students to be able to share that, for instance, with one another to again be a way helping one another on developing these things so it becomes more real, it becomes adults.

00:57:47:01 - 00:58:18:01
Jackie and other guests
So I do don't think it can happen if you don't go through that process. Yeah, well, Chris, Jesse, teach your agency something we need to consider alongside student orientation and the complexities involved with that and the capabilities in that school to really have that in mind as a leadership for me approaching the project I think we need washing machine us knows better in that area so to speak there.

00:58:18:15 - 00:58:28:08
Louka Parry
Fantastic Jackie Charlie, I'll I'll hand to you for a final comment on this idea lesson to capabilities and agency. What's your piece of advice, perhaps?

00:58:28:08 - 00:59:03:10
Charlie LeadBeater
I say I think all of that is really fantastic, this sense of going deeper, I suppose being prepared to go deeper, which is sort of underlying all of that. And as you do, generating new relationships, generating more energy, generating more confidence, generating a solid willingness to take the next step, you know, as being so important to what these schools have done and to take an aspiration and ambition and some ideas, and then to embed it in daily practice in and in what learning feels like.

00:59:03:17 - 00:59:28:12
Charlie LeadBeater
That's what's been so impressive about it that it's that sense of momentum that that builds up. So yeah, get, get your get get a sense of momentum by, by acting and thinking and reflecting on your action. And that constant cycle, I suppose is the most important thing. I think that I've come away with it great from it.

00:59:29:23 - 00:59:52:16
Louka Parry
Thank you so much, Charlie. And an enormous thank you to Jacqui. You, Heidi, Kerry and Sandra for sharing your journeys with us today and for the work you continue to do. You've you've been listening to Lesson two of ten, Lesson ten Lessons on Agency, part of a 12 part series. Thank you for joining us today. And we hope to see you next time.