A New Paradigm of 21st Century Schooling
By: Guy Levi
Tags: Design Thinking, New Paradigm, Schooling, Oecd, Lean Startup

Schooling in the 21st century

Michael B. Horn in a recent Forbs article “Begin with the end: what’s the purpose of schooling?” outlines the history of schooling from the 19th century through the 20th and focuses on the 21st, specifically on the post-pandemic era which conceptually arrived. He wisely defines five domains as the main purpose and priorities of current schooling: content knowledge, skills, habits of success, real-world experiences and social capital, and health and wellness. These five domains can be easily aligned with the OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030, or more specifically with the Learning Compass, its practical ecosystem, which, I will argue here, sets a good and feasible structure of the new paradigm of schooling.

We are working towards a new paradigm of schooling, whether we’ll admit it or not, and Horn’s analysis, in my view, is both “theoretical” and “practical” as he “…encourage[s] schools to think through [the] five domains as they build specifics around their central purpose and priorities.” Think through is extremely important but is certainly not enough, however, Horn’s recommendation is to think practically through these five domains when school leaders build their central purpose and priorities, i.e. to integrate these five domains when they plan their school learning plan or curriculum. In this case, school leaders have to remember the old saying that “in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.” Well, we know that in many cases when education systems attempted to integrate 21st-century skills in the curriculum, it ended as a “lips service” as the structure of 20th-century curriculum usually culminated in traditional assessment — testing and testing and testing… and teaching and teaching and teaching.

Nevertheless, Michael Horn’s “…what’s the purpose of schooling?” and the OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030, are in my view, no less than a beacon for a new paradigm of schooling, and they should not stay theoretical. In what follows I will sketch the new paradigm of schooling through a practical experience in the Lady Davis high school in Tel Aviv, Israel, a school characterized by leaders that ceaselessly look for new challenges. Sara Halperin, the school’s principal, and her team dare to dream… and also they aspire to break away from the 20th-century educational paradigm.

The OECD Learning Compass: an ecosystem for a new paradigm

New educational ecosystem

The OECD Learning Compass 2030 is a multi-year endeavor that “…defines the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that learners need to fulfill their potential and contribute to the well-being of their communities and the planet.” The idea of “personal potential — community — the planet” are the leading actors of the ecosystem of the Learning Compass, aiming at changing the learning paradigm, targeting traditional schooling. The Learning Compass is actually more sophisticated as it includes the ecosystem for schooling in the 21st century: first, core foundations which are the fundamental skills and knowledge, attitudes, and values that are prerequisites for further learning. They provide a basis for developing student agency and transformative competencies. They include cognitive foundations — literacy and numeracy to build digital literacy and data literacy; health foundations to build physical and mental health and well-being; and social and emotional foundations. Second, “transformative competencies that students need in order to further develop themselves, contribute to the world and shape a better future: creating new value, reconciling tensions and dilemmas, and taking responsibility.”

The Learning Compass, I believe, directs us to achieve student agency, which is the students’ “…ability and will to influence positively their own lives and the world around them. Student agency is defined as the capacity to set a goal, reflect and act responsibly to affect change.” Capacity to set goals, think critically and practically to make an impact on their lives. No wonder that in one of the OECD Education 2030 meetings in Paris, students were asked to define the most important skills and competencies for them. They chose responsibility and problem-solving… their explanation was: you adults are leaving us a deteriorated planet… grant us the responsibility and develop our problem-solving skills so we could save the world for future generations.

These premises and principles set the ecosystem for a new paradigm of schooling in the Lady Davis high school during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Let’s end curriculum overload

Lady Davis, a public high school in Tel Aviv (1,800 students, Grades 7–12 and 200 teachers) is known for its unique culture of change with a focus on pedagogical autonomy to all teachers. This provides fertile soil for innovative and creative learning projects. Hence, during the first COVID-19 lockdown, harnessing the pedagogical changes accelerated by the move to online learning, the leading team of the school promoted a re-definition of the school’s values.

The result was a set of transformative values which signified the understanding of the need to create a New Normal: from I Must to I Wish; from Compulsion to Choice; from Passive to Active; from Oppressive time to Liberating time; from Matriculation exams to Maturation processes.

In light of these new values, the Lady Davis team embraced the Learning Compass as the pedagogical ecosystem for a new skills-based curriculum, which also serves as an antidote to the traditional 20th-century national curriculum overload. A design thinking workshop with the leading management team and selected teachers developed a new concept of schooling — “Unleashing the Nature of Learning” of both students and teachers, emphasizing teacher agency, student agency, and co-agency. The focus will be, it was decided, on skills development — communication skills, thinking skills, and social and emotional skills. Dare to dream, dare to act.

Lean Startup — the “secret sauce” for skills-based Curriculum

Innovative curriculum development

Time becomes an important factor in the process of change everywhere and the Lady Davis high school is no exception. Therefore, the leading team decided to employ entrepreneurship and agile methods for the development of the skills-based curriculum. The Lean Startup methodology which was employed became the “secret sauce” of the process, and turn out to be the “game-changer”. A group of six teachers developed an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) for quick testing using the Build-Measure-Learn formula. They started with a students’ survey to select the skill best fit their needs. The students “voted” overwhelmingly for Problem-Solving. Then, they broke the Problem Solving concept into its components and decided to focus for the MVP on “defining a problem”, the basic and maybe the most difficult part in the process of conceptualizing this skill. Now, a small group of students join the development and experienced an AAR (Anticipation-Action-reflection) cycle on defining simple, complex, and wicked problems, utilizing active learning in a flipped learning model. The MVP was concluded with an ethnographic interview, a design thinking method that enables, in our case, both students and teachers to take a holistic approach and deepen the relevancy and the importance of the skill development, in this case, problem-solving, to their agency.

New School’s Culture: Co-agency and Collaboration

Collaborative development using Miro board

The success of the MVP created confidence in the Lady Davis team to move forward and develop a pedagogical model based on the Learning Compass ecosystem for a skills-based curriculum. To the Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes, and Values we added Digital Pedagogy which, in a nutshell, is associated with planning and designing utilizing collaborative tools; documenting the design process with digital media; introducing digital feedback tools throughout the process; integrating creative digital product (storytelling, for example); and data gathering and analysis. The development process of this model begins with a creative “brainstorming-like” session that creates an inter-connected pedagogical framework… actually, something new. This method allows the developers to draw an interdisciplinary view and define the interplay between the different components. This method enables the developers to create diverse narratives which refine the learning modules, focuses on specific capability which communicates with the ecosystem of the Learning Compass and promotes transformative competencies and well-being, for example. The forms and methods of co-design — teachers and students — still need to be evaluated and re-shaped as it is yet to achieve its full potential and know-how. It is certainly a challenge and an important one.

Lady Davis high school is now going through a development stage of skills-based curriculum stems from the ecosystem of the Learning Compass. This new direction will gradually replace parts of the traditional national curriculum which is not relevant anymore. This philosophy of change is associated with Buckminister Fuller’s saying that “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” And the existing model which still dominates the system is really outdated, archaic… well, obsolete. If you are a leader in a position to make an impact… go the Buckminister Fullers’ way.

Walking through education systems in the last 25 years I am well aware of the difficulties of school leaders to swim against the current, great courage is needed as resistance and opposition come from outside and within. Sara Halperin has the courage to let her team of teachers “fly”, as she knows that those, like the eagle, who “…soar high above the troubles of the world” will prepare the new ground for the entire Lady Davis community.

Dare to dream!