Designing the Curriculum of the Future — Part 2
Whilst Friday 4th October may have been a great start to the October break for the young people at Arbroath Academy it was certainly not the usual in-service day for teachers. A diverse group of 25 teaching & support staff from across the school came together to discover and define what the future of education may look like.
3 weeks earlier was Part 1 with 40 young people from across the school tackling the same brief but diving deep into it from a pupil’s persepctive. One of the most recognisable correlations with the previous event in the school, was the passion and enthusiasm from those who participated on day 2.
After some initial brain writing and affinity mapping a total of 6 groups were formed. The themes were wide ranging; motivation, flexibility, integrated curriculum, social skills, vocational skills and life skills. To kick start the newly formed groups, we asked them to participate in an empathy walk around campus. No talking, just observing and recording. They were encouraged to walk in areas of the school they wouldn’t normally visit on a daily basis.
The feedback from this empathy activity was very insightful. People noticed the visiting impression and recorded a bright, well kept garden, clean front of house impression. The spaces inside the school told a different story, feeling caged in, unsociable, communal areas (lack of), clutter, signage and classroom rows to name but a few of the more negative observations. Members of the motivation group actually recorded feeling de-motivated after completing the empathy walkabout.
Just as the young people had done, it was now time to carry out some open user interviews on each other. This technique was used to gather deeper insights from a teacher’s persepctive. What is it really like to teach in this environment; how do we meet our young peoples needs; from a broad general education perspective what needs to change; these were just some of the questions raised. After 3 rounds of interviews, empathy maps were introduced to the groups.
At this point of the morning it was all about reflecting and falling in love with the problems that have been discovered through user research. A pain point that was recorded time and time again was the teacher-young person support relationship. That one to one quality time with individuals was rare and was causing a considerable amount of pain for many teachers. A feeling that we are letting some people down and striking that work / life balance is hard. Gathering all these insights allowed us to build an empathy corner.
After collecting user insights, it was time to further reflect and literally dive head first into some divergent thinking. Using SDA’s sunflower each group was challenged to come up with 64 ideas in 20 minutes directly linked to the theme they were working on. No easy feat, but one the teachers met head on!
After some ideation each group was asked to highlight the ideas that they would like to possibly take forward. A visit from a critical friend helped to generate some different thinking on those chosen ideas before moving into some final reflection from the session.
18 out of 25 recorded that working with colleagues was the most enlightening part of the day. Collecting meaningful data, being open minded about the future, school is daunting for pupils and that there is a willingness to make change for the right reasons all came out of the final evaluations.
Co-designing the curriculum of the future will take place on 29th October and will be a collaboration of young people, teaching & support staff alongside partners and local businesses. This group will take responsbility to help design the future based on all the user research and insights collected on days 1 & 2.
Moving the curriculum from an organisation-centric process to a more user-centric experience at Arbroath Academy is now within reach. Watch this space to find out the outcomes from the co-design day of action!
