Blog: Innovative Education Workshop

Blog

  • Picture of Tom Gilliford
    Tom Gilliford
    Former Project Engagement Manager
  • Education

Last Saturday I had the privilege of hosting the very first RSA Innovative Education Faculty workshop. Members of our Faculty were invited along to Fab Lab London to take part in a creative afternoon of education workshops.

On the agenda were two tricky questions:

  1. What are the key features of successfully creative schools?
  2. How do you decide who should go to university if qualifications were not used as the measure of ability?

Successfully creative schools

In the first of our workshops Faculty members unpicked the realties faced by schools wanting to be creative. We recognised that although many schools aspire to be more creative in their practice, there are often limiting factors both political, societal and practical which contain them. Working within these sensible boundaries the faculty set about developing two prototype frameworks designed to help schools identify what actions are needed to be successfully creative. You can check these out below and we invite your ideas, additions and comments on these initial thoughts.

Curriculum

Leadership

Response to Context

Ethos

Collaboration

Interdisciplinary

Risk-taking

Realistic

Global learning

Include lifelong learners

Creative assessment models

Initiative- taking

Recognising that the environment is dynamic

Work across age groups

Networked thinking

Focus on process and outcomes

Articulate

Ability to embrace change

Open to industry and academia

Work with schools, colleges and universities

Based around a defined philosophical; position

Collegiate

Inclusive of wider community

Interdisciplinary

A focus on meta-cognition

Willing to create space for innovation

Engagement with the Global and Local context

 

 

 

 

Curriculum

Leadership

Context required

Ethos

Collaboration

Holistic

Open to risk-taking

Informed policy makers

Willingness to make mistakes

Engagement with outside industries

Innovation focused

People focused

 

Empowerment

Engagement with alumni

 

Distributed leadership

 

Agency

Strong links with other schools

New approaches to university entrance

Our afternoon workshop focused on the problem of University selection. Teachers are still responsible for ensuring young people have the grades required to progress to the next level of education yet are continuously being asked to make their teaching more innovative and creative. In an attempt to address this, faculty members were asked to imagine alternative systems allowing for more creative practice within schools, in addition to  creating a fairer recruitment process in higher education institutions. Our discussion ranged from radical propositions of ‘a lottery of places’ to the slightly more mainstream idea that portfolios rather than qualifications might be a more accurate reflection of a pupil’s aptitude.

RSA Innovative Education hopes to pursue this topic further in the coming months with the intention of developing some ideas into a prototype. If you work in schools, further education or higher education and are interested in being involved with this work please get in touch and let us know.

Get involved:

JOIN THE INNOVATIVE EDUCATION NETWORK

BECOME A SCHOOL GOVERNOR OR TRUSTEE

TELL US ABOUT YOUR INNOVATIVE EDUCATION IDEA

 

 

 

Follow Innovative Education @RSA_IE

Follow Tom Gilliford @Tom_gilliford

 

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