A plan for Australia’s innovation education

| May 16, 2016
Global Citizen Leaders

Global Citizen Leaders (GCL) is an initiative to build innovative education and global relations for young people. As the founder of GCL, Kate Sinclair wants all students in all schools to be able to play their part as engaged and respected citizens.

Perhaps it is my unusual background in business, my education in the humanities then law, or the paradox that I am a social entrepreneur in Australia in the over 60’s age group — that urges me to write about what I represent and why I do it by reassuring you: Please don’t worry (or dismiss me) when you read this piece. I know that what I stand up for may on the face of it sound totally unrealistic and unachievable.

Innovative initiatives though only succeed if we get behind audacious ideas and plans. And doing “audacious business” involves getting behind ideas and plans that are “not feasible” (Editor of WIRED, T. Goetz 2012, Business Conference). Here is my longstanding ‘not feasible’, and — in a sudden period of national commitment to innovation — I invite you to watch this space because it is more possible now than any time in our history to succeed.

I represent an initiative to help transform global relations and education. I started Global Citizen Leaders (GCL) as an unfunded citizen-powered initiative in 2009 to help design and build a 21st century vision of global relations for young people (I did warn you, unrealistic! But bear with me).

The USA, for example, is said to be ‘our best friend’. Australia and the US are formally connected around how we engage in conflict together. We are connected around how we engage in consumer and trade relations together. We are connected around how we tackle cyber crime.

I think it is time we formally connect to build communities together. Students deserve nothing less than formal global relations that help them to connect, share ideas and values, learn from each other and engage as change-makers in action projects helping to shape communities.

I fell into the education innovation space from this standpoint; you could say backwards, tumbling, fumbling, then climbing over ridges until I hit gold: the power of young people as our greatest national resource – one that I was stunned to see is mostly untapped and underrated.

On the one hand, when students engage in and develop action projects, they experience being more

creative, adaptable and resourceful — skills that simultaneously help to prepare them for a 21st century workforce that is increasingly uncertain, unstable, under-resourced and demanding of their ability to be individual critical thinkers while collaborative team players across diversity.

On the other hand, building the initiative opened my eyes to an education system in urgent need of change:

  • Schools kept referring me to work with the Student Representative Council or with students seen “to have leadership potential”. All the rest (99 percent in some schools) rarely access values-based action project or citizen engagement training, beyond the old ‘handout-fundraising-model’.
  • Teachers are overloaded with extra-curricular work and, in the curriculum itself, report ‘teaching to the test’. The need for change grew when students were independently reporting ‘we are learning to tick boxes’.
  • Understandably, schools work hard to avoid making mistakes. But this culture is unwittingly being
  • transmuted into the DNA of our students, and it flies in the face of the sort of experiences students must face — such as failure — to build the developmental assets required to succeed in an innovation nation.
  • Some schools offer exemplary extra-curricular or curricular learning beyond classrooms but rarely connect locally across diversity collaborating and learning in action. This leaves students at risk of holding skewed views, thinking ‘real problems’ only exist elsewhere, and they fail to know the workforce of Australia’s future.

To address these concerns, I developed an education model which aims to systematise learning by doing. The goal is to: embed values-driven engagement in the academic curriculum so that ALL students in all schools can experience their power to play a part as engaged and respected citizens.

The GCL vision is best expressed in its theory of change CVE: Catalysing Values-driven

Empowerment Engagement and Entrepreneurship Education. CVE is the focus to build and deliver transformative change.

Before we contemplate delivering CVE in schools it helps to remember that we can stop one thing from changing in a world of deep uncertainty – our values. And with a note of irony, at the same time as being a stabilising force, our values can strengthen our ability to address and achieve powerful change. A neutral mechanism to deliver this system change — while going some of the way to also help counter violent extremism through diverse action —is the non-political, non-religious Global Youth Service Day.

Run mostly informally in 100 nations annually, GYSD is an opportunity to celebrate students as problem solvers and we can design it in Australia as a time to launch curriculum action projects. With a humble beginning, GCL is also working with a leadership school to develop a one year course for HSIE curriculum (Human Society and Its Environment). The UN Global Goals provide the framework for project learning.

Utilising our National Education Values, students will learn Emotional Intelligence and collaboration while also experiencing an education system with three new ‘R’s as formal tools of learning: Reflection, Resilience and Relationships.

Based on past projects, students learn that they have the power to play a part and that change happens in small groups committed to action. They learn that failure and obstacles are inevitable aspects of engagement and that they have the ability to face the challenges that are constant companions in today’s world. In short, they learn that creating change is not easy — but possible.

Students learn that heroes are not the ones in front of the cameras. Cameras are not rolling while they write letters and blogs, develop action plans, research options, write proposals or develop videos to get school executive or external support for their initiative. They learn that team members might let them down and that they have to step up and fill the gap if they want the result they are aiming for.

They learn from and understand people they might never have connected with. They learn they are more resourceful than they realised and that more is possible when they work to include all members of the team. They learn things never go 100 percent to plan and how to expect this reality.

They learn they don’t have to have the perfect amount of knowledge, perfect timing, perfect team, perfect topic, the perfect funding or policy support to get moving. They learn that when they believe in themselves — not perfectly, but at least a little — and support each other, they are unstoppable.

When added to the curriculum, these experiences will help build an innovation nation where ALL students are equipped with the skills demanded to live meaningful lives that thrive and prosper – together. They will also have the skills to build stronger communities and, consistent with research, have the ability to move more readily than is now the case, from education to employment.

GCL started with six school students; a microcosm of what is possible. But after attending a GCL collaboration day, a Regional Eduction Director of 300 schools in Western Sydney described it as “outstanding”. Along with other worthy education initiatives, it has the potential to help all students succeed. This is the least we should do as a nation: expose every student to the sort of learning that best unleashes their potential, which is as abundant as gold once was, and as untapped.

It could take decades to go to scale or in our current climate, grow with a quantum leap. But it will take the sort of vision fortitude and fearlessness that led our unique culture to evolve from “not feasible” into something that made us stand proud. The Director of Education for the OECD gets what I am talking about. It you do too, and you would like to help, I welcome hearing from you.

 

Kate Sinclair is the Founder of Global Citizen Leaders (also known as Global Citizen Initiative). In the late 80s Kate made a life-shift from successful senior executive in Australia to starving student in America studying volunteering. This transition exposed Kate to what she regards as America’s biggest failure: that is, to promote its best asset globally – how people help each other through service. Although her studies in volunteer programs elevated her exposure to the generosity of American people, Kate’s personal experiences of the spirit of service in the US created a lasting impact. The spirit of service that helped make Kate’s studies in the US possible was strengthened by the type of American education she received. Kate first studied while volunteering with abused and neglected children and families at San Diego Children’s Hospital. By integrating field experiences into theory and research she excelled. Her results mirror service learning research that found that when learning is meaningful and linked with the real world, academic results improve. Knowing firsthand what it is to discover inner talents while learning meaningful things and playing a part to help create change (bringing passion and evidence-based knowledge into the same realms) inspired Kate to select service learning as the first vehicle to establish system collaborative change, initially between Australia and the United States for global citizenship, and more recently expanding to South Korea and India.

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0 Comments

  1. Cheryl McDonnell

    Cheryl McDonnell

    May 25, 2016 at 8:57 am

    No perfect time or place

    Hi Kate, I related strongly to your paragraph: "They learn they don’t have to have the perfect amount of knowledge, perfect timing, perfect team, perfect topic, the perfect funding or policy support to get moving. They learn that when they believe in themselves — not perfectly, but at least a little — and support each other, they are unstoppable." As I read your article I was considering how this would all relate to the desegregation of students with disabilities. The above paragraph resonated with the idea that there is no such thing as a perfect school, perfect teacher, or perfect situation so there really is not reason to educate students with disability in segregated classrooms or schools. In fact to take it further more diversity in each classroom can only improve the classroom for all.

  2. lionelduffield

    June 17, 2016 at 6:24 am

    Innovation in Education

    Nice post and really a great plan to encourage students to study hard. There is a studybooster program which help students financially to study.