ransforming education systems is impossible without involving the broader public, including young people. Hence, building public demand for change and for participation in reimagining education is essential.
How to build public demand for system transformation has been one of the questions explored by the CatalystsLearning Alliance. This ambitious group includes organizations from India, Uruguay, Australia, Bermuda, USA, England, Canada, Spain, and Kenya.
The following actions emerged from the Learning Alliance’s deep-dive calls and open forums with people from diverse contexts. These intertwined actions can help in engaging a broader public in meaningful ways.
Have conversations about the purpose of education
To build public demand for change we need to unpick some of the hidden assumptions about what education even is.” - Cal Lindsay-Field, Australia
Education is everyone’s business and redefining the purpose of education is one of the most powerful levers for transforming systems. Therefore, developing a broadly shared vision and purpose is crucial. However, there aren’t many spaces that unite parents, teachers, young people, employers, and the community to talk about what education is really for and how it should change for the future.
To build public demand for profound system transformation, we need equally big education conversations. It’s essential to bring different stakeholder groups together to surface hidden assumptions, reveal privately held beliefs shared across groups, and to ask big questions such as “What purposes do learning and education systems need to serve if humanity and our planet are to flourish?”
Invest in the emotional infrastructure
“In order to move to a space of shifting behavior, we had to first create a space of listening and validation and trust” - Vishal Talreja, Dream a Dream, India
You can’t have systemic change without personal change. Changing ourselves this deeply happens in spaces that provide emotional safety. If we wish to move to a space of shifting behavior, it's a prerequisite to make room for listening, validation, vulnerability, and trust.
Vishal, from Dream a Dream, India summarizes what’s needed to provide this emotional infrastructure: “A big part of our work is creating our own capacities of facilitative leadership, our capacities for working through our own biases and prejudices, and our capacity to show up with love and empathy every time we show up in the system.”
Bridge the tangibility gap
How do you build a sense of what’s possible? One of the biggest barriers to the type of change we’re talking about is a sense of it being doable, achievable. You often hear ‘it couldn’t happen here’ - how do we close that tangibility gap?” - Tom Beresford, working in Bermuda
Education systems are often perceived as unchangeable, and many stakeholders lack a sense of agency. Policymakers, school leaders, educators, learners, and the wider public need to be encouraged and supported in developing both the mindsets and skill sets to effect change.
Lowering the barrier to entry by providing various participation pathways is a key step. Once a broad range of stakeholders immerse in new ideas it stretches the sense of what’s possible, making change more tangible.
Learning First in Bermuda, for example, offers entry ways that range from participating in an empathy interview to signing up to a transformation team. Edúcate in Uruguay concludes their programs with community showcase events. Mónica Nadal, Fundació Bofill, Catalonia emphasizes: “It’s about making people believe the little changes they make matter”.
Connect conversations across different contexts and continually self-reflect
“Our views of education are often shaped by our own experience and/or that of our own children. That can be a place of fear and hope, and requires real bravery to step beyond that and believe and act in different ways.” - Caireen Goddard, Big Change, UK
Organizations that lead the way in building public demand for education must invest in continual self-reflection.
When connecting conversations across different contexts, making space for surfacing differences and remaining aware of our own biases and prejudices is essential.
Immersion in communities can support a deeper (grass)rooted understanding of local value systems. The team from Zizi Afrique spends regular 3-day immersions in rural communities to ground their catalytic work across Kenya and East Africa.
Acknowledge how process equals transformation
”Process is where the transformation happens?” - Hayley McQuire, Learning Creates Australia
The outcome of reimagining education systems can provide a direction, but the process is what enables real change. Hence, designing a process that is aligned and integral to the transformation is central.
Annie Kidder, from People for Education, Canada offers a helpful way to think about the process design: “How do we ensure that we are truly hearing from different perspectives, not just building another echo chamber?”
Different political ideologies don’t always surface right away but are forceful when they do. This can manifest in division in attitudes towards data and “what counts.” It’s fundamental to center those who've been least heard in the current system - including first nations and indigenous communities, those left behind, the students - and normalize this as our way of working, rather than as an outcome or an objective. Inclusive and supported dialogues are needed to surface values and beliefs about education and to shift mindsets.
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How to Build Public Demand for Transforming Education Systems
Photo by Jaime Lopes via Unsplash.
September 21, 2022
Transforming education systems is impossible without involving the broader public, including young people. Hence, building public demand for change and for participation in reimagining education is essential, write Big Change's Caireen Goddard and Eloïse Haylor.
T
ransforming education systems is impossible without involving the broader public, including young people. Hence, building public demand for change and for participation in reimagining education is essential.
How to build public demand for system transformation has been one of the questions explored by the CatalystsLearning Alliance. This ambitious group includes organizations from India, Uruguay, Australia, Bermuda, USA, England, Canada, Spain, and Kenya.
The following actions emerged from the Learning Alliance’s deep-dive calls and open forums with people from diverse contexts. These intertwined actions can help in engaging a broader public in meaningful ways.
Have conversations about the purpose of education
To build public demand for change we need to unpick some of the hidden assumptions about what education even is.” - Cal Lindsay-Field, Australia
Education is everyone’s business and redefining the purpose of education is one of the most powerful levers for transforming systems. Therefore, developing a broadly shared vision and purpose is crucial. However, there aren’t many spaces that unite parents, teachers, young people, employers, and the community to talk about what education is really for and how it should change for the future.
To build public demand for profound system transformation, we need equally big education conversations. It’s essential to bring different stakeholder groups together to surface hidden assumptions, reveal privately held beliefs shared across groups, and to ask big questions such as “What purposes do learning and education systems need to serve if humanity and our planet are to flourish?”
Invest in the emotional infrastructure
“In order to move to a space of shifting behavior, we had to first create a space of listening and validation and trust” - Vishal Talreja, Dream a Dream, India
You can’t have systemic change without personal change. Changing ourselves this deeply happens in spaces that provide emotional safety. If we wish to move to a space of shifting behavior, it's a prerequisite to make room for listening, validation, vulnerability, and trust.
Vishal, from Dream a Dream, India summarizes what’s needed to provide this emotional infrastructure: “A big part of our work is creating our own capacities of facilitative leadership, our capacities for working through our own biases and prejudices, and our capacity to show up with love and empathy every time we show up in the system.”
Bridge the tangibility gap
How do you build a sense of what’s possible? One of the biggest barriers to the type of change we’re talking about is a sense of it being doable, achievable. You often hear ‘it couldn’t happen here’ - how do we close that tangibility gap?” - Tom Beresford, working in Bermuda
Education systems are often perceived as unchangeable, and many stakeholders lack a sense of agency. Policymakers, school leaders, educators, learners, and the wider public need to be encouraged and supported in developing both the mindsets and skill sets to effect change.
Lowering the barrier to entry by providing various participation pathways is a key step. Once a broad range of stakeholders immerse in new ideas it stretches the sense of what’s possible, making change more tangible.
Learning First in Bermuda, for example, offers entry ways that range from participating in an empathy interview to signing up to a transformation team. Edúcate in Uruguay concludes their programs with community showcase events. Mónica Nadal, Fundació Bofill, Catalonia emphasizes: “It’s about making people believe the little changes they make matter”.
Connect conversations across different contexts and continually self-reflect
“Our views of education are often shaped by our own experience and/or that of our own children. That can be a place of fear and hope, and requires real bravery to step beyond that and believe and act in different ways.” - Caireen Goddard, Big Change, UK
Organizations that lead the way in building public demand for education must invest in continual self-reflection.
When connecting conversations across different contexts, making space for surfacing differences and remaining aware of our own biases and prejudices is essential.
Immersion in communities can support a deeper (grass)rooted understanding of local value systems. The team from Zizi Afrique spends regular 3-day immersions in rural communities to ground their catalytic work across Kenya and East Africa.
Acknowledge how process equals transformation
”Process is where the transformation happens?” - Hayley McQuire, Learning Creates Australia
The outcome of reimagining education systems can provide a direction, but the process is what enables real change. Hence, designing a process that is aligned and integral to the transformation is central.
Annie Kidder, from People for Education, Canada offers a helpful way to think about the process design: “How do we ensure that we are truly hearing from different perspectives, not just building another echo chamber?”
Different political ideologies don’t always surface right away but are forceful when they do. This can manifest in division in attitudes towards data and “what counts.” It’s fundamental to center those who've been least heard in the current system - including first nations and indigenous communities, those left behind, the students - and normalize this as our way of working, rather than as an outcome or an objective. Inclusive and supported dialogues are needed to surface values and beliefs about education and to shift mindsets.
