Author: Lynn Fuini-Hetten and Randy Ziegenfuss

In episode 5, we had a conversation on learner agency, real-world projects, community, impact, leadership and much more with leaders and learners from Iowa BIG. We spoke with Trace Pickering, Executive Director and co-creator of Iowa BIG, Shawn Cornally, lead teacher and co-creator at Iowa BIG, and Jemar Lee, a junior at the time of the podcast recording.

Key Competency

The thread that travelled through the entire conversation was that of learner agency. In fact, Trace describes its importance this way: “Learner agency is that secret ingredient, that secret sauce that unlocks the other four elements – competency, personalization, open-walled and socially-embedded.” Learner-centered leaders have a clear understanding of learner agency and the role it plays in shifting the paradigm from school-centered to learner-centered. Notice the “learner-centeredness” in these words used to describe learning at Iowa BIG: passion-driven projects, learning adapts to the learner, not driven by time, relentless about giving ownership to learners.

Key Takeaways

At the center of learning at Iowa BIG are projects tied to learner passions. Iowa BIG has strong connections to the community, and students have a pool of projects to pull from – more project opportunities than can actually be adopted by learners. (The school is located in an entrepreneurial/co-working space in Cedar Rapids, IA.) Jemar spoke of several projects connected to his passions of literature, US history, architecture and education.

Failures are not uncommon and expected as learners are learning. When encountering failure, learners pick themselves up, pivot and learn how to be better next time. If a project isn’t working for a learner (if it’s not a “Saturday project” – Would you get up and care about this project on a Saturday morning?), the learner will work with the advisor to find one that is more closely connected to a passion.

Why is learner agency so important? We paraphrase Shawn: Currently, students in school believe in their ability to act on their ideas 0% of the time and our ideas 100% of the time. Learners are being robbed of their agency in order to receive our content knowledge, much of which is useless to them. This needs to be reversed. The first step? Identify learner passions and interests.

Learners come to Iowa BIG with different ideas of agency. Some learners know they have it, and school hasn’t previously honored it. There are also learners who actively dislike or are afraid of agency. “It’s a really awkward feeling to have agency,” Shawn shared. Mentors at Iowa BIG struggle with students who are afraid of owning their own agency. There are several ways, systemically, that the school creates a culture of learner agency: (1) get rid of classical structures that “control” (i.e. grades, schedules, testing, traditional curriculum and standards); (2) alter language to minimize control structures – teacher becomes mentor; class becomes meeting time; lecture becomes seminar; (3) develop strong staff/student relationships and engage in 1:1 conversations with students about interests, passions, and projects; (4) create conditions for staff to experience agency so they know how to create conditions for learners to experience it.

The above are examples of how leaders at Iowa BIG are challenging assumptions about schools, rejecting those they can, and giving the freedom to those in the system to reimagine new assumptions. Some powerful questions learner-centered leaders ask: (1) What parts of the old system have merit? (2) What can they look like in a new learner-centered paradigm? (3) How do we rebuild meaningful structures around learner agency? These questions have a “design thinking” flavor to them. How would leaders, mentors and learners respond to these questions?

The toughest thing to let go of in a learner-centered environment is the belief the written curriculum is the only way learners achieve competency. “It’s arbitrary,” said Shawn. There is no one way that learners come to an understanding. Shawn shared, “Competency-based is not about focusing more on the standards. By not talking about standards, you unleash agency. All we care about is that they become passionate about a project.”

How does this work? Mentors have the standards in mind. When they see a connection to a learner’s project, proficiency is documented. Once learners understand how agency works, they are introduced to the appropriate standards. At the conclusion of every project, the mentor and learner hold a “wake” where standards are back-mapped.  After standards are backmapped, students are allocated credit towards their transcript.

Regarding college transcripts: These leaders believe this is largely a made-up barrier. They have spoken with some regional colleges who want self-actualized learners. The question focused on at Iowa BIG: How can we help learners develop a resume that represents their deeper learning?

Other competencies learner-centered leaders need: (1) Embrace a complex/adaptive perspective driven by a vision for learning. Practice. Refine. Adjust. (2) The default answer is “yes.” Leaders create the conditions for mentors and learners to exercise the power they already have. (3) Recognize that each learner has a purpose.

Connections to Practice

• This conversation shows that the process of change is not perfect. There are challenges along the way, nothing is perfect, and agency requires a lot of work.
• Learner agency applies to everyone across the entire organization, not just learners in the classroom but leaders and mentors as well.
• Focus on learner agency can be a high-leverage point for changing to a learner-centered school environment.
• Leadership needs to be collaborative. When challenges arise, we need to support each other and view ideas from multiple perspectives.

Questions Based on Our Context

• How are we creating the conditions to embrace ownership of learning – for older and younger learners alike? How do we identify passions and interests in our learners, mentors and leaders?
• What command/control structures are squashing agency (in learners, leaders and mentors)? (i.e. grades, schedules, testing, curriculum and standards)
• How are we as leaders creating space for learner agency for principals and mentors?
• How does the notion of language changes fit into the context of our organization?
• How would leaders, mentors and learners respond to these questions? (1) What parts of the old system have merit? (2) What can they look like in a new learner-centered paradigm? (3) How do we rebuild meaningful structures around learner agency?
• What is the relationship of agency and trust? Without accountability systems will people feel the system has no expectation and fall into a routine of producing low effort? If so, what does this say about culture? Is agency more work? How do leaders demand a high level of agency?
• How are we moving our mentors to let go of the notion that the written curriculum (or even the textbook) is the one and only way to achieve competency?
• Are our students doing “Saturday” projects? If not, are they able to “join another team?”
• How are we helping students develop “more than a transcript?”
• If we want learning to be more social and more open-walled, what mechanisms do we need to put in place to generate a pool of real-world, community-based projects?

Next Steps for Us

• Look at aspects of the organization through the lens of learner agency. And ask the above questions.
• Develop a dialog around changing vocabulary in the organization.
• Focus on creating the conditions for agency in school leaders for 2017-18.
• Develop action plans to increase opportunities for real-world projects connected to learner passions

In episodes 3 and 4, we had the opportunity to learn about learner-centered environments and leadership at Alamo Heights Independent School District in Alamo Heights, TX. We spoke with superintendent, Dr. Kevin Brown, and assistant superintendent, Dr. Frank Alfaro in Episode 3. In Episode 4, we spoke with Erick Castillon, a graduate of Alamo.

Key Competency

It was clear from our conversation with Kevin and Frank that learner-centered leaders engage the voice of the learner. We learned how Alamo Heights has created their Profile of a Learner and how students were involved extensively in this process. Learner-centered leaders treat learners as individuals, then design coursework that lays out a path to success aligned with the Profile. We heard this in Erick’s story.

Key Takeaways

Kevin and Frank spoke extensively on how they have focused on engagement. For quite a few years they have worked with the Schlecty Center to deepen their values around engagement. In order to design compelling learning environments where learners want to do the work, it’s important to understand the learners as individuals. This is done through learner panels and focus groups. Practicing close listening, qualitative data is gathered and used to design and redesign learning environments based on the individual needs and interests of learners.

This leadership stance goes beyond the classroom. Kevin and Frank shared that while initially the learner profile was focused on the classroom and listening to learners, they soon realized it applied to everyone in the organization. All stakeholders are valued as learners, engaged as learners and listened to as learners. This reminds us of an important component of design thinking – empathizing with the user. Design thinking is an important framework through which to deepen our understanding of learner-centered environments and leadership.

Along with gaining a deep understanding of stakeholders (learners) comes a flat organizational hierarchy. While there are formal titles, everyone is an individual with talents and strengths that can be tapped into when designing solutions to complex challenges. Everyone is a learner in the organization. Differences are valued as strengths.

Leaders in a learner-centered environment shape the conversations of the organization. At Alamo Heights, the conversation is focused on learning and the things they care about as communicated in the Profile of a Learner. Conversations around compliance occur (i.e. state accountability mechanisms), but they are overshadowed by conversations about learning and experiences for children.

Learner-centered leaders, through engaging stakeholders, have to learn to give up control to others. Building relationships requires vulnerability and an openness to letting ideas come from within the organization – this reinforces a culture of agency. Learner-centered leaders do not have all the answers.

At the classroom level, Erick’s story provides an example of engaged learning. Erick was successful in the rocketry program because it connected to his interests. He also shared that working on real-world projects was motivating, especially when he was expected to do most of the work of learning with support from his teacher as needed. The teacher provided the “what” for learning, but Erick was in control of the “how.” The classroom was a motivating and compelling environment for Erick because he needed to learn how to learn. That has served him well in two internships at NASA and in engineering coursework at the college level.

Time is used differently by learner-centered leaders. Kevin shared that leaders need to “get out where the game is being played.” This is a shift from traditional leadership paradigms where leaders spend much of the day in the office, behind a desk. Learner-centered leaders also make time to think and have enriching dialog around a vision for learning and how to translate that vision to reality. This often involves creating prototypes, gathering data and creating the next prototype rooted in the vision.

Connections to Our Practice

• Listening to stakeholders – We seek out formative and summative feedback from a variety of stakeholders in the form of focus groups, surveys, conversations in professional learning sessions, coffee and conversation meeting, etc.
• Our Profile of a Graduate has helped anchor our conversations around learning more frequently than before. Evidence of this is in the work with Leading #YourSalisbury.
• Our organizational hierarchy in Salisbury is flat. As Kevin and Frank were describing what this looks like in Alamo Heights, we were making connections to what ours looks like.
• We have also minimized the conversation outside of learning. While we complete tasks of compliance, we and our board do not hold them as the highest need. Those things that are valued most are indicated in our Profile of a Graduate.
• We use our time differently than school-centered leaders. We are frequently out of the office and in our schools. We also engage each other in enriching dialog around vision and how to best translate that into reality. We are also learners – connecting with like-minded colleagues through state/national organizations, reading and producting two podcasts.

Questions Based on Our Context

• How do we define enagagement? How do we use the engagement of learners to fuel change? How are our teachers, learners and students engaged?
• How do we use feedback from stakeholders to redesign the map for change or redesign the next iteration?
• Would a better understanding of the design thinking process deepen our understanding of the learner-centered paradigm?
• What would it be like if we had more classrooms focused on real-world, authentic projects such as those described in these podcasts?
• What if our leaders were more engaged in enriching dialog around learning? How can we better foster that?

Next Steps for Us

• Engage in personal learning around engagement and design thinking.
• Develop further opportunities to more deeply engage stakeholders in this work.
• Determine how PBL can fuel our transformation and bring vision to reality.
• Find formal and informal opportunities to engage our leaders (and all stakeholders) in conversations around learning (i.e. collaborative classroom walkthroughs, classroom spotlight segment on SFN-TV, community programs around the Profile of a Graduate on SFN-TV).

This post is the first in a series connected to the podcast Shift Your Paradigm: from school-centered to learner-centered. My colleague, Lynn Fuini-Hetten, and I will be sharing our learning and thinking along the way and cross-posting to the Working At The Edge site.

In the first two episodes of Shift Your Paradigm, our guests (Kelly Young, Allan Cohen and Anya Smith) helped lay the foundation for future conversations by helping answer the questions: What is learner-centered? and What is learner-centered leadership?

One of my takeaways from the conversation was the importance of language and the words we use to describe our practice. In Episode 2, Allen helped clarify the idea of “transformation.” Allan piqued my curiosity and challenged my own thinking when he described transformation as a kind of change where the form of something is altered. Transformation occurs when we let go of the past and create something entirely new. It’s about breaking from what has been done, not just improving it. (Go ahead, read those last two sentences a few times and think deeply about how they resonate with your current thinking about change in education.)

You may be thinking about some of these questions: How are we transforming education? How is the paradigm shift from school-centered to learner-centered leveraged to bring about transformation in education? What is the evidence of a transformation? What are the learners (young and old) saying about the learning? The “how” of the paradigm shift and the transformation of education is what we will be focusing on starting in Episode 3. 

Once we’ve shifted our mindset, there is the actual work of transformation. And it is challenging! Leadership up and down the organization is critical, and we explored this topic in Episode 2 with Anya and Allan. Formal leaders working to transform learning first have to manage the dominance of the existing school-centered paradigm. Leaders can begin to cause something new to happen by introducing the new learner-centered lens into the culture of the school or district. Initially, they may sound crazy to those speaking the language of the dominant school-centered paradigm, and may not initially be heard because it’s disruptive to the dominant paradigm. Allan offered some valuable advice:  listen more than you speak. Find the best opportunities to share the new paradigm. Then ask the question, “What are your concerns? What are you curious about?” The shift – and subsequent transformation –  requires time, careful conversation and listening, not speeches. 

In Episode 1 Kelly offers this advice to leaders embarking on the transformation journey and the paradigm shift : (1) be a learner; (2) approach it as a mindset shift; (3) listen and find your own answers relevant to your own community; do not try to replicate what others are doing. “There is no one way to be!” What will you need to rethink in your context? What will you need to let go of? And in Episode 2, Anya reminds us that our greatest untapped resource in this work is our learners. How do we see everyone in the organization as a learner and a leader?

Ready for the work of transformation – breaking from what has been done and creating something entirely new? If you haven’t listened to Episode 1 and Episode 2, head on over to ShiftYourPardigm.org or iTunes and join us on the journey! Come back soon for Episodes 3 and 4 where we begin uncovering the “how” of transformation in specific contexts, speaking to leaders and a learner from Alamo Heights Independent School District in Alamo Heights, TX.

What is your vision for learning? What does it let go of from the past? What does it create that is entirely new?

Connect with Randy on Twitter and on the TLTalkRadio podcast!

We are super excited you are checking out the podcast, Shift Your Paradigm: from school-centered to learner-centered, a collaboration between Education Reimagined and TLTalkRadio. Each episode is focused on learner-centered learning and learner-centered leadership.

So why a podcast, and why a focus on learner-centered learning and learner-centered leadership? We’ve  been thinking a lot about the learner-centered paradigm as put forward by our friends at Education Reimagined. In fact, we’ve adopted the five elements, what Education Reimagined calls the “north star” for a new design for learning, as part of our work around change in our own district.

As school leaders (superintendent an assistant superintendent) we are constantly reflecting on our practice as learner-centered becomes more common in our district. We wonder how leadership in a learner-centered paradigm looks different than leadership in a traditional school-centered paradigm. If we want learning across the organization, with all stakeholders, to be viewed through a new paradigm – the learner-centered paradigm – should we shift our paradigm for leadership as well? What might that look like? These are the big questions we are exploring in this series of conversations.

In the inaugural episode, we establish a common understanding of what learner-centered means in a conversation with the Executive Director of Education Reimagined, Kelly Young.

In episode 2, we explore the idea of learner-centered leadership with two guests, Allan Cohen and Anya Smith. Allan is one of Education Reimagined’s strategy consultants and program leaders who has been working with Education Reimagined from the very beginning. He has a passion for leading work in paradigm shifting and transformation. Anya attends Mt. Vernon Presbyterian School in Atlanta and considers herself, at her core, to be an innovator. She is an active participant in SparkHouse—a group of young learners brought together by Education Reimagined.

With episode 3, we start interviewing practitioners and learners from across the country. These practitioners and learners are doing the work of creating a new design for learning – a learner-centered design.

Interspersed throughout the episodes highlighting practitioner stories, you’ll find additional conversations with panels of experts analyzing and synthesizing the work of learner-centered practitioners to answer the driving questions behind the podcast series. You’ll even find blog posts from our guests and us, digging deeper into trends and themes that emerge over the episodes.

Ultimately, we wish to elevate the conversation around leadership in education, at all levels, for everyone is both a learner and a leader. We aren’t certain of the final outcome, but we know it will emerge as we learn from the various conversations across time.  How long will this series last? More and more practitioners are doing the intentional work of redesigning learning through a learner-centered paradigm. We plan to dialog with as many practitioners as possible over the next 18-24 months. We also hope that in the end, we will have made a contribution to the larger field of education and educational leadership.

Know of a learner-centered practitioner or learner we should connect with? Email us at shiftyourparadigmpodcast@gmail.com. We’d be delighted to connect!

Thanks for coming on this journey with us! And be sure to subscribe on iTunes!

Randy and Lynn

May 2017