ELEVATE: unleashing the brilliance of every learner
What happens when we see every student as having potential to be cultivated - not only those labelled as gifted and talented?
Students’ promise can be elevated with creative new practices
A golden opportunity exists within gifted and talented programs to identify and nurture the full breadth of students who might benefit from extra challenge - not just those who are academically high performing by traditional measures. Driven by the Association of Independent Schools NSW, schools came together with a shared purpose: to uncover new approaches to identify, support and maximise high potential in all their learners. From 2015 to 2018, ThirdStory (then Innovation Unit Australia New Zealand) supported and coached design teams from 40 independent, catholic and government schools to generate new ideas for learning, prototype and test the most promising ideas, and scale the ideas that delivered the greatest benefit for learners. The learning community was named ELEVATE after their ambition to raise the bar for student learning in NSW.
Schools started by deepening their understanding of their learners
An ethnographic research process involving 200 students surfaced strong, consistent themes: they wanted their learning to connect more directly to their passions and interests; they wanted to have more choice and control over their learning; they wanted to see the relevance of their learning to the future. What students expressed was confronting for the school teams who were challenged by how much change would be required to truly address the issues they uncovered.
School teams were inspired by examples of how high potential has been identified and supported in schools around the world and in other sectors beyond education, and informed by OECD research about innovative learning environments. From this they developed new learning designs to prototype and test against quality criteria and success indicators. These included:
An elective module in which students pursue a negotiated learning experience that links them directly to industry or community leaders in their local area.
An innovative space where students and teachers can work together on negotiated challenges in ways not possible in an ordinary classroom.
A new learning culture developed through workshops focusing on metacognition.
Our team then supported schools to consider how their practices could scale across their school, and to other schools too. Together explored the evidence about how scale happens and models that can support scale, and developed a plan and strategies for how practices could scale through building the interest and engagement of colleagues and parents/carers.
As a result, the impact of schools’ ideas had the potential reach far beyond the schools involved and beyond New South Wales. Insights from the community of practice about the needs of students and innovation tools and resources were also published online for other interested schools to explore for themselves.
“We’ve recognised that the infrastructure that’s in our schools at the moment, is to some degree suffocating what we want for high potential learners and what we’ve got to do is get those shackles away from ourselves to enable us to explore this fabulous idea.”
Learning for teachers and students
As well as the exciting new approaches to students’ learning that were yielded by the process, important learning was happening for teachers, school and system leaders too as they experienced a disciplined innovation process aimed at generating new ways of working.
School teams identified how engaging with this challenge brought about significant shifts in the way teachers think about their practice: “We have learnt that when encouraging risk taking in students, we must be able to provide the environment for that to happen. It is important to explore what really challenging learning experiences are like,” said one participant.
Leaders in the 40 ELEVATE schools experienced the power of collaboration, working with other schools in a dynamic and diverse community of practice. Beyond the community of practice, 70 more schools formed a community of interest, following the development of the new learning designs.
Project team
Keren Caple Chief Executive
Martin James Director, Innovation and People
Emma Scott Senior Project Lead
David Albury Senior Associate
Julie Temperley Senior Associate, Innovation Unit (UK)