Head, hand and heart

Photo from Pxhere

I can't speak for anyone else, but my own personal learning is most enriched when I'm in conversations with others. Whether it is sat during a break in a conference schedule; over a few drinks in the evening with a couple of colleagues; in breakout sessions; or simply sat discussing ideas across a social media channel; all of these can be rich veins of new thinking for me. I suspect it's the same for many others.

I recently read a thought provoking article in the RSA journal about how one English school is harnessing the power of dialogue to enhance learning. In Anatomy of Learning, Peter Hyman reports on great developments at School 21, a school for 4-18 year olds located in Stratford, East London. Hyman argues that schools should be places where learning can be experienced in all its complexity. School 21 achieves this by teaching across the three domains of head, heart and hand. In other words, the school focuses equally on knowledge, emotional intelligence and skills. Schools have failed to achieve a good balance in their curricula, Hyman argues, instead, focusing on one to the detriment of others. In Hyman's own words:

"School is, for too many young people, neither enjoyable and fulfilling in its own right, nor a powerful enough preparation for the exciting yet dangerous world they will enter. The high stakes hoops and hurdles that must be navigated to pass exams are now so intense for both teachers and pupils that little else really matters. Policymakers and politicians think that the harder exams introduced this year raise expectations about what pupils can achieve, but they are in fact doing the reverse. They put a ceiling on the extraordinary learning that could happen if schools were freed from the imperative of teaching to the exams" (Hyman, 2017).

Peter Hyman hits the nail squarely on the head. Whenever I discuss the challenges of education with teachers, the same theme always emerges - teaching to the test, and the pressures it places on staff and students - is the greatest issue that is always expressed. There isn't enough time for students to discuss their ideas, explore complexity and create things. All they can be focused on is passing each test as it is presented.

Hyman's perspective is that change is needed and that a repertoire of curriculum strategies is required to give young people a rounded education. These include real world learning (which presumably involves immersion in real world problems, challenge based learning etc), maths mastery, oracy techniques and storytelling - and dialogue, plenty of dialogue. Hyman concludes by arguing that schools need backing from government to promote different approaches to learning and the curriculum than are currently prevalent in education.

The promotion of head, hand and heart education presents 'three interlocking conversations', he suggests, enabling students to wrestle with big ideas, discuss what it means to be human, and encourage them to offer their highest contributions.

Now that's a school I wish I could have attended when I was young.

Reference
Hyman, P. (2017) Anatomy of Learning. Royal Society of Arts Journal, 3: 26-31.


Head, hand and heart by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.