Rocket image: https://www.needpix.com/photo/174049/
“There’s no definite roadmap for a successful moonshot; the path is littered with obstacles and failure. It takes passion, grit, luck and sometimes a decade or more of hard work to see a moonshot materialise, much less succeed.”
Peter Diamandis, entrepreneur, futurist, technologist, New York Times Bestselling Author
I was at secondary school when the Apollo 11 mission made a successful moon landing. I was one of those completely caught up in the wonder of that event – I still have the scrapbook I kept of every newspaper clipping I could lay my hands on at the time! 1300 of us gathered in the school assembly hall and sat in silence for almost three hours, listening to the broadcast on a single speaker that had been set up on the stage. (Yes, no live-stream TV in those days – in fact, no colour TV even, we watched the fuzzy, black and white images a day or two later!)
That was 1969! Just a few years earlier, in 1962, US President, John F. Kennedy, planted the seeds of a dream when he declared “We choose to go to the moon this decade.” At the time this must have seemed near impossible to many, yet it inspired a nation to believe – and to act. The president didn’t say precisely how it was going to happen – he simply set a timeframe for something ambitious, something incredible to happen. It was his ‘moonshot’ moment.
Decades later this concept has become known as ‘moonshot thinking’, when you choose a huge problem, such as climate change, and propose to create a radical solution to the problem using a disruptive technology.
I reckon we could do with some ‘moonshot thinking’ in education at present. There’s no shortage of huge challenges facing us, but there is a distinct lack of any ambition in the solutions being proposed. Mostly we see the same old ideas being re-cycled like the re-runs of Home Alone movies at Christmas. It all seems so tired, unambitious and focused narrowly on short-term wins that pander to the populist vote. It’s been like that for many years now, and there appear to be no changes on the horizon despite a change in government. The table below illustrates just a few examples of the challenges schools face currently and the responses we are seeing…
Consider our current approach…
| Problem | Solution | Concerns |
| Students not attending school, truancy. | Employ people to track students down and bring them back to school. Punish parents for not sending them to school. | Why are they choosing not to attend in the first place? How might we make schools and learning more engaging and meaningful for all learners? |
| Digital Distraction. | Ban mobile devices at school. | How do we prepare young people (and teachers!) to function effectively in an increasingly digital world – including understanding the safety and moral issues of being a digital citizen? |
| Declining literacy and numeracy achievement. | Spend more time on structured approaches to reading, writing and maths, focusing primarily on the mechanics. | How do we inspire writers, authors and mathematicians for the future? How to sustain an interest in literature, story-telling and mathematics in the world around us? |
| Bullying. | More supervision, more punitive measures for those responsible. | How to address the social influences and generational patterns of behaviour that are behind this sort of behaviour? |
| Recruitment and retention of high quality teachers. | Introduce teaching standards, recognition of excellent teachers and punitive measures for those not performing. | How to make teaching a profession that attracts the very best candidates. How best to design initial teacher education programmes and professional learning programmes that sustains a dynamic profession? |
| Low level of participation in STEM subjects to meet demand for employment in the tech sector. | Privilege resourcing of STEM programmes and STEM teachers. | What about the arts subjects where creativity (a key element in innovation) is cultivated? |
| Increasing numbers of learners with special learning needs (incl. ADHD, autism etc.) | Limited funding for special needs teachers and support people. Teachers expected to become skilled in dealing with these demands. | What are the conditions that are most suitable for these learners, and what support is most helpful? How can we personalise/individualise programmes within the traditional one-class, one-teacher structures? |
| Ongoing disruption and change (e.g. natural disasters, weather events, pandemics etc.) | Short term mitigations, targeted resourcing to bridge the gap until things ‘return to normal’. | What if ongoing disruption of this nature is the ‘new normal?’. How might we structure schooling to take account of the ongoing challenge to sustain an approach that is historically dependent on attendance at a single site? |
As the table above attempts to illustrate, it’s not that the solutions being suggested or implemented are inherently wrong – indeed, many have sound research supporting their use in defined contexts. The issue is that while they may provide an effective solution for particular learners in particular contexts, they are unlikely to address some of the wider (and more complex) concerns that are a part of the problem they are attempting to address. It’s not a binary argument – it’s about understanding the broader, richer and more complicated tapestry of interactions among and between these areas that create the current form and function of schools and schooling.
I believe we need to see more ambition our efforts to identify (and courage to follow through on) solutions that matter. Of course, there’s plenty of ambition around at a personal level, with individuals seeking to ‘climb the ladder’ of personal success, or schools seeking to outdo their rivals down the road – but this sort of ambition is counter-productive in terms of achieving the solutions required to some of our ‘wicked problems’ in education.
I’m talking about the sort of ambition that is linked with taking risks (something that is frowned upon in our current bureaucratic structures), to ‘stretch’ beyond the current limits and push the boundaries of educational possibility. This sort of ambition sets aside personal interest for the corporate good. It involves releasing dreams and capturing the interest and trust of others to pursue those dreams. It’s about letting go of conventional thinking and ways of working, and experimenting with new forms of teaching, schooling and learning to find what works and what will help us achieve our ‘moonshot’ ambitions.
In the table below I’ve shared just a handful of ideas that could form the basis of the sort of ambitious ‘moonshot’ thinking that we’re talking about here. There will, of course, be others you can think of (hopefully!), so regard these as they are intended – something to stimulate your thinking. It might be helpful to consider taking one or more of these and using them as a starter for a conversation with colleagues, or at a start of year staff meeting – anything to help stimulate conversation and lift the level of thinking beyond ‘the ordinary’ as we seek to find ways of resolving the increasingly challenging problems we face in education.
Could these be your moonshot…?
Moonshot 1:
Agency and Joy!
Imagine if…
…we were to create schools where learners come curious and leave inspired? Where learners were eager to attend because they found what happens there, day by day, exciting, engaging and relevant to their needs and interests. Where learners ( and teachers) experience JOY each day, where their physical, mental, social and academic health and wellbeing were all being addressed as a matter of course. Where there is a definite ‘shift in ownership’ of learning, and learners (and teachers) experience agency in all aspects of their learning.
Moonshot2:
Learning Laboratories
Imagine if…
…we were to design our schools as learning laboratories, and our learning programmes around a culture of experimentation, where teachers and learners are open to risk and learn from failure? What if our approach to learning across the curriculum left space for teachers and students to experiment with new ideas and pursue the questions that are important to them. What if, instead of following prescribed methodologies we encouraged innovative approaches to solving problems, including how to address individual learning challenges or needs (e.g. as those in the medical profession do when making a diagnosis).
Moonshot 3:
Boundary-less Schools
Imagine if…
…we conceived of schools as ‘boundary-less’ entities, as nodes in a network or learning ecosystem. Where physical attendance to participate in social, sporting, cultural and collaborative activities, is valued alongside access specialist teachers in other contexts, including community settings and virtually. And what if that learning was all recorded and tracked in a single ‘record of learning’ that recognises the value of what is learned in all of these contexts? What if we recognised the roles of those providing support for learners differently – as specialist teachers, as pastoral support, as virtual teachers etc. as opposed to assigning all tasks to a ‘generic’ teacher. How might we include the link with home and partnership with parents as an essential aspect of this ‘boundary-less-ness’?
Moonshot 4:
AI Enhanced Personalisation
Imagine if…
…we could harness the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create truly personalised programmes of learning for both individuals and for groups based on an analysis of their needs and preferences? What if the AI platform could then provide personalised support and feedback as the learner/group worked on the learning task, scaffolding and shaping the learning activity based on the learner response and evidence provided. What if the platform could also maintain a record of learning for each learner with dynamic links to the evidence provided by the learner to illustrate achievement against the criteria set.
Moonshot 5:
New Structures
Imagine if…
…we were to completely suspend all of the structures around which our current school system is designed – learning spaces, timetables, curriculum, staffing allocations, assessments/exams etc. How would we design things differently? How would the school day work? What would the curriculum look like? What if we were to create the opportunity for learners to be immersed in learning for as long as it takes for them to become accomplished in what they are doing? How might we keep track of what is being learned, how it is being learned and when it has been learned?
What would be the role(s) of educators in all of this? How would they be supported?
Moonshot 6:
New Measures of Success
Imagine if…
…we adopted completely different ways of measuring success? Where exams and summative assessments were replaced by more dynamic and ‘real-time’ provision of evidence to match against the progression indicators linked to criteria established at the beginning of the learning activity? What if learners were actively involved in the decisions around the criteria and the indicators? Instead of designing learning to match the assessment criteria, what if learners were able to immerse themselves in meaningful learning activity, and then select the criteria that they have evidence for – from across different ‘subjects’ and different levels?
[Rocket image: https://www.needpix.com/photo/174049/]
None of the scenarios above are particularly original. In fact, examples of each of these innovative approaches already exist in various jurisdictions and contexts around the world. As William Gibson once said, “the future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed yet‘. Also, while the scenarios have been separated out here to emphasise a specific idea, there are many overlaps between them and in most cases, a ‘moonshot’ idea will likely include elements from two or more of the scenarios above (and others not mentioned here).
Create your own moonshot:
Being ambitious in our thinking like this doesn’t come naturally. For many of you reading the list of ‘imagine if’ statements above you may find yourself thinking immediately of all the reasons why this couldn’t happen. That’s quite normal. It’s how we’ve been programmed – a consequence of the education we’ve received and the structures and systems we conform to. But you can break the habit – all it takes is some courage to allow yourself a little space to dream and ponder.
The important thing is that, like JFK, you don’t have to have it all sorted from the beginning. You simply have to imagine, put the idea(s) out there, and be relentless in seeking to find ways of making it happen.
Peter Diamandis, entrepreneur, futurist, technologist, and writer of the TechBlog has a simple five step approach for MoonShot Planning:
- 5-Year Goal: Briefly describe your 5-year Moonshot goal in a clear, objective fashion using specific dates and numbers.
- 1-Year Goal: What concrete, measurable milestones can you achieve in 12 months that will put you on track? Remember, your progress is exponential. You just need to hit 6.25% of the target.
- 30-Day Goal: What can you do in the next 30 days to test and ‘de-risk’ your 1-year and 5-year objectives?
- PROOF: What evidence can you provide to your team that this Moonshot is possible?
- ACTION: What single action can you take right now to make immediate progress? (Do it in the next hour).
Why not use this framework to create your own moonshot and consider the ambitious approach you want to take in 2024? You don’t have to do this alone. In fact, it’s best if you do it in collaboration with others. Build the dream collectively. Get the buy-in of those who need to be involved and for whom it matters.
Imagine if, across the country, school leaders and teachers found time in these last few weeks before the next school year begins to work through the five steps outlined above, so that as you return to school for 2024 it isn’t simply to repeat what you did in 2023 with a few minor tweaks and improvements, but is something more revolutionary, more purposeful and more life-changing!
Instead of planning to get ‘back to normal’, let’s make 2024 a year of being extra-ordinary, of being ambitious in what we seek to achieve for our learners and our schools!
Check out some of these links for further ideas…
One reply on “Looking for more ambition in 2024!”
Another mind-extending read Derek. I enjoy them. Have always loved JFK’s mantra, “A man’s (sic) reach should exceed his grasp.”