Foundations to Futures: Rethinking Literacy for Tomorrow’s Learners

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to give a presentation to the online conference held by the New Zealand Literacy Association, my topic being Foundations to Futures: Rethinking Literacy for Tomorrow’s Learners. My main focus was an emphasis on how, while the teaching of foundational skills of literacy must be regarded as essential, we must also extend our young people’s capacity to build on these skills in order to develop the capabilities they will require to flourish and be active contributors in the world of the future. In this blog post I have attempted to summarise the essence of my talk to share with a broader audience of those who didn’t attend…

I began with a simple question – “why d0 we teach children to read“. It’s a fairly simple thing to ask – something I’ve started sessions with staff and parent groups often. Generally I’ll get a simple response like “so they can read books“. If I then ask “why do they read books” the response is generally “so they can learn” But when I ask “why do we want them to learn?” the responses become far more thoughtful, along the lines of; “So they can participate fully in life.” and so on. Nobody argues with that chain of thinking – until you follow it one step further and ask whether it still holds.

Here’s the question I then challenged the online group with: “if our tamariki can read fluently but can’t recognise when they’re being manipulated, radicalised, deceived or emotionally exploited online, are they truly literate?”

I don’t think this is a rhetorical flourish. I think it’s the literacy challenge of the next decade. The challenge lies in not simply learning to read, but learning what – and who – to believe. AI can now write essays and conjure convincing images in seconds, so what’s left that’s uniquely human about literacy? Almost every learner alive today carries the ability to access more information in their pocket than any generation before them, so why does misinformation still outrun knowledge? Many of our students aren’t choosing what they read anymore; algorithms are increasingly choosing what they think about. Attention itself is becoming education’s scarcest resource. (And as I highlighted in my talk, this isn’t just a problem for our young people, it’s also increasingly evident as it affects the adults in our community – including teachers!)

These aren’t abstractions. The signals are already showing up in our schools and communities. Loneliness is now treated by security agencies, not just wellbeing services, as a risk factor – because isolated young people are the ones online communities go looking for. It’s rarely ideology that draws a young person in first; it’s friendship, belonging, humour, a sense of being seen. The manipulation comes later, once the connection is real. You can hear more on this in my recent podcast with Ray Finch. New Zealand’s own security agencies have started naming this explicitly, and framing it as an educational question as much as a security one – about belonging, critical thinking, identity and resilience, and the literacies our young people need to navigate digital worlds that are more complex than anything we were trained for.

Which brings me to the distinction I keep returning to: the difference between foundational literacy and futures literacy. I used the examples below to illustrate this…

A child can read the instructions on a seed packet. That’s foundational literacy. But a learner who asks whether those instructions suit their soil, their climate, their community – who draws on other knowledge, tests possibilities, works with others to decide what to plant – that’s futures literacy. The first gives you access to knowledge. The second lets you use it to shape the world you’re actually standing in.

Or take AI directly. A student can write a sharp prompt and get back an impressive answer. That’s a foundational skill, and a real one. But a futures-literate student doesn’t stop there. They ask: how do I know this is true? What’s missing? Whose perspective isn’t in this answer? What do I need to check before I trust it? The first student can communicate with AI. The second can exercise judgement in a world where AI is constantly communicating with them.

One of the conundrums I often hear being discussed is whether the use of AI might actually help our students (and us) become better writers. It’s a tempting thought, and pretty much every teacher I know admits to now using AI to help them in the work they do. Further, the recent PISA data reports already 46% of students in OECD countries use AI chatbots weekly or more to help them learn. So it was of interest to read what Serena Jampel shared in her recent article in the Harvard Magazine. Serena is a researcher at Smithsonian Centre for Folklife and Cultural Heritage who writes for a living. In her article titled “I Used to Think AI Could Make Me a Better Writer“, she concludes:

‘AI encourages students with endless platitudes, luring the would-be-writer with an illusion of assistance to degrade the inimitable self that makes their writing interesting. AI trains us, more than anything, to parrot the AI voice. I’d rather we teach students how to find their own.’

It’s this illusion of assistance, and the way in which AI tools seduce us into believing what they offer that is especially concerning – and a very important reason why we must be expanding our view of literacy to include these most essential capabilities. I used the following examples in my talk to illustrate this, asking “what would a literate student do?” in the following scenarios:

A student asks AI a question. It gives a beautifully written, confident answer with references.
What would you want a literate learner to do next?

A student sees a post that makes them angry. It contains statistics, an impressive image and a strong emotional claim.
What would you want a literate learner to do next?

A student watches several videos about a controversial topic. Their feed begins serving increasingly extreme versions of the same viewpoint.
What would you want a literate learner to notice or do?

A friend sends a message saying, “Everyone knows this is true. Just look at what people are saying online.”
What would you want a literate learner to ask?

You might find these questions useful to initiate conversation in your staffroom or even among your students. Invariably the responses will include answers that begin with verbs such as check, question, verify, interpret, compare, investigate etc. – suggesting an expansion of the way we think about literacy. My table below is an attempt to illustrate this:

Foundational Literacy	Futures Literacy
Find information	Evaluate information
Read words	Interpret meaning
Use language	Exercise judgement
Learn knowledge	Create knowledge
Communicate	Collaborate
Understand stories	Understand systems

In my talk I referred to the recent PISA report on Future-ready students which states in its introduction:

Overall reading scores saw particularly steep declines in the past three years, including in skills that matter most in the AI age: evaluating information, making connections across multiple sources and thinking critically about what we read. The instances of “hasty reading” – in which students read quickly but inaccurately – nearly doubled to 9% between 2018 and 2025.

Here’s our challenge. Not only do we see an emerging problem with young people who are being taught simply to decode text but not spend time developing the future-ready capabilities listed above, but the ways in which they are then engaging with text are leading to this ‘hasty reading’. I certainly see and hear this in many contexts., where the conversations consist mostly of the headlines that have been read and missing the deeper engagement with what the piece of writing may actually be exploring. In the conclusion of the same report it says…

Taken together, these findings underscore the need for education systems to adopt a holistic approach to learning, one that values both proficiency and engagement, and ensures that all students have the support, opportunities and resources needed to reach their full potential in school and beyond.

To emphasise my point I asked a series of questions that I referred to as “the literacy test no one prepared for.” I asked whether our students could…

recognise a deepfake?
detect an AI-generated scam?
identify emotional manipulation?
know when they’re being recommended increasingly extreme content?
distinguish expertise from popularity?
recognise synthetic media?
know when an “friend” is grooming them online?

These aren’t add-ons to the curriculum. They’re what literacy now requires.

I like to think about this using three horizons as a way of ensuring we are maintaining a balance in our approach here. Horizon one is foundations – what must endure, whatever else changes. Horizon two is signals – what’s shifting right now, often faster than our systems can respond. Horizon three is futures – the capabilities that will actually matter once the dust settles.

Many of our current curriculum conversations are stuck arguing about horizon one, as if strengthening the basics and preparing for what’s coming were competing projects. They’re not. They’re the same project.

Which brings me to my main point – none of this is an argument for teaching less reading and writing. It’s the opposite. It’s an argument for understanding why reading and writing matter more than they ever have. Because AI can generate fluent language at will. Because algorithms shape attention by design. Because misinformation moves at the speed of a share button. Because loneliness, tragically, can be weaponised against the very young people we’re meant to be protecting.

Foundational literacy hasn’t become less important. It’s become the floor, not the ceiling. Its purpose has expanded – from decoding words to reading the world; from acquiring knowledge to creating it; from communicating an idea to collaborating wisely with the tools now doing some of that communicating alongside us.

Literacy has always been about making meaning. The question our tamariki now face – and the one we owe them an answer to – is whose meaning they’re making, and whether they have the judgement to tell the difference.

References

Keeping Our Kids Safe Online – podcast episdoe with Ray Finch
Future-ready Capabilities – a NZ framework developed by participants at the EdRising convening
PISA 2025 report
I used to think AI could make me a better writer – Serena Jampel in the Harvard Magazine
New Zealand’s Security Threat Environment – an assessment by the NZ security intelligence service

Images from StorySet.com

Tags AI literacy, futures literacy, literacy

Step Outside. See Differently. Lead Differently.

Reflections from an Australian educators’ immersion tour of schools in Aotearoa

There is something powerful about stepping outside of what’s familiar to us. When we spend our days immersed in our own schools, communities and systems, it can be difficult to see the assumptions that shape the way we think and work.

Visiting another education system offers more than the opportunity to see different approaches in action. It creates a little distance from our own reality – enough to notice things that might otherwise remain invisible, to ask different questions, and perhaps to return home seeing our own context with fresh eyes.

That was the opportunity for a group of Australian educators from the Lutheran Schools Network who spent last week in Aotearoa New Zealand as part of an immersion tour of some Wellington schools, hosted by my colleague Maurie Abraham and myself. The schools we visited were Amesbury Primary School, Ōtaki College on the Kapiti Coast, and Wainuiomata High School – providing a mix of primary and secondary, and examples of the cultural diversity we’re seeing across the network of schools in New Zealand.

The experience we designed for them was deliberately more than a series of school visits. It began with a day to build an understanding of the New Zealand education context and to consider what they might encounter. The school visits then provided opportunities to hear directly from principals and staff about the vision and beliefs that shape their schools, and to see how those ideas are expressed not simply in documents or statements, but in the everyday experiences of learners, whānau and staff. The final day provided space to pause, reflect and consider what they had seen and heard – not with the expectation of simply taking New Zealand ideas back to Australia, but of interpreting the learning through the lens of their own communities and contexts.

As I’ve reflected on the week we spent together, and the reflections of the group on our final day together, there are some key themes that emerged from the reflections on our visits:

1. Vision, beliefs and values as the organising framework

A repeated observation was how each school’s vision, beliefs and values were not simply words on a wall or statements in a strategic plan – they provided the organising framework for the everyday life of the school. In each case these things had been developed in collaboration with staff, parents/whānau and the community, ensuring this organising framework is unique to each school and its community.

Articulating a school vision and values wasn’t an altogether unfamiliar concept for members of the visiting group, but what became evident from these visits was how profoundly and powerfully these were used as the organising framework to shape everything about how these schools operated – curriculum, pedagogy, relationships, spaces, staffing, decision-making and even the way success was understood.

2. Partnership and collective ownership

Further to the observations about the importance of having a strong vision, the visitors were impressed by the extent to which in each of these schools this wasn’t something created by a leadership team and then communicated to others. It is something built with the people who make up the school community, and continually renewed through partnership with whānau, community and staff

This generated much discussion about the importance of corporate ownership – that people are more likely to sustain what they have helped to shape.

3. Visionary and courageous leadership

The leadership we encountered in each school was both visionary and courageous, but rarely heroic or hierarchical. The leaders at these schools led by inspiring others to lead, distributing responsibility widely, and yet were prepared to hold the line when important values or beliefs were at stake.

This is particularly important during these times of significant change. Distributed leadership doesn’t mean leaderless leadership. Someone still needs to protect the integrity of the vision. And someone will ultimately be required to ‘hold the line’ when difficult decisions need to be made that will impact the whole organisation. But what this group observed and recognised was leadership that operated with humility, a servant heart and an unrelenting focus on building a school culture that reflects the shared beliefs and values of their staff and community.

4. The learner at the centre

Perhaps the most consistent thread across all of the schools we visited was the determination to keep the learner at the centre – understanding who each learner is, creating genuine opportunities for agency, and adapting curriculum, pedagogy, environments and support around their needs rather than expecting every learner to fit the same mould.

Promoting learner agency was a priority at each of these schools, and we saw evidence if this in a variety of ways, from the different ways learners could engage with learning tasks through to evidence of learner voice in key strategic and leadership decisions. At each school the principal commented on the increasing number of neuro-diverse students that were now attending their school, and shared about the different structures and strategies they had put in place to meet the needs of each of these students.

5. Emotional culture alongside academic rigour

In each of the facilitation days we spent with the group, we deliberately created opportunities to explore the emotional dimension of leadership – and the importance of attending to how staff, students and whānau experience change, not simply what needs to be done. Too often, innovation is approached in a task-driven way, with leaders focusing on goals, timelines, expectations and desired outcomes. While these things matter, they can easily overlook the human experience of change, leaving people feeling anxious, overwhelmed, disconnected or simply “done to”. We encouraged the group to add another question to their leadership thinking: “How do I want my staff to feel as we introduce this innovation?” That simple shift changes the conversation from managing the tasks of change to intentionally shaping the emotional culture in which change takes place – creating the conditions for people to feel safe, valued, hopeful and able to contribute. As we led the group through some exercises to illustrate this, they, in turn, reflected on how this was a characteristic of leadership in each of the schools we visited.

6. Te Tiriti, culture and belonging

One of the most powerful aspects of the immersion was seeing how schools were interpreting their responsibilities under Te Tiriti o Waitangi in ways that strengthened belonging, identity and participation for all learners. This was particularly evident in the way we were welcomed with a mihi whakatau at each school. While each context differed in how this was given effect, the common elements were clearly evident, and students were always involved. The use of te reo Māori in everyday conversation, in signage around the buildings and in strategic documentation was also clearly visible, providing an important reminder that culture and identity can be woven into the everyday life of a school rather than treated as an occasional addition.

Each of the schools and their communities had found their own way of responding to the commitments of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and creating learning environments in which Māori learners could see their culture, language and identity affirmed. Yet this was not at the expense of others. Rather, it created a broader invitation for learners from many cultures and backgrounds to bring who they are into the life of the school, and to experience that identity as something valued rather than something to be accommodated.

For our Australian visitors, this also prompted important reflection on their own context. While Australia does not have an equivalent partnership agreement to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, there is a growing desire within many communities and schools to find both structural and local ways of recognising, respecting and embracing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, cultures and identities. The experience of seeing how Te Tiriti is interpreted and given life within New Zealand schools provided a valuable opportunity to think about what this might mean in their own settings. The intention was not to simply transplant a New Zealand approach into an Australian context, but to consider what they might learn from the principles of partnership, participation and recognition of identity, and how these might inform their own journey towards greater cultural responsiveness and belonging.

7. Working within – and sometimes against – system pressures

Running through many of the conversations was a recognition of the tension schools face when externally mandated approaches collide with locally developed visions for learning that have been built patiently with learners, whānau and communities. In each of the schools we visited, senior leaders spoke openly about how they were responding to the current government requirements around curriculum and pedagogical approaches. What was striking was that, while each school was finding ways to accommodate these requirements, none saw compliance as a reason to abandon the vision and values that had been developed collectively over time. Rather, there was a strong sense of holding the line on what mattered most -working out where changes could be incorporated, adapted or interpreted in ways that remained consistent with the school’s beliefs about learners and learning. It was a powerful reminder that responsiveness to system direction does not have to mean surrendering local agency, and that courageous leadership sometimes means being willing to navigate the requirements of the system while remaining steadfast about the things a school community holds to be important.

Conclusion

Perhaps the real measure of the immersion experience was not what participants saw while they were there, but what they will see differently when they return home. The value lies not in coming away with a shopping list of things to copy, but with new questions to ask of our own practice. What might we see differently now? What assumptions might we challenge? How might we more intentionally build a shared vision with our staff, learners, whānau and communities? How might we lead change in ways that attend not only to what needs to happen, but to how people experience it? And, when external expectations inevitably change, what are the things we need to adapt – and what are the things we need to hold the line on?

The experience of these Australian educators in Aotearoa offered many examples of what schools can do, but perhaps its greater value was in prompting deeper reflection about the kind of leadership, culture and learning communities they will want to create in their own contexts. The challenge now is not to replicate what they saw, but to take the learning home, interpret it through their own communities and circumstances, and make something of it that is genuinely their own.

Would you like to learn more?

The programme we offered the Lutheran Schools Network grew from the GROW programme that Maurie Abraham and I have developed together – supporting educators in leadership roles to rediscover their purpose, experiment boldly and lead the kind of transformational change our schools need for the future.

If this experience has prompted you to think about how an immersion might benefit your own leadership team or professional learning group, we’d love to explore the possibilities with you. We can work with you to design a GROW immersion experience around the contexts and questions that matter to your group, or provide an extended period of GROW facilitation to support your team as you turn new insights into action within your own school.

Sometimes the best way to see new possibilities is to step outside our own context for a while – and then have someone alongside us to help make sense of what we see when we return.

About the Grow programme

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Tags GROW programme, immersion tour, school leadership

Designing a bolder future for education

What might we learn from the beacons that are already showing us what a different future for education could look like?

In my latest podcast in the series of ‘conversations on the future of education’ I’m joined by Jeff Wetzler, co-founder of Transcend and one of the people behind BOLD – Beacons of Learning Design. We ask “what if the future of education isn’t about finding the model that every school should adopt, but about learning from those who are already showing us what might be possible?”

BOLD brings together learning environments from around the world that are pushing beyond inherited assumptions about what school is for, what learning can look like, and what young people are capable of.

The most important thing about this project is that it isn’t an attempt to create another blueprint for schools to follow. Instead, it is an experiment in learning from the edges.

What can we discover when we put very different contexts alongside one another? What principles appear to endure across cultures and systems? What can we learn from the places already testing new possibilities – not simply about what they are doing, but about the conditions, mindsets, relationships and forms of leadership that make it possible?

I was particularly struck by the idea that the purpose isn’t simply to prepare young people for the future, but to activate them as people who can help shape a better one. That shifts the conversation from education for the future to education as a contribution to creating the future – a thought that aligns well with my previous blog post on the ‘isms’ shaping our society.

I think there is something here for all of us who are thinking about innovation and transformation in education.

We don’t necessarily need another silver bullet, another prescribed model or another initiative to implement. We simply need to become better at noticing what is already emerging, bringing those experiences into conversation, identifying the deeper principles beneath them, and creating the conditions for those ideas to take root in our own contexts.

As Jeff puts it, “This vision is bigger than any one school or any one organisation.”

I think that’s what makes this conversation worth listening to. I hope you’ll take the time to listen to our conversation (video embedded below)

For more information check out these links:

Shaping a better future (BOLD Project Website)
Transcend Education (Transcend’s website)
Conversations on the future of education (podcast series – all episodes)

Signal, noise, and the children in our classrooms: Part 3 – It isn’t about us

What are we deciding about children this term, and how have we asked them?

My first two posts in this series were about how we read the noise and what governments are doing about it. This one is about who’s missing from the conversation.

The response that’s closest to the classroom

The most visible response to all of this so far has been to restrict, and it’s happening close to schools. New Zealand’s Online Safety Bill, introduced in August, would require platforms to take reasonable steps to keep under-16s off social media. It also brings AI companions into the framework and would establish an online safety regulator within the Department of Internal Affairs. The Prime Minister said when introducing it that one in three 13 to 17-year-olds now spend at least five hours a day on social media. The bill won’t progress before the election, though, and ACT and NZ First have said they won’t vote for it.

Elsewhere, restriction is reaching schools directly. The EU has drafted a Kids Act that would restrict under-15s’ access to social media, AI chatbots and online games. It still needs agreement from member states and the Parliament, and services designed for education are reportedly excluded. Norway has blocked generative AI for students in Years 1 to 7 from this school year. New York City has announced a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI from the youngest years through eighth grade, with companion chatbots prohibited in every grade, alongside AI critical-thinking modules for high schoolers.

The concern behind this isn’t hyperbole. Britain’s technology minister has described children forming one-to-one relationships with AI systems that weren’t designed with child safety in mind. A lot of this is covered in the podcast conversation I had with Ray Finch earlier this year where we discussed the emergence of nihilistic violent extremism – coercion and radicalisation for no ideological purpose at all, “just because they can.”

The evidence is early, and the reactions are mixed

Many young people say they feel relief at the idea of restrictions, while others argue it’s a breach of their rights. The weight of opinion currently leans towards restriction, but the evidence on whether it works is early. A peer-reviewed study of Australia’s under-16 ban found little sign that teenagers had turned away from social media, and critics of Norway’s school ban call it avoidance rather than discernment.

I’m not arguing against restriction. I’m arguing that it’s a decision made about children and not with them, and that it doesn’t keep the technology out of their lives beyond the school gate. A ban can be part of a response, but it isn’t a strategy.

The conversation that’s missing

Notice who’s absent from most of this. The debate is framed around the economy, security and the companies. Even Australia’s national framework, which at least names education, lists it alongside climate, energy, jobs, copyright and defence as one area among many. Education is one portfolio among many, and children aren’t in the room at all.

Here’s what’s easy to forget. A five-year-old who started school this year will finish Year 13 around 2038. Whatever we decide, or fail to decide, in the next few years will shape the world those tamariki inherit, and they have no say in how it’s decided. We’re making decisions on behalf of mokopuna who will live with them far longer than we will. The imagined future in this debate isn’t ours. It’s theirs.

What I’m asking of us

I want to end with three things, each building on the earlier posts.

Ask them. Ask rangatahi and ākonga what they think, what they’re seeing, and what they want us to understand. They’re already living with this technology. If we’re going to restrict, regulate or teach with it, they should be part of the conversation, and their views should reach the people making decisions.
Hold ourselves to the evidence. When a new ban, moratorium or tool arrives, use the four questions from the first post. What has been committed to, by whom, and how would it be verified? Be as sceptical of the quick fix as of the headline, and that applies as much to bans as to hype.
Act now on what’s already real. We don’t need to settle the existential debate to deal with the near-term risks in our own schools. That means clear guidance on AI companions, a plan for responding to deepfake incidents, hard questions for vendors about data and safety, and honest, plain-language communication with whānau. And it means pressing, in the way I described in the last post, for education to have a seat wherever the national conversation happens.

The wolf may not come, or it may arrive in a form we didn’t expect. Either way, the adults in the room should be the ones who read the headlines carefully and then acted, on behalf of the children who’ll live with the result.

Something to think about

What are we deciding about children this term, and how have we asked them?

What policy exists in your school that addresses the issue of AI use? Has it been developed by you and your community, or is it a copy of something you’ve found online? How have you actively involved your students in its development – is their voice represented?

Have you considered using my Thought Piece titled Lead Like a Wayfinder, that offers guidance for school leaders and boards on how they might develop a policy for their school?

Signal, noise, and the children in our classrooms: Part 2 – Watch what governments do

Where does education sit in your local candidates’ positions on AI? Have you asked?

In my first post, I suggested a way of reading the headlines: ask what has actually been committed to, by whom, and how it would be verified. This post applies the same test to governments. Statements are cheap, but institutions cost money and staff, and somebody has to be accountable for them. So rather than listening to what leaders say about AI, we should look at what they’ve built.

What others are building

Across the ditch, Australia established an Office of AI within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in July 2026, to coordinate a national framework and lead mandatory standards, with enabling legislation planned for early 2027. That’s a different body from its AI Safety Institute, which sits in the Department of Industry, Science and Resources and monitors and tests frontier models. One sets policy and the other builds technical understanding, and the two work together. Australia’s framework also names education among the areas it will coordinate, which is more than most.

Australia isn’t alone. The UK has its AI Security Institute and the EU has its AI Office. Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Canada and France joined Australia, the UK, the US and the EU as founding members of an International Network of AI Safety Institutes. These bodies differ in form and power, and I’m not claiming any of them is perfect. The point is that these governments decided someone should be paid to look.

The United States is the interesting exception, and the picture there isn’t simple. It chaired that network’s launch, and its president now calls the fears a hoax. Yet Congress is negotiating bipartisan bills on frontier risk, so even there the argument is far from settled.

Where New Zealand sits

New Zealand has so far stayed on the sidelines. The 2025 AI Strategy focuses more on reducing barriers to adoption than on regulation, and the Prime Minister’s recent message has been that we’re missing a big opportunity by adopting too slowly. He has also said the opportunities outweigh the dangers, while acknowledging the need for oversight and talking about working with like-minded partners on regulatory frameworks. That’s a considered position, and it isn’t the same as having no view – but not the position I’d be taking. It’s light-touch, and it leaves us with few structures for convening the kind of expertise other countries are gathering.

With the election on 7 November, I’ve been scanning what the various parties are starting to offer here and how they differ:

Labour would establish an Office of AI within DPMC to coordinate New Zealand’s approach, set standards for responsible use and plan for workforce effects. It would also expand the scope of an online safety regulator.
The Greens have called for a one-year moratorium on new AI data centres until proper rules are in place. The Prime Minister has said such a moratorium would send the wrong message to investors.
National relies on the AI Strategy and existing public service frameworks rather than a new body.
Te Pāti Māori has taken a firm stance that any use of AI must be guided by tikanga and Māori data sovereignty.
ACT and NZ First appear to have no comprehensive AI policy of their own at this stage.

You don’t have to agree with any of these. What matters is that they reflect very different answers to a basic question: who, if anyone, is charged with looking into our national response?

Why this matters to us

An office or an institute may be a useful start point, but it isn’t a cure. It could be set up and never look at education at all. That’s the risk for us. Without doubt we need guard rails and policy to guide responsible use. But these alone will not be effective without a concerted effort to ensure our population is well enough informed and educated to ensure we keep ourselves safe and not relying on externally mandated ‘rules’.

Education is a huge part of a country’s future and a small part of most national AI conversations, and unless someone in our sector speaks up, we’ll be a footnote in whatever framework emerges.

Whoever forms the next government, the sector should be asking to be part of the conversation from the start, not consulted at the end. That means principals’ and teachers’ associations, boards, and the people who work with young people every day. Other countries are gathering experts to work out what they must do. We should be making sure educators are among them.

Something to think about

Where does education sit in your local candidates’ positions on AI? Have you asked them?
How are you keeping yourself informed about these issues – and your staff, parents, community?

In the final post, I’ll turn to the part of this conversation I think matters most: the children in our schools, and the decisions we’re making about them right now.

Signal, noise, and the children in our classrooms: Part 1 – Reading the headlines

Think of the last AI headline you reacted to. What had anyone actually committed to, and how would you know?

Over the past week I’ve been increasingly concerned about the ‘noise’ in the daily news and social media feeds claiming that AI is about to end the world, that AI safety fears are a hoax, and that the whole thing is a share-market panic. Sometimes all three in the same feed!

That’s the problem. When every alarm sounds the same, it gets harder to hear the one that matters. We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf, and in that story the wolf did eventually come.

I began writing my thoughts about this and found the document becoming extremely long, so have broken it down into three posts – this being the first. This one is about how we read the noise. The second looks at what governments are doing about it, and the third, the one I most want you to reach, is about what this means for the decisions we make in schools and the children in our classrooms.

What’s actually happened

The current wave began with an essay, “We Must Pace the Frontier“, in which Anthropic’s Dario Amodei called for slowing the pace of frontier AI development. His proposals include independent evaluators embedded inside the labs and coordination on safety standards among companies in democratic countries, and Sam Altman and Elon Musk endorsed them. The endorsement deserves a closer look. OpenAI has committed to independent evaluators with employee-like access, but it hasn’t yet said who they’ll be, what they’ll be able to review, or how their findings will affect development. Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark went further, suggesting that a third-party-checkable “kill switch” may need to become mandatory across the industry. Tech shares fell as investors weighed a possible slowdown.

The response from Washington was dismissal. President Trump called AI safety fears a “hoax”, and Vice President Vance suggested that industry calls for regulation could be a Trojan horse for companies that would benefit from new restrictions.

So within days we had industry leaders warning, a president dismissing, and markets wobbling. No wonder most people are working from the headline.

Two kinds of risk, and a motive problem

The first thing to separate is the kind of risk being discussed. Existential AI doom, the catastrophic scenario, remains a theoretical debate. The nearer-term concerns, however, are not theoretical. Consider agents that take complex actions unprompted, models that have found ways around their restrictions, AI lowering the barrier to sophisticated cyberattacks, and the deepfakes and large-scale fraud we’re already seeing. Much of the alarm draws its energy from the first while resting its evidence on the second, and that mismatch is what makes it so easy to dismiss.

The second thing to separate is motive. Critics argue that big tech can use safety rules as a moat against smaller competitors, and The Register ran a piece framing Amodei’s proposal as a bid for regulatory capture. There are also practical pressures behind a slowdown, including compute costs, power shortages and diminishing returns on new models, plus a geopolitical race with China. That’s a fair challenge, but doubting the motives doesn’t dispose of the evidence, and the evidence doesn’t launder the motives. Both things can be true at once, and holding both is the discipline this moment asks of us.

A method rather than a verdict

In her book The Big Nine, Amy Webb sketched three possible futures for AI: optimistic, pragmatic and catastrophic. Just last week she published fifteen principles for steering towards the better ones. When the AI leaders’ announcements landed, she didn’t react to the tone. She graded each company’s commitments against those principles. She found The labs are implementing the list one principle at a time, in the wrong order, with no one keeping score.

Whatever you make of her grading system, the method is the point. She judged the announcements against criteria settled before the headlines arrived. That’s something any of us can borrow, and it’s something educators can teach.

The response I’m suggesting we take

Read past the headline, and help the people around you do the same. Neither panic nor dismissal is a position. When the next announcement or alarm lands, ask four questions:

What has actually been committed to?
By whom, and with what detail?
How would it be verified?
Who benefits if we believe it?

Many of the people who most need this habit are the ones we serve – parents in our school communities, colleagues in our staffrooms and the boards we work with. They’re making sense of this through the same headlines. If we don’t help them read them, nobody else will.

Something to think about

Think of the last AI headline you reacted to or shared. What had anyone actually committed to, and how would you know?
What steps do you regularly take to check on the accuracy of the information that is affecting your thinking and the work you do as an educator? What groups do you belong to or feeds you subscribe to that might affirm or challenge your thinking?

In the next post I’ll look at what governments around the world are doing, and why New Zealand has so far stayed on the sidelines.

Building school around people, place and possibility

It seems appropriate that in Te Wiki o te Reo Māori I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Bianca Elkington and Kathleen O’Hare about the establishment of Kura Toa in Porirua.

What makes this story particularly interesting to me is that Kura Toa isn’t simply a new school opening its doors. It has grown from more than a decade of work with Ngāti Toa whānau and young people – an education ecosystem built around community, identity, relationships and aspirations.

For me, there are some important future-focused ideas that were shared in this conversation.

The first is community. Kura Toa isn’t being designed as a school operating in isolation from its community. Whānau are not simply being consulted about the school; their aspirations and knowledge are helping to shape what the school becomes.

The second is the idea of starting with the person, rather than the curriculum. Before deciding what should be taught, there is a commitment to knowing who the learner is – their strengths, their identity, their whānau, their aspirations and what matters to them.

And then there is the Mauri Ora plan that provides the mechanism that enables this personalised approach to curriculum. It provides a particularly powerful example of what it might mean to put a graduate profile into practice. It isn’t a statement framed on a wall or something revisited at reporting time. The intention is for it to become part of the everyday work of teachers – a source of knowledge about each learner and their aspirations that sits alongside professional knowledge when curriculum and learning are designed.

That raises an important question for all of us involved in education – what would change if our vision for the learner genuinely became the organising principle for curriculum, pedagogy and relationships?

I found this conversation both challenging and encouraging. Kura Toa is clearly on a journey, and Bianca and Kathleen are very open about being learners themselves. But perhaps that is part of what makes it worth listening to.

They’re not simply talking about creating a different school. They’re asking what education might look like when community, identity, aspiration and the future are allowed to shape the design from the beginning.

I hope you’ll take the time to listen to our conversation (video embedded below)

For more information check out these links:

Kura Toa – Learning Without Limits (School Website)
Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira (iwi website)
Conversations on the future of education (podcast series – all episodes)

Reclaiming Education as a Common Good

Image source: Derek Wenmoth using Canva and Gemini

If education simply mirrors the dominant values of society, it will reproduce them. If education is to help create a different future, schools must become places where young people experience and practise a different way of living together.

Three ‘isms’ shaping our society

I recently attended a seminar where a speaker referenced three ‘isms’ shaping our society – prevailing ways of thinking, being and doing that show up in how we do business, organise as a society, and educate our young people. Reflecting on this, I began thinking about how these isms manifest in our schooling systems – in curriculum design and pedagogical practice – and, more importantly, how we might view them differently: not as constraints to work within, but as a starting point for a more liberatory approach to education, one in service of a future where human flourishing is possible. I found this particularly useful in helping to understand the ideological and societal drivers influencing so much of the current debate about education in the lead-up to our general election.

All of this comes back, of course, to the essential question of ‘what is the purpose of education?’ which we’re seeing responded to in a variety of ways in the lead up to our next election here in NZ. This is mostly implicitly referenced in the policy statements being issued by the various political parties, an analysis of which reveals the extent to which these ‘isms’ are influencing the direction for education being advocated for.

So I thought I’d start by summarising what I see as the current state of each of these ‘isms’ and how they are being manifest in our education system – then suggest some things we could be doing as schools and as a system to take a more radical departure from these conventional ways of thinking:

The current state

Consumerism – education as something to acquire

We live in a society that treats almost everything as a product – something to buy, use and replace, always assumed to be in endless supply. Education is not immune. Schools themselves become products to be chosen and compared, qualifications become commodities promising access to income, and school choice or private tutoring reinforce the idea that a better education is something the well-resourced can purchase. Charter schools, school choice and the tutoring economy aren’t corruptions of the system – they are the system working exactly as a market is designed to work. The danger is that education becomes valued mainly for its exchange value – What will this get me? – rather than for its contribution to who we become and the society we build together. What’s being ‘consumed’ isn’t a good that depletes with use; it’s a shared capacity that a society either builds together, or doesn’t.

Individualism – education as personal fulfilment

Our culture places enormous emphasis on personal choice, fulfilment and identity, and this shows up in increasingly individualised curriculum, learning pathways and pedagogy. Language like ‘child-centred’ and ‘learner agency’ can quietly be redefined – from empowering learners to act with and for others into optimising outcomes for me. That’s not a small drift: agency stripped of its relational, common-good dimension isn’t agency at all, it’s individualism wearing a nicer word. A system built only to ask what this learner needs – with no companion question about what this learner owes or contributes to others – shouldn’t be surprised when its graduates are fluent in self-advocacy and illiterate in reciprocity.

A note on where ‘student-centred’ came from
Margaret Mead’s 1943 essay Our Educational Emphases in Primitive Perspective argued against a colonial ‘will to teach, convert, or assimilate’ – and student-centred pedagogy was a genuine answer to that history. But Mead valued curiosity over rote learning because a culture’s capacity to evolve depends on each generation thinking freshly – for social renewal, not individual fulfilment. What’s been lost in the drift toward individualism isn’t her emphasis on curiosity; it’s the collective purpose that curiosity was meant to serve.

Tribalism – education as belonging to ‘us’

Alongside consumerism and individualism sits a growing tendency to organise ourselves into tribes – groups defined by shared identity, culture, beliefs or status – amplified by social media echo chambers and political rhetoric that frames disagreement as defeating enemies. Education can mirror this through differentiated schools, ‘specialist’ provision and postcode competition for example, while communities – quite understandably, as Aotearoa becomes more multicultural – seek spaces where language, culture and identity are affirmed. That impulse is entirely legitimate; people are drawn to whānau, to belonging, to being seen. The risk is when it hardens into an expectation that institutions must reshape entirely around one group’s worldview, or that other groups must be persuaded, defeated or excluded. A school system built on postcode envy and identity enclaves isn’t fostering diversity – it’s fragmenting the very commons that diversity needs in order to mean anything.

What a radical departure might look like

Beyond consumerism – education as contribution

A school resisting consumerism stops treating education as a product to be delivered or consumed, and instead treats it as a shared resource – a contribution to the common good, the way a well-run marae treats manaakitanga: something that grows through circulation rather than depletes through use. Learning is justified not only by its usefulness to an individual’s career, but by what it enables that person to give back to whānau, community and society; success is measured by what learners create, restore, solve and contribute, not simply what they acquire. Practically, this might look like a school redistributing its best opportunities rather than auctioning them to the highest bidder or most anxious parent; treating senior students’ expertise as something owed back to younger learners and the wider community rather than banked as private credential; and refusing enrolment or funding models that let it cream the easiest students while pushing harder-to-teach ones elsewhere. The underlying principle is sufficiency, not scarcity: this is not another shop on the strip, and ‘choice’ will not become a euphemism for who gets left behind.

Beyond individualism – education as interdependence

A school resisting individualism still values every learner as a unique person, but refuses the idea that personal fulfilment is education’s ultimate purpose. Learner agency is deliberately designed as agency with and for others: learners make meaningful choices and experience the consequences of those choices for others, with collaboration, reciprocity and shared responsibility valued as highly as individual achievement. (See the section at the beginning of my book Agency By Design pp 18-20 for an expansion of this thinking.) This has real curriculum consequences – assessment and reporting that credits contribution to others alongside personal achievement; project and inquiry structures where success includes ‘who benefited beyond me’; and interdependence taught as a skill, not hoped for as a value. The guiding principle is empowerment for, not just from – personal capability as the means to contribute beyond the self, not the end point of self-interest – said out loud, in how a school grades, groups and celebrates its learners.

Beyond tribalism – education as belonging together

A school resisting tribalism becomes a place where difference is neither erased nor allowed to become division – one that honours culture, language and identity while deliberately creating encounters between people who are different from one another, and teaches how to live well together. This takes courage: not a neutral, flavourless institution avoiding identity to keep the peace, but one that structures its culture explicitly around whakawhanaungatanga – the ongoing work of building relationship across difference – treats cultural and philosophical difference as curriculum content to be examined rather than merely tolerated, and refuses postcode logic through shared campuses, cross-school projects and mixed-catchment programmes that force encounter rather than avoidance. The guiding principle is belonging without enclosure: every group gets to be fully itself, but no group gets to redraw the school’s boundaries around itself alone.

Bringing these ideas together

Consumerism, individualism and tribalism each promise something education genuinely needs – access, empowerment, belonging – but each collapses that promise into its narrowest, most self-referential form. A school that wants to operate differently doesn’t reject access, empowerment or belonging; it re-grounds each one in relationship rather than self-interest. Three principles hold that shift together:

Sufficiency, not scarcity – treating knowledge and opportunity as a shared resource that grows through circulation, not a product to be bought, hoarded or rationed by ability to pay.
Empowerment for, not just from – agency and personal capability as the means to contribute beyond the self, not the end point of self-interest.
Belonging without enclosure – every identity fully present, but none redrawing the school’s boundaries around itself alone.

Together they describe a school acting as steward of a commons rather than supplier to a market.

At a glance

In the table below I’ve attempted to summarise this thinking so that the key ideas and comparisons can be recognised at a glance:

	The current state	The narrow promise	The radical alternative	Guiding principle
Consumerism	Education as a product; charter schools, tuition and “learn to earn to buy” treat opportunity as infinite supply, purchased by those who can pay.	Access – everyone should be able to get a good education.	The school as steward of a shared resource: opportunity redistributed, expertise circulated back into the community, no creaming of easy students.	Sufficiency, not scarcity
Individualism	A reductionist model built on isolated learners, where peer interaction is managed as disturbance; “child-centred” and “agency” language now dressed over the same architecture as personal optimisation.	Empowerment – learners should have voice and self-direction.	The school rebuilt around networked, emergent learning: diverse skills and perspectives deliberately brought into synergy, group intelligence recognised as greater than any individual output.	Empowerment for, not just from
Tribalism	Schools of type, postcode envy, cultural enclaves amplified by echo chambers into culture-war rhetoric.	Belonging – people deserve to be seen in their identity and culture.	The school as plural commons: whakawhanaungatanga built deliberately, difference taught as curriculum, structures that force encounter rather than avoidance.	Belonging without enclosure

Final thought

If education simply mirrors the dominant values of society, it will reproduce them. If education is to help create a different future, schools must become places where young people experience and practise a different way of living together.

A call to action

To help you make sense of this in your own context I’ve created the following prompts as a start point for the conversations and thinking you might do in your school or community. This isn’t a checklist to implement – it’s a lens to think with, and it’s worth turning into a conversation – in the staffroom, at board level, and with your wider community.

Revisit your vision, mission and values against these three isms – where does the language you already use assume a consumerist, individualist or tribal frame, even accidentally?
Ask your board, staff and community which of the three principles – sufficiency not scarcity, empowerment for not just from, belonging without enclosure – is most alive in your kura, and which is most absent.
Examine your pedagogical structures – timetabling, assessment, reporting, enrolment, grouping – and ask what they assume about the purpose of learning: an individual acquisition, or a shared contribution?
Bring your community into the conversation deliberately – not to seek instant agreement, but to practise the kind of belonging-across-difference this piece describes.

The point isn’t to arrive at a single answer, but to keep asking the question – publicly and often enough that it starts to reshape what a school assumes about itself.

Like riding a bike

Learning to ride a bike was pretty much a right of passage when I was growing up. In a time before there were SUVs transporting kids to school or sports events on Saturday, your bike was essential for getting you from A to B on a daily basis, so learning to ride well and safely at an early age was extremely important.

I can recall my mother spending time holding on to the carrier on the rear of my bike as I gradually got the ‘feel’ of holding my balance and then using the pedals. I can remember also the jubilation (for both of us) when, finally, I was able to pedal down our drive without her holding on, running to keep up!

The real turning point for me in becoming a more competent rider occurred just a few months after that, when a traffic officer visited our school and we were instructed to collect our bikes from the stands behind the school and bring them to the netball courts. Our whole class lined up, bikes of many different colours and types, some even had saddle bags strapped to the carriers which were the envy of the rest of us.

The traffic officer explained that he was going to see how well we could ride, and give us some tips on how we could become better riders. This started with the whole class mounting up and riding around the perimeter of the netball court. This provided some level of consternation for some and hilarity for others as 30 kids all jostled for position in the paloton (I didn’t know the meaning of that word then 🙂 and endeavoured to make their way around the perimeter without bumping into others or falling off at the turn.

On arriving back where the officer stood were were asked how we felt about that. Some felt OK, others said they felt ‘wobbly’ while yet others said it was difficult to avoid bumping into others and so on.

The officer then said he had his next challenge for us. He lined us up at one end of the court, and one-by-one, invited us to cycle to the other end of the court, following one of the lines painted on the court as a guide. He then emphasised that he’d be judging our performance by how well we kept our cycle on the line throughout the journey to the other end.

One-by-one we completed the task, with very few being able to keep their cycle on the line all the way – most of us simply veered from one side to the other for the whole journey – travelling so very slowly as we concentrated on the line in front of our wheel.

Assembled back again after that challenge we were again asked how we’d felt doing it. No-one felt confident, many argued it was too difficult.

This is when the office shared his ‘secret’ for doing it well. He told us we’d be doing the same thing again – but this time, instead of looking down at our front wheel as we tried to keep on the line, we were to fix our eyes on a spot in the distance beyond where the line stopped, and to keep cycling with our eyes on that spot. As each class member took their turn, the rest of us were asked to keep a close watch on the bike tyres to see how closely they stayed on the line (or not).

To begin we were clearly skeptical, with some of the class complaining that made it difficult for them to actually get started and know where the line ways. As each class member took their turn, however, the mood changed and we were amazed at how close to the line pretty much everyone was now able to travel.

The memory of that lesson has remained with me ever since – and I’ve used that strategy when teaching my own kids how to ride – and then my grand-kids. I’ve also used it as a metaphor in much of my work with school leaders to help explain the importance of having a vision and mission to guide you – the vision being the point beyond the end of the line, and the mission being to get there by staying on the line the whole way in the example of the cycling lesson.

Applying this to leadership

The key point to note in this story is that the office wasn’t trying to teach us how to ride a bike. Most of us know how to do that already. He was teaching us how to ride with direction and purpose.

There are some clear parallels in this story for how we approach leadership.

The line represents the pathway or mission that keeps us moving towards our destination, and the rider is the person or organisation making continual adjustments along the way. When we remain focused on the front wheel and the line we are concentrating on immediate performance. When we look to the horizon while riding we are more likely to maintain direction and purpose.

The important lesson we all learned that day, and the lesson for us as educators was looking at the line actually made it harder to stay on the line.

When organisations become so focused on what is immediately in front of them that they lose sight of where they’re actually going, and can so easily veer off course in terms of their vision and mission – just like we did as young riders. The ‘line’ we are being challenged to follow currently can be identified by listening to conversations we are having in staff-rooms and professional meetings – things like What do we need to implement? What does the Ministry require? Have we completed the documentation? Have our teachers been trained? Are we meeting the deadline? Have we ticked the box?

These are all legitimate concerns – but are all ‘front wheel’ questions. The more important question is; Is what we’re doing taking us towards the kind of learners – and the kind of society – we say we are preparing for?

Compliance with Direction

The problem isn’t about compliance – it’s about compliance without direction. In my cycling lesson metaphor above we were all asked to comply with a simple instruction – to follow the line, which we did, but without really focusing also on the direction we were headed. There wasn’t anything particularly wrong with the instruction – in fact, it is very helpful to be able to cycle in a straight line and avoid appearing unsteady on the road as it provides confidence for the other road users who we may pass or who may pass us!

My point here is that externally mandated change mustn’t be thought of as inherently bad. Some mandated changes may be worthwhile and necessary. The danger comes from when we blindly implement the change. An organisation can become very good at responding to whatever appears immediately in front of it while gradually drifting away from its own purpose.

This is something that is concerning me a lot at the current time when schools are faced with so much mandated change, and I see a lot of ‘front wheel’ thinking and acting taking place in response.

The purpose of vision

This is where a school’s vision becomes so important. Even more important when it has been co-constructed with the community and is owned by staff and embraced within the culture of the school.

It’s important to emphasise here that a vision shouldn’t simply describe a desirable future. It should orient decisions in the present. So when something new comes along – new policy, curriculum requirements, assessment expectations, technology, accountability measures, initiatives etc. – the question isn’t simply “How do we implement this?” It is: “How does this help us get closer to where we say we’re going?” That changes the role of vision from something purely aspirational to something that connects genuinely with the operational life of the school.

Which brings me to the role of leadership. Leadership is about keeping eyes on the horizon – and helping others do the same. A leader can’t continually steer an organisation by making every decision personally. The organisation needs a culture in which people at every level understand the destination well enough to make good decisions about the next step. That means that everyone in the school community needs to know where are we going? Why are we going there? What matters most along the way? How will we know whether we’re still on course? What should we do when something pulls us away from that direction?

The leader’s job isn’t to keep everyone’s front wheel perfectly aligned. It’s to make sure everyone knows what they’re riding towards.

On reflecting on my cycling lesson I need to acknowledge, however, that the line painted on the netball court was unusually simple. Real organisational journeys aren’t. There will be obstacles. Detours. Unexpected events. Changing circumstances. Sometimes the path itself needs to change. And that’s precisely why you need the horizon. If circumstances require you to leave the original line, you can still make intelligent decisions because you know where you’re trying to go. This is particularly relevant to education leaders operating in uncertainty as we appear to be currently.

Back to purpose

If schools say their purpose is to prepare young people for a future that is uncertain, complex and changing, what happens when the adults in those schools become entirely preoccupied with responding to today’s requirements? There is an inherent irony here – we can become so busy preparing students for the future that we lose sight of the future we’re preparing them for.

The danger isn’t that we fail to keep up with change. The danger is that we become so focused on keeping up with change that we forget what we’re changing for.

When I think of my cycle lesson experience, the traffic officer didn’t tell us to stop looking at the road. He taught us to look beyond the road while still attending to it. This applies to the work we do in schools. We can’t ignore the front wheel. Leaders still have to deal with the policies, requirements, deadlines, resources and practicalities immediately in front of them. But we shouldn’t confuse paying attention to the front wheel with knowing where we’re going.

As school leaders it is important to keep your eyes on the horizon. Make the adjustments you need to make. Stay attentive to the road beneath you. But never let the demands of the journey cause you to forget the destination. Otherwise you’ll end up like so many of my classmates on that day, wobbling all over the place, some falling off and very few reaching the other end having stayed on the line at all.

What can you do?

The challenge I’ve outlined above isn’t new, and is something that I’ve worked with many schools, school leaders and boards of trustees to address. Here are some practical ideas you might consider to ensure you are focused on the horizon, and not simply the front wheel:

Revisit your vision – not just your wording.
When was the last time your leadership team, staff, board and wider community genuinely talked about what your vision means for the decisions you are making today? Is it still the destination you are collectively heading towards, or has it become something displayed on walls and websites rather than used to guide action?
Put every major change through the “horizon test”.
When a new mandate, policy or initiative arrives, don’t begin only with “What do we have to do?” Ask also: “How does this take us towards our vision?”
And, importantly, “What might we need to stop, adapt or challenge if it doesn’t?”
Turn your vision into an operational tool.
Use it in staff meetings, professional learning, strategic planning, appraisal, board discussions and conversations about resourcing. Make the vision part of the questions you routinely ask rather than something you refer to occasionally.
Talk with your people about the horizon.
Ask staff, students, whānau and trustees:
What are we trying to achieve for our learners?
What does our vision ask of us in the way we teach and lead?
Are the changes currently occupying our attention helping us get there?
Where might we be in danger of losing sight of the destination?
Give people permission to keep looking up.
Perhaps this is the most important leadership task of all. In times of rapid change, people can become so absorbed in implementing what is immediately required that there is little time or permission to step back and ask whether it is taking the organisation in the right direction.

So, perhaps the challenge for school leaders right now isn’t simply to manage the changes coming at us. It is to keep our eyes on the horizon while doing so. Know what you’re being asked to do. Understand why it matters. Make the necessary adjustments. But continually ask: Is this taking us where we say we want to go? Because the purpose of leadership isn’t to keep everyone’s front wheel perfectly aligned. It’s to ensure that, together, we know where we’re heading.

Tags education purpose, strategic planning

An education for each

It’s not often I come across an education leader who is working in two different parts of the education system – but my guest in the latest episode of my series on Conversations on the Future of Education is one who does. For the past eight years he’s been Superintendent of the Eastern Hancock Schools District in Indiana , and for the past two years has also been CEO of the Indiana Micro-schools Collaborative, an initiative that he helped to found that is working across the state.

I first came to know Dr George Philhower eight years ago when I was working alongside a group of schools on a transformation project in North West Arkansas. George was also working alongside them as the project researcher, and was able to travel to New Zealand with many of the leaders from these schools when I hosted them on a tour of schools here. Since then we’ve kept in touch and I’ve had the privilege of visiting him in Indiana and spending time in the schools he’s responsible for, observing first hand the impact of his leadership approach and the things he shares in this podcast.

The overarching theme in our conversation focused on the need to shift from schools designed for the system to schools designed for the learner. As George said of his own approach as a district superintendent, he’s committed to ensuring “each kid gets to go to a school that feels like it was designed just for them.” The most provocative idea in the podcast came when George highlighted to the difference between a focus on ‘each‘ versus the focus on ‘all‘. We often talk about all learners succeeding, all learners achieving, all students getting the same opportunities. But perhaps the language of each forces us to confront individual experience, identity, strengths, interests, aspirations and needs.

George explained the ‘four promises’ that underpin the work of his teachers in the Eastern Hancock schools as an illustration of this principle. These are; Joy, Connection, Growth and Academic proficiency – you can hear him explain more of these in the podcast, but I was particularly interested in the first of these and his explanation of what that looks and feels like in the daily life of teachers and students at EH schools. I’ve actually had the opportunity to observe this first hand, so can vouch for what he’s discussing here. Put simply, George explained the focus on joy as focusing on providing students (and staff) with the emotional experiences that help anchor memory – giving this more depth than simply saying “learning should be fun.” When I challenged him on this he explicitly rejected the idea that joy means “play way” without learning. Joy becomes an anchor for memorable learning, while growth and academic proficiency provide the necessary rigour.

I was also very encouraged by his explanation of how he and his team are active in involving parents and the community in what happens at EHS. His CAFÉ strategy deliberately brings community partners into the educational work. The reason isn’t merely engagement with parents or community goodwill: it’s because the application and meaning of much of what students learn exists beyond the classroom. This is something I’m personally passionate about and have been helping a number of schools to work on in recent years as part of their strategic planning. For me it’s important that instead of simply asking “how can we involve the community more?’, we consider; “What happens when we stop thinking of community as something schools engage with and start thinking of community as part of where learning happens?“

When it came to discussing his involvement with the Indiana Micro-schools network, I was interested to understand his motivation for starting this up – and whether he saw this as something that could eventually replace the traditional state school. George acknowledged the tension between improving today’s schools and creating radically different ones. His conclusion isn’t “tear down the existing system.” Instead, he talks about the possibility of operating schools within schools – creating new models within existing structures and allowing them to develop and spread. His advice is “don’t try to transform the whole system at once. Create somewhere in the system where the future can be rehearsed.“

One of the issues with our current system that George raised is how excessive reliance on standardised measures, prescribed materials and predictable processes can actually de-professionalise teaching. He pointed to the numbers of good teachers who are leaving the profession in the US as an indicator of this. By contrast, the teachers in his micro-school model need to:

know learners deeply
assess where they are
determine what they need next
design learning experiences
monitor progress
adapt continually.

In other words, professional judgement comes back to the centre of teaching. This is certainly something that was reinforced for me in my own teacher training and during my time as a teacher and teacher educator, however, I agree with George, that the whole issue of teacher professional judgement appears to be under attack in the current education mileu.

As I reflect on this post I wonder if perhaps the future of schooling isn’t about finding a better version of the system we have, but creating the conditions for something more responsive to emerge – something that puts learners at the centre, restores teaching as a deeply professional endeavour, and allows different models to develop, learn and spread. That means improving the schools we have while simultaneously creating the schools we might need. And, above all, it means shifting our ambition from designing education for all to designing it for each. “All” is a system aspiration. “Each” is a human commitment.

Why not listen to the conversation yourself and hear more of what George has to say:

Access all of the episodes here

References

Futuremakers Newsletter

1. Vision, beliefs and values as the organising framework

2. Partnership and collective ownership

3. Visionary and courageous leadership

4. The learner at the centre

5. Emotional culture alongside academic rigour

6. Te Tiriti, culture and belonging

7. Working within – and sometimes against – system pressures

Conclusion

Would you like to learn more?

Thank you for your response. ✨

Futuremakers Newsletter

Futuremakers Newsletter

The response that’s closest to the classroom

The evidence is early, and the reactions are mixed

The conversation that’s missing

What I’m asking of us

Something to think about

Further Reading:

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What others are building

Where New Zealand sits

Why this matters to us

Something to think about

Further Reading:

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What’s actually happened

Two kinds of risk, and a motive problem

A method rather than a verdict

The response I’m suggesting we take

Something to think about

Further reading:

Futuremakers Newsletter

Futuremakers Newsletter

Three ‘isms’ shaping our society

The current state

What a radical departure might look like

Bringing these ideas together

At a glance

Final thought

A call to action

Futuremakers Newsletter

Applying this to leadership

Compliance with Direction

The purpose of vision

Back to purpose

What can you do?

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What others say

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