It is often hard to simply describe the elements that underpin Global Spirit Ed’s work. That is because it’s about supporting transformational change and as such our work  needs to be  holistic and contextualised to the school, or country we are working with. But behind it is a philosophy of belief that all young people can achieve more than they can imagine. And that goes for schools as well.

Although our work is infused with words  such as ‘enquiry-based learning’, ‘student agency’, ‘trauma informed practice’ and ‘wellbeing’, this should not be mistaken as being over liberal, or permissive. We see the process of teaching for great learning as being researched consistent  practice set in the context of authentic relationships.

Schools can work with us at a range of levels, but it is only when you pull together all the jigsaw pieces that the maximum benefit is achieved. We want to help you find an holistic transformative strategy for improvement personalised for your school.

There are four strands to this work. Firstly, we believe in the need for personalisation and building self-regulated young people who have the agency to shape learning and the world around them. In fact, UNESCO describe personalisation as an essential human right.

Secondly, this work is about achievement for all. Pasi Sahlberg the great Finnish education architect believes systems only achieve excellence though equity. And many years ago, Edmonds reminded us that we know enough about how to teach, that all young people can achieve.

Thirdly, if we are transforming our work especially in a high accountability system, then we need to ensure that all our learning sessions are effective. A school cannot be any better than  the quality of its teaching. Except our approach is different. It uses instructional rounds to engage all staff in self-evaluation and being part of the solution not the problem.

Finally, we need to ensure leadership throughout the school has an instructional rather than just a transactional focus. We are committed to supporting our leaders through the collaborative nature of our network. Theirs is a tough job, and we need to care for their personal and professional  efficacy. So, this is the jigsaw as of today! We live in a rapidly changing chaotic world and need to be ready for the next challenge.

Personalisation and Agency

The OECD built a  learning framework for 2030 and flagged up agency as a critical skill for us to build in our young people.  In their paper they wrote:

‘To navigate through such uncertainty, students will need to develop curiosity, imagination, resilience, and self-regulation; they will need to respect and appreciate the ideas, perspectives, and values of others; and they will need to cope with failure and rejection, and to move forward in the face of adversity. Their motivation will be more than getting a good job and a high income; they will also need to care about the well-being of their friends and families, their communities, and the planet. Education can equip learners with agency and a sense of purpose, and the competencies they need, to shape their own lives and contribute to the lives of others ‘

In his book ‘Learning for Uncertainty’ Prof. Yong Zhao describes a very different environment for work with people with portfolio careers, working in flat and virtual organisations and in other cases being part of the ‘gig’ economy. If our future citizens are to be successful, they need to be able to self-motivate and shape the world around them. Curiosity and creativity will be to the fore. Our systems  that try to fit every child into a fixed curriculum designed for an industrial revolution age, have to be transformed to being able to create personalised offers to meet the needs of each individual student.

We recognise these four elements to the creation of a self-regulated student.

For the  moment we will postpone a discussion about the creation of powerful knowledge (the bottom left quadrant and recognise the other three quadrants.). Schools working with us can start to use a range of our tools, strategies, and resources. The jigsaw overleaf is from the top right quarter ; schools will start to build personalisation in a range of places. But unless they create a transparent curriculum and assessment , students will have to rely on the teacher rather than taking ownership. Coaching is a great way to build executive functioning and metacognition, but  has to be informed by progress data, and opportunities for choice and individual work plus a clear set of long term and short-term goals.

As we have developed this work, we have created Mini minds and Mega minds with our partner Mindspan. These develop metacognitive options for students but also bring that positive psychology focus. Many young people have a voice of pessimism ‘in their ear’ and do not approach challenges with a solution focus.    These programmes help develop that more embedded growth mindset. And finally our partnership with ‘Alltogether’ and Learning Everywhere bring expertise in curriculum and subject design and careers guidance options linked to our goal setting.

Great Teaching and Learning

Returning to the bottom left quadrant of the self-regulation diagram above, it is essential that students develop deep knowledge and understanding and as such teachers need to deploy a wide  repertoire of skills. You will find some of this repertoire in every school, but the great challenge is that from classroom to classroom  this practice is inconsistent and variable, and sadly not embedded in planning and routine instruction.

We believe  in appreciative enquiry where we identify what is going well in a school and then embed it across the school. We use a process of instructional rounds to identify theories of action already present in school. These might be some of the teaching theories you find from the observations.

This becomes starting point for  helping teachers improve practice. It is however only the first stage, and we help schools define the practice in detail and then coach one another to improvement. The next part of the jigsaw shows where schools start and where they need to go.

We are scientifically identifying known successful teaching strategies, creating a rubric that defines professional growth and them articulating that model of teaching. For instance, there are many ways to improve the impact of collaborative strategies from  ‘Think, Pair, Share’ to ‘Socratic Seminars’ to ‘Jigsaw Activities’. The aim is to build a playbook of successful approaches for teachers.

As teachers coach one another, they will reflect on their success, and this will create opportunities for action research. Global Spirit Ed along with the University are committed to capturing this learning and building up more collaborative research to inform and enhance the wider system. In our case our partnership with the International Association of Laboratory Schools (IALS) and the University of Sunderland gives us the scope to widen the reach of teachers work. This mirrors the earlier work of Lawrence Stenhouse who in 1975 wrote this about teacher classroom researchers.

‘…that each classroom should not be an island. Teachers….need to communicate with one another. They should report their work.’

Our aim is that all teachers we work with rediscover their professionalism and self-worth.

Instructional Leadership

The third element of our mission is to support  and strengthen instructional and transformational leadership in schools. Global Spirit Ed is committed to building capacity, so any development is sustained. Instrumentally this means making sure there is a school champion for personalised  learning and a coaching coordinator each school and that we can support them to develop and  lead off any initiative in their school.

And as a collaborative organisation we regularly bring heads together to share practice and their current challenges and we ‘speed date’ expertise to help in other settings. We facilitate study visits and internships nationally and internationally. And every year we hold one day regional conferences , an annual national conference and bring vlogs and  blogs for schools from core staff and visiting professors and experts.

In addition, we have created an instructional leadership programme which carries 60 master credits and can be developed with Sunderland into a full masters. This enables teachers and leaders to use their current change agenda to create a validated and researched portfolio of impact.

Equity and Inclusion

Finally, we are committed to impacting on all young people; our strategies and approaches can be personalised to high achieving students and those who are under resourced.  In particular we have developed a range of strategies and tools with partners  to help schools engage those less motivated or challenged by circumstance and diversity. We start with understanding that the work of building a repertoire of great teaching skills, can also be defined as quality first teaching.

Stenhouse was very clear that teaching is an art and every day teachers adapt their approach and strategies to the students sitting in front of them. Our goal setting and coaching strategies demands that all students are known . Working with partners like Nurture International we can drill down to micro levels of child development so we can better engage and enhance progress.

This further diagram illustrates our equity strategy.

How  we work.

As mentioned above we prefer to work as partners in an individual school or Trust’s journey. We will own  the goals you set yourselves and provide as much support as we can to help achieve that.

We prefer to have an agreement that sets our commitment and expectations with a specific service level agreement. However, we will work on a single consultancy basis on individual projects. We will also create a school improvement team to help organisations make a significant and holistic change and improvement strategy. We will always personalise our approach to your context.

We hold our values close:

  1. We are all different and therefore  we need to  allow them to personalise their learning  experience and  let them follow their passions and find their bespoke way through their learning journey

2.We want all our children to have the best outcomes and need  to challenge them to have high expectations and set clear goals, so they achieve more than they thought possible

3. We have to  find ways to break down learning, so it is visible to young people, giving them  a chance to contribute and demonstrate their mastery in a range of ways.

4. We need to enable young people to be self-regulated so they can shape their world rather than be shaped by it.

5. We are committed to designing and facilitating change which addresses equity and helps create a more just and fair system for young people

6. We want to enable young people to be thinking responsible global citizens  ensuring their learning is deep and relevant, broad, and balanced, and human-centred , helping them   experience different cultures, and engage with other learners around the world.