lasting change January 2015 - January 2017 Space Unlimited Final Report
Space Unlimited Space Unlimited is a social enterprise and charity. Our work supports organisations to work in direct collaboration with young people in order to design and take action together. Our youthled enquiry process is a powerful catalyst for new insights and more collaborative leadership. We are passionate about building resilience – in individuals, within groups and across wider communities. In 2015, with the support of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, we embarked on a new programme, building on several years of experience, to engage young people as active partners in the development of their ‘work-related’ learning experiences.
Aims of the Working Well Programme The high level aims of the work were to improve the educational outcomes and life chances of young people, in particular those most at risk of failing to achieve and progress in the school setting, by: •
Developing young people’s capacity and awareness of themselves as resourceful, resilient, self-directed learners, equipped to adapt to an uncertain future.
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Building young people’s confidence and skills to prepare themselves for their own transition into the world of work.
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Encouraging a shift in the way that educators, employers, parents and others work with young people – and with one another – to support higher levels of engagement, achievement and attainment, both in and beyond the school setting.
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Co-designing and testing new processes with programme participants to support lasting systemic change.
Lasting Change Learning Community – Scope and Objectives Alongside the delivery of the programme in schools, we set out to create a learning community that engaged young people and educators in a dialogue about Lasting Change. In particular, we wanted to build on learning from our earlier ‘Changing Schools Together programme’ to better understand how we (young people, adults and Space Unlimited) can support lasting change at a whole-school and wider system level that more effectively enables young people to be active partners in the development of their learning experiences. 12 teachers and around 40 pupils from 6 schools participated in the Lasting Change forum over 9 month period, working towards a sustainable model for student-led change in schools 2
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Lasting Change Activities and Events over the course of the programme What?
Year 1
March 2016
May 2016
Sept 2016
Dec 2016
Work with
Lasting
Collaborative
Lasting
Lasting Change
Changing
Change Forum
Conversation
Change Forum
Forum 3
Together
1
2
schools Who?
3 schools from the original programme: 48 young people and 10 teachers
5 schools represented – 17 young people and 6 teachers
Young people from Early Experiences And Confident Transitions plus invited guests: Educators / Youth Service Providers, Policy makers
4 schools represented – 14 young people and 5 teachers
3 schools represented – 18 young people and 6 teachers
Headline Outcomes from Lasting Change
• All of the young people involved in the Lasting Change forum said they valued the opportunity to discuss the prospects, challenges and dilemmas of enabling change in schools through youth-led enquiry. • All participating teachers valued the rare opportunity to work with colleagues and young people from other schools to reflect on learning – for support and reassurance that ‘we’re all in the same boat’. • Whilst young people and teachers found the process of collaborative change-making difficult and frustrating at times, it was also a powerful developmental experience. • There is clearly a desire amongst young people and teachers to sustain youth-led approaches.
All have plans to take the work forward, but these are tempered by an
awareness of the very real challenges (logistical and cultural) associated with embedding this way of working.
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The Vision: Engaging Young People As Genuine Partners in their Learning Experience Young people can clearly articulate their vision for lasting change – they can say what it would look and feel like in schools if young people were genuinely engaged as partners in their learning experience in school using an enquiry based approach: Benefits to young people
Benefits for school community
Pupils get input on things before the teachers have already decided what the change is to be
School will have pupils with more pride
Pupils getting more independence and opportunity to think about options that would help make school better
Teachers will better understand the pupil’s mindset Subjects will have better topics School would feel more fun and enjoyable
Pupils would feel like their opinions are being heard
Teachers will get more ideas
Pupils would feel they have a say in what the school does
Other pupils and teachers will want to get involved
Pupils would have the lead Pupils know and what other pupils think and what is popular Group decisions are better than 1 dictator The teachers talk about the importance of them learning to ‘step-back’ and their delight at what is possible when they can do this and give the young people the space: “…all young people have really good ideas if you just give them the opportunity to explore those ideas and give them the space, to express them. Even pupils that you maybe think, have got nothing to contribute, they all have something, they’ll have an idea…so just to actually give them that space, to allow them to voice it.” “I think that the moment that will stick with me for a long time, is just seeing the children presenting their ideas to the SMT during the Space Unlimited visit.”
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Barriers and Enablers of Sustainable Change Early in the discussion young people and teachers identified the following enablers and barriers to the ‘ripple effect’ of change: Perceived enablers
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Shared sense of purpose – young people and teachers feeling the work was important.
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Change in attitude to own role (teachers and young people).
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Young people noticing teachers
Perceived barriers
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things.
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from young people without relaying this back to young people - with the
Teachers trusting young people –
end result that young people feel
not needing to know the end try something new.
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disconnected from changes.
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Teachers struggling to find time to support logistics, then feeling like they
More frequent dialogue between
are letting young people down – which
young people/ teachers / SLT –
over time results in them feeling bad
made it easier to build relationships
about the process (and eventually
and say what they thought – and
undermines sense of shared purpose
helped to demonstrate that people ‘felt the same about things’.
Poor communication – teachers / SLT making changes based on feedback
‘interested’ way.
outcome to give them permission to
Frustration when things take longer / don’t work first time round.
getting involved in a different,
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Negative feedback when trying new
and confidence at the outset).
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Turnover of teachers.
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Changing priorities of young people – particularly national exams in the senior phase.
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No established structure for learner voice in school.
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Difficulties in devolving leadership responsibilities beyond the initial enquiry group – over reliance on a few key people.
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The forum created space and time for more in-depth discussion about school culture and the blocks that inhibit or halt change in schools. The power dynamics of teacher-pupil relationships and relationships between older and younger pupils were recognised as a source of tension: “Some teachers encourage you more than others.” “S1 should have a say because they are going to be there longer.” “There’s a pecking order – older people get more say.” Similarly, young people did not always feel valued or listened to, and this saps their confidence and undermines their own motivation: “Some Head Teachers weren’t really listening to what we had to say (they didn’t understand).” “There are people with good ideas out there, but they don’t feel confident or in the environment to share them.” “People would rather have a conversation than listen to you.” “SMT intervened and squashed the plan that came from the young people.” “All it takes is one conversation where your ideas get heard and it feels better.” Teachers talked about the difficulty of ‘passing on’ project work to colleagues, perhaps due to pressures of time and a reluctance to invest in projects that are ‘owned’ by others. Young people and teachers identified enablers of student-led change as: good planning, teamwork, persistence and staying true to the principles of youth-led enquiry: “Our ideas have started to happen and without the teamwork we wouldn’t have planned it as well as we did.” “This stuff helped me to realise that if you stay with something and you are brave and committed it will benefit you in the long run.” “You don’t get the buy-in from the young people unless the ideas come from them…that’s what makes them proactive”
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Teachers and young people want to build on what they have learned The young people were both motivated and anxious about making the impact of their work go further in their school.
“I seen real things come out of it. We created a plan and we actually landed something.” “I felt privileged. People wanted our ideas…they were listened to…worth something.” “We feel really motivated about it and feel it will work and be carried on in the future.” “…motivated because we saw the impact it had on the first years. Being a leader, we had a drive to complete and realise our ideas.” “As a team, we are motivated, but the challenge would be convincing others.” “The whole experience helped me learn that it’s hard to get things done and I thought it would have been easy. ” The young people expressed a sense of the justice in talking about the importance of enabling more young people to be able to experience something similar for themselves. They can see the scope for good ideas to emerge, for pupils to develop different skills from those they learn in the classroom and the prospect that school itself might be transformed by this approach: “I have learned so many skills and others should get the same opportunity I got.” “Skills like the ones I’ve learned aren’t practised enough in my school (I think).” “It’s important to listen to young people’s ideas because they could be just as good or better.” “Pupils need more opportunity to influence their learning.” “Our school could be completely different if the pupil’s ideas are took into consideration.” “This makes ‘Pupil Voice’ real.” “I would like to help pass on what we have learned to others and see others getting the chance that we did every year.” “Young people have ideas and although they might be different from what the adults think they can be just as good. Just ask them.” Teachers experience the process as developmental too: “I think for me it’s about taking a step back and just giving the students the opportunity to develop their leadership and again, building the capacity, they have the chance to fulfil,
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to empower them to have the opportunity to take charge of their own learning. I think as a teacher, maybe I don’t do that enough. It’s just taking that challenge on and just hopefully making sure we empower the kids as much as we can.” “Obviously, everybody sees the benefits of the programme.
There’s nothing more
satisfying than seeing the kids getting involved and buying into ideas, and everyone going in the same direction. It’s so much easier for the kids to buy into ideas that they’ve been part of.”
Teachers in particular express concern about the sustainability of the approach
Positive interest in sustaining youth-led approaches is tempered by an awareness (particularly from teachers) of the real challenges of taking this forward in schools without the support of Space Unlimited. This means that the desire to take the approach forward may not necessarily translate into clear structures in the school through which youth-led enquiry may continue. “[The] sheer volume of time that SU has invested with the pupils. You might well say it’s a partnership with the schools, but I could never have done it without SU starting the whole process off. So, without SU being involved, I don’t know whether I’m pessimistic or realistic, but I can't see achieving what these guys have achieved, with other pupils, without the amount of time – the proper amount of time – being invested in it.”
(Teacher) “It does need more teachers involved...but I can’t see an easy way to do that.”
(Teacher) Whether it’s rooted in ‘pessimism or realism’, the teachers focus on the specific ideas that have already come from the process rather than on a sustainable process of enquiry with new groups of young people across the school community: “What they’ve done (the pupils) we can continue and they can continue to lead for 2 or 3 years – who knows? But to come up with the whole new concepts, that’s going to be a real challenge.” (Teacher)
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“I just think because of the nature of the project….we’ve kind of got our values now, so the young people coming into the school from now on will see those values, and it’s something we now have that we can build on.” (Teacher)
Conclusion
Young people participating in the Lasting Change forum have relished the opportunity to take on a leadership role - in their own school and collaboration with young people and teachers from other schools – to discuss the challenges and dilemmas of change-making in schools. The Lasting Change Forum has been a chance Space Unlimited to build on previous work in schools and an opportunity to affirm and enhance learning; frequently there is a recognition or reminder that both young people and teachers see the value of the enquiry process, share a desire for change in schools and have similar concerns about how to take the process further in each school. For the young people, it’s clear that power of the learning experience lies in the attention that is paid to personal sense-making and self reflection through the enquiry process. This allows the group to appraise and create opportunities for self-awareness and self-correction and encourages a sense of being partners in this experience. A consistent model is used throughout the programme and helps young people to recognise learning as a three-stage cycle. It begins with readiness and engaging with information until the task is understood by all of the individuals within the group. The next stage is simply participating in the task/activity. And the final part, which is emphasized as the most important, is to share and make present the behaviours, thoughts and attitudes that helped or hindered progress. In this way, young people build confidence to engage, and importantly also confidence to make sense of their own contribution and articulate that (sometimes as a first step to changing / moderating their behaviour in the next task): "I hadn't really thought about how I say stuff and how it might affect the group I am in" "When everyone shares what they thought it helps me to do the same" "It got easier to share what I thought" Young people have developed communication skills and greater confidence by working differently with other young people. They notice the difference in themselves and in others; changes which the teachers endorse. Their skills include being more comfortable in working
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alongside others, being more cooperative, persistent and patient. They have learned to listen to others, overcoming fears about conflict, arguments or other difficulties. They are much more aware of the value of letting others offer their ideas and have greater faith in what others can contribute. They can see that it’s not always easy or fun and that teamwork is both hard and better than working alone. Some clearly express the idea that it is through sharing ideas and working positively with others that those ideas can become real. Their work with wider groups of young people has delivered positive experiences for those wider groups and has enabled to develop and articulate skills they already have or have developed. Young people have greater knowledge of their own strengths, skills, interests and personal values, which has made them more curious about their futures, the options open to them and who and what might help them now. However, this latest phase of work, has reinforced the challenges of changing whole school culture so that young people have more opportunities to lead their own learning. Our work has enabled students and teachers to make real changes in their schools, but there are doubts that these changes are sustainable, or that the leadership opportunity that they have been afforded will be extended much more widely. There is also a distinction being made between a keen appetite to take forward the specific ideas and plans that the young people have already generated the continuation of the enquiry process itself. “I do think it will continue at our school without a doubt. In what shape or form, I’m not entirely sure, but I do think that their ideas that they’ve come up with …will continue. Whether we manage to pull off the enquiry process and changing how things are done in schools with regard to who’s involved in the decision-making process, I’ll not hold my breath, just as yet, but I’ll certainly make inroads into changing it.” (Teacher) However, young people themselves need no convincing: “I just don’t get why more of school can’t be like this, I mean, we learn about everything else – well, when we actually study – but not …you know…’us’.”(Young Person)
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Reg. Charity No: SCO37607
Reg. Company No: SC306061
with sincere thanks to our delivery partners
this project was funded by
space unlimited... it can change minds. Space Unlimited 42 Nithsdale Road Glasgow G41 2AN t: +44 (0) 141 424 1403 e: hello@spaceunlimited.org www.spaceunlimited.org