Designing Experiences

I've always enjoyed leading others to experience learning. Shared discovery brings me joy. In my youth, I shepherded groups on night walks in the tropical rainforests of North Queensland. Turning our torches off, and hearing the exclamations of wonder and awe as eyes adjusted and the luminescent fungi dominated the forest floor are vivid memories. This is also the joy I felt when a student experienced a learning breakthrough, or mastery over a process. Or when a sports team I had coached celebrated an applied, newly acquired skill in a game setting.

What is now explicit is that the feelings of reward and satisfaction I experience are entwined with someone else's learning – with another's individual ‘aha!’ I couldn't demand or plan for Eureka Moments, but I could endeavour to set the conditions for it to be more likely to happen. There may be specific elements ‘taught’ in an explicit teaching sense, but the ‘learning’ is deeply personal.

Where this manifests most obviously for me is in the design of study tours. Opening multiple windows for others to sense possibilities, building in experiences likely to surprise and delight, but allowing the journey to unfold in deeply personal ways, has become a primary focus in this and other aspects of my professional learning work.

It’s not only a skill set but a different mindset. It's not delivering content knowledge in the traditional ‘big jug, little jug’ scenario that is important but rather allowing individuals to make meaning of that knowledge for themselves. For example, it’s about building deliberate time for reflection into programs, perhaps through the use of learning circles for listening. Our First Nation's people know this as Dadirri.

We, as school leaders, must challenge ourselves about the notion that we can engineer particular outcomes through rational plans, control, direction or coercion. Education must be uncoupled from the theory of Taylorism used to improve efficiency on the factory production line a century and a half ago. Our best hope is a mindset that prompts us to create the conditions where new learning might allow solutions to emerge. Let’s approach this as a design challenge.

Next: Learning Generosity