Envisioning Innovation in Education Stories
Alison's Story
Alison encourages school leaders to….
… embrace the iterative inquiry process… and focus on the process, not the product.
Evolving with the future means that the only certainty is that there is no certainty.
I encourage educators to get comfortable with the unknown, reflect often and never be afraid of change.
This story illustrates
how you can approach innovation with…
Colleagues
Leverage colleagues as resources and critical friends
Embrace the mindset of “teachers are also learners”
About this EIE Story
This is the story of Alison Kutlaca, High School Co-Principal at The Harbour School (THS). Her story describes how she collaborated with colleagues to create a culturally driven internal professional development mechanism called DIVE (Developing Innovative and Versatile Educators), in order to cultivate and sustain the school’s unique culture and innovations with new and existing staff.
Key Highlights of this Story
THS is a through-train American curriculum international school and is recognized for its commitment to progressive education. It acknowledges children as complex individuals with differing needs, goals, personalities, and backgrounds with a customized approach to learning. THS embraces five core values:
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The Learning Experience Comes First
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Lifeworthy Learning
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Redefining Rigor
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Invested in the Individual
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Community Oriented
In the 2021/22 academic year, THS launched the DIVE Program as a result of their team’s explorations in the EIE project. The DIVE Program is an in-house teacher-training initiative which aims to promote the technical and cultural practices that resonate with THS’s unique context and specific needs.
Here is the continuous development of the DIVE Program:
2021/22 Academic Year
Implementation of the DIVE Program to share EIE ideas for flexible application of practices and tools in any subject.
2022/23 Academic Year
The EIE Teacher Cohort established an Innovation focus to support the progress of the DIVE Program. During study group meetings, they engaged in discussions, sharing practices, and exchanging ideas and actions related to the program.
Innovation Focus:
How do we strengthen our school’s culture of deeper learning, student agency and sharing?
2023/24 Academic Year
DIVE continues to promote school priorities. THS will explore Project Zero’s Cultures of Thinking over a multiyear period through the DIVE program, and teachers will engage in study groups to learn and explore with their peers.
In this story, Alison has highlighted two elements that DIVE differ from traditional professional development,
Culturally-driven
Learner-centric
Frameworks, Concepts and Tools Learned from the EIE Experience
Inquiry Cycle
To facilitate innovation projects, EIE participants were encouraged to engage in the Try-Share-Revise inquiry cycle:
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Try: Facilitate learning experiences to support their inquiry.
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Share: Examine documentation generated from the learning experiences with a small group of colleagues interested in inquiry-driven innovation. What did the experience look like? What might the teacher and students have learned through the experiences?
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Revise: Reflect on how the experiences you facilitated have informed your inquiry, and what you would like to do next to continue your inquiry.
To learn more about the process, read the Inquiry Cycle Guiding Questions here.
Alison’s story highlights the usefulness of this cycle in promoting innovation at THS. Creating time and space enabled opportunities to experiment, reflect, adjust, and reimagine the DIVE program.
On the left is a Vision Board prepared by Alison during the EIE experience. This board acts as a visual tool for sharing her exploration of the DIVE program with her school colleagues in in-school study groups and with peers from other schools during learning community events. It documents her trials related to her inquiry and innovation focus, facilitates the sharing and discussions, and helps gather feedback to revise her exploration.
Source: Vision Board prepared by Alison during the EIE experience
Re-directing Authority
Re-directing Authority involves shifting the role of educators as sole knowledge holders and empowering students and other community members. It encourages students and community members to actively use their individual and collective agency to enhance learning.
For THS’s DIVE Program, it is designed to be learner-centric. Instead of asking external experts and school leaders to take the lead in hosting the session, it redirects the authority to participating teachers, encouraging them to share teaching practices and gain inspiration from peers. The approach emphasizes the contributions of participants and the expertise of individuals.
Agency by Design Framework
The Agency by Design (AbD) Framework for maker-centered learning focuses on cultivating a sensitivity to design, and a capacity to shape one’s world through building, tinkering, re/designing, and hacking.
In the context of Alison’s story, the AbD framework inspired her to introduce experiential professional learning experiences in DIVE session for her colleagues. This approach allows participating teachers to not only try out the tools and adapt them for their classrooms but also enables them to develop a deeper understanding of the systems that support their teaching philosophy and values.
Other Resources
Are you interested in exploring more relevant frameworks, concepts and tools? Click here to learn more!