Envisioning Innovation in Education Stories
Betty's Story
Betty realized the value of identifying an inquiry focus to support innovation in education.
I have discovered that by having a focused inquiry, not rushing to find answers,
trying with an open mind, reflecting with an open heart,
listening to the voices of teachers and students, and making adjustments step by step,
many principles and strategies gradually become clearer.
This story illustrates
how you can approach innovation with/by…
Yourself
Set an inquiry focus to investigate and promote innovation
Colleagues
Leverage colleagues as resources and critical friends
Students
Empower students through voice and choice
Embrace the mindset of “teachers are also learners”
About this EIE Story
This is the story of Betty Cheng, Vice Principal from Chan Sui Ki (La Salle) College (formerly at HKCCCU Logos Academy (Logos)). Her story is about setting an inquiry focus to innovate successfully with a clear goal and vision.
Key Highlights of this Story
Logos promotes self-directed learning with an aim to cultivate students into lifelong learners. During her EIE journey, aligning with the school’s emphasis on promoting self-directed learning, she identified her Inquiry Focus Question (IFQ) as “How to design lessons that enhance student autonomy and curiosity”.
Key learnings from EIE:
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Define and find consensus for inquiry focus
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Pursue personal interests under a broader inquiry
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See Teachers as inquirers and reflective thinkers
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Use inquiry focus to guide different teaching strategies
Betty’s Picture of Practice:
In a study group session, Betty and her former colleagues at Logos engaged in a “Making Meaning” activity. They attempted to redefine the school’s direction on promoting self-directed learning and reached a consensus on the essential elements needed to achieve this goal.
Betty encouraged students to raise curiosity questions towards the lesson topic. This approach created opportunities for students to express their wonders and enhanced their learning motivation. It also enabled teachers to better evaluate the level of understanding of students, surface their wonder and adjust teaching practices in response.
Betty created an authentic learning experience for students by bringing flowers to the classroom while teaching Chinese literature, “On the Love of the Lotus”. She also utilized a Thinking Routine “Part, Purpose, Complexities” to scaffold students’ thinking and make their thinking visible.
She also mentioned two key conditions to support innovation:
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Having an open mind and the courage, to transform different experiences into daily classroom practices
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Respecting the thinking of teachers and students, and encouraging their development of personal viewpoints
Frameworks, Concepts and Tools Learned from the EIE Experience
Surface a Wonder, Follow a Wonder
Surface a Wonder, Follow a Wonder strategy prompts students to look for things that are interesting, and then to go deeper with their wondering. Once wonders surface in the classroom, the strategy prompts educators to follow their students’ interests and let their students’ curiosity lead the way.
In Betty’s EIE experience, this strategy reminded her that asking curiousity questions should not solely originate from the teacher but should also be cultivated by the students themselves. Everyone’s curiosity can be different. According to her practice, it was effective to enhance students’ learning motivation by allowing them to follow their interests.
Teaching for Understanding (TfU) Framework
Developed by Project Zero researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Teaching for Understanding (TfU) framework invites educators to design meaningful learning experiences that prioritize students’ deep understanding over rote memorization. It asks four key questions:
Generative Topics:
Understanding Goals:
What topics are most important for my students to understand?
What about these topics needs to be understood?
Performances of Understanding:
What kinds of learning experiences will best help students develop and use understanding flexibly and thoughtfully?
Ongoing Assessment:
How will I (and my students) know how well and how much they have understood?
In Betty’s story, “Understanding Goals” has been integrated as one of the curious questions posed to students. This approach allowed students to focus on exploring their curiosity regarding the learning goals of the lesson topic.
Thinking Routines
A Thinking Routine is a set of questions or a brief sequence of steps used to scaffold and support student thinking. Project Zero (PZ) researchers designed Thinking Routines to deepen students’ thinking and to help make that thinking “visible”. Thinking Routines help to reveal students’ thinking to the teacher and also help students themselves notice and name particular “thinking moves”, making those moves more apparent and transferable to other contexts.
Thinking Routines used by Betty as mentioned in her story:
Making Meaning: This routine asks learners to explore an already familiar topic, concept, idea, or event through connection-making, wondering, building explanations, and synthesising to achieve deeper learning.
Parts, Purposes, Complexities: This routine sparks curiosity by encouraging students to observe carefully, looking beyond the obvious features of an object or system, to surface questions and identify areas for further inquiry.
Reflective Practice
Reflective Practice can be described as the process of probing our identities, and understanding how our identities influence how we view and understand our students, as well as how we view and understand the teaching and learning environments where we work.
3 simple questions, “Who am I?”, “Who are my students?” and “What is my context?”, were considered in Betty’s reflection in supporting students’ learning.
Other Resources
Are you interested in exploring more relevant frameworks, concepts and tools? Click here to learn more!