School today is a very different place to my recollection of the 60s and 70s where some-one like me who cant draw or paint could top art because we could learn all the theory off by heart.
Today school is an exciting place where young people are invited to solve tomorrow’s problems today. Schools do this by using the project based learning model and teachers ask their students BIG QUESTIONS
Big Questions are those that inspire students to explore all possibilities – there should be no easy answer!
Currently watching our political leaders make tough decisions to lock us all down because we stuggle as a cohort to do the right thing has me asking the big question
How do we make doing the right thing the social norm?
At Picture You in Agriculture we collect alot of data that helps us inform the way we design and deliver our school programs, helps teachers understand how they can be support their students and inform everyone what young Australians think about, talk about, care about, what they want to learn and how they want to learn and what inspires them to take action..
I dipped into our ten years of data to help me answer the big question I have posed this morning. The question we ask students that gives the widest diversity of answers year in year out is this one
Which of these environmental activities do you already do?
Please click the boxes for the ones you do now either at school or at home.
There are two answers under the HOME column that are consistently the same year in year out and a big diversity between schools under the SCHOOL column.
As you can see good habits learnt at home and at school are not automatically transferable. Our big question to the students this year will involve several HOW and WHAT questions around this conundrum, asking them about the barriers they face and what they see are the opportunities to make good behavoirs learnt at home and at school the social norm
For adults I imagine the first question might be. How do we define THE RIGHT THING There is certainly no shortage of diverse opionions in this space
A very good reason indeed I would think we should all be celebrating an education system committed to the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians defined as:
- Australian schooling promotes equity and excellence, and
- All young Australians become successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens.
