Student Focused Futures

As Mr T in the A Team used to say ,"I love it when a plan comes together!" What a feeling when something that you have been working on and planning for a long time comes to a successful conclusion! This is what a group of Endeavour staff experienced last week. For the last three and a half years our College, along with a series of other independent schools, has been involved in the Student Agency A-Lab project run by AISSA. The project involved setting a hypothesis based on increasing in students a sense of agency. Our hypothesis was 'that students who can reflect on and articulate their capabilities have a greater sense of agency'. To you this project looked like a

re-structured Care Group Connection night and updated Care Group reports. To students this looked like workshops on agency (Year 7 and student leaders), Year 7 student-led Learning Conversations building to all students reflecting on and setting goals for the development of their independence, interdependence and ability to take collective action then presenting this at Care Group Connection, and an increased focus on where and how students can develop their own agency including the playground project and Options Infinity time. To teachers it looked like supporting and upskilling students in the language of agency, professional learning on student agency and its absolute centrality in developing in students the three principles of the Vision for Learners, which in turn is designed to develop in students the characteristics needed for them to thrive in a world that will require not just knowledge but a heightened need to know how to apply knowledge and skills to a variety of developing situations.

While the Student Agency project was driven by a small team, all staff, students and parents/ caregivers have been involved at some point. You have all been a part of the trialing, feedback, improving and trialing again phases and as you have been getting used to doing things a new way unbeknown to you, the world of education has been watching.

This work has been ground breaking. Educational thinkers have been taking an interest in the progress of the entire project. The work that we, alongside other schools have been doing, has been based in current educational research and supported by international thought leader Charles Leadbeater with at various times, Michael Bunce, Jerome Brunner and Louka Parry. Part of our involvement has been the sharing of our work with other schools and also more globally. Endeavour College's work forms part of Charles Leadbeater's academic paper, "Learning on Purpose: 10 Lessons in placing agency at the heart of schools", a podcast series as part of the Learning Futures podcast and the A-Lab website and finally a symposium showcase with all schools involved in the project.

While the project itself has concluded, the work for all of us has just begun. How can we continue to develop agency in students to better prepare them for a thriving future? The role we all play in Care Group Connection is critical in this. Valuing times when students share their reflections on their capabilities and then set goals for their ongoing development, forms the how of student future success.

Sandra Barry

Director of Learning

As we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:18

The Anchor

Issue 25.6 · 13 May 2022

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