In March, Kevin Bartlett, one of the most experienced professionals in international education, paid a four-day visit to Romania and Avenor College. His visit came in the context of Avenor College having achieved Cambridge International Examinations accreditation and joining the European Council of International Schools (ECIS).
Besides training sessions with Avenor teachers and school management, Mr. Bartlett led a workshop that included all the stakeholders involved in the educational process: children, teachers, school management and parents.
Mr. Bartlett has 40 years professional experience, including over 15 years spent as Director of the International School of Brussels (ISB). Under his leadership, IS Brussels was heralded as a ‘School of the Future’, an accolade only given to only five schools in the world and for his exceptional qualities as an educational leader, he was named ‘Superintendent of the Year’ in 2014. Currently, Mr. Bartlett focuses exclusively on sharing the experience and expertise he has accumulated over time through the organisation which he founded – Common Ground Collaborative.
Kevin Bartlett considers that the world has become more divided and more dangerous and that education is the best antidote against fear, hatred, ignorance, and extremism. His answers below will help you understand how Kevin views education and why he considers it vital in creating a learning community around a school:
What are the most important lessons that you have learned during your 40 years of experience as a teacher?
They’re the simple ones. Learn your own craft. Build a relationship with the students, care about them. Build a learning culture and a team spirit in the classroom. Include learning itself as a focal point of the continuous conversation. Establish clear purposes. Give honest, constructive feedback. Focus on strengths. Learn the strategies that work best, practice those. Enjoy it!
Why is the principle of simplicity so important to you regarding schools?
Schools are notoriously complicated organisations. In the absence of a simpler way of seeing things it’s so easy to lose the plot, to go chasing after every new initiative, run out of energy, and lose the focus on learning. Simplicity enables us to see what is the right thing to do and helps us to do things right.
What is learning? How would you define it?
There is really no point in defining learning unless we do so in a way that is simple, memorable and practical, so that the definition actually drives teaching and assessment practice. For these reasons we developed our simple definition of learning with its three interacting strands: conceptual learning, competency learning and character learning.
Which are the most important learning principles to you?
The first one is to have learning principles! Others include the principles that:
- To be effective and efficient in making learning happen we need to share a common language for learning
- People can learn how to learn
- Learning happens best in rich, relevant contexts
- Real learning involves transfer into different situations
According to The Common Ground Collaborative (CGC) global network, conceptual learning, competency learning, and character learning interact as we learn. How do these three methods actually interact during the learning process? Could you provide examples?
We have to remember that we are talking about what happens in the human brain, a highly complex organ with countless connections. Any definitions of learning are necessarily simplifications of that complexity. Nevertheless, the definitions we use are very useful.
At any given time all three kinds of learning may be in play, but one is likely to be dominant. For example, when a child is practising the violin s/he is predominantly building a competence, but is also learning the character trait of perseverance. When a child is preparing a debate on a complex topic, s/he is developing a conceptual understanding of the key issues, but is also learning the competence of skillful debating.
Why is it necessary to create a learning community around a common objective? In our case, Avenor College.
Whether or not it’s necessary depends on how good the school wants to be. It’s pretty straightforward to have a transactional relationship with your community. Parents pay fees, kids go to school, the school provides an education. Job done. Good enough.
However, for me, good enough is never good enough. I like to work with schools that have a transformational relationship with their community. In schools like this there is a shared vision that all learning stakeholders support. Everyone shares a common language for talking about learning. Everyone knows how to support the child’s learning in the best ways. Everyone learns. Organisations like this transform lives. They become more than a school. They become a learning community.
Why is it important for students, teachers, parents and for the school management to fully understand that each of them has a vital role in the educational process?
Schools are connected organisations, living ecosystems. In an ecosystem, actions in one part of the system always have an impact elsewhere in the system. Everything we all do has some impact on the success of the school and the children in it. Understanding how learning works, giving our children support and feedback, supporting each other’s work, being positive and constructive, assuming good intent of each other… these things create a positive culture in which learning can flourish.
Why do you think it is essential for every educational stakeholder to know how to learn?
Unless we learn how to learn, we can never fully reach our potential. As knowledge grows exponentially, we can never get by with just ‘remembering’. We need the tools to process new information, coming at us from different sources, through different media and we need to be able to make use of it for different purposes.
Obviously, it’s most important that the students know how to learn and that teachers help them to learn that. Then it’s critical that teachers understand the learning process, not just for the students but for themselves. Teaching is a very complex profession and involves a lifetime of professional learning. When parents understand how learning works, they are better placed to understand and support the work of the students… teachers and parents can be lifelong learners too, why wouldn’t they be?
What should every stakeholder do in order to improve the educational environment?
They should do those things that support any successful social environment: assume good intent and act with positive intent themselves; work hard; communicate honestly; collaborate on those projects that are clearly in the interests of the children and the school.
What are those skills that children should learn in school in order to be great, have remarkable results in life, and become independent adults?
They need to learn a range of things, not only skills. These include developing a personal moral compass that will guide them in making the right decision when faced with complex dilemmas. In terms of skills, or competencies, there are plenty, including the ’old basics’ of high levels of literacy and mathematical reasoning, and the ’new basics’ of adaptability, innovation, critical thinking, collaborative problem-solving and technological proficiency.
You said, ‘Education is the best shot we have’. Is education becoming more important than it used to be or the main objective on today’s educational agenda is actually the way education is or should be done?
I’m sitting writing these responses in Brussels, where, over the few days since we returned from Bucharest, there have been multiple murders of innocent people by terrorist extremists. The world is becoming increasingly divided and dangerous. I truly believe that education is the best antidote to the fear, hatred, ignorance and extremism that fuel these various `movements’. People who can think, evaluate information, identify bias and who have developed integrity, empathy and other aspects of good ’character’ are less likely to be led into extremism and mindless violence.
What impressed you the most during your visit at Avenor College?
A number of things: the clarity of vision, the high aspirations, the way the students talk about their school, the commitment of the faculty, the interest parents take in learning, but, perhaps, the most impressive thing is the positive, supportive culture. People really care about the school and about each other. With that kind of spirit, the sky’s the limit!
