Our Organic Learning Cycle has been evolving since 2015. We attribute a lot of our thinking to our learning in Design Thinking. Significant staff changes and participation in system/government improvement projects led us to uncover tensions and ambiguities in our school-wide structures and processes that required critical discernment and creative thinking ‘outside the box’.

This became an opportunity to create a school research project and ‘shake up’ assumptions related to improving student achievement, increasing teacher capacity, the rigour of explicit teaching and its connection to inquiry learning, understanding authentic data, the depth of professional learning in action and the effectiveness of whole-school strategic planning and review. It allowed us to draw a line in the sand and establish our own organic framework to maintain the integrity and rigour of our school-wide learning agenda, whilst providing a filter for managing external expectations and processes that regularly attempt to dominate school agendas. The end result is an unambiguous language of learning for all members of the community with consistent structures and processes accessible to all learners. We believe this will bring us closer to actioning what Fullan refers to as ‘leading from the middle‘ and if done in collaboration with other schools sharing the same journey, we may become a collective driver for systemic cultural change and improvement.

As mentioned in a previous post, our Why is to help learners develop the capability to change the world, our How is keeping Self-Determined Learning as ‘the main thing’ and our What will allow it all to make sense. The Organic Learning Cycle is our What.

Overview of Organic Learning Cycle

This is about our sixth iteration of the cycle and it is still evolving. It appears rather complex so this post will attempt to broadly explain the critical components. In subsequent posts, each phase will be unpacked in greater detail.

The centre of the cycle outlines the 5 Key Phases learners go through during an Organic Learning Cycle: Explore, Connect, Create, Innovate and Impact. Student, teacher, leadership team, parent and whole school learning can be accommodated in the cycle.

Explore is the beginning of the learning cycle with many possible starting points depending on the relevance of authentic data available to the learners. The breadth of data can stem from assessments, learning intentions, problems or tensions uncovered through learning experiences, and personal or collective passions and interests. During the Explore Phase, learners move from ‘Unconscious Incompetence’ to ‘Conscious Incompetence’.

Connect is the second phase during which the learners connect the dots, synthesise their ideas and consolidate new learning (with guided practice). They connect the new with what they already knew and begin to move from ‘Conscious Incompetence’ to ‘Conscious Competence’.

During Create learners begin to think divergently to generate possible ideas to solve problems or experiment with newly learned skills or concepts, with support. It is critical during this phase for learners to receive effective critique in order to improve their ideas and refine their knowledge and skillset.

Innovate is when learners apply new learning. It is where new knowledge and skills really kick in and take shape, when a reader can apply their skills into becoming a writer, a mathematician can apply newly acquired problem-solving skills into authentic and meaningful situations. It is also where the composer, inventor or tinkerer can show off a prototype in order to receive valuable critique, to refine and improve it in order to impact upon the world around them. It is also where the explicit can become implicit.

Impact is where our learning cycle is more explicit compared to many others. It is always implied that new learning will make an impact, but how often does it hit the mark? How often is new learning really reflected upon and evidenced, in order to influence change for the better? How often is it compared against the baseline or initial data that informed and sparked this new learning in the first place?

This phase invites and encourages the learner to be proactive and dig even deeper and find a new area, skill or concept to learn about – something that the learner had not previously considered because they were still scratching at the surface level. It justifies and celebrates the ‘So What?’ in learning and why it was ever undertaken in the first place. This is where the cycle can begin again. It is reflective and celebratory and feeds into new learning.

Outlining the circumference of our Cycle are what we believe are the ‘drivers’ for Organic Learning. Many of these would be familiar to all educators. We see each driver equally critical to maintaining momentum and motivation in the learning process. It obviously depends on what new learning is being undertaken to the degree as to which they will be key influences. We acknowledge the importance of these and work to give time and resources to developing each in our self-determined learning community.