We believe the key to eradicating ambiguity in school-wide learning is to align the learning process for all stakeholders. In our community, this is achieved through the Organic Learning Cycle. The cycle has been developed so that it can be utilised for every aspect of learning in the school whether you are a student, teacher, parent or leader. Our aim is to refine it to the point where the cycle could be used even for systemic learning (as self-determined learners we believe we can change the world).

Currently, the Organic Learning Cycle is utilised for the development and implementation of learning programs across the school (for students and parents), creating a personalised professional learning plan for teachers and leaders and for facilitating our engagement in system processes (formal reviews and contract renewals). If Organic Learning is THE learning process used across the school, then regardless of age, all members within the community will not only speak the same language but also share the same understanding of the learning process.

To support aligning the learning process across the school, we created an Organic Learning Rubric (below). The Triangular Mosaic (symbols) and key phases are the same as the Organic Learning Cycle and are intended to be made visible in all learning spaces in the community. In that way, learners can identify the learning phase by the symbol as well as the term.

This rubric is a prototype and still a work in progress, and will continue to be critiqued and refined by users over time. It is visible in the Bunker Room, in teachers’ programs and in classrooms, which creates alignment between teacher learning space and student learning space and begins to make learning unambiguous, even for six and seven-year-old learners.

In this image from a Year 1/2 Class, the teacher and her students have started recording their thinking (making it visible), in preparation for their learning. The students are using the same language of learning that teacher use.

To introduce Organic Learning to the parent community, a Parent Experience Tour was conducted. We believed it was important for parents to ‘Explore’ the cycle of Organic Learning first hand and then experience the process of learning via a collaborative workshop.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The rubric is also central to teachers’ professional learning inquiry. Taking responsibility for our own learning was proving to be a provocation in the early days of our research project and was in many ways a catalyst for our focus on aligning the principles of learning in the community. A number of our teachers were showing signs of being ‘conditioned’ by the system so much so, that they were still wanting to be told what to learn and how to go about learning it. This encouraged us to explore Self-Determined Learning and make it a focus for the whole school community.

To assist our teachers’ own understanding of Organic Learning, we incorporated the rubric as part of our Professional Learning Sprint. The Professional Learning Sprint is based on the concept of a Design Sprint. We rebadged our version as an Organic Learning Sprint, which goes over an eight week period. So it is more like a canter than a sprint, but it allows teachers critical time to explore and take risks in their own learning and hopefully step outside their comfort zone. In preparation for the sprint, all possible data perceived as relevant by the teacher needs to be considered. As with all other learning across the school, each phase of the Organic Learning Sprint is made visible in the teacher learning space. This allows for authentic collaboration because the learning is visible, transparent, tangible and critiqueable, and it keeps all learners personally accountable to themselves and to each other.