[RE]LEARN 2020 - The Learning Innovation Festival

What's your purpose? What's our purpose? How can we share in this together?

Dr Philip SA Cummins has been leading a global team of educators over the past decade through his various collaborations with schools and their communities - this session shares the most essential research findings about the role of purpose and how it underpins all that we might do to develop in young people the adaptive expertise and self-efficacy they need to thrive in their world.

Phil and his team have discovered a way to look at the development of character and competency that occurs in the wrestling between an individual's sense of identity and the expectations that others place upon them. It begins with building a sense of belonging that allows a person to work towards achievement of their potential. With this civic character of belonging and this performance character of the achievement of potential comes the moral character that allows us to contemplate and then seek to do what is good and right in our world. And it's the personal journey of discovery that they call The Pathway to Excellence that helps each of us to find a purpose, contextualise it through people and place, and put it into practice.

It's this quest for purpose that Phil and his team believe should be the heart and soul of a School for tomorrow. Phil will explore how this can go from theory to reality in four ways.

First, we will unpack the inside-out model of purpose-driven development that helps learners to grow in the self-awareness, relationships, service and vocation that allow them to reveal the graduate outcomes of good people, future builders, continuous learners and unlearners, solution architects, responsible citizens and team creators that school communities all over the world use to express their educational aspirations for their children.

Second, we will explore the holistic framework for education of a School for tomorrow. that links the fundamental competencies of learn, live, lead and work to the behaviours and outcomes for students, teachers, leaders and schools.

Third, we will learn how the concept of a life of purpose can give genuine meaning and rigour to students and teachers engaged in pedagogical relationships of character apprenticeship.

Finally, we will learn about the role of authentic evaluation and measurement of character and competency in acknowledging and warranting the ongoing development of student and staff voice, agency and advocacy.