“Transformation of education needs fearless leadership,” WISE Summit is told

Including the voices of children and parents alongside teachers, leveraging the connection between schools, universities, and the community - and having the faith and courage to do it - is what creates the ecosystem that can drive the transformation of education.

That’s according to education experts who aired their views on reimagining learning during a panel discussion held on the second day of the 2021 WISE Summit, organized by Qatar Foundation’s (QF) global education initiative WISE.

“Listening to children is not rocket science. The idea of a child’s identity to be shaped by trust and respect is not unusual, it is not transmitted, it is just a fundamental right,” said panelist Kiran Bir Sethi, Founder and Director of Riverside School and Design for Change.

“We need to go back to what we all do as individuals at the first two years of a child’s life. Children tell us ‘look at me, I can do it’ - from crawling to sitting to standing to laughing to thinking. And we say ‘yes, you must, you should’. And then, just when they tell us they can, we send them to school and say ‘sit, sit’ for 15 years

“The act of listening and not instructing; the idea of respect and not patronizing; the idea of co-creation and not a one-way street - this is a beautiful thing that could happen in any part of the world.”

Sharing his views on how education can be redefined within schools and systems, Mehdi Benchaabane, Executive Director of Learning and Innovation, QF, said “A transformation of education should be carried out on two levels.

“One is at the school level, challenging the assumptions of what the teacher should be doing, what a student should be doing, and what a parent should be doing. I believe we’re getting to renegotiating all of this from the basic level.

“But we can also look at it practical ways of micro-credentialing pedagogy [offering ‘mini-degrees’ or certifications in specific topics], such as inviting parents to sessions alongside teachers to really talk about what is good practice and what are the learning skills we need to build within our student body.”

Benchaabane also focused on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, and how it reinforced the need for schools to connect to the wider community.

“School leaders have quickly identified that an isolated school within the pandemic is a school that is likely to fail,” he said. “At Qatar Foundation, we always try to leverage the connection between the variety of schools that we have within our system and facilitate the conversation across those multiple schools, so that we can create a sense of an ecosystem where people can learn from each other.

“I also think that connections with universities, with the workplace, with research labs, and with a community, are no longer a luxury for schools; they’re now a necessity if we want to make education more meaningful. If you democratize or demystify your pedagogy within the community, you can have researchers coming to your school to teach students, or, for example, a specialist in woodwork showing students how it works. And then you can have an ecosystem where learning is organic.”

The panelists agreed that taking “a leap of faith” is also crucial to achieve a transformational shift in education across multiple communities and systems.

“Faith is an important ingredient in the transformation we need to have,” said Benchaabane. “In order to have young people trying to unlock their potential, we need to have fearless leaders to drive transformation.”