Week 1 of “What they should be teaching at school” – Agility.

We are used to ‘agile’ in terms of project management and software development; it’s even been applied to a style of business management itself. From the agile process, we recognise the value of continuous learning from a combination of task-based collaboration, iterative experimentation, rapid validation and constant improvement.

So it would make sense to deploy agile learning in school. Whether it’s research methods, data validation, practical experiments, rapid testing, team collaboration or scenario planning, agile thinking can foster the ability to be empathetic, consider alternative perspectives,  evaluate different contexts, and respond to new data or situations.

While it’s important to learn core foundational facts and key conceptual frameworks, we can’t remain rigid in the face of new information. But the rate at which our knowledge is changing (new science, new data, new discoveries) also means it’s a challenge trying to keep up. Therefore, agile thinking is essential to being able to gather appropriate information, process and interpret the data, construct and validate innovative theories, and apply them to new situations, based on the available evidence. This approach should also foster greater creativity, build stronger reasoning skills, and see the development of logical thought processes.

Next week: Resilience