Only Connect!

This paper by Innovation Unit Managing Partner Valerie Hannon was first delivered to the International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement in Vancouver and subsequently published in Australia. It outlines the values which the Innovation Unit wishes to see infusing a humanistic but 21st Century system of learning, and draws upon the practical expression of these in the Innovation Unit’s work with schools.

The argument presented in this paper is that our current ‘school reform’ and ‘improvement’ efforts are wholly inadequate to the scale of the challenge to prepare young people to live well and sustainably on this planet in the new century.  Views about what it means to ‘live well and sustainably’ are of course contested. What are the skills, knowledge, competencies and, perhaps above all, values which would enable this? And if we can reach at least a provisional view on these, what does that imply for our arrangements for the organisation of learning?

Click here to download a copy.