Years ago, I was part of a staff football team. Circumstances, rather than ability, made me one of the founding members of a motley group representing a small international school in local matches and tournaments.
There was a lot I agreed on with my fellow players – the rules of football for a start, trying to organise regular games with other teams was another. Most other things were unsaid: it was obvious what we were doing and what we wanted to do – play football.
Over the years, the school got bigger, and so did the size of our available players. We started having to make selection decisions. It was at this moment of difficult decision making, that I realised how much had been unsaid. I had assumed that the football team had existed for the players – a way we could keep fit, have fun and socialise. Others felt that the team was a thing in itself; a thing which wanted to win matches, and only the players who best served that ambition were worthy to be a part of it.
When embarking on a joint enterprise, it can seem so obvious what we are doing that there doesn’t seem any point in explicitly stating it; neither the what nor the why. Schools can be as guilty of that as amateur football teams. We are teaching kids, right? Here’s the curriculum, here are the exams.. Here are the kind of places they’ll go on to after.
In my team, I never thought to ask, why are we playing football? It didn’t matter – until, of course, we faced some tough decisions. Schools have a lot of tough decisions right from the start: who to educate, to stream or mix abilities, what subjects to teach and for how long, what exams and how many – the list goes on.
The table below sets out five possible inspirations for schools.
| COGNITIVE PROCESS | SELF-ACTUALIZATION | TECHNOLOGISM | ACADEMIC RATIONALISM | SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTIONISM | |
| SOURCES OF GOALS | Scientific method, problem-solving, thinking as basic | Individual needs, interests, abilities | Measurable learning, task analysis | Truths, classics, structure of disciplines, traditional values | Problems of society now and in the future |
| VIEW OF LEARNER | Problem-solver, mind over matter, all learning in the brain | Within each individual are potentials to be nourished | Information processor, input-throughout-output | Container/vessel to be filled / sponge to absorb | Social being – member of the group |
| EDUCATION PSYCHOLOGY | Cognitivist | Humanistic/holistic/gestalt | Stimulus-response, Skinnerian behavioral conditioning | Imitative | Molding |
| ORGANIZATION OF MATERIALS | Problem-focused, data sources, discrepant events | Multiple, varied, student-created, individualized | Learning activity packages, modules, systems, computers | Basic tests, classical literature | Newspapers, current events, school problems |
| TEACHING STRATEGY | Inquiry, critical thinking, problem-solving | Self-directed learning, centers, individualized | Diagnosis-prescription, management systems, task analysis | Lecturing, note-taking, memorization, drill | Simulations, role-playing, awareness of values |
Looking through you may agree with statements in more than one of the columns. It is rare that anyone’s educational beliefs are all or nothing. But generally we agree with one of the columns more than the others.
In the school year, 2023-24, ISA’s board, its leadership and its staff thought long and hard about the school’s identity and purpose. Amongst other activities, we studied the table above, and chose the column that best described our approach to education.
Most of us would have experienced ‘academic rationalism’ growing up. We learnt the words of Shakespeare and the laws of Newton, we aspired to paint like Raphael and kick a ball like Maradona. We had chanted king lists and verb endings. Weekly quizzes showed peers, parents and teachers how much we had absorbed. We knew this way inside out.
More than a hundred of us played the ‘pick the column’ game. Almost no-one picked what they had experienced as a child. The overwhelming majority picked column two – self actualisation, with the focus on the individual child.
Part of me wasn’t surprised, ISA is an International Baccalaureate school – child centred education is what we signed ourselves up for. But I was relieved – we had never asked anyone explicitly before; it was a comfort that we had all, in fact, signed up for the same thing.
My football team hadn’t all signed for the same thing; although it was a while before we realised it. Knowing why you are doing something is key to making sense of difficult decisions. On the other hand, knowledge is not enough by itself, you have to operationalise it.
That begins with a mission statement. Staff told their stories about the school – a time which left an impression. We asked, when reflecting on these anecdotes, what words sprung to mind. There was quite a variety but the most common was kind/caring. We talked about our students, their backgrounds and challenges; about the decision already made to be an IB school, and our beliefs about education
There was quite a bit of back and forth between a leadership team making suggestions and a staff offering feedback. We used Curipod, an AI tool, to mediate this incredibly rich interaction. This is what we came up with:
Our Mission
We are a kind and inclusive community of reflective global citizens in Northeast Scotland.
We provide a broad high-quality education with multiple pathways to success.
We aim for every student to develop their personal wellbeing and academic abilities so that they thrive in, and positively contribute to, each of their communities.
We split our mission statement into three parts: our core identity (we are …), our core function (what we provide …) and our core aspiration (we aim for …).
Very quickly we decided who we were – kind and inclusive, not anywhere but here in northeast Scotland.
After establishing identity, we stated what we were there to do, an important framing for our aims. We chose our key words carefully: ‘broad’ would mean that students would not drop whole areas of curriculum at a young age (as they often do in some national systems); ‘high quality’ a curriculum recognised by all post secondary institutions; multiple pathways to success – we are not cookie cutter school.
All this leads to our aims as a school, where my football team went wrong. If hard decisions are an issue for a group of friends kicking a ball together after work, you can only imagine what it is like for a school. You simply cannot make up the basis for decision making every time something tough comes along: that basis has to be in your face at every meeting.
ISA’s aims are carefully ordered: they begin with personal wellbeing. Without doubt, wellbeing is a good in itself, and if it were no more than that it would be worthwhile having top of our priority list. However, the learning, thriving and contributing which come after it is utterly dependent on it. When we are hungry we think of our stomachs, when cold of the temperature, when we’ve had an argument we think of relationships. It is difficult to focus on equations, the causes of war, verb endings or writing a five paragraph essay if our bodies and minds are out of balance. How can we thrive and contribute to our communities, when we are busy making repairs to a damaged self?
ISA students graduate into all kinds of places and have many types of career. Some will earn a fortune, and others will just get by. Whatever their route, we want them to have meaningful lives, feeling connected and valued in the communities they will be part of.
I was eventually dropped from the football team I helped create: the team had, without thinking, developed a purpose separate from its members. ISA doesn’t make the same mistake: our purpose is in each and every child who comes here.