This document started out as an email discussing what a traditional English school would look like if it were based on a holocracy/agile approach rather than the currect status quo. By establishing it in a global source control repository we can treat it more like a communal blueprint encompassing more people's views and beliefs. If we all don't agree indivually we can fork it and modify it in the way we want, those changes can then be merged back into the mainline if we see they are benificial for the whole. This is not supposed to be the new 'orthodoxy' this is a base from which to establish a set of possible implementations, each of which should be challenged and reviewed continuously. If you see this document as the new set of rules to follow to the letter, then it has failed in it's goal to make you think about the structure of education and how we can improve it together.
Every morning the students would come together at 9am and do a stand up for 15m. They discuss what they learned yesterday, what impediments they were facing and what they would do today. They would also have some kind of kanban board for the week where they participate in moving cards through swim lanes showing their levels of proficiency at various topics.
After this they split off into pairs and in one hour blocks that they planned and they study different topics. A certain number of topics would be mandatory and a certain number of blocks left open for them to pick what to learn. To study various topics say design they would move off to the design room where there would be a design coach who could help them out and advise if needed.
In weekly governance meetings the students and coaches would get together to discuss new topics and roles and responsiilities. In weekly tactical meetings they would discuss troubles with different topics. In weekly planning meetings circles would plan their agendas for the next week.
The goal of an agile learning organisation should be to enable learners to learn more effectively and apply that learned knowledge or wisdom to new situations and environments. The only measurable outcome of this is the number of students that leave the academy, anything else is but an illusion or simplification of the truth. When a learner leaves, they should however leave with something they are proud of. In many interviews for jobs the learners will be asked to present 'something they are proud of' to demonstrate passions, an awareness of quality, the ability of solve problems with hard work, the ability to work in groups or as a team and most importantanly a situation where they failed but through failure learned something new in order to achieve their goal. In order to enable this each student should leave with a 'presentation' of a collection of projects and evidence that demonstrate their time in the alo, and the final task before leaving the alo should be to present this to a group of peers.
#Education anti-patterns
Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review… The idea of a merit rating is alluring. the sound of the words captivates the imagination: pay for what you get; get what you pay for; motivate people to do their best, for their own good. The effect is exactly the opposite of what the words promise.
W. Edwards Deming
Our current notion of annual testing is based on a push system. Students (or work in agile terminolgy) is pushed into a quality assurance process (standardised testing) to test their level of completeness. In the majority of cases the students are not complete (otherwise they would all get 100%) but even so are then pushed into the next queue of processing (the next topic for understanding). The antidote to this madness is a pull based system. Once students reach a level of completeness they then should be pulled into the next queue of processing.