If I could distil our work in this partnership down to one word, I think it would be “Connection”.

In our recent Seattle Institute, the global cohort, now joined by education leaders from Japan and Finland, worked through defining our core message.

NPDL Core focuses

Cluster Leaders all shared the strong desire of their participating schools to connect, to share and build new and best practice around explicit learning design and leading to create ad support the conditions for innovation and excellence to flourish.

Actively fostering new learning partnerships, between and among teachers, learners, family and community is at the absolute centre of our learning design and leadership.

Workshop activities “making this real” allowed us to build clarity and precision of focus around what this work looks like at all levels, from cluster, to school and classroom level.

Our challenge remains to contextualise global resources, taking into account national curriculum imperatives and drivers, whilst maintaining the directional vision of the partnership work. Pedagogy, Technology and Change Leadership are powerful levers; employed with explicit and elegant efficacy they remain the drivers for change across our work together.

So for me, “Connecting” – locally, nationally and globally, to define and redefine what we do as leaders, teachers and learners, to build a bank of shared and incisive practice, is the most exciting possibility this partnership presents. The Global Partnership supports  Cluster teams, to build the knowledge, skills and competencies needed to transform learning in their clusters.

Interesting to read in the NMC Horizon Report: 2014 K-12 Edition the FastTrend Shift to Deeper Learning Approaches, and their definition of Deep Learning: “Deeper learning is a term increasingly used to describe a variety of approaches in which students gain knowledge and skills by investigating and responding to a complex question, problem or challenge.” The elements of authentic engagement in real world issues and problem solving again reflect “Connection” – of learners to learning. Implicit in this is the need for teachers to connect to and to understand their students’ interests and abilities, and design learning opportunities accordingly, focusing on the deep learning competencies of Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Citizenship, Critical Thinking and Character.

It was fantastic to share the work in Seattle with my Australian colleagues in a rare opportunity to come together in person. Look forward to continuing to lead the shift together……

London Annual Deep Learning Forum, January 2014.

It was a pleasure and privilege to be a part of this week as a learner and facilitator.

www.newpedagogies.org hosts an outline of the partnership, including two whitepapers, Towards a New End: New Pedagogies for Deep Learning, and deeper insights into uncovering Deep Learning in A Rich Seam: How New Pedagogies find Deep Learning.

There is little doubt that education globally is at an inflection point. Although technology holds great potential, too often it saps productivity and discourages critical thinking. New Pedagogies for Deep Learning: A Global Partnership will develop deep learning competencies that go BEYOND 21st century skills.

The goal is to implement deep learning across whole education systems that are enabled by new pedagogies and accelerated by technology, and to include skills that prepare all learners to be compassionate global citizens who have the ability to communicate effectively, think critically and collaborate to create knowledge and solve real-world problems in an increasingly complex and connected world.

Building on the work begun in Hong Kong in November, clusters met to dig deeper into planning for implementation in their local contexts. Our Australian cluster focussed on the logistics of implementation across 20 Tasmanian and 80 Victorian schools, with school selection to be completed by the end of February.

Highlight of the week was the Partnership Global Launch featuring Michael Fullan, Andreas Schleicher and Peter Hill.

And Peter’s observation “New Pedagogies – Why NOW? Because we can.”

Michael Fullan talked us through the push and pull factors influencing education, and making change inevitable. “There is a grand convergence spontaneously erupting. I think it is a natural dynamic of push and pull. The push, to put it directly, is a combination of the boredom and alienation of students and teachers. Students won’t wait, and teachers can’t wait. It is simply intolerable for students and teachers to be at school every day when increasing numbers of them would rather be somewhere else. What kind of existence is that!

On the other hand the digital world is a 24/7 phenomenon of limitless intrigue and consternation. There is something out there but it cannot be fathomed. Humans have stopped evolving physically, but the brain is changing in uncontainable ways. Humankind’s relationship to the universe is becoming seamless. There is no distinction between us and mother nature; between us and what we are creating– digitally, artistically, and spontaneously. We are what we create, and what incubates ineluctably becomes us.

Technology, pedagogy and change dynamics are converging on their own. We cannot stop them but we can take advantage of them to enable and accelerate learning, where learning and living become indistinguishable. This is not a theoretical realm. It is reality.”

The “new pedagogies” are not just instructional strategies – they are powerful models of teaching and learning, enabled and accelerated by increasingly pervasive digital tools and resources and support deep learning at all levels of the education system. “Deep learning” develops the learning, creating and ‘doing’ dispositions that youth need to thrive now and in their futures.

In short, we are in a perfect storm. We have the tools, understandings and strategies to turn the rhetoric around 21st century skills into a concrete reality in contemporary teaching and learning.

Focussing on the twin pillars of capacity building and developing new measures of engagement, attainment and excellence, the NPDL Partnership is ultimately about the evolution of the teaching profession.

To quote my good friend Erika Twani New Pedagogies for Deep Learning is not a pilot. It is the real thing. The time is now. Transform education.

See also “The Plastic Brain” http://dradenozine.wordpress.com/2013/08/25/notes-on-new-pedagogies-for-deep-learning-part-1/ for a great summary of the New Pedagogies whitepaper, and www.newpedagogies.org for more info!