Schools as Drivers of Innovation - A Conversation with Anna Pons & Leila Loupis

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

If we really want to improve quality, we need to find a better balance between measurement and the trust to the profession, the trust to schools to really find solutions to the new challenges that we are, that we are finding and to really find ways to improve education processes.

Hi everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Future Learning Design Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Logan, and the podcast is brought to you in partnership with Notosh. This week, it's fantastic to be speaking with Leila Loupièce and Anna Pons, who are leading the OECD Schools+ Network. The network was launched in May as a space for schools to become drivers of innovation, developing, connecting, and sharing innovative practices across the world with other educators, researchers, and policymakers. It was great to be able to chat with Anna and Leila about the opportunities and challenges of innovating in education, including moving beyond a compliance-led system, the importance of context for implementation of great ideas, and looking beyond silos and getting hung up on polarizing arguments about pedagogy. If you're keen to get involved in the network, there are links in the show notes to get in touch with Anna and Leila and the OECD team and to find out more. Hi, Leila.

Hi, Tim.

Hi, Anna.

Hi, Tim. How are you?

Hey, good. Yeah, great to meet you. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm really looking forward to this discussion to talk about the Schools+ network and the work that the OECD is doing around encouraging schools to be drivers of innovation in education. So firstly, thank you, Anna and Leila, for joining.

Thanks, Tim. It's a pleasure to be here with you today.

Fantastic. If I could ask you just briefly to introduce yourselves just in terms of your roles within the network, and then I'd love to just, yeah, get into some interesting discussion around how we can support schools and how we can build more of this innovation in the educational ecosystem. So Anna, perhaps you could introduce yourself first.

So I'm Anna Bons, originally from Barcelona, but I've spent the last 14 years in Paris working for the OECD in different roles. And the most recent one, it's actually leading this Schools+ network, which is a new initiative in which we want to put the schools at the center and connect and empower schools from across the globe.

Fantastic.

Hi, my name is Leila, and I'm working at the Schools Plus Network as the network coordinator, and I've been working in various positions but working in international organizations on education development for many years. So it's great to be in this new space working with schools directly.

Good stuff. And so the launch was last month. Which I was really interested to attend online. And Andreas Schleicher, Director of the Education Skills Department, kicked it off with his context setting. And one of the things that he was talking about was the fact that education is still often in many countries, in many settings, quite compliance-driven, and that a lot of the work that OECD is doing is trying to kind of support schools to move away from that. Just to kind of set the context for the moment we're in, where we are. Because there's a lot of talk around student-centered education and all of that. But actually, as Andreas is highlighting, education is still compliance-driven. So I would love just to ask you, perhaps starting with you, Anna, why do you think that is, that compliance is still a big part of the way that we do education?

I think that compliance still plays a big role because there are high stakes in education. So change is extremely difficult because of the high stakes, because education, it's all about humans and it's very, very hard to change mindsets. And I think that for the last decades, we have all focused a lot in standardization and in measurement. And there has been a big push to really try to understand what makes a difference in education. There has been a big push on, on testing. There has been a big push in ensuring access. But we've realized that if we really want to improve quality, we need to find a better balance between that measurement and the trust to the profession, the trust to schools to really find solutions to the new challenges that we are, that we are finding and to really find ways to improve education processes. And improvement today, it's basically walking away from that industrial model that has helped us be really successful and provide every child in OECD countries with opportunities to attend education. Improvement is about finding new ways and more powerful ways to to educate the children. And that means a lot of experimentation. And you will agree with me, Tim, that experimentation, it's kind of opposite, or it's very hard to sit in the same place, experimentation and compliance. And that's exactly why, why at the OECD we are trying to understand what is happening on the ground, because there are fantastic initiatives in every country to walk away compliance and to look into new ways to empower schools, to empower teachers, to improve education.

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, thank you. Leila, did you want to add anything there?

I think that, yeah, just to add on what Anna was saying, it's this whole notion of this, the evolution of education systems and the fact that, wow, we're moving away from access, and that's both in developed and developing contexts. But now we have to look a lot more strongly at the quality of education and what that means in terms of really important questions such as equity. So is every child getting access to a learning environment that is also able to adapt to them and not the other way around. So it's kind of, you know, there's these increasing recognition and call that we need to turn education systems on their heads to a certain extent.

Yeah. And it's, I find it very interesting. I mean, in relation to what you were saying, Anna, about perhaps is it, is it about the moment? And when I say moment, I mean the kind of long moment, the period that we're in. That is prompting that change? Because it's quite ironic, right? I mean, let's be transparent. It's quite ironic that the OECD, arguably the most influential organization globally in education, is talking about some of the same things that people like Ivan Illich and, you know, other kind of progressives and radicals were in the, let's say, '70s, '80s. It's a really interesting shift of narrative, right? That, that idea of moving away from compliance and encouraging more of the kind of entrepreneurial, the transformative competencies that's in the learning compass, all of that kind of language around agency and empowering young people is precisely what the voices of the people on the margins who are calling for change in education may and have been for decades. Do you feel that it's because of this change in context? I mean, Andreas was talking a lot about the digital and the artificial intelligence revolutions currently. And so is it something about the historical moment that therefore this is just something we more broadly just need to address?

I think that we've been really, really successful on access. So now we are really all turned into the challenge of quality. And as Leyva was saying, I mean, that the system is not working for far too many people. And the question is, how can we move away from that one-size-fits-all model to make sure that we cater to the needs of all learners on the one hand. And on the other hand, it's what you're, as you're saying, Tim Logan, the world has changed a lot. Like 20 years, I mean, if you look at what has happened outside of the education system in the last 20 years, there have been profound changes. Just to start with, with all of these mobile devices that we all have in our pockets. This year we have all been shocked by ChatGPT. Now that artificial intelligence, which is this abstract revolutionary game changer that we've all been talking about for many years, now that it's on our, our fingertips, now that teachers can use them, now that the students can use them, all of a sudden we've all realized about the potential and the potential shock that technology can bring into education. And just to continue with ChatGPT, we've done, as you know, one of the things that has made the OECD most well-known is the PISA, the PISA test. Well, if we ask ChatGPT to respond to the PISA test, you will see that on reading ChatGPT gets 90% of the responses correct. That basically means that we all need to rethink what is that we are teaching to our students. How are we preparing our next generation? So we see a lot of pressures into the education systems that are calling for change, and that's probably has played a role in, in all of these changes of narratives or focuses. But at the end of the day, it's about finding a balance between measuring to understand. Now we have a wealth of information about what works. Into education and evidence, but also listening to educators and empowering educators to bring that change and to show new ways to move forward for all learners.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I mean, just going back to your very first point, the stakes are high, right? These are our children. And that idea of experimentation that you mentioned is a challenging one when it comes to children, right? You know, we want some level of certainty in a world that is increasingly and incredibly uncertain. And so it's quite a challenge. And I think the way that the OECD seems to define innovation, I was reading in the Innovative Learning Environments report, was openness to disciplined experimentation. So putting that adjective of disciplined experimentation somehow is maybe as a, it tempers it slightly and makes it feel a little bit more scientific. But I think, I mean, I think that's the reality, right? That's very important that we are informed and careful about the way that we move forward and make change.

I do think you are making an important remark here. And, you know, innovation is not necessarily good per se. And that's why at the OECD we say that there needs to be this disciplined innovation and that there needs to be some sort of evaluation. And that means basically strengthening the links between practitioners, between the teachers that are experimenting, looking into new ways, with researchers that can evaluate those new ways and help us bring new light into what can work at scale. So also what we are aiming at the OECD with Schools Plus Network, a new initiative, is basically to strengthen the links between practice, research, and policy, because we feel that we can innovate a lot, but if we cannot evaluate those innovations, then it will be hard that these innovations are taken to scale and make a difference at the system level. And then we will just continue to have the pockets of excellence and the pockets of innovation that we are seeing in every country.

Yeah, and I think you're highlighting an important tension as well there in terms of evaluation and measurement. You mentioned earlier with PISA, because when the measurement becomes the target, then we're all in trouble, right? And that, and I think that has happened with PISA, and, and it, it becomes in a high-stakes system, the measurement becomes the thing that people are aiming to to game or make sure that they pass because that, you know, there's funding attached to that. There's all sorts of kind of conditions and, and benefits attached to that, let alone for— hopefully we'll be focusing on the young people in terms of their successes to go on to the next stage of their education. But we can see how very rapidly the education system kind of wraps everybody into this same thing. So I think that's one of the things I think is really important for me about the Schools Plus Network is that you are inviting people to take this on. It's not an easy thing and we're not, it's not that one agent in the system is going to be able to do any of that work. It has to be a cross-ecosystem thing. So maybe Leila, perhaps I could invite you just to give a bit of the kind of context and the background and what you're aiming for with the Schools Plus Network. And then just so people who haven't heard of it can understand a bit more clearly.

Thanks, Tim Logan. Yeah, absolutely. So it's this question of the centrality of schools in the, in the discussion about education change and education improvement that is really the driving force behind why this network and why now. So because we know that the teacher-student relationship is central to, to basic, to students' learning and preparing students to the future and the quality of their education. And we know this is happening in school. And we also know that there's a lot of innovation that's coming from the grassroots level, as we've mentioned before. And the driving kind of thinking behind this network is that there was two challenges that we see, and this is the gap that we're trying to fill and support to deal with these challenges. And the first is basically that we know that there's these islands of innovations that are happening in lots of schools around the world and lots of systems around the world and lots of organizations, but they're not necessarily joined up and they're not necessarily learning from each other. So there's an awful lot of this learning and innovation which is basically not being taken to scale and it's not being able to influence policy and come to systems change. So that's the first challenge. And then the second is this challenge of evidence that we've just touched upon, the fact that teachers and schools are not necessarily getting access to the evidence about what works, so what's being generated by researchers, and conversely researchers aren't necessarily listening to or getting access to this expertise that exists within schools. So it's important to kind of take these experiences of teachers and schools and to try and systematise it in such a way that it actually becomes a body of evidence that can influence policymakers. So basically what we want to try to do with this new Schools Plus Network is to create this enabling environment to respond to these challenges and to also promote a greater use of evidence. And if you can imagine that plus symbol with a horizontal bar where you've got lots of different schools that you can bring together coming from different contexts in different places around the world, and then you've got that vertical bar where you're kind of trying to make these links between the grassroots actors, so the teachers and the school leaders themselves, all all the way up the chain through the researchers up to the policymakers. So that's the goal, is to bring those different actors together with schools at that center, at the crux, and working with evidence as well to really bring about the improvements in education that we so desperately need.

Yeah, no, fantastic. And so this is a multi-year initiative, right? So you're starting last month, and then it's— I imagine it's going to be going on for a few years. I'm not sure whether there's an end in sight. But in terms of what would success— how would you know that the network's been successful? I mean, I hear you and I think it sounds brilliant. The question is how, how do you know what's the— what does the success look like? Is it just a generation of kind of stories of sharing of innovation?

So basically we've got a 2-year cycle, but we do, we do see that the network will hopefully live beyond that. But we've got a 2-year cycle of work and within that we're going to be carrying out 3 different kind of strands of activities in which all are leading to the final goal. And of course, the final goal is to bring together the policymakers, the researchers, and the schools themselves to really deepen these conversations about education improvement, but also to increase the use of evidence. And we're gonna be doing this in 3 different ways. So the 3 different strands that I've been talking about, the first is to foster this exchange between all these different actors. And we're basically, we're working in this sense as a network of networks. In other words, bringing together organizations, large organizations, whether they be national, regional, or international working with schools to bring them together to foster exchange, to discuss common challenges and to find solutions and to learn from each other.

Yeah.

So that's the first way. The second way is to work more directly with schools to give them the opportunity to interact more with evidence and to learn from each other. And the third is to then take it forward to inform policy, research, and practice and the global education debate. And this is what's going to be happening at the end of the 2-year cycle. Where we hope to bring together all of these learnings, produce resources of promising practices, and make them available to all different schools around the world. And then also to ensure that this is not only available to other schools, but to also policymakers and decision makers. What I might do is I might hand over to Anna if she wants to talk a bit more about how the schools are going to be learning from each other.

Well, what I would like to add is that it's a bit picking on what you were saying, Tim Logan. Are you just going to end up with a collection of innovation stories? And I would like to say that our ambition here is to go beyond that. There are already fantastic collections of stories. Oftentimes we look into the profession, we just collect some examples from here and there, and then we will straight think, right? And what we are actually aiming at, and I'm not sure we're going to achieve this in this 2-year period, but what we are really aiming at at the OECD with this new initiative is to move beyond anecdotal stories that can make it for fantastic illustrations into systematizing these stories and turning these stories into knowledge. And if you consider other sectors, you, you don't collect stories from doctors to have anecdotal stories from doctors, or from architects to have anecdotal stories from architects, or from managers. You know, there are lots of cases, business case studies, but then these business case studies are drilled down to understand what are the common patterns, and this is turned into business education, and people pay lots of money to get access to that tacit knowledge called business education. In the education sector, we are still seeing teachers very much as artists instead of scientists. And what we are actually really aiming at is into considering teachers as experts in their craft and finding ways to build expertise in systematic ways so that we can turn this tacit expertise on what they do in the classroom into something that can be aggregated at the large level across borders. And in particular, it's not to replace researchers. Research plays a really fundamental role here. But what we are seeing is that in, in the most rigorous of the research, which are random controlled trials, what we are seeing is that only 1 out of 3 random controlled trials, when they are replicated in other settings, they achieve similar results. So what this means is that the whole difference is in the implementation. The whole difference is in, is in what the teacher and the school community do whenever they implement a practice. And what we are aiming at is in trying to understand the how between effective practices. So when we were always talking about this work that we are going to be doing with the schools in trying to elicit their expertise and to build this toolbox of effective practice, what we are aiming at is systematizing schools' expertise to move beyond great stories that can make headlines into actually knowledge that can be helpful for a broader range of schools and for researchers and policymakers. That's what we are really aiming at here.

Yeah. And it, it's an interesting inversion almost of Leila, what you were talking about with the vertical axis of the plus, right? Because you've got sometimes, I think when you're teaching in a school or you're a senior leader in a school, as I've been both, you, you kind of experience the system kind of constraining your world, right? And I like the idea that schools can be the drivers of the emergent policy, actually, not just innovation, but actually then this, the kind of co-agents in the development of the policy that can continue that kind of enabling environment idea that you mentioned that you're trying to create. Because I think I think that kind of hierarchy of, of again, that compliance-driven, quite restricted, top-down, here's the policy, now you implement, is a challenging one. And it doesn't necessarily consider the uniqueness and the importance of the context and the particular situation that different places are in when they're trying to implement. So I think there's an interesting inversion happening there. Is that intentional?

Absolutely. Yeah, we absolutely want to put schools in the driving seat, as you mentioned. And just to add to your point as well, that even, even when these kind of top-down policies are making it into schools, they're not necessarily making it into classrooms either. And I think that, you know, just we need to be really thinking about putting more value to that teacher expertise, to that classroom, classroom expertise. And how we believe in giving that value is by trying to systematize it, trying to give those voices a greater space in the education discussion. But to also, as Anna was saying, to make sure that it's— it becomes a body of evidence that we can actually work with and that can be convincing for policymakers as well, because we know that education budgets unfortunately aren't getting any bigger. So there's a real importance of making sure that investments in education innovations and education transformations, we actually— not only do we know that they have worked in another context, but they could potentially work in mine. And it's that question as well, is, you know, just because 'cause something has worked in another classroom or a school, will it work in my classroom? And that's the question that it's really important that we give a space for those discussions to happen. Yeah.

And I think that absolutely hones right in onto the equity point that you were making earlier in terms of historically that kind of universal access to education has been, here's the model, let's distribute it in this kind of colonial fashion to the rest of the world, right? And I think there's an inversion and a necessary inversion of that as well in terms of the deep importance of the context in which these things are arriving. Because what's worked in Finland, it won't work in Nigeria in the same way because it's such a completely different context. And I think that's one of the challenges around universal education is this idea that somehow there's, and it's often a, a somewhat Western model that is exported. And that's, I think that's a really interesting challenge in terms of innovation within education. How do we really genuinely reflect the cultural and the social and the, you know, interpersonal context? Because it's fundamentally, I would say education is fundamentally a very human interaction despite all the technology to support it. And that is therefore interpersonal, intercultural, all of those things. And that makes context this incredibly rich, important factor that is really, makes it really difficult when you talk about scaling innovations, as you both have done explicitly or implicitly so far. It's, that's a real interesting challenge.

I think it's definitely an exciting challenge. And I think you're totally right, Tim, that context makes all of a difference and context needs to be taken into consideration. But as much as. Looking into the context is important, it's also important to look outside of your context because otherwise you fall into your own beliefs and it's very narrow what you can see. And if you are able to look outwards, there is a whole set of experiences and initiatives that you can learn from. And that's, it's what we are really missing in education. Again, if you look at other sectors, you will find that there is a lot, much more of professionalization and a lot of, of learning across borders. If you look into teaching and learning, there is very little learning across borders. Teaching practices are sticky and have been national for a very long time. And whilst we have made great progress in measuring the performance of education systems, we still know far too little about what goes on in the classrooms. And this is what we are aiming to do as well, which is to better understand as much as, you know, all of the teachers are sitting in different contexts, but they are all working towards the same goal, which is to support their students' health and development. So we believe that there is something that they can learn from each other. Before this, we did a video study in which we placed cameras in classrooms in 8 different countries. And you will be surprised to know that actually there is a lot of similarity between countries in how teachers teach, but there are also very important differences. And these differences might be because of the context. There might be an explanation to these differences, but maybe there is not. And maybe there is a great opportunity to inspire each other, to learn about different ways of doing things. And sometimes when we don't see we cannot consider opportunities and looking outwards where we believe that has great potential in order to inspire change in education or at least reassure us that the choices that we've made are the right ones.

No, I would, I would take that. I think that's a really important point. You're right. In terms of looking outside of your context, I completely agree. I just, I think, and I recognize this is challenging for the OECD as an international non-governmental, non-political organization. I mean, there is also the kind of deeply political values-driven aspect of education. And so the idea that there is a kind of a, a universality to the way that people educate, I don't think there's, there's not consensus around that when you get into the actual important detail, right? Of course, you know, we can talk about teacher-student relationships and kind of some basics, but when you actually start getting into some interesting detail, there is quite quickly a values judgment and a political kind of aspect of what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to live a good life and for a society to be functional? There's some interesting challenges there, which I recognize is a difficult space for the OECD to inhabit, but I think it's important that it's somehow in the room with the conversations because I think those kind of values are there.

But, you know, oftentimes we use values as an excuse not to learn from each other. And, you know, let's take classroom observation. We are, the three of us, we are now in France. There is very, very little opportunities for teachers in France to observe each other, to learn from each other. In other countries, this is common practice. It is well accepted that you would go and sit in the class of another teacher, observe that teacher so that you can learn from someone who is more experienced, who knows better how to do, or who knows, who has experience more time at the same challenges that you go through and you can learn from that person a lot. Or maybe you will sit in the classroom of someone else to give them feedback. Well, when we ask teachers in the TAVI survey that is implemented in 48 different countries, all of them say that they benefit from the feedback that they receive from classroom observation. They feel that that gives them more confidence and that helps them learn about new ways of doing things. So classroom observation, there is a lot of evidence that can have a great positive impact And yet in countries like France or Spain or other cultures, it's not really an opportunity for teachers. So is it about the values or is it about that we haven't been able to move away from that notion of control and teachers being the kings of their own classroom and no one can enter there? And how can we make that shift between compliance, what we were discussing at the very beginning, that has led to teachers closing in and not allowing anyone to enter their classroom. Classroom to actually being open up, open to feedback in this constructive, collective, professional collaboration approach that research is saying that can have a great impact. Well, maybe looking outwards and seeing what is happening in other countries could help change that, that, that perception and make that shift. So I'm not sure. Sometimes there, of course, there are values, and education is— of course, values have a role to play, But oftentimes we, I also feel that we use values to prevent ourselves from looking into other ways of doing things.

No, it's a fair point. And there is a polarization of the discussion when you look at it publicly that perhaps is unhelpful. And you're right, when you start getting into just individual educators or different, you know, different people dialoguing and supporting and observing each other, you actually strip through some of that kind of overly polarized values-based kind of debate. Yeah, I know, absolutely. Leila, did you want to come in on that?

Yeah, no, just actually jumping on what you just mentioned, Tim, is this question about peer support and peer learning. And I think that's one of the things that came out so incredibly strongly during the, the school shutdowns in the COVID pandemic was the fact that actually the teachers and school leaders were incredibly open and incredibly receptive to peer support, but peer support happening in all sorts of different levels. So we saw all sorts of online communities springing up not only at the local or at the national level, but also at the international level. And I know that Anna and I were incredibly privileged to be working with teachers at that moment during the Global Teaching Insights in which we had teachers from around the world sharing videos of their solutions about how they were coping, about how they were dealing with these lockdowns from all different contexts. And I think that that question about fostering teacher peer support and fostering the dialogue between teachers is actually— there's an incredible appetite for it from the teaching profession. And I think that we certainly believe that that's something that we can support at the international level.

Interesting. Yeah. And in a crisis, you see that it really counts more than many other kind of enabling structures. Actually, it was that peer support that really helped people get through it. No, interesting. And I mean, that actually segues into another question I wanted to ask you around, because obviously it's called a Schools Plus Network. So, and it's, as you said, schools as the drivers of innovation and schools kind exchanging and informing the policy development and that kind of innovation ecosystem. Is there also a kind of an outward looking back to your point, Anna, about looking outside of the context of schools? Because I do wonder as well, when you start looking at innovation, I mean, the education system is deeply embedded in other social systems and changes and innovations in one will affect what happens within education. And the other thing that I'm particularly I'm actually personally quite interested in is the, our obsession with formal education. And then there's, there's all these other structures socially, which you might call them informal education, non-formal learning, all of these kinds of language. But essentially they're, you know, it's parenting, it's clubs, it's societies, it's, it's all of the civic engagement stuff that happens. And there's education happening there too, I would argue. So it's, I wanted to ask you the question just in terms of the do you see the innovation possibly coming from outside the education system as well as from kind of bubbling up, as you said, from the schools and from the grassroots within the education system?

That's a very good question, Tim. And I think that in the Schools+ network, what we are focusing is in the current model and how can we actually transform this industrial model. We have other work going on at the OECD, which is much more more forward-looking into what would schools look like in 2040, in 2050. Yeah, or rather than schools, what would education look like? Because maybe the school model will disappear, right? Sure. So we, in, in that type of work, we have actually delineated 4 different scenarios that, that show different possibilities just to spur thinking and, and to actually talk about these different possibilities. Because clearly learning does does not stop within the school walls and can happen in many different places, not to mention all the digital world and the fact that everyone now has access to, to all the wealth of knowledge in there. The point that we are making with, with this network is actually that as much as other sectors have strong networks of expertise, we are not seeing that in the education sector, as we were saying, because we haven't found ways to connect and empower schools to share their tacit expertise, whilst other sectors there are these leverage points, these leverage networks. So we are looking at other sectors to inspire ourselves on what might be possibilities further in the education sector. We, in the launch event, we actually had very interesting presentations from iNaturalist and Wikipedia, which are two examples of ways in which, if you look for example into this iNaturalist, which is an an app for identifying plants, and there have been citizens reporting plants that have led to new scientific discoveries. Well, imagine an opportunity for schools reporting new ways of doing things that can help inspire schools in other countries. So we think that there is a lot of power in all of the crowd. If the future, if innovation is coming from the ground, we need to find new ways to identify and aggregate this knowledge coming from the ground, from the crowd. And that's what we are aiming to to experiment. And of course, education is not isolated, right? Education is the product of everything that happens around it.

Absolutely. Leila?

Yeah, I think during the launch event, we also, we had a focus on generative AI. So we were looking at, you know, the effect of these new tools such as Bard and ChatGPT on the education systems. And I think that's just a really clear indication that, you know, the education as a system, like any part of society isn't, isn't in a silo. And, you know, obviously there's going to be the implications of these new technological developments and the fact that there's an acceleration of these changes, which is obviously going to have impacts in education. But we think that's what actually makes it even more important for us to be, you know, fostering these global communications to get the actors around the table to find the solutions together, because these challenges are just going to keep coming out. At us and that the education system is going to need to evolve to be able to respond to these challenges, but also to harness the power of these new tools as well, to prepare students for the jobs of the future, for these uncertain futures and challenges.

Yeah, no, it's interesting, isn't it? And there is a— I do wonder whether even the concept of school and as you were reflecting on, you know, a lot of the similarities you see cross-culturally, internationally in schools of teachers and their approaches. I wonder, is that a kind of a universal truth or is it just that the concept of school has constrained people's imagination about the way that education can be done, right? And I think personally, I think that's quite an important question to ask because yes, there's quite a pragmatic focus on innovating within the system to improve the system and absolutely, you know, obtain more of that equity that we want. And the access and all of the things you were talking about. But I do wonder whether, yeah, there's this kind of vision challenge of people within the system are constrained to a certain extent in their imaginations of what's possible by that possibility space that the kind of concept of school creates. I don't know.

Yes. And we are actually moving in these two directions. On the one hand, these colleagues of ours looking into the future of education, they actually start their work saying, imagine that you are in planet Mars, that we all had to move to planet Mars. How would you design education? So there is nothing. Now you go and design ways to help teachers develop, grow, and flourish. How would we go about it? And that freedom of constraints really ends up with fantastic ideas of completely new ways of shaping up what education looks like. But the reality is that we are sitting in a school model. So we also need to find ways to change this school model. And that's exactly what we are focusing on. Where is the light? Where are the cracks within the current model so we can help bring that change and probably need to explore both of them. And as I was saying, I mean, there are a lot of external pressures into the education system. Technology is clearly one, but we are also living in a planet where we are seeing that climate change is a big, big challenge. And as much as we go to all the climate conferences and it's all about the money that we are putting into to transform it, there is a big role to play as well for education because at the end of the day, it's about changing people's mindsets and lifestyles. And this is at the heart of what we're doing in education, right? So what is the role that education has to play? We are living in increasingly polarized societies. Inequality is increasing. What is the role that education has to play? What is the role of the education as social mobility? Another trend that we are seeing, it's about GDP growth. We have never been as rich. And now we were— education, the education model was was all focused on preparing young people to be productive, preparing young people for the labor market. And now we are seeing all this trend of quiet quitters, of burnout all around the world. So should we put more emphasis in wellbeing, in helping students develop personally and not just professionally? So there are many different trends that are putting a lot of pressure to change in the education sector. And that's why it's a very, very good time to explore of these questions and, and look even to the ground to see what is happening, because there are many initiatives in every country to transform education. And that's— these are all the people that we want to bring together.

Yeah, absolutely. But I think to your point, if that kind of futures thinking initiative is separate from the Schools Plus, I reckon there's obviously this tension between the conservative and the progressive. And, you know, you have to hold those intentions. They both, as you said at the beginning with the high stakes, they're very real. And I think the Learning Compass, I've not heard as much about that in terms of what's happening with that now. And I think there's, there's so many powerful ideas within the Learning Compass that perhaps provide people with a bit of guidance. For me, the kind of agency and co-agency is such an important one for young people with young people.

Yeah. So the Learning Compass was designed for students, right? Was out of this reflection about what should the students be learning by 2030. And now what is really exciting is that the team has developed or is developing a teaching compass. So what will be the equivalent for teachers? Because as much as students need to have agency, we also need to find new ways to empower teachers. And that links very well with what we are aiming to do in terms of exploring pedagogy and exploring teaching and learning in a school's class that Leyva was describing before. When you look into pedagogy, you will see that it's a bit of a war in every country. You will have the traditionalists. The ones that advocates of frontal teaching and these conservative ways of teaching. And then you will have the big supporters of innovation and radical ideas.

Of course.

And what we are aiming to say is that it's not about one and the other. We need to overcome these words and actually empower every teacher with a toolbox, with the whole set of potential practices to be used so that teachers teachers can use their professional judgment and expertise to draw upon and to pick the practice that will be most adequate depending on what the goal, what the students are working towards or learning at that particular lesson, the student composition, and other contextual factors. So what matters, or what we feel that is needed, is this shift from one type of pedagogy, or whether you are innovative or whether you are conservative, to actually know we need to empower teachers to use their professional reasoning and judgment to make the appropriate pedagogical choices in the classroom.

It's an interesting point, isn't it? And you only need to spend 5 minutes on Twitter to see that unbelievable polarization. It's totally unhelpful. And I, but I think you're totally right. I think you, you have to hold those two things in tension because that's the meta insight. I think that people who are lost in those silos are not seeing is that these are two fundamental dynamics within society. They always have been. They're not going to go away and one side's not going to win the war. There's a fundamental tension between that kind of conservative urge and that more progressive urge. But the only thing I would say on that is that there is a, so individual teachers are not empowered in a lot of contexts to make those decisions because the school is constraining the space around the pedagogy, right? So if I work in this school X, I cannot be focusing in on any kind of inquiry-based structured inquiry. Because the way we do things here is didactic tradition. This is all the other way around, right? And so schools, I think, are to some extent guilty of supporting that kind of polarization of pedagogy, which I think, I agree, is completely unhelpful.

And if I can add, and maybe I'm sure that you also have a lot of things to say here, but that also means that we need to move away from that notion of the individual teacher into communities of practice, into professional collaboration, so that it's not, you know, just a decision of the teacher, but decision of the school community. And every teacher pulls and pushes each other into finding those most appropriate pedagogies for the context. And that's part of the shift as well, to move beyond the individual to the collective, to empower the whole.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, maybe I'll just add as well. So it's about providing, you know, teachers with the autonomy and the space to make those decisions and to take the tool that they need out of the toolbox when it's the most appropriate, but also to support them to be prepared to make those decisions as well, because you can't have autonomy without support, basically, for the teaching profession. So, and that's what we aim to do, and that's in particular also what those communities should be doing, is helping teachers work together to develop those tools to be able to use them.

Yeah. And I wonder whether that's part of the reasons why we're seeing the recruitment crisis is because teachers are lacking that kind of creative autonomy because they end up in these schools where they say, this is how you do it. And even to the point of scripted classes, you know, it's not necessarily a very human or creative space to be in. And perhaps that's not so attractive to new teachers coming into the profession.

Exactly. And the countries that do best are the countries where teachers are recognized that the profession is valued. And where teachers have the space to shape their work and their—

Yeah, fantastic. Thank you. So just finally, I'd love to just give you the opportunity. What, what's coming up in terms of the next steps with the network? Because I would love to support, to encourage more people to engage with this in different schools and organizations around the world. So what can they do? What's the call to action for them now going forward?

Oh, that's fantastic. Now, we definitely love to engage with as many schools as possible from all around the world. So we're going to have different phases as we work through these different activities that we've been talking about. So at the moment, we've had a recruitment phase with our founding networks and founding organizations, and actually they're the ones who are identifying the schools who are going to be part of these activities. But very soon, probably in less than 12 months' time, we're going to be opening up some of the tools and some of the findings and some of these outputs that we've developed together, and we're going to make that available to all the schools who are interested in interacting with this material. To giving their feedback on some of these promising practices that we're talking about. So we would encourage people to keep in touch and there's an email address and there's a website link which will be available at the bottom of the page, I believe, so that they can follow along and that will be definitely— we're very, very keen to work with as many schools as possible as we move along the different phases of activities.

Fantastic. Yeah, now we'll certainly include all the links in the show notes, But so you would be interested to hear from even just individual schools who want to engage?

Yeah. So for the individual schools, we'd be definitely interested in hearing of, in working with them as we move into the second phase of the work of the network. So yeah, absolutely.

Great. Ana, is there anything you wanted to add?

No, simply that we are really looking forward to work with all of those that are driving change in, in education from the bottom up and all of those that are committed to evidence because that's something important. At the end of the day, we are at the OECD, so we look at things in a rigorous way and through evidence process. So all of those that are interested in working with the best education research out there and bringing new insights to shape global education, I think they have a space in this new Schools+ network, and we are really looking forward to, to learn from them, to connect them, and to look into new ways to together.

That disciplined experimentation that we were— let's keep the discipline. Very good. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you, Leila. Thank you, Anna. It's a real pleasure to speak with you, and I'm happy to be able to support. So thank you so much.

Thanks, Tim Logan. That's a great podcast, and it's great to be part of it.

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