Getting Serious About Happiness

 "I did not put you here to suffer

I did not put you here to whine

I put you here to love one another

And to get out and have a good time."

-          The Rainmakers

A False Start

A few years ago, I presented to a group of education professionals at a university in Dubai on the topic:

“2020 and beyond: what our students need to thrive and survive”.

The brief was to focus on 21^st Century Skills, digital technology and entrepreneurship. “OK,” I thought – “should be easy enough to knock something together.”  But it wasn’t. It took me ages to write the presentation as I agonized over the thought that was nagging at me, gnawing away somewhere at the back of my brain. Of course, I dutifully produced lots of stats on the importance of SMEs, the rise of the entrepreneur and the importance of digital skills. All good so far, but the dreamer in me just couldn’t get away from the growing realization that this just wasn’t enough – not for my own children, not for any child.

The question nagging at me was one that so often crops up in many a visioning exercise, and it’s a big one:

“What is the purpose of education?”

It’s not a new question, of course and, put on the spot in another presentation once, I remembered saying something along the lines of:

“The purpose of education is to uncover every child’s gifts and to nurture those gifts into talents that will ensure maximum life chances.”

I knew what I meant, but it still somehow seemed inadequate. Incomplete. Impractical. Deep down, I knew what I wanted to say: that the true purpose of education is to empower our children to become happy adults. I also knew that this would most likely be viewed as woolly and lacking in substance. (Indeed, when David Cameron issued his ‘Happiness Survey’ a year later, he was widely mocked for these very reasons.  It could be argued that there are many reasons to mock Mr. Cameron – but to be fair to the former UK Prime Minister, I don’t think is one of them – as we shall see).

Nevertheless, I decided to take a risk and go with happiness as the proposed answer to ‘what our students need to thrive and survive.’

In the hope that the audience would back me before I committed myself, I posed what I thought would be a leading question that would elicit the answer I wanted and give me an easy ride for the rest of the presentation:

“What do you want for your own children?”

I had rather hoped that the word ‘happy’ would feature in at least some of the responses collected on my beautifully designed Padlet wall - but it didn’t. Not once. Some came close:

“I want him to grow up as a responsible & content adult and to do that I would like to be able to give him a good education that will enable him to do that.”

“To fulfill their dreams which meets their basic necessities and gives them professional growth and success and helps them to be independent.”

“Quality education that will enable her to be an expert in the field she chooses and ensure a secure future for her and her family.”

“To be independent, get the know-how and be able to choose the best for themselves. So, I encourage them to be more reflective thinkers, enquirers and connect with others.”

“To grow independent, responsible and respected in any field to catch their dreams.”

“I want them to follow their passion, whatever that may be.”

Close – but no cigar. Perhaps it was the ‘professional’ environment in which we were having the discussion, but it seemed that no one could bring themselves to say straight out that they wanted their children to be happy. Surely if they were asked at a dinner party, or even by their own children, this is what they’d say?

Disappointed, but not defeated, I went on with the presentation. After all, the responses alluded to my upcoming Maslow slide – AND I had John Lennon up my sleeve!

Despite having Lennon on my side, the final response on closing was as I had feared. Respectful because I guess everyone loves a dreamer, but impractical as a tangible outcome that could be articulated and implemented in schools. If I could sum up the faces and atmosphere in reaction to my focus on happiness, it would be simply “That’s nice.”

I had failed and I must admit that, for a while afterwards, I gave up this approach in subsequent presentations. It was clear that happiness was not really a thing in the brutal world of exam results, grades, rankings, competition for university places and jobs, and the almost immovable traditional curriculum structure and hierarchy.

A New Hope – and a Word of Caution

But the nagging did not go away and, in the few years since then, some remarkable things have happened that have given me the heart to revive this approach and to start to look at giving happiness the practicality and academic rigour it obviously requires if it is to succeed as being seen as the real goal of schools.

1.       People started publishing high profile surveys about the happiest countries and ‘most livable’ cities – with the indicators clearly articulated. Forbes ranks Norway as the happiest country and the Central African Republic as the unhappiest – a country in which more than 10% of children die in their first year. 

2.       People started talking about ‘Positive Education’ as the positive psychology movement began to find its way into schools. 

3.       People started publishing papers with titles such as ‘Happy Schools! A Framework for Learner Well-being in the Asia-Pacific’ (UNESCO, 2016).

4.       People such as Marc Prensky started challenging the traditional structure of school curricula, actually suggesting viable, if bold, alternatives.

5.       People, or rather Finland (!) actually began implementing a radical restructuring of a national curriculum. And everyone loves Finland, right?

6.       People like http://www.youhue.com/ started making ‘Mood’ software for schools to measure happiness levels and gather data on emotional states.

7.       People in education have started talking about the Sustainable Development Goals in schools, with children. Goal 4 states: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” Anthony Salcito, VP Worldwide Education at Microsoft, has even stated that: "We should be deploying technology in the service of teaching children to deliver the sustainable development goals." 

8.       People here in Dubai (again, the government, or rather KHDA, the local education regulator), employed a ‘Director of Happiness’ and made a bold policy statement that schools had a duty to make their students ‘happy’. We now have a ‘National Programme for Happiness and Positivity’.

I applaud all of these initiatives but the last one in particular makes me nervous. Not because it’s a bad idea. It’s a great idea.  The reason it makes me nervous is because of the tendency for the education profession to either bolt on or dumb down such ideas, without fully understanding the underlying theory or making the bold, difficult, transformational changes necessary to really make them work and have serious, sustained impact. There are many examples:

Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences was reduced to the now discredited ‘Learning Styles’ of the Visual, Auditory or Kinesthetic student. ‘VAK’ posters appeared in classrooms everywhere and there were endless tests issued to children so they could discover what sort of learner they were. The impact was pretty much zero – probably less than zero when the real learning time lost to this is accounted for.

Carol Dweck’s impressive work on growth mindsets was leapt on by educators and parents, suddenly going all out to praise effort at the expense of outcomes. Dweck never said outcomes don’t matter. They really do.

Marc Prensky’s 2001 paper on Digital Natives was widely misconstrued as suggesting that today’s learners knew more about technology than their teachers, so we could just let them get on with it. iPads flooded classrooms with little real thought as to how the curriculum or pedagogy would need to change to ensure ROI in terms of learning outcomes. Prensky in fact never said we could leave digital natives to their own devices (literally or metaphorically).

All three academics above have had to spend time clarifying their messages, which have been so widely misinterpreted and misapplied.

And so we come to the happiness agenda in schools. Let me say it again: it’s a good idea – and there has already been some great work done in this area. But, as educators, we must take a deep breath and think carefully about what happiness really means and how it can be achieved and sustained.  If anyone thinks I’m scaremongering, I would point out that we are already seeing examples of the ‘add-on’ approach, with little consideration of the underlying theory and how we could reimagine the curriculum. Schools suddenly now have:

·         Happiness Corridors (can students be happy elsewhere in the school, or just in that corridor?)

·         Happiness Lessons focusing on mental health, positivity and mindfulness. See https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/mar/12/schools-to-trial-happiness-lessons-for-eight-year-olds for more on this.

·         Happiness Days – seriously. Are the other days miserable? Reminds me of ‘Safer Internet Days’. As an aside, I would think about banning any event with the words ‘Day’ or ‘Hour’ in the title: Eco Day, Book Day, Hour of Code, Genius Hour, Earth Hour/Day and so on. The fact that we have to do this surely proves it’s not embedded in the curriculum. My particular favourite is Sports Day. Most children love a well-planned, fun Sports Day – arguments about winning and losing, medals and competition aside – but these children also love PE. My children have PE once a week and Sports Day once a year. Please don’t tell me they are happy with that – I know they’re not!  As adults, we know we should exercise every day but we are teaching our children that it is something we timetable once or twice a week plus, perhaps, some voluntary extra-curricular activities – clearly an ‘add-on’ and not something that is, in fact, central to lifelong health and happiness. I wouldn’t give a school even an acceptable rating if the children didn’t have some form of PE every day. Then we’d know that ‘health and happiness’ were truly valued.

·         Happiest School competitions – with the winners, assessed via short video submissions, announced in the media. One can only hope this does not lead to league tables – imagine being at the bottom, labelled as the ‘Most Miserable School in the Country’, based on inevitably suspect evidence. I can see the Daily Mail headline now.

·         Endless adverts on the radio, each promising that the school in question has ‘a culture… underpinned by the science of positive education’, or ‘promotes happiness’ or ‘puts the children’s well-being first’ and so on. Again, I hope it’s all true, I really do. But as these soundbites have only just started to appear this month, in a sudden flood of happiness, I simply cannot believe a culture of happiness has been embedded in school curricula since the KHDA announcement.

·         And finally, this being Dubai, we now really do have this...

(I do like the idea of there being a North and South, indicating there may be more than one route to happiness...)

Getting Serious about Happiness

I really don’t want to be critical of schools. Leaders and teachers want the best outcomes for their students and they work incredibly hard at it. They are also under tremendous pressure to improve their inspection ratings, a process which now requires them to prove their happiness – so the clamour for highly visible, quick wins is understandable.  Happiness is on the map and that’s a good thing. People are talking about it with children, who know that being happy is important – but we can’t expect it to just happen, to last and to be evenly distributed, without doing a lot more.  Indeed, there are already some outstanding examples of curriculum development producing tangible outcomes for students, such as the ‘Tolerance and Generosity Curriculum’ at GEMS Kindergarten Starters in Dubai. This highly innovative school is starting to go further than simply adding happiness and global citizenship to the existing curriculum. Rather, we are beginning to see the notion of ‘service’ being embedded in the curriculum and projects, which I believe is an important and admirable step.

As Tim Lott points out in a recent article, a happiness initiative as an add-on is “a bit like Vlad the Impaler instituting pain-management courses. Because although children are raw to all the inevitable human sources of suffering – disappointment, injustice, unkindness, etc. – one of the main sources of unhappiness for children are schools themselves.” https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/17/the-secret-of-happy-children-get-rid-of-teachers-and-ban-homework?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I don’t agree with Lott’s 3-point plan, but his message of futility in teaching happiness as an add-on to an ineffective model that itself is often a cause of misery, is valid.

One of the Dubai radio adverts mentioned above states: “As parents, we all have high aspirations for our children and want them to be successful - but most of all, we want them to be happy.” The school claims to offer “a strong values-based approach to learning.” It goes on: “Our school nurtures happy, successful, resilient and confident global citizens” and finishes with the claim that this is where “…today’s learners become tomorrow’s leaders.”  Powerful stuff and it certainly sounds like somewhere I’d like my own children to be. In truth, I doubt this school’s curriculum is significantly different to any other. And it is still an English National Curriculum School, which takes us back to Lott’s Vlad the Impaler analogy above. Again, I am NOT criticizing this school. It’s better to do something than nothing – but I do believe that the changes needed are more fundamental.

If we are serious about happiness, I suggest that we need to also get serious about creating a curriculum model that ensures this is a lasting outcome and not just the latest educational fad. So yes, let’s make sure our schools, teachers, students and parents are happy. And yes, let’s try and measure it. But first of all, we need to know what happiness really is – and then work on the model to achieve it. We also need to draw a clear distinction between the desire for children to be happy at school and home (and therefore better at learning, as the argument goes) and lifelong happiness as an achievable goal for all. It is the latter that I really want to focus on, as this speaks to the notion of happiness as a goal of education rather than just a facilitator of learning in the K-12 years.

I live in the UAE.  In the land of Malls, Maids and Maseratis, I do fear that the goal of ‘happiness’ will all too easily be misconstrued as the pursuit of some hedonistic Utopia, where we live the life of H.G. Wells’s future humans in The Time Machine - lazy, ignorant cattle with all our needs catered for; a life of leisure and no work - but of course there is always a price. For Wells’s tribe, this price was the intermittent risk of being taken by the hideous Morlocks, a species that had evolved to be the farmers, in a world where humans were the livestock.

In such circumstances, of course these humans could not be truly happy.  We are programmed to work. We are programmed to contribute to our society, on whatever that scale may be – the cave, tribe, country, or, as is our current reality, today’s connected world. We are programmed to take control of our own destinies and to earn our happiness - and this is where we begin to see the real potential juxtaposition of curriculum content and the outcome of ‘happiness’.  We cannot treat our children with kid gloves and we cannot ever let them believe the world owes them something - just as many educators have misconstrued Dweck’s work as meaning that only the process and not the outcomes matter. Dweck knows that process is not enough and we must be clear that ‘happiness as an-add on to the curriculum’ is not enough.  Children must learn that success and happiness are a product of sustained hard work and also that they have a lifelong duty to an equitable global society. This is how they will better their world. Indeed, I do believe this is the goal of the UAE policy makers, who recognise the essential role of hard work in achieving happiness. The danger is that this becomes lost in translation as schools look to make their children happy. I know that my own proudest moments as a teacher all correspond to students achieving beyond what they thought possible, by working harder and for longer than they ever have before, on something that really mattered to them, something they cared about deeply on a personal level. They have been in control, in flow and, by the end, exhausted. And they have, at that point in time, ‘become all they can be.’  It may be dangerous to speak of happiness as a ‘right’. It is surely better that we teach our children the reality – that happiness must be earned.

The Goal of Education and the Enduring Relevance of Maslow

So what really is the ‘goal’ of education – and how can it be articulated?

Buoyed by the surge of happiness initiatives, I started to reintroduce this into my presentations and workshops. I knew by now there were two key components:

1.       Self-actualisation for every individual; and

2.       The recognition that each of us has a wider duty to better our world and serve others.

It is arguably implicit in Maslow’s explanation of self-actualisation (and even the lower level of esteem) that those achieving this level of becoming all one can be would also naturally respect, if not actively work for, the benefit of others. Maslow believed that self-actualised people were accepting of others and the world.  But there’s something about the word ‘self’ that leads me to believe this is not sufficiently explicit to make the self-actualisation level sufficient as a societal goal. There is not quite enough in that level to guarantee that even the self-actualised person will necessarily work positively towards the welfare of all others, i.e. the global society. Indeed, Maslow’s ‘self’ was seen as ‘sovereign and inviolable’ and self-actualisation has therefore been described as ‘healthy narcissism’ (Pauchant et al, 1991).  Fortunately, Maslow actually went further, developing the concept of ‘self-transcendence’.

“Self Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos.” (The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, New York, 1971, p. 269.)

So self-transcendence builds on individual self-actualisation, thereby providing the final level of the model and the second component of the goal of education.  

Criticisms of Maslow’s work have focused mostly on the hierarchy itself, although I do not believe these are sufficiently convincing or relevant to dismiss his work as being non-applicable to a curriculum model. Certainly, it is likely that a person must have achieved self-actualisation and be secure in the lower levels to progress to self-transcendence. So self-actualisation remains critical. GEMS Chief Academic Officer and former head of Eton College, Tony Little, was asked recently about the outcomes achieved for his students at Eton. He responded by saying that “Every student leaves knowing what they are good at and what they can achieve.”  This is important when we consider initiatives such as “Every Child Matters,” “Every Student Succeeds” and “No Child Left Behind.”  Such policies, although well-meant, have tended to focus on a core, traditional skillset that governments have decided will serve every child. There has, as a result, been a further narrowing of the curriculum to focus on traditional literacy and numeracy skills, with scant regard for true personalization of learning. There is a huge difference between personalizing learning programmes for children so that they achieve the same, or minimum outcomes in literacy and mathematics on the one hand, and truly personalized learning, which empowers every child to discover and develop their gifts as they strive towards self-actualisation.

At least three great thinkers seem to agree:

“There is a major difference when we focus on the ‘learner’, instead of the ‘learning’.  A subtle shift that needs to be made in education.” – George Couros

“We must meet the real needs of every child – not just in core subjects, but in their real aptitudes, gifts and desires.” – Tom Friedman

“To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.” - John Dewey

Also, a UN General Assembly Resolution (2011) states simply: “The pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human goal.”

Given the focus on Maslow, a new statement of the goal of education may be:

“The educated person is the one who is equipped with the values, attributes, skills and knowledge to live a lifetime of self-actualization and self-transcendence.”

This is the definition I started to use before I heard Sir Ken Robinson at BETT 2017 convey much the same meaning in his statement:

“The purpose of education is to enable students to understand the world around them and the talents within them, so they can become fulfilled individuals and active, compassionate citizens” – Sir Ken Robinson (2017).

This succinctly and simply articulates the two key components stated above, representing Maslow’s hierarchy in its entirety, including the top level of self-transcendence. Breaking it down further, Sir Ken has actually provided even further clarification of both the goal and the method.

This is important and timely if we think about happiness as a lifelong outcome. I also believe it is measurable in a meaningful way at a very large scale.  I will make three simple assertions here, based on the current political and social climate, noting that by ‘happy’, I mean fully self-actualised, or even self-transcendent, in the Maslow sense. 

1.       Most countries have over-flowing prisons, creating untold misery and at enormous, unnecessary expense, both financial and social.  Self-actualised/transcendent people do not commit crime, including politically or ideologically motivated crime. They have too much to lose and those who have achieved self-transcendence know that there is no such thing as a victimless crime. This in itself guarantees compliance – and empty prisons. This is also why it is so important to redefine the true meaning of policy statements such as ‘Every Child Matters’ and ‘No Child Left behind’. It’s really not just about basic academic skills. Unless we strive towards self-transcendence for ALL, then we will only perpetuate a world of inequality and disenfranchisement of the masses. The UK’s Ministry of Justice budget for this year is around GBP 15 Billion and “£1.3 billion will be invested to reform and modernise the prison estate to make it even more efficient, safer and focused on supporting prisoner rehabilitation.” The government is also planning to build NINE new prisons. Obviously it would be a very long term strategy, but surely it would be wiser to start investing in schools and an effective curriculum model that would prevent offending rather than wasting such obscene resources on prisons and rehabilitation. Self-transecndent people don’t need rehabilitating and, as GEMS Founder and Chairman Sunny Varkey says, “Whatever the question, education is the answer.” I believe this is true – but only if we get it right for every single child.

2.       We are seeing an alarming rise of ‘alt-right’ and dictatorial political leaders, and movements away from global citizenship (not to be equated with the economically inequitable ‘globalization’ trend) and a return to pathetic nationalism and misguided tribalism – happy people do not vote for right wing leaders because this action is inimical to the very concept of self-transcendence. Leaving Trump aside, we can safely say that those who voted for Brexit wanted, for a plethora of reasons (some arguably valid, such as the rampant corruption, arrogance and waste within the EU’s institutions), to change the status quo. They were not happy – otherwise they would have voted to remain in what was a 2 choice offer. In effect, the question was “Would you be better off (happier) in or out of the EU?”  Each had his or her own reasons to change the status quo but, whatever the reason, whatever their concept of happiness, they must have thought they’d be happier out of Europe.  Now they (and everyone else in the UK) are, or soon will be. Looking inwards, breaking up unions and returning to one’s own perceived ‘tribe’, can only be a backward evolutionary step.  Away from Brexit, we now see The United Nations becoming increasingly impotent. The five permanent members of The Security Council, each with the power of veto, do not share the same values, aspirations or political history and are moving further apart when they need to be acting together. We should not be surprised at this. These five states were never true allies with shared values – they hold their position as a result of the global power dynamic that came out of World War Two. Even looking at that situation, for the sake of argument, with a British / Western bias, we can say that Russia was an ally only in that it wasn’t Nazi Germany and China because it wasn’t Japan. War creates strange bedfellows indeed.  Somewhat alarmingly, it was pointed out to me recently that, should Marine Le Pen win the French election, then the five member states that effectively decide the future of our world would be led by: Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Theresa May and Xi Jingping. This is why global citizenship needs to be a fundamental pillar of the curriculum in our schools. We can only hope that our children can do better than we have – or rather educate and empower them to do so.

3.       Linked to no.2, but worth mentioning as a separate point, is global inequality - the collective cancer that shames our species. We must surely be teaching our children that we all have a lifelong duty to actively help narrow and ultimately eliminate the gap between Norway and the Central African Republic. It simply cannot be right to focus on individual examination and career success while countless numbers of children are dying unnecessarily, because of their simple misfortune to have been born in a country at or near ‘the bottom of the league’. Furthermore, it is not enough for schools to hold Charity Days, well-being lessons or other ‘add-on’ initiatives in this area. For lifelong self-transcendence for all, meeting the challenge of global inequality must be an explicitly stated, core element of the curriculum. It is important to realise that not one of us can be truly self-actualised within Maslow's model, unless we strive for universal equality. This is true simply because the wider the inequality gap, the greater the crime rate and potential for global political upheaval, civil unrest and war. In such conditions, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to feel they have achieved the 'safety' level in Maslow's hierarchy. The further we retreat behind walls, national borders, gated communities, CCTV-controlled estates, etc., to try and guarantee safety, the more difficult it becomes to argue we are self-actualised. There is only one way and that is towards a fair global society. This is not Communism - simply a vision of the world in which every single human being is self-actualised and self-transcendent in their own way. It does not require everyone to enjoy equal wealth, as there are many other indicators of happiness. It does, however, require equality of opportunity in schools and beyond to ensure that every child is able to become all they can be. 

A Way Forward

My contention, therefore, is that we need to re-imagine the structure and focus of the school curriculum with the boldly stated, overarching aim of empowering all children to achieve lifelong self-transcendence. Not just to be happy as children so that they ‘learn better’, but so that they see self-transcendence as the goal and have a deep understanding of what this means and how it can be achieved. Furthermore, as positive psychology continues to develop Maslow’s seminal work, I also suggest that the re-imagined curriculum should, and can, be developed and delivered using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as the framework. Talking about Maslow is almost a cliché these days, but I do believe his work, combined with subsequent developments in the field of positive psychology, can provide the basis of, and even the entire framework for, the curriculum we need to better our world. 

I have started work on this and it is exciting to begin seeing how the content fits in at each level.  Indeed, one thing I am already noticing is that nothing of value that currently exists needs to be lost or shoe-horned into the model. Compared to more revolutionary models such as Marc Prensky’s “The World Needs a New Curriculum,” it is not likely to be as philosophically challenging to convince schools and policy-makers to accept a Maslow-based curriculum framework. It is more of a restructuring and re-focusing exercise than a revolution and, consequently, perhaps more palatable.

It is not enough to add ‘happiness’ into a traditional curriculum model. We have a model that explains lifelong happiness in terms of ‘self-transcendence’ and provides the opportunity to empower our children to be happy and to better their world. It would be remiss of us as educators to ignore its potential.  It seems almost too simplistic to say that if we are agreed on the purpose of education and therefore the broad, desired outcomes of a curriculum, and that Maslow appears to fit this purpose very well, that this model should explicitly form the basis of the curriculum itself. Why not? This is real world learning for a better world. If we want our children to be happy and fulfilled and good global citizens, why wouldn’t we base our school curricula on a model that makes these outcomes explicit?

It is heartening to see that others have already started to explore this very possibility. Dr. Lori  Desautels https://www.edutopia.org/blog/addressing-our-needs-maslow-hierarchy-lori-desautels has suggested some useful practical activities and questions to ask for each stage of Maslow’s hierarchy, which help to ensure children are meeting their needs at each level. There is reason to believe this will also help children to acquire and internalize the skills and mindsets that will serve them well throughout life. My hope is to build on this, and other on-going work, to develop such a model to the point where the hierarchy provides the framework for the whole curriculum, rather than an additional strand.

It will be a complex task, but one that I believe is worth the time and effort. My hope is to produce a practical curriculum model with the potential to transform how we organize learning in our schools and meet the true goal of education – for all children and for a better world.

A world in which we can all live on Happiness Street. 

Ensuring Impact of EdTech - a Journey

As the sensationalist, mainstream media machine continues to peddle the myth that technology in schools has no impact and is a waste of time and money, it is heartening to see more and more examples of real impact, such as this wonderful story from The Kindergarten Starters in Dubai.

Of course it doesn't happen overnight. Of course it doesn't work when schools just throw technology at a traditional curriculum, never moving past the substitution level in SAMR.

As Mal Lee and Roger Broadie have pointed out, digital transformation in a school takes an average of 5 years, and Asha Alexander, Principal of The Kindergarten Starters - Dubai always knew this would be a long, difficult and arduous journey.  Her relentless focus on student outcomes, self-belief, courage and determination to transform the life chances of her children have never wavered - and the rewards are clear.

Implicit in this story are two key factors in school digital transformation - where these are absent, we know that digital initiatives really do fail, providing ammunition for the naysayers. It's hard work and not easy to get them right, but it is necessary to ensure these pillars of transformation are in place to support the journey to digital normalisation. The factors are:

1. Re-imagining the curriculum and associated pedagogies, with clarity of the desired outcomes for students. The school spent a long time re-writing the curriculum and, as stated in the article, the children now learn in a completely different way - on the redefinition level in SAMR.

2. Leadership - the right people in the right roles and distributed across the school. The connection and teamwork between the Digital Leader and Curriculum Leader was no accident!

Enjoy this heartening story!

'Edtech: How to spend wisely'

By Asha Alexander, Principal, The Kindergarten Starters - Dubai

Edtech is a dizzying world. It changes so fast that by the time we are deliberating an even more advanced version of a resource beckons. Buying a product has become harder as we are inundated with the range of resources that has made decision making maddening.

Five years into our digital journey, I am a more balanced purchaser. I put my money where I will see the most long lasting impact.

Let me start at the beginning. The first year of our digital journey was undoubtedly the most chaotic. We were in a trance as we experimented with all the possibilities we saw for our children. We were grabbing everything that appeared to be useful in our limited budget and agonizing over the constraints we were under. At the end of that year, we reviewed our purchase and decided we need to have a plan for our spending. There were so many purchases that had diverted our limited funds and we had not been able to maximize the impact it had on learning.  Some very appealing products were overpriced and many we had selected were under performing.

A thought struck us that if students brought in their own devices, we could move the funds that were being diverted to purchase laptops and put it to more profitable use. The campus was WiFi enabled and the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) was launched. Five years into our digital journey 3000 students from Grades 2-5 bring their devices, thus enabling us to cut costs on laptops and tablets.

We studied our school’s performance and analyzed data to see what could help our children learn better in Science and Mathematics which were our focal points as we needed to improve student learning. We were helped by our Digital Advisor to identify the best products which had been vetted by the Research and Development wing of our organization, compare pricing and negotiate for better deals through our large network of schools.

The Introduction of Robotics, 3D printing and Coding brought us in touch with LEGO Mindstorms and EV3 Kits which have changed the way children learn at our school. There is greater enjoyment as children have moved out of their passive roles of knowledge recipients to becoming active seekers of knowledge.

Mindspark is an adaptive learning tool that has improved Math scores at our school. Mastery of a concept has to occur before students can move to the next level. The self-paced instruction allows students to work on areas that need attention and allows the school to gain information on their progress and the number of hours the student has used the tool.

Harcourt’s Math in Focus, 3P Learning’s Mathletics, Mc Graw Hill’s Science Resource are among our carefully selected resources. Read and Write Text Help is nothing short of visionary as we see the tremendous strides our students are taking in language learning.

Part of the layout in transforming our school has gone into the selection and appointment of key personnel to drive the digital journey. In order that we make the right EdTech choices, we have appointed a Head of Digital Learning and a Head of Curriculum who work in tandem with the Digital Learning Coordinators of every Grade to cascade the learning. A key component of the selection of EdTech is the professional development and support we receive from the providers to maximize the benefits of the resource for both students and teachers.

Through Innovate my School, we had the opportunity to interact with several providers at our Speed Networking event last year that enabled teachers to interact directly with carefully selected providers to gain an understanding of how the resources would affect instruction in the classroom.

We have come a long way in our process of winnowing the plethora of products that are on offer. I have learned that we cannot and must not listen to the sales pitch alone but consult colleagues in our network, pay close attention to my Digital Advisor and Head of Digital Learning to make a difference to student learning.

In five years we have moved our Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) scores from 489 in Science and Math to 591 in Science and 549 in Math in 2015. That is only due to the changed curriculum and the digital delivery of content.

By upgrading our purchasing practices and spending wisely, we have increased the benefits to students even as we have saved money.