In this month’s issue …
Opening thoughts
Risk taking is essential for learning and development.
Whispers from the frontier
The World Economic Forum argues for play.NZ research examines what enables and inhibits risk acceptance in education.
Katie Martin offers a framework for activating learner agency.
Heather Nelson takes a risk and gives learner agency a go.
Caroline Paul says brave kids are made, not born.
Theory on my mind
Bevan is interested in the link between risk and relationships.
Reading spotlight
Simon Sinek’s book The Infinite Game argues that thinking life is about winning misses the point.
Guest Writer
Ann Langis writes about the importance of accepting risk as a fundamental, developmental way of knowing oneself.
Opening thoughts
How often, when someone mentions that doing a particular thing is risky, is your first instinct to pause or shy away from it?
How often, when a student comes to you with an idea that’s a little ‘left-field’, has your first thought been, ‘Will this make passing difficult?’
How often, when you see a kid at play move beyond what you feel is safe, have you moved to stop them?
It’s natural for us to want to meet risk in a cautious and considered way; we should pause and think, and where necessary mitigate. But this natural instinct is not the same as risk aversion, which is the dominant modus operandi for most kids these days, both within and outside school. Fear of what might happen in the worst case tends to direct decision making.
Risk is usually seen in physical terms: ie, if something’s risky we might break an arm. But it can also take the form of intellectual, emotional and relational risks. Learning how to navigate all those aspects of risk is crucial. In education, we must be cognisant of accepting risk taking in all those dimensions if we are to support the holistic development of kids.
So, in this issue, I hope to offer some food for thought to help you assess risk with less emphasis on fear, and more understanding of why experiencing it is developmentally essential. Which means the dominant question should be:
What is in place to help kids feel safe enough to take risks?
Not
What is in place to keep kids safe from the harm that comes from taking risks?
Bevan
Whispers from the frontier
The World Economic Forum has a number of articles on their website about the importance of play, both developmentally and explicitly for learning. In an article called ‘Learning through play: how schools can educate students through technology’, they state
“research has repeatedly underscored that learning through play has a critical role in education and in preparing children for challenges and opportunities throughout their lives.”
The New Zealand ECE curriculum, Te Whariki, says children must
“have opportunities to make choices, take risks, and engage in a wide range of play, both inside and outside, with the support of kaiako, and that the environment should be “challenging but not hazardous… [and] while alert to possible hazards, kaiako support healthy risk-taking play with heights, speed, tests of strength and the use of real tools. (p. 28)”
So, taking risks is mandated as an essential part of learning. But what factors inhibit or enable teachers to enact it? This paper by Vikki Hanrahan, Karyn Aspden and Tara McLaughlin explores that question.
Katie Martin says this
“Agency is by definition the power to act, but this doesn’t have to be misconstrued as a free for all.”
Her article '5 Ways to Activate Learner Agency in Distance Learning’ provides a good framework for teachers in understanding the crucial role they have in enabling and supporting learner agency, regardless of the context.
Heather Nelson, a high school teacher in the USA, details how she went about enabling learner agency in her podcast Exploring Education. In it, we hear how we can’t forget about teachers when thinking about risk.
“The teacher guides the learner and then gets out of the way … for me it was really hard.”
I like her idea about operating in Starbucks mode!
Where might risk take you? Anywhere, says Caroline Paul in this TED Talk that argues allowing kids to take risks is essential, especially for girls.
“studies show that risky play is really important for kids, all kids, because it teaches hazard assessment, it teaches delayed gratification, it teaches resilience, it teaches confidence. In other words, when kids get outside and practice bravery, they learn valuable life lessons.”
Theory on my mind
It’s interesting to me that the smata-note that has generated the highest number of views was the one on safety. In it, I quoted a secondary school student who said to me, about being in a class that fostered learner agency
“[it] feels different ... you feel supported ... that getting things wrong is ok unlike in other classes ... I want to try more, strike out for more things.”
Why did this context make her feel safe in a way that other learning contexts didn’t? I find this fascinating, because I know for sure the teachers in her other classes would have spent a lot of time thinking about how they could make learning a safe experience for her. Yet she felt safer, more supported, more willing to be adventurous and take risks when she had the agency to control her own learning.
In response to that smata-note, Katie Smith wrote that one big thing that’s changed for her in fostering learner agency is that she no longer jumps in to save students from failure. Instead,
“We talk about how they can 'save' the work themselves or what went wrong and why. In some cases the thing that didn't work sparks a new idea or a process that is uniquely theirs.”
Compare this to the standard operating procedure in many classes: students are shown the way to do something, the safe course is plotted, and all this is front-loaded. The learning experience is a controlled one, and the best course for the learner is to stay on the safe path. Yet, counter-intuitively, in removing these measures that are normally used to keep the learning ‘safe’, Katie had noticed something.
“I do think the students feel safer knowing the control is with them to fail and try again until they are satisfied with the result.”
In prompting discussions about what can be learned from the dead ends and didn’t-work-outs, which validates risk taking as part of the learning process, I think Katie has allowed students to see learning as more than a pass / fail, win / lose paradigm. Instead, it becomes one associated with satisfaction, which is a personal feeling. We feel satisfied when we know we’ve pushed ourselves and done something good to our best ability. Only we know this, and it’s closely tied to risk taking. In this case, Katie’s students are able to take intellectual risks because she has shifted the point of learning from the outcome to the process by positioning her support of the learning in the process space. The outcome or product is nice, but not the main point.
We’re back to a common Smata Bulletin theme here aren’t we: emotions and connection as drivers of agentic learning. These are concepts tied closely relational ideas, and I think they give us a clue as to how risk might be more effectively embraced as an essential part of the learning experience.
At heart, when we speak of relational ideas, we are speaking of care. As such, it’s worth making a connection here to manaakitanga, which, as Angus MacFarlane reminds us, is about kindness, respect, care and concern for others, usually exhibited through feeding, sheltering and nurturing. MacFarlane also makes the point that
“manaakitanga is not optional, it’s obligatory, and it has reciprocal ramifications, suggesting teachers who value others will be valued in return.”
It’s easy to see how being in a context where manaakitanga is evident, one is likely to feel secure enough to take risks. Is it possible that the relational space is the space to look to if we want students to feel safe enough to take risks? Is it possible that in focusing on processes and systems as the means through which we make things safe enough for learners to take risks we’ve forgotten this?
Guy Claxton wonders if, when thinking about risk, it might be helpful to think about the difference between safe from and safe to, because while they’re two sides of the same coin when thinking about risk, the difference is significant.
“safe to explore; safe to be adventurous; safe to be half-baked; safe to float ideas and experiment...all of which presuppose a lot of 'getting it wrong”
Safe to is about action, coupled with the acceptance of ‘failure’. Katie’s students learn a lot in this sense, and the type of support Katie gives them allows them to have ownership of their actions and learning. They’re safe to pursue a half-baked idea because they know Katie will support them and that there’s something valuable to learn if it doesn’t work out.
“safety from ridicule or judgements of personal ability / effort...” [I’d add harm to this]
Safe from is about relationships and culture, which when positive provide a kind of protective blanket. Culture is created through caring for others, not systems and processes, rules, instructions or class treaties. In Katie’s class the culture is one where the process of ‘striking out’ is nurtured through the relationships she builds with students. She feeds and supports the process, and this shelters them from feeling the pressure of failure. It sends messages of care.
For much of my teaching carer I thought it was enough to tell kids that they should take risks, and the way I supported them to do this was in providing structure, examples, modelling, and clear systems and processes. I thought those things would do the work of enabling risk taking, but actually I realise now they were things that emphasised the idea of keeping kids safe from the harm that comes from taking risks. The safe space was within the process, which was dominated by what I provided. As a result, I tended get get back work that looked a lot like what I provided. I hadn’t considered that it was the relational space that worked to support risk taking. Without manaakitanga as the foundation stone, the kids didn't feel safe enough to venture beyond the path I’d lit up.
Reading spotlight
Inspired by the work of James P. Carse, Simon Sinek’s book The Infinite Game is an easy read that unpacks a way of looking at how organisations and individuals approach their purpose. A finite mindset is associated with short term, goal oriented ideas about winning (the aim) and losing (to be avoided). A finite game has the following characteristics
Known ‘players’
Fixed rules
Agreed-upon objective: when reached it ends the game
A beginning, middle and end.
Sinek says that
“finite-minded players do not like surprises and fear any kind of disruption. Things they cannot predict or cannot control could upset their plans and increase their chances of losing.”
While the book illustrates its argument primarily with examples from the business world, I also think it offers a way to think about risk in an education setting.
There is no doubt that losing in education is not passing a course, exam or assessment. These things tend to have fixed ‘rules’ (or the impression of them) with clear objectives. Students move through them in clear ways, often with systems to guide their progress.
For most students (and their teachers) ‘losing’ is something to fear. So, minimising the risk of this occurring is a dominant aspect of life in school. I’m sure you can think of ways in which you have acted in accordance with this idea. The problem with this is that in seeking to minimise risk, trust in the people involved is eroded. And life, Sinek argues, is actually an infinite game: we don’t win at life, or in a friendship; saying someone won school sounds like nonsense. The answer, therefore, is to adopt an infinite mindset, which leads to
“higher levels of trust, cooperation and innovation”
I find this really interesting, because if we unpack the sequence here, we get
Trust: it comes from building strong relationships where people know they’re cared for (manaakitanga)
That enables
Cooperation: which is where we find reciprocity, acceptance and a feeling of support (feel safe from)
Which leads to
Innovation: this looks like people inclined to take risks and ‘Strike out for more things’ (feel safe to)
And this is why a reliance on process and systems acts against risk: the foundation stone of trust is missing. Everyone sits within the process, so to take a risk means to step outside the group. Sinek acknowledges the detrimental impact of this when he says
“The most anxiety-inducing place to be is alone … when there is danger, we act from a place of fear rather than confidence”
In a dynamic, fluid, complex world, where nothing is fixed and certain and the possibilities for ‘being’ are infinite, what we want are people who know how to navigate risk, not hide from it out of fear.
Guest piece
I’m really pleased Ann Langis agreed to contribute to this month’s issue. I have worked with Ann now and then over the past couple of years, and always found her ideas about risk stimulating, particularly the idea that intelligence begins in our gut. In this piece, Ann writes about how important it is for kids to be given chances to develop this intelligence on their own terms.
Ann would love to hear from you, and can be reached at hi@annlangisplay.com
I hope you enjoy her piece.
…
“Don’t be stupid.”
This was the response I received from a Year 8 boy when asked, “How can you respect yourself at Junky Monkeys?” I travel around to schools delivering this programme, where we empty out a truckload of large loose parts onto the grass for kids to play with… Sort of like a traveling inorganic circus. At this particular school the environment afforded a grassy hill with a decent vertical drop, so the possibility for stupidity was very real!
“Don’t be stupid” was followed by peals of pre-teen giggles and snickering, but I chose to embrace the sentiment. “Absolutely. And how will you know when you are about to do something stupid?” I asked. The students turned their attention back to me with nascent curiosity and quizzical looks. “What I mean is, you all have a stupidity radar that gives you a warning when you are about to do something stupid. Whereabouts in your body is your stupidity radar?”
A tentative hand went up… “Your brain?” “Sure, your brain can be helpful,” I replied, “but it’s not your best stupidity radar.” After eyes, ears, and heart had been ruled out, I got the answer I was fishing for… “Guts?”
Bingo.
We all have a risk radar in our bellies. When we push ourselves outside our comfort zone our risk radar is elevated and we start to feel butterflies. I told the students, “A little bit of butterflies is a good thing – it means you are taking a risk and challenging yourself, and helps you pay attention to what you are doing. But if there are too many butterflies, and you’re starting to feel sick, that’s when your risk radar might be heading into the ‘stupid’ range… Have you considered all the hazards? Are you feeling strong enough? Are YOU ready for this or are you just doing it ‘cause your mate is?”
The thing is, no one knows the right amount of butterflies for anyone else… no parent, teacher, or coach can be the judge of that for any child. They have to find the right balance themselves – where they continue to push themselves into the unknown (and in this sense risk is fundamental to learning) without veering into the ‘stupidity’ range.
The tricky thing for us as adults is that as we support children to play outdoors and take risks, we feel the weight of health and safety policies and parental expectations. We try to assess risk ‘objectively’, but in reality we are looking through the lens of our OWN risk radar, and the butterflies in our tummies may have very little to do with the ramshackle go-cart careening down the hill. Our own butterflies might be saying, “What if he breaks his arm? His mum’s a nightmare, she doesn’t even want the school uniform getting dirty, she would not be happy about this! What would my Principal say?”
So instead of calling the whole thing off, consider trying a different approach… one which values our role in actively educating children for risk and resilience.
Step 1: Ask go-cart boy to “Stop” Or “Wait”
Step 2: Help him identify the hazards e.g. “I’m noticing that your wheels look loose” or “I’m thinking about the concrete at the bottom of this hill”
Step 3: Ask “How can you solve this problem?” or “How can you manage those hazards” giving agency to the student to come up with a plan, seizing the teachable moment
Step 4: If the plan is plausible, step back and observe the outcome together.
Why? Consider the alternative… children who have little experience identifying hazards and listening to their own risk radar until they are old enough to get behind the wheel. Or possibly worse, a generation who avoids those butterflies at all costs, preferring to stay in their comfort zone rather than challenge themselves, whether physically, socially, or intellectually. By reading The Smata Bulletin and delving into play pedagogy I would argue you are taking a professional risk; let’s create space for our students to take learning risks as well. Bring on the butterflies all around!
There’s a question that sits at the heart of teaching: What do I do next?
When kids sit in rows, being nicely compliant, all doing as instructed, it’s an easy question to answer. But when learners have agency there is a diversity in the learning that makes answering that question increasingly difficult.
The Smata app is designed to help you respond effectively to learning diversity. Download it now to activate your 1 month free trial.
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