The positive quality of responsibility
I am always thinking about the positive qualities and capabilities we hope to develop in our young people. Since the full return of students to school last Monday the word ‘responsible’ has been prevalent in my thoughts. It sits purposefully alongside ‘aware’ on our Graduate Tree as awareness feeds into responsibility. The events of 2020 have underscored that we live in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world. In this world, in our rapidly changing global society, we have been reminded of the larger context of what it means to be ‘aware’ and ‘responsible’.
Going forwards, the context of student responsibility is important in many areas including:
- The magnificent new precinct for learning for the Junior High community. Our students need to appreciate this and look after it well so this significant resource and investment can serve them, and future cohorts, for many years.
- While Queensland has moved to Stage 2 in easing COVID restrictions the virus is not gone. Our students need to continue to act responsibly in the interest of their own health, the health and wellbeing of others, and to the benefit of our community. Our older students should have an acute awareness of the devastation this virus has caused, is causing and could still cause.
- With the full return to school our older students need to take responsibility for their learning. They need to make the most of the renewed in-person access to their teachers and peers to maximise their learning.
In my experience students who graduate with the best outcomes have consistently taken responsibility for their learning; they have relentlessly pursued understanding and left no stone unturned in their endeavour. They have not avoided work or challenge, nor failed to ask questions; they have not blamed others, nor made excuses, and they have not given up when they have struggled. As teachers and parents, we expect them to take responsibility, we encourage them and support and guide them in solving problems and overcoming hurdles. It is important we do not enable students to deflect responsibility thereby depriving them of the opportunity to grow in character and capability.
As Fullan, Quinn and McEachen point out in Deep Learning: Engage the World, Change the World (2018), if learning is to be maximised, if our young people are to be equipped with global competencies so they can thrive today and in the future, students must play their part and take responsibility for their learning and understand the process of learning. This requires students to develop skills in metacognition, giving and receiving feedback and enacting student agency.
The OECD report The Future of Education and Skills – Education 2030 (2018) similarly places ‘taking responsibility’ as a prerequisite core competency. Future-ready students have a sense of responsibility to participate in the world and, in so doing, influence people, events and circumstances for the better.
As stated in the OECD report, dealing with novelty, change, diversity and ambiguity assumes that individuals can think for themselves and work with others. Equally, creativity and problem-solving require the capacity to consider the future consequences of one’s actions, to evaluate risk and reward, and to accept accountability for the products of one’s work. This suggests a sense of responsibility, and moral and intellectual maturity with which one can reflect upon and evaluate one’s actions. Central to this competency is the concept of self-regulation, which involves self-control, self-efficacy, responsibility, problem solving and adaptability. Advances in developmental neuroscience show a second burst of brain plasticity takes place during adolescence, and the brain regions and systems that are especially pliable are those implicated in the development of self-regulation. Adolescence can now be seen as a time not just of vulnerability but of opportunity for developing a sense of responsibility.
The Finnish schooling system is often held up as a global exemplar in light of its educational outcomes. In Teach Like Finland, author and American educator, Timothy Walker, observed that Finnish students are given far more responsibility at home and at school from an early age than their American counterparts. Because of this they were far more autonomous, happier and achieving higher educational outcomes. Our students are perfectly capable of taking responsibility, it is more so a matter of whether we let them.
Responsible. Sounds like an old-school quality, but it is as critical now as ever, if not, more so.
May God bless and keep you all safely.
Craig Schmidt
Principal
