Brandy Yee, Anne Sliwka, Matti Rautiainen - Engaging Adolescent Learners-Springer International Publishing - Palgrave Macmillan (2018)

Engaging Adolescent Learners
Brandy Yee • Anne Sliwka
Matti Rautiainen
Engaging Adolescent
Learners
International Perspectives on
Curriculum, Pedagogy and Practice
Brandy Yee Anne Sliwka
Calgary Board of Education, Universität Heidelberg
University of Calgary Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Calgary, AB, Canada
Matti Rautiainen
University of Jyväskylä
Jyväskylä, Finland
ISBN 978-3-319-52601-0 ISBN 978-3-319-52602-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52602-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018953169
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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This book is dedicated to all those teachers, students and instructional
leaders whose words and work have provided us with images of practice
that will positively impact the ways in which we engage adolescents in
their learning.
This book is also dedicated to that person each of us has in our lives who will
not only read our chapters, but who, more importantly, inspires us to be
brave enough to share our words with the world…WGY, thank you for
being my person…xo
Contents
1 Why Comparative Research on the Middle Years? 1
2 Setting the Stage 21
3 Multicultural and Multifaceted Canada 71
4 Germany: A System Undergoing Change 115
5 Finland: Towards the Future School 139
6 Ecologies of Practice 161
vii
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 (a, b, c) Whys, hows and whats on rocks 89

Fig. 5.1 Big Picture of Teacher Education at the Department of Teacher
Education at the University of Jyväskylä 152
ix
1
Why Comparative Research
on the Middle Years?
Is it okay if I tell you that most days I feel like I don’t even know who this
person is who is staring back at me in the mirror. Sometimes I am happy,
sometimes I am sad, and then mad and just bored, all in like the same hour.
My body aches and all these things are happening to it that I feel embarrassed
to ask my family and friends about. And then I have to be in class and try to
hold all these emotions together and also get my mind focused on learning.
Every day feels like a struggle.
(Yee, Student Interview, December 2014)
Anyone who has recently stepped into a middle years’ classroom knows
all too well the truth of this portrait—the lived experience of learners in
our schools today. Early adolescents are truly a unique group of learners,
like none other a teacher might experience—a group that will at one
moment test a teacher’s mettle and the very next bring so much elation
and reward that a teacher might even question how they could ever think
of working with another age group. This is the appeal and the true curios-
ity behind the early adolescent learner and is the heart of what we will
present to you in this book.
While many arguments can be found to support either the early years
(kindergarten through grade 4) or the high school years (grades 10
© The Author(s) 2018 1
B. Yee et al., Engaging Adolescent Learners,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52602-7_1
2 B. Yee et al.
through 12) as being of crucial importance in a child’s growth and devel-

opment, it is the middle years that have often gone unnoticed. Much
brain-based research has been devoted to understanding the tremendous
changes early adolescents experience; yet, connecting that research to
school-based practices for these learners has remained elusive. Decisions
about middle level learning environments and programming for these
learners are often based on budgets and capital plans as opposed to what
will best support them through what can be a very tumultuous time.
This is not a group of slightly more complex primary students. Nor is it a

group of immature high schoolers. These [middle-years learners] are
unique. Intellectually, the tools they need for figuring out academics and
life are not all in the toolbox yet. This makes decision making, impulsivity
control, moral/abstract reasoning, “reading” the situation, planning,
understanding consequences of words and actions, and other executive
functions intermittent at best. They are fiercely independent, yet paradoxi-
cally, they crave social connection. They move from concrete to abstract
thinking, sounding like adults when talking about some topics, and young
children when discussing others. They crave competence, self-definition,
creativity, vividness in learning, emotionally control/power over their lives,
physical activity, positive social interactions with adults and peers, struc-
ture and clear limits, and meaningful participation in school/community.
Most of all, they want to belong. (Wormeli 2012, para. 9–14)
Truly understanding the unique developmental needs of early adolescent

learners and how the multifaceted developmental changes they undergo
during this period impact their experience in school is often overlooked
while educators with good intentions engage in “strategic guesswork”
attempting to create effective and appropriate learning environments and
opportunities for adolescent students. We cannot deny the very real stages
of physical, emotional and social development and transition occurring
for these learners; however, we need not perpetuate myths that associate
early adolescence with distress, difficulty or suffering. If school systems
attend to how these changes impact teaching and learning, middle level
learning environments can achieve their potential in becoming remarkable
places of learning, responsive to the unique learning needs of early
adolescents.
Why Comparative Research on the Middle Years? 3
With much attention worldwide currently focused on the early years

of learning along with supporting students as they work towards high
school completion, it is the early adolescent learner, age 10–14, and the
middle years of learning that are often overlooked as large education sys-
tems endeavour to bolster student achievement. An abundance of current
research highlights a concerning decline of student engagement in and
connectedness with their learning, beginning at age 10 (Association for
Middle Level Education 2010; Balfanz 2009; Centre for Collaborative
Education 2003; Manitoba Education 2008; McCreary Centre Society
2009; National Association of Secondary School Principals 2006; OISE
2008; Rumble and Aspland 2009; Steinberg 2014; Willms et al. 2009;
Wormeli 2011). Still, a significant imbalance exists in the amount of
time, money and human resources education systems have invested in
the middle years of learning as compared to learners on either end of the
developmental continuum.
According to one study, Young People in Canada: Their Health and
Well-Being, early adolescents’ behaviours and self-perceptions are closely
related to their quality of life in school (Klinger et al. 2011). This study
found that by Grade 8, only 21 per cent of girls and 16 per cent of boys
reported “liking school a lot” (p. 52). Furthermore, 52 per cent of girls
and 54 per cent of boys described their “teachers [as being] interested in
them,” and only 72 per cent of girls and 70 per cent of boys believed that
“most of their teachers were friendly” (p. 54). Similarly, a study sponsored
by the McCreary Centre Society (2009) in British Columbia examined
adolescents’ perceptions of school and feeling connected to school and
their learning throughout the adolescent developmental period. This
multifaceted study generated troubling findings that characterized early
adolescent learners as lacking any meaningful connection to school across
all grades. Results showed a sharp drop in student connectedness to their
learning from 23 per cent in Grade 7 to 7 per cent in Grade 10, with a
slight rise to 12 per cent in Grade 12. Longitudinal research studies from
both New Zealand and Australia indicate that it “works” for schools to
develop a middle years approach. Outcomes are better, student engage-
ment with their learning is greater, teacher satisfaction is higher and
resources within and across schools are better utilized (O’Sullivan 2005).
Haigh (2004) writes, “Studies have overwhelmingly concluded that
4 B. Yee et al.
middle schools do an effective job… The notorious Year 7 dip tends not
to happen” (p. 2).
The Canadian Education Association’s (CEA) What did you do in school
today? study has, since 2007, surveyed over 63,000 Canadian adolescents
and found that although 69 per cent of students report being “engaged in
school,” as measured through indicators such as attendance, homework
behaviours, positive relationships with friends and participation in extra-
curricular activities, only 37 per cent reported being engaged in learning.
The concept of being “engaged in learning” was measured by reported
levels of effort, interest and motivation and perceived quality of instruc-
tion (Dunleavy et al. 2012).
During these transitional years, students change significantly--physically,

intellectually, morally, psychologically and social-emotionally. The aca-
demic growth and personal development experienced during these impor-
tant years significantly impact their futures. In the middle grades, the stage
will be set for success in high school and beyond…[These students] deserve
an education that will enhance their healthy growth as lifelong learners,
ethical and democratic citizens, and increasingly competent, self-sufficient
individuals who are optimistic about the future and prepared to succeed in
our ever-changing world. (AMLE 2010, pp. 11–13)
This research, along with emerging evidence from other parts of the
world, combines to underscore the importance of further examination
into the experiences of early adolescents in middle level learning envi-
ronments and the factors that contribute to their engagement in learn-
ing. Therefore, the significance of this book can be found in the unique
comparative approach we utilize to examine dialogues and practices
related to the major paradigm shifts underway in Germany, Finland and
Canada designed to target the early adolescent learner, the pedagogical
methods employed by teachers for that age group, along with the orga-
nization of the learning environments in which their formal education
takes place. So far, very few studies have examined this phenomenon
within a contemporary international context; further, none can be found
that have crossed linguistic borders, where cultural beliefs and values
connected to education have a significant impact on the emerging narra-
tives contributing to distinct national systems of education. Without an
understanding and appreciation of other cultures and the unique histo-

ries, beliefs and contexts intertwined into their national identity, which
have consequently impacted their systems of education, we may miss
valuable opportunities to learn from each other.
Finland is considered by many to have one of the world’s top perform-
ing education systems (Hancock 2011; Sahlberg 2011). Education
reforms in Finland have been described by some as emphasizing teacher
and student personal responsibility—where teachers are given the free-
dom to design the curriculum and students have increased choice in what
they study, thereby creating meaningful and authentic learning experi-
ences. The Finnish context will provide a thought-provoking narrative of
how this much-admired system supports the unique and ever-changing
developmental needs of early adolescents in what is viewed as a highly
student-centred system of education.
Germany is currently undergoing significant reforms in the country’s
education system and teacher preparation as long-held beliefs about hier-
archies and levelled systems of schooling are challenged as a response to
the findings of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
and other empirical research studies. Once believed to be a symbol of
national strength, the sifting and sorting of children into one of three
tiers of school at the age of 10 is now believed by many to be a limiting
factor in potential for student growth and opportunities (OECD 2011).
In response to what some described as “PISA shock,” Germany has, since
the year 2000, seen a steady increase in PISA scores in literacy, mathemat-
ics and science. With a decentralized system of education, the 16 German
Länder (states) have primary responsibility for what happens in schools
and teacher education programmes. Reforms in teacher preparation pro-
grammes are now underway, as educational leaders in the university sys-
tem work to ensure teacher training programmes reflect the changes in
Germany’s secondary schools. The German context will provide a fasci-
nating look at how the needs of early adolescent learners are being
attended to in a school system undergoing rapid transformation.
The education system in Canada varies considerably among the 10
provinces and three territories. When Canadian results are profiled in
international measures such as PISA or the Teaching and Learning
International Survey (TALIS), the nation as a whole continues to score
6 B. Yee et al.
near the top. These results, when further examined by province, reveal
there is a large discrepancy in how individual provinces fare on the tests. A
small number of provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and
Quebec) score, in all PISA tests, at the Canadian average and have in some
cases surpassed the average Canadian results. The remaining six provinces
score below the Canadian average and, in some instances, well below other
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
countries. It is interesting to note that some of the most significant work
related to leading, teaching and learning in the middle years has come
from the province of Manitoba. The province of Ontario, driven by
research emerging from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,
has also recently been more intentional in the way it has supported and
resourced its middle level learning environments (2008). The Canadian
context will provide an intriguing examination into what impact the mid-
dle years movement has had on selected Canadian school contexts, almost
50 years after it originated just south of the border in the United States.
Throughout this book you will find boxes entitled “Research to Praxis.”
The intent here is for the authors to share their own experiences as educa-
tors and researchers in the hope of providing insight and practical wis-
dom into the complex and rewarding phenomenon of adolescent
engagement in their learning. Chapter 2 will provide an overview of the
current state of international research on adolescents’ development and
its implications for their learning.
Research to Praxis: Seeing What Is Possible

Throughout the duration of my doctoral program, it was a common occur-
rence for people to ask me why I had chosen to do my research on the topic
of adolescent engagement in their learning. It was almost as though indi-
viduals could not comprehend why I would devote the time it entails to
engage in doctoral research to this particular issue. Similarly, as a teacher of
adolescents, people often offer me their condolences, or praise me as hav-
ing unlimited amounts of patience for “being forced” to work adolescent
learners each day. I have never seen my work or the students I have chosen
to teach as an inconvenience, a burden or even an afterthought. What I
find interesting and also saddening is this viewpoint is far too common. I do
not fully understand what has perpetuated these myths we have all heard
that equate teenagers with trouble. I always consider it a loss that others
have not been able to see these learners in the same way that I do, as con-
fident, capable and caring young men and women.
In Chaps. 3, 4 and 5, our country chapters, we will explore how cur-

riculum reform, inclusive philosophies, instructional design and assess-
ment practices, fostering student voice and choice, and creating new ways
to engage the student community within each country context are sup-
porting the conditions in which effective middle years learning can
unfold. Finally, in Chap. 6, a conceptual framework of “next practices”
and emerging evidence from each country will be shared in order to con-
tribute to what is believed to be a necessary ongoing discourse concerning
early adolescent learners and the middle years of schooling. The contexts
for our comparative work will be shared to end this first chapter in order
to situate the importance of this cross-national, cross-linguistic perspec-
tive. To provide our country analysis with a joint theoretical framework
we have been excited to come across the study “Changing Practices,
Changing Education” by an Australian research group (Kemmis et al.
2014). We have found the concept of “ecologies of practice” as developed
in this profound study to provide us with an ideal framework for our
comparative examination of suitable learning environments for adoles-
cents in the twenty-first century. Before we look at international research
on adolescents and their learning we will explicate the theoretical frame-
work that will serve as foundation for our comparative work in Finland,
Germany and Canada.
Our Framework
Across OECD countries, efforts are being made to transform systems of
schooling to meet the needs of the globalized economies and cultures of
the twenty-first century. These transformation processes affect core areas
8 B. Yee et al.
of schooling such as curricula, design of learning environments, teaching

methods and assessment. In spite of all these ongoing efforts to transform
schools and school systems, “classrooms and schools have remained strik-
ingly stable as social forms” as Kemmis et al. (2014, p. 1) have pointed
out. The visible culture of schooling today can in many cases still be
traced back to the late nineteenth century age of industrialization, when
mass compulsory schooling became a question of survival for the newly
emerging nation states and their rapidly industrializing economies. We
have chosen to write this book to study and analyse today’s transforma-
tion of schooling with a focus on adolescence, the crucial stage when
children develop into adults, a complex process accompanied by changes
in brain and body. Recent years have seen the emergence of significant
research on adolescents and the unique developmental needs impacting
their learning. In our societies, adolescents have become a highly visible
group, not only as learners in schools but also as consumers in our market
economies and in their identity as “digital natives,” active contributors to
our networked and digitized societies. As individual schools and entire
school systems are changing their pedagogies, practices and organiza-
tional cultures to meet the challenges of twenty-first-century societies,
they have begun to use the evidence-base emerging from disciplines such
as educational science, motivational psychology and medical brain
research to inform the process of school transformation to better meet
the needs of the adolescent learner.
In analysing the cultures of schooling for adolescents, we have found
the framework developed by Kemmis et al. (2014) to be extremely useful.
It is based on the notion of social practices, the human actions that con-
stitute our social realities and “secure and stabilize the world of today as
continuous with the world of yesterday, and as a precursor of the world
of tomorrow” (p. 2). This model takes social change into account and
describes the transformation of schooling as a “kind of dance between
reproduction and transformation” (p. 3). Like Kemmis et al. (2014), we
are deeply convinced that our schools and education systems will not
meet the needs and challenges of the twenty-first century, unless we man-
age to develop and institutionalize new practices of education. In our
own systems, Canada, Finland and Germany, we have in recent years
observed sometimes significant, often tentative changes, manifested in
what Kemmis et al. describe as new forms of understanding (sayings),

new modes of action (doings) and new ways in which human beings in
educational settings relate to one another and the world (relatings). These
changes have been complex and fragmented and therefore hard to deci-
pher, because they originate both from individual schools at the grass-
roots level but at the same time from meta-level policy discourses
focussing on educational change and innovation. In our countries we
notice:
• new languages and discourses that express new ways of thinking,

• new material and economic arrangements that support different ways
of doing things and
• new social and political arrangements that support different kinds of
relationships between the people involved.
Intellectually, it has been a fascinating enterprise to trace and to synthe-

size the many different developments we have been observing in pockets
of our systems at the same time as we observe an almost stifling continu-
ity in other areas. One reality that constitutes the twenty-first century for
us is that the challenges we are currently facing in our different systems
have become strikingly similar. In all three countries, current discourses
on change revolve around notions of migration, globalization and diver-
sity, equity and inclusion, individualism and consumerism and the dis-
ruptive societal and economic transformations occurring as we move into
the digital age. While the discourses on the drivers of change are quite
similar, we have found the specific responses to be unique in each of our
three countries. We are aware of the fact that historically and linguisti-
cally, Canada, Finland and Germany have developed distinct narratives
of schooling. The cultural-discursive arrangements manifested in the lan-
guage we use to speak about schooling simultaneously enable and con-
strain how practices of education are described, interpreted and justified
in our three education systems. To look at schooling for adolescents from
three different linguistic and cultural traditions seems to us to be a genu-
ine twenty-first century inquiry. We noticed that educational discourses,
much more than discourses in science or economics, have largely remained
within cultural-linguistic boundaries. It was surprising to us to see to
10 B. Yee et al.
what extent publications about adolescent schooling only reference

research and practices from the same cultural-linguistic realm. We think
that it is worthwhile to go beyond these linguistic barriers to examine
educational practices and the practice ecologies, in which they are embed-
ded, from a phenomenological and comparative angle. In doing so, we
are trying to understand better to what extent the concerns articulated
and the tentative steps taken in the process of educational renewal over-
lap—driven by a global discourse—and to what extent they represent the
unique contingencies of three quite different school systems.
In this enterprise, we have found Theodore Schatzki’s (2002) notion of
the “site of the social” as used in Kemmis et al. (2014, p. 4) to be of great
value. They rightly point out that “the social” is more than the sum of its
practices: “The people in ‘communities of practice’ do not interpret each
other simply on the basis of their sense impressions, nor do they under-
stand each other only via cognitive information processing. On the con-
trary, people understand another in terms acquired in a lifetime of
inhabiting the social world” (p. 4). It is exactly these intersubjective
spaces that we are most interested in, the tangible sematic, physical and
social-political spaces in between people that enable and constrain how
the agents in education, students, teachers and administrators express
themselves in the social medium of language (sayings), how they make
use of material arrangements (doings) and how they relate to one another
in their practices (relatings). Practices go beyond individual agency: “In
practices, individual will, individual understanding and individual action
are orchestrated in collective social-relational projects” (Kemmis et al.,
p. 32). In these projects, sayings, doings and relatings interdependently
hang together. Practices occur in the present, but they are situated on a
time-space continuum oriented towards the future and in contingency
with the past.
Whereas the traditional understanding of sites of practice in education
was often framed in the form of distinct entities such as “the student,”
“the teacher,” “the classroom,” “the school” we now understand well that
practices are interrelated and interdependent and best understood in the
context of “practice ecologies” (Kemmis et al., p. 43) constituting an
interdependent ecology of practice: (1) student learning, (2) teaching, (3)
professional learning (4) leading and (5) researching. Traditional catego-

ries of analysis like “the student” and “the teacher” are increasingly being
replaced with the intersubjective spaces which constitute our social world.
As we strongly believe that this paradigm is much better suited to under-
stand the systemic and ecological nature of any social process in the
twenty-first century, we embrace it in our analysis of schooling for ado-
lescents in Canada, Finland and Germany. We will also use this ecology-
of-
practice framework for the phenomenological and comparative
reflections we present towards the end of our book. The practices we
examine are situated and contingent. They are also informed by d iscursive
and material local conditions that make an “omniscient viewpoint”
impossible. We will use a range of artefacts developed in the three systems
and selected schools that for us signify the transition from the past of
adolescent education to its future. The agents in these settings come alive
by means of interview data collected from different stakeholders, not
only teachers and school leaders, but also adolescent students, who we
perceive to be key agents in the co-construction of their learning. Our
research will reveal that the empowerment of the learner is not only
driven by the research on adolescent motivation and brain development
but also by attempts to take the diversity of twenty-first century societies
into account and to democratize education.
We consider ourselves to be researchers who work at the boundary
between practice and theory. All three of us have spent many days in
actual schools, practising education ourselves as teachers, school princi-
pals, professional developers and teacher educators. Our view is not a
distant one. We are part of the education systems we write and think
about. That is a difficult position to be in as it blinds us to the perspec-
tives of a “neutral observer.” We are convinced, however, that this inti-
mate knowledge of the systems we write about will account for a rich and
in-depth perspective on the kinds of learning working for adolescents in
twenty-first century schools. To see beyond a narrow view on our three
school systems, we have chosen a joint framework: we will focus on the
intersubjective spaces that constitute the practice architectures of adoles-
cent schooling in the twenty-first century. We understand these architec-
tures to be made up of:
12 B. Yee et al.
• Sayings: the semantics of how stakeholders including students talk

about and plan learning (language)
• Doings: the ways of using the material arrangements for adolescent
learning (activities and work)
• Relatings: the forms of social interaction that come to bear in our edu-
cational settings (social interaction: leadership and co-operation).
Our cross-national perspective requires that we take the broader

cultural-discursive arrangements, the material-economic arrangements
and the social-political arrangements into account. Stenger’s term
“ecologies of practice” (2005) used in its plural form as “ecologies of
practices” by Kemmis et al. seems therefore well suited for our study.
The twenty-first century transformations in education go beyond
changing pedagogical practices in individual classrooms. The main
changes are taking place in the intersubjective spaces between the vari-
ous agents of schooling. We agree that changing education today means
changing the ecologies of practices (in plural!). Student learning, teach-
ing, professional learning, leading and researching education are highly
interdependent: “If change in education is to be wrought, then all five
of these practices need to be changed in relation to each other” in their
ecological interdependence (Kemmis et al., p. 51). Taking this interde-
pendence into account, we will start our book with a background chap-
ter outlining and discussing the current knowledge base on adolescent
learning. What do we know from research in education, in psychology,
in brain science about adolescents and their genuine learning and
developmental needs? We will then, in Chaps. 3, 4 and 5, introduce the
system ecologies and selected practice architectures of schooling for
adolescents in Canada, Finland and Germany. In doing so we will focus
on the intersubjective spaces of sayings, doings and relatings and our
understanding will be based on the assumption that student learning,
teaching, professional learning, leading and researching are intimately
connected and hang together. We will now briefly examine what we
mean, when we talk about five different components of practice ecolo-
gies: learning, teaching, professional learning, leading and
researching.
Learning
Learning and teaching are profoundly interrelated in a complex dynamic.
Since its inception as a mass activity, schooling has been closely linked to
the notion of teaching, the deliberate transmission of knowledge and skills
from a teacher to his or her students. For the most part of the twentieth
century, schools were places of visible teaching but not necessarily visible
learning. As the “sage on the stage,” the teacher’s task was to transfer knowl-
edge and her obligation was seen as fulfilled when the process of teaching
had been completed. The transitions to the twenty-first century brought
with them a much stronger focus on learning rather than teaching. With a
boom in empirical research on learners and their different learning prereq-
uisites, attention began to shift from teaching to learning, from mass
instruction to individual processes of cognitive development and the moti-
vational, emotional and social processes driving it. When we talk about
learning and teaching today, our perception has become more complex: the
relationship between learning and teaching is neither simple nor straight-
forward. Learning can and does quite frequently occur independently of
intentional teaching and some teaching taking place in formal settings of
schooling results in little or no new learning or might even discourage stu-
dents from learning altogether. Whereas in the past learners have mostly
been perceived as the more or less passive recipients of teaching, they are
increasingly seen as co-constructors, as research on motivation and self-
regulation in learning has moved to centre-stage in the learning sciences
(Boekaerts 2010). This shift has an impact on all elements of schooling
such as curriculum design, classroom practices and forms of assessment.
Teaching
In the twenty-first century, teaching is no longer seen as a process of simply
transmitting educational “content” from the teacher to the learner.
Knowledge, skills, values and attitudes are constructed by the learner
through his or her own agency in educational settings. Teachers are not to
be diminished; on the contrary, the role of the teacher is more active and
complex than ever before (Hattie 2012), because teaching can be under-
14 B. Yee et al.
stood as an act of initiating individuals into practices. The complex task of

the professional teacher is to constitute an intersubjective space, in which
particular sayings, doings and relatings enable learners to (re)construct
knowledge, to acquire skills, to examine values and to appropriate atti-
tudes. In creating the intersubjective space for these experiences “teachers
enable and constrain what students can say or do and how they relate to
one another and the objects around them” (Kemmis et al., p. 95). In doing
so, teachers assume multiple roles: they model and coach, scaffold and fade
depending on the students` needs in the learning process. The outcome of
learning depends to a significant extent on the degree to which the student
is cognitively activated and engaged in the learning process (Friesen 2009).
This kind of engagement requires a “strong” notion of teaching, in which
the teachers plan the sayings, doings and relating with their students in
mind. In their attempts to plan for and design learning, teachers are influ-
enced by the practice architectures and sites enabling and constraining
how these practices unfold (Kemmis et al., p. 97). In the twenty-first cen-
tury, teaching has essentially developed to be a co-constructivist activity:
learner engagement depends on some kind of dialogue between teachers
and learners. To make learning relevant teachers need to be able to see
learning through the eyes of their students (Hattie 2012). We will examine
what this dialogue looks like when teachers are talking and listening to
learners in order to co-construct learning that is challenging and engaging.
In that sense, teaching in the twenty-first century can be seen as a complex
set of skills depending not only on profound subject matter knowledge,
but also diagnostic and dialogical skills as well as the cognitive and meta-
cognitive ability to plan highly adaptive arrangements, in which students
engage in meaningful sayings, doings and relatings. We now better under-
stand that this can hardly be achieved by teachers working in isolation, so
that twenty-first century teachers increasingly see themselves and organize
their work as active members of professional learning communities.
Professional Learning
When teaching was still seen as a “private” activity of individual teachers,
the design and quality of teaching and learning depended to a significant
extent on the individual teacher, his or her knowledge, skills and attitudes
towards teaching and learning. The evidence-base for the gradual “depri-
vatisation” of teaching is becoming ever stronger (OECD, 2013) and
thus professional learning communities in schools are seen as key to both
improved student learning and teacher job satisfaction. The semantic
shift from “professional development” to “professional learning” signifies
that teachers themselves are taking charge of their own learning rather
than relying on professional development providers, with the focus
shifting from the development of individual skills to the development of
joint practices. This allows teachers to respond to the “unique circum-
stances, needs and opportunities” (Kemmis et al., p. 128) that exist at
their individual school sites. Drawing on their shared knowledge, teach-
ers increasingly use joint inquiry to work out the connections between
their own experiences and the research and evidence-base and then co-
design practices accordingly. They focus on improving student learning
in order to make their schools work for particular individuals of a par-
ticular age group in a particular environment.
This emerging understanding of professional development encom-
passes a plurality of practices, ranging from informal discussions, on-site
research and data collection, joint analysis and inquiry of evidence, peer
visits and mutual observation of teaching and learning, coaching and
mentoring to name but a few. These practices take place in what is increas-
ingly perceived as an intersubjective space, a shared language community
of professionals who see their professional learning conversations as key
drivers of practice development. Student learning and teacher profes-
sional learning are increasingly seen as highly interdependent. In the
twenty-first century, teaching and learning are no longer confined behind
classroom walls—the often cited “black box”—they have instead become
the subject of an ongoing professional dialogue with the aim of changing
practices to make learning work for students.
Leading
The notion of “leadership” is also undergoing significant change. In line
with the “deprivatisation” of teaching, the common understanding of
what it means to “lead” in a school is surpassing the focus on individuals
16 B. Yee et al.
in formal positions and their capabilities and traits. The focus is shifting
from the persons who lead to the processes of leading: “We have looked
for too long in the direction of the leader (and often just at the principal)
to understand leading. We need to look instead at the practices of leading
and the practices that connect with them” (Kemmis et al., p. 157). These
emerging practices of leading are in profound ways driving the change in
learning and teaching. “Leading” needs to be seen in the plurality of its
manifestations: formal leadership by school principals constitutes a nec-
essary but insufficient driver of change. While principals and vice-
principals have an important role in the transformation of educational
practices, leading also encompasses the pedagogical leadership by teach-
ers and the leadership of students as co-constructors of their own learning
experience. Systemic leadership refers to the broader systems in which
schools are situated: conditions of practice are influenced not only by
school principals, teachers and students, but also by parents, local citizens
and other stakeholders. As “enablers” of distributed leadership, formal
school leaders play a key role. As “gatekeepers of change” (Fullan 2015)
they can facilitate but also constrain the distribution of leadership. When
a principal as a “primus inter pares” is able to change the “relational archi-
tectures” and to nurture shared responsibility and collective learning by
building “relational trust” (Kemmis et al., p. 166), she allows for a plural-
ity of leading practices to evolve. Thereby leadership practices can reflect
multiple sayings, doings and relatings, such as sharing professional read-
ing to introduce new ideas, turning traditional staff meetings into joint
sessions of inquiry and planning for change. Building relational trust
implies moving away from “power over others to power with” others
(Kemmis et al., p. 166), in which teacher, student and parent agency are
actively encouraged. Leadership becomes “a practice-changing practice”
(Kemmis et al. p. 177).
Researching
In our current “knowledge age” research and practice inform each other
more than ever before. Professionals in schools are increasingly open to
reading and using research evidence in their renewal of learning and
teaching. Researching has become a core practice of “ecologies of prac-

tices” in twenty-first century schools. It takes place on different levels and
with different methodologies, large-scale and grassroot, quantitative and
qualitative, driven by practitioners as well as university researchers col-
laborating with schools. Flourishing system ecologies rely on a mix of
research evidence, both from academia and from practitioners themselves.
In that sense, research has become democratized. Kemmis et al. point out
the crucial importance of “researching practice from within practice tradi-
tions” (p. 179). To engage in systematic self-critical inquiry has become a
core practice of any effective school and is increasingly seen as a key driver
of practice development. Practitioner-driven research has become more
rigorous and more like academic research in the sense that it is “con-
sciously undertaken, identifiable, deliberate, planned, data-driven, ana-
lytical, interpretive, oriented towards reflection and action, and directed
towards communication with others” (Ibid., p. 180). In our work on
schooling for adolescents we have noticed that academic research has been
informing practitioner research and practitioner research in turn has—in
significant ways—informed and triggered academic research. This fruitful
interplay between university researchers and researchers in schools can be
seen as a crucial “ecology of practices” driving change and innovation in
today’s schools. In our three country chapters we attempt to analyse ways
in which different practices of researching have played important roles in
the transformation of schools for the benefits of adolescent learners.
In the subsequent chapter on our three countries, Canada, Finland
and Germany, we will use this framework to take an analytical look at our
school systems and schools within them to better understand how “ecolo-
gies of practices” in which learning, teaching, professional learning, lead-
ing and researching are highly interdependent, are working to improve
schools, so that they become better places for young people on their way
from childhood to adulthood in the twenty-first century.
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2
Setting the Stage
To be an educator requires one to have a deep understanding of how

development unfolds in the children and young people you work with
each day and the impact of this development on teaching and learning in
the classroom. In this chapter, we will not foray into an in-depth exami-
nation of the intricacies involved in the neurobiology of the adolescent
developmental period (we do not profess to be developmental psycholo-
gists); instead we will focus on what we believe our shared experience has
made us experts in, and that is the impact of the adolescent developmen-
tal period on teaching and learning in our current classroom contexts.
This chapter will explore what current research supports as appropriate
and effective responses by teachers, instructional leaders, communities
and systems in relation to adolescents’ changing developmental needs,
along with the contextual philosophies and needs adolescents themselves
have identified which have positively impacted their experience with
schooling. In Chap. 3, we will bring this research into practical realms in
what we like to refer to as “pedagogy and practice in action” across our
three country contexts.
For ease of reference, this chapter will be organized into the following
sections:

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52602-7_2
22 B. Yee et al.
• Adolescents’ perspectives on their schooling needs in response to their

changing developmental needs.
• Teacher pedagogical response to adolescents’ changing developmental
needs.
• Instructional leadership dimensions in response to adolescents’ chang-
ing developmental needs.
• School organization in response to adolescents’ changing developmen-
tal needs.
• Community engagement in response to adolescents’ changing devel-
opmental needs.
• Systemic approach/strategy in response to adolescents’ changing devel-
opmental needs.
First, a brief overview of the adolescent developmental period to ensure

a common lens from which to view, understand and critically examine
the responses that will be presented in each section. Five key areas of
adolescent development are commonly agreed upon in the research and
must be considered when determining how to best meet the needs of
these learners in our classrooms today (Centre for Collaborative Education
2003; Garden Valley School Division 2010; Manitoba Education 2010;
NMSA 1995). It important to remember that although general catego-
ries of development can be identified, adolescent development is neither
linear nor does it occur in a predictable manner; and, it is this under-
standing that must form the foundation of anything that is undertaken
in the hopes of improving the experience of adolescents in schooling. As
identified by the Centre for Collaborative Education in Turning Points:
The Young Adolescent Learner (2003), and reinforced in countless of other
documents (in some cases with slight adaptations to the labels used), the
five broad domains of adolescent development are:
1. Physical: Young adolescent learners mature at varying rates and go

through rapid and irregular physical growth, with bodily changes that
can cause awkward and uncoordinated movements.
2. Cognitive: Young adolescent learners are curious, motivated to achieve
when challenged and capable of critical and complex thinking.
3. Social/Emotional: Young adolescent learners have an intense need to
belong and be accepted by their peers while finding their own place in
Setting the Stage 23
the world. They are engaged in forming and questioning their identi-
ties on many different levels.
4. Psychological: Young adolescent learners are vulnerable and self-

conscious, and often experience unpredictable mood swings.
5. Behavioural: With their new sense of the larger world around them,
young adolescent learners are idealistic and want to have an impact on
making the world a better place. (p. 8)
Adolescence itself, as it is understood and experienced in most advanced

industrial societies, is the transition from childhood to adulthood, begin-
ning with puberty. It is a period of development more rapid than any other
phase of life except infancy. Adolescent development is neither singular nor
simple, and aspects of growth during adolescence are seldom in step with
each other, neither within individuals nor among peers. (Carnegie Council
on Adolescent Development 1989, p. 3)
As the above passage indicates, adolescence is widely recognized to be

one of the most dynamic times in whole-being, multifaceted development,
second only to the rapid development experienced during infancy. While
infants do not demonstrate the same conscious awareness of their develop-
ment, adolescents are all too aware of the multitude of changes happening
to them. The sometimes dramatic self-awareness that accompanies early
adolescent development can have a significant, long-lasting impact on the
adolescent as an individual and as a learner. Research focusing on middle
level reform places tremendous importance on the role of the teacher in
not only supporting early adolescents through this period in their develop-
ment, but in also understanding the impact this evolving development has
on student learning (AMLE 2010; Centre for Collaborative Education
2003; National Association of Secondary School Principals 2006).
he Impact of the Neurobiology of Adolescent

T
Development
Adolescent Physical Development As with most developmental change
during early adolescence, physical development occurs at an uneven rate
and is often of most concern to the adolescents themselves (McNeely and
24 B. Yee et al.
Blanchard 2009; Strahan et al. 2009). Extremities in the body, most
noticeably the hands and feet and the ears and nose, tend to grow sooner
and at a faster rate than other parts, accounting for difficulties with equi-
librium and sometimes coordination. It is not until later in adolescence
that fine and gross motor skills improve, permitting adolescents greater
control over their developing bodies (McNeely and Blanchard 2009;
Strahan et al. 2009). Adolescence is the period of most rapid bone growth,
often resulting in physical discomfort. The once separate bones of the
coccyx or tailbone begin to fuse together, taking on the adult form, plac-
ing the sciatic nerve closer to the skeletal structure. These changes make
it difficult for early adolescents to sit in particular, for extended periods of
time (McNeely and Blanchard 2009; Strahan et al. 2009).
The hallmark of physical growth during adolescence is often referred

to as the “growth spurt,” in that significant increases in height are often
seen during one short period, rather than gradually throughout adoles-
cence. “Growing pains” is another term associated with growth in adoles-
cence, due to the physical stress placed upon the adolescent body during
this period (McNeely and Blanchard 2009; Strahan et al. 2009). Females
enter into this stage of physical growth earlier than males, reaching adult
height earlier than their male counterparts; doctors maintain however,
they see their young male and female patients entering into this stage
earlier than before. Body composition also changes during adolescence;
males tend to develop more lean muscle mass and lose the fat associated
with childhood, while females’ ratio of body fat to lean muscle mass tends
to increase. The many other physical changes associated with adolescent
development and puberty (increased hair growth, changes in voice pitch,
body odour and the development of other secondary sexual characteris-
tics) can leave adolescents feeling self-conscious and unsure of themselves
and their abilities. Adolescents are especially vulnerable to disordered
thinking related to body image during this time, with statistics of eating
and other body dysmorphic disorders on the rise for this age group
(McNeely and Blanchard 2009; Strahan et al. 2009).
The two-part pituitary gland is sometimes referred to as the master
gland. This gland is responsible for the secretion of hormones and also
signals all other hormone-producing glands in the body to produce spe-
cific hormones, which determine tissue growth and function. Changes in

the pituitary gland during adolescence can sometimes lead to the release
of large amounts of adrenaline at unpredictable times. What can appear
as inappropriate and arbitrary outbursts of sound and movement are in
fact completely explicable physiological responses to a surge of adrenaline
rushing through the body of an adolescent (McNeely and Blanchard
2009; Strahan et al. 2009).
Adolescent Brain Development During the early adolescent years, the

brain is still very much under development. Current research suggests
that the brain does not take what is referred to as its “adult” form until an
individual reaches their early 20s (National Institute of Mental Health
2011). Steinberg (2014) in his book, The Age of Opportunity, discusses
new developments in the study of the adolescent brain, which indicate
that adolescence is a “remarkable period of brain reorganisation and plas-
ticity. This discovery is enormously important, with far-reaching implica-
tions for how we parent, educate and treat young people” (p. 60). Brain
plasticity refers to the ability of the brain to be moulded, which Steinberg
describes as “a process through which the outside world gets inside us and
changes us” (p. 65). This knowledge of the early adolescent brain and
what conditions stimulate healthy brain development are of utmost
importance for teachers and parents as they work to place adolescents in
a “Zone of Proximal Development” adequate for learning (Vygotsky
1978) and provide the necessary scaffolding to develop adolescents’ skills
and abilities.
Different parts of the brain mature at different rates, adding complex-

ity to the multitude of changes occurring in the body of an early adoles-
cent. Cortex regions responsible for controlling basic functions
(information processing from the senses, motor coordination) develop
earlier on; whereas higher order functions, such as impulse control, for-
ward thinking and the ability to reason are seen to emerge much later in
adolescence (Friedman 2014; National Institute of Mental Health 2011).
Steinberg (2012) highlights four structural changes that occur in the
adolescent brain as being significant. First, the process of myelination
(where brain fibres become enveloped with myelin, enabling more effi-
26 B. Yee et al.
cient circuitry in the brain) is accelerated, and continues throughout a

healthy adolescent’s development. This process is essential for the devel-
opment of higher order cognitive functioning. Second, the grey matter in
the brain responsible for housing synaptic connections where thought
and memory are processed is known to be at its highest volume during
early adolescence. The pruning of some connections as the adolescent
matures, enabling a more efficient brain, is a normal part of maturation.
These anatomical changes and efficiencies in the brain are responsible for
improvement in basic cognitive functioning and ability to reason logi-
cally. Third, the connection between the limbic system and the prefrontal
cortex (the anatomical regions of the brain responsible for emotional
regulation) begins to strengthen. As these connections intensify, circuitry
that supports the abilities of self-control and self-regulation are formed in
the adolescent brain. Brain imaging scans show that the adolescent brain
responds to emotionally-laden imagery with a heightened response com-
pared to older and younger subjects. Lastly, the number and distribution
of dopamine receptors in the brain increases significantly during adoles-
cence, most noticeably at the onset and throughout puberty. The neu-
rotransmitter dopamine is deeply involved in the brain’s response to
pleasure and pain, perhaps shedding light on adolescents’ tendency to
seek stimulation from any number of sources (Steinberg 2012).
It is also during this time the brain is left especially susceptible to the
influences of toxins, such as drugs, alcohol and other environmental haz-
ards; the adolescent brain responds very differently from adults’ to the
presence of drugs and alcohol in the body, and this poses a tremendous
concern because of the increased susceptibility to addiction (National
Institute of Mental Health 2011; Friedman 2014). Coupled with the
intense hormonal changes occurring in the body, early adolescents’ ability
to process and cope with both internal and external stressors is greatly
compromised. At perhaps no other time in an individual’s development
does sleep (or the lack thereof ) have such a profound influence on both
physical and mental health.
Adolescents and Sleep Ask any parent of an early adolescent to list one
of their biggest concerns related to their child’s development and the
amount of sleep would be near the top. A recent blog post in the New
York Times (Brody 2014) highlighted the concern many parents have
about the amount of sleep their adolescent children are getting and the
impact this is having on their schooling and overall well-being. Based on
what we know about the tremendous diversity in the rate of adolescent
growth and development, pinpointing an exact number of hours adoles-
cents should sleep every night is often difficult. Researchers generally
agree that eight and a half to nine and a half hours are the minimum
amount required for healthy adolescent growth and development. Less
than this amount places adolescents at an increased risk for Type 2 diabe-
tes, obesity and a compromised immune system, as well as psychological
risk factors leading to depression, anxiety and increased risk-taking
behaviour (Dement 2000). Dr. Judith Owens, lead author on a 2014
statement released by the American Academy of Paediatrics states that,
“Sleep is not optional. It’s a health imperative, like eating, breathing and
physical activity” (Owens as cited in Brody 2014, para. 7). Lack of sleep
has also been linked to an increased number of traffic deaths involving
adolescents. Owens, who is the paediatric sleep specialist at Children’s
National Health System in Washington, indicates that, “Lack of sleep can
be fatal. The level of impairment associated with sleep-deprived driving is
equivalent to driving drunk” (Owens as cited in Brody 2014, para. 9),
and encourages parents of adolescents to reconsider giving their children
permission to drive if they have not gotten enough sleep. Owens also
links sleep deprivation to an increased rate of suicide attempts among
adolescents, citing the impact of sleep on adolescent mood, ability to
think rationally and employ good judgment. She presents further evi-
dence indicating that for each hour of sleep lost, adolescents are at an 80
per cent greater risk for becoming obese.
The Developmental “Perfect Storm”

Many experts in the field of adolescent development have put forward
what they believe to be essential traits and abilities of “successful” adoles-
cents; those adolescents who are seen to have navigated this developmen-
tal period relatively unscathed. Resilience, grit, perseverance, drive,
tenacity, the ability to delay gratification have all been used to describe
28 B. Yee et al.
what essentially boils down to adolescents being able to self-regulate their

behaviour. Steinberg (2014) describes self-regulation as being the “central
task of adolescence,” (p. 45) and a key determiner of healthy adolescent
development.
Teachers and school leaders of adolescent learners indicate the social-
emotional environment at their schools is an issue of significant concern,
so much so that many indicated it often kept them up at night (Yee
2015). Thoughts turned to the classroom contexts and long-held prac-
tices at their schools, questioning if the school culture is actually condu-
cive to supporting our adolescent learners developing sound decision
making skills, good judgment and the ever-important task of self-
regulation. And here is why…Two systems in the brain, that can be said
to have competing interests, are involved in the decision making process.
The limbic system is the brain’s centre of emotion and also reward. It is
constantly searching for stimulation and reward. The prefrontal cortex,
which governs self-regulation, tries to balance the reward system, by get-
ting us to think critically about the stimulation in our environment
(Steinberg 2014). During adolescence, there is a constant struggle to
keep these two systems balanced—think of the scales of justice, with the
adolescent being the blindfolded (sarcasm intended) Lady Justice. A host
of developmental changes occurring during puberty, often at different
rates, makes it very difficult for adolescents to maintain balance in the
scales. Being around peers stimulates the reward centre in the brain, often
impairing their ability to make good decisions, placing adolescents on a
path to seek immediate reward at all costs. This heightened sensitivity to
social acceptance and rejection, along with a desperate need for peer
approval can throw out the window what adults may think of as common
sense. Adolescents show poorer decisions making and judgment
capabilities when they are in groups—unstructured, unsupervised time
for adolescents is known to have disastrous consequences. Finally, there
seems to be a culprit and an explanation for the drama that school admin-
istrators and middle years teachers see every day—the very natural
unfolding of events in adolescent brain development.
The capacity of the brain for learning is never greater than during ado-
lescence. The adolescent brain is believed to be a formidable match for
the adult brain in terms of learning. Functional brain imagery shows that
when presented with the same task, adolescents and adults access differ-
ent regions of the brain in the processing and execution phases of its
completion (Friedman 2014; National Institute of Mental Health 2011).
In adolescents, the parts of the brain responsible for emotions appear to
fire, to some extent, during all tasks they are presented with; whereas, in
general, adults appear to be able to mitigate the emotional response to
most tasks. During controlled tests in a laboratory, in the absence of peers
or any emotional stimulation, adolescents perform just as well as adults
on the tasks they are given. Insert peers or any type of emotional stimula-
tion (positive or negative) and adolescents’ performance drops dramati-
cally. Peers do not even have to be present in the testing environment to
impact the performance of adolescents on requisite tasks, simply believ-
ing they may be close by is shown to have a significant impact (Steinberg
2014). It is no wonder that many adolescents cringe when called upon in
class to answer a question or demonstrate a skill—the anticipated judge-
ment of on-looking peers is a terrible experience to endure.
Because adolescents’ capacities for self-control, sound thinking and
good judgement are significantly dependent on the context they find
themselves in, sometimes by choice and sometimes the ones we place
them in, educators need to be highly intentional about the kind of envi-
ronment they create in their classrooms and the kind of culture that is
established in schools. The question then becomes if our adolescent learn-
ers are sometimes placed in the most impossible of situations because of
the structures and processes established in schools, many of which have
not changed in decades.
With this in mind, it is perhaps easier to understand why adolescents
may not respond as adults would hope when they are placed in situations
that elicit strong emotions. Steinberg reminds us that a strong emotional
reaction from an adult is likely to be met with an equally strong emo-
tional response from the adolescent. Furthermore, given the stage of their
brain development, adolescents are more apt to fixate on the body lan-
guage and emotion demonstrated by the adult, rather than on the mes-
sage that was attempting to be conveyed. Adolescents themselves have
said they would rather slack off in school, appear disinterested in their
learning or even sometimes antagonize their teachers, all to gain the
approval of their peers (Yee 2015). This understanding of the adolescent
brain is crucial for all those working to create a classroom learning envi-
ronment that draws upon the strengths of the adolescent brain, while
30 B. Yee et al.
ensuring opportunities are presented for it to develop in a safe and sup-

ported learning community.
In a publication by the American Psychological Association (APA)
(2002) dedicated to better understanding the impact of adolescent physi-
cal development on their psychological development, a section entitled,
“Yes, it’s normal for adolescents to…” described, with a touch of humour,
several behaviours typical of adolescent development, and while perplex-
ing and frustrating, are to be viewed as very normal as adolescents test
both boundaries and the patience of adults. Found on the list of charac-
teristic adolescent behaviours are: “[arguing] for the sake of arguing;
[jumping] to conclusions; [being] self-centered; constantly finding fault
in the adult’s position; and, [being] overly dramatic” (p. 11). It is pre-
cisely this kind of understanding that is important for educators to have
as they work to create a classroom environment and teacher–student rela-
tionships founded on mutual respect and empathy.
An Optimistic Outlook

Many descriptions of the developmental changes experienced during
adolescence carry with them a negative connotation. Beginning with
Hall’s (1904) first study in the field of adolescent development and for
the next almost 85 years, adolescence was most often characterized, from
scientific research and societal perceptions alike, as a time of turmoil and
anxiety. Prior to the 1990s, other descriptions portraying adolescents as
being “broken,” “in danger” or “dangerous,” or requiring extensive
management to “tame uncivilised behaviour” served only to propagate
the commonly held belief that adolescence was not a time to be cele-
brated (Anthony 1969; Benson et al. 2006; Roth et al. 1998). Any posi-
tive depiction of adolescence was often characterized as the absence of
negative traits (Benson et al. 2006).
More recent investigation into early adolescent development, such as
Turning Points: The Young Adolescent Learner (2003), has helped frame
this growth and developmental period in a more positive light.
Psychologist Richard Lerner (2005) has also approached adolescence and
adolescent development from a strength-based rather than a deficit-based
model, through the evolution of a Positive Youth Development (PYD)

perspective. Lerner’s (2005) work is founded on the belief that the best
ways to circumvent challenges inherent in the developmental changes
facing early adolescents is to focus on their strengths and view these
changes as a positive phase in the maturation process. Similarly, Steinberg’s
(2014) Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence,
presents a much-needed perspective of the adolescent developmental
period, calling for society, systems and people to support the healthy
development of our adolescents. These two approaches, coupled with
Dweck’s (2007, 2008, 2010) work on the growth mindset, highlight the
impact of perceptions, both self and others, on adolescents’ abilities to
navigate this critical developmental period in a healthy manner.
It is this “Growth Mindset” approach we believe to be essential to
ensuring that the current values and contexts of our education systems
are reflective of the needs of today’s adolescent learners. And it is with this
positive viewpoint on adolescents as developing individuals and learners
that we will approach the following sections, beginning with the voices of
the adolescent learner themselves and their perspective on what they need
from their schooling experience.
he Adolescent Perspective: “What Would

T
They Say?”
Have you ever wondered what education systems would look like if they
were left in the hands of students? If adolescent learners were given
authentic opportunities for voice and choice in aspects of their learning
that are meaningful, what would they say, what would they do, what
would they create? Students are the reasons schools exist, the reasons
teachers have jobs and the reasons governments have ministries of educa-
tion. It is, however, sometimes forgotten that all that is done in the name
of education should have at its core the purpose of serving the needs of
students. Government officials, curriculum specialists, principals, teach-
ers, all with good intentions, make decisions every day that impact the
learners in their schools, yet often those decisions are made using “average
data” or “perceptions about early adolescents” rather than actual feedback
32 B. Yee et al.
in the form of the students’ voices. Instructional leaders, teachers and

district officials have at their disposal a wealth of information and insight
into the needs of early adolescent learners (Yee 2015).
In so many aspects schooling, student agency and voice has been left
out of real decision making with regards to how their schooling experi-
ence unfolds—and, if student voice is celebrated primarily as being the
choice between a poster or a PowerPoint presentation as a means of shar-
ing research, then educators’ notions of voice, choice and agency are per-
haps misguided. The creation of a learning environment that supports
the unique developmental and learning needs of early adolescent learners
needs to be co-created with the very individuals that will be most
impacted—the students (Willms et al. 2009; Yee 2015). In order to
ensure middle level learning environments are responsive to the needs of
early adolescent learners, the learners themselves can no longer be left out
of the multifaceted learning equation. Transformation of middle level
learning environments involves a complex interplay of many factors, per-
haps none more important than the students. If we seek to create the
types of learning environments where adolescent learners will flourish,
the needs students articulate must be used in more intentional and
purposeful ways to guide the work of teaching and learning (Manitoba
Education 2010; Willms et al. 2009; Yee 2015).
Research to Praxis: Engaging Students as Active Participants in

Their Learning
During one interview, a Canadian student asked me quite inquisitively,
“So, who decides what we do and learn in school every day?” (Student
interview, December 2014). When I replied that it was a rather complex
interplay between government regulations, district and school philoso-
phies and also what his teacher thinks is best for the group of students, he
threw up his hands and replied, “Well no one ever asked me! If anyone
wants to know what is important for kids to learn, they should ask the
kids” (Student interview, December 2014). He is very perceptive. If we fail
to engage students as active participants in their learning, we will be left
with students who can no longer advocate for themselves as learners, com-
municating what only they know best and that is what they need from
their teachers.
To learns the needs of adolescent learners necessitates that we engage

with them in a conversation about their learning, yet for various reasons
many teachers feel this type of dialogue and potential shifting of relation-
ship has no place in classrooms. Despite overwhelming research that tells
us the “sage on the stage” pedagogical approach of classrooms past will
not foster the kind of engaged thinkers needed to meet the challenges of
our ever-changing world, this is the reality faced by many students’ in
their schooling experience (Cooper 2011; Manitoba Education 2010;
Willms et al. 2009; Yee 2015). What was clear from interviews with stu-
dents during my doctoral research is their desire to be more involved in
all facets of their education. This does not necessitate a swinging of the
student agency pendulum 180 degrees in opposition from where it cur-
rently lies to find students involved in managing their schools, writing
curriculum, approving budgets and hiring teachers…yet, this does not
seem completely absurd.
Research to Praxis: Nurturing Student Agency in Their Learning

With great delight I have taken on the teaching duties for a class of 18
grade 9 boys at my school this term. These are the boys some teachers feel
are unreachable. They often find their way into my office for some reason
or another, where we discuss appropriateness of behaviour and better
choices for next time. Working with them is the highlight of my workday. I
began our class by asking them a simple question, “If you could learn about
anything, anything at all, what would it be?” An awkward silence fell over
the room. So, I changed my question slightly, “What lights you up? What
would you pay to learn about? What do you dream about doing when you
are not at school?” Still nothing. It took close to 15 minutes to pull out of
these boys what is was that they wanted learn about over the course of the
term. The parameters I had placed on this class were quite loose. The boys
could choose any topic they wanted to learn about, with the following
three guidelines: one, the topic had to be school appropriate, something
they would be okay to discuss with their grandmothers (I use this test with
my own children and it has yet to fail me); two, with their new learning,
they have to find a way to use it to give back to their school community;
and three, they have to use this new learning to challenge themselves per-
sonally. This is a structure I learned about during my doctoral research in
Germany and I think it is quite brilliant. What concerned me most about the
difficulty my students had in selecting a topic of study was not that they
34 B. Yee et al.
could not find a school-appropriate area of focus – it was that look they
gave me, like I was crazy. The look had suspicion written all over it, like they
had just been posed a question they felt there was no correct answer to –
like there was a catch and I was waiting to pounce on them should they say
the wrong thing. My “ah-ha” moment came with the realization that for
far too many years these boys have been told what to learn, why, when and
how, and now that I was placing the power in their hands (where I think it
should actually reside) they simply did not know what to do. They waited in
quiet compliance for their teacher to tell them what would come next. I am
reminded that we have much work to do.
ultivating Positive Teacher–Student Relationships:

C
“Teacher Is Not Spelled f-r-i-e-n-d”
What do our adolescent learners need from their teachers? One thing is
certain—they do not need their teachers to be their friends. They have
many of those, along with all of the drama those friends are likely to
bring. They need the adults in their lives to provide them with structure
and boundaries, and as Steinberg (2014) describes in his most recent
work, to be warm, to be firm and to be supportive.
Teaching teenagers is about being an adult all the time. You can’t just give
them orders; you have to be the adult, an adult who is present all of the
time. If I put [the student and I] into a situation where I say it is “this” or
“that,” then I have lost. If “this” doesn’t happen, then I have to make “that”
happen and then my relationship with this student is on thin ice. This is
the issue I have to avoid as long as I can. Also have to be awake when the
students do something good. That is very important. That is the main
issue. Tell them they are doing well, that you are proud of them. You need
to be interested in them. Notice them. Not pretending, but genuine. And
at the beginning I thought, “Can I be interested in them all?” I noticed if I
am truly interested in them and want to meet them as persons, it didn’t
take energy away from me, it gave me energy. (Yee 2015, p. 187)
They will give us pushback; this is what they are supposed to do. We can-
not give up on them; that is what they expect us to do. They need us to
believe in them. The development of self-regulation is what Steinberg
(2014) believes is the central task of adolescence and the capability that
separates those who navigate this developmental period securely into
adulthood from those who do not. Positive relationships with adult men-
tors play a significant role in helping adolescents develop this self-
regulation, which Steinberg characterizes as the gradual shifting of
control, once provided by the adults in their lives, to a more internal
form of self-regulatory behaviour and action. The success of this transi-
tion is determined in large part by the presence of three characteristics in
adolescents: emotional security; behaviourally skilled to be able to govern
actions in the absence of adult direction; and self-assured so as to be able
to assume responsibility for their choices (Steinberg 2014). It is these
three characteristics that we must nurture in our classrooms and foster
through the very influential relationships we develop with our students
through the teaching and learning process.
Research to Praxis: The Importance of First Impressions

After you have been in front of a classroom for a number of years, you tend
to develop a pretty solid opening day routine to fall back on. I think mine is
pretty stellar. I start of with something like, “This year I am going to chal-
lenge you to think for yourselves, to problem solve and to ask me difficult
questions. I do not want you to sit there and blindly accept everything I say
to you. I want you to ask me great questions, in a respectful way, but ques-
tions that will challenge me and will therefore challenge you and our entire
class to grow. I expect us to work together as partners in your learning. I
will demand this from you. I will hold you as capable learners. I will ask that
you hold me as a capable teacher. As much as we are partners in this class-
room, we are not equals – this is not a democracy. I am your teacher. You
are my students. Teaching you is my job, and a job I take very seriously. I am
also a learner, alongside you. Remember this always. I will earn your respect,
and you must do the same from me. I do not hold grudges – I do however,
remember facts and remember them well. Be honest with me. We all make
mistakes. I do every day, but I use those mistakes as lessons to learn from.
Do not lose my trust. You will need to work hard to regain it if you do. Every
day is a new day with me, beginning with a clean slate. I will treat each of
you fairly. Do not mistake this to mean sameness. You are each individuals,
and the way I will work with each of you will reflect this individuality. Do
not occupy your time or concern yourselves with what others are doing, or
with how I am working with other students. Spend time thinking about
36 B. Yee et al.
yourself as a learner, about yourself as an individual and about the person

you hope to have become by the end of our year together. Oh, and this
whole thing about technology, that seems to occupy so much of our time. I
love technology. I use it all of the time. We will use it together to support
and extend and enhance your learning. I will ask you to create with your
technology and to use your technology to show me what you know. So, we
will not play a game of hide and seek with your personal devices. I am not
the cell phone police. Put it away when I am talking to you; use it responsi-
bly when I am not. And – if you dare – use your technology to show me
something I have not yet discovered. This is going to be a great year. Shall
we get started?”
urturing Positive Peers Relationships in and Through

N
the Learning: “Friends…Pick One?”
The general consensus among adolescents is that no one gets them other
than their friends, and at times, even those friends can be at the centre of
an awful lot of drama. Conversations with adolescents consistently reveal
the importance of friends in their school lives (Steinberg 2014; Willms
et al. 2009; Yee 2015). Interestingly enough, it would appear that schools
often go to great lengths to separate groups of friends. A pretty standard
practice is for students, at the end of the year, to write down on a piece of
paper one friend (in some cases two) they would like to be placed with in
a classroom the following year. Students felt that schools generally made
good on those requests, but still questioned why the practice was in place
at all (Yee 2015). Great anxiety was reported by students when having to
select one friend only; and, in the lives of adolescents when an everyday
occurrence can be the cause of great strife and angst, schools need not
unnecessarily complicate things. This falls under the category of practices
and processes that no one can quite remember why they came to be, but
continue on without much inquiry into the why.
Research to Praxis: Removing Barriers to Student Learning

As an instructional leader in a large middle school with almost 1000 adoles-
cents, I regularly work with students and parents who have concerns about
the classroom groupings that been made. And while on some level I under-
stand how one might believe that classroom groupings consisting of large
friends groupings may negatively impact a student’s ability to focus and
take the risks necessary to grow as a learner, I believe the positive outcomes
far outweigh any “supposed” undesirable effects.
Having always made the choice to be a “teaching” school administrator,
I feel I can speak to this point in a current and informed manner. As I write
this, I am currently teaching a group of 18 grade 9 boys; students whom are
all friends, who socialize with each other outside of school time, and who
go to great lengths throughout their school day to find each other (often
resorting to “hiding out” in the bathroom, something to this today I have a
difficult time understanding the logic behind). Some questioned my sanity
in choosing not to separate these boys. I retorted that I would rather spend
my time redirecting side conversations towards the topic of discussion than
on policing strategic calls for a bathroom break. As a side note, I know
unreservedly this to be true – when learning tasks are designed in ways that
allow each learner to connect with and find meaning in what they are
studying, then their engagement with the learning task is complete and
any off-task or disruptive behaviours disappear, irrespective of the number
of friends they are surrounded by. I believe that at time when our adoles-
cent learners are so painfully self-conscious, placing students in a learning
environment surrounded by trusted peers (while not completely without its
drawbacks) also removes a very real barrier to their learning. Students I
interviewed indicated that looking foolish in front of their peers prevented
them from taking risks as a learner, or showing their excitement for what
they were learning. Being surrounded with trusted and loyal friends helped
students to feel more comfortable in exploring their learning in ways that
may find them making mistakes or showing vulnerability.
At this point, some of you may be taken back to earlier in the chapter
when the impact of the adolescent “social brain” on their ability to make
good decisions was discussed, and you would be quite correct to question
whether putting a large group of adolescent “friends” into a single class-
room is the best approach. Educators and educational institutions are in
the best positions to create the appropriate environments in which ado-
lescents can explore, make mistakes, learn what do not to do and perhaps
what to try next time and then to repeat it all again. Partnering with
parents, schools can create a strong alliance to support adolescent learners
as they navigate the myriad of choices they will need to make and situa-
tions they will encounter in their adult lives.
The question, “Does adolescent development unfold in different ways
in different cultures or parts of the world?” often arises in discussions
38 B. Yee et al.
among teachers who cross international borders. The answer comes in

two parts. First, in a neurobiological sense, adolescent development
occurs in relatively consistent patterns around the world, although we
know a host of environmental and societal factors that have led to puberty
beginning at an earlier age and entry into the “adult” world coming much
later. Second, adolescent development from a behavioural standpoint
often looks different in different locations around the world because of
the contexts in which the adolescents find themselves. Expectations and
beliefs related to the importance of education, male versus female gender
roles, acceptable behaviour, perceptions of what constitutes “cool,” and
so forth carry with them great cultural histories. Adolescents growing up
with these cultural norms are certain to adopt these values and attitudes.
As Steinberg (2014) articulates very clearly, the best chance we have at
changing risky adolescent behaviour is not by providing them with more
information (they are quite adept at processing and understanding infor-
mation provided to them), but through changing the contexts they are
growing up in. Why would we leave this to chance when we can control
these contexts to a large degree through the conditions we create for
teaching and learning in our schools?
A quote by Alfie Kohn (2014) is particularly applicable when reflect-
ing on the impact of school-based practices and philosophies:
Traditional schooling isn’t working for an awful lot of students. We can

respond to that fact either by trying to fix the system (so it meets kids’
needs better) or by trying to fix the kids (so they’re more compliant and
successful at whatever they’re told to do). (p. 1)
And so it seems appropriate to ask the question, “Whose needs are we

serving by continuing such practices?”
Informed Design of Learning: “Fits Like a Glove”
Hart (1983) equates designing learning for students without a deep

understanding of how the brain learns naturally and most efficiently to
designing a glove without knowledge of the human hand or designing
cars without an understanding of how an engine works. In Human Brain
and Human Learning first published in 1983, Hart coined the term
“brain-compatible” as he sought to help educators understand the neces-
sity of matching instructional design and assessment practices with how
the brain naturally works best. As large education systems around the
world engage in the process of curriculum redesign, more consideration
should be placed on the acquisition of competencies, knowledge and
skills through the lens of how students’ brains learn best rather than on
forcing a fit with existing programmes and content knowledge alone.
Look out across a classroom of 32 Grade 8 students and you are certain
to see learners of all types that would fall into as many categories of
Gardner’s (1993) Multiple Intelligences, deBono’s (2010) Thinking Hats,
Goleman’s (2005) Emotional Intelligences or even Lowry and Kalil’s
(2001) Colours. With this kind of diversity in one classroom, is there an
answer to the question of what kind of learning experiences adolescents
want most? The answer lies in the students themselves. The phrase, “The
Children are the Curriculum” strikes many people as odd. [My colleagues
and I have used the phrase for so long that I am not even certain who
should be given credit for it.] Nonetheless, the point is this, the students
that teachers have in front of them each and every day provide everything
they need in order to create meaningful learning with them and for them.
Without a doubt, teachers will have pages and pages of curriculum
documents issued to them by the body governing education in their sys-
tem, yet they must find a way to create a relationship between those pages
(that were likely created with good intentions, thinking of the content
first and the children second) and their students. If teachers, for even just
a second, can flip this on its end and view the children as being the cur-
riculum and those specific learning outcomes as supports, bringing con-
text as they work with their students to make learning meaningful and
relevant, then there is a much better chance that they will deeply engage
a whole generation of students in learning that is relevant to them and
the world they are growing up in.
What do adolescents say when asked about the kind of learning that is
meaningful and engaging? The following key insights have emerged from
research spanning several decades and from many corners of the globe
(AMLE 2010; Barratt 1998; Chadbourne 2002; Hill and Russell 1999;
Willms et al. 2009; Wormelli 2006, 2011; Yee 2015). First and foremost,
40 B. Yee et al.
adolescents say they would like to have input into what they learn, how
they interact with their learning and the ways in which they demonstrate
their learning. For the most part, students understand that the “what” of
their learning is often not in the total control of their teachers. (As an
aside, there is another whole level of student voice missing in the redesign
of curriculum.) Students would like to be given choices within larger “big
picture” topics (Yee 2015). For example, curriculum standards may dic-
tate that students must study the Renaissance to better understand what
influences our worldview. Rather than a prescribed set of learning assess-
ments based on what the teacher deems necessary, students who were
particularly interested in Renaissance art could explore how the artistic
styles of the time reflected the emerging worldview of the people. Or,
students with a real curiosity about da Vinci’s journals could examine
how his work has influenced advances in science and technology to this
very day. This level of voice and choice allows for all students to find a
way to connect to a curriculum that may seem foreign to them.
When asked about their most memorable learning experiences, stu-
dents, nine times out of ten, described learning that could be character-
ized as active learning (Yee 2015). Under no circumstances did students
describe occasions where they were sitting at desks in neat rows as their
teacher lectured to them from the front of the room. The adolescent
brain thrives on novelty and challenge (which also explains some of the
thrill-seeking behaviour that as a mother keeps me up at night, and as a
school principal, makes my office a very busy place). Exposure to learning
experiences that test students’ abilities, just beyond their zone of proxi-
mal development, are precisely what the adolescent brain needs at a time
when it is most plastic, meaning the brain grows and develops through
experience (Steinberg 2014). Classes that fall outside of the “core” pro-
gramme of study (often labelled complementary or exploratory courses)
such as applied technologies, culinary arts, fashion design, website design,
digital photography and so on are often those students report being most
engaged in. This in part can be attributed to the newness of experience,
but is also due to the fact that students are active, work with their hands,
collaborate with others and are challenged to solve complex problems.
Students questioned why classes such as Language Arts, Mathematics and
the Sciences could not involve the same kind of active learning (Yee
2015). They are quite correct; all of their learning should incorporate
these elements. Critical thinking, problem solving and the skills of meta-
cognition are not abilities that students either have or do not. These are
aptitudes that need to be developed and nurtured in very deliberate ways
through the learning opportunities teachers challenge their students
with. Contrary to what some may believe, a conversation with an adoles-
cent learner is sometimes all that is needed to bring clarity to what seems
like the elusive adolescent engagement in their learning.
onnecting Students to a Learning Community: “Let

C
Us Hope It Is Not a Black Box”
The things that may seem frivolous or extraneous to the work of teaching
and learning in the classroom are in fact known to have a significant posi-
tive impact on teachers and students and the learning culture within a
school. School clubs, sport teams, intramurals, the school band or drama
production all provide amazing opportunities for teachers and students
to learn together in non-traditional ways. For some students, these oppor-
tunities will be the reason they come to school. They may always struggle
in math class, but they shine on the basketball court—every student
deserves to find that place within their school where they shine. There is
something very powerful that happens to the culture of a school when
teachers, students and their families unite in support of a common pur-
pose (Manitoba Education 2010; Yee 2015). As silly as it may sound,
students take great pride in identifying with the school name and mascot
that has been chosen. [Being recognized as a “Titan” (the school mascot
name) and wearing that bright orange (the school colour) “hoodie” with
the school logo is significant in the life of an early adolescent.] The chal-
lenge is to create a school culture that teachers would want their own
children to be part of—that is a very good litmus test.
Research to Praxis: Self-fulfilling Prophecy

There is a poster that hangs on the wall of my office, well there are many,
but this one in particular always seems to catch the attention of passers-by.
It reads, “My teacher thought I was smarter than I was – so I was.” The
42 B. Yee et al.
words came from a child, not a necessarily a famous one, but for those of us
who spend our days working with children, each one is as important as the
next. This always reminds me of the importance of seeing each student who
passes through the doors of our schools as capable leaners, and with this in
mind, I believe we return to society strong, confident, talented young men
and women ready to give back to the world in a manner in which they only
can. I am also reminded of a conversation with a principal I interviewed dur-
ing my doctoral research, whose approach to student learning, “failure is
not an option” reflected his willingness to do whatever it took and to sup-
port his teachers in doing what they believed necessary to ensure their stu-
dents were successful as learners, the success criteria defined by each one
individually. And with this in mind, it is perhaps easier to understand the
highly intentional pedagogical responses needed from teachers of adoles-
cent learners to ensure their engagement in learning.
Teacher Pedagogical Response

The notion of developmentally responsive learning environments, along
with developmentally responsive instructional practices within those
environments, emerged on the Canadian educational scene in a position
paper put forward by Manitoba Education, outlining a provincial strat-
egy for engaging adolescents in their learning. Further consultation with
teachers highlighted the need to develop common understanding,
common language and common instructional practices that would

underscore the province’s philosophy for developmentally responsive
learning environments that support early adolescent learners.
Responsive Middle Years education is more about teaching and learning

and less about management, more about helping students to make healthy
choices and less about mandating behaviour, more about using time pro-
ductively and less about sticking slavishly to timetables that do not support
learning, more about personal relationships and less about upholding tradi-
tional roles, and more about including student voices and less about Middle
Years teachers covering curriculum. (Manitoba Education 2010, p. 18)
In this description of developmentally responsive middle level learning

environments, it is apparent that the student is at the centre of all deci-
sions, all practices and all things related to their experience as learners.
Students are viewed as essential partners in the creation of a developmen-

tally responsive learning environment. Students work closely with their
teachers as co-creators of their learning experience; students set goals,
they establish criteria for successful demonstration of mastery, they artic-
ulate their progress towards given learning outcomes and monitor and
adjust their learning strategies based on feedback. “Making students…
prime partners [in their education] means putting them and their learn-
ing at the core of all other partnerships—and involving them directly in
their process” (Hargreaves and Fullan, as sited in Manitoba Education
2010, p. 25).
In Search of Expert Teachers: “The Importance

of Understanding the Students You Teach”
In 2009, Rumble and Aspland presented a paper at the Australian

Curriculum Studies Association Conference entitled, In search of the middle
school teacher: What differentiates the middle school teacher from other teach-
ers, based on their own research study, which sought to understand essential
attributes of the middle school teacher. Rumble and Aspland’s findings
clearly point towards the necessity of middle years teachers h aving expertise
in adolescent learning and development, along with a true passion for
working with students of this age. Four core attributes of the middle years
teacher emerged during this research study, which should perhaps form
part of any prerequisite search for a teacher of adolescents:
• The capacity to forge a middle school identity;

• A designer of wholesome curriculum;
• A specialist in adolescence;
• And, a capacity to sustain middle school reform and support systems
for the middle school teacher.
Research to Praxis: “What Is Best for Students”

As a teacher with particular expertise working with adolescents in middle
level learning environments, specifically within the discipline of the human-
ities, I am very aware of my strengths as a teacher and where I can best
44 B. Yee et al.
facilitate exceptional learning opportunities for my students. While I might

be able to “survive” as a teacher in a classroom of 22 kindergarten students,
it would not be the very best learning experience for them. [Is this not what
education systems should aspire to? Is this not what our students deserve?]
And, if the filter, “What is best for students?” is used for everything we
endeavour to in the field of education, then logic would dictate that we
place the very best people with specific expertise in leading, teaching and
learning at the various developmental levels in those specific contexts. As a
mother of an early adolescent son, this is what I want for him to experience
in middle school – expert teachers and expert instructional leaders, who
have dedicated their careers to creating the best learning environments for
students of the middle years.
ultifaceted Teacher Expertise: “Wearing Many Hats

M
While Juggling Just as Many Balls”
When teachers have both disciplinary expertise as well as expertise in

early adolescent development and learning, it becomes easier to see which
instructional practices best serve the needs of a particular group of learn-
ers (or an individual learner) at a particular point in time. This is likely to
change the next day; however, when teachers approach teaching and
learning in middle level learning environments through the lens of
responsiveness, they are better able to adapt to the ever-changing needs of
their students. Bransford et al. (2005) term this “adaptive expertise”
which is very reflective of the iterative nature of a teacher’s work. Teachers,
as adaptive experts, are not tied to existing ways of thinking and knowing
and doing; instead they are able to use the understanding they have about
the students, the content and current research to effectively adapt their
instructional design and assessment practices to meet the needs of their
students. This responsive approach to instructional practices does not
take on the form of an “anything goes” or “laissez faire” approach. Quite
the opposite; a learning environment with clearly articulated expecta-
tions and success criteria, where students are viewed as capable learners
and enlisted as co-designers of the learning, is shown to foster student
motivation and intellectual engagement.
Adolescents are capable learners (far more capable than they are often
given credit for) and they need to be provided with learning tasks that are
challenging and offer them multiple opportunities to demonstrate their

unique aptitudes and to experience success. Research emerging from
Stigler and Hiebert’s (1999) study of classrooms in Asian countries has
shown that teachers deliberately design learning tasks that are slightly
beyond the capabilities of the students they teach so the students can
experience struggling with something just outside their reach. Once stu-
dents have mastered the intended learning outcome, teachers will actively
point out that the student was able to accomplish it through hard work,
tenacity and determination. Taxing the adolescent brain in this way, just
outside of, what educators often refer to as the proximal zone of develop-
ment, is what stimulates development. The “drill and kill” approach of
pure repetition will do nothing to promote brain development in adoles-
cents when their brain is experiencing great plasticity.
Moreover, learning tasks for early adolescents need to be authentic and
true to the disciplines they are studying, while also reflecting and con-
necting students to the world they are growing up in. When teachers
provide authentic opportunities for student voice and choice in meaning-
ful aspects of their learning, students’ problem solving, critical thinking
and metacognitive abilities are challenged to develop and grow. Neatly
put together posters, PowerPoint presentations with whirling animation
or other examples of “busy” work are simply not the type of stimulating
learning tasks that foster deep understanding for adolescent learners.
The multi-year, cross-Canada What did you do in school today? study
sought to better understand the schooling experiences of Canadian ado-
lescents. The numerous factors found to impact student intellectual
engagement in their learning fall within the two broad concepts of
instructional challenge and learning climate, encompassing such things
as instructional design and assessment practices, relationships and school-
based practices. These concepts, further developed by Friesen (2009) in a
framework outlining principles of effective teaching, serve to focus
teacher professional learning and conversations on next right steps in
supporting adolescent learning. In the context of middle level learning
environments, the five principles of Friesen’s (2009) Teaching Effectiveness
Framework are particularly relevant to ensuring early adolescent learners,
who are shown to be vulnerable and at risk for disengagement in their
learning, remain connected to and supported. Although many cognitive
46 B. Yee et al.
changes are taking place in early adolescence, there is no better time to

engage these students in the ways of thinking and doing true to the dis-
ciplines they are studying (Friesen 2009). Work that early adolescents
engage in should be worthy of their time, allowing them to collaborate
and connect with peers, their teacher and experts in the discipline.
Assessment cannot be seen as separate from the instructional design pro-
cess, and similarly, cannot be seen as something meant only for the
teacher. Assessment is most meaningful to students and supports them in
their growth when they work together with their teachers and peers to
create clear criteria for success. Ongoing feedback becomes an integral
element in student self-assessment and the subsequent adjustments they
make to their learning strategies.
L earning Relationship: “In the End, It Is All

About Relationships”
Past, current (and most likely) future research highlights the importance
of healthy relationships in the development of adolescents, both as indi-
viduals and learners. Friesen’s (2009) Teaching Effectiveness Framework
identifies the need for three types of strong relationships to exist in order
to support ongoing student engagement and success: students’ relation-
ship to the work they engage in and an understanding of why this work
is important to them and in the real world; teachers’ relationships with
the students, making their thinking and problem solving processes visible
to students in order to support the development of these abilities in their
students; and, students’ relationships with each other, collaborating to
build collective capacity and understanding (Friesen 2009).
Further, in developmentally responsive learning environments, the
establishment of a learning community, where teachers support and men-
tor students and where students serve as positive support systems for each
other, is essential to ensuring adolescents feel valued as contributing
members of the classroom and the larger school community (Manitoba
Education 2010; Wormeli 2006, 2011). This increased student owner-
ship of and agency in their learning is not thrust upon them all at once,
but gradually, within a supportive learning environment with trusted
peers and teachers. Middle years teachers who truly understand the
nature and needs of early adolescent learners focus on building appropri-
ate learning relationships, which differ from those relationships that exist
outside of the school context. These learning relationships provide an
appropriate balance between high expectations for behaviour and achieve-
ment and the nurturing supports necessary to meet these expectations
(Rumble and Aspland 2009; Wormelli 2011).
The final principle of the Teaching Effectiveness Framework focuses on
the understanding that teaching is not a solitary pursuit and that profes-
sional collaboration makes everyone better. The image of the teacher as a
lifelong learner is important not only as a model for students, but also to
ensure the teaching profession remains in a continuous cycle of improve-
ment. Ongoing professional learning and professional dialogue about
how to best support adolescent learners guarantee the most current pro-
fessional knowledge and collective wisdom is being used to create devel-
opmentally responsive and intellectually engaging middle level learning
environments.
ssessment That Supports Student Learning: “Holding

A
Up a Mirror”
Instructional design and assessment should not be viewed as separate

entities, as they work in conjunction with each other to inform teachers
as they work alongside students to create developmentally appropriate
learning opportunities. Throughout the assessment and grading process,
teachers have an opportunity to impact student motivation and engage-
ment and the way students view themselves as learners—capable or not
capable. “Assessment is not something that teachers do to students; it is a
process of collaborative communication in which information about
learning flows between teacher and student” (Manitoba Education 2010,
p. 10). In classrooms today, there continues to be evidence of long-held
beliefs teachers hold related to assessment, which is at best assessment of
learning, but honestly more along the lines of evaluation, signalling the
end of a unit of study and the subsequent “moving on” to the next con-
cept in a long line of curricular learning outcomes (Dunleavy et al. 2012;
48 B. Yee et al.
Yee 2015). However, if teachers follow the line of thought that the intent
is for all students to learn the identified outcomes, then ongoing assess-
ment information is as much about teaching as it is about student learn-
ing. The “I taught, but they didn’t learn” viewpoint of pedagogy has no
place in our schools today (Cooper 2011).
Undeniably, teaching is a highly personal profession, and it is difficult
to not feel vulnerable when teachers’ beliefs and practices are drawn into
question. Student assessment evidence provides teachers with rich infor-
mation about their next steps. And yes, student assessment evidence cer-
tainly does identify gaps in their learning, but should the response as
teachers not be twofold when it comes to emerging assessment informa-
tion? One, teachers determine what their next steps are in order to close
the gaps; and two, students are supported in understanding how they can
adjust their learning strategies so as to move closer towards mastery of the
learning outcomes. Just like reading and writing, these skills of reflection
and the higher order thinking skills associated with metacognition must
be intentionally taught. The assessment process is powerful place in which
to foster these skills while the adolescent brain is highly malleable (Cooper
2011; Steinberg 2014; Yee 2015).
ultiple Opportunities to Experience Success: “The

M
Power of “Not Yets” and “Do-Overs”
Perhaps one of the most powerful lessons for middle years teachers emerg-
ing from Dweck’s vast body of work comes in the simple form of the
word “yet.” The assessment process, which inevitably at several points
during the year translates into a formal report card grade or mark, can be
a stressful and anxiety-filled time for many early adolescent learners.
Dweck gives an example from a school she has worked with, where
instead of issuing a student a failing or incomplete grade on a report card,
the words “not yet” appear (Dweck 2010). When students see “not yet”
versus a “0” or an “F” or “40%,” the first message is that while students
have not yet mastered the learning outcome, it is still expected that they
work towards mastery. “Not yet” is also a signal to teachers that even
though the concept may have been taught, students have not yet demon-
strated they understand it, and this should inform next steps in
teaching:
Whenever students say they can’t do something or are not good at some-
thing, the teacher should add, “yet.” Whenever students say they don’t like
a certain subject, the teacher should say, “yet.” This simple habit conveys
the idea that ability and motivation are fluid. (Dweck 2010, p. 20)
The work of Canadian educator and researcher Damian Cooper (2011)

compliments Dweck’s (2007, 2008) views that support the developing
nature of learners in general, most certainly relevant to the adolescent
learner who will for several years while in the care of our educational
systems be in a constant state of growth and development. The premise
of his book, Redefining Fair (2011), is that outdated beliefs about what
constitutes “fairness” in our classrooms often prevents teachers from
engaging the necessary pedagogical supports to ensure that all learners
can be successful. He asks that teachers be very clear, first in their own
minds and then with students, about intended learning targets and what
assessment will evidence student mastery of the concept. This ensures the
“target” does not become a “moving target” as these can be very difficult
for students to hit. And with this clearly articulated understanding of the
intended learning target, adolescent learners, with the appropriate time
and scaffolds, can work towards mastery.
Problems arise with outdated assessment practices that come in a sum-
mative nature, with little information about how a student can improve
upon their work, often with one opportunity to demonstrate their learn-
ing. If the goal is that all students attain mastery of a learning outcome,
teachers must understand that not all learners, especially adolescent learn-
ers given the wide range of developmental readiness, will reach that target
at the same time. “Do-overs” become a necessary component of a respon-
sive instructional programme that seeks to ensure all learners are success-
ful in their own way, in their own time. Ongoing, formative feedback,
along with multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery of identified
learning targets ensure adolescent learners understand the importance of
and purpose of clearly identified learning targets and are held “capable” of
meeting these targets (Cooper 2011; Dweck 2007, 2010).
50 B. Yee et al.
orm and Criterion Referencing: “Stop the Madness

N
of Sifting and Sorting”
A question that all educators must come to terms with is the nature and
purpose of assessment. The practice of norm referencing aligned very
much with the notion of fixed intelligence, using assessment information
to sift and sort students into ability groupings, capable and not capable.
An instructional programme built around criterion or individual refer-
encing supports the belief that all students can learn and that all students
achieve proficiency. Equity of opportunity is foundational to this phi-
losophy, not uniformity, which is the intent of a norm-referenced system.
Teachers who follow a criterion- or individual-referenced system in their
classrooms understand that in order for all students to achieve profi-
ciency, students will require different forms of scaffolding. The learning
target does not change, but the pathways students use to reach the target
may (Cooper 2011). Adolescents thrive in this kind of learning environ-
ment (Manitoba Education 2010; Wormeli 2006, 2011; Yee 2015).
uilding Flexibility into Structures and Processes: “Not

B
Only for Yoga”
If public education systems are to be a mirror of modern democratic

society, teachers can no longer draw on a singular pedagogical approach
in order to meet the diverse needs of learners within an inclusive setting.
Enter the adolescent learner, and we are no longer looking at inclusion in
reference to only those students with exceptional learning needs; the
multifaceted developmental changes taking place during adolescence cre-
ate classroom contexts where a teacher is likely to encounter 32 students,
all at different levels of developmental readiness. Differentiation is a phil-
osophical approach to teaching and learning where the teacher (or team
of teachers), beginning from a place of deep understanding of their stu-
dents as individuals and as learners, makes intentional decisions about
what each student needs to achieve success (Tomlinson 2014). A key
tenant of differentiation is that all students can learn, in their own way,
in their own time. Understanding that the adolescent developmental
phase places each adolescent learner within our classrooms at different

levels of readiness to engage with their learning, teachers employ such
strategies as flexible instruction, flexible groupings, as well as providing
students with multiple means of accessing content, working with infor-
mation and expressing their learning.
Recognizing that the learning needs of adolescent learners will change
as they grow and develop means that the learning environment and the
supports within that environment may vary depending on the day or the
curricular area of study. Based on the learners in their classroom, teachers
make decisions about the nature of the supports they will provide for
their students, but the learning target remains the same. In some class-
rooms, this notion has been mistaken to mean that the quantity or the
quality of the task is compromised, leaving some students to engage in
nothing but “busy work” (think map colouring), while others are simply
tasked with more questions to answer (think answering all questions odd
and even, as opposed to only the even questions). In a truly differentiated
classroom, all students are engaged in respectful learning tasks, intended
to support them in arriving at the same learning target in their own way,
in their own time (Cooper 2011; Robinson 2014; Tomlinson 2014).
Providing “just in time” and “just right” instruction for a large group
of adolescent learners can test the mettle of any teacher. A strategy of flex-
ible grouping allows teachers to move students in an out of smaller learn-
ing groups, ensuring students can receive the instructional support they
need to be successful. For some, flexible grouping and ability grouping
have become synonymous and therefore the notion of flexible groupings
has come under fire for their place in an inclusive learning environment
(Olszewski-Kubilius 2013). The intent of flexible learning groups is never
to “institutionalise” a student to a particular ability group (high or low);
instead, this strategy sees students sometimes in groupings based on need
or targeted skill development, but also based on interest, learning profile
and even choice. Learning groups are reflective of current assessment data
and should never be viewed as static. The key message emerging from the
strategy of flexible grouping is that teachers are better able to match
needed instruction and supports to smaller groups than to whole class
instruction (Tomlinson 2014).
52 B. Yee et al.
One of the unintended positive outcomes of differentiation is that as

teachers provide their learners with varying strategies to support their
learning, students themselves begin to understand what they can access
to be successful in their learning. Students become active participants in
their learning, equipped with the very powerful knowledge needed to
advocate for themselves as learners. A quote by Howard Gardner (in
Siegel and Shaughnessy 1994) provides a great reminder of the impor-
tance for teachers to look at each learner as an individual, requiring sup-
ports for their learning as unique and individual as they are.
The biggest mistake of past centuries in teaching has been to treat all chil-
dren as if they were variants of the same individual and thus to feel justified
in teaching them all the same subjects in the same way. (p. 563)
If we fail to recognize this, the already large gaps that are sure to exist
among adolescent learners will continue to widen with a singular
approach to teaching and learning.
Instructional Leadership Response

The four core attributes of the middle years teacher identified by Rumble
and Aspland (2009) through their research study (the capacity to forge a
middle school identity, a designer of wholesome curriculum, a specialist
in adolescence, and a capacity to sustain middle school reform and sup-
port systems for the middle school teacher) should perhaps be applied
more broadly to also include the search for middle school principals. The
practice of many education systems to hire school-based instructional
leaders—both principals and assistant/vice-principals—who have little to
no background in working with teachers, students and their families in
middle level learning environments is puzzling to me. A search of recent
job postings for middle school principals uncovered some which listed as
the only criteria assistant principals with a given number of years of expe-
rience or current principals desiring a transfer. There was no mention of
specific expertise in middle level learning or a passion for working with
early adolescents and their teachers.
There is an abundance of current research emphasizing the middle

years of learning as being key to putting early adolescents on the path to
success in subsequent grades, high school graduation, post-secondary
acceptance and completion, career futures and overall well-being. It is
troubling that so much is left to chance when it comes to creating the
conditions for early adolescent learners to experience success in their
growth and development within our school systems. The importance of
searching for “the right” instructional leaders for early adolescent learners
and their middle level learning environments must not be underesti-
mated. Attention must be paid to current research along with paradigm
shifts occurring in education systems around the world which indicate
our collective thinking related to instructional leadership in middle level
learning environments needs to be re-envisioned in order to better serve
this population of learners and their teachers. Newly emerging images of
teaching and learning in the middle years must form the basis for devel-
oping, selecting and cultivating those who will lead the schools that serve
our early adolescent learners.
haracteristics of Effective Instructional Leaders: “A

C
Hint of This and a Bit of That”
Recent research into effective instructional leadership practices revealed

the qualities of courageous and unconventional, visible and responsive,
along with clear vision and direction to appear as descriptors for those
instructional leaders suited to lead learning environments where adoles-
cent learners flourish (Yee 2015). Instructional leaders who have been
shown to effect meaningful and sustainable change in the learning envi-
ronments for their early adolescent learners show courage, and at times a
hint of unconventionality. Sometimes, transformation takes real courage,
courage to reflect on what has been done in the school in the past, cour-
age to ask why and then courage to say “we can do better.” A concerning
characteristic in many schools is what can be termed a “history of
grandeur”—a community mythology of being good schools that actually
prevents them from becoming the kind of exceptional learning environ-
ments that best support the learning and developmental needs of adoles-
54 B. Yee et al.
cents (Collins 2001; Yee 2015). To move a school from outdated, deeply
rooted philosophies and practices requires courageous leadership.
Research to Praxis: “Finding That ‘Just-Right’ Fit”

I am reminded each and every day when I step through the front doors of
my school, of the unmistakable energy that fills a middle school. There
were 932 adolescents in my school at last count, so not only is there a con-
stant buzz of activity, a high level-vibration, but also a wonderful air of
quirkiness that some tell me you need to be “middle-schooler” to get.
Undeniably, it takes a certain kind of teacher and a “just-right” fit instruc-
tional leader to embrace all that accompanies the adolescent learner and a
learning environment that supports their unique learning needs.
In my own experience as a middle years teacher, a district specialist for
middle years teaching and learning, and an assistant principal of two differ-
ent middle school configurations, I have worked with hundreds of teachers
and school principals who have very diverse pre-service teacher training
experiences, along with in-service professional learning opportunities.
[Only a handful of those educators have been part of teacher training pro-
grams designed for those eager to work with adolescents in middle level
learning environments. None have been part of leadership development
programs aimed at aspiring middle school principals.] Many carry with them
the belief [a misguided belief, based on my own research] that “good
teaching is good teaching,” and “good leadership is good leadership,”
regardless of the developmental stage of the students they face each and
every day. I would concede that there might be key tenets of basic peda-
gogy that cross the developmental spectrum of students. However, consis-
tent with my research, foundational middle years research (This we believe,
Turning Points 2000, Breaking Ranks in the Middle, Transforming Middle
Years Education in Manitoba) has demonstrated there are far more peda-
gogical considerations specific to the age, and more importantly, the devel-
opmental readiness of the student.
Robinson’s (2011) student-centred leadership philosophy aligns with

the type of instructional leadership vital in developmentally responsive
and intellectually engaging middle level learning environments.
Instructional leaders who are deeply involved in the teaching and learn-
ing taking place in the classrooms of their schools develop a better under-
standing of the unique learning needs of their early adolescent learners as
well as the instructional practices that will support these learning needs.
Establishing and articulating goals and expectations that support a theory
of quality teaching and learning in the context of early adolescent learners

will ensure the collaborative focus is clear. The importance of ongoing
professional learning that promotes a better understanding of early ado-
lescent learners, along with instructional design and assessment practices
that increase student agency and ownership in their learning has, in the
context of Robinson’s work, the biggest impact on student learning out-
comes. Finally, the importance of the school environment for early ado-
lescent learners is clear. With the vast number of developmental changes
early adolescents experience during this time period, ensuring they feel
safe and supported (as individuals and as learners) is key to their aca-
demic success and healthy development (AMLE 2010; Manitoba
Education 2010; Wormeli 2006, 2011; Yee 2015).
Student-centred leadership is instructional leadership that makes a dif-
ference to the equity and excellence of student outcomes (Robinson
2011). The leadership dimensions outline clear direction, identifying
what leaders need to do in order to have a bigger impact on student learn-
ing. In her keynote address at the Calgary Ideas Conference, Robinson
articulated her “big message” as being the following, “the more leaders
focus their relationships, their [daily] work and their [professional] learn-
ing on the core business of teaching and learning the greater their influ-
ence on student outcomes” (Robinson 2014). She went on to indicate
that leadership in schools is based all too often on management of
resources, people, time and money, on the building of relationships with
adults and other partners and, more recently, on what is perceived as
“innovation.” This has overshadowed what should be the central purpose
of all we do in education, and that is improving student outcomes. While
the work of a school principal is sometimes one step removed from work-
ing directly with students in classrooms, Robinson articulates that it is in
creating the conditions for teachers to do their work where principals
have the most impact on students:
There are compelling ethical arguments for student-centered leadership.

Because the point and purpose of compulsory schooling is to ensure that
students learn what society has deemed important, a central duty of school
leadership is to create the conditions that make that possible. (Robinson
2011, p. 4)
56 B. Yee et al.
New View on Instructional Leadership: “Creating

A
the Conditions”
While none would contest the importance of a student-centred philoso-

phy towards instructional leadership as put forward by Robinson,
another, complementary view of instructional leadership, which creates
the conditions for adolescents to engage deeply in their learning, was
proposed in a recent study that is worth noting (Yee 2015). An examina-
tion of any leadership section at a local bookstore would reveal a wide
variety of books touting the latest leadership “style” or even more preva-
lent, the leadership “manifesto.” While many forms of leadership have
been put forth as most conducive to leading educational reform and
transformation, looking at instructional leadership as a synergistic factor
has not been part of that discourse. This is something Yee (2015) has
proposed in her recent research. By definition, a synergist is, “something
that enhances the effectiveness of an active agent” (Merriam-Webster
2014, para. 1) or “an agent that increases the effectiveness of another
agent when combined with it” (Merriam-Webster 2014, para. 2), further,
a synergist is, “[an agent] that acts in concert with another to enhance its
effect” (Merriam-Webster 2014, para. 3). There is something rather
intriguing about looking at the work of instructional leadership through
the lens of a synergist. To illustrate this idea—instructional leadership (as
the synergist) creates the conditions, acting as a catalyst for an intense
reaction to unfold, which is the work of teaching and learning in the
classroom. Many labels have been used to describe the work of a principal
(change agent, servant leader, transformational leader, charismatic leader,
etc.), however the image these labels create all centre around the traits of
the leader, rather than the conditions they create for others. Effective
instructional leadership cannot be an egocentric undertaking.
A second image of instructional leadership, again making reference to
the sciences, emerges, this time involving the laws of physics. If we agree
with the notion of energy conservation, that the energy within the uni-
verse is constant and therefore cannot be created or destroyed, only
changed into a different form, as proposed in the first law of thermody-
namics, it would seem reasonable to look at the synergistic quality of
instructional leadership as a factor that creates the conditions within
school for energy to be shaped in the ways most conducive to learning.

Now taking into account the Newton’s third law of motion, stating “For
every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” (Newton 1686),
instructional leaders must be cognizant of the kinds of opposite reactions
elicited by their actions. Practical wisdom might suggest that forcing or
pushing teachers towards a desired end may not yield the anticipated
positive results. Actions of instructional leadership must never lose sight
of the most important outcome, which is student learning. This requires
the work of an instructional leader to be very “finessed”; making sure the
necessary conditions are in place, bringing together the right people and
producing an intentional first action allowing to for the reaction of teach-
ing and learning to unfold in the classroom. Instructional leadership as a
synergistic factor; there is great potential here for a transformation of
sorts in the way the work of an instructional leader is approached and
viewed in the context of adolescent learning.
Contextual Response
he School Environment: “Balancing Consistency
T
and Flexibility”
There is something to be said about a strong sense of consistency, cohe-

siveness, coherence and dependability in the “school life” of early adoles-
cents, when many other aspects of their growth and development seem
not within their immediate control. Current instructional leaders and
teachers need to examine the processes at their schools, many of which
probably existed long before they arrived, to ensure the current school
population is being served well; and, then should not hesitate to do away
with those structures and philosophies that may be doing more harm
than good. If there was one word that can be used to describe the kind of
middle level learning environment (and subsequent school processes)
that best support the adolescent learners within it, it would be “flexible.”
This should not be confused with “anything goes” or “laissez faire.”
Flexibility very much reflects the needs of adolescent learners in relation
to their school environment as the developmental changes they are expe-
58 B. Yee et al.
riencing can have them experiencing an entire spectrum of emotions,

behaviours, thoughts and physical sensations, all within the span of a day.
To be more specific, balanced flexibility with high expectations and firm
boundaries would be a more accurate descriptor to characterize effective
middle level learning environments.
Research to Praxis: A Pep Talk for Principals

A reminder. As an instructional leader, please never lose sight of the fact
that the adolescent learners you have in your school are the most important
resource you have at your disposal to easily gauge if you (as the instruc-
tional leader) and your teachers (as facilitators of learning) are on the right
track. Talk to your students. Ask them about their experiences in your
school. Provide your students with authentic opportunities to develop
agency in their learning by demonstrating to them through your actions
you consider them and their voices as important factors when creating a
learning environment in which they will flourish. Shadow some of your stu-
dents throughout the course of their day at school if you truly want to
understand what it means to be an early adolescent learner in the middle
level learning environment you have been entrusted to care for and lead.
Base any decisions you make on what you learn from your students and
about your students. Do not attempt to find a “quick fix” in the latest inno-
vation or packaged program. Find the answers you need to create a devel-
opmentally responsive, intellectually engaging learning environment, in
those very students who are the reason you are here today, wanting to
know how to make their experience in your school exactly what it needs to
be, so they, too, may see the world of possibilities that exist for them.
eflecting on Current Practices: “More Like a

R
Guideline”
School timetables need to accommodate large blocks of learning that can

be negotiated among the teachers to allow students to delve deeply and
linger with topics and issues important to them. The start and end to
learning must not be dictated by the sounding of a bell or the passing of
a week or month. The practice of asking teachers to create unit plans and
year plans that determine the pace of learning is considered outdated by
many current instructional leaders and teachers (Yee 2015). This pace of
learning, of course, can only be dictated by the actual learning students
demonstrate. Again, this does not encourage an anything goes approach;

however, when teachers are tied to an arbitrary timeline, with the sole
purpose of covering the entire curriculum by the time the end of the
school year rolls around, then teachers are missing out on wonderful
opportunities for the learning to reflect and take on the lives and lived
experiences of their students.
he Importance of Non-cognitive Factors in Student

T
Success: “The Missing Link”
Based on the extensive understanding current research has provided

about the neurobiology of adolescent development and learning, the
focus of most traditional systems of education on curriculum content
may not provide the necessary balance between academic and social-
emotional learning in which adolescent self-regulation, viewed by many
as the single most important contributor to healthy adolescent develop-
ment, can be fostered (Yee 2015). Recent surveys conducted worldwide
reveal that adolescents report experiencing alarming levels of depression
and anxiety (Klinger et al. 2011; McCreary Centre Society 2009;
McNeely and Blanchard 2009; Yee 2015). One must question whether
there may be a key element missing from what is taught to students every
day. Some believe that traits such as resiliency, tenacity, confidence and
self-efficacy develop (or do not) in students naturally. It can be likened to
what some think about leadership: you either have it or you do not. Like
reading and writing, and also critical thinking and problem solving, these
traits need to be intentionally targeted through our teaching. So much
time is spent focusing on the academic aspects of schooling that for the
most part school systems have overlooked the psychological aspects that
play a significant role in students’ success in school (Steinberg 2014).
Developing these essential capacities throughout the natural course of
teaching and learning in the classroom should also be seen as fundamen-
tal curriculum content. Education systems need to re-imagine what is
possible for their adolescent learners in all facets of their schooling
experience.
60 B. Yee et al.
Research to Praxis: The Potential of Unconventional

The longer I work with adolescents in middle level learning environments,
the more convinced I am that there is a “just right” fit between the people
in place in a school who can effectively support the unique learning and
developmental needs of adolescent learners. This includes the principal,
teachers, support staff and any other individuals a budget may permit –
such as psychologists, social workers, etc. I advocate for being open to all
possibilities that exist with regards to how you might schedule your school,
deploy your teachers, group your students, and secure learning resources
and tools. Some of the most unconventional approaches can yield amazing
results.
Community Response
The community in which a school is situated can act as a powerful force
for a school; and, whether this takes on a positive or negative tone in
many ways rests in the hands of the adults in the building. The positive
relationship between a school and its community is one that should be
nurtured. Instructional leaders and teachers must shape this relationship
so their adolescent learners are not only supported while in school, but
also the moment they step outside—the community must also be open
to this type of partnership and it is often at the school level where the
conditions must be created for this to occur. Early adolescents are not
always seen in the most positive light by older generations. Opportunities
for early adolescents to contribute to their communities in positive ways
are important components in their healthy social and moral develop-
ment. Increased opportunities for positive contact among early adoles-
cents and the various individuals, groups and organizations that form
their community promote understanding and the building of mutual
respect among these groups. Developmentally speaking, early adolescents
are highly susceptible to influences, both positive and negative; the estab-
lishment of a community that supports the healthy development of its
early adolescents is of utmost importance in ensuring the success of these
learners both inside and outside the four walls of the school.
In a developmentally responsive learning environment, learning rela-
tionships are also seen as extending beyond the classroom and school,
into the community (Manitoba Education 2010). To foster these rela-

tionships requires the intentional design of opportunities that will con-
nect students and their communities. Schools should be opened up to
those in the community; ask community members to share in the stu-
dents’ learning. Every opportunity that will showcase students’ unique
talents and abilities to the community should be explored. Helping the
community see early adolescent learners as the kind, caring and capable
individuals the schools know them to be is essential. Then there will be
the establishment of a true school community; and, this is exactly what
early adolescent learners need to support their healthy growth and devel-
opment as learners and as individuals.
Systemic Response
Either through what systems openly endorse or (sometimes worse) what
is rarely is mentioned, it quickly becomes clear what priorities exist. This
has been an issue plaguing the middle years of learning for quite some
time in most countries around the world. The middle years of learning
and consequently those learners that fall within this grouping have rarely
been identified as system priorities, with most attention being paid to the
early learning years or high school completion (OISE 2008; Yee 2015).
Both worthy in their own respect; however, the failure to acknowledge
the impact of the adolescent developmental period on the middle years of
learning, along with the complex nature of the work facing teachers and
instructional leaders who have been entrusted to care for these students,
has left much to chance for adolescent learners and middle level learning
environments (Centre for Collaborative Education 2003; Wormeli 2006,
2011; Yee 2015).
Some will say that not everything can be a priority when it comes to the
multifaceted world of education, yet it can be argued that when it comes to
a profession where the most precious resource is children, children of all
ages, of all learning abilities and all cultural backgrounds should be a prior-
ity (Manitoba Education 2010; Yee 2015). It must not be seen as accept-
able, through what falls into the categories of sins of omission or sins of
commission, to deny an entire developmental group of students the con-
62 B. Yee et al.
sideration necessary to ensure they, along with their teachers, are given
adequate resources and supports. Those who have devoted their careers to
working with adolescent learners know the wonder and challenge (often all
at the same time) associated with the middle years of learning. The struggle
of the adolescent learner to find his or her place within a school environ-
ment, let alone find their way in an ever-changing world is very real.
Teachers who work with these learners tirelessly work to find ways to help
their adolescent students connect to and find meaning in their learning.
Worldwide, research shows adolescent motivation and engagement in
learning decreases steadily throughout the middle years of learning
(McCreary Centre Society 2009; Willms et al. 2009; Yee 2015). This
should be cause for concern. This should be attracting the attention of
education systems around the world. This should be enough to cause a re-
visioning of what the middle years of learning can be and what is needed
systemically to ensure adolescent learners are supported to successfully
navigate this developmental period within our school systems. These stu-
dents and teachers are every bit as much deserving of the same kinds of
attention and resources currently being directed at other populations of
learners and their teachers. There are a couple of exceptions worth noting.
For the past decade, both New Zealand and Australia have worked
hard to establish nation-wide systems of beliefs, practices and resources
that would support teaching and learning in the middle years. This
desired consistency across all middle level learning environments is
believed to be important in supporting early adolescent learners through
what is understood to be a very dynamic time in their development
(Bishop 2008). Policy emerging from both countries clearly articulates
the importance of holding at the centre of their newly developing middle
years philosophies the early adolescent learner, their unique developmen-
tal needs and the ever-changing world they face (Barratt 1998;
Chadbourne 2002; Hill and Russell 1999).
New Zealand has invested considerable resources into reform initia-
tives for their middle level learning environments. The question that has
guided their research has been focused on how schools and systems are
responding to the unique developmental needs of learners, ages 10–15.
Longitudinal research studies from both New Zealand and Australia
indicate that a middle years approach simply “works.” Outcomes are bet-
ter, student engagement with their learning is greater, teacher satisfaction

is higher and resources within and across schools are better utilized
(O’Sullivan 2005). Haigh (2004) writes, “Studies have overwhelmingly
concluded that middle schools do an effective job… The notorious Year
7 dip tends not to happen” (p. 2). Departments of Education across all
Australian states and territories and in New Zealand have identified the
central need for change and support of reform in the middle years of
schooling and have committed to continued research, development and
funding in support of their early adolescent learners.
In 2006, the Canadian Education Association (CEA), in response to
growing concern about the lived educational experiences of adolescents
in Canada, identified the adolescent learner as a core priority. The CEA’s
multi-year, What did you do in school today? research and development
initiative began shortly thereafter in 2007. Douglas Willms, Sharon
Friesen, Penny Melton and other researchers involved in the What did
you do in school today? (2009) research study hypothesized that transfor-
mation of the educational experiences and increased achievement for all
adolescents in Canada was possible. Carole Olsen, then president of the
CEA, explained that:
From CEA’s standpoint, the process of transforming schools to improve

learning will require a significant shift in our current designs for learning,
the beliefs we hold about the purpose of schooling, and the knowledge we
draw on to understand adolescent learning and development. (Willms
et al. 2009, p. 1)
The intent behind What did you do in school today? was twofold: one,
explore how student engagement and effective teaching practices
impacted adolescent achievement; and two, begin a dialogue with
Canadian educators about new ideas that would enhance the learning
experiences of adolescents in classrooms and schools. While significant
findings and important insight pertaining to adolescent engagement in
their learning have come from the study, it is disappointing (from the
perspective of a Canadian educator) that as a country Canada has not
taken the very clear message conveyed through the voices of our nation’s
adolescent learners and acted upon it in some greater way. Any research
64 B. Yee et al.
or any source of data should always be looked at with a “so what and now
what” lens. And so there would seem to be an important “now what”
piece that has been missed.
In Canada, where no national governing system exists for education,
the province of Manitoba should be applauded for the strategy they have
developed to transform the middle years of learning and engage adoles-
cents in their learning. Perhaps some of this is in response to the initial
What did you do in school today? findings. Beginning in 2007, the Manitoba
department of education held a series of open forums and interviews with
school division administrators, school leaders and other stakeholders in
an attempt to gain a better understanding of the current state of middle
years teaching and learning in the province. Information gathered sug-
gested the typical curriculum and assessment documents, often the hall-
mark of system support departments, did not adequately address the
needs of those working in the province’s middle level learning environ-
ments. Educators in Manitoba acknowledged the unique learning needs
of their early adolescent learners and pressed the Department of Education
for further guidance, support and resources to ensure they could more
effectively meet the learning needs of their students. In response,
Manitoba Education identified five key action areas they committed to
support and resource in order to transform middle level learning environ-
ments in their province. These five action areas are as follows:
• Understanding of and commitment to young adolescents: Effective

middle years education is provided by educators who have a deep
understanding of young adolescents and are committed to meeting the
needs of their middle years learners.
• Responsive teaching and learning experiences: Effective middle years
schools provide young adolescents with responsive teaching and learn-
ing experiences.
• Learning relationships: Effective middle years education provides
strong learning relationships for young adolescents.
• Student voice and choice: Effective middle years education offers stu-
dents opportunities for voice, choice and responsibility.
• Community involvement: Effective middle years schools have strong
community involvement. (Manitoba Education 2010, pp. 3–6)
At a provincial level, Manitoba continues to resource and support the

strategies put forward in what has now become part of provincial legisla-
tion for education.
The Middle Years Movement: “A History Lesson”
A side note that some may find interesting, in the form of a brief history
lesson. The middle years movement had its origins in the United States
(US) in the early 1960s after the move towards creating a junior high
school between primary and high school failed to adequately meet the
needs of students of this age group. Thus it is perhaps that most organiza-
tions, people and research that have been influential in setting the agenda,
focusing the debate and providing direction for practitioners and policy
makers alike with respect to middle level education around the world
originated in the US. The Association for Middle Level Education
(AMLE) is the hallmark organization for middle level education around
the world. Turning Points and Turning Points 2000 are credited by many
for re-energizing the need for middle level reform after the middle years
movement waned in the early 80s. Since these two hallmark position
papers were released by the Centre for Collaborative Education, the spon-
soring group, Carnegie Corporation, has continued to support m iddle
years transformation with the subsequent release of numerous Turning
Points publications related to curriculum development, understanding
the early adolescent learner, assessment, as well as collaborative and shared
leadership for middle schools (Carnegie Council on Adolescent
Development 1989; Centre for Collaborative Education 2003). Breaking
Ranks in the Middle (2006) is a position paper published by the National
Association for Secondary School Principals in the US that focuses on tak-
ing the theoretical into more practical realms. Research emerging from
these three organizations has shaped and influenced (up until now at least)
what is thought to be next practice for teaching and learning in the middle
years. The National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform aims to
promote middle level transformation by highlighting and honouring the
work of exceptional middle schools in the US each year (1999). Rick
Wormeli (2006, 2011) has been a champion and advocate for learning
66 B. Yee et al.
environments which meet the needs of early adolescent learners for over
three decades. The voices of these organizations and people will continue
to be important as worldwide, education systems work to understand how
to best meet the needs of their adolescent learners. In the face of persistent
criticism facing the American education system one would question the
current status of the middle years movement in the US and wonder what
the next steps may be for some of these influential organizations.
As we move into the next chapters, specific regional practices in
response to the sections that formed the basis of this chapter (the adoles-
cent, instructional leader, teacher, contextual, community and systemic
perspective on the interaction between the adolescent developmental
period and adolescent engagement in their learning) will be highlighted.
What will become apparent is how success for adolescent learners in their
schooling experience is dependent upon the intentional creation of con-
ditions and the careful matching of resources, leaders and teachers to
support their unique learning needs.
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3
Multicultural and Multifaceted Canada
The Canadian Context

Describing the system of education in Canada is akin to trying to describe
the nation itself—complex. It is perhaps difficult to pinpoint defining
features, the country being viewed by many on the world stage as strong
and stable; yet on home soil, many Canadians struggle to articulate where
the essence of their country lies. [I am one of those Canadians. That
being said, I feel very fortunate to live, work and raise my children in
Canada. I look out my window and see the Rocky Mountains; I breathe
clean air and have clean water to drink any time I turn my faucets on; my
children walk to school in what I feel is as safe a neighbourhood as you
will find in a large Canadian city; and, I am fortunate to have a good pay-
ing job doing something I love that also provides for my family.] But—
and perhaps the one “thing” many Canadians struggle with most is that
when questioned they would be hard pressed to explain what “the
Canadian experience” is. In large part this is due to the fact that being
Canadian is far from a singular experience shared by all. Canada is such
a diverse country, welcoming with opens arms people from all nations as
though they were our own. Canadians come in all shapes and sizes,

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52602-7_3
72 B. Yee et al.
colours and voices, and for the most part, the people tend to make “it”
work. Describing the Canadian education system is in many ways the
same—education in Canada is not a singular entity. It is complex and
diverse, dynamic—yet in some cases so very slow to change, to reflect the
world our students are growing up in.
There are ten provinces and three territories in Canada, and each is
responsible for all levels of education and education policy in the indi-
vidual province or territory, as afforded by the Canadian Constitution.
Ministers of Education from the 13 provinces and territories (some with
no background in education policy making other than their own school-
ing experience) form The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada
(CMEC). This group meets to discuss policy and other issues facing the
education system in each province and what impact these may have at a
federal level. There is no indication this group aims to align the provincial
and territorial education systems across Canada. There have been times,
however, when the Ministers have identified common issues of concern
and agreed to make these a priority for education in each province and
territory, thereby elevating the specific issue to a nation-wide one. The
most recent example is mathematics. Western Canadian provinces and
the northern territories agreed to collaborate on common curriculum
development and went so far as to develop a common resource to support
mathematics teaching and learning (CMEC 2013). Unfortunately, other
than the development and dissemination of one mathematics resource,
along with limited use by teachers, little else came of the Western and
Northern Canadian Protocol for K-9 Mathematics (2006) and the call for
additional collaboration among this group.
In the province of Alberta, there have been five different Premiers, or
heads of government, in five years; with each new leader came a shift in
direction of education in the province. Funding for education in
Canada is determined by each individual province, although indirectly
overseen at the federal level, and in today’s uncertain economic times,
oil prices and particular inclinations of government leaders tend to
impact whether new schools get built or the state of labour peace with
teachers. Education funding issues are rarely about teacher salaries
alone, but extend to concerns over class size, adequate provisions for
resources, workload issues and professional learning opportunities. This
Multicultural and Multifaceted Canada 73
unpredictability in e ducation funding is one of the biggest concerns

facing educators today, and led to a five-week teacher strike in the prov-
ince of British Columbia, ending the previous school year two weeks
early and delaying the start of the 2014–2015 school year by three
weeks, a total of 27 instructional days lost (British Columbia Teachers’
Federation 2014).
Each province has a Ministry or Department of Education, which is
responsible for curriculum development, teacher certification and educa-
tion policy. There are no standards or timelines for the revision of provin-
cial curriculum; truth be told, some students are being taught the same
curriculum as their parents had 25 years earlier. Similarly, reviews of and
often much needed updates to provincial education policy tend to carry
the same timelines as election campaigns. The structure of the curriculum
differs in each province and territory. In Alberta, curriculum documents
are mandated at the provincial level to be enacted by teachers. In theory,
there is little room for teachers to shape the mandated curriculum to the
interests of their students or their own particular teaching strengths;
although in practice, there is great variability in the way the curriculum
is delivered in the classroom of each teacher.
The number of hours of instruction also varies by province. In Alberta,
the number of hours of instruction per year is 950 for students in Grades
1 through 9 and 1000 hours in Grades 10 through 12. There are guide-
lines for the minimum number of instructional minutes in core subject
areas in Grades 1 through 9; again, how this is carried out in individual
schools varies greatly. In Alberta high schools, course credits equate to
instructional hours; one credit equals 25 hours of instruction, and most
core courses consist of three or five credits. By contrast, in the province of
Ontario, guidelines come in the form of the minimum number of
instructional minutes per week, which is 1500 for Grades 1 through 8.
And in the Northwest Territories, compulsory instructional time is
997 hours per year for students in Grades 1 through 6 and no less than
1045 hours per year for students in Grades 7 through 12.
Alberta’s newest Ministerial Order on the provisions for basic educa-
tion in the province was signed in 2013. The previous Ministerial Order
carried the date of 1998, there was another dated 1997, and before that
1994. As with revisions to provincial curriculum, there are no guidelines
74 B. Yee et al.
or timelines for revisions to provincial education legislation. The p

rovinces
and territories determine grade structure, and the age and grade in which
school begins and ends; whereas grade configuration of schools is deter-
mined by local school boards. In many instances these configurations
have little to do with any particular pedagogical philosophy and more to
do with external factors like budgets and facility usage. The notion of a
school board and school trustees varies as much within a province as it
does amongst provinces and territories. In the school board where I am
employed, seven elected members of the public serve as school trustees.
Their role is to represent the interests of the public in the education sys-
tem; these seven individuals are given a considerable amount of power
and authority with which to act. As with the provincial Ministers of
Education, many trustees’ only experience in education policy develop-
ment has come in the form of their own schooling experience or their
role as parents of children attending school.
Teacher training is another element that varies as much within a prov-
ince as it does between provinces. In Alberta, there are four major post-
secondary institutions that offer teacher training programmes. As a
school-based instructional leader, I can easily distinguish which institu-
tion my teachers have been trained in by the particular pedagogical stance
they hold. My perspective is that philosophically, the teacher training
programmes in the province are very different, resulting in tremendous
diversity in the skills and background new teachers bring to their
classrooms.
While it is often easiest to identify challenges and uncertainties in
things we hold near and dear to our hearts, there are many strengths of
education in Canada that are worth noting. On a very basic level, public
education in Canada is free. The number of both private and charter
schools is on the rise, attracting parents with lower class sizes, uniforms
and classroom environments often similar to what they experienced as
children—choice of school setting is enticing for many Canadian par-
ents. Education in Canada is compulsory until the age of 16 in ten of the
13 provinces/territories, and until the age of 18 in the other three.
According to the most recent 2014 Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) Country Profiles, there is
much to celebrate about education in Canada: the school enrolment rate
for children age 5–14 is 99 per cent; 92 per cent of Canadians age 25–34
attained upper secondary education; 57 per cent of Canadians age 25–34
attained a tertiary education degree; expenditure per pupil on tertiary
education is one of the highest among OECD countries; beginning
teachers’ salaries in Canada are similar to the OECD average (however,
Canadian teachers reach the top of the salary grid in 11 years, versus the
OECD average of 24 ); and, compulsory instructional time for students
in both primary and secondary education is above the OECD average
(although some might question if this statistic should be seen as positive
factor) (OECD 2014).
Results from the 2012 Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) tests, in which 21,000 Canadian 15-year-olds partici-
pated, indicated Canadian students ranked tenth in performance on
measures of overall mathematical literacy (CMEC 2013). The gap
between Canada’s highest achieving and lowest achieving students in
PISA mathematical results is high, pointing towards inequity in educa-
tional outcomes. In measures of reading literacy and scientific literacy, as
defined by the OECD, Canadian students performed well above the
OECD average, being outperformed by only five countries in reading
literacy and seven countries in scientific literacy (CMEC 2013). The gap
between the highest and lowest decile scores is on par with the OECD
average, indicating greater equity of learning outcomes in reading and
science. While Canadian students continue to perform well on the PISA
tests, there has been a downward trend since 2000, which has created
discomfort among provincial education leaders (CMEC 2013; OECD
2014a).
Standardized testing at the provincial and territorial level is a highly
debated topic and very much dependent on the government in power.
[I grew up in the province of Saskatchewan, where my high school
teachers were trusted to develop and mark our final exams.] These
exams were valued in the same way towards university entrance require-
ments as provinces with standardized tests, marked by anonymous edu-
cators paid to do so. As described above, when Canada is depicted in
international measures of achievement such as PISA or Teaching and
Learning International Survey (TALIS), the country as a whole tends to
do quite well. However, when these scores are broken down by province
76 B. Yee et al.
and territory, large variations often emerge in how these 15-year-olds,

sampled from various schools across the provinces and territories have
performed on the test. So, the question Canadians must ask themselves
is if this one test, administered every three years, is a true indicator of
the quality of provincial education systems, or whether it is simply
another standardized test for educators, the public and politicians to
either value or criticize.
Further, while on the surface Canadian results in international tests of
achievement would lead one to believe that both students and education
systems are faring well, two notable cross-Canada measures portray some-
what different images. The Canadian Education Association’s (CEA)
What did you do in school today? study has, since 2007, surveyed over
63,000 Canadian adolescents and found that although 69 per cent of
students report being engaged in school, as measured through indicators
such as attendance, homework behaviours, positive relationships with
friends and participation in extracurricular activities, only 37 per cent
reported being engaged in learning. The concept of being engaged in
learning is measured by reported levels of effort, interest and motivation
and perceived quality of instruction (Dunleavy et al. 2012). What does
this tell us? I believe there are many ways in which we can interpret this
data, but as with any data, I always feel the most important questions
come in the form of “so what and now what?” (How can we look at this
data as one piece of an entire data story? In which context should this
data be viewed? How can we use this data to determine next steps?) This
data appears to indicate that many Canadian adolescents do well in
school, despite not being intellectually engaged in their learning. Perhaps
even more perplexing is that of the three indicators reported to have the
most significant impact on academic outcomes, only one—effort—
relates back to intellectual engagement. Attendance and homework
behaviours are the other two indicators found to have a positive effect on
academic outcomes in the three core areas of mathematics, language arts
and science. Dunleavy et al. (2012) explained, “Our purpose in this study
was to illuminate the relationship between intellectual engagement and
academic outcomes. Yet, in our study, students do well on school-based
assessments without being intellectually engaged” (p. 6). This research
finding has led to more questions than answers, calling into question
c urrent assessment practices and whether the learning tasks students are
being given require them to be intellectually engaged:
The results of our national sample of What did you do in school today?
schools may indicate that traditional assessment practices are still preva-
lent, in that the three measures correlated with higher marks – attendance,
effort and homework completion – are the very things that current research
and policy say should matter least in determinations of academic success.
Although these behaviours and dispositions contribute to creating the con-
ditions for learning, they do not tell us what students know and can do as
a result of learning. (Dunleavy et al. 2012, p. 7)
The “now what” for this important contribution to Canadian educa-

tional research comes in the form of a question, “Where does this lead
us?” (Dunleavy et al. 2012, p. 8). Dunleavy and his colleagues (2012)
point towards current beliefs about assessment and assessment practices
as the first places educators need to turn their attention to:
The concept of intellectual engagement resonates strongly with many edu-

cators because it represents the kinds of learning that they aspire to for all
students. Yet often the most basic of structures in schools – in this case
marking practices and definitions of academic success – can work against
the emergence of practices that would support higher levels of achievement
and engagement among larger numbers of students. Existing models of
assessment rarely measure these higher types of learning or the competen-
cies they foster. (p. 8)
What did you do in school today? brought attention to the schooling

experiences of Canadian adolescents and highlighted the importance of
intellectual engagement. This was a key development in the aim to
improve education outcomes for all Canadian adolescents. It is antici-
pated that the next phase of this cross-Canada study will continue to
shed light on how to best integrate what research has revealed about
adolescent development as well as what is known about effective
instructional practices in order to create a coherent education strategy
that will meet the needs of Canadian students in an ever-changing
world.
78 B. Yee et al.
In Canada, the National Alliance for Children and Youth is currently

working to establish recommendations and policy to support Canadian
early adolescents. Although the Alliance acknowledges the importance
and many positive influences of the provincial education systems, it
warns Canadians that the nation’s early adolescents are at risk for experi-
encing a variety of health and physical problems (Hanvey 2006). Louise
Hanvey, author of the Alliance’s latest report on Canadian children of the
middle years, indicates that the middle years of child development are as
critical determinants of well-being in adulthood as the first years of life:
“These children are laying down the building blocks for future well-being
and participation in society” (Hanvey 2006, p. 2). Through internally
created measures, it was found that statistics are on this rise for Canadian
adolescents exhibiting indicators of diabetes, obesity, aggressive behav-
iour and other physical and mental health issues (Hanvey 2006). Using
the index of vulnerability as put forth in the National Longitudinal
Survey of Children and Youth, 29 per cent of Canadian early adolescents
are believed to be vulnerable to all factors that challenge their well-being.
Both school and family are believed to be mitigating influences in this
vulnerability; it is for this reason that the Alliance calls on Canadian
schools to support the growth and development of early adolescents as
learners and individuals with a commitment like never before (Hanvey
2006).
While seemingly fragmented in so many ways, there are many exam-
ples within the education system in Canada where individual schools and
lone practitioners have heeded the call for a renewed commitment to the
adolescent learner and the learning environments in which their formal
schooling takes place. What follows are “images of practice” that illus-
trate how one select Canadian school, its teachers and instructional lead-
ers are in many instances challenging traditional ways of thinking,
knowing and doing to ensure the unique learning needs of adolescents
are being met.
There are many examples I could have drawn upon to highlight not
only innovative practice but also much overdue philosophical shifts hap-
pening with regard to the ways schools approach working with their ado-
lescent learners. I am fortunate that my research and experience has given
me many sources of inspiration to draw from. I considered sharing images
of practice from several different schools across the vast country which I
call home; however, the words of Alfie Kohn, “In a context, for a pur-
pose” (Kohn 2015) often echo in my head when I am working with the
students, teachers and parents of my school. So, I felt it best to share
several different images of practice from one school, my own, to which I
believe I can most “expertly” speak to and provide the reader with the
necessary context behind the decisions that have been made in the best
interest of our adolescent learners. The “why” behind what can be termed
a “cultural shift” at this school is important. It is important to know
where we have come from to understand what we are moving towards. It
is my hope that the reader draws inspiration from this school, the stu-
dents and the teachers; I know I do, each and every day.
Images of Practice: One School Three Lessons

The school sits high upon a hill, a most wondrous vantage point, from
which the Rocky Mountains can be seen to the west and an expansive
view is offered of the cityscape to the south and east. I do not know if the
students and teachers realize the kind of learning opportunities that
present themselves by what some term the “third teacher”, the lessons
that can be drawn from the physical learning space in which you find
yourself. Just under 1000 students, ages 10–15 enter through the doors
of the building, five days a week. The buzz begins shortly before the first
bell rings and is still present when I leave the building, hours after the
last student has gone home. Such is the draw and the appeal of the
middle school to me. The energy of such a place of learning is undeni-
able and it is a different energy than one finds in an elementary or a high
school. The school will celebrate its tenth year in operation this year,
which is significant for many reasons. Much has changed in the world in
the past decade and it was important that the school ask itself what has
changed in the context of our school in that time. Certainly the demo-
graphics of the community have shifted to include a more diverse popu-
lation. Vast societal changes cannot be underestimated for their impact
on our students and the ways in which they approach and value learning
opportunities.
80 B. Yee et al.
A significant turnover in administrative teams had left the teachers

wondering what was coming next and how long it would last. Five differ-
ent administrative teams in ten years of operation never has a positive
impact on any school, especially not a large school of 62 teachers, filled
with students facing such a critical development stage. Sadly, this image
of practice is far too common in many Canadian school systems and one
that needs to be changed. School principals need to commit to a school,
the students, teachers and school community. To put a year number on
this is difficult; however, in many education systems overseas it is not
uncommon for a principal to devote their entire career to one school,
beginning first as a teacher. To be a true instructional leader of a school
necessitates that one work tirelessly to build relational trust and credibil-
ity with not only teachers, but also students and the school community.
To truly know a school, to understand the community, the context and
culture, to identify essential process and philosophical shifts needed
comes only with time.
And so it was here that the real cultural shift began, with the teachers.
Teachers first had to identify what their beliefs about high quality teach-
ing and learning were grounded in. (More to come about the specific
process that was used in the first image of practice.) It was important that
as a staff we become comfortable with creating a professional culture of
inquiry within our school, where asking questions of our colleagues and
ourselves was not only acceptable, but sought out. Friesen (2009), in her
Teaching Effectiveness Framework, identifies principle 5 as “Teachers
improve their practice in the company of their peers” (p. 6). To be better
for our students has its roots is the staff desiring to be better first for each
other. Working in isolation behind closed doors, with professional con-
versations limited to small talk in the hallways and teachers’ lounge does
nothing to challenge the status quo. It becomes easy for teachers to live in
a land of “always and only perfect” rather than engaging in the type of
dialogue that leads to real professional growth.
Before going into detail about specific images of practice, I will include
a short passage from one of the students at the school, which clearly
articulates the “why” behind the supporting conditions that have been
created for teaching and learning at the school. In the words of our ado-
lescent learners, you will come to better understand the complex nature
of the schooling experience of an adolescent as we approach the two-

decade mark of the twenty-first century. One school. Many lessons. More
growth on the horizon.
Building a Learning Community: The Big Rocks
I want to feel like this is my school, that I have a part in making this school
a great one. After all, I will have spent five years here, by the time I am done
middle school. We do surveys all the time, but now kids just think they are
a waste of time because nothing ever changes. Why do they ask for our
opinion when they don’t really use it? Who is it for? Who is it helping? I’m
not so sure the teachers really know what it is like to be a teenager in 2016.
I’m not sure they think very highly of us. I think they only think we want to
post things on social media and hang out with our friends. Then again I
don’t think we know our teachers either which is weird because we spend
so much time together.
Making Data Meaningful for Teachers Schools in this particular system

have available to them a huge amount of data in the form of surveys,
standardized test scores and the results of an extensive community
engagement process. The challenge has always been what to do with this
inordinate amount of information available. What do you pay attention
to? We know that not everything that is of value can be measured, nor
can everything that is measured be considered of value. With what lens
do you examine the available data? What data is missing? All of this leads
to the creation of a data story for a school, from which sound decisions
regarding how to best resource your school and support the teaching and
learning needs of teachers and students can be made.
“Data” has become a four-letter word for many educators. Under the
pressures of accountability and to demonstrate improved achievement
results, teachers and instructional leaders have been inundated with
increasingly complex (and sometimes questionable) ways to demonstrate
the effectiveness of school-based practices. With good intentions, school-
based instructional leaders have often made the decision to keep the
results of these accountability measures from their staff. Some cite
82 B. Yee et al.
“ protective” reasons, not wanting their teachers to become distracted or

discouraged by results that often only reflect a snapshot in time. Other
instructional leaders view it as part of their job to act as a filter, ensuring
teachers receive only what they deem necessary information so as to not
distract from their most important work. Several problems arise with this
approach. One, when relevant available data overwhelmingly indicates a
particular area of practice or school operation needs to be examined,
teachers do not have the necessary context to understand the ever impor-
tant “why.” Often teachers are left feeling as though they can never quite
get their feet under them; one change in direction after another leaves
them questioning not only the vision and mission for their school, but
also their own professional practice. We cannot underestimate the impor-
tance of including teachers as partners in any change initiative (large or
small) that takes place at a school. Do not mistake this for a call for con-
sensus when decisions must be made. However, presenting teachers with
all available information that has informed a particular decision goes a
long way to ensuring cohesion among staff. Cohesion is the important
aspect, which will not always indicate consensus. Teachers need time to
process information. They need the opportunity to formulate and ask
questions. They need support to make necessary adjustments to their
daily practice. They need to believe the change process was something
they were part of. These are all important steps towards developing
teacher commitment and buy-in; this starts with ensuring that teachers
have an understanding of their school’s data story and what the next right
steps are for their students and themselves as practitioners.
Secondly, it cannot be denied that teachers are on the front lines of our
school systems, deeply embedded with students and their families each
and every day. Teachers are the best ambassadors schools have to help
students and their families understand what is happening daily in their
classrooms and why. Teachers need to not only be looked at as dissemina-
tors of information, but also primary advocates for the current educa-
tional philosophy and practice in today’s societal context. This can only
be effective if teachers have access to and understanding of the available
data that has contributed to school-based transformation.
There are three aspects to this particular case that have contributed to
a school-wide transformation in the way teaching and learning during
the crucial adolescent developmental period is approached. The first is

how teachers were engaged in a critical examination of available data to
determine critical areas of focus for the school year. The second was
ensuring not only that student voice was at the centre of all decisions that
impacted their learning, but also soliciting involvement from all students
in creating a learning environment that met their needs. The last critical
piece linked teacher and student beliefs about important aspects of the
schooling experience in what proved to be a wonderfully transformative
and healing process.
At the beginning of each school year, schools are asked by the district
to submit what is called a School Development and Renewal Plan. There
are three key elements of this plan, which is intended to be a living,
breathing and very much actionable document that reflects the current
teaching and learning needs of the school:
1. Theory of action – is written in the form of an “if/then” statement.

Essentially the theory of action indicates if the teachers do “this”
(“this” is determined by the school based on the available data story)
then student achievement will increase.
2. Instructional goal – what teachers will do to positively impact student
achievement and engagement in their learning.
3. Achievement goal – the impact of the instructional goal on student
learning.
Previously this plan had been something created by a select number of

teachers, leaving the remaining staff with little awareness of the school
development plan and certainly no investment or ownership in some-
thing that is supposed to be highly reflective of the collective work of all
teachers. It was obvious that a new direction for this school was needed,
grounded first in an understanding of the adolescent learner and how to
create a learning environment that would meet their unique learning
needs.
On this occasion, all teachers were presented with relevant data high-
lighting the needs of their adolescent learners. Tell Them From Me is a
survey all schools within the school district have access to in order to
administer it to their students. It looks at how numerous indicators
84 B. Yee et al.
impact the adolescent schooling experience, including social-emotional

well-being, participation in extra and co-curricular activities, and drivers
of academic success. This survey yields invaluable information that is
unfortunately often not followed-up upon. The “so-what and now-what”
is the critical next step, which helps teachers make sense of what the data
indicates are the next right steps for them and their students. Another
example of why teachers tend to cringe when asked to administer yet
another survey to the students is that there is often not the kind of
debriefing and unpacking of the data needed to better inform school
operation and teacher practice.
The two data pulls from the survey yielded over 1700 student responses.
This data was categorized by the school leadership team and then presented
to the teachers. They were nothing short of stunned. According to the latest
standardized test results, the school is a high performing school. It is easy
for schools, school districts and national education systems as a whole to
hide behind positive standardized test scores. What those tests do not reveal
is a lot actually; they do not necessarily reflect how engaged students are in
their learning, how well students are developing on a social-emotional level
and certainly not the relevance of student learning to the current societal
context they are growing up in. Test scores at the school continued to be
high, so it was never deemed necessary to ask any further questions about
the needs of our adolescent students being served well in their school.
The results of the Tell Them From Me survey should not necessarily
have been surprising. Our adolescent learners were sending us a very clear
message and as a staff, we were compelled to act. We spent much time
together unpacking the survey results. Some of it was not easy for our
teachers to read; yet it was a necessary exercise so we could grow together
as a staff to be better for our students. Our school development plan
theory of action very much reflected what our students told us in the
survey. Developed collaboratively with over 60 staff members, our theory
of action evolved into the following: If teachers share a common under-
standing of the adolescent learner and what constitutes a developmen-
tally responsive, intellectually engaging middle years learning
environment, along with common practices for the design and assess-
ment of authentic learning opportunities true to the disciplines students
are studying…then students will engage with the curriculum through
thought and action, whereby they develop an orientation to create origi-

nal work, solve complex problems, collaborate with others and develop
self-efficacy as individuals and as knowledge-builders, which is the foun-
dation of intellectual engagement. This statement became our touch-
stone—everything we did was measured against it. It guided the work of
teachers within their classrooms. All professional learning supported
teacher development in areas identified as necessary to be able to effec-
tively carry out the theory of action. This common focus among a very
large staff served us well in ensuring we were all moving in the same direc-
tion with the same intention of serving our adolescent learners well. The
theory of action became our filter for all decisions that were made as we
were constantly striving to ensure our learning environment was effec-
tively meeting the needs of our students.
Making Data Meaningful for Students After bringing our teachers into
the conversation on what the data was telling us about the student experi-
ence in our school, the next group who needed to be part of this impor-
tant discussion were the students themselves. It is fascinating that student
opinion is sought for so many purposes of accountability, yet the results
are so very infrequently shared with them. This was apparent when I
made the point of going into each of the 31 homeroom classes in my
school to discuss the results of the surveys. Some students looked at me,
red in the face, and asked, “Do you really read those things?” To which I
responded, “every single answer.” Student embarrassment came from the
fact that some students, and understandably so in many cases, had drawn
inappropriate images on the survey, or included some unfiltered responses,
thinking that no one would pay attention to what they wrote. I shared
with them the importance I placed on their opinion and their voice in
their learning. It made me feel sad that so many students felt resigned to
the fact that school is something they simply have to get through for
180 days a year, that they feel no excitement in their learning. I pushed
the students to think further. It is one thing to identify what is wrong,
but the real measure is providing solutions for what can be done to make
things better. If there is no desire to be part of the solution, then you are
simply a complainer.
86 B. Yee et al.
What followed were discussions that could have gone on all day about
how to improve the adolescent schooling experience. [No, we cannot
purchase a water slide for the school, but yes, it is completely reasonable
to ask that the learning commons remain open during lunch for students
to create peer study groups.] When students feel their voices are valued
and considered as decisions impacting their learning are made, students
began to take ownership of their learning, ownership of their school com-
munity, and then an amazing thing begins to happen: students become
active participants in their learning. They became strong advocates for
themselves and for their peers.
At this time, we made the decision to form a student advisory council
who would meet monthly with the principal and assistant principal to
share the voices of their peers. These meetings provided considerable
insight into both the climate and culture of the school, from an adoles-
cent’s perspective. When we could we acted on what the students had to
say. When we could not, we helped them understand why we could not,
be it at that time, or ever. Students began to see their teachers and the
school administration as partners in their learning, rather than adversaries
there with the sole purpose of spoiling their fun. One of the most powerful
things to emerge from the student advisory council was the student ver-
sion on something the city’s mayor had challenged citizens with, “3 things
for your city.” The concept is simple, but significant; identify three things
you can do, big or small, which will make a difference in the lives of others.
Our students believed that it was everyone’s responsibility to make their
school great. They identified areas of daily school life that needed to be
attended to. These things ranged from ensuring the school’s laptops were
put away properly so they would be charged and ready for the next student
to use, to ensuring there were enough recycle bins in the hallways that
would promote good recycling habits for students. The student advisory
council encouraged each student in the school to identify three things they
could do to make the school a better place. And the amazing thing was
that the students did, not just the council members, but the entire student
body, all 958 of them. The students viewed the school as theirs to take
responsibility for, and for the most part this was driven solely by the stu-
dents, with the adults in the building serving to support and encourage
and whenever possible ensure doors were opened for them.
Teachers and Students as One Learning Community The last piece to

bring all of this together was to help both teachers and students see that
they essentially wanted the same things; to help them understand that in
many ways they were not as different as they might believe. This is how
we accomplished it. Simon Sinek, in a 2009 TEDx Puget Sound talk,
introduced a significant, yet simple concept that we believed was missing,
or had been misplaced, in our current school culture. Quite simply it was
beginning with the “why.” In his 2009 “talk” he describes what he terms
The Golden Circle and how most organizations begin with the “what”—
what you do or what your product is. There is no soul in that, no passion
and no greater purpose to the work that we devote ourselves to each and
every day. When you begin with your why and have piercing clarity
around that why, then there is a reason why you and your organization
exist. Following this line of thought, comedian Michael Jr. (2015), shared
a video entitled “Amazing Grace” on his Break Time Comedy YouTube
channel. In this video he asks a school music director to sing Amazing
Grace. The first request came with no surrounding setting or context. The
second time he was asked to sing the song, Michael Jr. provided a com-
plete context around “why” the man would be singing the song.
Undeniably, the music director had an amazing voice, however, his whole
demeanour and the way in which he delivered the song was noticeably
different the second time he performed it. There was emotion and an
intent behind the words he sang. And that is precisely Micheal Jr.’s mes-
sage, “When you know your ‘why’ then your ‘what’ has more impact,
because you’re working towards your purpose” (2015, video transcript).
Showing the staff these two videos helped them understand the impor-
tance of collectively articulating our why as a school. Any time you bring
a group of teachers together, be it a large staff like this of 60 or a smaller
group, each teacher brings with them an entire history of experiences and
expertise that has shaped their beliefs about education and the work of a
teacher. It is important to recognize the very individual and personal
nature of the teaching profession, yet it is also critical that there are shared
beliefs that drive the collective work. These two videos set the tone for
what was asked next of this group of teachers. The teachers were first
asked to identify their “why”—why they get up each morning to come to
88 B. Yee et al.
work, their purpose. (This was prefaced with a rather bold comment that
their answer could not involve the phrase “to increase student achieve-
ment results.” And while it is understood that much of our accountability
as a profession comes from standardized test results, this cannot be the
reason why we come to work every day.) Answers included their love for
children, the desire to contribute to development of a healthy society, to
ensure each child had one adult in their lives who believes in them and
the hope of helping their students see all they are capable of. Next,
teachers were asked to articulate the “how”—how they make the why
happen. Here, teachers identified things such as personalizing the learn-
ing experience for each student, ensuring the learning tasks they give
students are authentic and worthy of their time, creating a classroom of
daily inquiry, fostering positive relationships with students and develop-
ing the whole child. Lastly, teachers determined the “what”—what they
do to ensure the why happens. School processes, structures and philoso-
phies were at the root of teacher beliefs in this category, focusing on the
conditions we create for teaching and learning. The school pyramid of
intervention, the timetable, the progressive discipline policy, the use of
technology to support teaching and learning, the philosophy of a learn-
ing commons versus a school library and the students and teacher advi-
sory councils were some of the elements teachers identified as being
essential in supporting our why and what.
Using rocks (yes, rocks, large and small, see the included images),
teachers were asked to write their “why(s)” on the big rocks. The “how(s)”
were written on smaller rocks. The sand symbolized the “what(s),” and
try as they might, our teachers were not able to write on the sand. We
used a large cylindrical container to assist us with this object lesson of
sorts. In the busy-ness of the work life of a teacher and the daily operation
of a school, it is very easy to become hyper-focused on the what, the
operational pieces. If we fill the container with the sand or the what, then
there is no room for the larger rocks, symbolizing our why and our how.
Simple as it may seem, and there have been other versions of this exercise
circulating on the internet, it was a powerful image for the teachers to
have before them. However, when we filled the container with our big
rocks first, our why, and then the smaller rocks, our how, they easily fit
into the container. The sand or the what then filled the spaces in between
Fig. 3.1 (a, b, c) Whys, hows and whats on rocks
the rocks and served to tie everything together. That day we learned that
we must first take care of our why (Fig. 3.1).
We then asked our students very similar questions; we asked them to
think about their why: why they come to school, why school is important
to them, or if they did not feel like school was important, why. We asked
them about their how; how they, how we together could ensure their why
was fulfilled. Finally, we asked students about the what; what happens for
them if together we were able to make their experience in school what
they hoped it could be, what proof we would have. This was by no means
a simple exercise for our students; it took a considerable amount of time,
helping them to linger in the uncomfortable moments of not being able
to “pass” on engaging in the process, of not seeking one “right” answer.
To the surprise of many, our adolescent learners wanted the same things
from their schooling experience that served as our why for engaging with
them in this challenging, yet amazing work we call teaching and learning.
Moving forward, it was understood that we needed to work together,
teachers and teachers, students and students, teachers and students; we
were on the same team, wanting the same things, believing in the ways in
which we could achieve our goals.
90 B. Yee et al.
All of the elements described in this particular section were necessary

to ensure there was a belief among the staff and students that we were a
learning community, not at odds with one another, not requiring consen-
sus, but aware that we wanted to be better together. The transformation
in the school was powerful and well worth the time and resources it took
to lay this very important foundation related to what we believe about
high quality teaching and learning and how we could achieve that within
our context.
reating the Conditions for Adolescent

C
Discovery: Self and the Larger World
I have never felt like I really belonged anywhere. And in school sometimes
it feels like you have to fit into what the adults think a typical teenager
should be, like they have this way they want you to act and talk and if you
make just one mistake it’s like you are labeled a bad kid. It sometimes feels
like school isn’t made for kids who are growing up in the world today. In
regular classes like math or English, I never really got excited about learn-
ing, but I followed along and did my work because I knew I had to or I
would get that label of a kid you have to watch. I also never really had a
group of kids who understood me and liked the same things that I do. So
then I went to my new school and there were so many choices for the kind
of courses that we can take. I found my place and my people in band class.
Some people think the band kids are odd, but we don’t care. We love to
play music and we don’t really care what anyone else thinks or says about
us because we have each other. Our teacher is amazing; maybe he is kind of
odd like us, but you just know that he loves music and he loves to teach us
what he knows. It’s really perfect, because you get a teacher who loves
music and kids who love music. Knowing that I can go to band class every
day makes me excited about coming to school and it makes sitting through
math class so much easier.
There is a room in my school that I am drawn to. Every school has

“that room.” It acts as a beacon, calling us back to where things make
sense. There is a familiarity and a comfort in this room, where the joy of
teaching and learning saturates the walls and flows out into the hallways,
hoping to inspire in others the impact of our craft as educators. In my
school, “that room” is the band room. And while some might question
why a room which houses a programme that can be one of the first con-
sidered for the chopping block when unstable education budgets fail us
would be a sanctuary of sorts, it is unreservedly the place I return to when
I need to be reminded of what great teaching and learning in a middle
school should look like. The teacher is a musician—a “real” musician in
his former life, a life outside the four walls of a school that I believe he
still longs for. This is perhaps where the magic begins, because as an
expert in the discipline he teaches to his students, he inspires in each of
them, upwards of 60 in some classes, the belief that they too are musi-
cians. The tone that permeates his classroom is that as a musician there is
a way to listen to music, to feel music, to critically examine music, to
appreciate music and of course to create music. Daily teachings go beyond
the basics of scales and theory into the heart of what it means to be a
musician: the thought processes of a musician and the essence of the dis-
cipline of music. How does a musician think about the world? What does
a musician do when they hear a new piece of music or are asked to play a
piece of unfamiliar music? How does a musician react when they have a
less than stellar performance? What is their response when they exceed
even their own expectations? This class is about so much more than “play-
ing” music. Students are given the opportunity to engage in and explore
the world of the experts. They are asked to create—to think creatively, to
problem solve creatively and then to show an element of vulnerability as
they express their creativity in the form of music, such a personal under-
taking. There is no room for worksheets and rote regurgitation of facts in
this room. The nature of a band dictates that this is not a solitary endeav-
our for students. Students learn the power of collaboration and how an
awareness of their peers around them is necessary for everyone and the
group to achieve their potential. This in many ways reflects the “real”
world more than what is often seen in a traditional classroom, with stu-
dents sitting in rows as the teacher delivers a monologue at the front of
the class.
Keith Sawyer (2008, 2014), a professor from Chapel Hill University
in the United States, has long been a proponent of arts education and
the transformation of schools through the deliberate fostering of creativ-
ity in students. It seems perhaps rather second nature 16 years into the
92 B. Yee et al.
twenty-first century that we need to discuss the role creativity plays in

healthy development across the developmental span, yet I would argue
that increased accountability measures that come in the form of stan-
dardized tests leave little room for creativity in the classroom. Sawyer
(2008) believes that it is most often music, drama and art teachers whose
pedagogical approaches foster creativity in their students. He cites three
reasons for strengthening arts education programmes in schools:
1. The arts in and of themselves are important and to be educated means

to have exposure to and grounding in a wide variety of disciplines,
including the arts.
2. Exposure to arts education develops important cognitive skills, most
notably creativity, in students that serve them well in their learning
across all subject areas.
3. The integration of the arts across other subject areas leads to more
effective learning and deeper understanding in those areas.
It is therefore a puzzlement to me why courses that fall into the arts

education category are considered by many to be lesser programmes of
study.
This particular image of practice began with a quotation from an ado-
lescent student, who articulates his struggles with trying to fit into what
he feels is a predetermined pattern of acceptable adolescent behaviour
and courses of study that our schooling system has created. It further
illustrates the long-standing division that has existed in schools between
“academic” and “non-academic” courses and those who teach these
courses. Not only for many families, but also for school systems and
teachers alike, there exists a hierarchy among the programmes of study,
mathematics and the natural sciences often topping the list, with the
languages and arts easily seen as unimportant or not as worthy of our
time and attention.
Ken Robinson (June 2006) discusses this very thing in his memorable
first Ted Talk, which brought this idea that schools kill creativity to the
forefront of educational reform debates. I have wrestled with this message
for quite some time, never quite being able to reconcile if in fact the
blame lay with the schools themselves, or perhaps is a reflection of
something else—that something else being societal and cultural values.

While doing research in Finland, a conversation with one principal reso-
nated with me on this particular issue. I asked him about the success of
the Finnish education system. He replied that first, Finnish society is
successful and the education system is an indicator of the culture it sits
within. So, a question I have had since my time in Finland is this…is the
health of the education system in a country reflective of the health of its
greater society? Does what the greater society values reflect what is valued
in our schools? If so, we may have much to be concerned about.
Promoting Creativity and Discovery In this large middle school, many

steps have been taken to create the conditions for learning that promote
creativity and depth of learning across a wide array of disciplines. The
move to large blocks of learning time, which allow students to linger with
their learning in the core disciplines of study (mathematics, science, lan-
guage arts and social studies), have allowed students to gain daily expo-
sure to the fine and performing arts, physical education and also career
and technology foundation (CTF) courses (upward of 100 courses fall
into this category such as natural resources, web design, marketing,
robotics, construction, culinary arts, fashion design…the list goes on.
More on this later.). Some may ask what constitutes “large blocks” of
learning time. The answer for me is found in what presents the least inter-
ruption to students’ learning time as is possible. The use of a bell to signal
the start and the end to learning is a practice of old that needed to be
changed. The incessant movement of students from class to class within
a large school significantly impacts not only the amount of learning time,
but also the quality. Moving students through different classes every
45 minutes, five days a week, was not a practice we felt served our adoles-
cent learners well.
There are many ways to approach scheduling in a school, and in all

reality, no one schedule is perfect. Six different versions of a schedule
were created for this school, each with its own benefits and challenges.
The only course that really needs to have a specific slot in the schedule
is physical education, because of a shared use of one space. Other than
this block of time, the remainder of the day is left for the teachers to
94 B. Yee et al.
organize as they see fit. Certainly there are parameters around the total
number of instructional hours per year targeted for different subject
areas, but this is left to the grade teams to negotiate how it will be
divided appropriately. If a particular grade team wants to take advan-
tage of an upcoming federal election and structure the learning around
that for several days, they have the freedom to do this. There are teams
of specialists in the fine and performing arts areas as well as physical
education who ensure the exposure our students have in these areas of
study is of the highest quality. These teachers often collaborate with
core subject teachers to provide students with authentic integrated
learning opportunities whenever possible.
When the school moved towards this model of organizing for learning,
some questioned if students needed such wide exposure to areas of study
outside of what is often referred to as the “core.” Would students who did
not consider themselves “artsy” thrive in an environment where this
became part of their daily learning? The same was asked of students who
were not necessarily “technologically savvy.” How would they benefit
from courses such as applied technology or digital literacies? (Although
one might question if a technologically “unsavvy” adolescent exists in
2016). It is interesting that for the most part these questions came from
parents, thinking, understandably so in many cases, that they knew their
child better than anyone, including the school and the child themselves.
However, it can (and should) be argued that one of the central undertak-
ings in adolescence is discovery. Much can be said about what constitutes
a middle school philosophy, and while many versions exist in the forms
of checklists and position papers, the heart of the middle years philoso-
phy is creating a developmentally responsive learning environment. A
developmentally responsive learning environment responds to the needs
of the adolescent learner; and what we know about the adolescent devel-
opmental period is that in many instances they do not know what they
do not know. They certainly have many ideas about what they think they
may like, often influenced by the onslaught of advertising they are bom-
barded with and also by equally unknowing peers. As an instructional
leader of a middle school, I believe I have a responsibility to provide my
students with learning opportunities across a wide variety of areas of
study. Only then can they make informed choices about what they are
interested in further exploring or developing and what they now have the
experience with to make an informed decision.
Connecting the Learning The CTF programme of study is one of

Alberta’s newest and is reflective of the type of curriculum the province
hopes to deliver through the ongoing curriculum re-development pro-
cess. This programme of study is designed for the adolescent learner and
is aligned with Canada’s National Occupation Classification focusing on
28 different occupational areas. The intent of this programme is to pro-
vide the adolescent learner, throughout their time in middle school, with
exposure to a wide array of learning experiences that may inform later
career choices. In high school, student then have over 1000 courses in the
Career and Technology Studies (CTS) area to choose from, many leading
to advance post-secondary credentialing and/or apprenticeships.
Departing for past curriculums with hundreds upon hundreds of specific
outcomes, the CTF programme of study is founded on three essence
statements with 14 outcomes:
CTF is exploring interests, passions and skills while making personal

connections to career possibilities.
• I explore my interest and passions while making personal connec-

tions to career possibilities.
• I use occupational area skills, knowledge and technologies.
• I follow safety requirements with occupational areas and related
technologies.
• I demonstrate environmental stewardship associations with occupa-
tions areas.
CTF is planning, creating, appraising and communicating in response

to challenges.
• I plan in response to challenges.

• I make decisions in response to challenges.
• I adapt to change and unexpected events.
96 B. Yee et al.
• I solve problems in response to challenges.

• I create products, performances or services in response to
challenges.
• I appraise the skills, knowledge and technologies used to respond to
challenges.
• I communicate my learning.
CTF is working independently and with others while exploring careers

and technology.
• I determine how my actions affect learning.

• I develop skills that support effective relationships.
• I collaborate to achieve common goals (Alberta Education 2016, p. 1).
More information on the Alberta Education CTF programme of study

can be found at: https://education.alberta.ca/career-and-technology-
foundations/program-of-studies/
The structure of this programme of study has given teachers incredible
freedom to design learning experiences for their adolescent learners that
are relevant to the current societal context students are growing up in,
personalized based on students’ own interests, and are integrated and
support their learning across multiple programmes of study. I believe our
experience in the world is very much integrated; we incorporate knowl-
edge and skills from multiple domains as we move throughout our day.
Yet in schools, we often go to great lengths to “silo” the learning experi-
ence for students. A student’s daily schedule in many schools often reflects
this. They move from one class to another every 45–50 minutes, being
asked to focus on one subject area, only to turn that thinking off as they
move to the next class. I do not believe this is reflective of how adoles-
cents learn best, and certainly does not support what we as a school iden-
tified as sound pedagogical practice for adolescent learners. We have
asked our teachers to consider meaningful points of integration across the
subject areas they teach and when possible, ensure their instructional
design process incorporates multiple disciplines of study. What this has
done for our students’ learning experience in our school is profound.
Students who struggled with finding the value of mathematics in their
lives now use these skills in a very practical manner as they re-design
“failed” structures in the Amatrol lab, also adding relevance to the
structures and forces unit in Grade 8 science. In the broadcasting class,
students develop presentation and public speaking skills, and how to use
green screens and the available technology to convey important informa-
tion they have written the script for to an audience. These skills are not
only relevant in this particular course, but are also applicable in other
subject areas as students develop the skills to communicate their learning
in meaningful ways. These are only a couple of examples of how this
approach to working within the mandated provincial programmes of
study have provided out adolescent learners with authentic and meaning-
ful learning experiences where they can discover and develop new skills
and knowledge, applicable not only within the walls of our school but in
the world beyond.
Supporting this approach to programme delivery that promotes dis-
covery and fosters creativity, we have been very intentional about ensur-
ing student voice inform their learning experience and their next right
steps in their development as learners. All students have learning plans,
housed in a digital application, that both student and teacher contribute
to. Students include their learning and personal growth goals for each
term, information about how they believe they learn best, along with
artefacts of their learning. Teachers contribute information related to
what they know about how the student learns best, strategies for how to
best support and extend the learning of the student, along with priority
learning cycles that need to be addressed. The learning plan is accessible
to students’ families, who we consider to be valuable partners in support-
ing student learning. As students transition from grade to grade within
our school and then on to high school, the learning plan ensures that new
teachers have the necessary background information on the student to
best support their learning. We have found that for many students, the
learning plan provides them with both a means of expressing what they
know about themselves as learners and also a way to communicate with
their teachers about their hopes, their fears and what supports they need.
Developing self-advocacy skills in our adolescent learners and ensuring
our teachers genuinely attend to student voice and choice in their learn-
ing has been a priority for us.
98 B. Yee et al.
Cultural Shift Away from Indifference The final undertaking we felt

was needed to support the development of student discovery and creativ-
ity in their learning was in the form of a cultural shift of sorts. In the
current school context, we were concerned about the indifference stu-
dents sometimes demonstrated towards their school, the community,
each other and even themselves at times. Rather than imposing rigid poli-
cies with accompanying negative consequences that often do not take
into consideration the range of developmental understanding and readi-
ness in a school of almost 1000 adolescents, we believed that building
leadership capacity and responsibility in our students would serve us bet-
ter than a more punitive approach. With the support of the student advi-
sory council, we asked students to identify all of the things they felt were
not working well for us in our school community. The very same things
that concerned teachers also concerned students. Issues like poor recy-
cling behaviour, taking better care of the school building itself, building
cultural acceptance, developing a more positive image of students in the
community and the use (or inappropriate use) of technology and the
school canteen topped the lists. We then grouped students according to
the issues they felt most strongly about and matched them with teachers
who shared those passions. During the last hour of the day on Fridays, we
move into “connect groups.” These are multi-age groups where teachers
work with students to develop leadership capacity in students across the
identified areas. Students identify the most pressing issue in their respon-
sibility area and create plans for how to address that problem area.
For example, the students who identified the school canteen as their
area of focus worked with the school districts nutrition guidelines to
come up with a way to serve better, more appealing food to students that
would be prepared by our own students taking the culinary arts class.
They developed weekly, cost effective menus to provide for our students
and served as caterers for numerous large school events. They connected
with local bakeries to donate day old products that could be used in cre-
ative ways for sandwiches, breading for chicken strips and a new favou-
rite: pull-apart cinnamon buns.
The students targeting technology use in our building were frustrated
with the way school technology was treated. Laptops often had keys
issing, which students had for some reason taken off. Laptops not being
m
returned to their proper location and plugged in to charge after being
used was a chronic problem. Students created the “tech team,” who would
be responsible for doing a sweep of the building in the last five minutes
of each school day to ensure laptops were in their proper location and
were being charged. They also made it their policy to speak to students
who were misusing school technology and when necessary involve the
teachers and school administration. This group started a blog that housed
information about the latest applications students could use to support
their learning and other interesting websites they believed their fellow
students might enjoy. When it came time to order new technology for the
school and purchase new software applications, this grouped served as an
advisory body. There was a dramatic improvement in the way students
viewed technology as a support in their learning and most noticeably, the
condition of the school’s technology at the end of the year.
The last example I will share, although there are many more, comes
from the school “do-crew.” One group of students was concerned about
all of the things in need of repair at the school that just never seemed to
get done. Under the supervision of teachers, this group of “handy” stu-
dents set about fixing chairs with wobbly legs, ensuring the bookshelves
did in fact have all of their shelves and sanding and staining the benches
that had become an eyesore at the front of the school. They developed an
online logging system where teachers could enter items within their class-
room that needed to be fixed and on Fridays, the crew would set about to
accomplish as much as they could.
A wonderful thing starts to happen when students begin to take
responsibility for their school—they begin to develop pride in their
school and pride in their ability to affect change. Problems we once had
were eliminated or reduced dramatically because students now had a
hand in making their school a place they were proud of. It was no longer
the case that if a computer was broken, someone, unknown to them,
would fix it, or if they broke a chair, well there must be other chairs some-
where, or if they did not pick up their garbage from lunch, a teacher
surely would. No, it was the students who became champions for making
their school the best it could be. The transformation was nothing short of
amazing.
100 B. Yee et al.
ommunity Connections: A Sense

C
of Belonging
I feel pressure all the time to be someone I’m not. I feel like my friends pres-
sure me to do things and act in ways that maybe I’m not okay with. I think
my parents want me to be a certain way so people will think good things
about our family. And then at school the teachers expect you to fit into
what they think a perfect teenager should be. It’s all so hard. I’m just trying
to figure out who I am and what I want to do and how can I ever really be
sure when everyone else is putting this pressure on me. Sometimes I just
want things to be quiet in my head so I can figure it out on my own and just
be who I am supposed to be without all the outside pressures. The biggest
pressure for me right now is probably my friends. I worry that I will lose
them if I don’t just accept and follow along with what they do. School is a
pretty lonely place without friends.
The final image of practice that is important to share from this school
context is the intentional work that was done to connect our students
with the larger community. We felt it was an important factor missing
from the culture of the school and one we felt would have multiple ben-
efits. One, there was long overdue work that needed to be done to change
the negative perceptions held by many community members about our
adolescent students. Two, we felt something that was missing from many
of our adolescent learners was the understanding that they are connected
to a larger community; something greater than themselves and their close
group of friends. In their current social context, so much of the commu-
nication they do is at arms length, through text and via social media. One
begins to question the impact this communication “distance” has on an
adolescent’s perceptions of accountability for their actions and a sense of
real emotional connection with those around them. Lastly, in a school of
almost 1000 students, it is unrealistic to believe that we have the breadth
of expertise on staff to encompass the unique passions of each student.
The community in which a school is situated is an excellent, and often
underused, resource to call upon to ensure students are provided with
opportunities to connect with and build relationships with experts in the
fields in which they demonstrate interest. These community partnerships
have proved to be invaluable in our school context as we work to ensure

all students feel that the school they attend is truly “their” school; a school
where they belong, one where they feel the adults seek every means to
understand and support them as developing individuals and learners.
There is a sign that hangs outside of the school, in plain sight for all to
see. It reads, “No Scooters, No Rollerblades, No Skateboards.” Every
school in the district displays this same sign. It did not really occur to me
until very recently the impact this sign has on many students. With a
school population of almost 1000, it is quite fascinating to see the stu-
dents arrive at school each morning. Eleven buses pull up to the school,
along with the onslaught of parents dropping their children off, breaking
numerous traffic laws as they try to manoeuvre their child into the most
advantageous position closest to the school. It brings me great pleasure to
see how many students choose a more active means to get to school,
walking, riding their bikes, and yes, via scooter and skateboard. Students
who ride their bikes have large bike racks out in front of the school where
they can lock up their bike and have easy access to it at any time. They do
not fit into the categories addressed by “the” sign. Those students who
ride a skateboard or scooter have to go to great lengths to hide them away,
trying to stuff them in a small locker or ask to leave them in a holding
spot in the office until the end of the day. What this seemingly innocent
attempt at ensuring student safety (or so I am told) has done is alienate
an entire population of students from a school that is supposed to be a
safe place for them to grow as learners and developing beings.
I had the great pleasure one school year to work with a group of Grade
9 boys, 18 in all, who very much fell into this category of students who
had become disenfranchised by a school system with inflexible rules and
processes that excluded them. Some might label these boys the “trouble
makers,” while others had washed their hands of them, believing they had
been given one too many chances to fall in line with school expectations.
It was puzzling that in many instances the standards by which these boys
were being judged were nonsensical; arbitrary rules, established when
these boys were just out of diapers, reflecting a society that was much
different from the one they now find themselves in. These boys are feisty,
they have opinions, they want to be seen for who they are and not forced
to fit into the mould of what some adults deem the “typical” adolescent.
102 B. Yee et al.
To be very frank, we adults need to do away with this notion that there is
a typical adolescent by which we critique all others and those who do not
live up to our views of how adolescents should talk and think and act are
looked at with disapproving eyes.
My work with these boys lasted five months. During that time I quickly
realized that my first big obstacle with them was to earn their trust.
Something or a series of “things” in their schooling experience had
resulted in them being untrusting of their teachers, not believing any-
thing they said. Research tells us that in order for adolescents to engage
in the learning process, they need to feel safe in their learning environ-
ment (Yee 2015). If they believe their teacher to be unreliable or unpre-
dictable (justifiably so or not) the likelihood that they enter into a deep
and meaningful learning space is greatly diminished. It started out very
slowly with things as simple as starting the class with everyone, including
me, putting their cell phones in the middle of a larger conference room
table we used to meet around before dispersing for the work they would
do in that class. If I asked them not to use their phones while I was talk-
ing, then I certainly was not going to have access to mine. This surprised
them, but also served to quickly earn some points with them. My next
action shocked them even more, as I asked them to come up with a list of
things that “light them up”; things that they would pay to learn about
and participate in. My promise to them was that I would help them pur-
sue these passions. My only caveat was that would need to come up with
a way to use these passions to in some way give back to the community.
The boys were quite convinced that in no way could I have the connec-
tions, nor the ability to keep my promise. Loving a challenge, I asked
them not to underestimate me.
The group came up with many different areas they were interested in
and as you would expect with a group of 18 boys in Grade 9, many com-
monalities emerged. The one group of boys who lived, breathed and
dreamed about skateboarding proved to be the greatest challenge, enough
that at one point I felt I might not be able to keep my promise to them.
And it is here where we must go back to “the” sign: No Scooters, No
Rollerblades, No Skateboards. The boys had decided that they wanted to
use their love of skateboarding to give back to their community by pro-
viding introductory lessons for other students in the school. Without a
doubt, these boys are athletes. The athletic ability it takes to perform the
manoeuvres they do on their skateboards is nothing short of extraordi-
nary. They are healthy, strong and confident and very much support and
encourage one another as they attempt to perfect their next “trick.” Are
these not qualities we want for all our students? Yet, these boys are imme-
diately outcasts because “the sign” excludes them. I sought the assistance
of two businessmen in the community, we will call them Jake and
Brandon. At one point in their lives, and maybe in some ways now, they
are very much like these boys. As adolescents over a decade ago, Jake and
Brandon loved to skateboard and snowboard. They encountered the same
challenges with public perception related to skateboarders and the skate-
boarding culture as the boys in my school do now. The story of their
“rise” to the point they find themselves at right now was what inspired
my students. Many hard lessons along the way made Jake and Brandon
realize that if they wanted to build their lives around skateboarding and
snowboarding, they could not just expect it to be handed to them. After
graduating from high school, they both went on to university, where the
skills they learned and the connections they made helped them arrive at
their next step, which was to open a business that would cater to young
skateboarders and snowboarders. Jake and Brandon spoke to the boys
about what is entailed in creating a business from the ground up. The
boys were shocked as Jake and Brandon detailed all of the not so glamor-
ous details such as months in the beginning where they ate nothing but
Kraft Dinner or the times when they did not receive a pay cheque, because
they had to ensure their employees were paid first. They spoke about
work ethic and the responsibility they all have in creating a positive pub-
lic perception about those who skateboard.
Jake and Brandon are young and smart (and much cooler than I could
ever be) and captured the boys’ attention the moment they walked into
the room. The boys spoke about their frustration, feeling marginalized
and stated that no matter what they did, people would not change the
way they saw them and felt about them. Together with Jake and Brandon,
they discussed ways they could begin to help others see them differently.
Jake and Brandon helped them understand that it is one thing to identify
the problems, but unless they were willing to put some work into provid-
ing solutions, they were doing nothing more than complaining. I was not
104 B. Yee et al.
sure where things would lead to next. However, the following day, the
boys arrived at my office with a proposal. They had created a well-thought
out and detailed plan for how they would teach other students to skate-
board. Highlighted in their proposal in big bold letters was their desire to
get “the sign” taken down. To them, the sign read like a “Keep Out”
warning. Now it was up to me to try and find a way to make this happen.
There were only two things standing in my way and they found them-
selves in our school district’s Legal and Risk Management Departments.
What happened from here were a series of email exchanges and meetings
in which I had to help the departments understand how our aversion to
risk as a school district was in fact in many ways a detriment to students,
alienating an entire population of them and barring other groups from
meaningful learning opportunities. A whole other conversation ensued
related to the risks associated with activities like football and downhill
skiing, which are deemed acceptable, but not skateboarding. Apparently
the experiences our students are permitted to partake in all have to do
with who or what organization can assume insurance responsibility. I
learned a lot through this exercise.
I went back to the boys with a revised proposal, much less than what
they had hoped for, but a start nonetheless. I will never forget the com-
ment of one student who was visibly disappointed. He said, “You know,
this is not what I wanted, but it is a small step. We’ll just have to show
them who we are and what we can do and then keep coming back to ask
for more” (Student anecdotal, May 2016). The accepted proposal out-
lined a showcase event where these boys would be able exhibit to others
in the school community their talents.
Every day leading up to the showcase, the boys would go out and
sweep the compound area where they would be skateboarding to ensure
it was free from debris. On the day of the event, Jake and Brandon came
out to support the boys along with other members of the district senior
leadership team who were there to ensure everyone’s safety. What hap-
pened was pure magic. For two and a half hours the boys skateboarded.
They were exquisite. They were gentlemen and good sportsmen. I had
not realized the creativity and problem solving that was so inherent in
what they do. They would create obstacles for each other and then come
up with ways to overcome them. Yes, sometimes they fell, but each time
they got up and showed the determination to come at the obstacle from
another angle. The school community saw these boys as talented, having
unique skills to contribute to the larger group, and the boys saw them-
selves as part of their school community, perhaps for the first time in a
long time.
Jake and Brandon stayed connected to the boys, offering them the
opportunity to work for them over the summer to teach skateboarding
lessons at their store. There was another group of boys I was working with
who wanted to start their own t-shirt company with unique airbrushed
designs they had created. Jake and Brandon offered to display their
t-shirts in their store and mentor them in creating a business plan. This
community connection was so important in validating for these boys that
they were in fact worthy of being part of the school community. I was
able to keep my promise…as for “the sign,” it may take some more time
to have it taken down.
Every Student Matters The demographic area in which the school is

situated has shifted over the course of the last few years, and with this the
school has seen as rise in students engaging in more risky behaviour, often
with severe legal ramifications. The number of suspensions that were
issued by the office was increasing steadily, as were a wide variety of
behaviours, which negatively impacted the learning not only of the stu-
dent engaging in the behaviour, but were disruptive to the learning envi-
ronment for all students. Of particular concern was the number of
students finding themselves at school under the influence of drugs and
alcohol, along with the number of students involved in outside of school
hours encounters with the local police. We knew something needed to be
done, and that something might require that we think outside the box.
Steinberg (2014) in his book Age of Opportunity reminds us of the inef-
fectiveness of traditional drug and alcohol education programmes, which
serve only to provide to adolescents information which they already
know, and do nothing to change the context in which adolescents find
themselves. This is what we tried.
The John Howard Society has long been a fixture in Canadian society,
working to raise awareness of and improve the criminal justice system in
106 B. Yee et al.
the country and support those impacted by crime. Schools across the
country have long been able to access the services of the John Howard
Society to increase student understanding of the justice system as it
relates to specific outcomes in the provincial and territorial curricula.
The local John Howard chapter was currently working in high schools,
providing individual youth advocates for at-risk students along with a
programme, tied to provincial curriculum, titled “Take Back Control.”
With the support of the school family liaison, the school proposed that
the John Howard group tailor this programme to our students. Before
we jumped into anything, we spent a considerable amount of time meet-
ing with them to help them understand the problems our students were
facing and the behaviours they were engaging in. It was important that
they know our students as well as we did in order to understand how to
best connect with each of them. After receiving parental consent, the
youth advocates from the John Howard Society began their work in our
school. The programme continued to evolve throughout the year as the
needs of our students changed and emergent issues needed to be
addressed. They began with weekly sessions targeting a group of 12 stu-
dents. As the year progressed and they developed relationships with the
students, the youth advocates began to work with the students in differ-
ent ways, based on their individual needs. The youth advocates were
available to the students at all times. They wanted the student to feel
comfortable reaching out for help should they ever find themselves in a
situation where they needed a trusted adult. Youth advocates accompa-
nied students on field trips, escorted students to their court dates and
also took them for a walk or for lunch when the students needed time to
decompress. Students entered into the programme initially quite scepti-
cal, but grew to eagerly anticipate the weekly group sessions and often
stopped by my office to ask when their youth advocates would be in
next. Although this programme had never before been attempted in a
middle school, we could not have asked for a better outcome in many
ways. The expertise of the John Howard Society youth advocates cer-
tainly contributed to this, as did our open communication policy. We
made the commitment to keep in constant communication with each
other with regards to our students. If something happened at school that
we believed would benefit the work the youth advocates were doing with
our students, then we ensured they had that information. Likewise, if the
youth advocates had information they believed was important for the
school to have, then that was shared as well. Successful community part-
nerships take time and commitment from all those involved. With the
support of this community partnership, many of our at-risk students
began to understand there were alternate positive paths for them to pur-
sue. These students and their families, many who had contentious prior
relationships with the school, began to see the school as a place of hope,
where all students mattered and all students would be given every oppor-
tunity to thrive and experience success. I remember shaking the hand of
one father whose son had been part of this programme at the end of the
year. He looked at me with a tear in his eye and said, “Thank you for not
giving up on my son.”
We have learned how important it is for students and parents alike to
understand that as a school, we never give up on learners and will hold
onto hope for families until they can find it again themselves.
What Will Be Their Legacy? The previous images of practice showed

how connecting with the larger school community had a tremendously
positive and in some cases life altering impact on two smaller groups of
students. To connect the larger student population with the surrounding
community, we used the opportunities afforded to us by moving into an
open, flexible schedule on our late student entries on Friday. We built on
the work first proposed by the Student Advisory Council to the larger
student body based on three things students could do to make their
school a better place. The focus of what we called our “Legacy Project”
was what students could do to give back to the community in which their
school is situated. Our students are very aware that in some cases the
community has a negative perception of them. Students are also very
good at identifying problems; however, we wanted to ensure that they
developed even greater skills in solving the problems they see. We believe
that the best way for our students to change their relationship with the
community is through consistent patterns of positive behaviours.
Providing our students with opportunities to show the community that
they are kind, conscientious and hard working adolescents is important
work for us as a school.
108 B. Yee et al.
Using the Design Thinking (IDEO 2012) process, which could be

described as a structured process for creative problem solving, we posed
the following question to students: “How might we give back to our
community so that….” The “how might we” statement is a key element
in the Design Thinking process, as is first building empathy and under-
standing for the problem you are trying to solve. After empathy and
understanding were built around issues the community might be facing,
we took students through a process of “plussing” used by Disney’s Pixar
animation group (Gogek 2014), as a means of generating and building
on the ideas of others without shutting down the creative process. The
premise is simple; students sit across form one another and share ideas
that they have individually generated on sticky notes. As one student
shares his/her ideas, the other student “plusses” them, using phrases like,
“yes, and” in order to build on each other’s original ideas. After students
had generated a list of attainable ideas about how they could give back to
the community, we used a Google Form where students signed up for
what they wanted to pursue further. Teachers selected which legacy proj-
ects they were most excited about and became teacher facilitators for
those groups.
Our Legacy Day took place on a Friday in May. Students engaged in
work around community beautification, such as building planter boxes,
“up-cycling” old garbage cans by cleaning and painting them and creat-
ing stunning pieces of fence art that would be hung on the fences sur-
rounding the school, inviting the community in to see the great work our
students do. A larger group of students went to the local seniors’ resi-
dence where they put on a talent show for the residents, hosted a tea,
played games with them and painted window planters for their individual
rooms. Another group of students spent the day with young refugees,
helping them to acquire English language skills and introducing them to
the community in which they now live, in the hopes of showing it as a
safe and welcoming place. A significant number of students had identi-
fied their desire to give back to those in need in the community who were
struggling with the current downturn in the provincial economy. This
group organized a clothing drive that resulted in 28 bags of clothing
being collected. Students also baked muffins and decorated bags with
messages of hope and love to place them in. On Legacy Day, students
delivered the clothing they had collected along with the muffins to the
local shelter for families in need. The list of work our students engaged in
that day goes on and on, as does the positivity that surrounded it.
Our students returned to the school changed that day. The work they
had engaged in had not only positively impacted the larger community
but also helped them see that they can in fact make a difference in their
community and in how that community sees them. It was delightful to
see the school’s Twitter feed filled with positive messages from commu-
nity residents. There is something quite profound that happens when
adolescents, who can be quite idealistic and are developing such a strong
sense of social justice, realize that their actions, good and bad, can make
lasting impressions. On this day the students were determined to cement
their legacy in the community as a positive one.
Lessons Learned: From a National Perspective

Is there anything that can be found in the systems of education in Canada
that have contributed to or detracted from how the nation views or
approaches early adolescent learning and middle level learning environ-
ments? This too is a complicated question to answer in a simplistic way;
some provinces have been much more intentional than others in attend-
ing to the unique developmental and learning needs of early adolescents
through provincial educational policy, resources and support. There are
three key factors on a national scale which I believe have impacted the
advancement of early adolescent learning and middle level learning envi-
ronments in Canada as a whole:
1. The absence of a national curriculum has placed the responsibility for

curriculum development and the timeline for renewal on the indi-
vidual provinces and territories. Some provinces develop curriculum
at a departmental or ministerial level; others do this in consultation
with provincial universities; while others approach it in an almost
business-like model, awarding tenders to those with the best proposal
bids. As mentioned previously, in some provinces parts of the curricu-
lum have not changed in 25 years, calling into question the e ffectiveness
110 B. Yee et al.
of a policy of individual provincial and territorial curriculums in pre-

paring Canada’s youth for the world they will face outside the nation’s
schools.
2. The absence of national standards and regulations for teacher training
has left individual post-secondary institutions to create teacher train-
ing programmes as they envision them. This has hampered the devel-
opment of consistent, quality teaching in the nation’s schools and has
certainly impacted public trust in the quality of education Canadian
children receive. Further, only a very select number of Canadian post-
secondary institutions offer teacher training programmes addressing
the specific needs of early adolescent learners and middle level learn-
ing environments.
3. The absence of a commitment on a national scale to use what current
Canadian research has revealed about early adolescent growth and
development as individuals and learners to establish middle level
learning environments that will best support their needs. Without
clearly articulated provincial/territorial and national philosophy and
policy related to leading, teaching and learning in the middle years,
education for early adolescent learners will remain inconsistent across
Canadian schools.
Lessons Learned: From a School Perspective

While giving each province and territory the opportunity to create the
vision and govern the direction for the education of its youngest citizens,
the lack of federal regulation of education in Canada has created the situ-
ation where the schooling experience of learners across the country, espe-
cially that of adolescent learners, unfolds in very different manners. What
I hope these three in-depth images of practice from the context of one
school show is how an intentional approach to teaching and learning in
the middle years can transform the schooling experience for adolescent
learners. Three important lessons should be taken from these images of
practice:
1. The importance of building a culture of ongoing professional learning

and growth, along with the need to bring our adolescent learners into
the conversation on how to improve their schooling experience. When
the topic of teacher professional learning is discussed, students are
rarely considered valued and contributing members in the conversa-
tion. Most current research related to professional learning includes
the use of student artefacts of learning to focus teacher discussions and
guide next steps (Dufour; Timperley). I would argue that to be well
informed and effective, teacher professional learning must include not
only student work, but also the voices of the students that teachers
face each and every day. A school learning community must extend
beyond the notion of teachers to involve the students. If we want to
know the effectiveness of teacher practice, we must look to multiple
sources of information. Student work certainly provides one perspec-
tive, but the actual voices and opinions of our students adds another
important perspective. Working together with our adolescent learners,
and having clarity around our collective “big rocks” has allowed a
transformation in the school beyond what could be done were it the
teachers acting alone, with good intentions, trying to improve the
schooling experience of our students.
2. The second image of practice focused on ensuring the learning envi-
ronment in our school was one that would foster in our students a
sense of wonder and exploration as they learned about themselves and
the larger world. In order to do this there were certain philosophies,
such as our belief in the importance of students engaging in interdis-
ciplinary learning opportunities similar to the work experts in the
fields they are studying are doing, and certain structures, such as the
timetable, that needed to be in place to create what we believe are the
optimal conditions for adolescent discovery through learning. The
plasticity of the adolescent brain during this developmental period
places schools in a unique (and perhaps precarious) position to create
an ideal learning environment where it will develop essential faculties
and grow in ways that will serve students as they transition into later
adolescent years and into adulthood. This does not happen through
worksheets and seatwork, but through a deliberate (and often difficult)
112 B. Yee et al.
examination of what is currently working well in a school and what

processes and philosophies no longer serve.
3. It seems almost a cliché to continue to refer back to the old proverb,
“It takes a village to raise a child,” but it holds true in every way in
today’s societal context, especially during the adolescent developmen-
tal period which requires a multifaceted wrap-around approach to
ensure the healthy development of our youth. Not only was the school
able to build successful community partnerships that supported our
adolescent learners, but we also ensured that our students developed
an awareness of their place in and responsibility to the greater com-
munity, ensuring they were not only on the receiving end of the good-
will of the community, but also finding ways for students to give back
munity. It is crucial that our adolescent learners understand they are
part of something much larger than themselves. During adolescence,
adolescents begin to develop an identity of their own, apart from their
families. As they experiment with what “feels” right, with what they
believe “suits” them and hopefully with what aligns with the values
and morals that have been instilled in them, the peer groups they are
connected to can be tremendously influential. The values and behav-
iours espoused by peer groups are often reflective of the communities
in which adolescents are growing up and what that community con-
siders acceptable ways to think and be. With the approach “they are all
our children,” we have begun to establish an entire community that is
watching out for our students not in a critical sense, but in a manner
that lets them know they have a community pulling for them to be
successful.
References
Alberta Education. (2016). CTF program of studies. Edmonton: Alberta
Education Publications.
British Columbia Teachers’ Federation. (2014). News release: BC teachers ratify
agreement, end strike. Retrieved from http://bctf.ca/NewsReleases.
aspx?id=35447
Council of Ministers of Education, Canada. (2013). Measuring up: Canadian

results of the OECD PISA study. Toronto: Council of Ministers of Education,
Canada.
between student engagement and academic outcomes. What did you do in school
today? Research Series Report Number One. Toronto: Canadian Education
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Gogek, D. (2014). Plussing – How Pixar transforms critiquing into creating.
Retrieved from http://www.thinklikeaninnovator.com/plussing-how-pixar-
transforms-critiquing-into-creating/
Hanvey, L. (2006). Issues affecting the well-being of Canadian children in the mid-
dle years – 6 to 12: A discussion paper. Ottawa: National Alliance for Children
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ingforeducators.com/
Kohn, A. (2015, September). What does it mean to be well-educated. Retrieved
from https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/mean-well-educated-article/?print=pdf
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2014). Canada:
Education at a glance, country note. Paris: OECD Publishing.
Robinson, K. (2006, June). Do schools kill creativity. TED.
Sawyer, R. K. (2008). Group genius: The creative power of collaboration.
Philadelphia: Perseus Books.
Sawyer, R. K. (2014). How to transform schools to foster creativity. Teachers
College Record, 118(4), 1–23.
Yee, B. (2015). Leading, teaching and learning “in the Middle”–An international case
study narrative examining the leadership dimensions, instructional practices and
contextual philosophies that have transformed teaching and learning in the middle
years. Retrieved from http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/19718/
4
Germany: A System Undergoing Change
The German Context

The German school system has been undergoing significant reforms as it
works to challenge long-held beliefs about the country’s traditional tiered
system of schooling. Once believed to be a symbol of national strength,
the sifting and sorting of children into one of three tiers of school at the
age of 10 is now believed by many to be a limiting factor in potential for
student growth and development (OECD 2011). In response to what has
often been described as the “PISA shock,” Germany has, since the initial
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study (2000),
seen a steady increase in PISA scores in literacy, mathematics and the
sciences.
In spite of common features of the school systems across Germany, the
country has a decentralized system of education, with 16 Länder
Education Ministries being in charge of school curricula, teacher educa-
tion and teacher recruitment. The constitution of Germany, known as
Grundgesetz (Basic Law), outlines the fundamental values and structures
of the Federal Republic of Germany. In Article 7 of German Basic Law,
the Länder are recognized as the supervising body of their school systems.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52602-7_4
116 B. Yee et al.
The Basic Law also makes provisions for so-called “joint-tasks” of the
German Federation and the 16 Länder. One such task is the co-operation
between the federal government and the Länder to assess the performance
of the education systems in each Land against various national and inter-
national measures—and based on this, jointly create recommendations.
Another significant area of joint responsibilities is the development of
common standards for the internationally-known German “dual system,”
in which students receive vocational training as an apprentice in a com-
pany while also attending courses at a vocational school. The dual system
is widely acclaimed for integrating young adults into the labour market
and is often cited as the primary reason for Germany’s low youth
unemployment.
To understand traditional German views and approaches towards early
adolescent teaching and learning, one must understand the origins of the
country’s education system. Germany was one of the first nations that
aimed to provide free basic education to all citizens (OECD 2011).
Wilhelm von Humboldt, believed to be the architect of the German
Gymnasium, and Georg Kerschensteiner, credited with originating the
German dual vocational training concept, where “the education system
would fuse schooling and apprenticeship in the workplace” (OECD
2011, p. 203), held different views about the role of the education system
and those who should be served by schooling. Whereas Humboldt’s
reforms focussed on a rather exclusive notion of education geared towards
the upper echelons of society, Kerschensteiner was concerned with educa-
tion for the working people (Kerschensteiner and Gonon 2002).
At the beginning of the twentieth century, four years of free compul-
sory basic education was provided for all students. Following these four
years of primary education, students were streamed into one of three
types of schools closely aligned with social divisions of the German feudal
system: the Volksschule (later: Hauptschule) was designed for the major-
ity of students, which at the time were also those with the lowest aca-
demic abilities; the Realschule was to serve students of higher ability who
were likely to acquire qualifications in fields such as clerical and technical
work. The Gymnasium was reserved for students with the highest aca-
demic abilities who would go on to take the German matriculation
examination, the so-called Abitur, a precondition for access to higher
Germany: A System Undergoing Change 117
education and professional careers (OECD 2011). Around 1900, less

than 2 per cent of any age cohort attended a Gymnasium. As late as
1969, less than 11 per cent of an age cohort in West Germany graduated
from a school providing access to university education. Those rates have
been changing rapidly in line with the changing labour markets and have
now gone beyond 45 per cent of an age cohort in most of the Länder
(Bosse 2016, pp. 45–46).
The strong German economy of the 1960s and 1970s created an
initial shift in the way the public viewed the three-tier system. Employers
could now offer apprenticeships to students who had passed the Abitur,
and there was pressure from families to ensure children worked hard
enough to at the very least attend the Realschule. The Hauptschule was
increasingly seen as an unattractive option by most parents (OECD
2011). Another opportunity to overhaul the three-tier secondary school
system in Germany presented itself with the collapse of communism in
1989: East Germany had abolished the distinctions among secondary
schools and (with the exception of some special schools for the gifted
and talented) all secondary schools there became comprehensive schools
(OECD 2011, p. 207). In the western part of the country, the percep-
tion remained that it had a top-performing education system, although
there were until the first PISA study no systematic measures to assess
the West German education system in relation to the rest of the world
(OECD 2011).
In 1997, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and
Cultural Affairs of the Länder decided that Germany would participate
in international comparative studies of student achievement. The results
from the 2000 PISA assessments shocked the country (OECD 2011) and
presented yet another opportunity for Germany to examine long-held
beliefs about secondary schooling. The notion that the different types of
schools could be seen as philosophically distinct, accommodating certain
“types of students” in order to prepare them for very different career and
life paths was increasingly seen as untenable. These early PISA results
showed German students lagged behind in every measured area, with the
performance of the most at-risk students aligned with some of the worst-
performing countries in the world (OECD 2011). Socio-economic back-
ground, along with German language ability was strongly tied to student
118 B. Yee et al.
performance on the PISA assessments, indicating children of immigrant

families were particularly at risk (Sliwka 2010).
owards a More Inclusive and Fair School

T
System: The Introduction of a New Kind
of Secondary School
As a response to PISA, politicians saw the tiered school system as no lon-
ger responsive to a “modern knowledge-based economy [that] would most
need a work force with a very high level of education across the board”
(Bulmahn as cited in OECD 2011, p. 208). Political parties operating on
both the left and right sides of the political spectrum worked together
through the Council of Ministers to make possible changes possible that
would not have likely occurred prior to the 2000 PISA results. One spe-
cific response to PISA was the introduction of a new type of secondary
school, the “Gemeinschaftsschule.”1 Different from the “Gesamtschule,” a
type of comprehensive school using tracking, this type of school is con-
ceived as a “community school”2 teaching all students together in mixed
ability classrooms and diversifying instruction according to students’ zone
of proximal development on the classroom level (Baden-Wuerttemberg
Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports 2014).
The idea of the “Gemeinschaftsschule” is based on the concept of the
Finnish school which was perceived to be an effective and successful
model of schooling as a consequence of Finland’s spectacular results in
the first PISA study. The focus in Gemeinschaftsschule is on mixed ability
learning groups, with individualized support provided for all students so
that they can experience success. More than half of the German Länder
have completely replaced Hauptschulen and in many cases, Realschulen
with the new type of inclusive school, postponing the decision about
academic versus vocational career path until the age of 16 and broaden-
ing access to the Abitur for students from different social backgrounds.
For outsiders, it may seem surprising that the Gymnasium (as the
1
The Länder currently use different names for this type of school, for example Gemeinschaftsschule,
Sekundarschule, Oberschule.
2
The German word “Gemeinschaft” means “community.”
“academic” type of school) is being left untouched by current govern-

ments. It can be described as a stronghold of upper-middle-class culture
in Germany, and many politicians fear that turning the traditional
Gymnasium into a comprehensive Gemeinschaftsschule would equal
“political suicide” because of the voting power of middle class citizens.
There is at the moment no broad political consensus for abandoning the
Gymnasium in favour of turning every school in Germany into a
Gemeinschaftsschule. Nevertheless, equity in German education is being
vividly debated and several steps have been taken to make the system
more equitable. In all but two Länder, it is now up to parents to decide
which type of school they want for their child. The standards at the
Gymnasium are high, but access has become more equitable by giving up
the system of primary school teachers deciding who is suitable and ready
to receive a Gymnasium education.
Since the 2000 PISA results were published, the systems of education
in Germany have been in a constant state of reform and restructuring.
Following the 2000 PISA results and the call for increased transparency
and accountability, the Council of Ministers from the 16 Länder devel-
oped and agreed to national performance standards and competencies in
core subject areas (OECD 2011). Further, in 2006 the Council devel-
oped common learning assessments used to compare the education sys-
tems in the 16 Länder to each other, as well as to international standards
(OECD 2011). The Institute for Quality Development in Education
(IQB), based in Berlin, was established in 2004 to monitor progress
towards identified educational outcomes. Many Länder have increased
the number of instructional hours for students, moving from the tradi-
tional half-day format to full-day school (OECD 2012, 2014b).
The Länder ministries are also in charge of curriculum development.
The Council of Ministers have agreed to enhance awareness of how the
various subjects connect to the world of work outside of school (European
Commission 2014). This so-called competence-based education is chang-
ing the teaching style to focus more on student cognitive activation and
learning engagement. Adolescents’ sense of belonging and connection to
school and learning, as measured through various PISA indicators, has
declined in most countries, but rather surprisingly this has not been the
case in Germany. Between 2003 and 2012, German students reported a
120 B. Yee et al.
20 per cent increase, from 70 to 90, in their sense of “belonging” to

schools (OECD 2012, 2014a, b). Various reforms introduced since 2000
have served to decrease the impact of socio-economic status and immi-
grant background on student achievement (OECD 2012, 2014a, b).
PISA results in both reading and science have increased since 2000 to
above Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD 2013) averages, although the portion of students achieving at
the highest proficiency levels has not seen a significant increase. Despite
these initiatives to increase options available to families related to their
choice of schools, over half of the variation in student performance on
PISA assessments in Germany can be attributed to which school in the
tiered system students attend (OECD 2012).
Images of Innovation in Learning: The German

School Award and Other Reform Initiatives
In retrospect, the “PISA-shock” seems to have triggered a range of inno-
vations in the landscape of schooling for adolescents in Germany. While
the Länder governments introduced top-down policy reforms including
new measures for a systematic quality monitoring and school improve-
ment, some of the most interesting changes have been initiated bottom-
up from the grassroots level of individual schools. Post-PISA, innovation
has become a buzzword in German education, but the reality of what is
considered innovative differs widely across schools. Some schools have
gradually moved through incremental changes whereas others took much
bolder measures to make schools work for adolescents.
A period of experimentation and innovation on the school level began
in 2000 and replaced a long period of stasis and stagnation in German
schooling lasting from the mid-1970s until 2000. Innovations in schools
have been encouraged and supported by several public-private initia-
tives. The most prominent of these is the German School Award
(Deutscher Schulpreis), which was started by a group of influential
foundations under the leadership of the Robert-Bosch-Foundation in
2006 (www.deutscher-schulpreis.de). Six schools from all over Germany
are selected each year by a jury of experts for their potential to motivate
students to learn and achieve results on a high level. So far, an impressive
number of schools which were able to enhance student learning through
innovative pedagogies—some of them under dismal circumstances—
have won the award. The prize is awarded by the Chancellor or the
President of Germany and the winning schools receive significant media
attention. The criteria underlying the selection for the award reveal that
educational philosophies developed in non-mainstream schools over the
course of the twentieth century are now moving centre-stage and are
increasingly shaping the public understanding of what constitutes a
good school (Sliwka and Yee 2015).
Criteria Underlying Selection for the German School Award

Achievement: Students at the school need to achieve outstanding learning
results (in relation to their base line) in the core subjects (mathematics, lan-
guages and sciences), in the arts (e.g. drama, fine arts, music or dance), in
sports or in other areas (such as national student contests).
Diversity: The schools need to have developed effective ways and means
to work productively with educational disparities, different student inter-
ests and talents, diverse cultural and national backgrounds, diverse educa-
tional backgrounds of families, and the gender of their students. They need
to contribute to the compensation of educational disparities and support
individuals in their learning systematically and continuously.
Quality of teaching: The schools need to motivate students to take charge
of their own learning process. They enable their students to learn in hands-
on ways focusing on deep understanding and let students experience learn-
ing in authentic learning environments outside the classroom. The schools
continuously digest new knowledge to improve the quality of teaching and
learning.
Responsibility: The schools do not only advocate but actually find ways to
enhance respectful behaviour, violence-free conflict resolution and care for
the school and its environment. They support and request active participa-
tion and democratic engagement, citizenship and community in the class-
room, the school and beyond.
School climate, school life and partners in the community: The schools
need to show a positive climate and an active and stimulating school life.
They are schools that students and teachers like to attend and parents
enjoy visiting. The schools maintain meaningful relationships with their
partners outside the school and with the public at large.
122 B. Yee et al.
Schools as learning organizations: The schools need to practice innova-

tive and result-driven forms of collaboration within the school team, their
leadership practice and the democratic management and enhance the
motivation and professionalism of their teachers effectively. They perceive
the creative use of the curriculum and the organization and evaluation of
learning as a core task and commit to it in a sustainable manner. (www.
deutscher-schulpreis.de)
The criteria of the German School Award reflect some of the changes
schools for adolescents in Germany have undergone in the past 15 years.
To take a closer look at how the five core practices we refer to in our
framework (learning, teaching, professional learning, leading and
researching) constitute effective ecologies of practice for the schooling of
adolescents, I will now examine four school cases from the metropolitan
cities of Hamburg and Berlin and two smaller towns in Northrhine-
Westfalia and Bavaria. All four schools have redefined in bold ways what
it means to be learning as an adolescent learner in a German secondary
school. They have won awards and received public attention, they are
known beyond their immediate environment and receive considerable
numbers of visitors. It is important to note that the four cases I chose for
the book do not (yet) represent the mainstream of current practice.
Instead, they work as reference cases for the discussion about “next prac-
tice” in adolescent learning and are currently being discussed publicly
and to some extent controversially.
When analyzing these and other cases of schools which are currently
reinventing cultures of learning for adolescents, it becomes apparent that
the most visible and bold changes concern the use of time and space in the
context of schooling. The traditional uses of time and space as developed
in the context of the industrial model of schooling (with its rigid temporal
and spatial order of organizing learning) were increasingly seen as limiting
student agency and stifling their learning engagement (Boekaerts 2010).
In all four school cases, creating cultures of learning that “work” for ado-
lescents has in turn influenced cultures of teaching, teacher professional
learning, leading and researching. Although my focus will primarily be on
the analysis of learning, I will provide some contextual discussion on
how changing learning as the core business of schooling is interdependent
with and to some extent dependent on associated changes in teaching,

teacher roles, professional learning, leading and researching.
Images of Innovation: Changing Structures

of Time and Space to Enhance Adolescent
Engagement in Learning
ase I: Gymnasium Alsdorf/Alsdorf
C
(Northrhine-Westphalia)
Students at the Gymnasium Alsdorf, situated in a small town near

Aachen in the Western part of Germany, get to sleep longer. They can
choose if they prefer to attend the first lesson in the morning starting
at 8 a.m. or if they would rather stay for an additional lesson in the
afternoon. After a trial phase lasting one school year, the secondary
school close to the Dutch border has decided to institutionalize their
system of “flexible timing” for their learners. Research evidence back-
ing the school’s new time structure is ample. For years, chronobiolo-
gists have been publishing research findings on the mismatch between
the timing of a typical school day and adolescents’ changing sleep pat-
terns. Chronobiologist Till Roenneberg from the University of Munich
calls the school “Germany’s first school taking into account the inner
clock of adolescent learners.” “Adolescents function differently from
adults,” he says. In its synchronization with the day-night-rhythm, the
inner clock of most adolescents is running late up to the age of 20.
Adolescents cannot fall asleep as early as adults. The fact that they tend
to fall asleep late but need to be in school at 8 a.m. causes what he calls
a “social jetlag.” The early start of the school day is very hard for three-
quarters of all adolescents, according to Roenneberg. “During the first
lessons in the morning, some of them are almost asleep,” he claims.
They also miss out on an important part of sleep that is needed to
consolidate what they have learned the previous day. Sleep researchers,
he says, have been asking for a delay in school starting times for quite
some time now.
124 B. Yee et al.
Luca, an adolescent at the schools says: “The first lesson in the morn-
ing has been so cruel for me. I was never fully awake.” He has opted to
arrive at the school for the second lesson and to stay longer in the after-
noon. Other students, like his co-student Milena have decided differ-
ently: “I don’t have a problem getting up early therefore I decided to be
here for the first lesson. It gives me more free time in the afternoon.” Hers
is a minority opinion at the school. Almost two-thirds of the students opt
for the later start of the school day.
This flexible time structure has become possible because of the school’s
concept of teaching. The school uses the Dalton-Plan, a reformist peda-
gogy developed by American educators Helen Pankhurst (1922). As a
young school teacher in the early years of the twentieth century, she
noticed that student motivation and the willingness to help each other
increases when they are given freedom for self-directed learning. The core
of the Dalton pedagogy is the learning assignments. Gymnasium Alsdorf
has defined a certain number of teaching hours per week to be so-called
Dalton lessons. In the more traditionally taught lessons students are given
access to a range of different assignments and projects, which they then
work on independently or in small groups during the ten weekly Dalton
lessons. Students do not only choose where to work but also what to
work on. All assignments and projects they plan to work on in a particu-
lar week need to be written down in their weekly plan. In the tradition of
Dalton pedagogy, they are free to choose what to do when. Different
teachers, all specialists for two subjects, are available in different school
rooms during the Dalton lessons. Students are given a choice of which
teacher’s room they want to work in. “The matching works very well,”
claims the school principal. “Different students enjoy working with dif-
ferent teachers. It all depends on the chemistry between the teacher and
the individual students.” Adolescents need to take full responsibility for
working on their assignments independently and are accountable for
what they have achieved during these lessons. If the assignments are not
completed on time and to a high standard the freedom to participate in
the Dalton model can be withdrawn and students may have to take more
traditional lessons for a certain period of time. If a teacher observes sig-
nificant knowledge gaps during “regular lessons” they can limit or with-
draw a student’s freedom of choice in “Dalton lessons” and assign specific
tasks to be rehearsed or completed. This might be a strict rule to learn the

past tenses in English or to repeat and practise certain content in
mathematics.
Joelle and Julia, 16 years old, both decided to come for the first lesson
in the morning. They work on a biology assignment together and have
chosen to come to the classroom of a teacher who is a math and biology
specialist. That way, they can use him as a mentor and a resource when-
ever they need help. When the work is done and the Dalton lesson is over
they ask the teacher to stamp their assignment sheet. Luca prefers to sleep
in and comes in the afternoon instead. “I used to have more free time for
gaming in the afternoon, but now I’ve chosen to sleep longer in the
morning and work longer in the afternoon,” he explains.
In 2013, Gymnasium Alsdorf won the “German School Award” for its
innovative techniques of enhancing student motivation for learning. To
balance freedom and choice with discipline and accountability and let
adolescents make important decisions about what they want to learn,
when they want to learn and with whom they learn best, was seen by the
jury presenting the award as a successful strategy to strengthen adoles-
cents’ self-regulation skills, a crucial developmental task for young people
between 12 and 16 years of age.
Case II: Evangelische Schule Berlin Zentrum (ESBZ)/Berlin
Evangelische Schule Berlin Zentrum (ESBZ) might be called the “enfant

terrible” of German schools. The Lutheran school in the heart of Berlin
turned what it means to be an adolescent in a German school upside
down. There are no grades until students turn 15 and no traditional
teacher-centred instruction. The school has also abandoned timetables
for the core subjects. To learn, students go to so-called Lernbüros, learn-
ing offices, to work on assignments in teams or on their own. The school
has established learning offices for mathematics, German and English.
Students have to work on the learning outcomes prescribed by the state
curriculum of Berlin but they get to decide which subjects they want to
study for each lesson. The learning offices are equipped with a range of
books, digital and hands-on learning materials. A teacher trained in the
126 B. Yee et al.
subject is present to consult, to help with the selections of tasks and mate-
rials to work on and to provide explanations whenever needed. Exams do
not take place at set times, but each unit has to be completed with an
exam and students decide when they are ready to take the exam. That
way, students get to study at their own pace.
The school is a “Gemeinschaftsschule,” teaching students of different
ability levels. While German school systems are still struggling to make
schools more inclusive and accommodate the needs of students with dis-
abilities, Evangelische Schule Berlin Zentrum has pursued an inclusive
philosophy since its inception in 2007 after Lutheran parents in Berlin
had started the initiative to found a fully inclusive and modern school in
the heart of Germany’s capital city. Today, more than 80 per cent of the
school funding comes from the state of Berlin, school fees are low and
means- tested, so that 5 per cent of the students are completely exempt
from fees. The school now teaches about 500 students and offers both the
Abitur and the middle-level “Realschulabschluss.” While the school day
starts with a few minutes of worship, only one-third of the school’s stu-
dents are baptized Christians. Thirty per cent have a migrant background
and 7 per cent come from families who do not speak German at home.
Because of its bold ways of embracing diversity, the school has also been
acknowledged as a suitable school for gifted and talented students. In
2013, it was awarded the Karg-Award for its concept of delivering high-
level education to gifted and talented students.
When talking to students at the school, and not just those who are
particularly gifted, one thing that is striking is how confident and outspo-
ken they are. Fourteen-year-old Anton, for example, managed to talk
Germany’s railway operator, Deutsche Bahn, into giving a group of ado-
lescents free tickets for a trip to the UK. The students were planning their
three-week-long “challenge project.” Anton and his team plan to go to
Cornwall to study coastal economies and also make use of their time to
practise their spoken English. Another group of students decided to delve
into fashion design. The girls asked the grandmother of one of them, who
lives in a rural area outside of Berlin, if she could teach them sewing.
They intend to produce dresses in the style of Coco Chanel. The school
has introduced two types of three-week-long projects. One is called “proj-
ect responsibility,” a social or ecological community service project, the
other “project challenge,” a project that students perceive as personally

challenging so that it will help them to learn new things and cross new
thresholds on their way from child to adult. In small teams, the a dolescents
need to plan their projects themselves and present their plan to the teach-
ers and the parents. For the challenge, students aged 12–14 are given
€150 and sent on a three-week adventure. Some go abroad (where they
need to find hosts to keep their expenses down), some go kayaking on the
many lakes north of Berlin; others produce a CD, a film or work on a
farm.
The core idea of the school represents a radical vision of what school-
ing for adolescents is about in the twenty-first century. The globalized
and digital economy is causing radical transformation of labour markets
and ways in which we live together and communicate with each other.
The school perceives the ability to motivate oneself to learn as the most
important skill a school can pass on to its students. The ability to self-
regulate helps young people succeed in a labour market and a world in
which they are given endless choices but are also condemned to achieve
the necessary knowledge and skills to make these choices work for them-
selves. To enable adolescents to become self-sustaining, fulfilled and
happy adults who find their way in an increasingly open and complex
reality, the school’s idea has been nothing less than to “reinvent” school-
ing for adolescents in the transition from child to adult. “The mission of
a progressive school should be to prepare young people to cope with
change, or better still, to make them look forward to change. In the 21st
century, schools should see it as their job to develop strong personalities”
(The Guardian 2016). The school encourages its students to come up
with alternative ways of showing which knowledge and skills they have
acquired, so they can code a computer game or teach German to Syrian
refugees as proof that they have achieved the learning outcomes pre-
scribed by the official Berlin curriculum.
Germany has a long tradition of alternative educational models going
back to the interwar years of the Weimar republic. Montessori and Steiner
schools are widely available as forms of alternative education provision
across the country. What is new and different now as these educational
approaches are becoming more mainstream is the fact that student free-
dom to self-regulate is embedded in a system of consistent and clear rules
128 B. Yee et al.
and expectations. Some students who are lagging behind in achieving

core learning outcomes have to attend school on Saturdays (in spite of
Germany abandoning teaching on Saturdays in the 1970s), to catch up
during a teacher-supervised session called “silentium” (meaning quiet
time). “The more freedom you have, the more structure you need,”
explains the school principal, Margret Rasfeld.
Results in the final Abitur exam have contributed to the school’s repu-
tation. Obviously, it is able to walk the talk. In 2015, school leavers tak-
ing the Abitur at Evangelische Schule Berlin Zentrum achieved an average
grade of 2.0, 0.4 points above the national average, although 40 per cent
of the cohort had been advised not to continue to Abitur before they
joined the school.
The most challenging part of creating this new type of practice ecology
has been to find suitable teachers for the school’s bold pedagogy. A school
like this only works if there is a constant process of experimenting with,
reflecting on and further developing pedagogy. To support the culture of
student learning with a strong ethos of professional learning and research-
ing, the school leadership has set up a so-called education innovation lab.
In an interview with the Guardian (2016) the principal explains: “In
education, you can only create change from the bottom – if the orders
come from the top, schools will resist. Ministries are like giant oil tankers:
it takes a long time to turn them around. What we need is lots of little
speedboats to show you can do things differently.”
As an “education lab,” the school-based think tank tries to keep inno-
vation and reflection going through two different means: the school’s
teachers and students develop innovative learning and teaching materials
for the school and other schools who want to follow this new model of
learning. In addition, the school encourages visitors to come to the
school. Many teachers, even innovative ones, would hesitate to pronounce
such an invitation out of fear of being overburdened and distracted
from their core business. Evangelische Schule Berlin Zentrum (ESBZ),
however, sees the reception of visitors as a win-win situation and a genu-
ine learning opportunity for its students. It is students like 14-year-old
Anton who teach workshops to visiting teachers, parents and school prin-
cipals who want to learn about ESBZ’s innovative philosophy and meth-
ods. The principal is convinced that giving her students this kind of
learning opportunity will make them even better prepared for the twenty-
first century. Three of the school’s students, teenagers Alma, Jamila and
Lara-Luna, even wrote and published a book about the school: “Wie wir
Schule machen: Lernen, wie es uns gefällt,” meaning: “How we make
school: Learning as we like it” (De Zárate et al. 2014).
Case III: Stadtteilschule Winterhude/Hamburg
Stadtteilschule Winterhude, a Gemeinschaftsschule in Hamburg, has

become well-known for its innovative learning projects for adolescents.
The highly diverse school with students from many ethnic backgrounds
and a significant proportion of recent immigrants has been seeing itself as
a “reformist school” for more than a decade. Teaching takes place in
mixed-aged groups and personalized learning is seen as a key pedagogy of
the school: “Each one in his or her speed. We do not want our students
to have to wait for others to catch up or to feel under pressure to take
short-cuts in their learning. Our student body is just too diverse,” explains
a teacher. Winterhude school was one of the first in Germany to devote
significant amounts of time to project-based learning. Every 8th and 9th
grader in the school participates in ambitious projects, putting musicals
and dance performances on stage, travelling through Denmark on Inline
skates or building canoes, for example. For many of the school’s students,
these projects open horizons they would not have had access to given
their family background. A project that has been reported on widely and
has become a “classic” is the crossing of the Alps on foot. Each summer,
several weeks before the school holidays, a group of 8th, 9th and 10th
Grade students age 13–15 set out on this three-week-long trip. They have
to apply for it by handing in a written application letter, in which they
make clear why they are seeking this highly demanding experience for
themselves. Every year, a male teacher and a female social worker accom-
pany the group. “To cross the highest mountain range in Europe on foot
with 13 kilograms on your back and zero experience in mountain hiking,
that is crazy,” the teacher explains. “It’s a real challenge and therefore
exactly the right thing for adolescents in the middle of puberty.” They set
out from Hamburg, an economically flourishing and highly diverse port
130 B. Yee et al.
city in the north of Germany. It takes 14 hours to travel to Bad Tölz in

Bavaria, where the real journey starts: three weeks on foot, seven or eight
hours of hiking every day, even when it is raining. Smelly clothes and
crying a few times are part of the experience. The students can spend up
to seven Euros per day on food and accommodation. Anyone who has
travelled to the Alps as a tourist knows that you do not get very far on
seven Euros per day. You need to be creative and ask farmers if the group
can sleep in the hay barn for free. Emotions run high on this trip and they
are not always the same emotions for everyone: Andrea lost some of her
money last night at the mountain hut, where she was buying food, and is
close to tears. At home she could go cuddle with her mom, but no family
member is here to comfort her. “I hate it, all of it,” she says and points to
the blisters on her feet. “I want to give up.” The teacher is quite relaxed.
“That kind of experience is normal on a trip like this. It’s part of the expe-
rience of overcoming difficult situations. All this is a core part of the
learning experience and most of them will get over it.” Tom seems happy.
He loved the sunrise they saw early in the morning. “You don’t get to see
it that way in Hamburg.” And the pizza they were able to buy at a bakery
today was delicious and cheap at the same time. Aladin seems less con-
tent: “I’m a little bit fed up with sleeping in the hay,” he admits. Eleven
girls and four guys, age 13–15 have successfully applied to the trip this
year. They have to work together as a team during the three weeks. Make
sure their money lasts until they get to their destination in Italy, find
places to sleep that are safe and free of charge or at least cheap, find and
prepare inexpensive food for themselves and help each other through dif-
ficult hours and days so that they all make it to Southern Tyrolia, on the
other side of the Alps in Italy, together. Each student got 150 € for the
trip from their parents. In addition, the school allowed them to do fund-
raising in advance to be able to pay for the train trip to Bavaria and the
return trip from Italy to Hamburg and to earn some money for a few
decent nights in hostels with warm showers. In the weeks before the trip,
the students sold cakes at the school festival and wrote to companies in
Hamburg to raise money. Their efforts have been quite successful: they
managed to earn an additional 4500 € for the entire group. The teacher
and leader of the group have been taking this trip every year for more
than ten years. He is an outdoor kind of person and clearly enjoys the
experience: “At this age,” he claims, “they have a lot of other stuff in their
heads, apart from mathematics and German lessons. They are confused,
have a crush on somebody, observe every little change of their body with
a certain anxiety. They can be moody, noisy and extremely funny. But
none of this is a reason not to teach them,” he explains. “Over the course
of these three weeks they learn more than they would in school at the
same time,” he explains. “Fundraising, housekeeping, reading maps,
working in a team and getting over difficult situations, alone and
together.” Initially, parents at the school were very sceptical, but when
they saw how proud and confident their children were when they returned
to Hamburg, the news of how valuable this experience could be quickly
made the rounds.
“We don’t have our parents’ credit cards,” says Andrea. It took her an
entire day and a night to get over the loss of her money. But in the end,
the group decided to give her some of the money they had raised together
and her friends shared their food with her. “It was a good experience to
know that you can rely on each other in a situation like this,” she sums up
her experience.
Sometimes, when they sleep in hay barns, it gets really cold at night.
They need to dig into the hay with their sleeping bags. They tell each
other stories and sometimes they sing together. And when they get up,
quite early in the morning, to continue their hike, they are rewarded with
beautiful sunrises in the Alps. “Just like in a commercial on TV,” says Joe.
“Here, their actions have immediate consequences,” explains the
teacher. “In the first days of the trip some of the students each year spend
too much of their money on sweets and other luxury items. When they
notice that their budget is not going to last for the entire three weeks,
they have to eat bread and really simple food. After that, they begin to
watch their budget more carefully. One lesson they all learn is to appreci-
ate what their parents have been doing for them, simple things like cook-
ing and washing their clothes, things they have taken for granted.” On
every trip, homesickness peaks on one day, typically about one week after
the students have begun the hike. The teacher already knows the pattern
and smilingly calls it the “homesickness day.” “Somebody begins to cry
and then others join in,” he explains. The situation is quite challenging
for the teacher and the social worker: they take out the application letters
132 B. Yee et al.
and remind the teenagers why they chose this particular project out of a
range of 15 different projects, most of which take place in Hamburg. The
transition of the Alps on foot has the reputation as being “the hardest” of
the projects. Every year, about four times as many students apply for it as
there are places available. The school chooses the students who can cred-
ibly explain why they want to push themselves to their limits. The ones
that are here had said that they wanted to face the challenge to solve
problems and overcome barriers without the help of their parents. “See,
that’s exactly what you are here for,” explains the teacher. Just before they
reach Bozen, the capital of the Northern Italian province of South Tyrolia
of about 100,000 inhabitants and the end of their trip, they are happy
and excited and can be teenagers again: “When we get downtown, we
will go shopping. There is some money left.”
ase III: Franz-Ludwig-Gymnasium and Kaiser-

C
Heinrich-Gymnasium/Bamberg
In Bamberg, a beautiful old Bavarian city with hundreds of heritage

homes in the centre of town, innovation can be found in the Gymnasium.
Both the Kaiser-Heinrich-Gymnasium and the Franz-Ludwig-
Gymnasium have embraced the concept of Service Learning to change
the adolescent learning experience. What makes these schools unique
compared with many other more academic types of schools in the
German context is that each of them is pursuing a “big project” and each
of the students at the schools gets to work in the project. At Kaiser-
Heinrich-Gymnasium, taking part in a service learning project is manda-
tory in Grade 9. The school offers a variety of different service projects
but most of them revolve around the school’s primary commitment: to
contribute to the preservation and restoration of Bamberg’s rich cultural
heritage. The Kaiser-Heinrich-Gymnasium decided to commit to its
project after the deputy principal of Bamberg’s other Gymnasium was
made the new principal at this school. Previously, he had been vice-
principal at the Franz-Ludwig-Gymnasium, and it was there that the
story of service learning in Bamberg begun to unfold about 15 years
earlier.
One of the school’s students at the time had a brother who was dis-
abled and working in a small company run by the “Lebenshilfe,”
Germany’s main provider of working opportunities and life support for
severely disabled adults. Because of the student’s connection to
Lebenshilfe, her class started to do service learning projects in co-
operation with this non-profit organization. This initial project was the
seed for many more projects to develop in the following years. Students
at the Franz-Ludwig-Gymnasium built an instrument, a small wooden
harp, in their music lessons and this served as a prototype for an instru-
ment built in one of the Lebenshilfe workshops by the disabled adults.
Another group of students in their German lessons developed a board
game on the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his
famous drama “Faust,” which was then produced and sold by the dis-
abled adults in the Lebenshilfe workshop. From there, the project fur-
ther evolved and the co-operation between the teenagers at
Franz-Ludwig-Gymnasium and the adults working in the Lebenshilfe
workshops became a continuous feature of the Gymnasium’s pedagogy.
In their German classes, adolescents produced brochures and other mar-
keting materials to market the products produced at Lebenshilfe. They
wrote articles and even organized a press conference to help the non-
profit Lebenshilfe get more media attention. A group of students
improved the Lebenshilfe website and included a feature allowing for
the products built in the workshops to be sold online. During joint
sports and music events throughout the school year, adolescents from
the Gymnasium meet with the disabled adults to spend quality time
together. They travel to cities like Munich, Nürnberg or Regensburg
together, because it is common in Germany for student in Grade 9 or 10
to go on a week-long school trips. At Franz-Ludwig-Gymnasium, this
means that healthy teenagers and mentally or physically disabled young
adults go on trips together. “The first time, before we met,” writes 15 year
old Jonas, “I was quite nervous. I did not know if I should smile or talk
to them. I had never spent time with somebody paralysed and sitting in
a wheelchair. In retrospect, that seems funny, because now Peter, a guy
working at Lebenshilfe, has become one of my best friends.” The co-
operation between the school and the Lebenshilfe, which started with a
single project, developed over the years to form a strong and continuous
134 B. Yee et al.
bond between the two institutions. Today, taking part in service learn-
ing is a core part of what it means to be an adolescent in Franz-Ludwig-
Gymnasium. Many teachers teaching subjects as diverse as music,
physical education, German, mathematics and biology are involved in
the co-operation and almost every year, new joint activities are emerg-
ing. What has been unique about this school is that so many of its teach-
ers have joined in and become involved over the years. “It’s almost as if
our school and the Lebenshilfe are siblings,” explains one of the
teachers.
The origin of service learning at Franz-Ludwig-Gymnasium is more
recent. It started with the vice-principal of Franz-Ludwig-Gymnasium
being appointed principal of the Kaiser-Heinrich-Gymnasium.
“When I first came to the school as the new principal, I noticed that
something important was missing in the students’ learning experi-
ence. We did not have a service learning philosophy,” he explains,
“and therefore a crucial lifeline connecting the lives of adolescents
with the world surrounding them and the many worthwhile projects
to work on was simply not there.” Based on his experience at the other
school, he had by then come to the conclusion that working on hands-
on service projects in real life could provide adolescents with genuine
opportunities to grow their personality and self-esteem. He quotes a
study by the American psychologist James Youniss, who writes about
the so-called transcendence effect. Adolescents who are given oppor-
tunities for selfless community service, working on real problems and
working for people with authentic needs “transcend themselves,”
implying that the experience enables them to think beyond the nar-
row world of an adolescent, which often revolves around questions
about one’s own body, attractiveness, popularity in the peer group and
status symbols. Studies by Youniss and his colleagues showed that
adolescents at schools where community service projects are part of
the curriculum were able to leave these narrow questions behind in
order to reflect on questions of social justice, the organization of soci-
ety and the history of human development (Metz and Youniss 2005;
Reinders and Youniss 2006).
The new principal at Kaiser-Heinrich-School decided that his school
also needed a big project, a real commitment, just like the commitment
to co-operate with Lebenshilfe at his previous school. He was able to

engage his staff and they came up with a big idea: the Kaiser-Heinrich-
Gymnasium would devote itself to helping preserve the old town of
Bamberg with its more than 1200 heritage houses and historical monu-
ments. Impressive projects have been realized since this decision was
taken more than ten years ago. The school has adopted particular monu-
ments, such as the “Apfelweibla,” a monument of a woman carrying
apples. By means of different fundraising activities (such as concerts and
Christmas markets) the school raised more than 400,000 € to help reno-
vate this and other historical monuments.
Service learning is hands-on but also academic. Teachers try to con-
nect the projects to the curriculum as much as possible. Tenth graders
have published a book about one particularly old part of town called
“Menschen im Sand,” for which they interviewed people living in centu-
ries-old heritage houses and did a photo documentation. Foreign lan-
guages play an important role in all of the German Gymnasium and
most students at this type of school learn two or three foreign languages.
At Kaiser-Heinrich-Gymnasium, the commitment to Bamberg’s cultural
heritage has also created authentic learning opportunities for language
learning. Many tourists come to the town and the school’s students have
translated leaflets about certain heritage quarters and monuments into
French, English and Spanish. Groups of teenagers have even begun
offering guided tours in these languages for tourists. “It’s great to be part
of this” explains Julia, a 16-year-old. “I live in this city every day and
now I feel that I am actually contributing to its development, not just
consuming it.”
Interviewing the teachers at both schools about service learning, it
becomes clear, however, that Bamberg is not representative of German
schools as a whole. All of the teachers I talk to agree that service learning
should be seen as a core part of what constitutes learning for adolescents.
“This is where they gain confidence and visibly grow,” explains one of the
teachers. “It’s crucial to provide them with authentic tasks and real chal-
lenges. They want to be treated like adults, who can do this,” says another.
While service learning has been disseminated more widely in German
schools in recent years, Bamberg is still exceptional in that both schools
have adopted big, continuous and ambitious service projects, in which all
136 B. Yee et al.
adolescents and most teachers are involved in active ways. “It’s almost as
if service to the community represents what it means to be learning as an
adolescent,” sums up one teacher.
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Approaches in Canada and Germany to preparing learners to live in a chang-
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Idealism or Core Business? 50(2), S. 175–183.
5
Finland: Towards the Future School
Finnish Context
Finland is known globally for two things: first, Santa Claus who is living
in Korvatunturi in Lapland, near the Russian border; and second, educa-
tion. A huge success in the international Programme for International
Student Assessment (PISA) results in the early 2000s raised Finnish edu-
cation to the core of educational discussion all around the world. Finland’s
top rankings in not only one category but in all three main test catego-
ries—literacy, mathematics and science—has led to many questions as to
the origins of this success. The answers lay in two main categories: the
developmental history of Finnish compulsory school and teacher educa-
tion. In Finland, PISA results were of more importance for others than
teachers and experts in the field of education. Many stakeholders, espe-
cially from the business world, had been criticizing Finnish compulsory
school since the 1970s. They were worried about the efficiency of the
Finnish school and questioned the quality of learning. The PISA results
ended this critique. Teachers and other experts in education had a very
realistic attitude towards PISA results, although the same could not per-
haps be said of other stakeholders. Educators had been developing their

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52602-7_5
140 B. Yee et al.
work based on aims set down in the Finnish national core curriculum.
PISA was only four letters for most in the field of education, and PISA
was also a system most had only heard of for the first time in the early
2000s. The professional development work of teachers in Finland has for
some time been grounded in many reasons other than success in PISA
surveys (see e.g. Sahlberg 2015; Rautiainen and Kostiainen 2015).
Finland is a Nordic, social welfare state, founded in the 1950s–1980
after World War II. Before this era, Finland was an agrarian country.
After World War II, there was a shift in the population density, as young
people moved to the nearest cities, capital areas or abroad, seeking job
opportunities that were no longer available in the Finnish countryside.
Hundreds of thousands of people moved to Sweden, while others made
longer journeys to Australia, Canada and the United States. The biggest
reason for the migration was unemployment. Finland industrialized in
the 1960s and the economic structure changed rapidly from primary pro-
duction to secondary. At the same time, the political climate was chang-
ing. Before the Second World War, the communist party was an illegal
political movement acting underground. The result of the war changed
the situation dramatically. The Soviet Union had strong power in Finland,
even if they could not occupy Finland during the war. With the help of
Soviet Union, communists returned to mainstream politics. The com-
munist party together with social democratic party, now became oppos-
ing powers fighting for control in the country.
As with other Nordic countries, Finland began to develop a societal
worldview according to the principles of equality, justice and economic
welfare for all citizens. The aims of the new welfare state resonated very
strongly with education in the 1960s. Education was believed to be a tool
for change, because of the school’s prime position for socializing children
in the values of society. If society were to set a new direction, it had to
change its educational system according to the new aims.
Left-wing politicians began discussing the need for school reform in
the 1950s, but the criticism grew more harsh in the 1960s, which was a
turning point not only in the development of Finnish basic education,
but the educational system as a whole. Left-wing politicians demanded
more justice and equality in the school system, which had its origins in
the nineteenth century and had remained relatively unchanged for a
Finland: Towards the Future School 141
undred years. This education system divided pupils into different

h
streams of schools after four years of basic education; according to left-
wing politicians it served to maintain the old order of society. Instead,
nine years of compulsory school for all was suggested, as well as a finan-
cial security system which would give economic opportunities for all chil-
dren to study beyond compulsory school, should they choose to do so.
The reform was radical and based on the idea that every citizen
should have either vocational or academic education and secure work
opportunities based on this education. This strategic thinking has been
the cornerstone of Finnish society for decades. The highly educated
Finnish population view the nation’s education system with the utmost
respect. Teachers’ status in Finland is extremely high, with the teacher
training programmes being among the most attractive Masters’ pro-
grammes in the universities. Basic education has not been at the centre
of political struggle since the 1970s. Instead, the country’s political par-
ties share similar beliefs related to the development of Finnish compul-
sory school.
Finnish compulsory school is also a symbol of trust in society. Teachers’
autonomy in their work is considerable, as well as each individual school’s
autonomy. Assessment is not based on a national test but on teacher
expertise. Finland does not have any controlling system concerning
teachers or schoolwork, like Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education)
in England. In spite of this freedom and autonomy, schools in Finland
have developed and evolved in very similar ways. Social cohesion among
teachers is high, with the underlying understanding being that the nature
of a teacher’s work emphasizes cohesiveness and collaboration. On the
other hand, differences between small rural schools and the schools in
suburban Helsinki can be enormous. Nevertheless, the differences in
learning results have been small between schools.
Compulsory school has two parts. The first six years are considered
primary school, and grades seven to nine are considered secondary school.
Since the early 2000s, basic education has been intended to be seen as
one entity; now, more than ever, pupils from grades one to nine are found
under one roof, with one school administration. There remain, however,
some structures which serve to create unwanted division in schools such
as teacher qualifications based on different university studies. Prospective
142 B. Yee et al.
teachers (Grade 1–6) are educated in the faculties of education. Their

major is education, with all teachers requiring and earning a master’s
degree, one of the reasons why the status of prospective teachers in soci-
ety is so high. Subject teachers (Grades 7–9) are educated in other facul-
ties and their major rests in the discipline of the subject(s) they are
teaching in the school. Prospective subject teachers will earn a minor in
pedagogical studies (60 course credits), which gives them the qualifica-
tions needed to be a teacher in secondary school.
Finnish children begin school in the year they celebrate their seventh
birthday and finish their formal schooling at the age of 15–16. Private
schools are rare. Children will begin their school career in the nearest
school run by the city. All compulsory schools follow the national core
curriculum for basic education prepared by the Finnish National Agency
for Education every ten years. This curriculum development occurs after
the national government has set the direction and overarching framework
for essential learning outcomes for all students receiving basic education.
This structure defines the subjects studied during compulsory school.
After the national core curriculum for basic education has been approved,
individual cities develop their own, which adapts the curriculum to the
local context. Most recently, the national core curriculum for basic edu-
cation was implemented at the beginning of August 2016 and contains
some major differences compared the previous curriculum (2004),
because of the critiques levied against compulsory school, which has been
strengthened during past few years.
Finnish school has two faces. On the one hand, Finnish students
continue to produce excellent results in international comparative
surveys like PISA, while on the other hand, it is emerging that pupils
have only minimal power in the decision-making process in the
school, and broader schools have a very thin participatory culture (see
e.g. Raiker and Rautiainen 2017). One of the most democratic coun-
tries in the world seems to have one of the most undemocratic sys-
tems of schooling. Also, school satisfaction of Finnish pupils is low
according to WHO (World Health Organization) surveys throughout
the 2000s. These results are partly explained by the structure and effi-
ciency of Finnish schools. Basic education reform in the 1970s stressed
individual learning and pupil’s right to access support and resources if
challenges in earning should become apparent. In practice, teachers’

focus was on those pupils who could not achieve the aims of learning
without support and help. Furthermore, teachers stated that they did
not have the time or resources to develop localized content to support
the aims of education for democracy and other large-scale aims of
Finnish compulsory school. Consequently, this is one of the gaps
the most recent curriculum tries to change; and change, is one of the
key themes in the new curriculum: stronger participatory culture,
new learning environments including digital environments, among
others.
At the moment, these goals are challenging because of the cost saving
measures being implemented across all public sectors, including educa-
tion. Even if the money is only a part of making the change successfully,
it is of course one of the factors every school has to take account when
planning for the future.
As described earlier in this chapter, Finnish compulsory school is
unique in the international context. Before the 1990s, the Lutheran reli-
gion, Finnish language and Finnish culture, including historical inci-
dents, had strongly united the Finnish people. However, over the past
25 years, this cultural uniformity has begun to crumble. Finland has
become more multicultural, especially in the capital area of Helsinki, and
the different living conditions between big cities and rural areas have
become more visible.
What about the question of Finnish adolescents in contemporary
Finland? School should be made for them, though it has lot of other rea-
sons to exist, too. Homer has said that “young people are invariably
thoughtless” and even if it is the older generations’ “duty” to criticize
youths’ way of living, there are some threats as well as advantages for
adolescents in Finland. Obesity, poor physical fitness and the time ado-
lescents spend with digital devices like smartphones and tablets concern
both parents and politicians. On one hand, digital devices have been seen
as one of the bridges which could bring adolescents and schools closer
and potentially raise feelings of school satisfaction among adolescents.
Others, however, are sceptical of this trend and instead of increasing the
use of digital devices in school, would like to minimize the use of digital
learning environments and materials.
144 B. Yee et al.
Finnish basic education is undergoing big change, which means the

future of the school is of great interest to society and its stakeholders. All
aspects of schooling in Finland seem to find their way into the daily pub-
lic debate via newspapers, TV programmes and social media. Fortunately,
the key message is that school really matters. One of the more tangible
forms of change is new school buildings as well as renovated buildings.
The physical school structure reflects not only the aims of school but also
the “big picture” of how Finland is re-envisioning next steps in education
via emphasizing experimental culture, student well-being, participation
and commitment to the community, and engaged learning.
In the following chapters, new experiments are presented, along with
solutions emphasizing the new kind of school—the future school in the
Finnish context. They all represent visions which are unique, but at the
same time strongly committed to the general aims of the development of
school in Finland. All examples reflect the desire and effort to engage
adolescents as more active stakeholders in their schools. This chapter con-
cludes with an example from teacher education.
dolescents as an Active Group

A
in the Planning of New Learning Environments
Almost all school-aged children in Finland go to the nearest school run
by the city. Only a handful of private schools following alternative peda-
gogies operate in Finland, such as the Rudolf Steiner or Freinet schools.
There are also a small number of state-run schools for pupils with special-
ized learning needs. All Finnish universities operate a primary and/or
secondary school which partners with its teacher education programme
to provide practicum experiences for the teachers in training.
The teacher training system in Finland is a unique one developed in
the 1860s. The first Teacher Education College was founded in Jyväskylä
in 1863, and began operating its own school for students in 1866. The
system was similar in Helsinki, where the subject teachers were educated
at the university. Teacher training schools serve not only to develop new
teachers, but they also have a special position in the developmental work
of Finnish primary and secondary schools. Training schools serve as

“laboratories” where pre-service teachers, in-service teachers and teacher
educators engage in action research, testing out new pedagogical
theories.
Jyväskylä Training School is the oldest training school in Finland.
There is a primary, secondary and upper secondary school housed adja-
cent to the university, with all these levels focusing on the developmental
work of new, especially digital, learning environments over the past five
years. These processes are strongly based on the participation of pupils
and students of the training school. It has been a collaborative project
where the school’s pupils together with researchers from the University of
Jyväskylä experiment with and model new ways of student-centred plan-
ning of learning environments. The first space the researchers experi-
mented with was a model for a science classroom. The aims for the project
were:
–– change a classroom and the hall next to the class into an inspiring,
stimulating and comfortable learning environment where the use of
modern technology is easy,
–– combine formal, phenomenon-based learning of science with infor-
mal learning, and create possibilities for different learning processes
which are independent of time and space. (Mäkelä et al. 2013, 275)
The process began with the brainstorming of ideas, opinions and per-
ceptions of what constitutes a good learning environment, followed by a
long period of studying, where students constructed different visions of
new classrooms. Those visions (plans) were collected for exhibition,
where other pupils and students could vote for their favourite. After vot-
ing, students continued working together with experts on critical evalua-
tion of the visions. Finally, the plans were sent for review by the architects,
who created the final plans for the classroom and hallway spaces. These
new learning spaces were constructed in 2013. Researchers’ work in this
process was to facilitate and conceptualize students’ work.
This kind of collaborative planning by students, with the help of
experts, reflects the way of learning in the 2000s, incorporating the skills
of the future such as creativity, collaborative work, critical thinking,
146 B. Yee et al.
inquiry-based and phenomenon-based approaches and broader skills

people need to live together in a democratic society.
This brings us to the question of if and how new learning environ-
ments can impact the development of the learning culture. Students and
pupils were asked after the use of the new learning environment: have
there been any changes in the learning? According to their own experi-
ence, the results were controversial. Forty one per cent of students thought
it had changed, but 42 per cent could not say if there had been changes
or not. Further, only 17 per cent were certain there had not been any
changes when the before and after learning contexts were compared
(Mäkelä et al. 201, 285).
Because of the encouraging results of this project, Jyväskylä Training
School has continued to design learning spaces according to the same
model, where pupils’ and students’ role is active. This extends to all learn-
ing contexts from primary to secondary school (see eg. Mäkelä and
Helfenstein 2016).
Towards Schools Without School Desks

The health and physical condition of adolescents has long been a topic of
discussion in Finland. Further, new scientific research pointing to the
dangers of long periods of sitting has raised awareness in many schools
and places of work. These results, together with the fact that school satis-
faction among adolescents is at an all-time low, has set in motion a string
of actions within the Finnish education system. On a national level, the
focus has been on school yards, where the amount of sports equipment
and active play structures have been increased as well as the incorporation
of different kinds of short active breaks during the school day. The Finnish
Schools on the Move project is coordinating and innovating new kinds of
school days at the national level (https://liikkuvakoulu.fi/english).
In this context, old-fashioned classroom designs with rows of school
desks, where pupils stare at the necks of schoolmates, are not the best
possible design to achieve the goal of active citizenship. Many schools in
Finland and around the world are trapped within a design of classical
school architecture, because they were designed for the purpose of control
and discipline. Classical school architecture is based on long corridors

where classrooms are side by side and the only connections to corridors
are through closed doors. While enormous renovations can and are being
done in these old school buildings, the most important shift is, of course,
the emerging new learning and teaching cultures that these new environ-
ments are reflecting.
Classrooms and schools without school desks are actually quite a new
phenomenon in Finland. Primary school teacher Maarit Korhonen was
the first to write about this and also give the public images for these new
ways of thinking. For many years, she had witnessed and been told about
the total frustration both teachers and students felt regarding the old-
fashioned classroom design, and so one day she decided to take all the
school desks out of her classroom with the help of her pupils. She brought
in couches and beanbag chairs instead. The transformation of Korhonen’s
teaching and learning space has been well documented (see e.g. 2014).
She has also become a vocal figure in public debate related to education
reform. Many teachers have since become interested in her idea of the
“classroom without school desks.”
The driving force behind Korhonen’s idea was to create a more com-
fortable school for pupils, and also the development of more individual
learning processes. Korhonen emphasizes pupils’ right to follow their
interests and broaden their skills of self-expression. Korhonen stresses
that these seemingly superficial changes in classroom design get to the
core of education reform. Is it possible to build a strong school commu-
nity which emphasizes individuality? Does strong individuality create
strong communality?
Korhonen is just one example of one teacher’s intent and hard work
towards the necessary change and goals, which are in many ways com-
pletely different from the existing social norms in school. It is also a good
example of developmental work coming from the bottom up. Classrooms
without school desks are not only some individuals’ experimental work
but also part of a larger strategy, where whole schools are changing their
way of living and learning.
Tuomela Primary School is located in Hämeenlinna. It is the first
school in Finland without any desks in the entire school. The school was
built in 1955 and underwent a total renovation between 2013 and 2016.
148 B. Yee et al.
The school is now without classrooms and corridors. Instead, there are
large open areas for all grades. All classes at the same grade level work in
a common, open area. These areas are very changeable and multifunc-
tional. Every class has its own tipi-like space for their work together.
Pupils do not have desks but boxes for their schoolbooks and other equip-
ment. Behind the change of Tuomela primary school were ideas and goals
similar to those of Maarit Korhonen; they aim to create inspiring learn-
ing environments which support creativity, courage, risk-taking, while at
the same time making them stronger as individuals and as a
community.
Dream of a Strong Community

Tuomela Primary School began its work in the renovated school in
August 2016 and while the physical structure has changed, the school
understands it will take several years to see the permanent philosophical
and pedagogical results. A similar process involving a radical shift in a
whole school community started in Ritaharju School in Oulu. The new
school building opened in 2010 and many in Finland viewed it as a mir-
acle. The grand entrance hall, which also served as a multifunctional
teaching and learning space, branched off into rooms which students
could use during their leisure time in school, such as for console games.
This was a marked difference in thinking about and planning for stu-
dents’ whole school experience. Classroom doors were open and pupils
could decide by themselves how to study and where as they were practis-
ing new skills and concepts taught in class, collaborating with other stu-
dents or completing other school work; some pupils took a more leisurely
approach, laying around, while still engaging in their learning, some took
advantage of the variety of different learning environments available to
them around the building and some pupils chose to work at their school
desks. Pupils could be seen working as individuals, with a partner or in
larger teams. Team-oriented working is one of Ritaharju School’s theo-
retical and strategic goals.
Ritaharju School is exceptional in many ways. The new physical struc-
ture of the building was only the beginning of a complete shift in how the
learning environment would impact not only teaching and learning

within the school, but extend to the larger community. Head teacher,
Pertti Parpala, had a vision of the future school and more broadly, a vision
of the school as a centre of the modern “city village.” He created a frame-
work where all the members of the school community would be dedi-
cated to a teamwork approach and collaborative professional learning.
This was viewed as a significant change as head teachers in Finland do not
have any formal power or authority to direct their teachers’ team accord-
ing to their own pedagogical philosophies and principles. Parpala was
able to invite new teachers to her team and guide the school’s pedagogical
development. It could be said that he was building a teacher dream-team
to make her vision come alive.
Where teachers were organized to work in teams, pupils were too. The
school is using Professor Liisa Keltinkangas-Järvinen’s classification of
temperaments based on her well-documented research (see e.g.
Keltinkangas-Järvinen 2006). It helps teachers in their understanding of
their learners as individuals. Temperament is not the element which
defines and dominates the learning processes, but it does give teachers
insight in their work, as well as gives learners more ownership concerning
their own learning processes. This idea is closely aligned with the educa-
tion for democracy movement in Finland. Education is based on a broad
consensus of trust among all stakeholders. Now some schools are trying
to create a culture where trust in children is greater than before, which
also resonates strongly with Lawrence Stenhouse’s idea of “teachers as
researchers.” Using the concept of the “school as a research community,”
it is believed that inviting all learners, especially adolescents, into this
learning space will be of great benefit to all involved.
Ritaharju School has manifested itself as “a center of the modern city
village.” After the Second World War, a lot of school buildings were built
in the countryside all around Finland. Those buildings became the cen-
tres of the villages, especially for the large number of youth born imme-
diately after the war. Most of those schools were closed in the 1960s‑70s
because of the migration of the population from the countryside to larger
cities and abroad. Nevertheless, the idea and experience of the school as
the centre of the community stayed. Even if there are fewer and fewer
small rural schools in Finland, they remain symbols for ideal communality.
150 B. Yee et al.
Based on the idea of the school as a centre for the community, Ritaharju
School has a public library, a youth outreach centre, as well as activities,
like clubs, for small children and senior citizens, all under the same roof.
A Step Towards Phenomenon-Based Learning

Ritaharju School often has weeks when pupils learn according to the
principles of a phenomenon-based approach, but it is not part of the
everyday life here. Phenomenon-based learning was at the centre of dis-
cussion during the period when the new national core curriculum for
basic education was made. This curriculum is still based on what we think
of as traditional school subjects, but the spirit emphasizes a larger the-
matic approach towards learning. As a compromise, the national core
curriculum includes larger themes, where the focus is on phenomena,
which stress future skills and multidisciplinary perspectives.
Phenomenon-based learning is seen as one of the bridges connecting
adolescents to school work in a more engaging way, even if today it
seems more like a vision and a brilliant idea than a widespread reality.
Radical phenomenon-based experiments in schools or other educa-
tional institutions are rare, as well as research related to the benefits of
phenomenon-based learning. In this sense, phenomenon-based learn-
ing is at the centre of pedagogical experimental culture. Nevertheless,
phenomenon-based approach has always been part of education,
though it has not been conceptualized as such. For example, the Socratic
method in Plato’s dialogues includes elements which are common for a
phenomenon-based approach. Also, as a concept, the phenomenon-
based approach remains controversial for some and there is no one
shared model among experts.
According to the Longman Dictionary, phenomenon is defined in the
following way:
Phenomenon: something that happens or exists in society, science, or

nature, especially something that is studied because it is difficult to under-
stand. (Longman Online Dictionary of Contemporary English 2016)
The Department of Teacher Education at the University of Jyväskylä

has a phenomenon-based curriculum for teacher education programmes.
Also, many schools are now moving towards a more phenomenon-based
approach to teaching and learning, such as the Alppila School in Helsinki
(part of Pasila Compulsory school since 1.8.2016) (Saukkonen et al.
2017).
Teacher education has a special position in Finland. It is highly
respected and one of the most popular programmes in all universities year
after year. Teachers’ status in Finnish society is high and one reason for
this is the highly academic nature of the education degree; a Masters’
degree is required for all teachers from primary to secondary schools.
Teacher education is research-based, which means not only that educa-
tion is based on the newest research, but also teacher educators engage in
research as part of their studies. The role of teacher education programmes
is also shifting, creating new visions for future learning and the schooling
experience of the youth. Teacher training programmes should not be
thought of as a socializing ritual, instead they should foster critical
thinking in new teachers. This shift needs to begin during the teacher
education phase, not after it, with new teachers, professors and students
working closely together (see Fig. 5.1).
Teacher education in Jyväskylä emphasizes phenomenon-based learn-
ing via the phenomena of interaction, co-operation, communality,
inquiry-based learning and society. At the centre of the picture is the
slogan think big, experiment bold! The phenomenon-based curriculum is
the biggest of the experiments made at the Department of Teacher
Education in Jyväskylä in the past decade. Behind the change was the
idea that teacher education programmes could provide better solutions
for the challenges of our time both in school and teacher education via a
more holistic approach. Finnish teacher education has been criticized for
year because of its fragmentary nature (see e.g. Nikkola et al. 2008). It is
also an attempt to have a more open and democratic culture inside teacher
education. Inquiry-based learning has been one of the concepts empha-
sized for years in teacher education, however it has also been more of idea
and theory than one put into daily practice in Finnish classrooms. Again,
a phenomenon-based curriculum narrows the gap between ideals and
152 B. Yee et al.
Fig. 5.1 Big Picture of Teacher Education at the Department of Teacher Education
at the University of Jyväskylä
reality, because it emphasizes curiosity and becoming engaged in authen-

tic learning experiences throughout the learning process.
The Teacher Education Department implements a phenomenon-based

curriculum: the goal of studying is an attempt to understand the phenom-
ena and problems related to learning. This requires the ability to combine
various scientific theories and authentic viewpoints deriving from everyday
experiences because the phenomenon of learning cannot be profoundly
understood from a single viewpoint.
The goal of the Teacher Education Programme is to support students’
professional development so that they become autonomous and ethically
responsible experts who are able to critically analyse and reform the culture
of school and education as well as their own activities. The goal is to create
a strong academic identity and the basis thus formed for teachers to con-
tribute to scientific and professional development in their own field. The
work of a teacher requires both mastery of practical procedures and the
ability to justify the choice of a particular way of working. At the core of a
teacher’s work lies the understanding and supporting of a pupil’s and a
group’s development. The dialogue between theory and practice takes place
particularly during teaching practice periods, which offer a holistic view of
a teacher’s work. (Curriculum plans 2014–2017)
Learning environments and school architecture are also important ele-

ments in teacher education. In Jyväskylä, the Department of Teacher
Education has been developing one model (scenario, vision) of a future
school, based on interaction within the community as well as with society
and inquiry-based learning. This model is an idea, but also an abstract
construction of the future school.
Spaces in schools should be seen as consisting of physical, intellectual,
social and emotional features. At the heart of the school community is
space, where members of the community can get together, share ideas
and develop new ones. The leaning space has to be open, but at the same
time there should also exist sheltered spaces in which smaller groups can
work. In the second space, students, together with their teachers, can
develop their ideas further by using different study methods, especially
inquiry-based learning. If the “product” from the second space is some-
thing students want to share in the community with other stakeholders,
they can do so in the third space. The products can be very different, like
art, drama, enterprise or voluntary work, but the key is that a school
contains learning spaces that can be multifunctional (Jääskelä et al. 2012).
High Participation, Excellent Learning Results

Developmental work in schools has focused on participatory culture,
learning environments and building a broader approach towards learning.
This is becoming more and more challenging as half of the sixth grade
pupils (at the age 12) report having difficulty finding meaning in their
schooling experience and instead, are focusing their energy somewhere else
(Salmela-Aro et al. 2016). These statistics stress the need for ongoing dis-
cussions between all members of the school community. Creating authen-
tic, engaging learning for adolescents connected to the contexts they are
growing up in cannot be done by adults alone; the co-creation of learning
between teacher and student has become increasingly important.
154 B. Yee et al.
The new national core curriculum for basic education and the discus-
sion surrounding its development has created a necessary shift in the
ways schools have organized for teaching and learning. Schools have
more co-teaching, projects with multidisciplinary approach and incorpo-
rate the expertise of other stakeholders in the surrounding community
and larger society. The enthusiasm of teachers and adolescents, too, was
novel in many schools in autumn 2016 when the new national curricu-
lum was implemented. This is important, because school architecture
only creates the frames for new kind of schooling, and stays empty with-
out a new spirit of community and commitment to change. However,
there are some challenges which might dictate the need for more radical
changes, like exclusion of the adolescent voice from proposed changes.
Should school do better at preventing this trend than it does now?
(Myrskylä 2012.)
In September 2016, the Ministry of Education and Culture released a
new programme for the compulsory school of the future. It outlines the
direction for schools, presented in this chapter, especially learner-centred
learning, participation and a more experimental culture in school com-
munities (OKM 2016.) The message to the student teachers’ association
(SOOL) is the same. They released goals for teacher education pro-
grammes of the future, and while the context is slightly different, they
have a similar vision for what development is needed to ensure the educa-
tion system meet the needs of teachers in training and students in school
(SOOL 2016).
cologies of Practice for Enhancing Adolescent

E
Learning Engagement in Finnish Schools
The development of Finnish schools is based on both systemic thinking
and the experimental work of individual teachers and school communi-
ties. If this relationship is productive, the national frame can support
grass-root development work, and the work from “bottom” can support
national strategic work. The Finnish educational system is flexible, espe-
cially at the grass-root level in classrooms and school communities. The
systemic level however is much more complex. Consequently, the national

government in Finland (2015–2019) is trying to both improve and sim-
plify the development of the national level education policy via two large-
scale projects: one, the new comprehensive school; and two, the teacher
education forum. Together with the new national curriculum for basic
education, these projects aim to create new kinds of ecosystems, where
co-operational culture between different stakeholders is much stronger
than it is now. The focus is on “relatings” according to the ecologies of
practice concept of Kemmis et al (2014). On the other hand, relatings are
not possible without new practices in doings or shared interpretations in
sayings.
Learning
Groups of prospective teachers were faced with a new kind of challenge

in Korpilahti School, 30 kilometres south of Jyväskylä, in November
2016. They had planned six hours of lessons for adolescents (14-year old
pupils) according to the principles of inquiry-based learning and gaming.
Pupils in Korpilahti school were organized into four groups and each
group had to solve an imaginary problem that took place in Helsinki (a
bomb attack). The school was modelled on the city; corridors became
streets and classrooms were transformed into replicas of buildings, such
as a bar, restaurant, police station, and so on. Social media tools that stu-
dents were familiar with played an integral part in this project, as teachers
used blogs, Twitter, Facebook and websites. Students and teachers played
different roles as citizens of the city. After intensive work, the groups had
to present an informed report addressing the question “which group was
behind the attack?” It is precisely this kind of learning task that the
Department of Teacher Education at the University of Jyväskylä has been
developing and implementing for the past few years. This is one way to
create a new kind of learning culture where co-operational work, inquiry
and problem-based learning in different learning environments are
emphasized. Interventions can be based on the idea of gaming, like in
Korpilahti, but they can also be more authentic, long-term projects, for
example, looking at issues that impact the school directly and its
156 B. Yee et al.
surrounding community. Even if this image of practice as well as exam-

ples described earlier in the chapter remain the exception to the norm,
they are a reflection of a new culture, which would not be possible with-
out new thinking about teaching and learning.
Teaching
Student teachers were leading the project in Korpilahti from the concep-
tion of the idea to the assessment of student learning. They created a
manuscript for the game and constructed all of the elements needed for
the project. They used social media to support the four student groups
and give feedback as they could not get together physically. This project
would not have been possible without co-operation and these experiences
should be strong in teacher education. Hence students can reflect in the
intersubjective spaces (Kemmis et al. 2014, p. 95) from the viewpoints of
teacher as well as learner. According to them, the teacher’s role in the
Korpilahti project was more like “producer” than teacher (in the tradi-
tional sense). Students felt they created environments for adolescents to
learn and become interested in the topic. Community building was also
a major part of creating this new teaching culture. Besides building the
teachers’ community within the school, student teachers inspired the
adolescent learners to become active participants in their own learning.
Professional Learning
Changing the culture of a school demands a collaborative approach

towards work and new kind of professional learning. Finnish schools
continue to be dominated by more individual teacher work than on co-
operative practice. Also, teachers’ pre-service and in-service educations
have been separated for decades. This unbreakable separate tradition was
one reason why the teacher education forum was created in 2016,
attempting to enhance the interaction between pre-service and in-service
teacher training. New professional learning should be based on the open-
ness of all stakeholders to meet and create a new culture together as well
as share and discuss experiences, challenges and shared concerns. In this
sense, the Korpilahti project also served as an intervention to break apart

these separate working cultures: teachers, student teachers and also uni-
versity researchers worked and learned together in the context of a real
school (Kemmis et al. 2014, p. 128). This type of collaboration is prob-
lematic in the current context. At the moment teachers’ working time is
based on the number of lessons delivered and time for co-operation is
marginal. Existing structures support the old system based on individual
work, not a new kind of culture based on teams and collaborative work.
In many ways, schools are becoming more autonomous units. The head
teacher plays a key role when schools begin to undergo this cultural shift.
Leading
Some stakeholders questioned the “doings” in Korpilahti from different

viewpoints based on the notion of teaching and learning of subject areas
rather than concepts such as co-operation and critical thinking. The head
teacher’s support for the group was extremely important because they
could continue the experimental work in peace. During the past decade,
school-based leadership has become a key element of educational devel-
opment in Finland. According to developmental programme for Teacher
Education (Ministry of Education and Culture 2016), leading in the
future will be based more and more on teams, shared leadership and
communality. Its focus is on long-term developmental work in pedagogy
and school culture. Like learning and teaching, leading is seen in the
centre of “sayings, doings and relatings” as the example from Ritaharju
highlights.
Researching
Finnish teacher education is based on research (research-based teacher

education). In Korpilahti, prospective teachers first read books concern-
ing theory and practice, especially inquiry-based learning, in history
teaching. They then construct pedagogical experiments where they
transferred their understanding of the new kind of history teaching into
reality. After this intervention they wrote a research-based article which
158 B. Yee et al.
will be published as part of a book consisting of similar articles from

other prospective students. One of the main objectives in teacher educa-
tion is to develop the competence of reflective practitioners, as well as the
attitudes and skills needed to study phenomena from multidimensional
perspectives. It could be said that these shifts in teacher education have
not yet had enough time impact to schools. The work of Finnish teachers
is still based more on individuality than on communality and schools are
not yet the learning organizations they should be according to principles
and priorities set for both teacher education and schools. The challenge
of course is to get all stakeholders to work together in new ecosystems,
which represent a type of future laboratory based on broad co-operation,
experimental atmosphere and research.
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6
Ecologies of Practice
Through current research evidence, anecdotal experiences portrayed in

the research to praxis sections and country-specific images of practice, we
hope the chapters of this book have highlighted the tremendous potential
and power of the adolescent developmental period. Education systems,
schools and teachers all play important roles in how the schooling experi-
ence of adolescents unfolds. Since such a significant portion of their sense
of self develops through their interactions and explorations with people
and ideas at school, we can no longer leave to chance what happens dur-
ing the middle years of learning. Bringing the science and research of
adolescence and adolescent schooling to life through the lens of story was
the best way we believed we could help our readers see just what is pos-
sible when we deliberately create a learning environment suited to the
unique developmental needs of these learners. The images of practice
brought to life in the pages of this book cross cultural and linguistic bor-
ders of countries, whose education systems reflect policies and practices
deeply rooted in long-held beliefs about what it means to be an educated
citizen of the country. Common to the images of practice from all three
countries, however, is the constant search for how to ameliorate the
schooling experience for adolescent learners by challenging the existing

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52602-7_6
162 B. Yee et al.
discourse on what is believed to be possible during the middle years of

learning.
In this final chapter of the book, we will return to the work of Kemmis
et al. (2014) as we examine, through the lens of the five interdependent
ecologies of practice, essential elements of education systems, schools and
educators that are responsive to the unique developmental and learning
needs of adolescents. We will weave country-specific images of practice
along with the shifts in prevailing discourse into the key elements of
schooling practices (student learning, teaching, professional learning,
leading and researching) identified by the framework. Further, we will
draw attention to the practice architectures within the education systems
of the three countries which manifest themselves in the form of nuances
in the prevalent ways of sayings, doings and relatings. We believe these
subtleties that are very much tied to culture and country-specific norms
are just as significant in the transformative process as more overt, large-
scale reforms labelled as innovation. The intent is to showcase, in a very
practical manner, how attending to the concepts of this comparative
framework and challenging the status quo with regard to teaching and
learning in the middle years can result in significant and meaningful
transformation in the schooling experience for adolescent learners.
The Ecology of Student Learning in Canada

In a Canadian context, much attention has been paid to the question of
what it means to be an educated citizen in the context of a rapidly chang-
ing world. What becomes immediately evident is that a traditional model
of schooling, born from the industrial age with a one-size-fits-all,
approach does not serve our students well in the current societal
context.
How do we ensure the child born this year can adapt to the many changes
ahead? As importantly, how do we help children discover and pursue their
passions? How do we help them make successful transitions to adulthood?
And how do we help them become lifelong learners who contribute to
healthy, inclusive communities and thriving economies? (Alberta Education
2010, p. 4)
Ecologies of Practice 163
These questions and others surfaced in the Canadian province of Alberta

as educators, industry professionals, parents and other stakeholders came
together in the form of education roundtables to reflect on two seemingly
simple statements: what is the value of education; and, what will it mean
to be an educated Albertan in the year 2029 (McKinsey 2009). What
became very apparent was that the current education system was not in a
position to adequately prepare a new generation of students for a rapidly
changing future; a future which in many cases has proven to be highly
unpredictable. Inspiring Education, A Dialogue with Albertans (2010), was
the result of this mass public consultation process. Charted in this steer-
ing committee report was a long-term, big picture, vision for education
in the province through to the year 2030.
In May of 2013, a new Ministerial Order delineating foundational
beliefs about the role of education in Alberta was signed into law.
Outlined was a very different direction, one that reflected a significant
shift in philosophy about the purpose of basic education, moving away
from the accumulation of mere knowledge towards the development of
essential competencies. And, if you share the belief of many that the
school, as a microcosm of society, reflects the value system of that same
public it serves, this new ministerial order is certainly positioned to sup-
port a renaissance of sorts in the education system serving Alberta’s youth.
“The goal of this Student Learning Ministerial Order for an inclusive
Kindergarten to Grade 12 education is to enable all students to: be
Engaged Thinkers and Ethical Citizens with an Entrepreneurial Spirit”
(Alberta Education 2013, p. 2). The statement, taken from the new min-
isterial order, highlights these very important philosophical shifts:
Whereas education in Alberta will be shaped by a greater emphasis on

education than on the school; on the learner than on the system; on com-
petencies than on content; on inquiry, discovery the application of knowl-
edge than on the dissemination of information, and on technology to
support the creation and sharing of knowledge than on technology to sup-
port teaching. (Alberta Education 2013, p. 2)
No longer will it be adequate to impart students with knowledge alone,

facts and a narrow set of skills. The role of the teacher and of the student,
164 B. Yee et al.
in what can be best described as a learning partnership, must evolve to

support this new way of learning in an ever-changing world. Characteristics
that may have once been reserved for describing the outcomes of alterna-
tive education programmes have now been articulated as foundational to
the large-scale public education system in Alberta. For example, students
in Alberta are learning to be:
Engaged Thinker[s]: [one] who thinks critically and make discoveries; who
uses technology to learn, innovate, communicate, and discover; who works
with multiple perspectives and disciplines to identify problems and find
the best solutions; who communicates these ideas to others; and, who, as a
life-long learner, adapts to change with an attitude of optimism and hope
for the future. (Alberta Education 2010, p. 5)
Students are also learning to develop the qualities of an:
Ethical Citizen[s]: [one] who build relationships based on humility, fair-

ness and open-mindedness; who demonstrates respect, empathy and com-
passion; and who through teamwork, collaboration and communication
contributes fully to the community and the world. (Alberta Education
2010, p. 6)
And, students are learning to embrace an:
Entrepreneurial Spirit: [one] who creates opportunities and achieves goals

through hard work, perseverance and discipline; who strives for excellence
and earns success; who explores ideas and challenges the status quo; who is
competitive, adaptable and resilient; and who has the confidence to take
risks and make bold decisions in the face of adversity. (Alberta Education
2010, p. 6)
While you would not find many in the province who would disagree with
the vision put forth in the 2013 Ministerial Order, what remains to be
seen is how this seemingly undebatable philosophical shift will be
operationalized. A very real concern is that as with many sound concepts
in principle, it is the implementation phase where good intentions fail.
The Ecology of Student Learning in Finland

As in a Canadian context, the question of educating citizens in the con-
text of a changing world is a big question in Finland, too. Twenty-first
century skills, like life and career skills, learning and innovation as well as
information, media and technology skills, are at the core of this process.
These skills are also emphasized in the new national core curriculum for
basic education (2014).
Besides by this individual goal, the new national core curriculum
stresses engagement with the society and stronger participation in the
communities in which adolescents are living. Finnish schools have had
two faces for several decades. The fact is that the country shows good
learning results in international surveys like Programme for International
Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and
Science Study (TIMMS), and on the other hand, a low participatory
culture in schools (according to e.g. the International Civic and
Citizenship Study). The big question in Finland is, how to combine good
learning results with high participatory levels.
According to Professor Juha Suoranta (2003, 137–138) Finnish
schools have had three different phases in their history. First, school of
discipline, where the teacher had strong routines and rules for school-
work and the learner was subordinate. The school of discipline stressed
national cohesion and uniformity. Second, the school of individuality,
which began in the 1970s when nine-year comprehensive schools for all
began in Finland. The school of individuality emphasized individual
learning processes and teachers’ support of these processes. The change
from the school of discipline to the school of individuality was huge,
because the whole basis of education changed from masses to individuals.
The third phase is called the school of co-operation, where communality
based on problem-based learning, justice and hope are emphasized.
Juha Suoranta’s analysis exposes well the tensions behind Finnish
school culture and learning. Because of the long tradition based on the
school of discipline, the creation of a new culture is hard, and words in
the curriculum have been implemented in everyday life in schools only
slowly. With the new curriculum (since 1.8.2016) the strategy has been
different. Changes concerning cross-curricular themes, new assessment
166 B. Yee et al.
cultures and the learner’s position at the centre of learning processes are
so huge that teachers cannot continue with their old routines.
What are the most important changes from the perspective of adoles-
cents concerning their learning? How do we try to inspire adolescents to
become owners of their own learning processes? According to our new
curriculum, the following objectives are needed to:
• Increase pupils’ interest;

• Include pupils’ participation in different activities;
• Increase the meaningfulness of school;
• Make possible for each pupil to experience success;
• Learn in different learning environments;
• Inspire learning;
• Study multidisciplinary learning modules.
In the Finnish learning culture, where classroom design has been tra-
ditional and teacher’s role in the learning process dominant, this new
turn demands changes at all levels of education, especially in attitudes.
School should be seen more from the perspective of adolescents in co-
operational school rather than traditional routines, where adolescents are
more subordinates than equal participants.
The Ecology of Student Learning in Germany

Germany has undergone an interesting shift in terms of what educators
discuss and pay attention to. Because the German education system has
for a long time relied on sorting and sifting students—at the age of ten—
into the supposedly “right school” for them, a lot of attention has in the
past been paid to the structure of the school system. Types of schools, the
vocational “Hauptschule,” the middle-tier “Realschule” and the academic
“Gymnasium” each developed and defended their own rationale, often in
distinction to and with a certain implicit disregard for the other types.
Until the PISA-Shock of 2000, there was little communication and
hardly any co-operation and exchange between these pillars of German
education.
The problematic results of the first PISA study, especially with regard
to student equity, had one immediate effect: politicians were suddenly
ready to set aside significant budgets for sound empirical research on
what happens in classrooms and schools. This so-called empirical shift
has had long-ranging consequences: More and more research studies
were published and showed that the type of school a child attended did
actually matter as much as the quality of instruction in individual schools,
the “deep structures” supporting the learning process.
The so-called supply-usage model developed by German researcher
Helmke and Schrader (2014) has been widely used in the German con-
text to explain that learning does not happen automatically but rather
needs to be understood as an active choice students are making. The
“supply” teachers are making is a necessary but not a sufficient condition
for student learning. To what extent and at what level of depth students
make use of the given supply depends on many factors, some of them
residing in the individual student. The research on supply and usage in
learning has led to an enhanced interest in student motivation: how can
learning be organized to motivate adolescents to actively use and embrace
the supply made by the school? The model most widely embraced by
German practitioners working with adolescents in schools is the “motiva-
tional theory of self-determination” as developed by American research-
ers Deci and Ryan (2000). It sees intrinsic motivation as depending on
the extent to which three basic psychological needs are being satisfied:
• Competence: Does the learning environment enable the students to

control the outcome of their learning and to experience mastery?
• Relatedness: Does the learning environment enable adolescents to
interact, to feel connected and supported and to experience caring for
others?
• Autonomy: Does the learning environment enable adolescents to make
certain decisions themselves and to have agency over their own life?
Schools not labelling students at the young age of ten, are increasingly
seen as better able to enhance intrinsic motivation for disadvantaged stu-
dents, which has resulted in the gradual introduction of more compre-
hensive types of schooling. In addition to the motivational side of
168 B. Yee et al.
learning, what really matters seems to be what researchers call the “deep
structures” lying hidden below the surface of what is happening in the
classroom (Kunter and Trautwein 2013, pp. 76–78). While it is easy to
observe classroom interaction at the surface level (to look, for example, at
different teaching methods individual teachers are using), what really
enhances student learning are the more invisible factors. Three key factors
have been identified by German research (Kunter and Trautwein 2013,
pp. 78–102):
1. Cognitive activation: The single most important factor in creating

effective and stimulating learning environments for adolescents turned
out to be the quality of cognitive activation. To what extent is the
teacher able to get all adolescents actively interested and involved in
the learning process? Are the students “engaged” in their learning? Do
they find the learning process interesting and relevant? To what extent
do they see themselves as agents of their learning and develop a sense
of ownership? Is the learning environment only activating a small part
of the adolescents in the class or do teachers manage to motivate all
learners?
2. Classroom management: It turned out that effective learning requires
teachers who are able to manage interaction processes in the classroom
really well. No matter if students were involved in a teacher-student-
dialogue according to the Socratic method or if they were doing
project-work in small teams, what mattered for their learning out-
come was the extent to which a teacher managed the process well. Do
teachers make sure that the learning aims are transparent, that the
time in class is maximally used for learning, that students understand
the meaning of what they are supposed to work on and that learning
takes place in a safe and undisturbed environment?
Constructive support: What really makes a difference for the outcome of

learning, it turned out, is the amount of support and scaffolding teachers
provide individual learners with during their learning process: To what
extent are teachers able to teach adaptively, so that different learners get the
level of support they need? Do they differentiate tasks and break down
complex assignments in smaller units for all students to be able to succeed?
Do they fade and move to the background to let students who are com-
petently working on a task experience their self-efficacy? Do the students
receive ongoing formative feedback that helps them understand where
they stand in their learning and what they can do to improve? Because of
the country’s long tradition of sorting students into groups of supposedly
similar ability, generations of teachers in Germany have been trained to
teach what they saw as homogeneous groups of students by means of a
“one size fits all” approach. Internal differentiation and scaffolding have
not been within the core of the teacher repertoire and there is still little
knowledge and experience on how to do this well. (Trautmann and
Wischer 2011)
To learn well, adolescents need to develop intrinsic motivation which

is most likely when they experience themselves as competent, relating to
other individuals and to some extent autonomous. Teachers can best sup-
port adolescent learning when they activate them cognitively by creating
syllabi that seem interesting, challenging and meaningful.
The Ecology of Teaching in Canada

Engagement is one of those terms that often falls into the category of
educational jargon, one where everywhere you turn, a slightly different
definition emerges. The work of the Canadian Education Association
(CEA) in 2007 began to shed light on this widely used, yet often misin-
terpreted concept, and assist Canadian educators in their understanding
of what “increasing student engagement” would entail. What did you do
in school today? was a multi-year study that included the voices of over
63,000 Canadian adolescents. It was “designed to capture, assess and
inspire new ideas for enhancing the learning experiences of adolescents in
classrooms and schools, using an expanded framework for thinking about
student engagement and its relationship to learning” (Willms et al. 2009,
p. 6).
Emerging from this expansive study was a new understanding of
engagement, one that built upon the concepts of academic and social
engagement and further expanded to include the notion of intellectual
170 B. Yee et al.
engagement. Academic engagement was defined as: “participation in the

formal requirements of schooling” whereas, social engagement was said
to be, “a sense of belonging and participation in school life (2009, p. 6).
The third element of engagement, intellectual engagement was described
as, “A serious emotional and cognitive investment in learning, using
higher-order thinking skills (such as analysis and evaluation) to increase
understanding, solve complex problems, or construct new knowledge”
(2009, p. 6). It is this deep connection to and ownership of learning that
has a significant impact not only on students’ quality of lives at school,
but on the quality of students’ daily lives outside of them as well.
The basic tenets of intellectual engagement target the same ways of
thinking and the same ways of being that encompass the phrase, “learn-
ing to be.” The pursuit of intellectual engagement elevates teaching and
learning in the classroom beyond a traditional stand and delivers struc-
ture to one that necessitates a shift in the role of the teacher, to a designer
of learning, and asks the student to become a co-creator in that learning
partnership. Students are developing metacognitive skills not in isolation,
but in the context of deep disciplinary understanding in a broad range of
core and exploratory subject areas.
Two very practical tools have emerged from the What did you do in the
school today? research that have supported instructional leaders and teach-
ers as they work to create school and classroom contexts that lay the
foundation for the development of intellectual engagement. The Teacher
Effectiveness Framework outlines five core principles of effective teach-
ing, teaching that fosters the development of student intellectual engage-
ment and also the emergence of pedagogies responsive to the changing
demands on education systems around the world (Friesen 2009).
1. Effective teaching practice begins with the thoughtful and intentional

design of learning that engages students intellectually and
academically.
2. The work that students are asked to undertake is worthy of their time
and attention, is personally relevant, and deeply connected to the
world in which they live.
3. Assessment practices are clearly focused on improving student learn-
ing and guiding teaching decisions and actions.
4. Teachers foster a variety of interdependent relationships in classrooms

that promote learning and create a strong culture around learning.
5. Teachers improve their practice in the company of peers.
Surrounding these five core principles, and infused into each of them, is
the effective use of the technologies of our time for both teaching and
learning. (Friesen 2009, p. 4)
The second tool that has significantly impacted the way teachers in one
urban Alberta school district design learning to foster intellectual engage-
ment is the Discipline Based Inquiry Rubric. This rubric outlines eight
dimensions to support the design of learning for students intended to
excite and engage them and lead to deep understanding of the discipline
they are working within. Through the lens of the discipline based inquiry
rubric, teachers ensure they design worthwhile, authentic learning oppor-
tunities that are true to the disciplines, rather than what Viviane Robinson,
Distinguished Professor in Learning Development and Professional
Practice, from the University of Auckland, often terms, “happy, busy,
lovely” activities that are sometimes seductive for teachers and students,
but often result in no deep learning (Park 2014).
What are some key lessons to be learned from this research? To borrow
a quotation from Jardine et al. (2008), “What began with such enthusi-
asm and hope around a century ago in the organization and imagining of
schooling has simply worn out…” (p. 14). Test scores alone cannot pre-
dict teacher effectiveness, nor can they be seen as an indicator of how
students “feel” about their learning experience and subsequently how
well students are being prepared for life beyond school. In fact, using a
Canadian context, international test scores might give one the impression
that all students are deeply engaged and invested in their learning. Willms’
(2003) research on student engagement suggested that high standings by
Canadian students in international measures are not necessarily matched
by high levels of student engagement. Above all else, this research has
shown us how very multidimensional, yet crucial to student success (in
school and beyond), the concept of engagement is. In order for schools to
support the needs of all students as they learn to be learners in a very
172 B. Yee et al.
complex world, the school and classroom environments must attend to

all three dimensions of engagement, academic, social and intellectual,
and the many facets of teaching effectiveness and the design of learning
that fosters it.
The Ecology of Teaching in Finland

The Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare is collecting a large
data concerning adolescents and youth’s health and life in Finland every
year from different age of pupils from Finnish comprehensive school
(School Health Promotion Study). Questionnaire includes also questions
of pupils’ experiences of teachers and teaching. According to those results
in 2015 nearly half (49 per cent) of 8th and 9th grade students experi-
enced teacher are not interested in their thoughts and opinions. Every
third feels teachers are not supporting and encouraging students to
express their views and opinions and 37 per cent feel they do not have any
part or role in the development of the school culture. Though percentages
are lower than they were 10 years ago (School Health Promotion Study
2006), results are describing teacher-centred classroom culture where the
voice of teacher is strong and the voice of adolescents is quiet.
The experiences of adolescents described above are different compared
to the spirit of the Finnish national core curriculum or other visions of
Finnish future school, which stress strong concord between teachers and
students. This contradiction is explained partly by strong cohesion among
teachers based on tradition and shared idea of teacherhood and profes-
sionalism. Only partly, because teachers’ pedagogical freedom is extremely
large in Finland. Because of this freedom, diversity in classrooms is enor-
mous and we do not have big qualitative data concerning teachers’ work,
because it is difficult to get data which is comparable. In this context,
again, two faces can be found: old school, where traditionalism is strong,
and new school, where teaching is based on curiosity and experimental
work by the whole community.
From these viewpoints, teaching in Finland’s future looks different
from what it is now and according to Rautiainen and Kostiainen (2015),
the following transfers are changing the culture:
• From static state to dynamic agility, where experimental culture is

strong.
• Extending perspective from the present and near future to the long-
term future, where radically future-oriented scenarios are possible.
• From conventional views of time and space to new ways of construct-
ing time and space, because existing spaces do not sufficiently support
future teaching.
• From structured systems to open systems, where teaching will be tak-
ing different shapes in new learning environments.
At classroom and school level, in practice these directions mean teach-

ing which is under experimentation and studying, such as co-teaching,
digitalism and co-operation with other stakeholders.
The Ecology of Teaching in Germany

Until quite recently, the common notion of what it meant to be a teacher
in Germany was quite narrowly focused on instruction. This is still
reflected in teacher working conditions. As civil servants, teachers do not
have a contract describing in detail the various professional roles and
expectations implied by the current international understanding of the
teacher professionalism. Instead, the state only defines the number of les-
sons each teacher is supposed to teach per week, their so-called Deputat.
It is thus not surprising, that teachers have in the past primarily defined
their role as transmitters of a canon of knowledge defined by the curricu-
lum. However, this narrow understanding of what it means to be a teacher
has been widely challenged in post-PISA Germany. The past 15 years
have seen controversial public debates on the role of teachers not only as
enablers but also as preventers of learning. Some reformers went so far as
to demand the complete abandonment of the term “teacher” because
they saw it as embodying a philosophy that values teaching more than
learning and prone to reducing the learner to a passive object rather than
a self-determined and self-regulating agent of his or her learning (Kahl
and Fratton 2014). These reformers suggested replacing the term “teacher”
with alternative concepts such as “learning coach,” “learning guide” or
174 B. Yee et al.
“learning companion,” which in turn led to controversial debates with

more conservative educational lobby groups who feared the end of
schooling (Felten 2016).
A similar culture war on the semantics of schooling focused on the shift
from input-driven curricula, so-called teaching plans (Lehrpläne), to out-
come-based curricula describing competences students should reach by a
certain age. This shift took place after the first PISA study, when German
policy makers had the impression that the input-driven curricula the
country had used were outdated and had not delivered the same high-
quality results as the more modern outcome-based curricula more success-
ful countries had already introduced much earlier. Whereas certain
progressive groups in education perceived competence-standards as the
holy grail of modern education (Hunziker 2017), more conservative
groups feared that the supposedly vague notion of what “competence”
means and the multiplicity of competences students were expected to
develop would distract from the core responsibility of education, namely
to enable “Bildung” seen as a process of working through a handed down
and stable canon of knowledge (Liessmann 2014). These public debates
on what it means to be teaching in today’s schools both in terms of teacher
roles and the aims of teaching have been thought-provoking and intellec-
tually stimulating. After years of controversial debate the tone is becoming
less biting. The supposedly antagonistic positions between the proponents
of the classical “teacher” with a focus on “Bildung” versus the more pro-
gressive “learning coach” with a focus on competences are becoming more
integrated and nuanced. The controversial debates manifest a substantial
learning process the entire German school system is undergoing as it is
moving from the industrial model of schooling inherited from the nine-
teenth century to schooling suitable for the knowledge age.
he Ecology of Professional Learning

T
in Canada
While the concept of teacher professional development is not new, emerg-
ing research on the sustainability of educational reform has underscored
the important connection between a continuous cycle of professional
knowledge building and improved student learning outcomes (City et al.

2009; Stoll et al. 2006; Timperley 2008). The professional learning com-
munity or PLC, typically enacted as a series of highly structured meet-
ings (often for the purposes of accountability), is now being
reconsidered—an opportunity to re-imagine the principles, processes
and context for more effective teacher professional learning. The work of
Timperley et al. (2007), Timperley (2008), Bolam (2005), Stoll (2006,
2008, 2012) and their colleagues has illuminated both the positive
impact of sustained professional learning among teachers within and
between schools along with the complex interplay of individual, school-
based and systemic factors that influence the development and direction
of professional learning networks. In a 2012 international examination
of how to best prepare teachers and develop leaders for the changing
landscape of education worldwide, the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development’s Andreas Schleicher described the need
for teachers to become “active agents of their own professional growth”
(p. 73). Processes for building teacher capacity which are embedded into
a school culture of continuous professional learning are now considered
to be the most effective ways of supporting teachers, as they learn from
their colleagues and alongside their colleagues by engaging in metacogni-
tion related to their own practice (Jackson and Temperley 2007). In our
increasingly interconnected world, where schools are subject to growing
systemic pressures for improved student achievement and where class-
rooms are becoming more diverse, the principles of developing both the
individual and collective capacity of teachers within a school environ-
ment of continuous professional learning is supported by numerous
pieces of research. For education systems in many countries this presents
a new notion of how to positively influence sustainable improvement in
student, teacher and system outcomes.
It would be misleading to portray the Canadian Education system as
having one approach towards the professional learning and develop-
ment of the nation’s teachers. Multiple factors, such as the number of
days devoted to professional learning, the content and focus of profes-
sional learning and the funds available to support professional learning,
vary within the individual school districts among the ten provinces and
three territories in Canada. Current provincial and territorial beliefs
176 B. Yee et al.
related to the importance and direction of teacher professional learning

and development often surface as fiercely debated issues during contract
negotiation times, usually seeing teacher unions and departments of
education at odds with one another. The previously referred to Teaching
Effectiveness Framework (Friesen 2009), emerging from the cross-Can-
ada, multi-year What did you do in school today? shed light on the impor-
tance of teacher professional development. The fifth principle of effective
teaching practice is that teachers improve their practice in the company
of their peers. Just as the “sage on the stage” view of the teacher impart-
ing wisdom to a room filled with students in neat rows is no longer seen
as an effective pedagogical strategy, teachers, teaching in isolation,
behind locked doors with blinds drawn does nothing to support the
continuous growth that is fundamental to a teacher’s pedagogical
practice.
This shift in discourse has caused one school district in Alberta to re-
envision how to best support and facilitate the processional growth and
learning of its teachers. Ten “system” days are devoted to professional
learning each year, allowing for the teachers in the over 250+ schools in
the district to collaborate, cross-pollinate and create support networks.
Further, written into the latest collective agreement is a clause indicating
that the staff at each school will have the discretion to determine the
professional learning focus for five of these ten days. While certainly not
mandated, it is very common for staff to devote these five days around
professional learning in support of school development plan goals. The
professional teachers’ union also requires all teachers to create a yearly
teacher professional growth plan (TPGP). A common positive trend that
has emerged is the alignment of teachers’ TPGP, with both district and
school-based goals. This alignment has served to create a shift in teachers’
beliefs about the effectiveness of their professional learning along with
the ways in which professional learning is carried out. An approach
towards professional learning that sees it not as an event that happens
when an outside expert is brought in to deliver a “sit and get” presenta-
tion, but rather as teachers engaging in continuous cycles of dialogue
with colleagues and ongoing professional practice reflection has been
much more effective in creating a culture of teachers as learners in our
schools.

T
in Finland
Teachers’ status is high in Finland. In addition, teaching programmes at
the universities are one of the most popular among all the university
applicants. Also, Finnish teacher education itself has a very good reputa-
tion not only in Finland but all around the world. But what happens to
teachers after their graduation? Have you heard of high profile in-service
teacher training in Finland or professional development?
Probably not. Traditionally, pre-service teacher education’s role has
been extremely emphasized in Finland because of the nature of the teach-
ing profession. Teachers’ credentials are based on individual effort and
according to this idea, their professional development has been con-
structed according to the need and will of the individual teacher. In prac-
tice, some teachers have invested in their professional development, and
some have not. On the other hand, in-service teacher education in
Finland is constructed around separate days or courses, which have
helped individual teachers with their classroom work but not the school
community as a whole.
This state of professional development and in-service teacher educa-
tion has come under critique, especially over the past decade (see e.g.
Heikkinen et al. 2015). It has been criticized not only from the viewpoint
of individuality, but also because it is considered fragmentary, unsystem-
atic and old-fashioned. Times have changed rapidly in the past 20 years,
and this has had a direct influence on teachers’ work. Also, the idea of
teacherhood has changed from an individual culture towards co-
operational culture.
During the past ten years, the basis of professional development and
in-service teacher education has also been changing in Finland. Individual
courses are still part of the “tray,” but more and more professional devel-
opment consists of building a community together with other teachers in
the school. The contemporary idea of professional development in
Finland has at its base the idea of the school community’s own develop-
mental work, which resonates strongly with the acute questions in a
school’s everyday life, but also for the local, national and international
178 B. Yee et al.
questions of school, learning and education. In this sense, a new ideal for
professional development is intellectual community, which studies its
conditions of work from different perspectives. It is not possible without
time for co-operational work, which head teachers are spending more
and more time on in schools. This demands very professional and system-
atic leading by head teachers and strong confidence in the capacity of the
teaching community.

T
in Germany
For several decades, the professional learning of teachers in Germany has
followed the traditional paradigm of instruction and reflected the pre-
dominant teaching mode used in schools and universities. Individual
teachers took part in seminars offered by state-run institutes for teacher
professional development. In those courses they were acquainted with
knowledge and rarely got the opportunity to practise skills and reflect on
the transfer of their professional learning into classrooms. When they
returned to their schools, the long-term effects of this kind of learning on
teacher practices were minimal (Lipowsky 2016). Similar to the findings
of international research (Timperley 2007, 2008), German research on
effective teacher professional development (Lipowsky 2016) has revealed
the deficits of the traditional instruction model of professional learning.
As it did not reflect what is known about effective adult learning, it
remained largely ineffective. For professional learning to impact the
actual practice of teaching and learning in schools, it needs to be
embedded in everyday teaching practice and connected to the strategic
aims a school is working on. Positive results are most likely if teachers
work together in professional learning communities on an ongoing basis
and focus on specific outcomes.
Two types of evidence drive effective professional learning: on the one
hand, teachers need to take into account the most current research on
what works in education; on the other, they should, for their joint work,
use data collected in the school and monitoring evidence made available
to the school by the education system. To perceive their professional
learning as relevant and meaningful, teachers need to experience a sense

of agency which is effectively supported if they are given sufficient time
to use collective inquiry and deliberation and experiment with new ideas
and practice what they have learned. This process requires a delicate bal-
ance of challenge and support provided by school leaders and system
administrators: it works best if professional development is experienced
as a cognitively stimulating process, in which teachers perceive their pro-
fessional growth as personally meaningful while at the same time experi-
encing it as a collaborative enterprise, a group effort that carries individuals
through difficult and challenging tasks and provides them with a network
of expertise and mutual support. The paradigm shift from the individual
to the collaborative, from the one-off event to continuous collaboration,
from the instruction model to the co-construction model of professional
learning has been a rough and unfinished one in the German context.
Multiple barriers remain to be removed for the system-wide imple-
mentation of this type of professional learning in a school system that has
traditionally treated teachers like lone fighters in the classroom and has
organized schools in the form of loosely-coupled systems, in which co-
operation and joint learning was the exception rather than the rule.
Adolescents will certainly gain from the ongoing change in how profes-
sional learning is perceived and organized. They benefit, as we have dem-
onstrated earlier in the book, from a support network of adults who pull
together to make learning environments work for students.
he Ecology of Educational Leadership

T
in Canada
Rumble and Aspland (2009) put forward four core attributes of the mid-
dle years teacher supported through their own research study, which they
suggest form part of any pre-requisite search for a teacher of adolescents.
These core attributes, the capacity to forge a middle school identity, a
designer of wholesome curriculum, a specialist in adolescence, and a
capacity to sustain middle school reform and support systems for the
middle school teacher, should perhaps be applied more broadly to also
include the search for middle school principals. The practice of many
180 B. Yee et al.
education systems to hire school-based instructional leaders, principals

and assistant/vice-principals, who have little to no background in work-
ing with teachers, students and their families in middle level learning
environments in puzzling to me. A search of recent job postings for mid-
dle school principals and assistant principals in Canada turned up several
which listed as the only criterion assistant principals with a given number
of years of experience or current principals desiring a transfer. There was
no mention of specific expertise in middle level learning or a passion for
working with adolescents and their teachers.
The multi-year, cross-Canada What did you do in school today? study
presented findings which should have been cause for concern for those
leading and teaching in Canada’s middle schools. Responses elicited from
over 63,000 Canadian adolescents revealed only 37 per cent of them
reported being intellectually engaged in their learning, encompassing
survey measures of interest and motivation, effort, and perceived quality
of instruction. With this percentage decreasing throughout the middle
years of learning, one must ask why a more widespread, intentional look
at the processes, policies and people supporting our nation’s middle years
learning environments has not been called for.
In her book, Student-Centered Leadership, Viviane Robinson (2011),
presented five leadership dimensions that were found to have the most
significant impact on student achievement outcomes. The five leader-
ship dimensions, establishing goals and expectations, resourcing strate-
gically, ensuring quality teaching, leading teacher learning and
development, and ensuring an orderly and safe environment, are most
effectively practised when an instructional leader understands the con-
text of teaching and learning in their school. A clearly articulated vision
for early adolescent learning should be viewed as an essential undertak-
ing of instructional leadership and a sign that the instructional leader
understands well what is needed to create a developmentally respon-
sive, intellectually engaging middle level learning environment.
Creating the conditions for teaching and learning to unfold is the cen-
tral task of the student-centred leader. This happens when principals
have the necessary skills, knowledge, expertise and experience to act in
the capacity of the instructional leader for the middle years teachers
and students they serve.
The findings from these two pieces of research reinforce the impor-
tance of searching for the “right fit” instructional leader to advance teach-
ing and learning in Canada’s middle schools. Attention must be paid to
current research along with paradigm shifts occurring in education sys-
tems around the world that indicate our collective thinking related to
instructional leadership in middle level learning environments needs to
shift in order to better serve this population of teachers and learners.
Newly emerging images of teaching and learning in the middle years
must form the basis for developing, selecting and cultivating those who
will lead the schools that serve our adolescent learners.

T
in Finland
New lines for teacher education (OKM 2016) stress not only life-long
learning as a basis of professional development but also leading of the
educational institute as one of the corner-stones in the process of making
schools more efficient learning organizations than they now are. According
to new lines for teacher education (OKM 2016):
• Strategic leading will be developed via education focused on educa-

tional leadership but also as part of pre-service teacher education;
• Teachers’ role as part of the leading processes will be strengthened as
well as head teachers’ large-scale educational leadership;
• Head teacher support will be strengthened by networks and teams
using means such as education, regular meeting and mentoring. Also,
more participatory and team-based leading will be developed.
Historically, head teachers have been seen as an administrational part

of the school system, where their major role is organizational and they are
also deputies of school with other municipalities and stakeholders. Slogan
“head teacher is one of us, who take care of administration” is the-oft
heard definition of a head teacher’s position and work in the school
defined by teachers. In fact, head teachers have been in charge not only
182 B. Yee et al.
of administration but also economics and pedagogical development of

the whole school. Pedagogical leading has played an especially minor role
just because head teachers have not had enough resources for the same.
This immense amount of work in head teachers’ everyday lives is one
reason for the attractiveness of a head teacher’s position. It is more and
more difficult to find qualified and motivated teachers to continue their
career as head teacher, even if there is more support and education than
earlier. Like teachers, head teachers are also carrying the culture of indi-
vidual labour in their work. New kinds of working cultures such as
shared leadership or teachers’ and adolescents’ participation in the
leading processes are being implemented slowly in everyday school
routines.
Also, head teachers’ education has changed in the last 15 years. Those,
who want to focus on educational leadership can obtain degrees, for
example at the Institute of Educational Leadership at the University of
Jyväskylä, which gives university-based training in educational leadership
and also supports the development of research around the phenomenon
of educational leadership. More and more head teachers’ work in Finland
will be based on research-based education, just as teacher education in
Finland in general has moved in this direction.

T
in Germany
It is only recently that the leadership paradigm in Germany has shifted
from a transactional one to a transformational one (Leithwood 2006).
For decades, school principals had been seen as individuals in charge of
management and administration rather than innovation and change.
That changed quite rapidly when PISA data revealed that schools had
failed to support their most needy students. Even before the inception of
major school innovation initiatives like the German School Award, char-
ismatic school principals had begun to emerge with visionary ideas on
how to turn schools into places where adolescents, independent of their
social background, could learn well and be successful. Among the first of
these publicly visible school leaders were Enja Riegel and Margaret
Rasfeld, both heads of large secondary schools. They saw the unsatisfac-
tory results and a general impression of stagnation and low student moti-
vation in the German education system as a fit occasion for radical school
change. In the 1990 and the early years of the new millennium, both
women became well-known for their new ideas about schooling. Enja
Riegel made project-based learning and formative assessment (using a
criterion- rather than a social-reference norm) core parts of her state
school’s culture when these ideas were still widely seen as genuinely “alter-
native.” Margaret Rasfeld at Evangelische Schule Berlin-Zentrum intro-
duced the “Lernbüros,” where students could individually work on
reaching targets in core subjects with the support of teachers. She also
implemented three-week long project phases in the middle of the school
year, during which teams of students had to work on a self-designed
ambitious “challenge project” or do service learning in demanding
“responsibility projects” in their local communities. Both school leaders
became authors and published their ideas in bestselling books (Riegel
2005; Rasfeld and Spiegel 2012). The fact that school principals of ordi-
nary state schools became public intellectuals can be seen as a crucial
turning point. More and more school leaders dared to develop bold ideas,
many of them especially targeted at meeting the needs of adolescent
learners. This emergence of strong instructional leadership was enhanced
by public reform initiatives like the German School Award and other
such incentives created on the level of Germany’s 16 states or regions. It
now became not only accepted but officially approved to emerge from
the anonymous crowd of school administrators to show strong instruc-
tional leadership and present a school’s work confidently to the outside
world.
While this development was generally positive and inspired many
other schools to step forward, there was one problem: as there was no
strongly developed culture of collaborative inquiry and distributed
leadership, several of the charismatic principals acted on their own,
often quite successfully for some time but in some cases failing to cre-
ate momentum that turned others into leaders and made the change
sustainable beyond one strong individual. This was partly to be
explained by the fact that leadership training for school principals in
Germany had always focused too narrowly on the administrative and
184 B. Yee et al.
managerial side of the principalship and neglected psychological aspects

of innovation and change. In addition, there were significant structural
barriers, which remain partly in place until the present day: German
teachers are expected to teach a comparatively large number of lessons
per week.1 Teachers’ work contracts do not contain weekly hours for
joint planning, lesson study and school improvement. While there is a
middle level leadership in larger secondary schools, many small schools
do not have formal leadership positions beyond the principalship. The
lack of respective training in addition to structural barriers account for
the fact that distributed leadership and collaborative school improve-
ment are still weakly developed in the German context. A closer look
at the schools which have won the German School Award since its
inception in 2006 reveals that a strong individual at the top is a neces-
sary but not a sufficient condition for sustainable innovations in
schools. The more than 60 schools which have so far been formally
acknowledged for their high-quality work are a diverse group: primary
and secondary schools, in urban and rural settings, many working in
underprivileged contexts, but some in well-to-do neighbourhoods and
towns, many of them serving immigrant communities but some in tra-
ditional white farming towns. Given all of this diversity, it is striking to
what extent the winning schools share a set of features when it comes
to their leadership:
• All of the schools have leaders who have been able to imagine a school
reality that works for children and adolescents of diverse backgrounds
and preconditions;
• They are strong communicators who manage to empower others to act
as leaders and in doing so encourage distributed leadership;
• The school leadership teams of all award-winning schools collaborate
closely and find the time for joint planning and work in spite of the
structural barriers in the system;
1
The average German teacher teaching adolescents in a secondary school has a teaching load of 26
lessons of 45 minutes duration. Many of these lessons are combined to 90 minute block lessons
today, but the overall teaching load in Germany is still comparatively high by international
standards.
• The leadership teams in these schools have successfully focused on

learning, with the learners and their motivation to learn a key focus for
attention.
For schools to be welcoming and effective learning environments for ado-

lescents, they need imaginative and strong school leaders, who do not act
alone but inspire leadership in others. Because good schools for adoles-
cents in the twenty-first century do look and feel quite different from
what these leaders would have experienced themselves when they were
young, they need to be bold and courageous in breaking the mould of
what schooling is all about.
he Ecology of Educational Research

T
in Canada
One of the most significant pieces of research to emerge from Canada in
recent years related to the adolescent experience in school was the CEA’s
What did you do in school today? study. While on the surface, Canadian
results in international tests of achievement would lead one to believe
that both students and education systems are faring well, two notable
cross-Canada measures portray somewhat different images. The study
has, since 2007, surveyed over 63,000 Canadian adolescents and found
that although 69 per cent report being engaged in school, as measured
through indicators such as attendance, homework behaviours, positive
relationships with friends and participation in extracurricular activities,
only 37 per cent reported being engaged in learning. The concept of
being engaged in learning is measured by reported levels of effort, interest
and motivation and perceived quality of instruction (Dunleavy et al.
2012). What does this tell us? I believe there are many ways we can inter-
pret this data, but as with any data, I always feel the most important
questions come in the form of “so what and now what?” (How can we
look at this data as one piece of an entire data story? In which context
should this data be viewed? How can we use this data to determine next
steps?) This data appears to indicate that many Canadian adolescents do
186 B. Yee et al.
well in school, despite not being intellectually engaged in their learning.

Perhaps even more perplexing is that of the three indicators reported to
have the most significant impact on academic outcomes, only one, effort,
relates back to intellectual engagement. Attendance and homework
behaviours are the other two indicators found to have a positive effect on
academic outcomes in the three core areas of mathematics, language arts
and science. Dunleavy et al. (2012) explained, “Our purpose in this study
was to illuminate the relationship between intellectual engagement and
academic outcomes. Yet, in our study, students do well on school-based
assessments without being intellectually engaged” (p. 6). This finding has
led to more questions than answers, calling into question current assess-
ment practices and if the learning tasks students are being given require
them to be intellectually engaged:
The results of our national sample of What did you do in school today?
schools may indicate that traditional assessment practices are still preva-
lent, in that the three measures correlated with higher marks – attendance,
effort and homework completion – are the very things that current research
and policy say should matter least in determinations of academic success.
Although these behaviours and dispositions contribute to creating the con-
ditions for learning, they do not tell us what students know and can do as
a result of learning. (Dunleavy et al. 2012, p. 7)
The “now what” for this important contribution to Canadian educa-

tional research comes in the form of a question, “Where does this lead
us?” (Dunleavy et al. 2012, p. 8). Dunleavy and his colleagues (2012)
point towards current beliefs about assessment and assessment practices
as the first places educators need to turn their attention:
The concept of intellectual engagement resonates strongly with many edu-

cators because it represents the kinds of learning that they aspire to for all
students. Yet often the most basic of structures in schools – in this case
marking practices and definitions of academic success – can work against
the emergence of practices that would support higher levels of achievement
and engagement among larger numbers of students. Existing models of
assessment rarely measure these higher types of learning or the competen-
cies they foster. (p. 8)
What did you do in school today? brought attention to the schooling

experiences of Canadian adolescents and highlighted the importance of
intellectual engagement. This was a key development in the aim to
improve education outcomes for all Canadian adolescents. It is antici-
pated that the next phase of this cross-Canada study will shed more light
on how to best integrate what research has revealed about adolescent
development as well as what is known about effective instructional prac-
tices to create a coherent education strategy that will meet the needs of
Canadian students in an ever-changing world.
The Ecology of Educational Research in Finland

Educational research is an essential part of the educational ecosystem in
Finland. The roots of educational research are strong in the country’s his-
tory. Education also holds a strong position at the universities in Finland. In
addition, some faculties of education undertake a broad co-operation with
other faculties concerning research in the field of pedagogy of subjects in the
school. The idea of “teachers as researchers” also includes subject teachers.
Adolescents are at the core of educational research in Finland for many
reasons, mostly because of their good learning results in international sur-
veys but also because of the problems they face in school, especially partici-
pation culture and their satisfaction with the learning offered in schools.
The problem is, how new research results are to reach schools and teachers.
Another problem is the wide variety of the educational research available
and how it is used to inform current practice. Currently, research based on
the perspectives, experiences, and expertise of researchers in different phases
of their career is still rare. This will change in the future because the Finnish
government is demanding all the universities to profile their activities and
put resources into the research of the most successful groups. Behind this
shift is a vision of how research could be more successful in the interna-
tional context and also have a greater impact on society. Finding balance
between large-scale research and new small-scale research is a challenge for
the future. At the moment, many research projects are still based on the
work of one to three researchers, sometimes operating in isolation from the
current realities of students’ and teachers’ experiences in schools.
188 B. Yee et al.
One solution for these two challenges is to strengthen the co-operation

of stakeholders in education. The more visible development researchers
are, the more direct the line from the researcher’s desk to a school’s reality.
Together with student teachers who are both practising teachers’ work
and also researchers’ skills, they can create an exceptional ecosystem,
which will promote not only educational research, but also school devel-
opment and teacher education.
he Ecology of Educational Research

T
in Germany
One of the most positive outcomes of the German PISA-Shock of 2000
has been the turnaround of the German education system with regard to
the role of educational research for policy making. Up until the begin-
ning of the new millennium, educational research had a hard time com-
peting with medical and technical research for scarce public and private
research grants. Research on schooling was marginalized in small faculties
and fragmented in small sub-communities and research paradigms. The
PISA-Shock triggered what is now called the “empirical turn” in
educational research (Buchhaas-Birkholz 2009). Suddenly there was a
significant public interest in studies analyzing causalities and correlations
in education. Educational research results in some cases even made it into
the leading newspapers and the evening news. Both the state (on the
national and the Länder level) and private foundations were now willing
to provide substantial amounts of funding and support for educational
research.
The questions that drew the most attention were equity issues in par-
ticular, with regard to vulnerable groups such as recent immigrant stu-
dents and questions related to school improvement. Hand in hand with
the new focus on empirical research went the introduction of substantial
forms of education monitoring, both on a municipal and on a state level.
Achievement and equity data were now reviewed and presented in ways
that provoked debates on social justice and equitable access to education,
especially for vulnerable groups like recent immigrants. Policy initiatives
by the state and local municipalities focused on changing the sorting and
sifting policies in favour of a more equitable and permeable school sys-

tem. Vulnerable adolescents and the support they need to achieve higher
levels of education were getting more attention than ever before in post-
war Germany. Even if Germany has been consistently advancing in PISA,
progress with regard to equity is still slow. As a consequence of this, more
and more schools are beginning to collect data themselves and use collec-
tive inquiry to come up with suitable measures and interventions to sup-
port adolescents in their learning.
For a long time, “research” in the German context signified a scholarly
activity conducted in universities. Anglo-American traditions like “action-
research” done by practitioners were frowned upon as unprofessional and
lacking methodological rigidity. It is a positive development for the “ecol-
ogy of research” in the German context (Altrichter et al. 2017) that this
narrow view of what it means to be a “researcher” is now being challenged
by teachers beginning to do practitioner research in their schools. This
bottom-up change adds to a rich landscape of research ranging from
large-scale empirical research to the research reviews in the context of
educational system monitoring to grassroots-level practitioner-driven
research in the context of school improvement and teacher professional
development. Research on all these different levels is the key factor
turning a static and languishing school system into one that has become
rather dynamic in recent years.
The Way Forward: Closing Thoughts

There is a lot of pressure to leave readers with something inspirational in
the final phrases of a book. We remember our original intent: for this to
be a book that practitioners would carry with them, with dog-eared
pages, highlighted passages and notes scribbled in the margins. We
wanted this to be a book that you would want to gift to your colleagues,
to teachers new to the profession, a book that would never collect dust on
your bookshelves or find its way into a banker’s box tucked away in some
storage space. We hope that what we have offered has been a provocation
of sorts. A presentation of current research, perhaps in a new form, along
with images of current practice and shifts in discourse that have caused
190 B. Yee et al.
you to pause and consider the current state of adolescent learning and
development in your context. The way forward is simple; we cannot con-
tinue to look at adolescent learners simply as older versions of primary
students, nor a younger version of secondary students. They are unique
learners in their own right. They are deserving of and require intention,
care and support around all facets of their interaction and experience with
schooling. As educators, we transform the adolescent learning experience
through first acknowledging their unique learning needs and then seeking
to better understand how their educational experience can in fact be trans-
formed through the learning environment we create in our classrooms. As
instructional leaders, we create the conditions within our schools that sup-
port the philosophies and processes most conducive to adolescents’ growth
as learners and developing individuals. As a community of teachers, we
ensure that collectively, we continue to develop as professional learners,
with the lens of always seeking to be better for our adolescent learners.
Through research we continue to question and seek answers to the ques-
tion of how to ensure the lived experience of adolescents in school meets
their unique developmental and learning needs. As education systems we
support a whole generation of adolescent learners by acknowledging that
the true way forward may come in the form of a fundamental shift in the
way we approach adolescent learners, their learning and the learning envi-
ronments our systems endorse. This work is not for the faint of heart.
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Brandy Yee, Anne Sliwka, Matti Rautiainen - Engaging Adolescent Learners-Springer International Publishing - Palgrave Macmillan (2018)

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Engaging Adolescent Learners

ISBN 978-3-319-52601-0 ISBN 978-3-319-52602-7 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018953169

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover illustration: © huePhotography / Getty

1 Why Comparative Research on the Middle Years? 1

3 Multicultural and Multifaceted Canada 71

4 Germany: A System Undergoing Change 115

5 Finland: Towards the Future School 139

Fig. 3.1 (a, b, c) Whys, hows and whats on rocks 89

through 12) as being of crucial importance in a child’s growth and devel-

This is not a group of slightly more complex primary students. Nor is it a

Truly understanding the unique developmental needs of early adolescent

With much attention worldwide currently focused on the early years

During these transitional years, students change significantly--physically,

understanding and appreciation of other cultures and the unique histo-

Research to Praxis: Seeing What Is Possible

In Chaps. 3, 4 and 5, our country chapters, we will explore how cur-

of schooling such as curricula, design of learning environments, teaching

what Kemmis et al. describe as new forms of understanding (sayings),

• new languages and discourses that express new ways of thinking,

Intellectually, it has been a fascinating enterprise to trace and to synthe-

what extent publications about adolescent schooling only reference

professional learning (4) leading and (5) researching. Traditional catego-

• Sayings: the semantics of how stakeholders including students talk

Our cross-national perspective requires that we take the broader

stood as an act of initiating individuals into practices. The complex task of

teaching. Researching has become a core practice of “ecologies of prac-

To be an educator requires one to have a deep understanding of how

© The Author(s) 2018 21

• Adolescents’ perspectives on their schooling needs in response to their

First, a brief overview of the adolescent developmental period to ensure

1. Physical: Young adolescent learners mature at varying rates and go

Adolescence itself, as it is understood and experienced in most advanced

As the above passage indicates, adolescence is widely recognized to be

 he Impact of the Neurobiology of Adolescent

The hallmark of physical growth during adolescence is often referred

cific hormones, which determine tissue growth and function. Changes in

Adolescent Brain Development During the early adolescent years, the

Different parts of the brain mature at different rates, adding complex-

cient circuitry in the brain) is accelerated, and continues throughout a

The Developmental “Perfect Storm”

what essentially boils down to adolescents being able to self-regulate their

ensuring opportunities are presented for it to develop in a safe and sup-

An Optimistic Outlook

model, through the evolution of a Positive Youth Development (PYD)

 he Adolescent Perspective: “What Would

in the form of the students’ voices. Instructional leaders, teachers and

Research to Praxis: Engaging Students as Active Participants in

To learns the needs of adolescent learners necessitates that we engage

Research to Praxis: Nurturing Student Agency in Their Learning

 ultivating Positive Teacher–Student Relationships:

Research to Praxis: The Importance of First Impressions

yourself as a learner, about yourself as an individual and about the person

 urturing Positive Peers Relationships in and Through

Research to Praxis: Removing Barriers to Student Learning

among teachers who cross international borders. The answer comes in

Traditional schooling isn’t working for an awful lot of students. We can

And so it seems appropriate to ask the question, “Whose needs are we

Informed Design of Learning: “Fits Like a Glove”

Hart (1983) equates designing learning for students without a deep

 onnecting Students to a Learning Community: “Let

Research to Praxis: Self-fulfilling Prophecy

1 Why Comparative Research on the Middle Years? 1

3 Multicultural and Multifaceted Canada 71

4 Germany: A System Undergoing Change 115

5 Finland: Towards the Future School 139

Fig. 3.1 (a, b, c) Whys, hows and whats on rocks 89

he Impact of the Neurobiology of Adolescent

The Developmental “Perfect Storm”

An Optimistic Outlook

he Adolescent Perspective: “What Would

ultivating Positive Teacher–Student Relationships:

urturing Positive Peers Relationships in and Through

Informed Design of Learning: “Fits Like a Glove”

onnecting Students to a Learning Community: “Let

Teacher Pedagogical Response

In Search of Expert Teachers: “The Importance

ultifaceted Teacher Expertise: “Wearing Many Hats

L earning Relationship: “In the End, It Is All

ssessment That Supports Student Learning: “Holding

ultiple Opportunities to Experience Success: “The

orm and Criterion Referencing: “Stop the Madness

uilding Flexibility into Structures and Processes: “Not

Instructional Leadership Response

haracteristics of Effective Instructional Leaders: “A

New View on Instructional Leadership: “Creating

eflecting on Current Practices: “More Like a

he Importance of Non-cognitive Factors in Student

The Middle Years Movement: “A History Lesson”

The Canadian Context

unpredictability in e ducation funding is one of the biggest concerns

Images of Practice: One School Three Lessons

of the schooling experience of an adolescent as we approach the two-

Building a Learning Community: The Big Rocks

“ protective” reasons, not wanting their teachers to become distracted or