Study tour




					Thanks to Paul D Scottl for allowing use of the picture.


	Organising a research trip

	Too many change-makers hunt for the future by looking at what the competition are doing. Copying means looking at recently built schools, or a new iPhone app; innovating means being first to market. People need to learn how to do it. That’s where a ‘not like us’ study tour can help.

		How many conferences on the future learning have you been to, only to hear from no-one other than a teacher or an architect? If that describes the kind of event you’ve been going to, then all you’re hearing about is the further improvement of schools. But as we wander warily into the 21st century, it is becoming increasingly clear that, as well as ‘more’and ‘better ’- eg more technology and better staffrooms - we need ‘different’.

Shortly after I set up Stakeholder Design, I was approached by the UK Department for Education and Wolverhampton Local Authority to organise a research trip with a difference. The resultant ‘Not Like Us’ study tour has since become something of an institution, drawing teachers and government officials from as far away as Australia.

The whole point of the tour is to help people see beyond schools and past the building-led agenda that has so dominated recent times. Participants visit all sorts of places where learning happens, and learn how to ‘port’ the knowledge to make it work in their own context. They undertake exercises that help them understand what it is like to be a young person in a school, and meet people who have learned to do the most amazing things while outside the school system - people like Eibert, left, who has learned to compete in shooting competitions despite being completely blind. Fundamentally it is about thinking about how we learn before getting into questions of where we learn.

Themes include new developments in school design, furniture, the transformational potential of rrefurbishments, new approaches to pedagogy, involving students in decision-making, and how to fail successfully.

Wolverhampton Local Authority commissioned a team of young people to make a video about their tour, describing just some of the highlights of their four day tour. I hope you enjoy it.

And if you’d like to organise a tour like this, get in touch.


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