Almost everyone involved in education agrees that leadership is important.
That, however, is where agreement ends and debate begins. Beyond that point, we cross a turbulent landscape where competing definitions of leadership abound, where the very nature of leadership is the stuff of argument, where conflicting philosophies of education each generate their own understanding of what makes for an effective leader and how a good leader should behave, and where notions of how we must go about educating and training the next generation of education leaders scatter in every direction at once.
But such observations are not a counsel of despair. Far from it! Just as education itself can never be a science in any accepted sense – it is a sphere in which battles will always be fought between philosophies, beliefs, ideologies, cultures, prejudices and histories – so these same battles are reflected in the ever-restless and exciting debates and discussions around leadership in education.
Whatever our own standpoint might be, we should accept that one voice is often missing from this unruly discourse: that of young people, the very group most often affected by the decisions of education leaders. Just as they are absent from educational debates generally, so youthful voices are too often muted when the topic is the leadership of the social good that is utterly central to their futures: their education.
Education Fast Forward (EFF), an organization, sponsored jointly by Promethean and Cisco, that brings together leading global experts and change agents from the world of education to discuss ‘the topics that matter most’, wants to begin to change that by bringing together some articulate and intelligent voices from the world’s youth to discuss issues that are relevant to young people themselves and to their education.
In July 2012, in the most recent of the five debates organized by EFF to date, a group of eloquent and youthful voices debated the topic ‘From Learner Voice to Global Peace’. The young people were located all across the globe and came together primarily through the wonder of Telepresence (TP), a high-definition video conferencing technology. The discussion that day was not only intelligent and thoughtful: it was truly inspiring for everyone involved.
The full debate can be watched and listened to on Promethean Planet.
And now, in January 2013, during the annual Education World Forum, to be held in London, another group of exceptional young people (including some of the voiced from EFF5) will come together through the magic of TP to talk about ‘From Learner Voice to Emerging Leaders’. Those of us involved in EFF have some hopes and expectations of what might come out of the event, but we are also highly aware that there must be a genuine space in amongst our presumptions for the hopes and expectations of the young people themselves to come to the fore during and beyond the discussion.
The primary aim is twofold:
Issues such as the structure of the curriculum, how education is delivered (including differences in this across the world), the relevance of education to their lives, how we might encourage real change in the relationships between people in education systems, seeking to realise the extraordinary value that can be sought by tackling education’s challenges with people rather than doing it to them. We need all policy makers to take on board the knowledge that they are making decisions now that will affect the generation ahead, and perhaps more than one generation ahead.
And all of this will be happening across a truly international matrix of connections, crossing countries, cultures, and communities. I will be blogging again in the New Year with details of the date and time, and with information about the key speakers, young and not-so-young, who will be leading the discussion.
Watch out for that!