This provocation is a call to action for educators to rethink, reimagine, and reframe their teaching practices. It’s about taking learning beyond the familiar, moving through the iterative phases of discovery from What is this? to What can it do? to What if? to As if, and finally to What can I do with this? Standardized teaching approaches frequently stop at either What can it do? or the What if? phase, limiting the potential for deep engagement and future-ready competencies. If we want to prepare our students for the challenges ahead, we must dare to go further.
The Pendulum Effect in Education
In recent years, education has swung toward practices like Direct and Explicit Teaching (DET) and Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). These approaches, grounded in cognitive science, offer undeniable benefits. They prioritize foundational knowledge, reduce cognitive overload, and ensure equity by providing all students with access to structured, evidence-based instruction. Yet, as with any pendulum swing, the shift has come at a cost.
The emphasis on standardization and measurable outcomes often sidelines exploratory, creative, and autonomous learning. Skills associated with creative intelligence, metacognition and learning how to learn, once heralded as essential for the 21st century, are increasingly deprioritized. The result is an educational landscape where students excel at recalling information but struggle to apply it innovatively or adaptively.
This swing toward standardization may reflect a broader fear of the unknown. In an era of rapid technological, societal, and environmental change, sticking to what’s proven feels safe. But safety is not synonymous with preparation. To truly equip students for the future, we must embrace a more balanced approach, one that combines the strengths of DET and CLT with the transformative potential of building our learners creativity, adaptability, and ethical problem-solving skills. Building creative intelligence within this balanced approach engages students with the higher-order thinking skills essential for solving complex problems and generating novel solutions. These skills not only empower learners to navigate ambiguity but also prepare them to address the multifaceted challenges of national benchmarks like ATAR and NAPLAN, where critical thinking and adaptability are increasingly valued.
Moving Beyond: The Five Phases of Learning
Transformation begins by taking learning beyond the confines of standardization. This process can be framed through five iterative phases:
- What is this? At this foundational stage, students are introduced to new knowledge and skills. DET and CLT excel here, providing clarity and structure. This phase answers questions like: What are the facts? How does this work? What are the key principles?
- What can it do? Building on the foundation, this phase explores functionality and application. Students begin to see how knowledge connects to real-world contexts. Structured, teacher-led activities guide students through practical applications, ensuring they understand the utility of what they’ve learned.
Traditional teaching approaches often stop here. While these phases are essential, they represent only the beginning of deeper learning.
- What if? This is the phase of imagination and exploration. Students ask: What if I changed this? What if I used this in a new way? What if I combined this with something else? Research-based learning, project-based approaches, and open-ended challenges allow students to push boundaries and think creatively.
- As if -In this phase, students function as if they are professionals, innovators, or change-makers. They simulate real-world roles and scenarios, applying their knowledge and skills in authentic contexts. This stage develops adaptability, problem-solving, and resilience.
- What can I do with this? The final phase is a launchpad for autonomy and agency. Teacher’s coach and mentor students to take ownership of their learning, using it to create, innovate, and contribute meaningfully. Here, they not only demonstrate mastery but also extend their learning into uncharted territory, guided by curiosity and purpose.
A standardized approach often limits itself to the first two or three phases, leaving little room for the imagination, adaptability, and autonomy that characterize the later stages. To truly take learning beyond, we must commit to fostering all five phases in our classrooms.
Embedding Vivedus Dispositions and Pedagogies
The Vivedus framework offers a pathway to balance foundational knowledge with future-ready competencies by fostering creative intelligence through a range of dispositions. For example, being open to ambiguity and uncertainty encourages students to embrace complexity without fear; collaboration and dialogue foster the ability to work collectively and learn from diverse perspectives; curiosity drives a passion for exploration and discovery; and being perceptive sharpens awareness of nuances and context. These sample dispositions guide students through all five phases of learning, enabling them to navigate complexity and think innovatively.
Being Perceptive: Encourage students to explore multiple possibilities and generate innovative solutions. For example:
- After teaching a scientific concept, encourage students to consider how this principle might be viewed or interpreted from multiple perspectives. Ask them to identify patterns or connections to other disciplines or real-world contexts, fostering their ability to perceive complexity and interrelationships.
- Present students with interdisciplinary challenges that require them to identify connections across different domains or experiences. For example, task them with analysing a societal issue such as climate change by examining relationships among scientific data, economic implications, and cultural perspectives. Guide students to uncover patterns and synthesize insights, fostering their ability to recognize how seemingly unrelated elements and contexts interconnect.
Curiosity: Foster a passion for exploration and discovery. For example:
- Create inquiry-based learning tasks where students generate their own questions about a historical event or scientific phenomenon, deepening their perceptiveness.
- Introduce “what if” scenarios, prompting students to hypothesize outcomes and investigate their feasibility through research and experimentation.
Collaboration and Dialogue: Develop skills in working collectively and valuing diverse perspectives. For example:
- Use group discussions to analyse complex texts, encouraging students to share and refine their interpretations collaboratively.
- Implement team-based projects that require roles and responsibilities, ensuring all voices contribute to a shared goal.
Being Open to Ambiguity and Uncertainty: Encourage comfort with complexity and the unknown. For example:
- Present students with real-world situations where problems are ill-defined, information is incomplete, or outcomes are unclear, guiding them to experiment with different approaches and reflect on their learning process.
- Use reflective journaling to help students articulate their thoughts when faced with uncertainty, promoting adaptability and resilience.
The Role of Assessment
In an environment of standardization overly prescriptive outcomes are more often shaped by rigid and prescriptive approaches to assessment. And this is especially so when schools and teachers disproportionately focus on NAPLAN results at the expense of deep and engaging learning. Dylan Wiliam’s Assessment for Learning (AfL) practices align perfectly with the phased approach to learning. AfL focuses on using assessment not as a judgment but as a tool for guiding and deepening learning.
- Clarifying learning intentions: Frame goals around not just content mastery but also dispositional growth. For example, success criteria might include demonstrating creativity or adaptability in addition to solving a problem correctly.
- Eliciting evidence of learning: Use formative assessments to gauge where students are in the learning process. Strategies like hinge questions, concept maps, and peer feedback can reveal not just what students know but how they think and apply their knowledge.
- Providing feedback: Offer actionable feedback that encourages students to move beyond the foundational phases. For example, highlight how a student’s work demonstrates critical thinking and suggest ways to extend it further into creative or autonomous applications.
- Activating students as resources for one another: Encourage peer feedback and collaboration, helping students learn from and with each other. This practice mirrors the collaborative nature of the real world.
- Activating students as owners of their learning: Empower students to set their own goals, reflect on their progress, and take charge of their educational journeys. This aligns with the final phase of What can I do with this?
A Call to Action
Education cannot afford to remain static in a dynamic world. It is imperative that all learners develop a dynamic ‘toolbox’ of dispositions and qualities they may bring to bear in whatever job the future presents. The pendulum must not swing so far toward standardization that we lose sight of the broader purpose of learning: to prepare students not just for exams but for life. We must resist dogmatism and fear of the unknown, embracing instead a vision of education that values creativity as much as it values structure and evidence. It is not a case of either or, it is both – creativity partnered with content mastery.
Taking learning beyond requires courage, commitment, and a willingness to rethink familiar practices. It demands that we move through all five phases of learning, equipping students not just with knowledge but with the dispositions and skills they need to shape the future. By embedding Vivedus dispositions, we can create classrooms that are dynamic, balanced, and transformative places where students don’t just learn but thrive.
The question now is: Are we ready to take the leap?
References
Craft, A. (2013). Creativity in education: Exploring the importance of possibility thinking. Cambridge Journal of Education, 33(2), 143-162. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764032000066583
Kempton, G. A. (2017). Creativity in education: Exploring teacher experiences of creativity through an immersion studies learning framework [Masters dissertation, Queensland University of Technology]. https://doi.org/10.5204/thesis.eprints.110591
OECD. (2018). The future of education and skills: Education 2030. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/education/2030/
Sweller, J., Ayres, P., & Kalyuga, S. (2011). Cognitive load theory. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8126-4
UNESCO. (2015). Rethinking education: Towards a global common good? United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org
Wiliam, D. (2011). Embedded formative assessment. Solution Tree Press.
