In the age of the internet and mobile phones, students have the power of attaining knowledge that fundamentally challenges the role of education systems, standardised curriculum and teachers. In my own teaching practice, within high schools, in my own tutoring model and at universities, I have persistently based my practice upon finding opportunities to hand over the learning to students, for students and with students. Within this workshop, I hope to share my practice and curriculum models that may offer counterpoints to the top-down, hierarchical structures that education systems and classrooms have historically depended upon and been shaped by. This workshop intends to be exploratory and discursive, based upon personally reflective praxis and small case studies of teaching, learning and curriculum design outside of institutional learning spaces for their potential to imagine different ways of empowering students.

My own student-led project model – combining the work of inquiry, problem-based and project-based learning into frameworks and cycles of learning that put the purpose of the learning in the hands of the students. As a high school teacher, often we are posed with critically challenging questions from students:

“Why are we learning this?”

“When am I going to ever use this information?”

“How is this relevant to my life?”

“I’m never going to need this information with where I want to be in my future.”

Through my own observations of different project-based, inquiry-based and problem-based programs, I experimented with refining and clarifying how these pedagogical approaches can be both better understood by students and their subtle differences clarified in the process. With these cycles, it offered students themselves to dictate what the purpose of their learning was – driven by their concerns or curiosities. Through these interests, students could learn critical thinking, digital and media literacy, metacognitive and communication skills that made their learning both meaningful and deeply relevant to their current and future lives (regardless of their interests or aspirations). In this workshop I hope to raise questions and offer solutions to the sticky world of untangling assessment, curriculum, knowledge, skills and student identities, motivations and aspirations.

Within these project cycles, and the potential questions they probe and power they provide students, we can consider their implications for policy and practice in ways that not only prepare students for their future, but are inherently inclusive, empowering and supportive. Arguably this workshop has the power to speak to all themes of the conference as it puts students as partners and leaders of their learning at its core.