Fusion: Making New Connections for Agency in Learning
Twenty-one years ago, the Kunskapsskolan was formed in Sweden and opened its first free schools. Kunskapsskolan is an all-embracing group of schools which provides goal-driven personalised education for each individual learner. The whole school design encompassing school building design: transformed on-line curriculum pathways and a pedagogy which put the student in the driving seat.
Now with over 50 schools world-wide and even more closely linked and inspired by their approach it operates in 6 countries including Sweden, UK, USA, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia and India. It is the highest achieving network of schools in Sweden and has been identified as creating some of the best new schools in India. It is developing quickly in the Netherlands and here in the UK over 40 schools are inspired by Kunskapsskolan’s personalisation agenda and accompanying tools.
However, it is important to recognise that moving from Sweden, where the approach was framed within the culture of that country, to countries like the UK, USA and Saudi Arabia, is no small task.
We know that when Multi Academy Trusts are formed around a high performing school, you cannot successfully transplant all the systems of the lead school into all the others. It must be contextualised and recognised as a journey that people in each school own. Think therefore how much more carefully we need to be if we fuse schools in other countries to a common ideology.
Erin Meyer in her book ‘The Culture Map’ illustrated some of the challenges for leadership in all types of institutions operating globally.[i] If you look at the leading and deciding bars in the diagram 1 for Sweden, ‘leading’ is very distributed and schools have a flat structure with decision making being quite consensual whereas in India it is traditionally more hierarchical and top down. In the west we communicate very specifically and want to spell out quite clearly what we expect to be done whereas in many eastern countries this would be regarded as over the top and almost insulting. Organisations seeking to work in other countries need to be aware of these cultural norms.