Through an initiative called Studio Curious, Catholic Education-Canberra Goulburn and its partner Knowledge Society brought together a team of seventy educators from across fifty-six schools, early learning centres and the CE office to work on solutions to its biggest challenges.

Director Ross Fox said the approach has been to give on-the-ground educators – teachers, and school leaders – the evidence, a rigorous process and support to design solutions for the schools in our system.

“Our teachers and leaders know their contexts and challenges best.” Ross Fox explained.

Facilitator, Elena Douglas from Knowledge Society said the design process started with the evidence base, curated into a ‘Global Knowledge Consensus’ from action-oriented researchers who have a demonstrated record improving the performance of whole school systems.

She said the participants took their inspiration from leading school systems, such as Ontario, and education researchers including John Hattie, Michael Fullan and Lyn Sharratt, who have a track record of designing long-term, sustainable improvement in student performance.

“Starting with the evidence base is critical, otherwise design solutions miss the target,” she said.  

Ross Fox said it’s our own teaching workforce through this human-centred design process that has produced a body of ideas supported by recent Gonski Report. “It validates the capacity of our teaching professionals to design the solutions. It shows that our frontline staff are best placed to identify the opportunities, strategies and pedagogy that will enhance performance across our 1000 classrooms in the Archdiocese.”

“We know that for any school or system to improve its performance, they need to adapt the global evidence and create solutions that respect the unique context of their particular schools. The best people to co-design these solutions are the people who will be implementing them on the ground,” Mr Fox explained.

Project teams in the Studio Curious initiative have presented 14 preliminary project designs to colleagues and a panel that included Mark Huxley, Executive Director of the School Performance and Improvement at the ACT Education Directorate; Dr Bill Maiden PSM OAM, Chair of the ACT Teacher Quality Institute Board; Tom Lowrie, Centenary Professor at Canberra University and Patrick Mcardle, Campus Dean of ACU’s Canberra campus.

“The opportunity to collaborate on projects that will make a difference to our work in class with principals and teachers from other schools – working with the evidence and learning how to create new solutions – has been amazing,” said Melanie Stratford, a teacher at St Benedict's Primary School, Narrabundah. “People don’t realise that it is not normal for teachers to collaborate – and it should be,” she explained.

John O'Neill, Assistant Principal (Curriculum and Achievement) at Carroll College in Broulee, and a teacher of science, biology and physics, said, “If you are going to have things work on the ground, you really have to have them designed by school people.”