Introduction

Motivation

I believe that emotional and social competencies are important to possess and nurture. Especially today with the rise of artificial intelligence, technology and autonomisation, human skills like persuasion, social understanding and empathy are going to become the differentiators. My hypothesis is that emotional intelligence will be a valued skill in the future workforce. At the same time mastering the language of emotions will have a positive influence on both relationships and the choices we make, as Geddes explains in the quote above. This has motivated me, as an experience designer, to venture for a holistic approach to learning in the 21st century, using the experience design process to improve the future of education.

Aims

The intention of this project is firstly to understand how a primary education system works today, and investigate how it can be improved to promote children's socioemotional well-being. To improve the quality of education in modern societies, it is not only relevant to understand which skills and competencies are predicted to be needed in the future, but also to look into the fields of neuroscience, psychology and cognitive science to create a better understanding of how we learn and how this information can be used to create more effective learning environments. It will also be interesting to compare the knowledge with recent school reforms as well as to ask what the purpose of ‘schooling’ is in the 21st Century.

Secondly, this thesis will contribute to the movement of initiatives disrupting the education systems in the 21st Century. During the research a lack of collaboration between innovative education entrepreneurs has been uncovered. The aim is to investigate this further, and to foster a culture of support among the entrepreneurs along with a framework for knowledge sharing, so they can learn from each other and inspire other people to make a change in education as well.

Initial research questions

• Which skillset should children learn in the 21st Century?
• How do primary school students stay motivated to learn?
• What is the purpose of compulsory education today?

Interviewees

Ethical issues related to experience design

Ethical issues when conducting qualitative research
Being aware of ethics in social research will benefit both the researcher and participants as human-centered design is “a fragile, face-to-face encounter between people, involving attempts to develop knowledge and being open toward others” (Steen, 2015, p404). Essentially, a good ethical researcher will try to create a mutually respectful relationship with the participants and always be aware of their privacy and protection of rights (Sieber, 1992). It is also very important to make the participants feel comfortable in the interview, so that they are honest and feel it is safe to share meaningful accounts of their perceptions, experiences, and feelings. After all, the quality of the insights depends on the participants. Interviewing the participants in an environment familiar to them (e.g. home or at work) can make them feel comfortable and encourage insights that would not have been uncovered otherwise. With regards to the number of interview participants in a qualitative research, ‘more is not always better’, and when the conclusion of an insight approaches it can be justified that a sample size is sufficient (Anderson, 2017, p128).

Social and ethical responsibilities of designing experiences
A person’s experience can not be artificially designed, as an experience is subjective and changes over time, because it is a product of interaction between that person and the surrounding environment (Kim, 2015). However, experience designers have the power to influence people’s behaviour and ultimately, their actions. Thaler and Sunstein argues that “there is no such thing as a ‘neutral’ design” and a rule of thumb is to assume that everything matters in the sense that even insignificant details can have major impacts on people’s behaviours (Thaler and Sunstein, 2009, p3). One might therefore argue that designers have both social and ethical responsibilities.

A reflection on personal biases

The ethical researches has to be mindful of ethics and that personal biases and own involvement in the project may project the desired outcome rather than what the gathered insight actually reveals. Many psychologists and neuroscientists move between two kinds of thinking: One that is intuitive and automatic and one that is reflective and rational (Thaler and Sunstein, 2009, p21). Being aware of personal biases allows the designer to make an active choice on “what to do about them” and reflect on how the personal biases influence the designers behavior and choices (Goleman, 1996, p157). Ignoring acts of bias will allow discrimination to thrive (Liedtka, 2015).

Reflecting on personal biases, I am aware that I am biased in my selection of school leaders, as my motivation to disrupt and improve primary education in Denmark is to create a holistic approach to learning in the 21st century which promotes children's socioemotional well-being. I have therefore reached out to innovative leaders of schools and companies with a special focus on developing social competences, as “holistic outcomes require pedagogies that value relationships, emotional engagement, reflection and responsibility, attention to content and process, uncertainty and challenge” (Hedges and Cooper, 2014, p406). The selection of innovative leaders has been made based on recommendations from other school leaders, as well as a personal opinion about what it means to be innovative. My personal interpretation of being innovative, regardless whether it is a school leader or entrepreneur, is when they instead of looking back in time to see how successful outcomes were achieved in the past, they look into recent science about learning. They focus on competencies for the 21century and are curious about future predictions. Forward-thinking educators challenge their pupils into engagement and help move toward autonomy, mastery and purpose (Pink, 2011).

Limitation of study

To provide a successful service it is important to understand how the environment influences people’s experiences (as well as whether people influence the experience) and at the same it is relevant to understand the local culture where the service is applied (Kim, 2015). Because school systems differ from country to country, it has been necessary to limit the study to one country in Europe, and being a Dane, I have chosen to focus on the Danish education system. Although it is a country offering free quality education for all citizens, it is important not to settle, but to keep being critical and innovating the schools and learning methods. Even though the solution is aimed at the Danish market, the project can - and has already - aroused interest globally by education entrepreneurs from many countries (Testing and feedback), who shows the same needs as the Danish education entrepreneurs (Identified challenges).

It is relevant to mention that my background is in design and I have an interest in but only minimal training in education - nor have I studied pedagogy, psychology or neuroscience. The past 18 weeks have been spent on continuously researching about and developing a solution for the Danish education system. It is worth mentioning that this thesis will not cover neurological diversities (e.g. ADHD, autism) despite being relevant, I have found it necessary to limit myself. In my opinion, the time restriction for this thesis has made me realise that not nearly enough time has been spent to cover all the elements of an education system, including the recent knowledge about how children learn. There are many more aspects that need to be addressed and explored before the complex nature of learning can be properly covered. Therefore, this paper should be seen as a first stepping stone towards a journey in the future of education.

Methodology

The experience design process

The design process

This design process follows the four phases of the double diamond model from the Design Council with overlapping methods and tools from Design Thinking, Lean UX and Agile product development.

Being a service designer
Service design is an element of digital experience design, but instead of designing a product, a service designer often have to design intangible processes. A service designer can be articulated as a so-called ‘design thinker’ and the core mission of Design Thinking is to “translate observations into insights and insights into products and services that will improve lives” (Brown and Katz, 2009, p49). Service design is therefore a human-centred design process for improvements and innovation of services which requires involvement of both customers and all levels of stakeholders and often includes co-design sessions (Service Design Network, 2013). An important part of the service design process is to find the problem first instead of trying to find the solution immediately. Another important element is to keep the big picture in mind and understand the whole user journey, as well as seeing each touchpoint as a whole (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016).

Discover
In the first phase of the design process, the service designer uses divergent thinking to understand the culture and goals of the people they are designing for, as well as the broader context of the field designing in (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016). This knowledge is gained through primary research (self-collected) and secondary research (desk research from secondary sources). As Martin and Hanington points out: “While human-centered design generally implies primary research with users, secondary research can also be a critical component of the project, establishing what has already been done and what hasn’t, gathering comparison data, and helping to suggest a research direction or methods that should be used in the current study” (Martin and Hanington, 2012, p154).

Design Thinking is fundamentally “an exploratory process; done right, it will invariably make unexpected discoveries along the way” (Brown and Katz, 2009, p16). One important element of Design Thinking is to gain deep empathy with stakeholders. Here, the designer uses human-centred design tools to identify a problem the designer needs to work on (Brown and Katz, 2009). As IDEO argues, ‘human-centred design’ “means believing that the people who face problems every day are the ones who hold the key to their answer” (IDEO, 2015, p9). It is therefore important to understand people, and as Marc Stickdorn points out, understanding a situation from the perspective of the customers is crucial for successful service design (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016, p128).

Define
The designer uses convergent thinking to synthesise the research by clustering research topics, defining key insights and formulating opportunity areas, and as designer Jon Kolko explains; the designer that has identified themes will better understand the problem that is being solved (Kolko, 2010).

By visualising the process, the designer simplifies intangible elements of both the process and the customer journey (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016). Kolke argues that stakeholders often can see this part of the process as a waste of time: “The output of design synthesis is frequently incomplete or intangible - the value of the output is not immediately evident, as the results are ‘half baked’. Synthesis often results in a number of high level themes and paradigms that help shape future design activities, but these high level and conceptual elements may be seen as too abstract to justify the time and resources spent” (Kolko, 2010, p17). However as Kolke points out, the process leads to new, innovative, appropriate, or compelling ideas. This means it is also important to have a clear understanding of both what the users want, need and desire at this phase.

A service designer needs to be able to understand not only what the users say they need, but also what they might not be aware that they need. As Tim Brown points out: “The basic problem is that people are so ingenious at adapting to inconvenient situations that they are often not even aware that they are doing so” (Brown and Katz, 2009, p40). Based on the identified problem the designer needs to work on, a challenge statement is formulated as a ‘How might we’ question. The challenge statement should provoke meaningful and relevant ideas, and the questions should be formulated so it is broad enough that there are a wide range of solutions but narrow enough that the team has some helpful boundaries (Stanford d.school, 2016).

Develop
The develop phase is an experimental phase, where Lean UX methodology is used to ensure customer feedback is received as early as possible in process to make quick decisions. This way the model aims at saving time and resources through constant iterations and review, and the feedback loops ensures a focus on the experience under the design instead of deliverables. The Lean UX cycle can be expressed as think-make-check, similar to the Lean Startup method’s build-measure-learn feedback loop (Follett, 2017).

In this phase the service designer still needs to be visual and create a range of prototypes again using divergent thinking. It can be relevant to test ideas already in the deep-dive interviews or conduct further interviews and look for the customers’ first reactions. By using qualitative methodologies and prototyping tools, Design Thinking improves customers’ ability to identify and assess their own needs (Liedtka, 2015). The user experience specialist Martine Tranström explains in an interview, that to illustrate the ideas it is recommended to focus on producing minimum viable products (MVP) and make shortcuts for the prototypes for example by showing an existing community platform and ask for opinions instead of spending extra time on design and layout (M Tranström, 2017, personal communication, 20 October).

Different ideas and prototypes are tested with customers, which allow the designer to fail early and draw learnings from it, as one of the main advocates in Design Thinking, Tim Brown, argues: “There is nothing wrong with failure as long as it happens early and becomes a source of learning” (Brown and Katz, 2009, p230). Marc Stickdorn agrees that “it is not about avoiding mistakes, but rather about exploring as many as possible mistakes” (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016, p130). Brown ads that prototypes need to be testable but not physical; Storyboards, scenarios and improvised acting can provide successful prototypes.

A service designer needs to be able to give customers “a good mental picture of the future service concept” in order to get useful feedback (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016, p132). Therefore it is important to prototype the service in circumstances as close to reality as possible. This can be done by creating a testing environment which most often allow users and stakeholders to contribute with their ideas as well: “Co-creative exercises are a way to incorporate an open-source development philosophy” (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016). Collaboration with customers and stakeholders is a core element of Lean UX, because it gives the team an understanding of the problems and solutions that their customers face (Adiseshiah, 2016).

In Design Thinking, there are three overlapping criteria for successful ideas: “Feasibility (what is functionally possible within the foreseeable future); viability (what is likely to become part of a sustainable business model); and desirability (what makes sense to people and for people)” (Brown and Katz, 2009, p18).

Deliver
The designer uses convergent thinking to finalise and deliver the service design (Design Council UK, 2015). A good service designer will create a service that balances the three overlapping criteria for success: feasibility, viability and desirability (Brown and Katz, 2009). Although there will always be unconsidered aspects of a new service when implementing it, Design Thinking is an iterative process: “Ideally, the change implementation is followed by another exploration to evaluate its progress” (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016, p134). Working in rapid, iterative cycles is the nature of Agile development, and Lean UX mimics these cycles to ensure that data generated can be used in each iteration (Follett, 2017). In an Agile team, each iteration improves the design of the system to make it as good as it can be for the current situation, rather than looking ahead for future requirements and needs (Martin, 2013). A clear communication of the desired customer experience is essential. If all important actors in the process have been involved from the beginning of the process, it will strengthen their motivation to use and run the service, and this engagement is crucial for a sustainable service design implementation (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016).

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Literature review

A vision for change in education

Global attention on quality education
In January 2016, the United Nation published the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which contains 17 ‘sustainable development goals’ to address the most urgent global challenges over the next 15 years. Goal 4 is ‘Quality Education’, with a focus to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (United Nation, 2016). UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, is responsible for coordinating international cooperation in education and believes that education is a human right for all throughout life and that access must be matched by quality (UNESCO, nd.). The roadmap to achieve targets within education (the ‘Goal 4’) is the ‘Education 2030 Framework for Action’ (UNESCO, 2016). The report highlights that quality education, besides the foundational skills of literacy and numeracy, should foster creativity as well as analytical, problem solving and other high-level cognitive, interpersonal and social skills. Children should develop “values and attitudes that enable them to lead healthy and fulfilled lives, make informed decisions, and respond to local and global challenges” (UNESCO, 2016).

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), is an intergovernmental economic organisation with 35 member countries founded in 1960 to stimulate economic progress and world trade. OECD formed a working group to support Education 2030. The chairman of the working group is Jørn Skovsgaard, a Dane who is also a chief consultant to the Danish ministry of education. Skovsgaard points out that while ordinary academic knowledge is still important it is not enough anymore: “New jobs are coming while some jobs are disappearing. It is especially manual and routine jobs that are disappearing - with the exception of craftsmanship. What is left are jobs that require creativity and the ability to act in complex contexts“ (Fagbladet Folkeskolen, 2017). Skovsgaard emphasises that the aim of the working group is to develop a framework for ‘learning 21st Century skills’. The framework will be an “inspiration catalogue” to help OECD member states understand which challenges the world face, but it is up to the individual countries to interpret the framework and use it in their own context.

OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has become “the world’s premier yardstick for evaluating the quality and efficiency of school systems” (OECD, 2016, p3). According to PISA, school systems are not outstandingly successful in preparing students with the abilities and skills that build the foundation for lifelong learning: “It is worrying to see how many young people fail to reach the most essential learning outcomes … Only in Canada, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong (China), Japan, Macao (China) and Singapore do at least nine of ten 15-year-old students master the baseline level of proficiency in science, reading and mathematics” (OECD, 2016, p3-4). Additional data from PISA shows that the world is no longer divided between rich and well-educated nations and poor and badly educated ones - even some of the wealthiest OECD countries need to improve their education system. Angel Gurria, OECD Secretary-General, states that to improve the quality of education, it is both a social justice imperative and a way to fuel economic growth and promote social cohesion. Gurria highlights that “everyone now needs to be able to ‘think like a scientist’” since science plays an increasing role in society. Social media, robotics and machine learning are transforming economic and social life globally, and genome editing, bio-printing and brain interfaces are changing life itself. At the same time, students need to learn that the ‘truth’ might change over time as we learn more about natural forces and technology’s capacities and limitations (OECD, 2016).

Skills for a changing world
All over the world the effectiveness of education is being challenged to improve the quality of students’ learning (Acedo and Hughes, 2014). The aim is not only to improve the student's academic skills and grades, but also to prepare them for “a rapidly changing global environment” (Stewart, 2012, 31). The globalisation and the evolution of science and technology calls for a wider range of skills than ever before, and educational institutions are forced to better equip their students for the work environments they are going to meet in the future (McElvoy, 2017). Jens Rasmussen, professor at Denmark's institute for pedagogy and education, argues that even though the future cannot be predicted completely, it is important to try to foresee it as that is the reality that students will live in: "Although we might not be completely correct if we try to imagine life 20-30 years into the future, it is still important to think ahead. This gives us some ideas about the world the students should move towards” (Fagbladet Folkeskolen, 2017). The diagram below shows a few selected skillsets that researchers predict will be needed in the future workforce.

Skillsets needed in the future workforce

Pearson and Nesla have recently completed a research collaboration predicting which skills and competencies will be required for the job market in 2030 (Bakhshi, et al., 2017, p66). The project director, Hasan Bakhshi, explains that an estimated 65 percent of children entering school in 2016 will work in jobs that do not even exist today - and this makes for a rigorous assessment of what skills will be required in the future workforce important (Bakhshi,et al., 2016). The report highlights a demand for:

The Center for Universal Education at Brookings and the LEGO Foundation uses the project ‘Skills for a changing world’, to show educational institutions that they should teach “beyond the traditional academic skills of numeracy and literacy to a broader set that includes interpersonal, intrapersonal, and technological skills” (Care et al.,2017). UNESCO highlights that a “narrow focus on work-specific skills reduces graduates’ abilities to adapt to the fast-changing demands of the labour market” (UNESCO, 2016, p43). Educational institutions should focus on developing a skillset which can be used across a range of occupational fields and the skills should be taught continuously through lifelong learning.

The sense that students can no longer rely on academic skills of numeracy and literacy is becoming more and more widespread. One can question if today’s educational systems around the world are outdated?

Quality education in the 21st Century

On a global scale, education is essential for peace, tolerance, human fulfilment and sustainable development: “Education shall aim at the full development of the human personality and promote mutual understanding, tolerance, friendship and peace” (UNESCO, 2016, p28). Sir Ken Robinson, an acknowledged international advisor on education, focuses on four basic purposes of education that the culture of schools should fulfill:

The purposes of education according to Sir Ken Robinson

Robinson argues that the public school systems today still builds on principles that dates back to the industrial revolution, and that three main elements of formal education - curriculum, teaching and assessment - are too standardised and outdated (Robinson and Aronica, 2016). “For more than a century, the dominant form of education has been mass schooling, employing a teacher-centered, ‘knowledge transmission’ model. This is what will likely sound familiar to most as a definition of school. Teachers are responsible for imparting knowledge to students, generally placing them at the front of a classroom, with a chalkboard and rows of students facing them” (Winthrop and McGivney, 2016). The mass systems of public education began with the industrial revolution in the middle of the 19th century. The industrial times needed manual, technical and administrative workers, and mass education was designed to equip students with the right skillset as well as teach them to follow specific rules and standards (Robinson and Aronica, 2016). With the fourth industrial revolution, which is characterised by a fusion of technologies, life is getting more complex as the physical, digital, and biological worlds continue to converge and merge on a global plan (World Economic Forum, 2016). A fundament of knowledge, competencies and healthy attitudes is therefore needed to functioning well in the constant transforming societies, workplaces and environments (Acedo and Hughes, 2014).

A quality education in the 21st century needs to address the whole student; The student's emotional self-awareness and attitudes both towards learning and towards the community they are part of (Acedo, C. & Hughes, C., 2014). Looking at two of the top performing nations in education, Finland and Singapore, you find a common interest in educating the students holistically. At public schools in these countries, students are developed into well-rounded citizens with grounded values. Both Finland and Singapore are “among the top scorers in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), and in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), achieving stellar results in all levels and areas of assessments” (Lee, et al., 2014, 871).

Brian Matthews, who has been teaching for 19 years and now lecturers at Goldsmiths College, University of London, has been studying engaging education. He calls school practitioners to discuss, advise and develop students’ emotional and social competencies, which he sees as being essential for leading a happy life and contributing to society: “Growing up to become healthy and happy adults in our society has less to do with earning large amounts of money and more to do with having strong relationships of all kinds, and feeling that one has some control over life” (Matthews, 2006, p2). However Acedo and Hughes argues that a good education in the 21st Century should not stop with social competencies; It should also teach students inner peace and mindfulness towards the environment, self and others: “In a world with an enormous amount of information noise, hyperactivity, competition and, in many regards, a coarsening of society, a 21st-century curriculum must also allow students opportunities to distil their thoughts, and seek silence and deep thought. They must develop ways to bring their mind and body together in an attitude of oneness in which they can focus their thoughts on the environment, self and others. A healthy life, spiritually and physically, is an imperative for societal regeneration and peace” (Acedo and Hughes, 2014).

One might argue that in a world with endless information accessible online for everyone with internet access, it is more important to teach children how to learn (to be lifelong learners and critical thinkers) instead of focusing the teaching around what they should learn (test, curriculums and standardisations). OECD has highlighted these issues in a report already in 2008: “The inevitability of lifelong learning in knowledge-oriented societies implies that school systems should have different objectives and characteristics than if education were considered to have been completed when a student leaves initial education. Yet in practice, there remains a tendency for school education to be assessed in terms of the achievements and targets that systems have set themselves, rather than their broader success in laying the foundation for lifelong learning” (OECD, 2008). This quote remains relevant today.

Regardless if education systems focus on the students achievements and learning outcomes - or has more holistic approach as in Finland and Singapore focusing on developing the whole child - school reforms should still reflect recent knowledge on cognition and how children learn and develop.

Science vs. school reforms
Studies in neuroscience show us that the human brain’s plasticity allows people to learn throughout their lives and that there is several connections between motivation and learning, furthermore, it also shows that emotional stimulation plays an important role in the students levels of engagement and information processing (Acedo and Hughes, 2014). Moreover, studies show that fundamentally, personal attributes like intelligence or personality are not fixed traits, but instead dynamic qualities that can be cultivated (Molden and Dweck, 2006). Carol Dweck, a leading researcher in the area of motivation and how self-beliefs and goals influence learning and academic achievement, recommends educators to create a growth mindset in classrooms: A mindset where the good process is praised and the students learn by effort and hard work. Dweck has studied the behavior of several thousand children, and finds that students taught a growth mindset learn and growth especially through difficult tasks, while kids who are praised for intelligence declines (Dweck, C., 2017). Doctor and brain researcher, Kjeld Fredens, agrees with Dweck that praising kids for intelligence have a negative influence on their learning. Fredens argues that schools should cut down on the syllabus and instead give students time to learn how to learn. New information can easily be lost unless the working memory makes sure to store the new knowledge in the long-term memory. In this context, it is important not to overload the working memory otherwise it will shut down, and it is important students understand how they learn best and have time to to reflect on their learnings (Frank, 2011).

Daniel Pink, who has been studying people’s motivation, as well as how to motivate school children to learn, questions why public school systems around the world is emphasising even more on routines, right answers and standardisation today, when studies show people are driven by autonomy, mastery and purpose instead (Pink D., 2011, p85-152).

Dr. Csikszentmihalyi uses the term ‘flow stage’ - a stage where you forget about your surroundings and immerse yourself in the activity you are performing in the moment - and ads that “students who get into flow as they study do better” (as cited in Goleman, 1996, p93). Flow happens when people are focused, engaged and able to perform the task, and reaching this stage depends on personal interests and motivations. Therefore in order to get school children into flow it is important to to identify each child's individual needs and topic of interest. Sir Ken Robinson therefore ask for flexibility within the curriculum, so there is room for each students to pursue their individual interests and strengths (Robinson and Aronica, 2016). Howard Gardner argues that humans have multiple intelligences, and schools should accommodate the different intelligences and ways of learning (Smith, 2008). A need for personalised learning was already being highlighted 20 years ago: “If we are to prepare successfully for the twenty-first century we will have to do more than just improve literacy and numeracy skills. We need a broad, flexible and motivating education that recognises the different talents of all children and delivers excellence for everyone” (Department for Education and Employment, 1997, cited in NACCCE, 1999, p5). One can question why students are grouped by age and not by skills or interests.

Daniel Pink is concerned about the effectiveness of school reforms and argues that there is a “mismatch between what science knows and what schools do” (Pink, 2011, p176). In the TED Talk, “The power of believing that you can improve”, Dweck explains that using the feedback “not yet” instead of a failing grade, will teach the students that their intelligence is not fixed and they can improve if they process the errors, learn from them and of course correct them (Dweck, 2014). Dweck advices educational institutions to focus on teaching students a mindset of ‘learning as much as possible’ rather than giving assessments and grades to judge the students (Dweck, 2017).

Robinson is concerned that many new school reforms “are being driven by political and commercial interests that misunderstand how real people learn and how great schools actually work” (Robinson and Aronica, 2016, ix). It may be tempting to question the effectiveness of standardising formal education systems (curriculum, teaching and assessment) and why school reforms are a modification of the existing system instead of developing a completely new system. In this case it is important to acknowledge that school reforms are led by the public education systems and therefore can be politically challenging. Even smaller visible changes such as longer school days or new tests and exams can cause societal response with political consequences (Care et al., 2017). In an interview Carsten Mejer Obel points out that a school reform requires comprehensive procedures to develop and time to implement because public education is a large system to change. Obel highlights that it is important to remember that all school reforms are done in good will and faith (CM Obel 2017, personal communication, 2 October).

Subset
To improve the quality of education in modern societies it is not only relevant to understand which skills and competencies are predicted to be needed in the future, but also to look into the fields of neuroscience, psychology and cognitive science to create a better understanding of how we learn and how this information can be used to create more effective learning environments. The next chapter will include some examples of how the public education system is being disrupted, and since the systems are slightly different in every country it will be relevant to focus on a specific market - Denmark - in order to fully understand the structure and purpose of a formal education system.

Disrupting education

The purpose of ‘schooling’
‘Schooling’, which is education received at school, varies from country to country. In Denmark compulsory education lasts 10 years with an optional extra year (The Ministry of higher education and science, 2015). One might question the purpose of ‘schooling’ for 10 years. On Danish teacher courses students (the future teachers) are asked to reflect on exactly this question: “Do we have schools that educate with the needs of the job market in mind? Do we have schools to keep the wheels going for the Danish business industry? … Do we have schools to educate? Or are schools meant for more than this? Should the perspective be broader and have more purpose than worklife? Is schooling for life? - The whole life? Then we cannot settle with just educating. We will need to form the students as well” (Kallesøe et al., 2014, p11). In the primary textbook (on all teacher courses in Denmark) it is explained that ‘schooling’ is a project for the people, where all stakeholders have had influence on the purpose and content. It is part of the Danish democracy and the foundation of the formal Danish education system is therefore determined by law and contains compromises. Public education is part of the Danish state and Danish schools are therefore national which means the government decides which study plans, learning outcomes and national values that are important to teach the Danish people (Kallesøe et al., 2014).

In Denmark everyone has “the freedom to form a school within the general framework of the responsibility that society has expressed” (Dansk Friskoleforening, 2017, p71). This means that people from all backgrounds are allowed to open a private school. Although private elementary schools must provide a level of education minimum as good as the one seen at public schools (Undervisnings Ministeriet, A2017). The Danish ministry is regularly checking up on private school to ensure the quality of the education. Most private schools are started by parents that feels an unmet need at existing schools, and decides to start their own school. Therefore the schools often are very different from each other. Private ‘free’ schools allow pedagogical, ideological, political and religious diversity (Dansk Friskoleforening, 2017, p70), but it also allow visionaries to experiment and revolutionise learning.

Some parents choose to ‘homeschool’ or ‘unschool’ their children, as not everyone agrees that schooling is the best solution for their child. Homeschooling means taking children out of school and educate them at home. Their learnings are then supervised by the government through tests and checkups to ensure the quality of the child's learning (The City of Copenhagen, 2017). Unschooling, on the other hand, means that the children decide what they would like to learn and when. Unlike schooling and homeschooling there is no curriculum, no imposed learning, no testing. The children set the agenda and pace, and the aim is to learn through living (Parkes, 2016). However, unschooling is illegal in Denmark (Undervisnings Ministeriet, D2017).

Should we even have schools?

Sir Ken Robinson explains that by ‘schools’ he means “any community of people that comes together to learn with each other”. He calls for a revolution in education where we rethinking what counts as a school (Robinson and Aronica, 2016, p xii). Wikipedia’s description of a school is: “An institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers” (Wikipedia, 2017). However, education also happens in informal learning environments such as communities, at home by parents, and in society at large. All parts are collectively responsible for a child’s education and together they constitute ‘the learning ecosystem’ (Care and Anderson, 2016).

According to Russell Ackoff, the author of the book ‘Turning learning right side up: Putting education back on track’, this creates two worlds of education: One being the schools and the mass education system which focuses on teaching and not learning, and the other being “the world of information, knowledge, and wisdom, in which the real population of the world resides when not incarcerated in schools” Ackoff continues, “in that world, learning takes place like it always did, and teaching consists of imparting one’s wisdom, among other things, to voluntary listeners” (Ackoff and Greenberg, 2008). Ackoff argues that people learn the most fundamental things outside the classroom settings, and argues that most of what we learn actually happens without it being taught to us (e.g. a child that learns how to walk, talk and eat). This means that the purpose of the early stage of ‘schooling’ is to teach children how to learn (Ackoff and Greenberg, 2008).

According to Daniel Goleman, learning happens best in a community of support (Goleman, 1996). This is confirmed in the Brazilian documentary ‘The Beginning of Life’, which explains that in order to grow, children need “a loving village”, because everyone in a child’s life is responsible for raising the child (Farinha and Renner, 2016). Goleman highlights a need for weaving schools, parents and community tighter together, and explains how building a “campus culture that makes it a ‘caring community’” will have a positive effect on the students learnings (Goleman, 1996, p280). Studies confirms that family and community involvement have a positive effect on students (Henderson and Mapp, 2002):

One might question if there should be supporting learning networks instead of schools. As Ann Lieberman, senior scholar in Education at Stanford University, explains: “Unlike bureaucratic organizations, networks are organised around the interests and needs of their participants, building agendas sensitive to their individual and collective development as educators. They can change quickly and invent new structures and activities that are responsive to their members” (Lieberman, 2000, p221). The closest example of communities raising and educating children is the unschooling movement, where families use the real world to create a community of learning for their children, who “live, work and play in the wider world” (Kesson and Rolstad, 2013). Anna Brix Thomsen, a Danish educational sociologist and unschooling advocate, argues that in ‘a real’ learning environment, adults no longer have the role as authority figures but instead as a supporter that “assist the child to navigate, assess, sort and reflect on information, to discover what is meaningful to them” (Thomsen, 2015). However, Peter Gray, research professor in educational psychology, argues that a common disadvantage with unschooling is that the children can experience some degree of social isolation from the lack of other unschoolers nearby and difficulties of socialising with school children because of their busy schedules and different orientation toward life (Gray, 2014). This is confirmed by Carsten Meyer Obel, profesor in children’s mental health, who during an interview argues: “It can be a problem if homeschooled kids do not play much with other kids… They need to practice collaborating with peers… It is a central element for their future that they are able to set well-functioning teams and that they see themselves as team players” (CM Obel 2017, personal communication, 2 October).

Sugata Mitra, an Indian education scientist and researcher known for disrupting education systems, ask: “Do we even need an education now?” Mitra argues that since most information is accessible online, students can find it themselves (Berger, 2017). However, as all children in Denmark are obligated to be educated, it will be interesting to research how innovative entrepreneurs and education practitioners rethink ‘schooling’ and challenge status quo with alternative solutions.

Rethinking schools
Private schools in Denmark have more freedom in regards to structure and learning methods. Merete Riisager, the Danish Minister of Education, highlights: “The value of private schools is the educational and substantive freedom. This gives the private schools a space for controlling their school in a particular direction or prioritising a particular educational or ideological approach - and still reach the same level of education as the public schools” (Riisager, 2017). The private schools also involve actors from outside the education system and dare to think differently (Fjeldsted, 2016). During the last 10 years, Denmark has 295 fewer public schools and 59 new private schools (Dansk Friskoleforening, 2017, p17).

Niels Ploug, the Director of “Statistics Denmark” argues that private schools are more service oriented than public schools, and the fact that the latest public school reforms have had a negative effect on teachers and parents, means that more and more parents are placing their children in private schools (Pedersen, 2017). A new study from the Danish Ministry of Education shows that most parents choose the type (public or private) of school they feel “most confident in”, and the number of parents that prefer the private schools system is growing each year (TV2, 2017). One can therefore question whether privatisation will be the future for Danish education?

Private schools rethinking learning: Den Grønne Friskole, Verdensbørn Grundskole, X-Skolen, Cirkelskolen

Founding a new school can be compared with an entrepreneur founding his or hers first startup company, and as an interviewed school leader explains: “I was unconsciously incompetent in the beginning” (G Svenning 2017, personal communication, 26 October). Daniel Willingham, Professor in cognitive psychology, argues that many people have tried to build schools inspired by Sir Ken Robinson’s “ideals” about education, and that while a few were “spectacular, inspiring successes” most “crashed and burned” (Willingham, 2010). The one - or few - people running the school the first years have to wear many hats like entrepreneurs. It will therefore be relevant to see research the role of networks in entrepreneurial learning.

Networks and entrepreneurial learning

Entrepreneurship is characterised by a disrupted process of significant and critical events (Deakins and Freel, 1998), and during difficult times entrepreneurs find solutions through observing, interacting and communicating with others and in this process they tend to involve a network of relatives, friends and business contacts (Soetanto, 2017). Learning often happens unintentionally rather than deliberately (Soetanto, 2017), but the ability to learn from each experience determines the success of the startup (Deakins, 2002). Research shows that networks are used to facilitate the learning process, and therefore can have an big impact on the project: “Through critical reflection, learning can fundamentally change an individual’s concept, theory and actions, thereby creating entirely new strategies” (Soetanto, 2017, p558). Furthermore, as education practitioners work in a challenging, ever-changing environment (Trust, 2012), being in a professional community allows the practitioners to constantly evolve by collaboratively inventing new ways of working. At the same time, it fosters a positive learning community with openness and colleagueship (Lieberman, 2000). Being in a learning network also has a positive effect on the teachers as “only the teachers who are continual learners that work to improve their practice, skills, and instructional strategies can successfully help others learn” (Trust, 2012, p138).

Subset
Education is essential for peace, tolerance, human fulfilment and sustainable development and should educate the child holistically. However, education also happens outside school settings, and in fact everyone in a child’s life is responsible for raising the child. Denmark has 10 years of compulsory education, and schooling is part of the Danish culture. Most of the new private schools in Denmark disrupt formal education systems, building on learning science, cognitive science, and educational research: Kids learn better when they are motivated (Pink, 2011) and kids improve faster when they understand that they need to work and exercise the brain as any other muscle (Dweck, 2017). Being in communities of support has a positive effect on both students, teachers, school leaders and education entrepreneurs and improves learning for all parts involved. Parents, entrepreneurs and passionate people who initiate private schools all take part in disrupting the Danish education system. At these schools there is room for rethinking learning and exploring alternative options than what is seen in the public schools. However, for many education entrepreneurs it is hard to succeed (Undervisnings Ministeriet, B2017).

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Discover

Understanding a local education system

Initial primary research
The aim of the initial research is to understand the Danish education system through Design Thinking: “In focusing on applying a human-centric approach to identifying problems” (Mootee, 2013, p30). Using a human-centric approach to identifying problems in the education system, it is important to talk to various groups involved with the service (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016). Therefore the initial research includes insights from parents, teachers, school leaders, entrepreneurs within education and an expert in children’s mental health, an interview with an entrepreneur who bypassed the system.

Learnings

1. There should be more focus on social competences

To aquile quantitative data two surveys is created: One aims at parents and the other aims at teachers which allow an investigation of their perhaps different opinions on Danish education. The research is lead by the motivation of teaching children social competences, which the questions reflect. The insights from two surveys shows, that in Danish primary schools most students work in teams at least once a week. However both parents and teachers would like schools to focus even more on developing the pupils social competences.

2. Teachers do not have enough time

There is a lot of tools and initiatives being developed to teach children social competences. The problem is that teachers do not have enough time in their schedule to focus exclusively on social competences. The teachers argue that because of “pressure on the theoretical academics from the the local government and ministry” (appendix 1, slide 13) there is not enough time to teach children about their emotions: “As teachers we must educate and form the whole person, but there is so much focus on the academic disciplines that the social element (to formed the child) slides in the background. There is simply no time” (appendix 1, slide 13).

3. Primary schools should allow children to get to know themselves

To add depth to this research in a more formal manner, stakeholder interviews are held (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016). An expert interview is conducted with a Danish professor in children’s mental health, Carsten Mejer Obel, to understand the social role of children attending primary school for 10 years of their lives. Obel is furthermore one of the researchers behind the online tool Skolesundhed.dk, that allows schools to measure the children’s well-being through a questionnaire. According to Obel, there has been too much focus on tests “you can measure and weight” in the Danish education system. Obel questions whether focusing too much on tests means that attention is taken away from some of the other competences children need to learn to do well in life. Obel explains that schools are a place where children learn the basic life skills. It is important that children get to know themselves outside of their home environment and get know their strong as well as weak sides, so they learn where they fit in both in groups and society at large (CM Obel 2017, personal communication, 2 October) (appendix 2, slide 9).

4. Private organisations do not receive much support from the government

A curiosity to discover and learn from schools that have explicit focus on social and emotional learning resulted in selected school leaders being interviewed. The desk-research has indicated that leaders at private schools have more freedom and more responsibility (Riisager, 2017). Therefore, the first few interviews were conducted with leaders from private schools, and from that it has became clear that there are many very specific problems related to working in education as a private organisation - both as a private school or a private business. Karen MacLean from Den Grønne Friskole, a private school located in Copenhagen, highlights that it is difficult to find an acceptable building especially in the cities. MacLean explains: “The building has been a constantly challenging project. First, we had to seek funds to renovate the building. When we got the funds, the City of Copenhagen had to approve the plans, which took a long time. So finally we got the workers on the project and a contract. And then there was problems with the workers...”. The government support public schools and daycare centers in the process of getting a building approved, but we did not receive the same support - being a private school (K MacLean 2017, personal communication, 23 October).

Inspirational visit (appendix 4, slide 2)

5. Learn from a “just do it” mentality

An inspirational visit has been paid to SOLE Athens which is Athens’ first school for refugee children. At the school, they use Sugata Mitra’s method of self-organised learning environment (Mitra, 2007). The aim with the visit has been to understand how SOLE Athens has created belonging and collaboration between children who speak different languages and have different history and background. The co-founder of SOLE Athens, Maria Calafatis, works with startups and has a “just do it” mentality. In an interview, Calafatis explains that the school opened without approval from the government because, as she argues, some education for the refugee kids is better than no education (M Calafatis 2017, personal communication, 25 August), (appendix 2, slide 12). At SOLE Athens Calafatis has been able to try out different methods and workshops with the children, and she has learned a lot about effective education, which she would not have been able to in a formal school. Of course, this is a very sensitive subject with regards to ethical issues - for instance, the government must ensure that all children get a quality education, which can be difficult in this case. However, the visit has inspired in the way that SOLE Athens proves, that if school entrepreneurs are able to bypass the system, they will make a lot of learnings. Read a blogpost about the visit here. 

SOLE Athens refugee school, located at The Cube Athens

6. Collaboration

During the research, I have contacted the social entrepreneur, Selina Gudnæs, who is opening a holistic private school in August 2018, Cirkelskolen (The Circle School). Gudnæs has becomes a close collaborator on this service design project ‘Disrupting education in the 21 century’. At the same time, I have become a close collaborator on the Circle School project, which allows me to get an essential ‘empathy’ experience of opening a new private school in Denmark. ‘Empathy’ in this case means being able to connect with the observed people at a fundamental level, and is according to Tim Brown “perhaps the most important distinction between academic thinking and Design Thinking” (Brown and Katz, 2009, p49).

Identified challenges
The secondary research and the primary research conducted so far cover the cognitive, civic and social purpose of schooling. Compulsory education lasts for 10 years in Denmark, and all children are entitled to free education in a public primary school. Schools in the 21st Century should allow the students to acquire interpersonal competencies, social skills and higher-order cognitive skills as well as promote healthy values and attitudes (Bakhshi, et al., 2017, p66), (UNESCO, 2016). Research evidence that children gets motivated to learn through their personal passion and drive - as well as autonomy (Goleman, 1996), (Pink, 2017), (Dweck, 2017).

One of the challenges identified through the initial research is that it is difficult to have a noticeable impact on the public education system in Denmark. As reforms are political and determined by law, it involves compromises and takes time. But by offering learning materials or workshops, it is possible to have a positive impact on some Danish school classes, which the companies MiLife and Design to Improve Life Education are doing with great success. However, the problem is not that innovative learning materials about social and emotional learning are missing, the problem is that teachers feel they do not have time to use the tools as they feel restricted by tight schedules and goals for hard skills learning outcomes.

Another way to disrupt education in Denmark is by opening a private school, but through the collaboration with Selina Gudnæs I identified another potential challenge that I would like to research further; It is a difficult job to start a new school in Denmark even for a passionate and experienced entrepreneur. This is confirmed by the statistics from the Danish Ministry of Education that shows that 27 private schools were registered last year (and paid the deposit to the government), but only 5 of them actually opened (Undervisnings Ministeriet, C2017). One one the schools that registered but did not succeed to open in 2017 was X-Skolen. They explain in an update on facebook, that they had problems getting an approval of their building from the City of Copenhagen (X-Skolen, 2017).

Revised research questions

• What specific challenges do innovative entrepreneurs disrupting or improving the Danish educational system face?

• What motivates the entrepreneurs to overcome the challenges and at which cost?

• How might these problems become easier to handle through support from like-minded people?

Additional research

In-depth interviews
It is relevant to conduct additional in-depth customer interviews as the focus became more specific around how to empower innovative education entrepreneurs. Therefore, several more interviews are conducted with both school leaders, education entrepreneurs and experts (appendix 2). Nicolai Seest, cofounder of &Learning, is interviewed as an extreme user, as he is initiating a lot of different projects all aiming at improving education. Seest has a large network within the education sector and at the moment is looking for inspiration and searching for a project where he can have the most impact on the Danish education system with the least effort (economic and timewise). It is therefore interesting to understand his challenges and how he would like to be supported. “When you speak with and observe extreme users, their needs are amplified and their work-arounds are often more notable. This helps you pull out meaningful needs that may not pop when engaging with the middle of the bell curve. However, the needs that are uncovered through extreme users are often also needs of a wider population” (d.school, nd.).

Inspirational visits and empathy experience

The private school, Børne Uni

In context, immersion is good for understanding the customers - not just on an intellectual level, but also on an experiential level: “Meeting people where they live, work, and socialise and immersing yourself in their context reveals new insights and unexpected opportunities” (IDEO, nd., p46). All interviews with school leaders are conducted at their schools which has allowed me to explore their schools. The inspirational visits revealed many more aspects of ‘how to run a school’ - as well as the challenges involved - compared to what is written on the schools’ websites, and what I have learned solely from the in-depth interviews. The inspirational experiences also have made me reflect on how much other school leaders will learn from visiting each others schools. At the same time, helping Selina to open a private school (the empathy experience) has given me insights about how many different skills it takes to open a school, that I would not be able to understand otherwise. In collaboration, Selina and I have written job descriptions, developed a school budget, searched locations and found a building for the school, as well as hosting events for children and parents.

Selina Gudnæs is joining me for an inspirational visit at Den Grønne Friskole

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Define

Analysis of research

Downloading the research

Synthesise insights
This technique can pivot the designer in many different directions based on the insights gained and leads to defining the key problems and opportunities. The sense-making phase is a visual process uncovering connections and finding patterns between elements, and it is “less important to be ‘accurate’ and more important to give some abstract and tangible form to the ideas, thoughts and reflection” (Kolko, 2010).

The desk research shows that several of the new private schools in Denmark are quite innovative (Rethinking schools). By conducting four in-depth interviews with school leaders (appendix 2), I get an indication that the leaders from the recently opened private schools are most prone to thinking disruptively. All interviewees show interest in staying updated on relevant science and knowledge about learning. During the primary research and inspirational visits, I have realised how the school leaders are “reinventing the wheel”, and feel like they stand alone instead of collaborating with each other. However, all interviewed participants show interest in connecting with like-minded people in education (see illustration below). What stands out most clearly from the interviews is that all the participants had experienced stress (most of them almost to the point of burnout) and explained that, especially during the first years, their projects were a constant series of ups and downs.

Interviewed participants show interest in connecting with like-minded people

Identified challenges

1. challenge

It is very stressful to be a private school leader or education entrepreneur and they have to work very independently. It is not easy to get support from either private or public organisations within education. Even though Nicolai Seest got a sponsorship from the Ministry of Education in Denmark to develop an online video community (Håndværk og design, 2017) for craft and design teachers, he still finds it difficult to stay motivated as he feels it is difficult to change or even just have an impact on the Danish public education system (appendix 2, slide 7). In the interview Seest stresses, that a way to have an impact on the Danish education system it to reach the system - not from the inside but from the outside: “Document your learnings (e.g. video) and share it with the world. When the world looks at it, the Danish government will look too” (N Seest 2017, personal communication, 23 October).

2. challenge

All the interview-participants say they use their closest family for support when they felt really stressed, which is hard on their relationships in the long run.

3. challenge

The school leaders carry a lot of responsibility - both for the success of the organisation as well as the quality of the education of the students. As the private school leaders are working very independently, they are “reinventing the wheel” in many cases instead of collaborating with other private schools.

4. challenge

All the interview-participants mention they are happy to share learnings with each other, but that they do not have the time to document their processes. Inventors do not have the time to document all of their learnings, as Karen MacLean points out: “We don't have time to teach and invent and document” (appendix 2, slide 3).

Identified opportunity areas

Defining the problem in a ‘How might we’ challenge statement
Challenge statement:

Ethics
I have focused on entrepreneurs - which in other words means the founders and leaders of private schools and private companies. One might question whether it is ethical to have a focus on private organisations. Especially considering that private schools often are small, it can be questioned whether they only are for privileged children and whether private schools are inclusive enough? I have become aware that in Denmark, private schools have the option to ‘opt out’ some children and families if they are not believed to fit in. However, for the sake of innovating education and learning what works in smaller schools to later inspire the entire education system in Denmark, this might be acceptable as the greater vision is to improve education for everyone. At the same time, it is worth highlighting that Danish private schools are inclusive and not only for privileged children. As mentioned in the Terminology, private schools attract families from all social classes (Pedersen, 2017).

Personas

While a persona is a widely used tool in the design process, some experience designers argue against using the tool and highlight that the personas often are based on biased assumptions (Klement, 2013). In contrast, same experience designers points out that the motivations and reactions that the personas illustrates are real (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016, p178). It has been recommended, to identify only the primary persona - “the one that needs the system, and can’t make do with a UI designed for another persona” (Velot, 2014) - however I find that multiple personas have allowed me to understand how to accommodate different needs in the same service design:

The persistent
This person has driven a school for 7 years. She has been at the school from the beginning, as she was part of the team founding it. Other stakeholders as well as some teachers have dropped out of the project over the years. Her motivations for being interested in this project are:

The experienced
This person has started a lot of projects in his life. He now wishes for a more stable project that gives more meaning to him (in the sense that he would like to feel he is doing something good - with a social impact) and where he can use his experience and knowledge. His motivations for being interested in this project are:

The entrepreneur
This person has worked with kids and been a coach for several years of her life. She has decided to open a “free school” and recently quit all other responsibilities, so she can focus all her energy on opening the school in time. Her motivations for being interested in this project are:

User journey map

To gain empathy with the target group their ups and downs are illustrated in a user journey map. Journey mapping is argued to “pave the way for better, more efficient, more intentional product development” (Startups.co, 2017). The timeline covers (1) when they started the school or company until (2) today and then (3) what the expected future looks like.

User journey map

As shown on the journey map, there is a lot of ups and downs for the entrepreneur (green/yellow), whereas the two others - the persistent (orange) and the experienced (pink) - are in a place in their journey where they today have a little more stability than earlier. The entrepreneur could benefit from a support network of more experienced school leaders or education researchers. At the same time, the persistent and the experienced could benefit from the new energy and ideas that they will get from the support network.

Just to mention a few of the downs, one is caused by the problems related to finding a building and getting it approved as a school building. Another down is due to difficulties managing various tasks at the same time and often dealing with new and unforeseen challenges. Yet another down is getting stuck in the daily running and managing the school, which means there is not enough time to stay updated and innovative.

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Develop

Process and learnings

Guerilla testing
Guerrilla methods are generally time efficient, low-cost and have "just enough rigor" (Unger and Warfel, 2011). During the research phase a lot of different people passionate about education have showed interest in this project (appendix 4, slide 6). Their contact information was firstly kept in a spreadsheet, but after a while it became clear that they would benefit from being connected with each other as well, so the Facebook group ‘Learning about learning’ was created. The interest in the Facebook group can be a confirmation, that there is a need for a community for people interested in rethinking education, but this should be tested further. To test if the participants would like to engage in online knowledge sharing a Flipboard is created with curated content about learning. However this test quickly shows, that it is hard to keep the audience engaged on such a platform. It has become a one-way platform because I have been the only one posting. Even though I, as a test, invited a few collaborators to post as well.

Industry feedback, Martina Tranström
Martina Tranström is a freelance digital experience designer, who has worked with Fjord, IDEO and UsTwo, and has 10 years of experience in user-centred design. This project has been presented to Tranström to get feedback on the process and coaching for the next steps (appendix 7, slide 2).

Testing ideas

MVP mockups tested with four participants (appendix 5)

Expectation maps are used to investigate what customer expect from a service. They can be used in in-depth interviews to gather customers’ reflections on the whole service or specific elements (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016). In this case, four MVP mockups are created to look for the participants first reactions to the different ideas (appendix 5). A few things are clear from the feedback:

A need to collaborate more

All four school leaders would like more collaboration between each other. “We share too little” explains Gitte Svenning.

Physical meetings are prefered

The participants prefer physical meetings over online meetings, but as both Selina Gudnæs and Gitte Svenning point out, it is so important to share insights and collaborate with others, that they should take time to meet up with the network even if the meeting is online. Karen MacLean points out that she already has a network group with three other school leaders, but they rarely meet up because it is hard to find a date and time where they all are available.

Quality and activeness are required

“If the community has an online platform for knowledge sharing, it needs to be active” Gitte Svenning says, but explains at the same time that Facebook groups “make me tired just by looking at it - so many people have opinions”. Both Selina Gudnæs and Karen MacLean highlight that the tone on the knowledge sharing platform or Facebook group should be serious and suggest that the community has a curator to secure the quality of the content. Gudnæs worries that “if everyone is responsible - no one will take responsibility”.

A lack of content creators

As mentioned earlier, it is hard for school leaders and teachers to find the time to document their learnings. Yassin Bachiri stresses that to him a knowledge sharing platform seems like a lot of work to create and manage. Karen MacLean says that the real task is to find someone to document what the schools are doing right, because as she explains: “We would love to share so others can learn from it, but we simply don’t have the time”.

Prototyping physical meetups
There is a need for place that allows collaboration and knowledge sharing between the participants, but it must not require too much time and effort to do so. Therefore, I would like to test if the participants benefit from network meetings. This also takes into account that most of the interviewed participants have mentioned that they prefer to meet up physically. On the other hand, it is important to be aware that physical meetups comes with geographic limitations. Therefore, the first network meetings will be tested in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, and if they are successful the concept can later grow to other cities. The prototyping of meetups happens over three steps:

Analogous experience
IDEO states that analogous experiences can work as creative leaps, as the designer puts herself into a new situation (IDEO, B, nd.). This project is affected by two analogous experiences:

1. Iterating a meetup framework

I have volunteered to be part of a team facilitating meetups for a community of alumni (appendix 4, slide 9-10). The aim has been to empower people in the network to connect and exchange value, to enable and spread lifelong learning. The experience turned out to bring many useful insights about facilitating a community building meetup:

Tips for facilitating meetups

2. Visiting a community of social change makers

The second experience is to visit ‘Sager der samler’ (Causes that Gathers) which is a Danish community of local changemakers - a support network for social activists sustained through face-to-face gatherings (appendix 4, slide 11). They have an office in Århus, Denmark’s second largest city, where people in the community can meet each other. The learnings from visiting ‘Sager der samler’ are:

Tips to engage a community

Industry feedback, Vasia Christoulaki
Vasia Christoulaki is an experienced service designer who has co-founded two service design companies, Design 4 Future (where she currently works) and DesignThinkers Greece. This project was presented for Christoulaki to get feedback on the process and coaching for the next steps (appendix 7, slide 3).

Service journey mapping
“In order to design better products or services that can provide a really great experience for users, it will be useful to identify the major elements, or ‘threads’ of the experience” (Kim, 2015, p23). As Kim (2015) argues, “because of the holistic nature of experience”, it can sometimes be difficult to draw clear boundaries between the elements (p24). Therefore, it is crucial to identify all the touchpoints where the user interacts with the service (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016). This aspect can be assessed through a ‘service journey’, which provides a high-level overview of all the factors that makes up the experience.

As seen in the diagrams below, the service process is delivered in three parts: ‘pre-service periode’, ‘service periode’ and ‘post-service period’, and it illustrates how a user can reach several touch points (both online and offline).

Service journey - Identified touchpoints

Service journey - Participant journey

Co-creative session
As recommended by Vasia Christoulaki during an interview, participants are invited to a co-creative session to develop the purpose of the service; namely the community (V Christoulaki 2017, personal communication, 14 November). Essentially, co-design sessions involve collaborative design thinking, problem setting and solution finding (Steen, 2015). A such co-design framework, enables members of a community to “participate in creating and sustaining a group that advance their professional identity, interests, and learning” and releases “great power and energy” (Lieberman, 2000, p223). It is important to make the participants feel comfortable in a co-creation session, as Marc Steen explains: “The ethics of co-design occur when the people involved are able to jointly achieve concrete results and critically evaluate these results, and when they are able to productively negotiate and combine their different interests” (Steen, 2015, p407). This can be supported with a network meetup, which allows the participants to get to know each other before the first the co-creative session. At the same time, this allows another iteration of the meetup framework and marketing materials (appendix 6). It also adds value to the participants by giving them a clear idea of the potential of the network meeting so they easier can share their ideas and insights in the co-creation session that follows. However, it is advised to keep the scenery rough to increase creativity from participants (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2016, p132). Therefore, participants are presented with 10 questions about the service, and then asked to answer them individually on post-it notes, to be discussed afterwards briefly together:

Co-creative session - Questions about the key elements

Photos from the meetup and co-creative session

At the meetup, Selina Gudnæs (founder of Cirkelskolen), Lars Larsen (administrative leader at Børne Uni), Ove Christensen (education researcher) and Yassin Bachiri (school leader and founder of Verdensbørn Grundskole) has participated (appendix 4, slide 12 and 13). One of the key learnings from the session was that, as school leaders are extremely busy, the meetup needs to be announced sooner than two weeks prior to the event. While most invited school leaders were unable to join, a few of them complimented the invitation and information surrounding the event, which is also expressed in an email from one of the participants: “The invitation as well as the meeting was very professionally designed and facilitated” (L Larsen, 2017, personal communication, 4 December).

The initial wish was to have at least six participants for the co-creation session instead of only four, but because of the quality and engagement of the participants, this turned out to work in our favour. Participants had time to go deeper into discussions and get to know each other better.

Teamwork

A fluid team
The “working team” has been rather fluid throughout the this project - it initially started as a collaboration between Selina Gudnæs and I, Christina Bruun, but hereafter evolved into a larger network. This can, theoretically speaking, be described as a “fluid team”, which is characterised as “a group that is responsible for one or more important outcomes but has unstable membership” (Bushe and Chu, 2011). The network meetings were planned by the initiators and co-facilitated by the participants in the community. Therefore, I see the core team as a joined force between the initiators and the active collaborators. Deep Patel, who is recognised as a top 25 marketing influencer by Forbes, explains that “the best teams are formed around fluid, open communication”, and that to be able to build a confident team, the manager should be able to collaborate rather than dictate: “Part of having people believe in you is believing in what you’ve built, so much that they want to help nurture and grow it” (Patel, 2017). Teams develop into effective ones if members feel they belong, but some research indicates a risk that members in teams with ‘transitory membership’ are less likely to feel they belong after a while (Bushe and Chu, 2011). Therefore, it is important to maintain the early member’s desire to commit. Factors that trigger a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction - such as skill variety, task identity, autonomy and feedback - have been identified as having a positive effect on members in fluid teams as they increase the intrinsic motivation of a job. Furthermore, social contacts and opportunities to learn have also been shown to increase the motivation (Bushe and Chu, 2011).

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Deliver

The solution

EdCircle - Learning about learning
Ed Circle is a global circle of people interested in the future of education. Comprising of local, physical meetups at schools, organisations and companies that are already rethinking learning. It is an open community that welcomes people from all backgrounds, which fundamentally revolves around the ideology that ‘disrupting education in the 21st century’ should be a job for a diverse circle of people, not only for those in education. Everyone interested in education is invited to join the community and contribute to the spreading of innovations in pedagogy and didactics.

Quote by one of the participants of EdCircle

Facebook group
The participants in the community interact online in the Facebook group ‘EdCircle - Learning about learning’. It is important that the community cultivates a safe space for all participants to share learnings and ask each other for support. Facebook has proven to provide the needed accessibility and framework for conversations to happen, because the online social platform allows people from all over the world to discuss and connect with the common mission to disrupt and learn and continuously question the purpose of the school system and where and how education will happen in the future. The Facebook group currently has a diverse circle of people with nearly 100 members from different backgrounds and nationalities. Some of the members share links and some actively answers questions. Yet, it is evident that the community still is in its early stage and it requires some level of curating to keep the conversations active and the members engaged. However, it is assumed that conversations will flourish when more meetups have taking place.

Meetup framework
To allow deeper collaboration between the members, local meetups are planned (and so far tested in Copenhagen, Denmark). The participants visit a new school or company each time they meet up, and here they are presented with a place that already rethinks learning and offers alternatives to the well-known formal, public school structure. These schools are often private schools, as they are small and agile. However, there is an inherent value in expanding the community to public school leaders as well, as private and public schools can derive value from collaborating and sharing learnings - the same way that large businesses can learn from startups and vice versa. One of the problems of being big is that because of size, (and the bureaucracy associated with it) it becomes harder to pivot on new ideas quickly and easily. This is also what the startup scene struggles with, as many startups - being young and small - have great ideas but very little expertise in manufacturing and business (Tamburini, 2015).

Co-creative session - Questions about the key elements

The meetups allow school leaders and education entrepreneurs, who do not have time to document their learnings, to share experiences and insights in a time efficient and engaging way. This ‘collaboration’ allows the participants to inspire each other, but also to become aware of their own blind spots: Participants will see how things are done at other schools and reflect on the learnings in comparison with their own school. The host school or company can also reflect on the received feedback from the visitors.

The EdCircle community

A simple illustration of the community

Testing and feedback

Feedback from participants
The participants express that they value the knowledge sharing between each other and feel very inspired after the network meetings. They mention a high level quality in both presentations and the host schools, and that they like that the meetups have a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. The feedback session and discussion at the end provides a framework for reflection on own practise. As one of the participants has written on the feedback notes from the co-creation session: “As schools we can lift and inspire each other, stay awake and grow together”. Another express: “Together we can each become better” and one of the hosts highlights that the network works like ‘free supervision’ (appendix 4, slide 12-13).

Even though all participants are part of the global Facebook group, they still request an online platform where they can find each other's profiles after the meetup. I therefore have started researching whether participants and stakeholders prefer to have a local Facebook group or a website. This needs to be researched further, but the majority of the respondents express that a website exudes professionalism. Many of them are happy to communicate with other participants in a Facebook group, but some of them do not use Facebook in work-related settings. Also, it might be worth mentioning that the participants appreciate that the network is open to everyone interested in education. In fact, the school leaders request that more professionals from outside schools (psychologists, local authorities, pedagogues etc.) as well as people from public education will show up at the next meetings. One of the participants from the last network meeting expressed that without the physical meetups the network will lose value.

Feedback from the industry and global community
Kara Kane is community manager for several user experience groups - including the user-centred design community across the UK government. She emphasises that a limited small amount of people at the physical meetups will most likely enhance each person’s engagement. Kane advises to invite people from outside the education system as guest speakers, and let them question and challenge the standards. As she explains “let them be provocative, this will spark the conversation” (appendix 7, slide 4). Matilda Sundåker, a learning designer and freelance strategist, is providing feedback on the meetup framework. Sundåker stresses the importance of a clear communication around the purpose of the meetup “be clear on ‘why’ the the meetups are important, ‘who’ should participate, ‘what’ will be the focus on the meetups and ‘how’ will it happen” (appendix 7, slide 5). During a telephone meeting with Lene Jensby Lange from Autens - a Danish consultancy house specialising in rethinking schools and designing innovative learning environments - Jensby highlighted that she has a positive attitude towards the future of education in Denmark as learning is already being rethought: “There are many initiatives at Danish schools that improves the teaching and learning environment for children” (appendix 7, slide 6). This statement indicates that the global community could benefit from the Danish success stories being shared at the local network meetings.

Conclusion

Educational institutions should be agile, as society constantly develops and we get smarter about how the human brain works. Humans are motivated by autonomy, passion and mastery, and therefore schools should allow personalised learning. Students need to learn to be lifelong learners, as predictions about the future indicates that they will not be able to stay in the same job during their whole lifetime. The purpose of compulsory education is to ensure that everyone learns the basic skills to live a good life and be a good citizen.

I originally chose to research education because I would like to work and user-test with children. However, I have allowed this to be a curiosity project for me, where I have given into the human-centered experience design process and followed the insights which have lead me to developing something that is needed above anything else. While conducting primary research with specific focus on the Danish educational system, I have identified that there is a need for creating a supporting network for the brave entrepreneurs. Hopefully, the EdCircle community can inspire and empower more entrepreneurs to disrupt and improve educational systems, as well as inspire larger schools to become more agile.

Selina Gudnæs, one of the participants in the EdCircle network, has in an email shared some of her thoughts about the schools visited and the school leaders she has met through the network. They have inspired her both with regards to interior design as well as school structure and learning methods. Gudnæs explains "Because of EdCircle, I feel more encouraged to stand out with the values and methods that I believe in is important, such as being a holistic school, the use of meditation and mental training, and to create a school without tests and grades" (S Gudnæs 2017, personal communication, 20 December).

Even though this paper primarily focuses on the Danish market, a global audience has shown interest in the project which indicates there is a global need for a support network for entrepreneurs in education. Some have already reached out to me because they would like to see a similar solution in their own countries. There are a lot of ways to improve education, but what is special about EdCircle is that it ‘breaks the bubble’ and invites people from outside education to engage and innovate learning. It provides a framework to learn from others and to co-develop each other's schools through feedback. This collaboration makes it possible for everyone with passion and vision to influence the future of education.

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Reflection

How far can we take this?

Vision
The vision is for EdCircle to unite the disruptive voices from educational thought leaders around the world
with a diverse circle of people passionate about education and school leaders that can implement changes
at their schools and make thoughts become reality. As a service designer I wish to keep contributing to this movement through the human-centred techniques of experience design such as co-creation and user-feedback.
The aim is to be able to document the learnings shared in the EdCircle community, so that innovative schools become learning labs that will inspire each other as well as impact the public school system and the state curriculums.

Next steps

• Develop a website
  In a sample survey, several respondents stated that a website would add credibility and professionalism to the community as a whole. A low-fidelity prototype has therefore been created in Marvel (online prototype testing tool) and tested with a few stakeholders. The website includes a list of local network meetings, member profiles and information about the community as well as a manifesto. It still requires further testing and iteration followed by a high-fidelity prototype. In the meantime, a temporary website has been created to collect the emails of potential participants, see EdCircle.org.

User testing the Marvel prototype

• Plan next meetings
  In order to expand the community, the next few meetings should be planned well in advance. Therefore, the next steps would be to recruit innovative hosts and speakers who can share valuable insights that will inspire the network. It will furthermore be relevant to test network meetings in other locations aside from Copenhagen - both inside and outside of Denmark.

• PR strategy
  At the moment, the global community has 100 participants that have all been invited through word-of-mouth. To bring the community further, one of the next steps must be to create marketing materials as well as get news media coverage to promote the network.

• Local Facebook groups
  Another thing worth testing is whether a local Facebook group exclusively for the participants of the meetups will increase or decrease the community activity. The reason why it will be relevant to create local groups is to provide a safe space for the participants that have already met in real life, so they can collaborate or ask each other for advice and support.

Final thoughts

In a recent article for Wired, the well known entrepreneur and author of The Lean Startup book, Eric Ries, explains that companies that want to stay innovative should consider entrepreneurship as a vital part of the organisation (Turk, 2017). However, in the business world 90% of learning labs owned by big corporations are failing. Instead, corporate innovation must come from outside the organisation from places more entrepreneurial and more customer-centered (Howard, 2017). As Diego Tamburini, the Principal of Industry Experiences at Microsoft, argues: “I think that is precisely where things are headed. There will be more and more innovation coming from outside the walls of ‘established’ manufacturing companies, and the best companies will embrace this new reality and adapt to be less monolithic and closed” (Tamburini, 2015). It could be interesting to test whether this goes for the education system as well.

As mentioned earlier, there is a resemblance between the corporate world and the education system. One could see the public education systems as the big corporations and innovative private schools (or alternative initiatives) as small startups. All parties should learn to learn from each other and collaborate towards a better future with more agile learning institutions.

On the 4th of December 2017, at a two day meeting arranged by the Danish Disruption Council (Danish Ministry of Employment, 2017), the Danish Ministry of Education asked “how to make a school that makes sense for the students right now and at the same time gives foundation for lifelong learning so that they can continue to build on their learnings when they grow up” (Danish Ministry of Education, 2017). Maybe the answer lies in the EdCircle network. I would dare to argue that first step is to acknowledge private schools, which are alternative and innovative, as living experiments and educational learning labs for the government and public education system. Eric Ries explains how big companies can innovate like entrepreneurs: “Got a project with unknown variables? Recruit a small team and let them experiment” (Turk, 2017). This experimental approach is exactly the DNA for the ‘little schools’ in Denmark,  especially the newer schools that are only 1-3 years old and have not grown into routines yet. I hope that the Danish EdCircle meetups can inspire stakeholders to continue this conversation.

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