Voyaging together...




I am three weeks into my new role as Director of Learning Innovation at UWC Atlantic.  This is my introductory blog that will help me share this exciting voyage of learning innovation we’re embarking on.  

I say voyage because we journey alone but we voyage together.  I have recently been re-inducted back into Atlantic College having taught Economics, History and Political Thought here from 1998/9-2002/3 which clearly ages me!  My recent induction reconnected me to the sense of belonging that is unique to UWCs.  From the many offers of support I have already received from UWC Alumni, clearly this belonging lasts a lifetime.  There are huge expectations for what we can achieve as we reimagine the curriculum here at AC and with Rebecca Warren’s leadership, across the UWC movement. 

Bouncing between the UWC, international schools and the British state system as a teacher, Head of Faculty, Assistant Principal, Principal and Executive Principal, I have made a career out of going to the margins of practice and bringing that into the mainstream. A perceptive educator told me yesterday that my professional life sounds like that of an adventurer. 

Adventurers go to the margins because it’s here that you find practice borne of real passion that thrives in spite of, rather than because of, the wider system that so often stymies innovation.  @skyschool_world, @AP_lifeboats CriticalEngagement are just three AC Alumni examples that are disrupting educational and social models.  As we forge new ways of empowering young people to be successful and live for the common good we are well served by emerging models of seeing, co-creating and prototyping what is really needed.

It’s clear that we are voyaging together as @UWC Atlantic, a @UWC_IO movement and in a wider system of progressive UK schools across networks such as @AshokaCMschools. Together, we're exploring how UWC Short Courses create ‘magic’ through transformative pedagogy; how Dialoog can enable deep personal expression that engenders new ways of ‘becoming’ and ‘being’ in the world; and how new universities such as London Interdisciplinary School are using systems thinking to enable students escape narrow silos of curriculum knowledge and deeply understand the whole. 

We have much to do and so much to learn from one another as like-minded adventurers seeking to create a better learning for students a a better future for us all.  Myself, some students and colleagues are following a MOOC from MIT based on their process of Theory U.  This is an enticing methodology for integrating individual and social transformation and throws up some interesting possibilities for curriculum development.  Feel free to join the online course here: online ULab1x programme and join our Hub by dropping me an email so we can voyage together.


Shaun McInerney, Director Of Learning Innovation, UWC Atlantic
Twitter:  @shaunpmcinerney


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