New World, Old Values

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We first encountered the phrase ‘indivisibility of principles’ in a book called ‘Leading the Learning School’ by Colin Weatherley. It immediately resonated with our personal beliefs and values. Fundamentally, it describes an aspect of integrity.
 
If we are asking learners (of any age) to develop certain ‘principles’ (values, skills, attitudes, attributes, etc.) then, as practitioners or leaders of learning, we should be modelling those same principles rather than establishing a ‘division’ of principles of the ‘One rule for you, another rule for me.’ or ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ variety! Indivisibility is about ‘walking the talk’.

Meeting Colin for lunch at The King's Manor Hotel, near Edinburgh.

​When we began designing and running our ‘in person’ training events, it was important to us that we did so with an indivisibility of principles. 
 
‘In this event or design, are we engaging safely, fairly and fully?’ is one of the questions we continually reflect upon. Over time, we have adapted, modified and created learning experiences in response to our self-reflection and the feedback from participants.
 

​As a result of the global pandemic in 2020/21, like the rest of the world, we were challenged to adapt our training to an ‘online’ format. 
 

While there are times when we need to share information directly, our events are not lectures where participants are passive recipients of information. Our in-person events involve participants being immersed in collaborative problem-solving experiences. They work in small groups as they learn tools and processes, engage in reflection and feedback and develop ideas about how to adapt their learning to their individual settings. The close interaction also helps to quickly generate a strong sense of community. 
 
We summarised our challenge in the following question:

‘In an online environment, how do we facilitate active, real-time collaborative problem-solving and nurture a sense of community when participants are remotely connected?’

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