Sharing Good Practice

BY ZOE GRIFFITHS

The land on which we all live today has indeed shaped us , but since what is described as the tipping point of 2007 , technology has very quickly created the distance between our mental and physical space , it has created new undefined borders across countries ; communities , families , schools and friendship groups , posing a direct threat to our culture . Heading to every Year 7 across the world this September is a generation who is considered to have been born into the most technology in history . When considering the speed of change posed by technological advancements , we have the greatest challenge to our society .

When we consider the shining examples of the Singapore policy reform and their long-term approach to holistic learner attainment and comparative tests , the time laps between educational reform and learner impact gives us a stark reality check on the 10 years taken for each phase to impact . A similar paradox of centralised / decentralisation was embedded into the education reform system of Vietnam , a country who showed remarkable PISA scores in 2012 and 2015 whilst being one of the poorest countries . Research by the Education Development Trust and Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences , showed that the quality and equity of education can improve if education is enacted in every part of daily life . Outside the school , a proeducation culture set the aspiration and expectation at community level and within families , interestingly mandated by policy to harness the power of parent partnerships . This fascinating approach has really shone a light on the success of collaborative accountability , top down and bottom up , in embedding important values , developing character and an aspirational culture to cultivate student agency .

Indeed , time is the common denominator of all our educational achievements , existence , differences and similarities and how we spend that precious commodity of time with family and at school , shapes our path to fulfilment and achievement .

Do you think Zahra Lari the UAE ' s first professional figure skater was born with ice skates on her feet ? It takes time to be great at something , the greater you become , the more time it takes to get there . Malcolm Gladwell made the claim in numerical terms , 10,000 hours is approximately 417 days . If you devote 3 hours a day it would be approximately 3333 days or little over 9 years . What if our Year 7 students are already half way to achieving 10,000 hours of interaction with a device that reduces their time spending quality time with family and / or friends , creates less time for physical activity , can cause sleep problems and have been strongly associated with mental health problems ? Despite spending his life creating one of the world ’ s biggest technology empires , Steve Jobs took a fairly strict view on gadgets when it came to his own children . There ’ s no surprise here when we consider the negative impact of too much time spent away from human interaction .

The colliding competition for children ’ s attention from a device to the attention of a loving family or friendship , is the big elephant in everyone ’ s family home . I hear a collective call to action ; let ’ s shift the power away from technology to the power of parent partnerships to create a systematic approach to time well spent , the type of purposeful practice that our children need to develop the human skills and qualities to achieve their life purpose .

Zoe Griffiths is a former international athlete , authentic leader and socially responsible entrepreneur with sustainability rooting all that she does . Zoe is currently serving as regional director of Life Learning ; a NZ educational consultancy based in Dubai .