Seeking Out Ideas that Challenge – Yes Please!
Ideas matter. We all know we are living in a fractured world and there is no point articulating the litanies of disruption yet again. Extremism, no matter its origin, is unfathomably problematic, shattering, and epoch defining. That is our reality. Our future rests on our ability to think and reason, probably more so than ever before – to think and to challenge. Technology, no matter what its name or source, hopefully will never be able to fully intuit, reason, and deduce. That is what humans do. We lose it, belittle it, or trivialise it at our peril. Somehow, we need to come together as one humanity to avoid disintegrating into tribal clusters. Nowadays such a sentiment seems to be more aligned to a ‘theological’ hope, yet we must be watchful and courageous.
Many of us have either read or heard about Harvard University’s long-running Project Zero. This pedagogical project has brought educators together around the globe for many years. One of the books stemming from it is Dr Ron Ritchhart’s superb Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Cultural Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools. This book is in my top five career-illuminating pieces of educational writing. The research underscoring this study was the result of a long-term collaboration with Melbourne’s Bialik College.
Given everything that seems to be bumping up against humanity currently, quoting fully from Ritchhart’s (2015:3) opening paragraph is illuminating. He notes:
When and where have you been part of a culture of thinking? That is, when have you been in a place where the group’s collective thinking as well as each individual’s thinking was valued, visible, and actively promoted as part of the regular day-to-day experience of all group members? It might have been any type of learning group – a book study, committee, graduate course, online community, museum tour, or hobby group – or it might have been a school or classroom. Take a moment to identify a single instance from your life as a learner in which you were a part of such a group. A time when you felt that everyone’s thinking in the group was valued, that thinking was expressed in a way that made the thinking itself visible, and you felt pushed to think and advance your thinking.
Early last term I had the opportunity to again visit Bialik College, this time for their Igniting Cultures of Thinking Conference. It was a celebration marking 20 years of their commitment to this approach to thinking and classroom practice. This was my first visit since COVID. Prior to this, a group of staff from our school visited them up to three times a year as we worked on developing our Cultures of Thinking methodology. Bialik’s campus again brought the gift of something very special. It is through its very DNA the epitome of a thinking culture. The gift of Cultures of Thinking, I would recommend to all classroom practitioners, is the 8 Cultural Forces it champions as underscoring classroom practice. Cultures of Thinking is much more than thinking routines!
When opening the conference, Bialik’s Principal, Mr Jeremy Stowe-Linder, gave an enlightened and inspirational address. In it he noted:
We are educators who see that creating a culture of thinking is a key antidote to the echo chamber of the algorithm.
We are educators who see that engaging with new ideas – ideas that may make me uncomfortable, ideas that may challenge my preconceptions – do not make me unsafe. They make me enriched.
Since igniting thinking cultures is now a key role of the parent, of policy, and of education.
And our optimism is spread to our students too. We see in our graduates the spark of ingenuity, the cynicism of the algorithm, the desire to push the boat out, the need for collaboration, the benefit of the wisdom of the group rather than the ideologue of the lone self. These are thinking cultures.
We are here to unpack complexity and reject the binary simplicity of the algorithm. We are here to reason and to challenge.
Seek out ideas that challenge you. Feel uncomfortable in your conversations, and thrive in the knowledge that discomfort does not breed a lack of safety – in reality, and curated well, discomfort is an inoculation and a stimulant for thinking.
We most certainly need an ‘inoculation’ against the purveyors of fear that would like to entrap our thinking or lead us lemming-like to an unpalatable future.
Now to something completely different. By the time this blog is being read, our Annual Conference Amplifying Every Voice: Shaping our Story, Empowering All Learners will be in full swing or concluded. No doubt this time together will have in part ‘inoculated’ us as well as stimulated our thinking.
It was wonderful that two of our Queensland National Prize winners contributed sessions at the conference. Dr Stephanie MacMahon, Senior Lecturer in the Science of Learning and Arts Education (University of Queensland), a National Leadership Award recipient as well as our Queensland Branch’s prestigious Millar-Grassie Award 2025 for Outstanding Leadership in Education recipient, presented a session entitled Leading the Science of Learning in Schools. Mr Andrew Pennay, Director of Creative Futures at Brisbane Girls Grammar School, as well as a nationally recognised arts protagonist and ACEL 2025 ‘New Voice’ in School Leadership Scholarship recipient, presented a session called Listening to Punk: Performing Possibility in Leadership and Learning.
This year’s William Walker Oration was given by esteemed QUT academic Professor Linda Graham entitled Lifting Student Outcomes by Investing in and Valuing Educator Knowledge and Expertise. Griffith University’s Dr Amanda Mackey presented a keynote entitled Reclaiming Leadership: Centring Care, Connection and Community. Other Queensland contributors to breakout sessions were Victoria Anstey (Principal, Peregian Springs State School) and Dr Jeanne Casey (University of the Sunshine Coast), who presented a session entitled Beyond Silent Participation: Co-production Empowering Every Voice in School Improvement, and Karen Johnson (Business Manager and Secretary to the Board of Trustees, Rockhampton Grammar School) and Nadia Correa (People Bench), whose session was entitled Data-driven Decisions: Improving Student Outcomes and Organisational Sustainability. Mrs Anna Owen (Principal, Sunshine Coast Grammar School) was a panellist on a keynote panel entitled Clarity in Complexity: Leading with Strategic Intent in a Noisy World. All of these colleagues contributed a potpourri of cutting edge research-based and practitioner-based expertise.
It was great to see so many Queenslanders involved in our National Conference. No doubt we were all challenged by the enormous intellectual capital presenting at our 2025 Conference. I will end this short piece where I started – Ideas matter!