Possibility thinking
Lorraine Sands
Tuesday 21 November 2023
Possibility thinking is a phrase used by Anna Craft, and it resonates with me because it raises so many ideas about ways teachers might design learning environments. Spaces that drive children’s creative energies are spaces worth creating because, like ripples in a pond, they stretch children beyond their current thinking into the realm of possibility actions. These creative spaces enable learners to pose questions and then find ways to test surfacing theories. I expect it goes to the heart of a teacher’s vision for learning because the way learning spaces are designed reflects what matters to teachers. Take, for example, learning environments that include structured, tabletop activities. These learning spaces send messages, especially when accompanied by teacher directives to complete a task in a particular order and in a specific way. Constricted time, too, reduces children’s efforts to go beyond surface engagements into complex play. These kinds of learning spaces affect children’s rights to make agentic choices about their learning experiences. Restricting the free movement of resources as children search to creatively join disparate things together is another example of narrow, controlled teaching that undermines possibility thinking.
These ways of teaching restrict learning. They reflect, too, low-level thinking about children’s abilities, and yet, Te Whāriki asks so much more of kaiako when designing environments for learning. Te Whāriki aspirations inspire teachers to create early childhood experiences that give children plenty of opportunities to follow their fascinations, pose their own questions, and explore, enabling children to be the agentic thinkers and doers that build their learning brains. The exploratory play that emerges as children have time and space to engage, both independently and collaboratively, throughout each learning day can be characterised as generative possibility thinking: transforming what is into what might be.
When we start from the premise that learning ought to be “irresistibly engaging” (Michael Fullan, 2013), we begin with the end in mind. We ensure we place children’s learning, their ability to teach others, and their research capabilities—exploring things they find deeply interesting—at the forefront of our practice. This means complex play can unfold in the time and space required for children to follow their individual interests, passions, and shared endeavours in a social setting. In these ways, Kaiako are, in effect, creating a culture of learning and teaching where power is shared. This kind of intentional, credit-based learning design supports everyone’s interests and nurtures confident, capable learners who are curious to explore our world. Learners can then build complexity that sees us all taking responsibility for learning with and alongside others, growing empathy, fair-mindedness, and positive attitudes towards diversity.
Teachers are gatekeepers, though, and Kaiako can leave those gates open for multiple ideas to emerge or shut ideas down through scheduled time constraints, tightly controlled programming, and hierarchical power structures, thereby limiting possibility thinking and action. We make learning design decisions moment by moment each day as we set in place, the time and the social setting that influences children’s growing identities as learners, teachers, and researchers. I include the learning story below about Duxton’s mahi focused on his idea to paint a flag to offer a practical example of possibility thinking in action. Play can happen in quiet, contemplative moments as children think more deeply about what they see and play around with ideas. The conditions that enable this learning to happen are embedded in each teacher’s contribution, and indeed, whānau involvement in curriculum that is described in Te Whāriki as the sum total of everything that happens in learning spaces. It is about intentional design for learning in its widest sense.
