Complexity Theory: Anne Knock
Is there a way to prepare ourselves for complexities that don’t fit standardised approaches or formula? How complicated can pedagogy become before it’s unworkable, and what does it take to increase this threshold?
This episode features The Learning Future’s Director of Leadership and Culture.
Dr Anne Knock is an educator, facilitator, and coach who enables profound shifts in strategy, leadership, culture and pedagogy through her wisdom.
Anne holds a PhD in Education from The Univeristy of Melbourne with a focus in complexity theory, revealing how to craft successful and sustainable practice and culture in innovative learning environments. She also routinely supports education leaders and architects to develop school masterplans and design briefs.
Commencing as a primary teacher, Anne has experience in community development, school system administration, and school-based innovation consultancy. At The Learning Future, Anne leads programs and projects to help educators, leaders and organisations step into the future through strategic design and learning experiences that optimistically chart a path ahead in our increasingly complex world. Anne also leads the executive coaching and learning tour aspects of The Learning Future, supporting schools and organisations to integrate the cutting edge of school design, philosophy and practice.
[transcript auto-generated]
00:00:04:16 - 00:00:27:17
Louka Parry
Hello dear friends, and welcome back to the Learning Future podcast with me. Luke Apparently I hope you're having a delightful day wherever you are in the world. And today we continue our conversation about education transformed. Why does it matter what might it take to get us to a place where schools, organization, societies really enable us to do our best work?
00:00:27:18 - 00:00:52:23
Louka Parry
Our guest is someone that's very close to my heart. She is Dr. and Nock, a long time educator, facilitator and coach who brings really profound insight and strategy, leadership, culture and pedagogy through her many years working in education in the nonprofit sector. She also holds a Ph.D. in education from the University of Melbourne. Our old alma mater, with a focus in complexity theory.
00:00:53:12 - 00:01:23:09
Louka Parry
We're really trying to understand how do we craft successful and sustainable practices and culture in innovative learning environments. She's got many years of supporting education leaders and architects to develop school master plans. She's also traveled extensively on international learning tools and is very much, I think, at the forefront of school based innovation and understanding. Again, how might we transform, not just improve or tweak, but really transform what school could be?
00:01:24:00 - 00:01:41:18
Louka Parry
She's also delightfully at the director of leadership and culture at the Learning Future. So exciting that I get to just talk to you. And in some ways I think it's going to be great to see what just unfolds from here. So thank you for joining for this chat. One of many.
00:01:41:18 - 00:01:46:09
Anne Knock
One of many we've had and one of many which we all yet to have. I'm sure.
00:01:46:20 - 00:02:02:21
Louka Parry
It's great. Let's talk about let's go straight for it. You know, this piece around education transformed like, what does it mean to you? And then, of course, where does complexity play a role? You know, when we think about the human systems of schools.
00:02:02:21 - 00:02:35:01
Anne Knock
So I guess some education for many of us of a certain age has looked the same for much of our much of our lives. To my heart, in a way that kids are walking into schools that look like schools that I attended as a student and the world has changed so significantly. But somehow inside that school gate, we have a I think it's the best intention in the world for our kids.
00:02:35:01 - 00:03:03:11
Anne Knock
But is fear of using kids as guinea pigs or just will we be doing the best for our kids if we change this model that's been here for thousands, 5000 years, that sort of thing. So yeah, I was really motivated to think about, well, we've got lots of opportunities and affordances, particularly this century. How do we maximize that for student learning and learning in a really broad sense as well?
00:03:03:17 - 00:03:16:17
Louka Parry
Yeah, Yeah. I think. How do you how do you understand learning and like what? What's your definition of learning? I guess that's a really great question. You know, like.
00:03:18:03 - 00:03:18:24
Anne Knock
What is life?
00:03:19:05 - 00:03:33:01
Louka Parry
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, that's the other question I always ask this. Oh, yeah. When it comes to learning, you know, and to your point about the distinction between schooling and learning is something that, you know, we often reflect on.
00:03:33:15 - 00:03:59:13
Anne Knock
I think we today, you know, the whole, the whole sort of change over from the 20th to 21st century was a significant part because, you know, we started to have the Internet in the late nineties. We really took hold of that and I think it shone a light on learning as opposed to knowledge acquisition, which was what school was about in the past.
00:03:59:13 - 00:04:34:05
Anne Knock
You know, we, we had to go on a treadmill and we had to get, you know, mixing my metaphors, treadmill. They jump through hoops and then, yes, all these different things we had to do along the way just to be able to get that piece of paper at the end. But with this, with technology, it did really that access to knowledge became so ubiquitous that where we're focused on knowledge, acquisition and assessment to get by with the test to meet the criteria to go to the next phase of life.
00:04:34:24 - 00:05:15:08
Anne Knock
Learning is a much more holistic sense of how do I need to be me? What do I need to succeed in life or to a need to thrive? And there's no rulebook for it, right? There's no formula. It's it's iterative journey that we're all on. And I guess that's where complexity comes into the into the frame because complexity saying, well, there are so many factors coming in, you know, the, the previous approach to education, we use the factory metaphor, the assembly line, that sort of language in complexity.
00:05:15:08 - 00:05:45:04
Anne Knock
We're using the language of the ecosystem where if you think about any system has strength in its collective capacity and in interdependencies, but you, you know, one tweak of an interdependency will have an impact on a something over the side. So it's so it's just the difference between linear and reducible towards that idea of the ecosystem. Mm.
00:05:45:14 - 00:06:09:06
Louka Parry
I think I love that. And, and that interdependency that's now so clearly the case in all parts of life. Really. If you think about the global economy, you think about the global health system and what's happened recently, you think about the weather systems that are causing cataclysmic damage all over the place. That's something that's really I think we're noticing.
00:06:09:06 - 00:06:28:17
Louka Parry
And, you know, we often talk about VUCA, which many people will have heard before on this podcast. But the idea that, you know, we live in a volatile, uncertain complex, ambiguous world and we had h the hyper connected to that now. And I guess it's true the world has never been so complex. It really feels this way.
00:06:28:17 - 00:06:55:03
Anne Knock
Yeah. That, that hyper connect because you, until the last one of the last podcast you did touched on that hyper connectivity and I had a thought about hyper connectivity in terms of so many aspects of our life. It's not just that we're connected digitally, but there a disease here could have an impact on humans here. You know that there's so much to that.
00:06:55:15 - 00:07:18:23
Anne Knock
So we can't in the one of the the language around complexity is one of the words it uses. It's irreducible. We can't reduce something to its component parts and put it back together again. Right. And that's to me, that's I think that's what we've attempted to do, is learning when, you know, when the encyclopedias or the teacher's handbook killed all the knowledge, Wow, we can't do that now.
00:07:19:02 - 00:07:23:16
Anne Knock
Yeah, but this connectivity has changed that immensely.
00:07:23:18 - 00:07:36:20
Louka Parry
Yeah, I think I think we're both showing our age. And because you remember the Encyclopedia Britannica and I remember having, you know, having some at home, and I remember when when and Carter came out on CD-ROM.
00:07:36:20 - 00:07:37:02
Anne Knock
Yeah.
00:07:37:12 - 00:08:00:19
Louka Parry
And I remember how transformative that was. And all of a sudden you could just type into a search bar. And I was at high school at the time I started to realize this there was going to be something to this technological transformation we were in at that point as part of the third industrial revolution at that point. And of course, you know, the pundits now at the World Economic Forum and others talk about the fourth Industrial revolution, you know, Klaus Schwab and others.
00:08:00:19 - 00:08:21:12
Louka Parry
But and this idea that now it's actually about augmentation and this world is not about just knowledge, but it's about the creative economy. I'm really interested in this and how do we prepare, I think prepares even maybe the wrong word for young people. Right. And some prepare them for they're in the world now. It's like, how do we acknowledge their irreducible uniqueness, right?
00:08:21:12 - 00:08:45:02
Louka Parry
So going from the denial to the personalized and then support them for this life of learning and lifelong life wide life deep ways. I like that three dimensional conception of expansion for each of us, right? So that means. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Having enterprise skills to build something, to create something beyond a Yeah. Like if we problem solving and yeah, that beautiful piece around that ecosystem.
00:08:45:02 - 00:09:02:07
Louka Parry
What's the piece like? You spent quite a number of years delving into everything around complexity theory and how it pertains to creating innovative learning environments. What are some of the big headlines that emerge from, from that research that you conducted?
00:09:02:07 - 00:09:27:00
Anne Knock
The whole journey of complexity theory was quite interesting. In one of my writings. One of them said to me all because I was talking about things that were interesting to me and regarded my data. And he goes, You should you should investigate complexity theory. And I thought, Oh, okay, I didn't know what it was and what you know about me.
00:09:27:00 - 00:09:57:24
Anne Knock
So I thought, you know, I'm a reader and I will dive into things. And it was like, Where have you been all my life? When I when I really started to say it and one of my other colleagues said to me, sometimes you find a theory and sometimes a theory finds you and I've always been comfortable in sort of having a vague idea and not actually having everything mapped out, but just navigate my way toward an end.
00:09:58:14 - 00:10:17:21
Anne Knock
And I had a when I was a primary school teacher a thousand years ago, and I had one of those epiphany moments when we were doing some payday with a facilitator who came in, But those people like us now, this facilitator came in and she was talking about different ways we think could work, and we had to continue on that we needed to stand on.
00:10:18:10 - 00:10:46:22
Anne Knock
And she said, Here, you're kind of spontaneous. And at the other end of that is you're comfortable with routine. And I went up comfortably through tape and it never entered my brain that people would be comfortable with routine. Because I would tell you, we talked about this the other night routine for me has been a discipline. Otherwise I just loosely yeah.
00:10:46:23 - 00:11:13:16
Anne Knock
So you know, that sense of I've always been one of these people who are like, You better go one step forward, two steps forward, one step back. You know, it's the whole idea with change and complexity is that we have a sense of where we're going and we're willing to iterate our way forward. And one of the metaphors I use for complexity is raising children right?
00:11:13:16 - 00:11:17:05
Anne Knock
You know, we can't apply a formula for raising children.
00:11:17:08 - 00:11:18:03
Louka Parry
That would be nice, though.
00:11:18:06 - 00:11:40:14
Anne Knock
Bill and I have two adult sons who have turned out to be pretty nice humans, and that was our goal. Yeah, this was the end goal. And we stuffed up or we did well, or we got some people to talk to us, but we make progress. We make steps progressing forward. And I guess you're not doing it alone.
00:11:40:18 - 00:12:12:21
Anne Knock
Method being one of the resound themes of just my reading in these last, even the last month, it is hard to think about individual versus together and doing things together. And so my research was around teachers working in teams in innovative learning environments and what made that successful and sustainable. And so much of that was down through the nature of the relationship of the people in the team working together.
00:12:12:21 - 00:12:27:09
Anne Knock
So if we think about education again, how much of it was individualized, individualistic, it's still individualistic, you know, comes to those exams and things. But what does it mean if learning was a together thing?
00:12:27:19 - 00:12:28:07
Louka Parry
Yeah.
00:12:29:03 - 00:12:30:09
Anne Knock
Game changer, I reckon.
00:12:31:05 - 00:12:52:17
Louka Parry
Tell me that's I love that. And I mean, I think we all get it implicitly. I think we get like it's things are better together, you know, we really understand that. And yet I know we talk about the idea of legacy systems that we've inherited. Yes. My view clearly is that it's not our fault, but it's our responsibility and systems actually broken necessarily.
00:12:52:17 - 00:13:11:07
Louka Parry
They just function in a way that I think was designed for a different time in history. It was designed in a sexist way on a race. I mean, all those things are really clear and obvious. But yeah, the question then is, okay, well, what do we do about that today and how do we act today? And this is why it's so much of our work is designed, right?
00:13:11:07 - 00:13:30:14
Louka Parry
It's like, well, this is a design question. It's how might we don't understand all of the great work of the day school that we've hosted on this podcast previously. Everything else. So how do you think you know, and because when I hear complexity theory, like the nerd in me goes like, all good, that's really exciting systems thinking, you know, all that kind of space.
00:13:30:14 - 00:13:54:21
Louka Parry
And I'm very drawn to it. I guess teaching is such a practical and the praxis of the craft and the art. Like what did you discern from this big inquiry that you've been conducting, you know, after many decades of direct experience yourself about how practically we shift where we are. And so, for example, should we ever have a single teacher in a classroom anymore?
00:13:55:02 - 00:14:03:15
Louka Parry
I mean, or do we then structure that? I mean, what what are the kind of practical aspects that you've discovered that now have kind of baked into your evolving worldview?
00:14:05:01 - 00:14:58:20
Anne Knock
Well, one of the things that really resonated with me quite deeply in my in that reading space of theory was the idea of challenging assumptions, because complexity theory or moving forward in complexity requires us to challenge assumptions. And it doesn't mean we throw out things just because they're old, but we have to actually put things under a microscope or through a lens and go, Does this thing serve our future or not come and make a decision on things rather than go Well, I think schools should not have uniforms, should call their teachers by their first name, should do all these things if are modern progressive school and I'm not averse to those things, but yeah,
00:14:59:08 - 00:15:04:15
Anne Knock
we need to go. Well, what what function is uniform serving?
00:15:04:21 - 00:15:05:10
Louka Parry
Yes.
00:15:05:13 - 00:15:33:18
Anne Knock
Is that something? Look, just put things under microscope and just go. I guess prior to that we're saying what's our vision and where we're headed and then putting things and going because this idea, that vision or not. Yeah. And I think challenge and I've I think one of the biggest personal learnings for me through my study was challenging assumptions that I sort of had in many areas of my life just to go, Hey, not Kate.
00:15:33:18 - 00:16:02:01
Anne Knock
Yes, no, Why do we do that? You know, I just mean, I think that could be like one of the biggest. When we talk about school, physical learning, space design, one of the biggest, I guess, hurdles people have to overcome is that that there is a trend toward taking away the teacher's desk in the classroom or in the learning space.
00:16:02:01 - 00:16:24:04
Anne Knock
So rather than I need to keep my desk or we need to get rid of the desks, so we go, what purpose is it serving? Is there something that could be better served? Is it a barrier to something? Ask some questions around those and challenge the assumption that every room should have a teacher desk or we should get rid of teachers, desks, inquire.
00:16:24:13 - 00:16:27:09
Anne Knock
You know, it's iterative. One step at a time. Mm.
00:16:27:20 - 00:16:58:00
Louka Parry
That's so good. And of course, that's your answer. You know, I have it because it's true. It's kind of not. It's not. Here's what needs to be done. It's. It's the deeper question of why would we do this and what are the benefits and what are the potential unintended consequences as well. You know, I think that in complexity of things, I really simple, you know, all this, you know, it's like, yeah, what's that great quote from Einstein?
00:16:58:03 - 00:17:05:04
Louka Parry
I'm sure you could quote, The complexity expert is like, you know, we want to get to the simplicity on the other side of complexity. We want to be simplistic.
00:17:05:04 - 00:17:05:24
Anne Knock
Oh, yeah.
00:17:06:09 - 00:17:37:14
Louka Parry
You know, I think we we fail, you know, the fault to that because it's it's just cognitively so much kind to us. We're like, oh, yeah, just do the thing and we won't challenge. But, you know, moving through complexity to the real essence of the simplicity that exists on the other side of complexity. I think there's something really powerful going through that inquiry, challenging assumptions, and then you come back and you, you actually, I feel and you know, some wonderful pundits out there that do this kind of work, you know, Peter Sangay, for example, we're talking about earlier and other Sharma and others, and going to be getting down to the level of the mental
00:17:37:14 - 00:18:01:06
Louka Parry
model. Even Ray Dalio I about investment, you know, and his principles, the principles are few, but the methods are many. But what principles are we are we focusing on here? Like what underpins my practice, what underpins my leadership, what underpins this company or organization? I think that's just really interesting. But also the system isn't oriented towards that question at all, really.
00:18:01:06 - 00:18:18:24
Louka Parry
It's a delivery. It's been a delivery system for, you know, a number of centuries. Really. If we think back of the history of mass education. So I guess one of the key questions when we think about education, transport, what are the questions we should be asking and.
00:18:22:10 - 00:18:45:12
Anne Knock
There's a couple of things I'm thinking about. What are the questions that I actually ask people when they are? For example, I think there's valid reason why we don't have a teacher. This could keep that story going. Sure. At the front, you know, so when we're facing a problem like that, one of the questions I ask is, is what problem is that seeking to solve.
00:18:45:21 - 00:18:46:02
Louka Parry
So.
00:18:46:07 - 00:19:07:01
Anne Knock
So that we can actually get to that sense of, well, I need somewhere to be with the students when they come. They bring their work to me and we can work on it together. Well, it's telling to assumption. Does it need a desk, that sort of thing? Yeah. The other side of what we were talking about too, I, I'm all about order.
00:19:07:16 - 00:19:38:06
Anne Knock
And so I think I don't want to give the impression that being comfortable with complexity means that I live in this chaotic state of, you know, I of erratic ness. Right? So there is this I think this is really delicate balance between creating order and being ordered. Yeah. So our goal when we're navigating change and transformation is toward order.
00:19:39:00 - 00:19:51:13
Anne Knock
What is, what is a sense of order that helps us to do the things that we're supposed to do rather than systems or ordered systems that lock us into a machine like way of working.
00:19:53:12 - 00:20:15:05
Louka Parry
That's great. And I'll just as the attack is, it's entropy, right? Is that is that the universal principle here? Things tend towards chaos. And so extra is the idea of creating order from that chaos and hence, yeah, strategy, i.e. intention in the election, hence, you know, clarity but not certainty. You know, I really like that as a principle.
00:20:15:05 - 00:20:30:05
Louka Parry
You know, we can't, we don't, we can't. And you're talking about, you know, raising your two sons earlier and, you know, yeah, you can't it's like we're so focused on the destination, whereas we can't know the destination anymore, but we can have directionality. So I really like.
00:20:30:20 - 00:20:31:02
Anne Knock
That.
00:20:31:02 - 00:20:31:20
Louka Parry
Idea.
00:20:31:21 - 00:20:32:11
Anne Knock
Yes.
00:20:32:11 - 00:20:59:04
Louka Parry
As a yeah, but of course, that's really easy to say and really difficult to do because you know that we seek, we seek these ordered environments out and then of course the grooves become potentially ruts. If we're not careful, we become so into even the neuroscience that you and I have been exploring, you know, through the extended mind or John Medina or whatever, you know, that we're kind of looking into, it seems like we actually do love certainty because it creates safety.
00:20:59:24 - 00:21:12:09
Louka Parry
So tell me tell me then the cultural implications of this, because clearly, to be able to do this work, there needs to be safety created. And that seems like a cultural question.
00:21:12:09 - 00:21:19:16
Anne Knock
Yeah. So what came to mind as you ask that question was I think it's Rogers and the law of diffusion of innovation.
00:21:19:22 - 00:21:20:06
Louka Parry
Yeah.
00:21:20:13 - 00:21:46:11
Anne Knock
Yeah. So we're always going to have people who are outward forward thinkers changing the world and then we're going to have the laggards at the other end who are going, what, knuckle holding on to the way it's been. So there are people who see opportunity and it the privilege I had of working with Steven Harris is that he was a fiery innovator.
00:21:47:18 - 00:22:20:06
Anne Knock
I consider myself an early adopter. I'm one of these people who gets excited by new, bright, shiny things and I like them to change. And then I go, Oh, that, that worked well and that didn't work well. But I'm so comfortable with that sense of, of uncertainty around that. But if we if we think about the people we work with, we need there's that idea of we might be a change agent, we might be an early doctor, and there's the other people who are on the journey and allowing them to take that journey.
00:22:20:06 - 00:22:41:16
Anne Knock
But I think if you've got the forward thinkers, then you've got people who are asking questions that most people don't even think about while we do this. What are we doing? Yeah, how can we do this better, that sort of thing. So it's a I, it's getting back to not make way more the way it's had a way do things.
00:22:41:16 - 00:23:06:18
Anne Knock
How do we get the people who are willing we're comfortable enough with you and I think talking about this idea of that sort of trusted space with a few. Yeah, how do we get people in the space where we can disagree and we can thrash things out? We don't have to keep all this tension under a surface, but we can have healthy discussion as we as we iterate forward rather than just stay where we are.
00:23:06:20 - 00:23:09:15
Anne Knock
But people we have around us, that's fine.
00:23:09:15 - 00:23:31:12
Louka Parry
So if I'm I'm I agree completely with that. And not surprisingly, I if I'm I'm interested in how how to architect that. So if you're a school leader or an educator, innovative parent, someone listening to this conversation, delightful conversation might add. Thank you. And but like what? You know, what do I do? It's like, what do I do about that?
00:23:31:12 - 00:23:54:00
Louka Parry
You know, because clearly it's the most complex thing. And all journeys in leadership, it's it's the greatest privilege to lead people and, you know, to be alongside them in front of them, behind them when necessary, to help create the environment where they can do their best work continually. I mean, it's literally al it's literally our relationship now is that it's kind of my role and you our snored that you know.
00:23:54:05 - 00:23:55:11
Anne Knock
Yeah yeah.
00:23:55:11 - 00:24:05:14
Louka Parry
But what so what are the key aspects to that You know what are the the practices or the artifacts that make all of that possible.
00:24:05:14 - 00:24:45:09
Anne Knock
What in my, in my thesis I am right it's not what I want to say. Auto ethnography, the chapter about my time at a school that is unknown because it's anonymous in my thesis. But you know, we had we had the team I was working with. We were helping people through this journey. And I'll I'll give a shout out to my colleague Steve Collins, who I'll send him this link because Dave Staples, he introduced me to this design way of thinking and it was another one of those ways it's been all my life.
00:24:45:22 - 00:25:17:11
Anne Knock
And we started to we worked with people to help them design the learning and the learning environment. Often there was an agenda toward contemporary learning, future focused learning, understanding that technology can change the game. But you know what Steve always made us start with when we work with groups is about the human factor yourself and the people in the team and the sense of We're going to do this journey together.
00:25:17:16 - 00:25:43:05
Anne Knock
Yeah, and we would help people and this has been backed up in some of my readings lately. We would help people break down that divide between my working self and my personal self to whichever degree they're comfortable. I get that, but help them to go, Here's something you don't know about me. Yeah. Or to start my day. Well, I need this.
00:25:43:05 - 00:26:07:09
Anne Knock
I could just to help people form that relationship of working together and then using the vision and the values of the school. Unpack. What does that mean for the students and their learning? What does that mean for the learning environment? And so this we had a kit called Design Engage that they've developed and we ended up delivering a lot of places.
00:26:07:09 - 00:26:38:01
Anne Knock
And it really did embed deep down in me this is how this is how we help people. We help people by letting them tech. Well, let's face it, it's agencies and it is giving people agency. Yeah. And having having team as default. I think those are probably the two things that we always we run with one progressive development and this was ten years ago in professional development and we realized just one person, one person from a school, they separate people.
00:26:38:08 - 00:26:50:13
Anne Knock
You can't do much with. We always try and get teams together and that's, yeah, those experiences in the 2000 to 2006 really framed my that way. I think about things now.
00:26:50:19 - 00:27:15:21
Louka Parry
Yeah, yeah. Good. So I feel like in that because I've heard you speak about this work up to this point that the piece around like radical transparency that you that even just as a principle of function of a culture, you know the idea of the three values that we use as you know in our work and it's like be curious, be honest, be kind.
00:27:15:21 - 00:27:36:12
Louka Parry
And the reason I love those three and I actually the principles I try to live my life by also. But, you know, the reason I love them is because the curiosity, openness, it's more about questions and answers. And I think that means it's problem finding and possibility space. The honesty is like so far beyond nicety, you know? And one thing I think, Oh, that's so nice.
00:27:36:12 - 00:27:57:10
Louka Parry
It's like we don't should never strive for nice. We should strive for kind because honesty, then you never get to the deeper pieces. You never really unearth what's really going on. We've kind of just we just kind of superficially treading around it because it scares us in some way. And of course, the above will be kind. I mean, that that really is a principle.
00:27:57:10 - 00:28:27:13
Louka Parry
We should just apply for doing any human centered work. We're all we all got these battles that we live in, this very complex, challenging world, you know, where there's loss and there's, you know, horror and there's also love and there's possibility and there's learning and there's insight. It's all it's all in there. So, you know, when you think about, yeah, the radical transparency piece, you know what what if you found in your career in life that really helps people be themselves and therefore do their best work because they have the psychological safety required.
00:28:27:13 - 00:28:45:24
Louka Parry
And that obviously is the only way we transform is when where we feel safe enough to really change our mind and and our self instead of being mired in this is the way it will be. And no, you can't challenge me because my ego's so on line. Like, what's your what's your wisdom in this?
00:28:45:24 - 00:29:31:15
Anne Knock
And yeah, it stemmed out of that time. Every time you ask a question, I would just go big and this time that's the word empathy. So it's yes, we all have things going on in our world that are big but sad. If that person beside me. So how do I know that I am? I am. I have a radar toward the others in the group and build that strong sense of empathy, which then like a lot of a lot of my thinking has been around the school is a workplace that was deliberately placed in my thesis title.
00:29:31:24 - 00:29:56:17
Anne Knock
So I realized it was early in my teaching career. When I was working with teachers, I realized actually I'd prefer to contribute to education by working with the adults. Yeah, moving on from children. And so that sense of working with adults and building, you know, that empathy that that we can see the perspective of the other person as well.
00:29:56:17 - 00:30:12:06
Anne Knock
And then we can see the perspective of the student as well. Building our empathy capacity, I think is probably one of the really most important human centered activities we can all human centered are what is, are the attributes that we can develop.
00:30:12:15 - 00:30:39:15
Louka Parry
MM Yeah, leading with empathy. I mean, yeah, beautiful and designing for belonging. You know, as Susie Wise spoke about in our podcast, you know, this it's kind of it's so often the beginning of every design process is how do I understand this other person's behaviors, feelings, emotions, thoughts, you know, stepping into that, you know, the learner profile aspect or, you know, any, any way to really step into.
00:30:39:15 - 00:30:48:05
Louka Parry
I mean, this is I love the empathy piece from the languages work that I delved into as well. I feel like when you try to speak someone else's language, like literally, like.
00:30:48:07 - 00:30:49:17
Anne Knock
Nothing more empathic.
00:30:49:21 - 00:31:07:08
Louka Parry
Well, it's all of a sudden you hear someone speaking and even say broken English. And the empathy that I have for them is just so much sharper than any empathy I held before becoming a multilingual, you know? So there's just yeah, that piece on empathy and then clarity.
00:31:07:08 - 00:31:07:20
Anne Knock
Can I.
00:31:08:07 - 00:31:08:15
Louka Parry
Yeah.
00:31:09:04 - 00:31:40:13
Anne Knock
Can I add something to that? Because in my research I talk to teachers working in safe environments, but I also ask the same question of the principal. So I spoke to a number of principals and what really resounded, and I feel that this goes alongside the empathy piece from a leadership perspective was the value you of the the nonhierarchical posture of the leader of being.
00:31:41:01 - 00:32:01:18
Anne Knock
You know, that's a that's not a delicate balance in the ecosystem, right. But being able to you know, I remember particular instances from my focus group, all my interviews with the principal and one principal said, well, in the instance in the learning environment, I wanted to have these things in place. But then the teachers came back and said, Well, this one does not working.
00:32:01:18 - 00:32:28:08
Anne Knock
And she said, I had to put that aside. And there's this idea of I think it's changing. The nature of leadership to a term I use is cross scale. So across the scale and it's nonhierarchical. And that's hard in all organizations. Yeah, on a piece of paper it looks like it's hierarchical and sometimes we do need to have that piece of paper.
00:32:28:08 - 00:32:42:04
Anne Knock
But how does that how does the culture, how does it leave doubt know that that nonhierarchical posture is, is evident in the community and the culture of the school?
00:32:42:12 - 00:32:42:22
Louka Parry
Yeah.
00:32:43:11 - 00:32:53:15
Anne Knock
I think empathy from a ladies perspective is is really important. And I know they've got a lot of pressures to get people to get things done, but that whole nonhierarchical spaces is big.
00:32:54:03 - 00:33:34:16
Louka Parry
I, I agree. I think of like Frederick Lalo's work on that, that, you know, the idea of think about the different level of an organizing mission. You know how hierarchical command and control and again fallen would speak to this command and control orgs or command and control systems versus the liberation space like a system that liberates a leader, that liberates down or outwards like that thing that direction and then is informed upwards towards the decision making because I mean, I actually really like org charts when they are very creatively different, as do there needs to be of course information flows and accountability, responsibility, all of that.
00:33:34:16 - 00:33:54:11
Louka Parry
But yeah but I think yeah, that kind of management paradigm I think is something else that we've inherited. Right. And it's now, Yes. You see, you see the great leaders that you're drawn to and that you kind of step out of a meeting with and you go and they might have just given critiqued a whole bunch of stuff that you've created and you just feel so motivated to effect.
00:33:54:11 - 00:34:23:19
Louka Parry
Yes. And that's that I think is the artist, the art and the craft of of humble leadership that where people see you and you and trust you in a high trust, high responsibility, that's there's something to those environments that we all have had experiences where it's the opposite of that. So yeah, and I think all this is as a pillar of the transformation rather than like there's no way we get we can shift deep mental models that are held if it's, if you don't feel trusted to step into the.
00:34:23:19 - 00:34:25:24
Anne Knock
Human.
00:34:25:24 - 00:34:26:04
Louka Parry
You.
00:34:26:10 - 00:34:27:03
Anne Knock
Know, the human.
00:34:28:02 - 00:35:04:07
Louka Parry
Side of the human future. And thankfully we get to keep talking for how who knows how many more months and years. So that's really exciting for me. That's I would love you to if you could just give us some take home messages for, you know, those listening to our conversation. What are some things when when do the words that come to you, the principles that underpin, you know, the complexity from the transformation space, from the work that we're trying to do, you know, alongside others in this education ecosystem.
00:35:04:07 - 00:35:40:02
Anne Knock
So it's not I'm just going to throw in one more concept that I haven't spoken about that hopefully maybe brings things together and this is the word create creativity, something I've been reading recently talked about there different ways. I'm not going to recite them now because I know I'll get three and four. But this whole concept that to problem solve or to make progress in complexity through design requires us to be to be creative and be and and be willing to be creative.
00:35:40:19 - 00:36:18:13
Anne Knock
And so I guess my biggest one of my biggest messages to people right now is we're all creative. We are all creative things. Just because you might not might not be artist of the paintbrush or a singer or good with writing words, whatever. There's different ways that we can show our creativity and to to grow that capacity, because that's how we're going to tackle the big problems that we're facing in this world through a sense of I have the I and my people.
00:36:18:13 - 00:36:20:14
Anne Knock
We have the creativity to be able to do this.
00:36:22:12 - 00:36:26:16
Louka Parry
That's great. And the collective creativity, you know, and I love.
00:36:26:19 - 00:36:28:02
Anne Knock
The collective creative.
00:36:28:02 - 00:36:48:24
Louka Parry
And come back to the way you started, you know, that idea of knowledge, you know, in your your critique, your reflection on the education system we've inherited, you know, going from this knowledge acquisition. And even when people say knowledge economy, I think that's pretty old, an old mental model. It's the creative economy, it's what can you do with what you know and, and, you know, creative economy in a character world?
00:36:49:08 - 00:37:03:15
Louka Parry
Who are you as you do things with what you know, If that piece matters more than ever, if we're going to try to collectively create solutions in this moment, perhaps so yeah. Gosh, I would say.
00:37:05:05 - 00:37:05:17
Anne Knock
Onwards.
00:37:07:05 - 00:37:07:14
Louka Parry
Onwards.
00:37:07:22 - 00:37:08:18
Anne Knock
I'm excited.
00:37:09:09 - 00:37:09:23
Louka Parry
Yeah.
00:37:09:23 - 00:37:10:20
Anne Knock
And excited.
00:37:10:20 - 00:37:31:24
Louka Parry
And that's the piece, I guess, like it can be overwhelming and we can other than go towards, oh, I don't know, crisis and in some ways freeze like as opposed to be like, All right, let's pull up our sleeves and let's go for it. You know, in that orientation, I think being something that we can cultivate over our lives, you know, wherever you are in your job, in your classroom, in your school right now.
00:37:32:16 - 00:37:36:06
Louka Parry
Yeah. It's like, what can you create and and who you.
00:37:36:07 - 00:37:37:00
Anne Knock
Have some people.
00:37:37:15 - 00:37:37:20
Louka Parry
That.
00:37:38:10 - 00:37:40:16
Anne Knock
People have the backs of people.
00:37:40:16 - 00:37:43:07
Louka Parry
The problem in the middle and then go for it, you know.
00:37:44:00 - 00:37:44:17
Anne Knock
Absolutely.
00:37:45:00 - 00:37:49:17
Louka Parry
Yeah doctor and thank you so much for this wonderful conversation.
00:37:50:24 - 00:37:52:15
Anne Knock
And it's been a pleasure.
00:37:55:02 - 00:38:18:23
Louka Parry
Thanks to your friend and colleague and I'll see you really say and for all of you listening along, thank you so much for staying connected to the Learning Future podcast. And we're continuing these conversations with wonderful people from all over the world as we think about how might we come together and collectively create solutions that help us towards, you know, a thriving ecosystem for young people and adults that serve them.
00:38:19:21 - 00:38:28:08
Louka Parry
See you next week.