In modern education, it is common to hear talk of helping students to develop ‘soft’ skills and traits. There are countless frameworks promoted by educators and by those with a stake in education (even HSBC Bank has weighed in through a collaboration with the British Council). There is often a large overlap in the skills being espoused within these frameworks. Commonly featured, for example, would be: critical thinking, digital literacy, leadership skills, meta-cognition and communication. Unfortunately, several recent studies seem to show that these frameworks rarely do more than identify and define a set of desirable skills. That does often make it difficult for schools to meaningfully provide opportunities for students to develop them. Schools rightly focus a large amount of time integrating opportunities to develop them in the classroom. However, one strategy that potentially deserves more examination is the educational excursion.
Obviously, they are always a source of excitement; whether it is a day-trip to the science museum or a residential trip abroad, the change to routine is significant enough to cause a stir. We can all remember one that we enjoyed, even as adults. For example, I can remember undertaking the German exchange trip as a student in grade 8. At first thought, the things I remember are enjoying the time spent with my friends, in a new environment, getting to know my exchange partner and feeling embarrassed at my relatively poor German speaking compared with the English speaking skills possessed by my exchange partner and his family.
But thinking a little harder about it, there was much more going on. By virtue of being a little older than some of my peers on the trip, I had assumed a leadership role within my peer group and was experiencing a small degree of responsibility; I was using my, still fledgling, language skills in unforeseen circumstances, in a real-world context; and, given this was an international trip, we were exposed to a culture with some different social views. You may read this and roll your eyes at being told that Germany (a country in the continent of Europe) and England (another country in the continent of Europe) are substantially different; or perhaps at the idea that a 14 year-old was in any significant way responsible for other 14 year-olds, when there will have been parents and teachers present. You might even be wondering why we needed to go all the way to Germany to achieve this. In each case, to do so would be to miss the point. These trips are not for thrusting students into difficult or complex situations to fend for themselves, they represent the beginnings for new skills and mindsets emerging. Similarly, Germany may well share similarities to the UK, but, for some, it represented their first time in another country and their first opportunities to experience cultures and societies that differ from their own. We all have to start somewhere, after all.
On such excursions, our students derive confidence from seeing that they can succeed in a new context. What is more, they bring this confidence back with them and apply it in further new contexts too. Over time, and with further opportunity, this confidence becomes the foundation for them taking risks in their learning; and it manifests as grit and determination not to give up at the first sign of difficulty. It may also be the first time they are required to be responsible for themselves. Something as simple as ensuring you have enough clothing to last the week and being responsible for monitoring this during the excursion itself is a useful building-block for being responsible in other ways. And when they experience success in managing that, again, it fosters confidence in becoming responsible in other areas of their lives. Even if it is not the first time they have had to pack their own bags, just the act of doing it in a fresh situation helps to build-up generalized confidence in being responsible.
As much as we try to provide such opportunities at school, these excursions provide valuable new contexts for them that we would otherwise be unable to reproduce. They are often authentic in a way that is difficult to reproduce in the classroom. Thinking back to the German exchange again, the situations and conversations I found myself in were a blend of some things for which I was prepared and many for which I was not. But in each, I had to use what I knew to succeed in those situations; the most taxing one being a conversation with a police officer, attempting to explain why my foolish friend had just tried to cross the autobahn.
So, for our students to get the most out of educational excursions, these ideas (not about the autobahn) should be very-much in the front of our minds when planning for them; and in this way, planful alignment with school values and practices can result in very powerful experiences that create great development of 21st century skills. At Middleton, that is exactly what we have at the fore-front of our minds when we are looking for a suitable venue, speaking with a co-operative partner or auditing the different activities available; how does this align with our school values and how it creates opportunities to practice the skills and display the values that we think are important.
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