PURPOSE LEARNING

Learning as Thinking, Feeling, and Doing

Back To School

As educators, we know that school has to change but we’re lost in a fog of reform. We’re told that learning should be project-based, place-based, social and emotional, mindful, diverse and equitable. . . with so many directions, it’s hard to see a way forward.

Purpose Learning is a growing movement that integrates today’s school reform into a simple, actionable framework. Learning in the past emphasized thinking, or helping students memorize content and develop key cognitive skills. Learning in the future will integrate thinking with rich forms of feeling and doing, all at the same time. At the center of these three domains students have a chance to explore purpose.

WHAT IS PURPOSE?

Stanford’s Center on Adolescence defines purpose as “a stable intention that is meaningful to self and consequential for the world.” In other words, it’s a core of meaning on the inside that connects to an action on the outside. It can be very simple, such as “to grow and give.”

According to medical studies, purpose-driven students are happier, healthier, and sleep better. They are also deeper learners and better stress managers. But only 20% of today’s high schoolers are purposeful, according to Stanford’s Youth Purpose Study.

At World Leadership School, we know we can do better. We help schools pursue deliberate strategies in response to the question we believe is guiding the future of learning: “How can schools help students explore, discover, and articulate purpose?”

PURPOSE RESOURCES

Over the last decade, schools have made a broad shift away from content memorization to skills mastery. But even competency-based learning can feel meaningless unless it is designed around the humanity of each student. Purpose learning allows students to explore two basic human questions: “Who am I?” and “How do I connect to the world?”

Purpose learning has profound implications for the future of K-12 learning, including how we assess students, organize the school day, divide knowledge into subjects, and define what it means to be a teacher — and a student. It will require a total reboot of school as we know it and it’s already taking form every day in hundreds of schools around the world.

We believe that having a sense of purpose is not a skill alongside grit, growth mindset, or self control. It is the capstone skill from which these other skills ensue. In an age of artificial intelligence, where everything that can be automated will be automated, our uniquely human ability to tell stories, make meaning, and follow purpose will be more important than ever.

Purpose Learning allows each student to navigate college and life with more direction and clarity. As the world accelerates and becomes increasingly connected, purpose helps students manage volatility and contribute to the common good. Our world needs next-generation leaders more than ever.

I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.

+ WHY PURPOSE LEARNING MATTERS

+ THE BRAIN SCIENCE BEHIND PURPOSE LEARNING

+ HISTORY OF PURPOSE LEARNING

+ THE MYTHS OF PURPOSE

Beyond Thinking: What If the Purpose of School Were Purpose?

Jessica Catoggio, Ross Wehner, National Association of Independent Schools, Fall 2023

Purpose is a unique journey for each human, and it’s an expedition that varies dramatically for each school. In our experience, each school enters the purpose-learning framework from different places. Many independent schools enter via learning as thinking, while others focus on doing via project-based, arts-focused, or expeditionary learning. Where independent schools can often grow is learning as feeling — in other words, the part of purpose learning where students drop into emotion, see others with empathy, and have the space and support to do the inner work of identity and purpose clarification.

Using Purpose Learning to Increase Belonging in the Classroom

Jessica Catoggio, The EARCOS Triannual Journal, Fall 2023

As purpose is a two-way journey, Purpose Learning is analogous to a busy, two-way street in which the “drivers” dynamically change lanes, detour at will, trail in the fast lane or slow depending on the road conditions, navigate roundabouts, and thoughtfully make return trips. Traveling one way on this busy street, “drivers” internalize and connect learning to self. In the other direction, the journey allows students to connect learning to the world outside of self in ways that are rich and meaningful.

On Purpose: Reimagining What and How Students Learn

Ross Wehner, Independent School Magazine, Winter 2022

Schools are already doing such great work around purpose formation. But we need to be more explicit by understanding the theory and science behind purpose formation. We need to tie together what we are already doing into a visible K–12 strategy designed to foster purpose among students. We need to formulate the right questions: Now that we understand how the adolescent brain works, how can we make it light up with purpose? Or more specifically: How can K–12 schools help students discover, explore, and articulate purpose? What if the purpose of school were purpose?