Value creation pedagogy can be an important piece of the integration puzzle. Some of the schools we followed in our research are located in socio-economically vulnerable areas. There, we have been able to follow how the approach strengthens integration for many years. I can honestly say that this was an unexpected effect, but on reflection it is not particularly remarkable. After all, integration is about achieving inclusion, the opposite of exclusion. To be involved, to be taken seriously and to experience the warmth of a wider community. All of this is enabled when students get to create value for others.

One headteacher who has seen the positive effects with his own eyes is Johan Karlsson in Sundsvall. He has worked for twenty years at Bredsands School, a school in a vulnerable area. From 2015 onwards, under Johan’s leadership, all staff participated in our research on value creation pedagogy. I met Johan’s staff myself several times and also got to read their reflections. Johan’s conclusion today, six years later, is that value creation pedagogy may be the best approach available for a school with challenges around integration.

The relational power of value creation builds bridges between schools and society at the individual level, between students at school and adults in the community. This enables many students to lift their gaze and break out of exclusion themselves. They build up a network of contacts both inside and outside their own neighbourhoods, they meet new role models and chart completely new paths in life. When students see what is possible for them, far beyond the suburban exclusion, they start asking school staff new questions: now I know, here is something I want in life, I want to become this, how do I do it?

According to Johan, more traditional approaches don’t really work for many young people living in exclusion. Johan’s frustration that not everyone seems to see the importance of allowing students to work in a value-creating way in vulnerable areas is clear:

“It is almost an error of omission not to understand how important and obvious this approach is for schools in deprived areas.”

Reversing the trend through community engagement

Another headteacher of a school in a vulnerable area is Marika Andersson at Lövgärdesskolan in Angered. Marika has become known in the national media as one of few principals who have managed to turn around a school in a deprived area. Under Marika’s leadership, the percentage of students achieving the upper secondary school objectives has increased from 30 to 70 percent.[1] Allowing students to interact with the surrounding community has been one of Marika’s key strategies. I asked her about value creation pedagogy, and here’s what she wrote to me:

“I truly believe that this is an approach that promotes integration. It gives students the opportunity to feel that they are doing something meaningful, that they matter to others. What they do becomes important. We already work like this to some extent in our school. However, I have never thought of it as value creation pedagogy before. When we put a name to what we do, it becomes clearer.”

In other schools in deprived areas, teachers and principals have told us about another somewhat unexpected effect. In deprived areas, the value-creation work of students attracts a whole new level of parent involvement and interest in school. When parents see that the school allows students to take initiative, connect with the surrounding world and work entrepreneurially, they recognise themselves. After all, escaping from a war-torn homeland and making it all the way to Sweden requires a good deal of initiative, networking and creativity. However, upon arrival they often end up in a segregated residential area where it is difficult for both them and their children to find equal pathways into Swedish society. That is where I share Johan’s frustration. It doesn’t feel fair that so many are stuck in exclusion. I think it is therefore important to spread Johan’s fundamentally positive message.

Some (in)justice perspectives on integration

It is difficult to write about social inequalities and integration without slipping into politics. Some believe that in Sweden we have a relatively fair distribution of income, a kind of “fair inequality” where those who make more effort also earn more.[2] According to the think tank Ratio, our compensatory education system has led to a high level of social mobility, which has ensured that almost everyone can succeed.

The young men who burn cars in segregated suburbs probably disagree. Rather, there is a deep anger and frustration at an abusive world that treats them as second-class citizens.[3] Nor can it be said to be fair that every third student in Sweden’s socially deprived areas does not finish primary school with a qualification for secondary school.[4] In many places we now have a “school for all”, except for one third, who are instead labelled as failures by society and denied the opportunity to continue their lives in regular upper secondary school. The situation is due to structural inequalities that have been allowed to grow for decades – the trend since the Second World War of increasingly equal distribution of society’s resources has long since been broken.[5] No wonder some youths burn cars. A kind of ongoing value-destroying learning, based on the lesson that you are worth nothing as a human being.[6]

What we can agree on is that we face major societal challenges. Whether we call segregation a disaster[7] , a ticking bomb[8] or a colossal challenge[9] , it is urgent to find ways to promote integration. But what is it about the value creation pedagogy approach that makes it seem like it could be part of the solution?

A gathering campfire for freezing students

Teachers can use the relational warmth and primal power of value creation to thaw the frozen hearts of segregated students. Students can feel the warmth of community for a moment by experiencing what it feels like to be a valued part of our community. If we give them the tools and the ability to change their environment for the better, they will also become more involved in the democratic development of society. The interpersonal relationships that are then created with the outside world become like glowing logs in a campfire that everyone can gather around and be warmed by. Not just the students, but all those they come into contact with.

Unlike assimilation, integration is a reciprocal process. If integration is to take place, the natives must also be involved and gain new perspectives. In Sweden, many of us need to be awakened from our slumbering filter bubbles and experience the value of other perspectives, knowledge and cultures. This is where students’ initiative and active action can make a big difference.

At Marika Andersson’s school in Angered, students got to exchange letters with a school class in a wealthy area of Jönköping. There was mutual surprise when they realised that in one class there were those living seven people together in a small one-room apartment, while in the other class one student was an only child in a seven-room apartment. This strengthened both writing skills and understanding across class boundaries.

At Johan Karlsson’s school in Bredsand, students were asked to write a book with an author and then present it at Sweden’s biggest book fair in Gothenburg. Johan’s students have also collaborated with a construction company, the municipality of Sundsvall, the regional science centre Technichus and a friend school in Huddinge in various value creation activities. In addition to strengthening their knowledge, the students also gained motivation for school work, resulting in higher achievement among students. More students succeeding in school also strengthens integration, says Johan.

An instrument of power to break out of exclusion

Feelings of powerlessness can be strong for students living in segregation. A term often used in sociology is alienation – a perceived sense of powerlessness, meaninglessness and social isolation.[10] For some students in disadvantaged areas, school may feel both meaningless and unrealistic.[11] Life in the suburbs and their classrooms is isolated from the rest of society and its norms. Moreover, when parents in affluent homes, even in deprived areas, choose to drive their students to schools in other areas every day, school ceases to be a meeting place between different social worlds.

Here, value creation pedagogy can be a possible countermeasure. The methods and tools in this book become, in the hands of segregated students, an instrument of power to break alienation. That knowledge is power is well known. This book makes it clear that knowledge of and the ability to create value for others is a power tool that young people can use to break free from involuntary isolation. When they take their rightful place in society by helping others through value creation pedagogy, we are thus getting a modern version of what Paulo Freire (1970) called the pedagogy of the oppressed.

However, getting students to successfully break away usually requires more extensive projects. Value creation within the classroom or within school can be engaging and beneficial to school work, but does not break an exclusion. Students need to be able to build relationships and create value for beneficiaries outside the deprived area in which they themselves live and work. Teachers in deprived areas therefore need to be a little braver than other teachers if they are to succeed in helping their students to experience that warming sense of involvement with the world outside where they live. If value creation pedagogy is to become a way of strengthening inclusion, there needs to be more cross-disciplinary projects over longer periods of time.

An integration bridge between school and work

The workplace can be the strongest integration tool we have in society. Professor Jonas Olofsson has written about how practical vocational training can counter both alienation and powerlessness among young people.[12] However, according to Olofsson, it is not enough to give them hard-cut routine tasks without context, personal development or fair remuneration. Vocational training needs to be characterised by participation, empowerment and fair conditions. As Juul has pointed out (see Chapter 1), students need to be seen as full citizens if the bridge to integration is to work. Industrialist Carl Bennet says:[13]

“For me, it goes without saying that an apprentice who does a job should be paid […] It’s time to see young people’s will and skills as a resource […] It’s very important to get a salary, it gives the job status. It’s important that employers invest in young people, it sends a message to those in charge.”

I myself have experienced with my five senses the integrative power of workplace value creation. As an entrepreneur, I was able to put both newly arrived and disabled people into productive work. Over time, we became good friends, even close friends. We went on holidays and spent time together with our respective families outside work. Mutual respect flowed from the fact that we were all contributing to a common greater purpose. Drawing on our different strengths and skills, together we created value for our clients. In the process, I learned about the tastiest food and drink in the Balkans, about a certain dictator’s best sides, about different aids for the visually impaired, and about what life as an immigrant or disabled person can be like. By sitting on their sofas and seeing life through their eyes for a while, I myself became the subject of a powerful form of integration. Together, we all grew as human beings.

Let students take action from the heart in new ways

Workplaces can also be segregating. What is the integration effect when low-paid jobs are staffed by immigrants and disabled people? Perhaps not non-existent, but at least limited. Every time I take a taxi in my work, I think about how in Sweden we carelessly leave routine value creation to the so-called precariat – individuals forced to accept precarious employment conditions in a gig economy where three of the four corners of the diamond model in Chapter 6 are missing. The everyday life of the precariat is not characterised by empowerment, creativity or personal development. Therefore, I think it is important that value creation pedagogy as integration does not only consist of value creation for others, but also includes the other three corners of the diamond model.

Students in vulnerable situations need to be taught at an early age how to take action from the heart about issues they are passionate about, how to help others in new ways and how to accumulate whole-body learning along the way. Of course, schools cannot take unlimited responsibility for everything and everyone, as often needs to be pointed out. But teaching students how to create new kinds of value for others around something they feel strongly about is certainly a pressing task for schools. Otherwise we risk ending up with Marxism’s dystopian image of an immigrant underclass being heavily exploited by the country’s capitalists. No wonder then that cars keep burning.

In 2016, Sweden’s former Education Minister Gustav Fridolin advocated that schools in deprived areas should employ people with a special task of building bridges between school and working life.[14] I think it’s a good idea, even though there is already a professional role in Sweden that has this mission. More and more school principals have started to appoint school-worklife developers who act as a “spider in the web” when it comes to various value-creating partnerships between schools and the surrounding community. Precisely because through value creation pedagogy we can build so much better bridges than the traditional apprenticeship.

But the best bridge-builders are probably the students themselves. Let them do a lot of the community outreach themselves, they are capable of it. Especially if they are supported by their teachers and others in their work. Let students take on the role of teacher, guidance counsellor, restaurant owner, care worker, journalist, architect or cleaner as a natural part of their core curriculum.

An alternative to the gangster lifestyle

What is the meaning of life? Throughout this book I have tried to give a picture of the ultrasocial human who sees community, social interaction and co-creation with and for others as important sources of meaning and joy in life. But what happens when young people are denied a place at society’s warming campfires? What fills the void in the lives of the one third who were not allowed to participate, who were assessed by their teachers at school as unfit? Just because they couldn’t do the maths or had difficulty learning the language of their new home country.[15] Unfortunately, the answer is probably that crime often takes the place in young people’s hearts that society has failed to fill with democratic and humanist ideals. At least among boys. And then it can take horrible forms. There is much in what Hjalmar Söderberg (1905) wrote in his novel about the lonely and isolated priest-killer Dr. Glas:

“One wants to be loved, or else admired, or else feared, or else detested and despised. You want to instill some kind of feeling in people. The soul shudders at the emptiness and wants contact at any price.”

Hand on heart dear readers. If you yourself were unaccounted for, lonely, loved by no one, despised by many (racist people) and seemingly without a future. And if at the same time you had a few good friends down in the square who occasionally asked you to help them move some small package here and there. Would you yourself have been able to resist the temptation to take a seat by the warm campfire of the gangsters? Here, schools can use value creation pedagogy as an alternative campfire, while inviting the community outside the suburbs to join them for a moment of fellowship.

Fire air instead of luxury car

Commercial ideals probably also play an important role here. Olofsson (2018, s. 32) writes about how many young people’s “horizons of action and vision are limited to commercially created images of success and meaning in life instead of a social community based on empowerment and responsibility for working and living conditions”. Olofsson’s quote puts an image in my head of a successful gangster with glittering gold jewellery and a expensive watch, sitting in his brand new black Mercedes with hip-hop on full blast. How will schools ever be able to provide an alternative vision of life for young men in vulnerable areas?

I think it’s possible. Creating value for others can be a drug stronger than the drugs that are peddled in the marketplace. Or, in the words of Machiavelli, a weapon bolder than a Kalashnikov. An alternative lifestyle that doesn’t consist of gang wars, fast cash, luxury cars and vicious life-and-death fraternisation. We have seen many times in our research how young people build a strong identity around seeing themselves as a person who loves to create value for others around issues they are passionate about. And it is the almost magical motivational substance of value creation, the fire-breath of learning oxygen, that does it. The strong feedback and deep affirmation from exciting people (socialising oxygen), the inherent joy and meaningfulness of collective creation (handiness oxygen) and, not least, the feeling of doing something urgent and completely new with others that would not otherwise have happened (creativity oxygen) are all highly addictive. There are certainly side-effects, such as lack of time and the risk of fatigue syndrome with prolonged use. But rarely is anyone drawn into crime or gets shot.

---

[1] See interview with Marika Andersson in Göteborgs-Posten (Petterson 2020).

[2] See Ratio (2020).

[3] See Kamali (2006, s. 93).

[4] See The Global Village Foundation (2019).

[5] See Olofsson (2018).

[6] See Wingborg and Svensson (2019, s. 31).

[7] See Wingborg (2019).

[8] See Lindquist (2020).

[9] See Olofsson (2018).

[10] Seaman (1959).

[11] See Hugo (2012).

[12] See Olofsson (2018).

[13] See interview in SVT, https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/halland/industrimannen-som-vill-andra-larlingssystemet and on the website https://gymnasielarling.se/for-foretag/arbetsgivare/carl-bennet/

[14] See Green Party (u.å.).

[15] See Wingborg and Svensson (2019, s. 23).

[This is an English translation of Chapter 9 found in my new book in Swedish about value creation pedagogy, see link here. Thanks to Google and to Hugh Mason for help with this translation]

There are many good examples of students who learn through creating value that contributes to a more sustainable world (see part two).[1] Value creation pedagogy is an effective way for students to learn more about sustainable development. Teachers gain access to concrete tools and methods that help students develop their ability to act on sustainability issues. Students get to try out an important future skillset in practice — sustainability development — a role that will soon become a necessary part of most professions. The chance that they choose a life path that contributes to a sustainable future then increases dramatically. We have seen in our research that identity development requires learning-by-doing. More specifically, doing that is specifically directed toward creating value for other people, animals, nature and for the planet at large.

Chalmers has a long tradition of fostering sustainable development. It has been a core value for as long as I can remember and, for decades, every single report students write has been required to relate to sustainable development. Over the years, we have also trained many social entrepreneurs at our School of Entrepreneurship. They have since gone on to dedicate their lives to create value through cancer medicines, algae production, underwater power plants, medical devices, water purification products, educational apps, biochar methods and much more. I myself have also run a social enterprise for almost eight years with a focus on UN global sustainability goal four — good education for all. Before that, I ran a company in environmental innovation that helped truck drivers to save fuel. So I have been immersed in questions about sustainable development throughout my adult life.

Nevertheless, this was by far the most difficult chapter for me to write.

Two halfwit middle-aged engineer types

As a white man in middle-age, I find my thinking limited when I consider sustainable development. Perhaps, as a square engineer, I’m morally sluggish. Or maybe it’s because, as an entrepreneur, I have always allowed pragmatism to prevail – “If the customer pays, I’m doing the right thing”. What is right or wrong is always contingent and debateable, surely? Well, that’s what I saw in a cartoon long ago, showing a satisfied entrepreneur with a briefcase.

However, sustainable development is different. It is difficult to negotiate with biodiversity that has disappeared, or with dictators who use refugees as political weapons. Today, growth, satisfied customers and profitability alone cannot dictate what is “good”. Increasingly, the issue is what kind of world we want to pass on to our grandchildren, and so how our actions today contribute to a socially, ecologically and economically sustainable future. I have had to reassess and learn anew.

A friend of mine, Göran Christiansson, has also become my teacher here. We joined Chalmers at the same time, but only got to know each other last year, through a book writing circle in which we both participated. His book is about both the footprint we each leave behind and the handprint we may leave on others’ backs as we nudge them towards living in more socially and ecologically sustainable ways too.

Yet I must say that, like me, Göran also seems a bit of a halfwit. It was only at age 45 years that he realized that the problem of sustainability was himself. In his book, he writes about leaving a well-paid engineering management job at roller bearing corporation SKF to become an organic farmer in the Dutch walnut tree industry. Determined to reduce more than his own footprint, he also wrote a book that inspires others to do the same. Every middle-aged engineer who is as much of a halfwit as me should read Göran’s book when it’s finished, then share it with their friends.

Two twins growing up in different places

Working with your footprint and handprint creates value for many different others: for humans, society, animals and nature. “Value creation pedagogy” and “learning for sustainable development” then seem very similar. Semantics may hold me back in making a distinction between them, for, when I asked a teacher how value creation pedagogy and learning for sustainable development can be combined, I got an interesting counter-question back:

“How do you not work with learning for sustainable development when you work with value creation pedagogy?”

It’s a good question – the similarities are striking. Maybe learning for sustainable development is an identical twin to value creation pedagogy, separated at birth and growing up in two different families in two different places? If so, it’s understandable that they developed a little differently, because nurture matters as much as nature. Figure 9.1 shows how I try  to sort these two twins apart.

When I read literature about learning for sustainable development, I recognize a lot from my own field of research. In both fields, authors write that it is possible to teach “about” and “through” respectively:[2] to lecture about the phenomenon itself, or to let students learn through action by being allowed to act. Why not strike a balance between both? For some reason, the emphasis is usually on learning “about” sustainable development and learning “about” being entrepreneurial. This leads to an unbalanced curriculum.

Figure 9.1 Comparison of value creation pedagogy and learning for sustainable development.

Similarities: Priority, assessment, pedagogy, emotions, activism

There are many similarities in the ways both value creation pedagogy and learning for sustainable development are treated in schools. Both phenomena have problems with low priority despite support in formal curricula.[3] Both present challenges in practical pedagogy and assessment.[4] Both raise strong feelings: in value creation, interaction with unpredictable outsiders can easily become an emotional roller coaster,[5] while sustainable development raises anxiety about climate and social injustice in young people that triggers some to become angry activists like Greta Thunberg. Also, many technologies, such as genetically modified crops, stem cells, irradiated food and nuclear power, start to appear unpalatable.[6]

Both value creation pedagogy and learning for sustainable development imply questioning the status quo and trying to find new tools and working methods that are better for humans, animals, nature and the planet. Thus, both share the difficult challenge of simultaneously applying action, social activism and a critical approach in order to overcome society’s managerial mentality — the widespread preference for the status quo. As early as the 16th century, Machiavelli wrote:[7]

“…nothing is harder to organize, more likely to fail, or more dangerous to see through, than the introduction of a new system of government. The person bringing in the changes will make enemies of everyone who was doing well under the old system, while the people who stand to gain from the new arrangements will not offer wholehearted support, partly because they are afraid of their opponents, who still have the laws on their side, and partly because people are naturally sceptical: no one really believes in change until they’ve had solid experience of it. So as soon as the opponents of the new system see a chance, they’ll go on the offensive with the determination of an embattled faction, while its supporters will offer only half-hearted resistance, something that will put the new ruler’s position at risk too.”

I think the length of the quote is justified by our context. I could even have made it longer by including words from the following page in Machiavelli’s book: “the visionary who has armed force on his side has always won through, while unarmed even your visionary is always a loser.” So, a school must not hesitate to arm its students with the tools and methods they need to succeed in making our world more sustainable. Value creation pedagogy offers a strong arsenal of weapons that I perceive its twin sister lacks, so I must also highlight some differences.

Differences: Methodology, values, philosophy, identity

The most obvious difference between value creation pedagogy and learning for sustainable development probably lies in methods of action. I have searched the literature on learning for sustainable development in vain for advice to teachers that is both concrete and theoretically well-founded about how students should develop their action competence.[8] Maybe such advice is out there but, if so, it is well hidden. This is then a strength of value creation pedagogy that can be offered to teachers working with sustainable development. It offers a tried-and-tested toolbox with an easily explained purpose — to create something of value for others — which develops students’ action competence.

Another difference concerns values. Value creation pedagogy has its roots in entrepreneurship, which is classically associated with individualism.[9] In contrast, learning for sustainable development has a focus on poverty reduction, climate activism and reduction of injustice, and so is inherently rooted in collectivism. Thus the two phenomena may be pictured as addressing a shared challenge from opposite directions, meeting in the narrow middle ground in today’s polarized society. During my last two years as a doctoral student I made a significant transition towards collectivism, recognising that students might be empowered by creating value for others. The addition of the two words “for others” left some of my research colleagues with individual-focused perspectives on classical entrepreneurship behind, but opened many new friendships in schools.

A third difference is philosophical. Value creation pedagogy is built on the philosophical platform of pragmatism: if something is useful, it’s good (and vice versa). I wrote about value creation as pragmatism in my first book, so I will not repeat myself here.[10] Turning now to the twin sister, I am just getting acquainted with her philosophical basis. I sense that sustainable development rests on the same moral-philosophical ethics as Kant’s writing on idealism and world citizenship.[11] Sustainable development seems more to be about the ideal world we want in a distant future, than the world we have today and what is pragmatically possible for an individual to do here and now. Therefore, learning for sustainable development presents political challenges for schools that adopt it. Such schools become politicized from the corner of collectivism rather than individualism.[12]

A fourth difference I perceive arises from the first — powerful identity development. When tools and methods for value creation pedagogy and its assessment are used by teachers, we witness young people undergoing a profound change in their self-image. They assume a new role in society, seeing themselves more as value-creators for others. This new identity guides their future choices. No doubt many climate and social justice activists undergo similar identity changes, but rarely as a direct effect of an educational initiative. Yet, if we encourage our two twins to move in together, the education system might deliver new Greta Thunbergs and Malalas like an assembly line, ready to take action on environmental and social development issues … just as teacher Maria Wiman predicted (see chapter 4).

Complementary strengths in learning for sustainable development

While this book aims to share the joy of value creation pedagogy, she does not offer all the answers. Her sustainable twin sister’s parents put tremendous effort into exploring what is valuable beyond money. The UN’s seventeen global sustainability goals may represent the most sophisticated value model the world has seen, divided it into 169 sub-goals. What a gift for the value-creating teacher: one hundred and sixty-nine possible starting points for students’ value creation!

Sustainable development requires systemic innovation on a scale that individual entrepreneurial people and groups can seldom implement alone, as well as calls for action in political and collective dimensions that entrepreneurial methods rarely cover.[13] For example, an interesting method called backcasting starts with a vision of the future that is desired, and then works back in time back to the present, along the way identifying leverage points where effort now can most effectively bridge the gap to to the desired future.[14] Highlighting what is absolutely crucial for the future in this way can then guide students’ experimentation in the present.

Another advantage of learning for sustainable development is its solid base in both the natural sciences and social sciences. An inherently interdisciplinary phenomenon tears down classroom walls and connects subject silos to reveal a more meaningful whole. Value creation based on the global sustainability goals facilitates co-planning, co-assessment and subject interdisciplinarity, linking seventeen compulsory curriculum subjects to seventeen ethically mandatory sustainability goals to offer a giant matrix with 289 boxes within which teachers and students can grow. Matrices are popular in school. Or, in any case, common.

On an emotional level, learning for sustainable development can also contribute a lot, since it is all about the world that youths will soon take over. Students’ concerns about sustainability are well documented. Eight out of ten young people are anxious about the future, and four out of ten to such an extent that they are hesitant about having children of their own.[15] Teachers now get an opportunity to turn that anxiety into something positive and meaningful, making education a platform for sociopolitical activism that simultaneously strengthens students’ motivation to study, their democratic values ​​and their knowledge across all the sciences. This bridges between traditional and progressive pedagogy, creating a better balance between two of schools’ most central missions: the democracy mission and the knowledge mission.[16] The two twins may be the missing superheroes we need to make this happen. Teacher Sara Nelson (2021) captures this succinctly in her thesis on education for sustainable development:

“value creation pedagogy offers a sustainability didactic approach that can be both playful and hopeful at the same time as it is meaningful and creates value for someone else – and is for real.”

Two complementary perspectives

One way of looking at the difference between value creation pedagogy and learning for sustainable development is to frame it as an analog for two classic contradictions: individual-versus-collective, and process-versus-outcome. I see value creation pedagogy as more focused on individuals and processes, offering many specific tools and methods to help individuals navigate processes of uncertainty, emotionality and innovation. Sustainable development, on the other hand, seems to me more focused on collective society, its ideal state and the enormous transformations of social systems that need to take place for us to realise the future we all desire, so serving as a “north star” for a school that seeks to educate citizens for the future.

Making these two distinct phenomena seem similar is then perhaps unnecessary. Their fundamental differences are what make them complementary. Being entrepreneurial without some form of ethical compass or vision can be dangerous. Consider pirates, careless technology entrepreneurs, criminal syndicates and unfettered financial speculation.[17] Discussing major challenges around a sustainable future without offering the means for individuals to take action seeds alarmism and unnecessary anxiety. These twin sisters really seem to need each other.

Making a difference: directly and indirectly

My study of sustainable development made me realize that actions can have either a direct, or indirect, impact on a sustainable future.[18] For example, a direct impact might result from choosing to cycle instead of driving a car, to sort your own waste, or to clean a beach together with friends. An indirect impact might arise from debating sustainable development in the media, influencing organizations to take a more sustainable direction for the future, demonstrating about sustainable development in streets and squares, calling for a boycott of unsustainable products, or encouraging others to sort their waste.[19] Much like my friend Göran’s difference between footprint and handprint, but in other words.

Direct impact is easy for students to achieve and politically unproblematic for teachers. However, it risks overlooking root causes and structural societal problems in which governments, companies, public actors and the non-profit sector play important roles. Indirect impact often requires more knowledge and offers greater risks for teachers to support, such as potential criticism from parents, colleagues, managers, politicians and others. Researcher Derek Hodson (2013, p.328) likens it to riding a tiger:

“Those teachers who promote political involvement and develop action skills are riding a tiger, but it is a tiger that has to be ridden if we really mean what we say about education for civic participation. It is an exhilarating ride for both teachers and students.”

Concepts in learning for sustainable development

Finally I would like to mention some organizations which have developed ready-made templates for teachers who want to work with sustainable development. The pitfalls of such templates are covered in Chapter 4, primarily the risk that students may feel low motivation if they do not participate in the design of activities. Many templates for sustainable development lack the waist of the spider diagram (see Chapter 6) — the opportunity for students to interact with and create value for outsiders. This may be a temporary problem if our two twins are allowed to hang out regularly. But beware.

Even so, templates can certainly be an easy way for time-stressed teachers to get started. An excellent and current overview of different templates for learning for sustainable development in Sweden is offered by Remvall (2021, pp.99-102), citing organizations including the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, the World Wildlife Fund, the Global School, Brevvännerna, Keep Sweden Clean, Ashoka, the UN and the Swedish Consumer Agency. Materials for teachers are offered on all these organizations’ websites.

References

Almers, E. (2009). Action competence for sustainable development: Three stories about the way there. University of Learning and Communication,

Baumol, WJ (1990). Entrepreneurship: Productive, Unproductive, and Destructive. Journal of Political Economy, 98(5 Part 1), 893-921.

Björneloo, I. (2012). Action competence on the schedule. In K. Rönnerman (Ed.), Action research in practice – preschool and school on a scientific basis Lund: Studentlitteratur. pp. 141-153.

Bursjöö, I. (2014a). Education for sustainable development – abilities beyond the curriculum. Research on teaching and learning, 12, 61-77.

Bursjöö, I. (2014b). Education for sustainable development from a teacher horizon: context, competencies and collaboration.

Fohlin, N., & Wilson, J. (2021). Meaningful learning – democracy and conversation in school. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Hickman, C., Marks, E., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, ER, Mayall, EE, Wray, B., Mellor, C., & van Susteren, L. (2021). Young People’s Voices on Climate Anxiety, Government Betrayal and Moral Injury: A Global Phenomenon. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3918955 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3918955.

Hodson, D. (2010). Science education as a call to action. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 10(3), 197-206.

Hodson, D. (2013). Do not be nervous, do not be flustered, do not be scared. Be prepared. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 13(4), 313-331.

Hodson, D. (2014). Becoming part of the solution: Learning about activism, learning through activism, learning from activism. In Activist science and technology education: Springer. pp. 67-98.

Hodson, D. (2020). Going beyond STS education: Building a curriculum for sociopolitical activism. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 20(4), 592-622.

Holmberg, J. (2019). Unsealed water? – then expeditions are needed! In J. Algehed, E. Eneqvist, C. Jensen, & J. Lööf (Eds.), Innovation and Urban Development – A research anthology on organizational challenges for the city and municipality of Borås: Stema. pp. 65-76.

Holmberg, J., & Holmén, J. (2020). Co-creative adaptation work – Backcasting expeditions for Agenda 2030. Stockholm: Sveriges Kommuner

och Regioner Holmberg, J., & Robèrt, K.-H. (2000). Backcasting — A framework for strategic planning. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 7(4), 291-308.

Jensen, BB (2002). Knowledge, action and pro-environmental behavior. Environmental education research, 8(3), 325-334.

Johnson, C. (1988). Enterprise education and training. British Journal of Education and Work, 2(1), 61-65.

Kemp, P. (2010). Citizen of the world: The cosmopolitan ideal for the twenty-first century.

Lackéus, M. (2021). The science teacher – a handbook for research in school and preschool. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Lans, T., Blok, V., & Wesselink, R. (2014). Learning apart and together: towards an integrated competence framework for sustainable entrepreneurship in higher education. Journal of Cleaner Production, 62, 37-47.

Machiavelli, N. (2009/1532). The prince. Penguin books, UK.

Mogensen, F., & Schnack, K. (2010). The action competence approach and the ‘new’discourses of education for sustainable development, competence and quality criteria. Environmental education research, 16(1), 59-74.

The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation. (2014). Sustainable development in school – please stay tuned. Stockholm: Naturskyddsföreningen

Nelson, S. (2021). Education for sustainable development – An exploratory study of “sustainability didactic approaches” for subject teachers and teacher students Master thesis, Lund university, Lund.

Remvall, I. (2021). Method book for change heroes – sustainable and value creation pedagogy in the future-oriented school. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Schindehutte, M., Morris, M., & Allen, J. (2006). Beyond achievement: Entrepreneurship as extreme experience. Small Business Economics, 27(4-5), 349-368.

Spahn, A. (2018). “The first generation to end poverty and the last to save the planet?” – Western individualism, human rights and the value of nature in the ethics of global sustainable development. Sustainability, 10(6), 1853.

Stagell, U., Almers, E., Askerlund, P., & Apelqvist, M. (2014). What kind of actions are appropriate? Eco-school teachers ‘and instructors’ ranking of sustainability-promoting actions as content in education for sustainable development (ESD). International Electronic Journal of Environmental Education, 4(2), 97-113.

Tiessen, JH (1997). Individualism, collectivism, and entrepreneurship: A framework for international comparative research. Journal of Business Venturing, 12(5), 367-384.

Örtenblad, A. (2020). Against Entrepreneurship (3030479374) Springer

Notes:

[1] See also book by Remvall (2021).

[2] See Hodson (2013, p.324) in Learning for Sustainable Development and Johnson (1988, p.62) in Entrepreneurship Education.

[3] See, for example, the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (2014).

[4] See Bursjöö (2014a).

[5] See Schindehutte, Morris and Allen (2006).

[6] See Hodson (2014, 2020).

[7] See Machiavelli (2009/1532, p.23).

[8] Some examples of central writings are Almers (2009), Mogensen and Schnack (2010), Stagell et al. (2014) and Lans, Blok and Wesselink (2014). See also Björneloo (2012).

[9] See Tiessen (1997).

[10] See Lackéus (2021, pp.84-96).

[11] For a moral-philosophical review of learning for sustainable development, see Bursjöö (2014b, p.45-48). See also Spahn (2018) and Kemp (2010).

[12] Hodson (2010, p.204-205) writes about politicization of education.

[13] See Holmberg (2019).

[14] See Holmberg and Holmén (2020) and Holmberg and Robèrt (2000).

[15] See Hickman et al. (2021).

[16] Read more about the school’s democracy mission in Fohlin and Wilson (2021).

[17] See Baumol (1990) and Örtenblad (2020).

[18] See Jensen (2002).

[19] The difference is well described in Hodson (2013, p.328).

In this chapter, I will give my current view of what we have learned about assessment – an important but difficult issue for the value-creating teacher. In our research, we are often drawn into various attempts to further develop teachers’ assessment strategies. Every year we learn more in this complex area, so this may be a bit of a flogiston chapter. The more sophisticated tools and methods described here are, in all honesty, a little difficult to explain in text form. I beg your indulgence if it is sometimes difficult to keep up. Then, just skip ahead to the chapter on value creation pedagogy for sustainable development.

Figure 8.1 shows an overview progression model of how assessment is influenced by value creation pedagogy. In the short term, teachers’ assessment work is not particularly affected by value creation pedagogy. Once the teaching has been slightly adjusted, assessment work can continue much as usual. However, the more extensive the value creation activities become, the greater the demands on teachers to further develop their assessment strategies. More and more focus needs to be put on formative assessment in order to monitor and manage the learning process and to reinforce each student’s learning along the way. IT support of various kinds may need to be used in order to reduce the time spent, so as to not become unmanageable. In the most advanced forms of value creation pedagogy, entirely new and sophisticated tools and methods are needed to ensure that the situation is not perceived as unsustainable for teachers. Thus, a crucial insight we made on our journey is that sophisticated learning journeys require new and sophisticated tools and methods of assessment. The three steps in Figure 8.1 will now be described one by one.

Figure 8.1. Three different levels of complexity in the value-creating learning journey and various associated tools and methods in the assessment work.

The simple learning journey

We start with the simple case when the teaching has grumbled to a little granna. A drop or two of value creation has landed in the ordinary teaching.

As usual but a little better

When value creation pedagogy is applied on a small scale, the impact on assessment work is minimal. On the one hand, the change is so small that no new assessment strategies are needed. This is because value creation is not a learning objective to be assessed, but a means to better achieve the learning objective. Teacher Maria Wiman writes:[1]

I think there is a danger in problematizing the assessment of value creation pedagogy too much. Then you make it more difficult than it should be. […] After all, it is the knowledge and skills in the curriculum that should be assessed, nothing else. In the course of value creation project work, a lot of evidence for assessment will be created.

The strategies already used for assessment can thus continue to be used. One change, however, is that teachers will have a more varied and more comprehensive evidence base on which to assess, as students who work in a value-creation way produce both more and better creations and presentations that can be assessed in the usual way. Teacher Madeléne Polfors writes:[2]

My fears about not reaching the knowledge requirements and not having enough assessment material were not realised. In all the classes I had full responsibility for [… ] I had the easiest time seeing how students achieved the learning outcomes in this class where we worked exclusively with value creation pedagogy. Similarly with assessment materials, I have never had so much assessment material and been so familiar with what each individual student has shown in terms of knowledge and skills.

The increased variety and quantity of assessment evidence can in turn lead to fairer assessment and more students achieving higher grades. Maria Wiman explains:[3]

Above all, everyone has been approved now who wasn’t before. […] I’m sure it’s because they’re motivated […] I feel like I’m judging more fairly now, because everyone gets to show what they know. […] I think I’ve given everyone a chance and it’s paid off, the assessment has gone up.

However, assessment work can be made more difficult if students’ projects are allowed to wander too far beyond the focus of the learning outcomes. In her second book on value creation pedagogy, Maria Wiman writes (2022, s. 158) about how she has sometimes gotten off track when students have enthusiastically wandered off and learned a lot about making video effects for their films on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) but less about the CRC itself. But as long as the teaching is balanced between facts and engagement, assessment is made easier. Maria Wiman also advises to include checkpoints along the way. If students are working on making films about the UN CRC, include a test or text submission somewhere in the middle of the process on the same theme.

Assessment for Motivation (AfM)

A new type of assessment that is added to value creation pedagogy is the assessment that outsiders make of learners when they give them feedback on their attempts to create value for them. This is not an assessment of students’ learning, but of their ability to create value. Such assessment contributes indirectly to students’ learning because it acts as a rocket fuel for their motivation. I think it is a kind of Assessment for Motivation (AfM), with the aim of enhancing students’ motivation. This can be compared to formative assessment or Assessment for Learning (AfL), in order to reinforce learning, and summative assessment, or Assessment of Learning (AoL).

The more advanced learning journey

We will now look at how assessment is affected by more advanced forms of value creation pedagogy.

Technology as the teacher’s extended arm

The more extensive value-creation activities are carried out, the more important various alternative assessment strategies become, see Box 1 below. We have seen more frequent monitoring of different parallel learning processes, more frequent feedback from teachers, students reflecting in writing through so-called exit tickets (written reflection at the end of the lesson), logbooks and various forms of peer assessment.[4] When students feel that school work is really important, peer feedback becomes more spontaneous in the classroom.[5] Much like colleagues in a workplace environment spontaneously seek feedback from each other on tasks that feel important in real life.

Value creation can also be given a clearer structure by having students write down what they intend to do in a plan or working template (Wiman 2019, p. 29). Questions that need to be included in such a plan include what is to be done, how it is to be done, why, resources needed, timetable and who does what. One plan per group is appropriate. The teacher monitors progress against the plan on an ongoing basis.

A challenge with formative assessment is the increased time commitment it usually involves for the teacher.[6] Therefore, various time-saving digital tools become an important element of more advanced forms of value creation pedagogy. Digital tools mentioned in addition to traditional learning platforms are: [7]

• apps that speed up feedback between teacher and student, in both directions
• apps that allow students to record audio files during meetings and phone calls
• apps where documents can be shared between students and teachers and commented on in real time
• apps that facilitate grouping
• apps that enable video calls in various forms
• apps that facilitate group collaboration and communication
• apps for visualising students’ ideas and thoughts during brainstorming
• apps for recording different types of video material.

Digital information generated in such tools not only saves time in communication, but in some cases it can also serve as a basis for assessment. An encounter between a group of learners and an external recipient of value can be documented for review by the teacher at a later date for assessment purposes. Since the teacher “can’t be everywhere”, digital technology becomes a kind of “extended arm” (Wiman 2019, p. 54–55).

Now, this is not a book about how teachers can work with digital tools in the classroom, so the above list is far from complete. But the pattern is clear. Many of the challenges that come with more advanced value creation pedagogy can be solved by teachers seeking out and trying different digital tools in school that save time while generating assessment data.

More advanced assessment and IT as inseparable friends

Value-creation teachers who use digital technology to successfully monitor and assess students’ more complex learning journeys makes me think of Célestin Freinet. As early as the 1930s, he needed to use technology such as printing presses, tape recorders, film cameras and hectographs to develop his value creation pedagogy.[8] I am therefore far from the first to conclude that technology is needed in more advanced forms of education. I have increasingly come to see IT and assessment as inseparable friends in value creation pedagogy.

In my research, I have therefore placed great emphasis on the digital dimension. By collaborating with systems scientists and programmers, we have made many breakthroughs in our work that would never have been possible without technology. In the light of what we now know, I hardly understand how it is even possible to research more advanced assessment without everyday access to such expertise.

Philosophy is also crucial. Without a philosophy of learning that guides the search for new insights, the risk is that technological solutions will not help teachers. My household gods are therefore both John Dewey and Célestin Freinet. Equal parts philosophy and technology. The ambition has long been to search for new ways to measure and assess what we value the most – deep learning, student motivation and emotionally powerful learning experiences. What we can make visible through measurement and assessment, we can also get more of.

Box 1: Assessing action-based learning

Value creation pedagogy is essentially a kind of action-based learning. There is much written in the literature about how such learning can be assessed. The methods below can be said to be variants of formative assessment, an umbrella term for assessment carried out primarily to enhance student learning (AfL).

Performance assessment is about having students perform authentic actions and assessing how well they succeed.[9] Teachers give students an assignment that allows them to demonstrate knowledge and skills in practice. Both the process and the “product” that students may create can contribute to the teacher’s assessment. This approach is common in aesthetic subjects and practical vocational training. Challenges include time constraints and subjective judgements.

Reflective assessment is about allowing students to reflect on their learning in writing or orally, individually or in groups.[10] The focus is often on what happened, how the student thought and felt, what was positive and negative, lessons learned and what could have been done differently.[11] It is easy to get started and the focus becomes on metacognition – awareness of one’s own abilities. Challenges are time commitment and deep reflection.

Peer assessment is about allowing students to assess each other for the purpose of learning and development.[12] It is a student-centred approach that reinforces responsibility for one’s own learning and that of others. Challenges include a lack of reliability and the need for students to practice their assessment skills.

E-assessment is about using digital support in the assessment process.[13] It is a broad category that includes everything from simple self-administered quizzes to advanced multimedia, simulations and e-portfolio systems. E-portfolio is a common application where students can upload their work for the outside world to see, much like a digital CV. [14]

Constructive alignment deals with linking three key aspects of learning – activities, learning outcomes and assessment.[15] Teachers are encouraged to focus assessment on the specific activities students need to do to achieve the learning outcomes, and to express these activities in verb form. One question teachers might ask is: What do students need to do in order to learn what we want them to know?

Assessment based on emotional activities

One assessment strategy I have worked with a lot in my research is to focus the assessment on the activities that generate strong emotions among students. If it is the case that we learn deeply from emotionally powerful events, then it is important to use assessment to ensure that all students are doing exactly what they need to do in order to learn deeply. The strategy is thus based on the principles of constructive alignment, and also on the different emotional learning events in Table 2.1 in Chapter 2.[16]

This is how I usually work with activity-based assessment in practice. Have students do a written reflection after an emotionally powerful event of some kind. For example, the assignment for the student could be written like this:

Conduct a dialogue/pitch/meeting with someone outside the classroom/school, and then reflect in writing on how it went, what feedback you received, what you learned and what you will do differently next time.

Make an attempt to create value for someone outside the classroom/school. How did it feel? What feedback did you get? What did you learn? What will you do differently next time?

When you have experienced something really emotionally strong related to your project, write down what happened and reflect on it. What did you learn? How was your project affected? What will you do differently next time?

Apply some of the core content practically in your project. How did it go? What was the impact of the project? What did you learn?

The texts above may need to be age-adjusted and formulated more specifically according to the value-creating task the students are doing. Each reflection should be individual and written, even if the task is carried out orally and in groups. Deep written reflection is always individual. Two people can never have experienced a situation in exactly the same way and learned exactly the same things. By putting the experiences into words, students also deepen their learning.[17]

Other emotional tasks can be given around activities that take place in the team, such as:

Develop a value proposition as a group and write it down in a canvas template. Then reflect on what you learned.

Make an important decision as a group. Then reflect in writing on how you felt afterwards and what you learned.

Written reflection on emotional activities is a good way to make visible learning events that are otherwise not visible with more traditional assessment strategies. It is also a way to gain insight into what is happening in the learning processes in more detail and to ensure that each student has been involved. It is difficult for students to make a credible reflection without having completed the activity in the assignment. If they try to write something down anyway, there is always the risk that the hoax will be exposed in subsequent dialogue with the teacher.

Tasks of the above kind consist of both acting and reflecting, embedded in the same task text. This is theoretically based on the so-called experiential learning cycle by Kolb (1984), see Figure 8.2. The planning and feeling stages of Kolb’s learning cycle can be included in the mission statement. Just make sure that the whole cycle is included in some form in the assignment text describing what students are expected to do.

Figure 8.2 Designing emotional activities for students supported by the Kolb learning cycle.

A crash into the formative assessment wall

In my own teaching I have experimented a lot with formative and activity-based assessment. Once it got out of hand. In an eight-week course at Chalmers quite a few years ago, I had nine different forms of oral and written assessment, both formative and summative. There were mini-exams, pitches, video submissions, coaching, compulsory workshops, student interaction with an external person, peer assessments via a Facebook group and written reflections via a sadly poor learning platform at Chalmers. Without thinking twice, I had given myself 1,543 assessments to do or follow over the next eight weeks.

There and then I crashed into the formative assessment wall. Never work like this again, I thought. It was hard to realise that a fundamentally positive form of assessment could do so much harm to me as a teacher. Later, I read that other teachers have had this problem as well.[18] To try to understand the situation better, I sat down and did the math. It turned out that formative assessment is relatively simple mathematics. The workload grows linearly with the number of students and the number of assessments per student, see Figure 8.3. Elementary.

But now I am also an IT geek. So I realised that the quality of the IT support available to teachers determines how many assessments they can do in an eight-week period without crashing. My own limit there and then, with the substandard digital tools we had at the time, was a few hundred assessments. With our 37 students, that meant a maximum limit of between five and eight assessments per student in a course. And that included compulsory attendance as a kind of assessment. Sadly summative if you ask me. So in March 2016, an idea was born about what we’re getting to now – the teacher as jazz conductor with chords that students can improvise to.[19]

The sophisticated learning journey

Now we come to the most sophisticated form of assessment for value-based learning that we have worked with in our research.

The teacher as jazz conductor

When value creation pedagogy is at its most extensive form, a rather different assessment strategy is required. The teacher’s need for structure and control over the learning process needs to be combined with ample scope for students to improvise and be creative in their value creation attempts. Let us therefore liken it to jazz. If there is any phenomenon where many people together manage to combine structure with creative improvisation, it is jazz, see box 2 below. Value creation pedagogy in its most advanced form is like big band jazz, where teachers take the role of jazz conductor and distribute the initiative to students based on various predetermined themes and “chords”.

At Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship, we have been working as jazz conductors for more than twentyfive years. My students probably think they are leading the process more than they actually do. We have composed and refined a concert arrangement for them so that new virtuosos get to shine with their solos every year. They probably feel that they are performing a unique concert. But we, the composers, hear much the same concert every year. That’s the beauty of being a jazz conductor. When the audience arrives and the concert begins, the jazz conductor’s work is basically done. All we have to do is stand there, a little discreetly, between the audience and the musicians and enjoy. Keeping an eye out for any musician having a problem with a string on the guitar or some mechanical failure on the saxophone or whatever. Or stage fright.

The best jazz conductors in schools are found in vocational education, more specifically in apprenticeship education. Half the time students are apprentices in a workplace creating value, half the time they are at school. All the time the teacher is expected to organise, lead and monitor the learning. I have had the privilege of working with vocational teachers since 2014. They are truly the virtuosos of value creation pedagogy. Everything I am about to tell you about sophisticated assessment strategies I have learned by working closely with these master conductors. I have then tested what we have arrived at in my own teaching at Chalmers. If you want to know more about our research with vocational teachers, read our reports to the Swedish National Agency for Education’s Learning Centre.[20]

New digital support for jazz conductors

Teachers leading sophisticated value creation pedagogy need a type of IT support that was not available anywhere in the world when we started our research journey. We had to spend almost eight years experimenting with a brand new type of digital assessment support tailored for vocational teachers. I had my research tool Loopme to build on. But there were many parts that needed to be redesigned and expanded to support vocational teachers in their assessment work. In the end, I think we succeeded quite well, because today Loopme is used by several thousand vocational teachers around Sweden with nearly 20,000 vocational students. More are being added all the time.

I think this new digital assessment tool for teachers acting as jazz conductors is relevant far beyond vocational education. We have seen here a way of working with assessment of value creation pedagogy that can probably work at all levels of the education system. We just haven’t got so far on our journey yet that the approach has been much disseminated beyond vocational teachers. So let me describe what we came up with in more detail. Perhaps this approach could work for more teachers who want to take on the role of jazz conductor in schools, but who have not yet made it work in practice. First, we need to review some key concepts that emerged from the work.

Fact box 2: Big band jazz

A jazz big band usually consists of ten to twenty musicians, often divided into four sections – saxophone, trumpet, trombone and accompaniment (guitar, piano, bass and drums). The big band is the jazz equivalent of the symphony orchestra.

Music form. Big band jazz is a free form of music based on chords. A chord consists of three or more notes sounded simultaneously, forming a happy (major chord) or more melancholy (minor chord) base for the melody. In jazz, the melody is improvised by the solo musicians as they go along, using different chords in an often predetermined chord progression. This gives the musicians more freedom to decide for themselves how it will sound. This can be compared to the symphony orchestra where the musicians follow detailed notes written down in advance, note by note, second by second.

Pieces of music. A jazz song usually consists of a theme and a chord progression from which the musicians can improvise. The more people in the orchestra, the more structured it needs to be. The musicians are given free rein, but within a framework set by the composer. This is a freedom that requires a lot of preparation and practice. For each song, the musicians have around four to six pages of notes with both chord progressions and detailed melodies, differently distributed depending on the role of the musician in the orchestra. The whole set of notes for all the musicians is called an arrangement or a score.

Leadership. Leading jazz musicians who improvise the music is a kind of inherent leadership paradox. Who actually leads the work? The jazz conductor or the solo musicians? Many jazz orchestras don’t even have a conductor leading the concert. Instead, one of the section leaders steps up from time to time and leads the orchestra through key passages. Other times, especially in larger orchestras, there is a jazz conductor who distributes the initiative to different musicians when it’s time to improvise. In many cases, the conductor has done most of his or her work before the concert begins, through planning, rehearsals and briefings months before the audience comes to listen.

A new semantics for assessing value creation pedagogy

To facilitate the assessment of value creation pedagogy, we have developed a new semantics consisting of five key concepts – tasks, tags, content package, emotional assessment and comment thread. These five concepts are briefly described below.[21] The concepts require a partially digitally supported assessment strategy, otherwise there is probably a high risk of crash.

Task – a description of a concrete action with associated reflection that is intended to lead to learning for the students.

A good learning task is action-oriented and describes simply and concretely what students need to do to learn what they need to know in a particular subject. A task description consists of a title of a maximum of eight words and a short description of a few sentences of what is to be done. The description also needs to show how students are expected to reflect in writing after completing the task, focusing on what was done, how it went, what the student learned and how the completion of the task can be improved next time. Asking the student to link to theory and literature is also useful, if it works with age. Some tasks need to be completed several times for the student to learn the lesson and for the teacher to grade. Although tasks are described, communicated and reflected upon via an IT tool, the completion of the task is completely decoupled from the IT tool. All action takes place “offline”. It is only when it is time to reflect that the work takes place “online” in the IT tool. Tasks are usually compulsory and need to be completed for the student to pass. They are thus an important piece of the puzzle in the teacher’s summative assessment work. A task is like a chord or a sequence of notes for a jazz musician to use as a starting point for creative work.

Tag – short phrase of maximum four to five words that summarises effects, experiences or behaviours of interest in the learning process and that can be displayed on a digital “button”.

A tag allows learners to quickly and easily describe the learning, effects and experiences they are having. However, it requires that what is being referred to can be described succinctly enough to fit each phrase on a small “button” in an IT tool and that learners can easily understand what learning, effects and experiences are being referred to. Each button pressed then means that the learner considers that he/she has learned or experienced what is described on the button. Typically, learners select around two to six tags each time a task has been completed and reflected upon. The teacher decides in advance which tags students can choose from.

Content package – a ready-made set of three to twenty tasks and ten to twenty-five matching tags that teachers can choose from and give to a group of students to carry out over an extended period of time.

The content packages have have become an understandable and useful form for disseminating, discussing, analysing, developing and testing a particular educational design in a wider circle than just in one’s own school or classroom. The packages have been brought together in a digital repository called the Loopme Library, which was designed and technically built in the research process together with professional teachers and the Swedish National Agency for Education’s Apprenticeship Centre. A large number of content packages have then been developed by teachers around Sweden. It has been clear that many teachers are waiting to get started with the new assessment strategy described here until there is a ready-made content package to start from that has been designed by another teacher. So it seems to be easier for teachers to be jazz conductors than jazz composers. A content package is like an arrangement for a whole orchestra (think whole class of students). It can be exchanged between orchestras and played in concert halls all over the country.

Emotional assessment – the student makes a choice from five possible emotional states, from strongly negative to strongly positive, via a simple button press by the student and linked to each written reflection.

This information is displayed to teachers in connection with each reflection from a student. The emotional assessment helps teachers to quickly capture things students do not express in text, mainly around well-being and motivation. The student may not even be aware that well-being has started to decline. The teacher can often see that the emotional state is starting to decline and can then arrange an extra meeting. The reason for the drop in mood usually surfaces in such a meeting. The emotional assessment can be likened to the jazz conductor maintaining constant eye contact with the orchestra during the concert.

Comment thread – a digital formative dialogue that can follow each reflection if the teacher chooses to write a comment on the student’s submitted reflection.

This type of task-linked digital formative dialogue has become an integral part of value-creation teachers’ formative assessment work. Many schools have even begun to define it as teaching time when the teacher sits and digitally comments on student reflections. This work serves an important purpose in affirming, challenging and motivating students in their learning. It also leads to higher quality as the teacher’s control over value creation-based learning is strengthened. It also helps to maintain the frequency of students’ written reflection which in turn enhances learning. A doing becomes a learning only when the student has reflected on it.[22]

Features of a digital assessment tool

Let us now look at some key features of a digital assessment tool for value creation pedagogy that have emerged from our research. The top priority for vocational teachers was speed of communication, simply to save time and get students and tutors on board. Therefore, we drew inspiration from social media. Students were allowed to reflect on their mobiles via a user interface that was extremely easy to use. They were also given the opportunity to attach pictures and videos to each reflection. Teachers were then presented with a social feed of students’ reflections on a web page where they could quickly and easily comment and view images. Similar to Facebook, but with a feed just for teachers and fully tailored to the jazz conductors of learning. This saved a lot of time in assessment work and also facilitated the all-important documentation. Here it was the students themselves who documented their learnings.

For research purposes, we had already built tagging and emotion estimation functions into our IT tool. For vocational teachers this became a way to let students quickly and easily describe what they were feeling and what they had learned. A kind of self-assessment of learning. It gave teachers invaluable information in both formative and summative assessment work, and again saved a lot of time.

It also became clear quite soon that a task, or mission, logic was needed to guide and focus the students’ reflections. Students needed to be allowed to act and reflect on the basis of specific activities and related reflection questions composed for them by the teachers. Just as the jazz musician needs a chord progression to improvise from. The assignments are often quite general and broad (think chords), so that students can improvise based on what each specific situation allows (think improvisation solos).

Six different levels of digital assessment jazz

In our work with vocational teachers, we have seen many different ways of working digitally to assess value-added learners. Figure 8.4 illustrates six typical assessment strategies. Let’s review them briefly here.

Reflection. The most basic strategy is to allow students to reflect in a digital logbook. This can be compared to loose jazz trudelutes by individual jazz musicians. Free reflection allows a lot of room for improvisation but is not very structured or coordinated. Such an assessment strategy is easy to get started with but does not support the assessment of more sophisticated learning journeys. It also requires a lot of teacher time to interpret large amounts of unstructured text when it is time to set a grade.

Portfolio thinking. To assess students’ competence by examining their creations has a long tradition in aesthetic-practical subjects and is called portfolio assessment. Creations are often linked to experiences and abilities through reflection, so-called portfolio thinking.[23] This makes students active co-creators of formative assessment rather than passive recipients of grades. Combinations of text, images and video provide good opportunities for such assessment in digital form. We can see this approach as a kind of pre-recorded solo jazz sent to the teacher. It allows for a wide range of performances and also enables a clear structure for teachers. However, it does not provide very good support in what students need to do in order to learn how to create different works.

Activity-based assessment. At the third level, the learning journey is more clearly described through series of action-oriented tasks. Here we begin to see the benefits of structure combined with improvisation. With a set of different tasks, relatively sophisticated learning journeys can be described in action form. This is the first step where we see greater time savings in assessment work. Here the teacher becomes a kind of jazz conductor with a pre-planned arrangement the whole class follows. Each action-oriented task is a kind of chord the student can improvise from and then reflect upon with a combination of text, tags, images and video. The chords are put together in arrangements (content packages) that the student is expected to improvise from over slightly longer periods of time, often a course, a semester or a whole year.

Three-party collaboration. In the fourth step, a key person from outside the school is added and becomes part of the digital assessment work. This step is common in vocational education and training with supervisors at the workplace who also read the students’ reflections. However, I believe that also many other teachers and even pedagogical concept designers who want to invest in value creation pedagogy could find people who fill this third role in a good way. Perhaps by defining supporting roles for outside partners for whom learners create value. As in jazz, the audience has an active role to play here by providing inspiring feedback, what I call here assessment for motivation (AfM). Achieving time-efficient three-party collaboration in everyday life has proven to be almost impossible without digital support tailored for the purpose.[24]

Community of Practice. In the fifth step, teachers start exchanging content packages with each other. This facilitates the dissemination and testing of more sophisticated learning journeys. It is more difficult to compose a unique learning journey yourself than to be a conductor based on an existing learning journey that someone else has composed. Therefore, teachers benefit greatly from being able to share activity-based content with each other.

We have been working with content packages together with vocational teachers since 2019, an approach that has quickly gained wide acceptance. Today, there are around 80 different content packages developed for all 12 national vocational programmes in Sweden. My guess is that in a few years we could see a wide spread of different content packages for value creation pedagogy as well. Perhaps based on some of the many examples of value creation pedagogy in this book? Anyone is free to create such a content package.

Scientific teachers. The most sophisticated approach we have seen is when teachers not only exchange content packages with each other, but also analyse all students’ reflections and tags from the digital tool using scientific analysis methodology. The aim is to gain insight into which different activities have which effects on student learning. My earlier book – The Scientific Teacher – is about this very approach.[25] You are welcome to read the details in that book. But based on our focus here, this approach is about teachers working together scientifically to build up locally produced evidence about the effects of different kinds of value-creating activities. I write more about this in the epilogue at the end of the book.

Some final advice for aspiring jazz conductors

After quite a few years of working with activity-based assessment, we have accumulated some tips for conductors of value creation pedagogy. Try to have a pace of reflection that is comfortable for both teachers and learners. Some vocational teachers have students reflecting every day when they are on placement. Others work more on a weekly basis. Personally, I have moved towards more infrequent than that, as I work part-time as a teacher. Right now, my students reflect once or twice a month. But they also have reflection assignments for their other teachers, so for them the pace is about three to four reflections a month. Whatever pace you choose, try to keep the pace. Time as a pace-setter creates security.

Also the scale can be experimented with. In recent years, I have started to have more and more extensive Kolbian learning cycles in each task. It can be quite a lot of work for my students before it’s time to write a reflection to me. It also makes the reading more interesting for me. Every time I receive a reflection from a student, I can be sure that something interesting has been done.

In addition to the paced reflections, I also often have assignments that are not time dependent, beyond the end of the semester. Indeed, some activities cannot be predicted when they can be completed. For example, being involved in an emotional event, taking an initiative, successfully creating value for an outsider, taking an important decision or acting on an unexpected opportunity. Then it becomes a kind of retrofit reflective assessment. Students are left to judge for themselves when the opportunity to carry out the task arises. Towards the end of a term, I have a conversation with those who have not yet managed to find a good opportunity. It’s a structured way of assessing things that otherwise don’t get assessed so easily.

Another variant of backward assessment is to look at students’ chosen tags at the individual level. If teachers allow students to choose from tags that represent important learning outcomes and skills to practice, at the end of a term the teacher can go in and analyse which of the students have learned them, according to themselves. I usually have a conversation with those who have not yet chosen to use a particular tag. Maybe I have an alternative assessment strategy that can capture that particular learning for that particular student. Or maybe something is missing and needs to be added to the learning process.

A summary of jazz as an assessment strategy

Figure 8.5 provides a visual summary of the jazz conductor’s activity-basede assessment strategy.

In step one, students complete various action-oriented tasks. Teachers summatively assess each assignment, but without setting a grade. The important thing is that each student tries to complete the activity, not how it goes. It is the attempt that counts. The digital support shows an activity matrix of which students have attempted which tasks.

In step two, students are formatively assessed by teachers (BfL) and possibly also by tutors (BfL + BfM). Student reflection, tagging and emotional state are read and commented by the teacher and sometimes also by the tutor. This forms a digital tripartite dialogue in a comment thread.

In step three, the teacher translates the first two steps into course or curriculum logic, which facilitates grading (In parallel to the three steps, the value created by the students is assessed by the potential recipients of value (BfM).

Taken together, this makes for an assessment strategy that represents a fine-grained mix of formative and summative assessment. This is contrary to what some researchers recommend,[26] but I have come to be convinced that such blending is absolutely crucial for the value-creation teacher. There are also other researchers who advocate such blending.[27]

A few final words on the assessment society

We live in a measurement society. Everything must be monitored, measured, documented and evaluated. What we can measure, we get more of, precisely because then it becomes visible. Conversely, if we find it difficult to measure something, we will get less of it. The effect will be that we value mainly what is easy to assess, rather than trying to assess what we value highly.[28] This is a challenge for value creation-based learning, as many of the student outcomes are difficult to monitor and assess via traditional exams. In this chapter, I have therefore outlined some alternative ways forward for teachers who want to assess and make visible the effects of value creation on student learning.

Teachers’ assessment strategies guide students’ focus in school work. The effect is called backwash – students adjusting effort and focus to what is on the exam.[29] The effect is so powerful that it’s hardly even worth fighting. Instead, researcher John Biggs recommends that teachers focus assessment on what students need to do in order to learn what we want them to learn, known as constructive alignment. I see this as a small step away from the usual focus on knowledge requirements and learning outcomes. More focus is then put on the concrete doing required of students. Could this be a better way to manage students’ value-creation based learning? Assessing them also on the things they need to do in order to learn? Not just assessing them on what they need to know according to the curriculum documents? I think so. But it requires well-tested assessment methods, digital support tools and teachers who don’t bow down to the New Public Management movement.

---

[1] The quote is from a comment by Maria Wiman on a post I made on 14/6-2016 in the Facebook group “Value creation pedagogy in theory and practice”.

[2] See Polfors (2020, p. 27).

[3] Quotes from impact study for the Swedish National Agency for Education by Lackéus and Sävetun (2016, p. 40–41).

[4] See for example Wiman (2019) and Jenssen et al. (2020).

[5] An example of this is given by Wiman (2019, p. 61).

[6] See Lundahl et al. (2011).

[7] Which apps are good and popular at any given time changes quickly, but some apps that have been mentioned are Google Classroom, Google Docs, Garageband, Menti, Socrative, Padlet, Showbie, Toolie, Whatsapp, Facebook.

[8] Read more about this in Freinet (2018).

[9] See Isaacs et al. (2013).

[10] See Bond, Evans and Ellis (2011).

[11] See Gibbs (1988).

[12] See Dochy, Segers and Sluijsmans (1999).

[13] See Supporting mountains (2012).

[14] See Ferns and Comfort (2014).

[15] See Biggs and Tang (2011).

[16] Read more about this assessment strategy in Lackéus and Williams Middleton (2018).

[17] See Moon (2004).

[18] See Jonsson, Lundahl and Holmgren (2015).

[19] The idea was first described in a video I made about summative qualitative formative assessment. Search on Youtube for “Social learning media Lackéus” and you will find it.

[20] See Lackéus and Sävetun (2019b, 2021).

[21] They are also described in more detail in Lackéus and Sävetun (2021).

[22] This is often described in the literature on experiential learning, see for example Aprea and Cattaneo (2019, p. 378), Roberts (2012) or Boud, Keogh and Walker (1985).

[23] See Impedovo, Ligorio and McLay (2018, p. 754).

[24] See Lackéus and Sävetun (2021).

[25] See Lackeus (2021).

[26] See Lundahl (2011, p. 157).

[27] See Brookhart (2010).

[28] See Biesta (2009).

[29] See Biggs and Tang (2011) and Panadero and Jönsson (2020).

This chapter looks at the different challenges teachers may face in working with value creation pedagogy. The content is based on reflections I received from teachers in my research. Succeeding at something really great often requires a lot of hard work. If value-creation for students at school had been easy, it would probably have been done already. We have seen challenges in five areas, see Figure 7.1.

Practical challenges

Taking the first step in value creation pedagogy is often about overcoming challenges of a fairly practical nature. These can range from a good reason to try something new to various how-to questions around time, support, assessment and targets.

Why should I try this new?

The very first step in a change or a new way of working is often the most difficult. The power of habit keeps us humans in a tight grip. We want so much to believe that the current situation is the best, even when it is not.[1] A successful attempt to try something new is therefore quite demanding. Three conditions need to be met and together overcome our inherent resistance to change:[2]

1. that we are dissatisfied with the current situation
2. that we have a clear idea or vision of what we want to achieve
3. that we are clear about the simple practical steps we can take here and now.

These three points are always valid and may be worth considering carefully in any educational change. Therefore, the first part of the book was about painting a vision of what is now possible. The second part was about practical steps teachers can take here and now. However, teachers’ possible dissatisfaction with the current situation is not covered by this book. Let me explain why.

I see a big difference in how quickly different teachers get started with value creation pedagogy. The ones who get started the fastest are those who, for whatever reason, have chosen to invest in the approach themselves. Those who have the most difficulty are those who have been called to a compulsory in-service training day where an external researcher from Chalmers comes and tells them how to do their job. What does Chalmers even know about pedagogy? In my previous book – The Scientific Teacher – I wrote about the evils of giving unsolicited advice to teachers and what can be done about it.[3] There are certainly respectful ways to deal with this, but they are beyond our focus here.

A common reason for teachers not getting started is that they do not see the connection between things they are unhappy with in their professional lives and the solution value creation pedagogy can provide. Teacher Roberth Nordin (2017) jokingly describes a typical study day:

The lecturer offers a great solution to a problem you don’t have. You get something you never asked for or ever lacked. You usually end up with at least a couple of newfound tasks to squeeze into your schedule.

If you recognise yourself here, in relation to value creation pedagogy, I can’t offer a clear solution. Each teacher has to find his or her own personal reasons, based on links between his or her own perceived professional challenges and value creation pedagogy as a possible solution. All those teachers who have the health and who find strong enough personal will to work with value creation pedagogy have been able to overcome all the challenges in this chapter. We have seen this time and again.

If you are one of the teachers who have been ordered here, to Chapter 7, my best advice is to still give value creation pedagogy a chance with your students, at least a couple of times in a school year and on a small scale. As secondary school teacher Madeléne Polfors wrote (2020, p. 40) in her thesis on value creation pedagogy in law teaching recently:

My strongest belief is that once teachers have tried it once, they will try it again because you can’t ignore the positive effects of value-added learning.

Value creation pedagogy, as mentioned, is quite difficult to describe in words. It needs to be experienced emotionally together with the students themselves. The effects tend to be surprisingly strong.

No time for me as a teacher

The most common objection I hear from teachers is that they lack the time to work with value creation pedagogy. I have great respect for the fact that teaching can be a stressful profession. But I still think of what I myself was always told by my boss when I complained about a lack of time in my job as a stressed-out sales manager in IT:

You have just as much time as everyone else. It’s how you choose to use it. This is just a question of your priorities.

Physicist and author Bodil Jönsson calls the perceived lack of time a life lie that is remedied by new choices about priorities.[4] Teachers who say they don’t have time for value creation pedagogy may need to decide how important this new work is, in relation to other necessary work, and then re-prioritise accordingly. It is not a question of one or the other, but of finding a good balance between different, apparently conflicting priorities, for example between duty and pleasure for students. Time to engage in value creation pedagogy is not something teachers have, it is something they need to create for themselves if it is felt to be sufficiently urgent. Ask a colleague to help with the priorities, it is often easier for someone else to find things you can prioritise down.

I also believe that this book can help to reduce the time spent for teachers who want to work with value creation pedagogy. After all, I have now spent twelve years of my life trying to understand this phenomenon, time that no teacher can ever prioritise in their calendar. With a clearer picture of what it is all about, more examples of what teachers can do, and more concrete proven tools that provide clarity and structure, teachers will save time getting started. A particularly important area for time savings is assessment work, read more about this in Chapter 8. There are also teachers who have said that they save time when they allow students to do value-added work. One teacher stated bluntly:

The students are motivated by themselves, and then I as a teacher can work less, because then they work more.

The main challenge related to time is perhaps the time it takes to get up and running with a new way of working. The fact that the start-up takes extra time applies to all new working methods, including this one. A facilitating factor then is if teachers support each other and have a school management that sets aside time for teachers to plan for and get into value creation pedagogy.

No time for students

Students also need time to get into the value-creation approach. It takes months for students to get to the point where tangible value is created for outsiders. Calendar time is at least as important here as lesson time, perhaps even more so. Teachers may need to stretch out time perspectives. An eight-week full-time course may be too short for students to get started in earnest.[5] Half or quarter speed may give students a better chance to get into the mindset. Teachers may also need to collaborate with each other. One course or subject can provide students with an introduction that is then built upon in another course or subject. It is not very difficult for students to find time to work on value creation activities if they are already in the mindset and have built up their capacity to create value for others. We also often hear of students working outside of class time on value-creating activities because they find it so engaging. Also, try giving your students action-oriented tasks as homework. I write about how such assignments can be designed in Chapter 8.

How to keep up with content and assessment?

Crowding of content is a common challenge for teachers, and not just when it comes to value creation pedagogy. It’s about both keeping up with all the content and having time to assess each student. Teachers who have faced these challenges and yet applied value creation pedagogy say afterwards that they did get all the content and were able to assess all the students, but often in a different order and in a different way than before.

Some teachers have chosen to involve students in ensuring that all key content is included. Other teachers, particularly in vocational education, have worked with innovative and digital assessment tools, see Chapter 8. Still others have relied on their long experience as teachers and have felt confident that by the end of the learning process they will have sufficient material to assess each student on each piece of core content. We also see many starting value creation pedagogy small-scale so that the established structure of teaching does not disintegrate. Overall, we see here how something that may initially feel like a detour unexpectedly becomes a shortcut. Teachers here need to try to trust the process and try it out for themselves at a scale appropriate to them, to see if they too can turn the detour into a shortcut.

It is therefore a question of taking courage, daring to venture into the unknown, daring to trust in one’s own abilities as a teacher and daring to try out a new way of achieving the same goals as before, but with much more motivated students, and in this way reaching further in the work with the core content.

How to find real-world recipients of value?

One challenge many teachers highlight is the difficulty in finding real recipients of value. Many lack good contacts in workplaces. They also often lack the time it takes to contact new people in workplaces. This is a challenge for which we must have great respect. At the same time, I hope to contribute some new perspectives. Students can be invited to both look for and make contact with potential recipients outside school. Teachers may of course need to support them here. But if twenty-five students each contact someone, it will almost certainly lead to at least one valuable contact that everyone in the class can work on together. I have seen many examples of this, even in primary schools. Students can also make use of their own networks of contacts – not least among guardians, relatives and their contacts in turn.

Making new contacts with the outside world is basically a kind of salesmanship. This is an area of expertise where practical practice quickly yields good results. There is also a lot of literature to read.[6] The sales pitch describes the value students believe they are trying to create for outsiders. And as in all sales work, it is the number of contacts that determines success. Ten taps a thanks, again. Many outsiders will say no, just like in all sales work. Learning to handle a no without losing heart is an important lesson here about what it means to be persistent. But suddenly the magic happens that someone says yes. Then students can have an analogue ship’s bell in the classroom that they ring to celebrate the wonderful thing. Imagine if, as a sales manager, I had access to a sales force as large as an entire class of students. Then our sales bell would be ringing a lot more often.

Building a sales culture in the classroom might seem a bit odd in school. But it’s always a challenge to connect what someone can offer with what someone wants help with. Not all people want to be helped either. A sales culture among students therefore helps in making contacts. Here, too, salesmanship is done with the laudable aim of enhancing students’ learning.

How to support students’ value creation?

Teacher leadership in the classroom is a hot topic in many schools. How should teachers actually lead students in the classroom? Many books have been written about this. But the question comes into a partly new light when students work on value creation. I can’t say that I have all the answers. But I think it’s very much about a variation on formative assessment, or rather what we often choose to call formative dialogue – confidential dialogues between teacher and student around emotionally powerful events, with the aim of supporting student learning.

In our work with vocational teachers we have seen that formative dialogue is best conducted in the digital space. It allows for more familiarity where not everyone hears everything, and is also time-saving for teachers. Digital dialogue is also better suited to value-creation processes where a lot of the learning takes place outside the classroom and at times when the teacher and student are not even in the same room. We will return to formative digital dialogue in the chapter on assessment.

What to do in my subject?

Apart from a few examples from different subject teachers here and there in the book, I have chosen not to have specific descriptions for each subject in my book. I see it as a bit of an impossible task for me as a generalist to give didactical tips in mathematics, social studies, physics, biology or any other subject. Nevertheless, many teachers can probably transfer the ideas described here to their own subject. Teachers can also help each other. Use your established channels and venues for subject didactic exchange, and this challenge will probably be handled well.

Books have also begun to appear in Sweden in which teachers give tips on how to work more concretely in the classroom. The two most concrete examples I have seen are Jennie Bengtsson’s book Real Recipients, about value-creating language teaching, and Maria Wiman’s second book on value creation pedagogy – Handbook of Value creation pedagogy. I think these two books can help many teachers to get started, and should probably be translated into more languages. It is also a book format that can inspire more teachers who might be thinking of writing about their experiences.

There is also a lot written in Swedish about value creation pedagogy from a subject didactic and special education perspective, for example in mathematics (Falkstål 2018; Sjödén 2021), law (Polfors 2020), technology (Hih 2021), sustainable development (Nelson 2021), economy (Christoffersson & Fredriksson 2021), leisure education (Johansson 2018), vocational training (Littke 2020) and special education (Grenander 2018). Subject didactics and different pedagogical orientations are important focus areas for further research on value creation pedagogy.

It seems complicated and vague

Progressive pedagogy has for centuries faced challenges of complexity and vagueness. There are very different demands on teachers working with cross-curricular projects and authentic problems based on students’ own interests. No two situations are the same, constant adaptation is required, each student’s learning needs to be uniquely assessed and the curriculum many learning objectives need to be ticked off in a kind of non-linear backward process. Smith and Ragan (1999, s. 295) conclude:

Although a few talented teachers have done well, the talent and energy required is extremely rare. The failure of progressive pedagogy can be attributed to the impossible demands that successful implementation placed on teachers, especially given the tools available in the early and mid-20th century.

The stark message ends on a cautiously positive note. Could the future bring tools and methods that make it possible to realise the progressive pedagogy dream of meaningful learning? A perfectly reasonable answer to that question is probably value creation pedagogy. Here comes a long-awaited simplification and clarification of the purpose, objectives and working process. Now teachers can finally be supported in how traditional and progressive pedagogy can be combined in everyday life.[7] The various tools and methods described in part two of the book provide teachers with concrete guidance and simplification. Assessment can also be facilitated through digital ways of working, see Chapter 8.

Let me draw a parallel to Freinet’s work at the beginning of the 20th century. I like both his focus on various technological solutions that facilitate teachers and his basic idea of pedagogy of work. But his thirty constants are, for me as an engineer and IT geek, a bit too fluffy.[8] Among other things, Freinet writes: away with caretakers and authorities, away with teachers’ explanations and lectures, away with control and grades. No wonder the Freinet movement is marginal.

I think we need to move from thirty to three constants – value creation, interaction and fine-grained mixing – as I wrote about in the introduction to the book. Teachers need fewer principles, not more, to work from. The whole philosophical playing field of education also needs to be included, see Chapter 2. Schools still need janitors, lectures and grades.

Perhaps we see here the the greatest mistake of progressive education over the centuries – to make things immensely more complicated and at the same time throw the baby out with the bathwater.

It doesn’t suit all my students

Not all people are equally ultra-social. Some prefer to keep to themselves, or dislike making contact with strangers. Others have difficulty with social interaction and empathy, or are simply shy. Still others are so used to clear structures and traditional, predictable teaching that they are not at all comfortable with a way of working that makes new, emotionally challenging and unpredictable demands on them. These students may protest and criticise their teacher.

Over the years, I have received many reflections from teachers who have tried value creation pedagogy and discovered exactly this, that it does not work equally well for everyone. And it would be strange if we had found a pedagogical idea that suited everyone. I don’t think there is such an idea. Just as some students find traditional pedagogy as meaningless and unmotivating, there are students who find value creation pedagogy problematic. This gives us yet another reason to pursue educational philosophy balance in schools. Some lessons suit some students, other lessons suit other students. Overall, pedagogical variety makes us hopefully reach all students.

It is often said that traditional teaching is not always fun for students, but that it is good for them and that they need to learn a lot of things by heart. I totally agree. But the same is true for value creation pedagogy. We all live in a relational society. All students therefore need to practice social interaction, relationship building, initiative taking, uncertainty management, perseverance and self-awareness. A modern approach to education also includes exploring how we relate to others.[9] Objections from students who do not like value creation do not therefore mean that they should be allowed to get away with it. However, teachers may need to give some students a little extra support. It is also possible, through teamwork, to distribute tasks across the group so that those who find it most difficult to make new social contacts do not have to do so quite as often. Indeed, value creation is at its most powerful when students draw on each other’s complementary strengths.

When it comes to students with different disabilities or diagnoses such as adhd and autism, it is difficult to generalise. Some teachers say value creation pedagogy works poorly for this group, others say they have finally found something that works really well. Diagnoses are over-represented among entrepreneurs and can provide a superpower that others don’t have.[10] A high level of activity, a desire to go their own way and a penchant for digging into a narrow issue can be very beneficial in value creation processes. Sometimes, however, schools may find it difficult to turn a disability into an opportunity. This is where I believe value creation pedagogy can help. But it would need more research. A good starting point could be Lina Grenander’s (2018) well-written study of entrepreneurial competences in secondary special schools. Another starting point could be the only research article that ever made me cry, written by Roth and Lee (2007). It is about a boy named Davie with an ADHD diagnosis and severe concentration difficulties in mathematics.

When Davie got involved in trying to save a stream near the school, he became the obvious focal point of the class and taught important skills to his classmates. His symptoms disappeared and he began to perform well above average, even in maths. I think Davie probably had a low tolerance for meaninglessness and that value creation pedagogy solved that problem for him. Perhaps one aspect of adhd is that you simply don’t take on meaningless tasks as credulously as others? Perhaps adhd is a diagnosis that should be equally given to schools – an inability to capture via meaningful activities the attention (AD) and activity (HD) of certain students?

Psychological challenges

Some of the challenges of value creation pedagogy are more psychological. The idea makes sense but feels a bit heavy in the stomach. Not daring, not wanting or not being able to try something new and unknown is quite human and can probably be found in just about every profession. For many people, it’s scary to dare to try something they’ve never done before.

How dare, how will, how can we work like this?

How do we actually become braver? Perhaps the three conditions for change at the beginning of this chapter can help teachers to dare to try? Instead of focusing on the psychologically heavy resistance, the focus shifts to one’s own dissatisfaction with the current situation, the vision of how things can be better, and the simple steps to take here and now. Then we circumvent our troublesome gut feelings.

Then again, someone may have decided that they simply don’t want to work with their students in a value-creating way. As a researcher, I have to respect that. But what do you do as a teacher if it’s one of your closest colleagues who just doesn’t want to? In a workplace, we are often dependent on each other. Here I think that teachers’ professional ethics can be invoked, written down by the teachers’ unions.[11] Teachers need to develop their pedagogical work and their skills on the basis of current research and proven experience. Teachers also need to support each other and protect the team. Thus, all teachers need to give a new approach a chance from time to time and try it out in practice at least once or twice, especially if colleagues so wish.

But sometimes you just can’t. Maybe you’re on the verge of stress exhaustion or depressed for other reasons. Maybe it’s hard in your personal life. There can be many reasons why you don’t have the energy to tackle a new issue right now. But maybe next semester you can? Perhaps the school principal or a close colleague can provide support in the work? Maybe you can try something small?

I am new to the profession

Some teachers feel insecure for the simple reason that they are new to the profession. It can be particularly difficult to try out yet another new idea. After all, everything is new. Here too, I think peer support and starting small is a way forward. Some teachers stress the importance of being confident in their subject and profession in order to be able to work in a value-creating way. I can understand that, but I think it should still be possible on a small scale.

What will colleagues, managers, carers say?

Even in the workplace, we humans are ultra-social. What will others say if we single-handedly start doing something very different from how our colleagues do? This is where the available research can provide reassurance. If there are questions from colleagues, managers or carers, there are many different publications to refer to. We at Chalmers have written a number of research articles on the subject. There are also more and more books from teachers describing their experiences and giving tips. Then there are also new theses every year in which prospective teachers write about value creation pedagogy. So, being the only teacher working on value creation pedagogy in a school does not mean that you are alone. Also look for Facebook groups of teachers discussing value creation pedagogy, where you will find like-minded people to share your experiences with.

Daring to let go of control

We have already talked a bit about this, about letting go of control. I think it’s basically a combination of courage, judgement, tools, methods and confidence in the profession. Courage to dare to try something new. Assessment that captures students’ skills in different and complementary ways. Tools and methods you as a teacher can lean on in your work. Confidence that, as a competent teacher, you will be able to put the whole picture together at the end of a project despite the uncertainty of a new approach.

I think that the need for control is a transitory challenge. As both you and your students become more comfortable working in a value-creating way, the sense of control will soon return. I guess it’s a bit like learning to ride a bike. To dare to take that crucial step into the unknown, to dare to step on it and pick up speed, to dare to defy the feeling that you might get hurt. Then you find your balance and a strong “aha” feeling sets in. And you’ve gained a wonderful new way forward.

My students are not mature or knowledgeable enough

A slightly different psychological challenge concerns the student view we inherited from older psychological research on children’s cognitive development. Researcher Kieran Egan (2002) writes in his book Getting it wrong from the beginning that we have inherited an erroneous view of adolescent development from child psychologist Jean Piaget. Egan’s criticisms are wide-ranging and multifaceted, so I thought I would highlight only one of his objections here.

According to Piaget, young people develop cognitively in distinct stages that can be defined relatively well in terms of both scope and age. Therefore, teachers should choose material and activities for which students are mature, based on their mental and age levels. However, Egan argues that cognitive development is not at all as linear and predictable as Piaget has claimed. Piaget’s theories are often wrongly used by teachers to judge what students should not be allowed to do or learn at a certain age. A stage-based view of children’s cognitive development has led many teachers to underestimate and limit their students.

I sometimes meet teachers with a Piaget-inspired view of students in relation to value creation pedagogy. Their students are probably too immature, they say. Or maybe the students need to acquire a little more knowledge first. Then they can create value for others. This is a psychological misconception that Egan helps us trace to Piaget. I hope more teachers give their students the chance to reject Piaget’s theories. Perhaps one of Piaget’s foremost critics can then be put to use – the scientist Lev Vygotsky.[12] He argued that students learn knowledge best when they are put into action with others.[13] He also emphasised the importance of giving students access to different tools to work and think with. I think Vygotsky would have loved the entrepreneurial toolkit I write about in Chapter 6. Perhaps Vygotsky would also be a professor of entrepreneurial education if he were alive today?

Organisational challenges

In many schools, the organisational conditions for value creation pedagogy are initially lacking. Teacher Katrine Nyqvist’s story on page _ about changing jobs to a workplace where the management does not actively work with value creation pedagogy is probably quite typical. There are ways forward, but it may take time.

How to get colleagues and school management on board?

I think Tomas Lindh in Växjö has a good point when it comes to how we get colleagues and managers involved in a new way of working, see interview on page _. The discussion can be based on the challenges and needs of your school. Few schools have no challenges in terms of motivation to study, desire to learn, student achievement, student conflict, classroom safety, values or, indeed, teacher recruitment. In all these challenges, value creation pedagogy can be a small or major part of the solution. Try to get your colleagues and school management to try this particular approach to the challenges facing your school. Use different texts and videos from researchers, teachers and others. Then, hopefully, a decision will be made to develop the work and value creation pedagogy will become a natural part of the next academic year’s professional development of the whole team or school. Many or all teachers will then be able to try it out for themselves, and the effects will surprise many in a positive way.

The schedule limits us

Scheduling issues can constrain an approach such as value creation pedagogy, which does not always fit into strict time and subject divisions. However, if more and more teachers start to recognise the powerful effects, it may over time be possible to discuss possible changes to the timetable to facilitate cross-curricular collaboration and pedagogical co-planning, see examples of arrangements in the interview with principal Josefin Nilsson on page _.

One way to get colleagues on board with schedule changes can be to lead the way and work in a value-creating way with your own students. As secondary school teacher Madeléne Polfors writes (2020, s. 28) about it:

It was also nice that other teachers came to me and told me that they had heard about my “little project” (which I had to explain is the students’ project). The teachers were curious about the approach because the students had asked if they could do similar things in their subjects as well.

But it is not a given that other teachers react with curiosity. As one teacher who works with her students in a value-creation way told us (Lackéus & Sävetun 2016, s. 43):

Then there’s the challenge of being a freak at school, you do some weird stuff.

Semantic challenges

Any attempt to broaden our horizons with new concepts is likely to be met with resistance from those who take issue with the existing conceptual apparatus. Don’t we have enough words already? What is the difference? These are natural and important questions we are now coming to.

Another concept – what does value mean?

Do we really need another concept in school? I have spent many years pondering this question and have come to the conclusion that this is indeed the case here. No other concept focuses on the knowledge-based creation of value for another person. Then the very element that causes the strongest effects we have seen on student learning and motivation risks being lost in a stressful school life.

That’s why I think the term value creation is both fully justified, uniquely contributing and absolutely essential. Without that very term, the impact on student learning risks being weakened or absent. But introducing a new concept obliges. It needs to be defined, delineated, explained, clarified, exemplified, contextualised. I myself fell into the trap of not even writing anything in my thesis about what the little word value means. Even creation needs to be defined carefully. I hope that my book can clear up some of these questions. I have also written a whole research article on the word value in relation to education, see Lackéus (2018). It’s a bit nerdy, but it’s available.

Of course we already work like this

I often hear from teachers that they are already working with value creation. But when they explain what they are doing, I often find that relatively few of the eight legs of the spider diagram in Chapter 6 are present. Usually the all-important waist of the spider is also relatively narrow. The value created is perhaps modest or vague. The interaction with outsiders may be missing altogether. Then the strong effects go missing. This is probably one reason why the form in Chapter 6 is so popular. Teachers are keen to develop their teaching, and the form clearly supports this.

There are definitely many teachers who are already working in a value-creating way with students. Especially in the aesthetic subjects, as pointed out earlier. But in the vast majority of cases, so much more can be done, and with relatively minor means. That’s why I can’t stop talking about value creation pedagogy when I hear teachers saying that they already do this. Usually they get many new ideas relatively quickly on how to go further with what they are already doing.

Some think value creation pedagogy is a set of self-evident principles for good teaching. I disagree. The vast majority of teachers I have studied in my research do not yet work on a day-to-day basis from the three basic principles in the introduction, or from the dimensions of the spider diagram and diamond model in Chapter 6.

What’s really new here?

Value creation pedagogy is a kind of action-based learning. Students learning-by-doing. There are many different such learning traditions. A few years ago, I was asked to write a paper on what is new about entrepreneurial and value creation pedagogy compared to more established options. The text was published in a digital encyclopedia of educational innovation, see Lackéus (2020b) and is also available on my research blog.[14] I won’t go into the details here, but in the article I asked the surprisingly rarely asked question learning-by-doing what? I went through the action-based learning traditions that are usually discussed, see table 7.1 below. The table is my way of illustrating that none of the established learning traditions have the same focus as value creation pedagogy.

The question of what is new about value creation pedagogy engages many teachers. So let’s also review some commonly used concepts and examine them based on the centre of the spider diagram in Chapter 6 – creating value for others and interacting with outsiders.

Is it possible to work thematically, interdisciplinary and with projects without students ever having to try to create value for others or interact with outsiders? Yes, it is possible and it happens all the time. The word value creation makes a unique contribution here.

Is it possible to work problem-, change- or challenge-based with authentic content without creating value for or interacting with outsiders? Yes, it is possible. Here again, the value-creation term helps.

Is it possible to work with authentic or real beneficiaries in real projects or real cases without creating value for or interacting personally with the beneficiaries? Unfortunately, I think so. There is a risk that the very element of students creating something concrete of value for recipients is lost when the phrase “… of value” is not explicitly stated. There is also a risk that the word real is misinterpreted as something other than that the students should create real value for and interact relationally with the recipients. Perhaps that the recipient is real, flesh and blood. But that is not enough.

Is it possible to work with entrepreneurial learning without creating value for or interacting with others? It depends on what we mean by “entrepreneurial”. By definition, if we define the word according to the diamond model, it shouldn’t be possible. But most of the examples in schools that I have studied myself unfortunately fail to have an external recipient with whom students can interact on a relational level and try to create value for. Not least because many in schools have difficulty with the word entrepreneurial in general. Very few teachers who have received in-service training in entrepreneurial learning act according to the three basic principles of value-creating learning. My conclusion is simple – the semantics need a major upgrade.

Ideological challenges

The last category of challenges is about ideology. No matter how much evidence we produce through scientific studies and good examples, there are still some who are not convinced. The challenges are probably more ideological.

This sounds too good to be true

Sometimes it is said that when something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. As a researcher, it is also part of the job to be critical of most things. Even of oneself and one’s own impressions. There is something called confirmation bias, an unconscious and overly focused search for things that confirm what you believe, want to see and often think about. Like the new parents who suddenly see prams everywhere in town. Or as in filter bubbles where social media algorithms mainly present information that fits with what we believe.

I definitely feel that I am at risk for such bias. Value creation pedagogy has affected me on an existential level before I became a researcher. Everywhere I look now as a researcher, value creation seems to have strong effects on students. But am I living in a self-inflicted filter bubble? Is this too good to be true? Some teachers have written to me that they feel this way. I have also written myself that it feels a little too good in one of my recent research articles.[15] It seems almost unrealistic that a pedagogical idea can have such a strong impact, be so widely applicable, so clearly defined and offer such low thresholds for teachers to get started and spread the idea and approach.

The problem is hard to get around on my own. My approach to this challenge has therefore been to leave it to others to continue the work, to see what they come up with. For example, you can do what in research language is called replication studies. Can our results be replicated elsewhere, by other researchers and with other methods? There is also a lot more to do, test and find out that we have not done in our research.

The work has slowly begun. Researchers in Denmark, Finland, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Pakistan, Australia, Iran, Indonesia, the USA, Mexico, China and certainly some additional researchers I do not know of are currently working on research closely related to value creation pedagogy as a pedagogical idea in various forms.[16] The future will tell what these researchers come up with. Teachers are also increasingly taking over the practical work and writing books about their experiences. [17]

Judging by the interest, there certainly seems to be something magical about the idea of value creation pedagogy. Our research, which in turn builds on the work of many other researchers, has been disseminated, read and applied globally. Exactly how magical value learning is, and in what situations more specifically, remains to be seen. We will simply have to come back later to the question of whether value-added learning is too good to be true or not.

I don’t believe in the progressive school, it’s a hoax

Sometimes value creation pedagogy is dismissed for no other reason than that it represents yet another pernicious version of flunky schooling. This is a dishonest argumentation technique based on guilt by association – that everything about promoting student motivation is fluff. This technique is often used by school debaters who have already decided in advance on a particular view on school issues. In the past, I engaged in polemics, without ever achieving anything. Nowadays, I usually just walk away quietly and avoid being drained of energy. This kind of criticism says a lot about the polarised times we live in, but nothing about value creation pedagogy as a phenomenon.

It is not aligned with current school policy

In terms of school policy, value creation pedagogy is an idea with rather bad timing in Sweden right now. We Swedes live in a consumer society where the individual is in focus. Students are educated at school to act as consumers in a market and to choose the path that creates the most value for themselves. Swedish schools have thus become a kind of institutionalised egoism, which is then patched up and repaired with values-based work. If there is a risk that students’ time is spent helping others, when it could be spent giving them what they themselves are entitled to according to the curriculum, then Sweden’s neo-liberal social system and subconscious thought patterns say stop.

Another political trend that discourages value creation pedagogy is the authoritarian and even fascist winds blowing in politics both in Sweden and internationally, with Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Åkesson, Le Pen and other authoritarian conservative leaders.[18] Authoritarian political winds at the national level then blow into classrooms via conservative school debaters. This makes student participation and the teaching of democracy less interesting to work with, at least from a school policy perspective.

Taken together, these two political trends constitute a liberal conservatism[19] that unfortunately clashes with the ideas of collectivism and democracy on which value creation pedagogy can be said to rest. I won’t politicise the issue much more than that, but I can say that in my twelve years as a researcher I have only met one leading school politician who has shown great interest in our research on value creation pedagogy – Karin Pleijel, a Green Party member and teacher in Gothenburg. Other teachers I have met have reflected that students who create value for others remind them of the political winds that blew in the 1970s, before neoliberalism swept the world.[20] However, the situation may vary internationally. One home language teacher told me that on her street in the Middle East, most people think more in terms of creating value for others than we do in Sweden, which nowadays has one of the world’s most market-oriented school systems.[21]

Control systems require something else from me

Philosopher Jonna Bornemark became almost a celebrity when, in a summer radio talk and via her book The Renaissance of the Unmeasurable (2018) advocated that employees in the relational professions should micro-resist against the over-prescription, measurement hysteria and bureaucratization that has afflicted health care, care for the elderly, social services and not least schools. Bornemark (2018, s. 52) describes paper-isation as “every part of the activity must be documented and put into a general language that can be displayed to those who are not present in the activity”. The aim is to give managers an overview and a sense of control. Also researcher Gert Biesta (2009) has described how an increased focus on the easily measurable crowds out other values in schools. The pursuit of greater efficiency in the public sector through various measurement methods and competition based on performance measures is known as New Public Management, or NPM. In an international comparison, Sweden has a strong NPM focus.[22]

I’ve often heard from teachers myself that they like the idea of value-creating students, but that they worry that control systems will punish them if they spend time on this. The measurement focus often ends up on standardised and therefore partly dumbing down performance measures that do not capture the positive effects of value creation pedagogy on students.[23] Many teachers then think that time spent on value creation pedagogy can be punished when guardians, school leaders and school inspectors then exercise their increasingly strong power of control over teachers.

One way to deal with this attempt to de-professionalise teachers that is going on in schools[24] is to fight against it and not give it too much space. If we see control systems for a moment as a way of taking control of teachers’ professional practice from above, or as ideologically motivated projects of limited value to students, then perhaps we can settle into a slightly more relaxed approach when working on something we believe in. No teacher has ever been fired for a little value creation pedagogy. On the contrary, it is often a pathway to great appreciation from students, school leaders and caregivers alike. It also rests on values such as humanism, empathy, responsibility and democracy. I don’t know how school inspectors relate to value creation pedagogy, but my call is still a bit rebellious: Dare to resist micromanagement from above. Wiggle out of the NPM shackles every now and then. Replace an assessment matrix lesson here and there with an hour of planning value creation pedagogy, without saying anything. Feel good about your pursuit of a balanced school between matrices and motivation. Rest in the fact that it will work out.

What happened to the value of knowledge?

A focus on what is valuable to others in society can be criticised for being overly utilitarian. One critical teacher argued that an excessive focus on the practical utility and “market” value of knowledge can diminish the intrinsic value of knowledge and thus become a kind of antithesis to education.[25] I can understand the logic behind such a criticism, even if it is perhaps a little exaggerated. Value-creating activities will never dominate schools as we know them. We will never land in the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s hedonistic vision of a society where utility, happiness and pleasure are maximised, at the expense of other values.[26] It is also a common misconception that students’ value creation for others is primarily a market-driven act motivated by their selfish self-interest. Just as primitive peoples often give gifts without direct expectation of reciprocation, students can create value for others without it having to be interpreted as a market transaction.[27] Instead, we can see it as the famous anthropologist Marcel Mauss saw it – that selfless giving is a natural way to build loving relationships between people.[28] Students who are able to create value for others then strengthen their capacity for compassion, respect and openness towards other people.

Again, this is the balance I want schools to strive for. A little more value creation for others is probably what students could have use for, as it is often completely lacking. But it shouldn’t crowd out a focus on knowledge. Rather, it should be a relational means that reinforces learning and allows students to learn knowledge and skills for life, not just for the test.

---

[1] See Jost et al. (2008).

[2] See Gleicher’s change formula described by Cady et al. (2014).

[3] See Lackeus (2021, s. 100–104).

[4] See Jönsson (2002, s. 19).

[5] See for example Polfors (2020).

[6] My personal favourite is an old goodie of a book written by Rackham (1989).

[7] Read more about this in Lackéus, Lundqvist and Williams Middleton (2016).

[8] A light-hearted presentation of them is given by Temple and Rodero (1995).

[9] See Biesta (2002).

[10] See Wiklund, Patzelt and Dimov (2016) and Wiklund et al. (2017).

[11] See Teachers’ Union and National Union of Teachers (2006).

[12] For an interesting comparison of Piaget and Vygotsky, see Cole and Wertsch (1996).

[13] See Strandberg (2009).

[14] See https://vcplist.com/2019/04/22/entrepreneurial-education-its-unique-and-novel-contribution-to-education/ or search for “entrepreneurial education unique and novel”.

[15] See Lackeus (2020a, s. 957–961).

[16] See mainly Jones, Penaluna and Penaluna (2020), Bell (2020), Neck and Corbett (2018), Brahe-Orlandi (2019), Yousafzai (2019), Stenholm et al. (2021), Bacigalupo et al. (2016), Le Pontois (2020) and Baggen, Lans and Guliker (2021). See also Larsson and Holmberg (2017).

[17] See mainly Wiman (2019, 2022), Bengtsson (2021) and Remvall (2021).

[18] See Albright (2018).

[19] See Apple (2000) who writes about how neoconservatives and neoliberals are forming a kind of unexpected but creative alliance in school policy.

[20] A fascinating text on how neoliberalism took over was written by Peck (2008).

[21] According to Dahlstedt and Fejes (2018, s. 9).

[22] According to Karlsson (2017).

[23] See Lindblad, Pettersson and Popkewitz (2018).

[24] Hultén (2019) describes this well, as do Jeffrey and Woods (1998) and Ball (2013).

[25] See Bruér (2019).

[26] For a good discussion of Bentham, see Heberlein (2014).

[27] See Graeber (2001).

[28] See Graeber (2001, s. 161).

I may be one of the least fluffy fluff teachers you’ll ever meet. My background as an IT geek, programmer and engineer has made me allergic to fluff. I’ve long been on the hunt for the perfect educational algorithm. An impossible and naive mission, of course. But along the way, I’ve come up with a variety of practical tools to help teachers navigate through fancy phrases, loose talk and fuzzy approaches. I thought I’d tell you about some of them in this chapter. They help to simplify what is often otherwise a rather complicated action-based and student-centred learning process.[1]

First, a pedagogical planning form is presented, which has become very popular among teachers. Having exposed thousands of teachers to the form, I know for a fact that this is the case. Then comes an eight-legged spider diagram, which helps teachers evaluate whether their intended design covers important aspects. Next come three practical tools that can be used in idea generation workshops with both teachers and students – the opportunity map, the canvas and the pitch template. Use them in small groups and in sequence and you will have a first draft of an idea. These three tools all have their theoretical roots in entrepreneurship, but please don’t say it out loud. Then some might get the idea that it’s all about making money.

Then we come to glamour. Our research team at Chalmers has developed a brilliant diamond model that provides guidance on what it means to be “entrepreneurial” – that uncrowned queen of flummery to words. The chapter continues with the entrepreneurial toolkit, in the form of some advice and recommendations from leading researchers and practitioners in the field of entrepreneurship. I’ve washed away all the business words, which is important for this advice to work well in schools.

The last part of this chapter is a short introduction to an approach to strengthened scholarship among teachers working with value creation pedagogy as a focus in school development, as well as some thoughts on various IT tools that can facilitate the value-creation teacher’s everyday life. One of them went by the early working name of the fluff killer. We conclude with some wise words from teacher educator Katarina Ellborg at Linnaeus University. She usually gets good feedback from teachers on in-service training when she asks them to draw up a pedagogical plan.

Planning form

The form in Figures 6.1a and 6.1b (download the form as a Word document here) has been a popular practical exercise among teachers who have just been introduced to ideas about value creation pedagogy. It helps them to think carefully about their planning of value-added activities for students. The different questions make visible what a value-creating activity might mean for students. It also focuses on key issues such as student participation in planning, possible beneficiaries of value creation, assessment strategies and links to curriculum requirements. The various fields that are expected to be filled in make the form difficult to complete without creatively engaging with the idea of allowing students to learn by creating value for others. Teachers usually like to have around 20 minutes to complete the form.

The spider diagram

On the back of the planning form there is a spider diagram that each teacher fills in graphically by answering eight control questions, see Figure 6.1b. The eight legs of the spider represent a kind of self-assessment for teachers. What then often happens is that many teachers realise that perhaps they could have thought a little differently in their educational planning. Two teachers reflected as follows:

Some numbers were low, others high. Immediately, my mind started spinning about how I could improve various details. This feels like a good template to use in the future!

One frustration of the task was that once you feel finished and proud of your exercise, you realise that it is flawed on several points by the control questions presented at the end. My conclusion from this is that a lot of practice and change of mindset from traditional teaching needs to be re-evaluated at a personal level before these exercises can be thought through according to the questions.

So why do the spider’s legs look the way they do?[2] Well, the two horizontal legs represent the “waist” of the diagram and represent two of the three basic principles of value creation pedagogy – trying to create value for others[3] and personal interaction with other people in the world[4] . Therefore, the horizontal line is drawn thicker. We want to see a wide waist when the spider diagram is filled in and coloured.

The top and bottom of the spider diagram are taken from the phenomenon’s roots in entrepreneurship. The process should ideally be characterised by a strong sense of emotional ownership of the process by the students themselves[5] and by repetitive elements where students are allowed to try to succeed over and over again[6] .

The two diagonal lines are linked to the third basic principle of fine-grained mix of value creation and learning. How such a mix is achieved can be inspired by research on action-based learning. Learning becomes particularly strong when students undergo emotionally challenging processes, perhaps even failures.[7] Learning is enhanced when students are allowed to work closely together – cooperatively – in close-knit teams.[8] Students also need ongoing activity-based feedback and formative assessment to reinforce learning.[9] In addition, there should always be clear links to subject knowledge and skills.[10]

I think the spider diagram is a much-needed fluff killer. The teacher who brings all eight legs of the spider into his or her teaching can be fairly confident of capturing the otherwise elusive but highly effective entrepreneurial learning. Especially if that all-important waist is wide. Which is a bit ironic, since spiders’ waists – their so-called pedicel – are otherwise usually narrow. A rule of thumb might be something like: fat spiders make for happy students who learn a lot. At the same time, not everything teachers do needs to get high marks on all the spider’s legs. It is probably more realistic to combine many different activities that all have fairly wide waistlines and that together satisfy the eight legs of the spider over the course of an entire school year.

The opportunity map

Starting up work on creating value for others is best based on each student’s own strengths and interests. Creating value for others tends to be more fun and successful when students are allowed to start from what they are passionate about or good at.

One way to get started is to have students fill in the Opportunity Map, see Figure 6.2. Print it out on paper, use small 4 × 5 cm post-it notes and let students silently inventory their strengths and interests for 5-10 minutes. Attach each completed post-it note to the paper, or write directly on the paper. Most people will have quite a few notes. Several students can also share the same paper, perhaps with different colours on the post-it notes. In this case, the opportunity map may need to be printed in A3 format to fit everything. With several students sharing each piece of paper, it is easier to see the links between the interests and strengths of different students in the group. The Opportunity Map originates from the theory of entrepreneurial effectuation, developed by researcher Saras Sarasvathy.[11]

On the Interests & Passions piece, students try to write down three to five things they are really passionate about. These could be hobbies such as handball or dance, interests related to school or other work, or issues of the heart such as the environment, justice and health. Knowledge & Skills can be about things learnt at school, through work or clubs, or from other experiences. It can also be about things that are part of the course or subject that students are currently working on. Resources can be physical assets such as a mobile phone, computer, car, boat or bicycle, or perhaps a party room or sports facility that the student has access to. Contacts are about people they know who they can involve in some initiative in some way. People who can help in the students’ attempts to create value for others. Experiences may be lessons learned from school, work, hobbies, volunteer work or in other ways earlier in life.

The canvas

When self-inventory is done in silence, it is time to come up with an idea for something worthwhile to do as a group. This is a creative step, and it involves the group moving from the opportunity map’s all self-centred post-it notes to a concrete and shared idea of a value proposition for others. Feel free to use post-it notes here as well, and attach them to a printed version of the canvas shown in Figure 6.3. A room with many groups tends to be full of creative buzz here. Time pressure may be needed to get students to move from loose talk to deciding on a concrete idea. I usually give the groups about 15 minutes. Ideally, the group’s idea is rooted in the complementary strengths and interests of several or all of the group members. Then there is a good base to stand on in the continuing journey, which can make it both emotional, personal and deeply engaging.

Value-creating ideas based solely on one’s own strengths and interests may risk overshadowing knowledge requirements and learning outcomes. In working with the canvas, the teacher may therefore need to clarify the framework. Perhaps every idea about creating value for others should have an element of history, religion or some other subject now being addressed? Combining one’s own strengths and interests with a predetermined area of knowledge is usually more successful than one might think. The level of ideas and innovation may even be higher than otherwise. Imagine religious football, horseback riding history or bakery chemistry.

The pitch template

The third and final step in the idea development process is to create a pitch for the value proposition that took shape with the help of the canvas. A pitch is a verbal and extremely brief presentation of what is to be offered to the intended recipient of value. One purpose of the pitch is to convince the listener of the excellence of what is being offered, in order to get a yes to collaboration or perhaps even purchase. Another purpose is to test your idea. If the reaction is lukewarm among many, the group may need to rethink its value proposition. In the beginning, it is probably more the rule than the exception that many changes and additions are required. The group may even need to restart from scratch.

Have students use the pitch template in Figure 6.4 below and write down the group’s pitch. A good pitch should be concise, oral, fun, engaging and ideally take no more than a minute to deliver. People’s attention is in short supply, so a good pitch needs to be delivered in a way that is both time-efficient and impactful. Each group’s pitch can be delivered in front of everyone in the room if participants are brave or know each other well. Each group then appoints one person to deliver the pitch. Before the pitch, it is a good idea to have the group describe the intended recipient so that everyone listening knows who the pitch is aimed at.

I’ve found that all three steps – the opportunity map, the canvas and the pitch – get a little more edgy and emotional if all participants know from the start that their group will be presenting their group’s pitch to all participants at the end. The work then feels a bit more real, and the nervousness makes the process more exciting, even a bit scary. Time pressure also creates focus. I usually run all three steps in around half an hour, including the pitches which take a minute per group. When a minute has passed, I usually make a discreet sound, by using a triangle bell. This usually elicits laughter from the participants and a little anxiety from the pitcher.

The pitch template can also be used at other times when an idea for a value proposition is to be presented to an intended recipient of value. It can become a useful tool in everyday life. After a while, it will become part of your spinal cord and no longer needs to be written down. This is the case with many entrepreneurial tools – they are a kind of beginner’s aid that are then not needed when students become experienced value creators. Just as the driving licence book is never read by experienced car drivers.

The Diamond model

Now a little longer on what it means to be entrepreneurial, because I believe that clarity and insight on this issue is an important tool for value-creating teachers.

As I write this section, it is exactly twelve years to the day since I started researching how we make people more entrepreneurial. For me as a researcher, these twelve years have consisted of four different triennial phases of entrepreneurial education – disengaged, bulldozed, crashed and resurrected. In October 2009, I stepped into a new world for me that no one seemed to care about. Entrepreneurship and education seemed to be two separate phenomena that didn’t want to know about each other. The no-man’s land in between was a kind of giveaway no one wanted. Other researchers in entrepreneurship told me to forget about that sad area no one could publish their work in. When my favourite researcher Paula Kyrö was about to present a paper at a conference in the US, almost everyone left the room. Except for me, who just sat there and enjoyed it.

In the following three years, all this changed for me unexpectedly. I stumbled into the Swedish school hype about entrepreneurial learning. It reached its peak around 2014, three years after the new national curriculum Lgr11 that emphasised entrepreneurship in schools. Everyone in the schools seemed to be wondering how that entrepreneurial learning was going to happen. Many wanted to give their clever explanation to the didactical questions what, how and why. Educational researchers as well as consultants. As a researcher, I launched several studies during this boom to try to find sensible answers. However, when we were done collecting all the data at the end of 2016, the crash came. After five years of fluff, teachers had grown tired of all the talk about entrepreneurial approaches and other fluff. Conservative forces had also successfully pushed Swedish schools into an increasingly authoritarian direction. As we began to see more clearly what was really working in the field, the number of people who cared shrank to near zero. I found my area of research to have been lost again. The only time any outsider took a genuine interest in the field was when the radio or the newspaper asked why entrepreneurship in schools disappeared so suddenly.[12]

Somewhere around 2018, the frustration for me as a researcher was probably at its highest. We were using something that was working extremely well, we could see this in our collected research data, but nobody in the schools was interested in any e-words anymore. But why fight the school windmills, I finally thought, and took my constant armourer on school issues Carin Sävetun with me and started researching other things.

But as I sum up my first twelve years as a researcher, I realise that the last three years have actually been devoted to developing a clear and concrete alternative to all the frustrating misconceptions and narrow perspectives on being entrepreneurial that have plagued the field for so long. Because this is how it is:

• No, it’s not about starting a business or making a lot of money, it’s a relatively uninteresting side effect that sometimes occurs.
• No, asking teachers and students to “see opportunities” or adopt an entrepreneurial “approach” does not work, it is dismissed by teachers as fluff.
• No, teachers are not significantly helped by long lists of entrepreneurial competences, except for what they should write as learning outcomes in their plans.[13]
• No, letting students sit and be “creative” and build cardboard space rockets has almost no effect whatsoever. [14]

But instead of admiring my nice sacrificial cardigan (well, it was probably on for a while), I sat down one spring day in 2018 with my research colleagues Karen and Mats at Chalmers and cobbled together a model of what we saw this was actually about. Negative emotions helped us focus our work, and we eventually drew up a diamond model which was later published by the European Commission (se Lackéus et al., 2020). If you ask me today what it means to be entrepreneurial, that model will be my answer, see figure 6.5. The model can probably be a useful tool in value creation pedagogy.

Being entrepreneurial is about constantly balancing between the four corners of the diamond in a non-linear four-step process that is constantly ongoing.

The first step starts at the bottom of the diamond with taking action from the heart. What are you frustrated about? What do you want to spend time on in a busy day? What new ideas do you dare to stand for? What risks are you willing to take? Because if you don’t care, why should others?

The second step is about imagining something new. This is not a solitary task for inventors, but requires constant dialogue. With the group, with potential beneficiaries of value, with experts, friends, neighbours, indeed with almost anyone. What is possible? What would be required? What can we try? What would you think of …? What would it take to …? A great idea for something new is not the starting point of the process, as many believe, but the result of a large number of open-minded dialogues over time with other people.

The third step is the concrete attempt to help someone else in a new way, on a small scale and in a relational way. It requires empathy, sensitivity, humility and an ability to put the needs of others first. But it also requires careful planning, resources and perhaps a prototype – which may be a simple brochure. Some in the group also need to sell the idea to outsiders about doing something together, making the first pitch to those who didn’t expect to be helped. This is where the pitch template comes in handy. Often the answer is no thanks, which is perfectly normal.

In the fourth step, the learning is collected after the experiment. Three kinds of learning need to take place based on thoughts, actions and feelings. Thought-based learning in the classroom involves seeking information, making phone calls, engaging in dialogue, writing down insights in plans and analysing the situation. Action-based learning often takes place outside the classroom or school – meetings, exhibitions, experiments and networking. Emotion-based learning can happen anywhere, and is about those crucial moments of presenting to others, receiving criticism, being struck by a decision, gaining a deep insight in the middle of a sleepless night. In short, moments of success as well as failure. Learning is about the process, the value proposition and the self. These emotional experiences build our capacity to handle uncertainty, persevere, deal with adversity, build relationships and understand ourselves a little better.

After step four, it all starts again. And again and again. In our report to the European Commission[15] we have described in great detail how the diamond model can be used by entrepreneurial employees in any organisation. Perhaps one day there will be a version of this report for teachers and students in schools as well. But I haven’t quite figured out yet how teachers can use the diamond model in their everyday work with students. However, I use it myself in everything I do. For example, this book was written entirely from the four steps of the Diamond Model:

1. Action from the heart. The book was written in frustration at how many students never get to experience a deeply meaningful school, my own children included.
2. Imagine something new. Everything new in the book came about through twelve years of dialogue with thousands of people in and out of school.
3. Creating value for others. The book represents my attempt to create some tangible value for you, the reader.
4. Collect learning. In time, I will learn more about whether my attempt was successful, and if so, how successful it was, via a number of emotional moments for me where we might even meet and I will hear about your experience of reading my book.

The Entrepreneurial Toolbox

Everyday work for entrepreneurial people is about moving between learning for themselves and creating value for others. Back and forth between the left and right corners of the diamond model. There are plenty of suggestions for how that pendulum movement might happen. My colleague Yashar Mansoori at Chalmers University of Technology who is researching this calls them entrepreneurial methods. [16]

I myself am very fascinated by these methods and their recommendations, and collectively call them the entrepreneurial toolbox. Each method is a small microcosm in itself, with a few mostly American prophets and lots of followers globally. The methods are rarely challenged, which is a problem in itself. But they have a lot of interesting and sensible advice to offer. The most widespread methods – Lean Startup, Customer Development, Design Thinking, Appreciative Inquiry and Effectuation – are each used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, perhaps even more. Search for them and you’ll find a sea of information.

But I didn’t intend my book to be too thick. So I wasn’t going to go through the methods one by one here. If you want to read more about them, you can always download a paper I did for the OECD a few years ago, with short reviews of the relevance of the methods in education (se Lackéus 2015, s. 29–32). There are also shelves of literature written about these methods by many others. A few writings are also critical.[17]

More interesting here is what the methods recommend in practical terms, and how this advice can be applied in schools. Figure 6.6 therefore provides a summary of what students might be allowed to do, sorted according to the eight dimensions of the spider diagram.

I don’t yet know exactly when or how the entrepreneurial toolbox can be used in schools. It would need to be researched in more detail. But one thing that is clear is that all the business words in the original texts of the methods need to be washed away. They prevent teachers and students in schools from being able to apply the methods. Now, entrepreneurship is a field of business and money, so the language is expected. But more and more people are noticing that these methods are useful far beyond the world of business.[18] Perhaps the recommendations in Figure 6.6 even capture something deeply fundamental about how we humans have created, socialized and invented our way over millions of years to a superior first place in evolution’s constant life-and-death competition for resources, existence and survival among species.

Value-creating science: Designed Action Sampling (DAS)

It is difficult for new pedagogical ideas to take hold in schools. All the lectures, workshops and training days on value creation pedagogy that I have been involved in over the years have left rather modest traces. My colleague Christer Westlund warned me early on about the risk of turning into a travelling entertainer in schools. Of course, it’s great to meet teachers around Sweden and discuss the positive effects we’ve seen on students. Many teachers really like the idea of value-creating students. But unfortunately, such meetings rarely lead to students having a more meaningful day at school. After an inspiring break, most teachers return to a stressful workday with little space to test new ideas whose effects are not followed up anyway. Nor have we been good at writing up our research findings in forms that work for teachers. Perhaps this book can change that, we’ll see.

The frustration of all my failures made me take action from the heart and try to create a whole new way of working with school development. I dropped the idea of value-creating students and instead, together with colleagues Christer Westlund and Carin Sävetun, started helping schools with whatever pedagogical idea they were working on at the time. Christer and Carin shared my frustration in the depths of their hearts, so we joined forces.

The result, after much agonising and even more failures, was a new scientific method that finally proved to work really well in schools. Today, the method is used by many thousands of teachers and head teachers across Sweden. We named the method Designed ACtion Sampling. In 2020, I wrote a book about the method – The Scientific Teacher. It describes everything thoroughly, so I won’t get long-winded here. But briefly, the method is based on a three-step working process:

1. Research leaders choose focus (Design). First, the research leader at the school (often one or more lead teachers) designs a number of action-oriented missions to his/her teaching colleagues, the implementation of which will hopefully create value for students.
2. All teachers test in the classroom (Action). Then many teachers in the school take action and try out the missions together in practice, each teacher in his or her own classroom with his or her students, reflecting in writing afterwards in a simple form, and receiving written feedback from the research supervisor (often a teacher, as I said) and sometimes from their school leader.
3. Everyone analyses the outcome together (Sampling). Finally, everyone in the school analyses the teachers’ written reflections together, as well as the written feedback they received, in anonymous form, and then revise the missions so that they might work better next time. Then it starts all over again.

Perhaps this new method is difficult to understand or distinguish on the basis of this summary description alone. It would be strange otherwise. After all, there was a reason I needed to write a whole book about the method. My first two books are actually siblings, even pseudo-twins. Similar front pages and titles show that they belong together. First came a book about a new scientific method, then a year later this book about a new pedagogical idea. Each book took about nine months to write.

My hope is that more and more schools will now have sibling love. Because I think the two books could use each other. A new pedagogical idea needs to be tested systematically in a scientific way that works practically in schools and gets everyone on the journey. Designed Action Sampling is thus an important tool for teachers who want to work systematically and scientifically with value creation pedagogy in their schools. One day I may have cause to write a third book about what happened when the siblings were allowed to work together. A trilogy. In the epilogue, I’ll talk more about how we could take the work further in a more practical way through the two siblings.

IT support for the value-creating teacher

Some teachers take a critical approach to IT and have a low level of trust in IT vendors. However, in order to work time-efficiently with value creation pedagogy, IT is still needed in various forms. I have seen many examples of how IT tools make value creation pedagogy so much better for everyone involved. Students can communicate digitally with each other and with the outside world. Teachers can communicate digitally with students, manage the complexity of students’ interactions with the world and assess students’ value-creation based learning more easily. School leaders can digitally follow the journey of teachers.

Let me give you some examples. I won’t mention specific platforms or vendors, that would just make the book age unnecessarily fast. The IT market changes all the time. Value-creation teachers need to keep up to date with what is happening in the IT field, it is part of the profession.

I have seen teachers use IT support to allow students to learn a foreign language with native speakers. I have met teachers who routinely use digital word clouds in the ideation process as students brainstorm new ways to create value for others. I know many teachers who use IT support to monitor students when they are out in the world creating value, for example at a workplace as part of an internship. They may write a digital logbook, report their attendance and take photos and videos of their work which are then used in teaching when they return to school. Teachers also use IT support to collect reflections from value-creating learners in a confidential way about their emotionally powerful experiences, and then give them personalised feedback. IT support is also used more generally to save time in formative assessment and peer assessment of value creation pedagogy.

There are many more examples. The lesson is that IT support is an indispensable part of the value-creating teacher’s toolkit. The progression model in Chapter 2 also shows that IT support is particularly important for assessment and student dialogue in large value-creation projects. We will return to this in Chapter 8 on assessment.

The pedagogical plan

One way to think something through properly is to write it down. When we put our thoughts on paper for others to read, we also see more clearly what we mean ourselves. Therefore, it can be a good idea to write down your ideas about how you want to work with value creation pedagogy during a school year in a plan. Especially if many teachers are involved. Writing a pedagogical plan can be a way for the team to create participation, invite each other into the thinking process and explain the details of what, how and why in a clearer way. It can also be a way to anchor their plans with school leaders.

Together with teacher trainer Katarina Ellborg, I have been working with practising teachers in the framework of a course at Linnaeus University called Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Learning. The course is given every two years and includes value creation pedagogy as one of several perspectives. Every time I read the participants’ reflections, I am struck by how positively teachers experience the process of making a pedagogical plan.

A plan can be short or long. It can be written as a Word document or as a PowerPoint presentation, or both. It can include headings such as:

• What do we want to do? Concrete activities? Effects we want to achieve?
• How do we do it? Tools and methods? Assessment? Division of labour and timetable?
• Why do we want to work like this? Goals, purpose, vision? Scientific basis? What problems are we solving?
• How do we link our plans to the curriculum documents? In which subjects?
• How do we evaluate our work afterwards? How do we know if we have succeeded?

The points above are certainly similar to the headings of the planning form, but here it is more a question of going into more depth and writing running text in a document that is worked on over several weeks and in which many people participate.

Writing a pedagogical plan can be usefully combined with the scientific method of Designed Action Sampling. In this method, teachers first formulate concrete action-oriented missions for each other, which are written down in a specific section of the pedagogical plan. These missions are then acted upon in the classroom and followed by written individual reflection among the teachers on each completed mission. Students can also reflect on what they have learned. This more structured approach allows for a strengthened peer analysis at team level of observed effects on students, thus making visible the school’s proven experience in value creation pedagogy. The collected reflections from teachers and students can also help to strengthen the scientific evidence for different approaches to value creation pedagogy.

---

[1] Read more about how tools simplify in Lackéus, Lundqvist and Williams Middleton (2016).

[2] The theoretical basis of the spider diagram is also described in Lackéus and Sävetun (2019a, s. 42–43).

[3] See Bruyat and Julien (2001).

[4] See Goss (2005) and Sarasvathy and Venkataraman (2011).

[5] See Cope and Watts (2000) and Rae (2005).

[6] See Mansoori (2018) and Mansoori and Lackéus (2019).

[7] See Jarvis (2006) and Roberts (2012).

[8] See Cuban (2007), Tynjälä (1999) and Fohlin et al. (2017).

[9] See Black and Wiliam (1998) and Hodges, Eames and Coll (2014).

[10] See Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) and Rosenshine (2009).

[11] Read more in Read et al. (2016).

[12] See, for example, reports in Utbildningsradion (2019) where in the introduction they ask “What became of this initiative? Who talks about entrepreneurship in schools today? “.

[13] See Bacigalupo et al. (2016).

[14] See Lackéus and Sävetun (2019a).

[15] See Lackéus et al. (2020).

[16] See Mansoori (2018) and Mansoori and Lackéus (2019).

[17] For a summary, see York and York (2019).

[18] See for example Sarasvathy and Venkataraman (2011).

In more advanced forms of value creation pedagogy, what students do begins to resemble what we in the adult world call professional work. However, children and young people doing professional work can be problematic. In many poor parts of the world, children creating value for others is a dreadful phenomenon known as child labour. Subservient nine-year-olds working in mines, workshops and factories are deprived of their childhood, mental development, health and schooling – we get work without school. Much child labour also takes place in the home, and is defined by UNICEF as when children’s unpaid work in the home exceeds 21 hours per week. [1]

In affluent parts of the world, we see the reverse – school without work. Certainly a much less serious problem. But still a concrete challenge for all those students who do not see the point of theories without practical value there and then, and therefore, for the exact opposite reason, stall in their development. Ironically, then, we need to do more of what in other places is called child labour. In Sweden that may well be okay, because here we are probably as far from child labour as you can get. Personally, I’m lucky if my children help out 21 minutes a week at home. Not all forms of child labour are harmful or even undesirable. What researchers call light child labour can actually benefit children’s development and prepare them for adulthood, as long as the work doesn’t crowd out education or harm the child’s health or psychological development.[2] We need to strive for a balance between learning for oneself and creating value for others, for both adults and students. I like to call it work-learn balance, a kind of cousin to work-life balance. [3]

When people every week have good balance between their own learning and creating value for others, they often feel a greater sense of purpose and meaning in life. They become more motivated, engaged and diligent. This is true for students and teachers alike. Society then gains higher quality, efficiency, deeper learning and better solutions that serve citizens better. This is illustrated in Figure 5.1. In fact, in the same classroom every day, students and teachers often experience imbalance, but in opposite directions. Students are very focused on learning, but often lack value creation for others. Teachers have a lot of focus on value creation for students, but often miss their own learning in their everyday working life.

In this chapter, we will look at some of the different occupations that are often seen when students are engaged in value creation pedagogy. These occupations are good examples of what is known in career guidance as the broad guidance approach, where students’ career learning is seen as the responsibility of the whole school.[4] Within the framework of the school’s regular curriculum and under the guidance of the teacher, students are given the opportunity to try out a profession for themselves in a light and engaging way, linking their work to the world around them and to the knowledge requirements of one or more subjects. Students strengthen their ability to choose a career path that suits them, and at the same time become more involved in school work in the here and now.

In vocational education it is already common practice to have workplace integrated learning, at a regular workplace. Here I rather mean occupations that can be carried out on a classroom basis in ordinary lessons in subjects such as Swedish, English, mathematics, social studies and science.

Some professions seem to be better suited than others as curriculum integrated try-out professions in the classroom. Or maybe we just haven’t yet figured out exactly how other professions can be linked to teaching through value creation pedagogy. After all, we do not yet know everything we would like to know about value creation pedagogy as a phenomenon.

Students as teachers

Let’s start with the profession closest to our heart in school. In my research, I have seen many fine examples of students taking on the role of teacher for a while, in all sorts of subjects. Both for younger students and for classes other than their own. Surely we should not go as far as the classic learning pyramid claims here, that students remember 5% of what they are allowed to listen to but 90% of what they themselves are allowed to teach to others. While many sympathise with the message of the learning pyramid, it has been found to be a classic myth without rigorous empirical support.[5] Instead, let’s note that students who take on the role of teacher are often more motivated to learn more deeply. The challenge is more likely to be what happens at the other end of the pyramid – how students’ teaching appears to the other students who need to sit and listen. Perhaps small groups or short sessions are therefore to be recommended when students act as teachers?

Real depth of knowledge in a narrow field is always a good basis to stand on in the role as a teacher. This is also the basic idea of the university with researchers as teachers. But why wait until then? Canadian researcher Kieran Egan has proposed that students should be assigned a subject on their first day in primary school, which they should be allowed to study in depth every week for twelve years.[6] He calls it learning in depth. Some topics Egan suggests students could spend a decade immersing themselves in are air, light, airports, ants, bridges, castles, caves, clothes, colours, coral, deserts, dust or eyes.[7]

I really like Egan’s idea, being the nerd I am. So do thousands of teachers and students. The idea has been applied in some thirty countries around the world. Students get to feel the joy of really deep knowledge in a field, complementing the superficial curriculum standard idea that students should know a little about a lot.[8] After all, our students need both breadth and depth, so-called T-shaped competence profiles.[9]

Egan’s idea of learning in depth could be a rich source of value creation for students. Imagine a school with five hundred students, each with their own area of expertise that they have spent between one and ten years immersing themselves in. That would be a dream situation for a school’s work on value creation pedagogy. When the students in class 7A learn about corals, the lesson is spiced up with a guest lecture by Sara in 6C who, after six years of study, knows just about everything there is to know about it.

Schools that do not have five hundred experts at their disposal can at least allow students to immerse themselves in complementary ways and then teach each other through short student lectures, preferably across grades and years.

Students as study and career counsellors

Work placements can be combined with value creation pedagogy by allowing students to share their experiences of a profession with other students. Students thus take on the role of career counsellors. In one school, students were asked to carry out a workplace survey which resulted in a report which was then presented at school to other students. A teacher tells us:

Our ninth graders have been given a task during their week of work placement – to report back and tell their peers in year seven what they have been involved in and learned during the week. The students were very engaged and eager to share their stories. In the past, the follow-up of the work placement looked very different, and certainly did not add value to anyone else. The work placement week felt more like a break from everyday life for the students, without either a purpose or a properly articulated goal.

Students’ workplace investigations can also be useful at the workplace and for career counsellors. Students have been tasked with identifying opportunities for improvements in the workplace, helping employers to improve their job interviewing skills and helping employers to improve their sustainability and CSR practices. Students have also helped career counsellors to gain deeper insight into how a particular workplace and profession is perceived by students. Students have also learned about professions by interviewing professionals and sharing insights with their class afterwards.[10]

Students as journalists

Some of the most powerful examples I’ve seen of value creation pedagogy are when students work as journalists. Value is created in two ways – both for those who are interviewed and thus get to influence others with their stories, and for the readers who get to read the students’ articles and portrayals. Students have told the life stories of homeless people, written biographies of elderly people, interviewed ex-criminals, met marine inventors, described young people’s experiences of eating disorders, described elderly people’s experiences of covid-19 and many other interesting things.

First, students seek out and interview different people who have something interesting to say. Then they write texts that tell the person’s story in an interesting way. The texts are then shared on social media, submitted to local newspapers, posted on walls in public spaces, disseminated through their own newspapers and books that are printed and distributed, or published through digital platforms such as Mobile Stories, specifically designed for student journalism. There is also an established prize for students called the Young Journalist Award.

Just as journalism today involves a lot of sound, images and video, students can also photograph, film, record sound and edit. They then also learn to deal with copyright, source protection, press ethics and privacy issues.

Students as social workers and assistants

In my doctoral thesis I wrote about something I called educational economics.[11] The idea was that students spend time and energy creating value for others and gain learning, motivation and a deep sense of meaning in return. While adults need to be paid in return for the time they spend helping others, or else they can’t make a living, students instead have guardians who pay for their living expenses. They can therefore enjoy the luxury of doing good without getting paid, especially for recipients who cannot pay. This is a fifth type of work in addition to paid work, relief work, domestic work and voluntary work. Given that the education system takes up to twenty years to complete, we are talking about a sizeable workforce. Educational economics opens up opportunities to help vulnerable groups that are not fully reached by distributive policies, charity and non-profit forces.

There are many lists of groups considered vulnerable in society.[12] Children, prostitutes, LGBT people, women (young, elderly, foreign-born and victims of violence), people with disabilities and the oppressed. There are a large number of organisations working to help the vulnerable that can be contacted in students’ attempts to work in a value-creating way.

However, it is important that students who help out for free do not feel exploited. In our research on apprenticeships we encountered several secondary school students on work placements who told us that they do much the same work as the workplace’s employees, but without being paid at all.[13] According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child every person under the age of 18 has the right to be protected from economic exploitation.

There are some tricks to reduce the risk of students feeling exploited. The help they give can be one-off or at least for relatively short periods. After all, it is the first few times we do something that we learn the most. The help can be innovative in some way, so it’s not about doing exactly what is already being done by paid adults. The help can be given relationally, so that students get to meet and build a personal relationship with those they are helping. A clear link to the curriculum and learning objectives and a focus on students learning new things is also important. Then, of course, students can also be paid for the work they do, especially in secondary schools where some apprentices are actually paid under employment-like conditions. Such pay enhances learning as they become more motivated, feel more like part of the team and take more responsibility in the workplace.[14]

In our research we have seen students helping homeless, orphans, prisoners, newly arrived refugees, ex-criminals, politicians living under threat, schools in vulnerable areas, and transsexuals. Charity fundraising is also common and can work. But then there is a risk of losing the relational aspects. Students often don’t get to meet those who benefit from their fundraising efforts. Perhaps the most important source of increased student engagement is then lost – feedback from externals to students face-to-face. At the same time, there may be ways to bring about interaction and feedback even in fundraising work, for example through analogue or digital conversations with charities or with recipients of aid. It is best if students can provide the help on the spot, but this can often be difficult to achieve practically.

Students as biologists and ecologists

Value creation can also be directed at something other than people. Also animals and nature can provide feedback. Plants can become greener, seas and rivers can become cleaner, animals can come back. There are around ten thousand endangered animals and plants, including turtles, elephants, gorillas, pandas, tigers, porpoises, killer whales, rhinos, crustaceans, mosses, lichens, fungi and insects. You can also help nearby forests, bays, lakes, seas and rivers.

In our research, we have seen students helping sharks, squirrels, kestrels and nearby lakes. Many students also get to build birdhouses in Crafts. Others may help tend a farm plot at or near the school. Students’ outdoor educational work is an inexhaustible source of learning, not least because the challenges facing wildlife today are far greater than conservation policy and non-profit forces can handle.

Teachers who want to have students work as biologists can draw inspiration from various non-profit organisations working in nature conservation. In Sweden, for example, there is a nature school association, an outdoor association, a field biologists’ association and a national network for the promotion of outdoor-based learning. Research on outdoor education in a 2012 thesis showed that students remember better and learn more when they sometimes get to experience the outdoor environment as a classroom in mathematics and biology.[15] However, outdoor education is most common in preschool, pre-primary and primary schools. The older the students get, the greater the risk of sedentary desk-based work.[16] Perhaps value creation pedagogy combined with outdoor education can get older students out of the classroom a little more often? Because when the student gets out, and also gets to help, the skills come in. We get powerful whole-body learning.

Students as chefs, dieticians and restaurateurs

In many cultures, offering each other food is a common way to show friendship, appreciation and togetherness – truly an ultra-social act.[17] Food is such an important part of life that the opportunities for value creation for others are great. It is therefore not surprising that many examples of value creation in schools revolve around food. We have seen students writing down recipes and cooking at home, or giving the recipe away to a friend. Students have also baked and sold cookies to raise money for a class trip, written cookbooks with recipes from around the world, text- and video-blogged about food, and even reached out to food influencers. Exhibitions have been organised with a focus on getting people outside school to think more deeply about what the food they eat actually contains.

In a school in Växjö, a collaboration with a local haulage company began, where students put together simple meals and recipe cards for truck drivers, as well as preparing small tasting portions for delivery to the haulage company. The aim was to teach the truck drivers how to prepare nutritious food that could easily be taken into the cab. Having worked in the transport industry for many years myself, I know how difficult it can be to eat well when you’re on the move. Having students come to the rescue about this problem was a fun and unexpected turn of events for me.

At a school in Sundsvall, students raised money for a class trip by hosting a three-course dinner in the home economics room. Each student had to sell three envelopes. At a school in Eskilstuna, students cooked traditional Finnish sausage soup together with Finnish speakers at the Tunagården retirement home. At a secondary school in Lysekil, the public was invited via advertisements in the local press to public lectures on Ireland’s history with appropriate food, evenings that were packed each time.

As long as students are not considered to be engaged in a permanent activity, there are no rules preventing them from occasionally taking on the role of hosts for small or large groups, entirely within the framework of home economics teaching. Imagine what good relations this can create between the school and the surrounding community. Perhaps in combination with adults coming to school to talk about their profession and then being invited for a bite to eat.

Students as nursing assistants in nursing homes

Many schools allow students to visit nursing homes. The forms vary greatly. Often it is a case of young and old coming together to share experiences and gain new perspectives. Students are also often invited to offer the elderly various art and music experiences based on aesthetic school subjects. Students have also been known to cook for the elderly. The job of carer includes many tasks that students on temporary visits are not allowed to try, such as heavy lifting and intimate hygiene, but at least they can contribute with empathy, compassion and just those relational cosy moments that many carers too rarely have time for in a stressful everyday working life.[18]

One of my favourite examples is from Varberg and is called senior surf. Students at many primary schools in the municipality teach elderly how to use tablets. The elderly learn how to surf, play games, take photos and do banking. The students bring with them the joy of teaching and helping the elderly, while strengthening their knowledge of Swedish, social studies and technology.

Students as fire engineers

There are not many examples of students being allowed to work as engineers. A fun exception was when students were asked to do a fire safety report on their own home. One student talks about his view of the task:[19]

It was quite difficult. [I learned] to pay more attention in the home and what things are flammable and what is needed to make it fire safe. [I learned about] organic chemistry.

Students as sanitation workers

Keeping clean and tidy is a timeless value in both urban and rural areas. At a school outside Kungsbacka, the Keep Sweden Clean campaign became a starting point that was adapted to the local community based on the motto Keep Kullavik clean. Students were asked to consider the question: for whom should it be clean?

In three schools in Sundsvall, students campaigned on behalf of the regional housing company Mitthem. The students educated residents on how food waste should be handled so that the public sector avoids unnecessary additional costs. In another primary school in Sundsvall, students were asked to think about how to improve the design of garbage bins. Perhaps an interactive bin will encourage more people to throw their rubbish in the right place? The students’ ideas were then presented to staff at the environmental office, closely followed by journalists from the local radio station. More general examples include young people helping to clean up beaches, forests, streets and schoolyards.

Students as architects and urban planners

As soon as a new building, park, street or facility is to be built where people will live or work, there is room for children and young people to participate and influence the process. It is part of the mission and professional ethos of architects and urban planners to take on board the views and ideas of citizens, including children and young people. Children’s perspectives on urban planning are included in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and is also a cornerstone of democratic planning processes.[20]

I have seen a few examples of value creation pedagogy where students work with architects and urban planners. The clearest example is a collaboration called Architects in Schools.[21] Students were involved in designing a new neighbourhood, a new playground at a pre-school, a new residential area, a new playground and a new park. They had to create mood boards and build scale models. They also had to use visualisation techniques to draw a prototype of a new building. The work took place over several years and was linked to mathematics objectives, social studies, Swedish and technology.

There are many other examples of urban development where children and young people are consulted. In Stockholm’s new master plan, students from fourteen schools participated.[22] However, this is not always done in an pedagogically thought-through way, which represents an untapped potential for strengthening knowledge development and motivation to study.

Students who get to try other professions

This chapter has provided an overview of the occupations that appeared in our various research studies and sample collections. I think this is only a start. Students can probably try out many more professions in the context of regular education and under the guidance of their own teachers. Pick up an occupational directory and look for occupations that might fit with what is happening in your classroom. Some professions where there should be potential are librarian (advising on books), property manager (looking after someone’s house), accountant (doing the maths), investigator (writing in-depth reports), web designer (designing a nice website), software tester (testing if apps work), research assistant (collecting data), health and safety inspector (inspecting workplaces), animal keeper (helping on a farm), leisure leader (organising leisure activities), personal assistant (helping different people) and surveyor (measuring the area of plots of land).

---

[1] See https://unicef.se/fakta/barnarbete

[2] See Bhukuth (2008, s. 393).

[3] See Lackéus (2021, pp. 47-65).

[4] See more in Lundahl et al. (2020, s. 36–46).

[5] See Letrud and Hernes (2016). The pyramid can be found by googling “learning pyramid”.

[6] See Egan (2010). See also summary of Stivaktaki’s (2017).

[7] For a longer list see http://ierg.ca/LID/how-we-can-help/topics/

[8] Stivaktakis (2017, s. 17) writes of curricula as “a mile wide and an inch deep”.

[9] Read more about people with T skills in Berger (2010).

[10] See Lackéus and Sävetun (2019a, s. 50).

[11] See Lackéus (2016, s. 70).

[12] See for example www.jamstalldhetsmyndigheten.se/

[13] Read more about this in Lackéus and Sävetun (2021).

[14] See Lackéus and Sävetun (2021).

[15] See Fägerstam (2012, 2014).

[16] According to Anders Szczepanski, see article in Skolvärlden (Wahlgren 2012).

[17] See Graeber (2001, s. 44 och 70).

[18] Se Beischer (2012).

[19] See Lackéus and Sävetun (2016, p. 36).

[20] See examples of how it can be done in the thesis by Nilsson Lövehed (2020).

[21] The idea originally came from Ingrid Svetoft at Halmstad University. Read more about architects in schools in Lackéus and Sävetun (2016, s. 47–50).

[22] See City of Stockholm (2017).

If the last chapter was about waking students up from a slumbering existence in a protective classroom through a variety of small-scale approaches, this chapter is about seriously drawing students out into the world outside school, letting them stretch themselves and show the world what they are actually capable of achieving here and now.

Once the first step has been taken, a pleasant descent often begins. This can open up time, courage and energy for more extensive activities with students. This chapter describes eleven different types of activities we encountered in the research, which I consider to be slightly more advanced or otherwise a little more challenging. The positive effects are then often stronger, but it may also require a little more planning or previous experience of value creation on your part as a teacher.

Many of the activities described below can probably also serve as a first step. But since I need to divide the book into different chapters, these eleven types of activities had to come in a separate chapter. How demanding the work will be probably depends very much on how the details are designed and on the possibilities and limitations of each teacher’s unique situation. At the same time, I think that for many teachers it is a bit of a leap to have students run campaigns, produce printed materials for external people, work on different concepts, collaborate internationally or organise a major event with external guests.

Let an external person give a real assignment

Let’s return to the idea of commissioned work. A slightly more advanced version of this is for the teacher to ask an external person to ask the students to help with something. It may seem sly, but it can make a big difference to the students. In fact, it’s no worse than the way in which the prompters discreetly whisper to actors on stage when they forget a line. The illusion persists and can work even if the students realise that the teacher has probably nudged the outsider who asked them for help.

Students have helped many different externals on the initiative of teachers. Architects have been helped to design playgrounds, construction companies have been helped to design the workplaces of the future, theme parks have been helped to come up with fun themes, museums have been helped to build exhibitions, housing companies have been helped to develop better waste management. The list of examples is endless. Such help is often referred to as “live”[1]  or “real missions”[2] , and can involve individuals, workplaces or associations. Often it is a company, a public organisation or an association that is helped. But not always. Teachers can also contact individuals who can be persuaded to ask for help privately or at work with various issues they are struggling with. Imagine getting help from thirty creative young people with something you struggle with in your everyday life. I wouldn’t turn it down.

Real missions are a very powerful approach, but there are pitfalls. Students need to feel that they have a reasonable chance to create value for others in real life. They need to get that all-important feedback from those they are trying to create value for, preferably through a real meeting where they get to present their work and then get feedback directly from those who have asked for their help. Best of all, they get to co-create value with externals. The more students who are given the same assignment, the greater the risk that each individual student will not perceive it as real. It can also be perceived as a competition, with one group winning the title of “best solution” and the others feeling like losers.

The teacher also needs to ensure that the link to the curriculum documents is there. With real missions, students take external people’s needs as their starting point rather than the subject knowledge and skills to be learned, which places greater demands on the teacher to be there and link theory to practice.

Let students take the initiative to help adults

I have been an adult for almost thirty years. I have never had a student in a primary or secondary school contact me and ask me if I needed help with anything. This is despite the fact that I have worked on many exciting and knowledge-intensive things in my adult life where I have needed lots of help. Imagine if I had been able to get help for a few months from nearly thirty bumbling creative students on some question I was puzzling over. Maybe with putting into words the beauty of value creation pedagogy, or why truck drivers should practice eco-driving, or what else I might need to learn about old educational philosophers like Dewey, Comenius and Rousseau?

What prevents students from contacting adults and offering them their help? I don’t think it’s the teachers. If teachers had known of a way to combine engaged, inquisitive students with curricular knowledge development, they would probably have resorted to that approach immediately. So now that this and other books on value creation pedagogy have just been finished, I will be sitting here in my office waiting for the phone to ring.

Hi, I’m a student in class 5B. In social studies we are now learning about opinion formation in the media. Do you have a question you would like to reach out with? We can help you. We need to learn about this. What do you say?

Hi, I’m in my second year of high school. I’m currently taking a course in Swedish about writing. You scientists write a lot. Do you have a text you are working on now that we can give constructive criticism on? We need to train our linguistic eye. What do you think?

Hi, I’m in class 2C. We are working with tables in maths. Do you have any tables of numbers you are working with that we can help you with? We can do a check count and make sure you haven’t miscounted. What do you say?

Hi, I’m in the 8th grade. We are currently working on biodiversity. If you have a garden, can we help you with something about your garden’s biodiversity? What do you think?

The list of possible pitches could be as long as you like. But I’d probably turn down the gardening question myself, I don’t have green fingers. Or maybe that’s what I need the most help with. But it’s important for students to be a bit clever in their approach and to be able to take no for an answer – even from those who really should have said yes. Let students think about who is an appropriate contact to make. Then the class can pick up the phone or email and ask ten people if they can help them with something. The question they ask can be both specific and knowledge requirement related, yet open and inviting. This can lead to rewarding win-win partnerships where students learn more in depth by helping an adult with something, and where adults get some help, learn something new and at the same time get to help future adults grow. There’s also an old cardinal rule in sales – ten taps one thanks. It’s perfectly normal to have to make ten contacts to find someone who actually wants help. If you want to make it a little easier, students can call some of their class’ parents. And it certainly doesn’t have to be the case that students call their own parents.

Of course, it is easier for older students to help an adult than for younger ones. But younger students can contribute a lot if given the chance. What’s more, adults find it surprisingly fun to get help from younger students. I don’t know how many times students have expressed surprise at how well they have been received by adults when they have made contact. Adults are also ultra-social.

Let students make videos

Video is a very valuable medium for student value creation. All it takes to get started is a mobile phone and an unpolished idea. Then they can reach billions of people with their videos and try to create value for their viewers in different ways. In one of our research studies, a student in Matfors in Sundsvall made a video about how to draw an eye. Today, that video has over fifty thousand views on Youtube. But students’ videos can also stay in the classroom, and that works well too.

A few years ago I received an email from the teacher Kjell-Ivar Karlsson at Strandenskolan in Dorotea who had heard about my research. He wrote to me about the flipped classroom that has become popular. Teachers film their briefings so that students can watch them at their own pace. Kjell-Ivar instead worked with student flipped classrooms – students filming their presentations so that their classmates can watch them at their own pace. In such a classroom, students get to work as newsreaders, actors, journalists, scriptwriters, vignette musicians, producers of history documentaries, travel writers and, of course, cameramen/women. In English, Swedish and other languages. The films at Strandenskolan are mainly shown in the classroom as a natural part of teaching, rehearsal and peer assessment, but also to parents at development talks and parent meetings.

The approach has been an incredible boost both for Kjell-Ivar and for the students. Students’ motivation to go to school was strengthened, they became better at oral presentations, nobody forgot their homework anymore, their self-esteem was strengthened, more people dared to fail and the class values were greatly enhanced by all the peer assessment. Kjell-Ivar himself had a much more enjoyable job, facilitated assessment and improved relations with the guardians. One parent asked Kjell-Ivar why more teachers don’t work like this. You really have to wonder. I promised Kjell-Ivar I would spread the word about his work, and here I finally got the chance. Go to Dorotea and be inspired!

Let students run campaigns or educate the public

Few students have been more successful in campaigning and public education than Greta Thunberg. By working one day a week to create value on her own initiative, she changed an entire world. Today, she is no longer alone on Fridays, but has been joined by millions of other students.

Those of us who are active in value creation pedagogy like to think of Greta as a prime example of students doing something through activism that really matters, something that astounds the world. Teacher Maria Wiman urges teachers to bring out students’ inner drive and fighting spirit, to “unleash students’ inner Greta’s”.[3] With teachers’ active involvement, we might be able to avoid unexcused absence and instead use the classroom as a base for students to practice their action skills to try to make the world a little better.

Nobody has missed that Greta is angry. Really angry. And that’s something teachers can pick up on. Read students’ emotion lists very carefully. I’m sure you’ll find there the impetus for their space flight towards motivation for schoolwork-moon. Let them campaign and educate the public on the very issues they are angry about and which can be linked to curricula and policy documents. One such issue is, of course, sustainable development, which can easily be linked to any subject in school, not least Science and Mathematics.[4] The students will eventually take over the very planet we adults are in the process of destroying. A perfect flare to awaken dormant inner Gretas. I will return to sustainable development in chapter 9.

So what have students been campaigning about? Well, lots of pressing issues. Child soldiers, energy wastage, oil spillage, littering, discrimination, ill health, cyber bullying, drunk driving, sexually transmitted diseases, child marriage, food waste and much more. All the world’s problems are guaranteed to be enough learning oxygen throughout primary and secondary school, for all students throughout the world. Activism is a chance for students to be part of something that really matters.[5] To work as a whole class towards a meaningful goal that is bigger than oneself and one’s individual development plan. To experience this while still at school.

Let students create printed materials

Seeing your own words in print is a special experience. For me as a researcher, it is a highlight every time I receive a final version of a research article for proofreading. It’s the same old text I’ve been working on for a long time, but in typeset form on paper it’s still a completely different feeling.

A teacher who knew how to harness the power of motivation of the printed word was Célestin Freinet. As early as 1923, he bought his first printing press and installed it in his classroom. His students then printed school newspapers, letters, textbooks and field reports, which they used in class and also sent to friend schools around France and Algeria. According to Freinet, the written word only becomes meaningful when it is used to communicate with others outside the school walls.[6] This is why the printing press was one of the most important and appreciated technical aids in Freinet’s model school in Vence, France.

Freinet was a real IT geek, long before the first computer was even conceived. His passion for information technology was undeniable. He experimented all his life with linography, hectography, typography, printing presses, radio transmitters, tape recorders, film cameras and projectors. Freinet was convinced that schools could not afford to neglect the possibilities that various technological tools could offer teachers and their students.[7] He himself sold printing presses to schools all over France.[8] 

In our research, we have seen many examples of students making various printed materials. These include leaflets used in a campaign, brochures explaining different phenomena, posters put up for public education purposes in health centres and other public places, Christmas cards sent to prison inmates, chapter books read aloud to young children, anthologies put together and whole books presented and sold at Sweden’s largest annual book fair in Gothenburg. The effects we see on students who make printed materials are incredibly powerful. They marvel at how well their work is received, their confidence is boosted and they are welded together as a class.

I often get the feeling that I am building on Freinet’s work, both in terms of educational philosophy and information technology. Since 2013, I have been experimenting with a digital tool we built to help teachers track students’ value-creating actions via written reflection, read more in chapter 8 on assessment. I wish more of us school researchers were experimenting with IT tools in the spirit of Freinet. But today’s technology is more complex than in Freinet’s time. It can cost millions to build a single digital technology support for teachers. The company Mobile Stories for example, has had to raise $500k in charitable funding from Google to further develop their publishing tool for students. This is money that traditional research funders don’t hand out, that universities can’t afford, and that private actors rarely charge to their bottom line.[9]

Capturing moments and events in flight

When value creation becomes a bit more established as a mindset and culture among the students in the class, it becomes easier to start new value-creating activities a bit more spontaneously. This can be based on discussions that have taken place in the classroom or out in the community. Something a student has said may have aroused the interest, involvement or outrage of classmates. Perhaps a recent incident reported in the media could be a seed for value creation. However, such unplanned and spontaneous value creation requires both teachers and students to have warmed up, otherwise it can be difficult to get off to a good start.

Many of the examples teacher Maria Wiman in her book Value Creating Learning came about in just this way. The students’ initiatives to try to save a television programme from closure, to educate the public about online hate and to write a magazine about child soldiers were all spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment ideas. An obvious advantage of taking up students’ ideas is that participation is at its peak from the start.

Use a concept or science centre

There are a large number of ready-made concepts that teachers can use in creating value with students. This can certainly be a good way to get more in-depth value creation work underway. Many concepts are very well designed and widely tested, but often also require a relatively high level of time and commitment from both teachers and students.

Some common concepts in Sweden with more or less value-creating elements are Operation Dagsverke by UNICEF, First Lego League, Make Music Matter, Young Scientists and Future Seeds. In Spanish-speaking countries there are concepts such as Junior Achievement – Aprender a Emprender, Empresa Joven Europea.

A closely related phenomenon in Sweden is the nineteen science centres around the country. Some examples are the Technical Museum in Stockholm, Universeum in Gothenburg and Navet in Borås. Many of these activities have historically had a strong focus on educational experimentation and entrepreneurial skills. Science centres often operate at the interface between education, the world of work and the non-profit sector. There is also a culture among their staff of trying new ways of teaching science, technology and mathematics. Student activities often have a focus on enjoyment value for students themselves, with the aim of raising their interest in science, technology and mathematics. Allowing students to create something of value to others has so far rarely been a focus of science centres and therefore represents an opportunity for the future. Some exceptions exist, involving students who are given sharp assignments from companies through science centres in Borlänge and Borås.

Teachers should beware of some risks and pitfalls when it comes to ready-made concepts. They certainly help teachers save a lot of time but often leave less room for students to have an influence on the working process. It is also still rare to find concept developers who know and really work with the basic principles of value creation pedagogy. Many (but not all) of them therefore miss obvious opportunities for genuine value creation by students for others, focus too narrowly on economic value creation and overlook the importance of feedback to students from outsiders face-to-face.

I would like to take this opportunity to encourage both concept designers and science centres to weave more of the three basic principles of value creation pedagogy into their various approaches – (1) students’ value creation for others resulting in genuine interpersonal feedback from outsiders, (2) interaction with real individuals in the world, and (3) fine-grained blend of learning and value creation so that the concepts do not remain isolated phenomena but rather are integrated into regular teaching over longer periods of time. This represents an often untapped opportunity to make a stronger impact of what is already being done in class. Teachers can also help concept makers and science centres to better weave value creation into their teaching. We may be entering an exciting new era as more and more concept designers and science centres, in close collaboration with teachers, take advantage of the three basic principles of value creation pedagogy, so that students can breathe handiness-, social- and creativity oxygen more often during their school days.

Get one or more buddy classes

Let us now return to Freinet. Buddy classes are a good old idea that offers great opportunities for creating value for others. Students can read and give feedback on each other’s texts. They can exchange thoughts, pictures and videos across great distances. But it is also possible to have a buddy class at your own school.

At Freinet’s example school in Vence, students had exchanges with as many as ten classes around France. Twice a week, they sent articles from their class newspaper to one of the ten buddy classes. If it worked in the 1930s, it should be as easy as pie in today’s digitally connected society. In our research, we have also seen examples of buddy class exchanges between a school in Sundsvall and a school in Huddinge.[10] In that case, it was the teachers who initiated a temporary exchange. A buddy class can last anywhere from a few days to several years.

Some tools for finding buddy classes are online resources such as ePals (epals.com), The Nordic Region in Schools (nordeniskolen.org) and eTwinning (etwinning.net) where millions of teachers have connected with each other worldwide. But it’s also possible to contact someone randomly in another school, to look around in your network or to seek contact via social media. The Nordic Region in Schools website gives teachers ten tips on how to make buddy classes work in practice. Keep it simple with a few activities, build strong relationships both between teachers and between students, talk through expectations and have clearly written structures for the work.

Start an international exchange

We live in a digital and global age. Students today are just a click away from the billions of people around the world they can create value for. This means new opportunities for teachers to “bring the world into the classroom and to take the classroom out into the world without physically moving” (Granath & Hahn 2021, s. 19). Through various collaborative projects, teachers and students can seek funding to work together and even meet across national borders. European partners can be found through the Erasmus+ and eTwinning exchange programmes, among others. But how can teachers structure their teaching?

At Gränby School in Uppsala, students had the opportunity to collaborate with students in Germany for three terms through an eTwinning project. They worked together on different themes every month, they presented tasks to each other via big screen, they compared each other’s school systems and they communicated and worked together via different digital tools and apps. Teacher Emelie Hahn sums up the impact in a Swedish book about bringing the world into the classroom (Granath & Hahn 2021, s. 323):

Their understanding of the world around them increased and their cultural competence was strengthened. The students made friends in Germany with whom they also communicated in their free time, which further strengthened their language skills. The lessons were real, which created motivation and engagement – students wanted to learn in order to communicate with their new friends in Germany. The students of the German partner school came to visit for a week.

I shiver of delight when I read the book. This is how every student should learn a new language, and a lot of other knowledge too. How can we even think that students can learn a foreign language without experiencing this kind of cross-border and mutually valuable exchange? Emelie Hahn’s example should be the norm, not the exception, in schools. After all, I experienced this myself when I was in secondary school. Maybe that’s why I became a backwards researcher?

Bring in resources for your project

One way to gain momentum for a value creation project is for students to ask around the community for different types of sponsorship, donations and resource contributions from adults working in different workplaces relevant to the project. Students can be surprisingly successful in getting outside help in various initiatives. If a printed piece needs to be produced, ask a printing company for help with printing. If a dinner needs to be prepared for a charitable cause, ask a food company for help with food supplies. If a radio programme is to be broadcast, ask companies to fund the radio time or, for that matter, the class trip through radio advertising. If a peace magazine students made needs to sell a little better, ask candy companies to donate candy that can be sent along to the buyers. This was how Maria Wiman’s students did it at Edboskolan in Huddinge. They received 135 kilos of sweets from various companies, and were able to spread the word about child soldiers while raising SEK 16,589 for the Red Cross.[11] Just make sure the students are prepared for the fact that selling requires a lot of conversations. Ten taps, one thanks, please.

Also make sure that the sponsorship does not violate ethical principles. Companies that help students should be reputable, free of tax liabilities and operate in a manner consistent with the school’s values. The contribution must be reasonable in relation to the scale of the project and the risk of commercial bias. Gifts may be complementary to, but not a prerequisite for, teaching. It may be useful to draw up a written agreement signed by the headmaster.

The best thing about sponsorship and donations is that suddenly you have unexpected resources that provide rocket fuel for student engagement. And once the help arrives, there’s no turning back. Time to do what you promised your helpers! Be careful what you wish for.

Organise an event

Let’s end this chapter with a real classic – students organising some kind of event. It could be a disco, a theatre performance, a concert or even a festival, a flea market, a sports event, a fair, an art opening, an experience day, or why not an animal festival. Invite an audience, maybe charge for admission. In our research, we have seen students organising science fairs, Nobel Day and of course the classic parents’ evening.

Just make sure that adults don’t do things that students can do perfectly well on their own. Don’t become a curling teacher or curling parent when events are being organised. I’ve seen that too many times in youth sports – perhaps the biggest curling movement in Sweden. There, dedicated parents take care of lots of tasks that children and young people could have done more or less on their own.

---

[1] Future Seeds calls its material “sharp missions”.

[2] In Trelleborg, sharp assignments are called real cases.

[3] In a Swedish podcast series by Patricia Diaz called På tal om lärande.

[4] See Nelson (2021, s. 42).

[5] Read more about educational activism in Hodson (2014).

[6] Freinet (2018, s. 44).

[7] See Freinet (2018, s. 105–108).

[8] According to Kergel (2020, s. 59).

[9] See Lackéus and Sävetun (2021).

[10] See Lackéus and Sävetun (2016, s. 43 och 51).

[11] Read more in Wiman (2019, s. 36–40).

A few years ago, my son’s fifth grade class had challenges that concerned me. Actually, we guardians are supposed to stay out of school leadership. But I had this idea that it might get better with some value creation pedagogy that could strengthen the classroom community and student motivation in this highly unfocused classroom. After good dialogue with that fall’s substitute teacher, I got the chance to help out a bit. I was given forty minutes with the class and happily thought that with my ten years of action research on pedagogy I was well equipped to meet the 28 children. But the day before, I had severe anxiety. I realised that not one of all the research-oriented slides I had shown to thousands of teachers could be used with students. Theory and practice were two completely different things here. A real sandwich moment once again.

The next day I met the 28 students anyway. By reducing the complexity to a minimum and asking a few simple questions, we had great conversations in whole class and small groups. It turned out that the students had many good ideas as they brainstormed answers to the following two simple questions:

For whom in our neighbourhood can the skills, abilities, resources, experience, contacts and interests we have create value today?

How do we want to make a difference in our area now?

This can certainly be a way to get started. But I really learned not to underestimate the importance of giving teachers many different possible first steps to choose from. So here are sixteen different practical first steps teachers can take to get started with value creation pedagogy. They are a condensation of various examples I have seen among teachers over the years.

Plan your pedagogy

Many teachers like to start the practical work with a pedagogical planning form. In Chapter 6 on practical tools, we take a closer look at a form I’ve developed in my research. Here I will just mention planning as a possible start. A form helps us to put our thoughts on paper. It gives us a basis for discussion with colleagues about how students could try to create value for others, who these others might be, what knowledge and skills they will then be able to apply in practice, and how we think about assessment and student participation.

Discussing value creation pedagogy with colleagues is also something many teachers like to do at the beginning, with or without a form. Such discussions are often combined with watching some short videos on value creation pedagogy. A simple search for value creation pedagogy on Youtube and Vimeo will usually provide some ideas.

Asking for whom knowledge can be valuable

The first step many teachers take with their students is to ask a simple question in the classroom, “For whom might this knowledge be valuable today?” This question helps connect theoretical knowledge with practical applications. Students may have some difficulty answering the question at first. They may need time to think about different answers. Gradually, the meaning of the question becomes clearer and more and more ideas come from the students. In the beginning, suggestions for recipients of value are often close to the students – in their own class, school, family or local area. With some support and repeated work on the issue, they tend to be able to think of more and more recipients of value further and further away and in more and more sectors of society.

The question can also be a simple entry point for deeper dialogue with students about who might benefit from their knowledge and skills here and now, what knowledge might be valuable, and what different types of value there are. The question becomes a way for students to mentally shift from seeing themselves primarily as recipients of value to becoming givers and creators of value for others. For some students, this means thinking in new ways, a first step in feeling that their actions and competences can be important to others. For some teachers, too, the issue may feel like a new and unfamiliar step. Teachers have described how they need to let go of some control, leave their habitual patterns and go outside their own comfort zone.

Ask students more questions

In chapter 6 I review the entrepreneurial toolkit. Already here we can pick up from that toolkit many good and simple questions for students to work with when thinking about who they can create value for. Value-creating work can usefully start from the students’ own strengths, interests and thoughts. Then these questions can work well:[1]

• Who am I really? (identity and goals in life on a deeper level)
• What can I do? (skills and abilities)
• What am I good at? (aptitude and talent)
• What am I passionate about? (passion, dreams and interests)
• What bothers me? (challenges and problems)
• What do I usually succeed at? (opportunities and strengths)
• Who do I know? (networks and friends who can help)

Pick one or a few suitable questions for students to work on, or make your own version of the opportunity map tool described in Chapter 6.

Once the students have a better understanding of themselves, planning for value creation can begin, and be linked to the outside world. Some of the following questions can then be used, preferably in groups:

• Who can we help?
• How do we help?
• How do we reach those we want to help?
• Who helps us to help?
• What can we ask our intended recipients of value already today?
• How can we easily test whether what we intend to do/create is really valuable to someone else?
• How can we observe others in their natural everyday lives to see what they might need help with?
• How can we solve other people’s problems in new ways?

Several of these issues are echoed in Chapter 6 in the form of the canvas tool, which is a tool for triggering value creation by students. But it is also possible to make your own canvas. In choosing questions, it may be worth remembering that an opportunity-oriented focus is often more motivating than a problem-oriented focus.[2] Sure, problem solving can be fun, but it’s even more fun to look for opportunities to create value for others based on students’ dreams, interests and strengths. A problem focus can seem inhibiting to many, while an opportunity focus often unleashes positive energy and action.[3] At the same time, our problems should not be swept under the rug. They can, however, be relatively easily reframed as an opportunity to create value for others.

Hold an ideas workshop with the students

An ideas workshop is an opportunity for students to brainstorm ideas on how they can create value for others. It can be done in forty minutes, but it can also take a little longer. Some of the questions above can form the basis of students’ brainstorming. There are also concrete tools that can be used – the opportunity map, the canvas and the pitch. These are described in Chapter 6.

A short introduction of around ten minutes can be followed by twenty to thirty minutes of brainstorming in small groups. The last ten minutes can be spent collecting ideas or writing them on the board so that everyone can hear about the different ideas that came up. Finally, a selection can be made, with students voting on which ideas they want to work on in the next stage. Such a selection could also be done at a later stage, to give students some time to think through all the ideas that came up. Bear in mind that an idea voted for by rather few students may still have as much potential, or even more, than the ideas that many initially like. It is not possible to know at the beginning of an idea development process which ideas are good. Divergent ideas can often turn out to be both more unique and more viable once they have been developed further.

The introduction can include an explanation of what value can be, what it means to create value for others and why such experiences are an important part of school work, working life and life in general. Include some examples from other schools where students have worked on value creation. But not too many, as these examples can guide students’ unconscious thoughts when they come up with ideas themselves. Keep the introduction short and concise – don’t let it become too theoretical.

Now you might be wondering how my idea workshop went with my son and his class. Well it went very well. One idea that came up was to organise a football tournament for socially vulnerable people in the local area. But there was never a tournament. The lesson for me was the importance of securing a continuation of the value creation work before inviting students to brainstorm ideas. I certainly should have planned the work better. My mistake was not having the school leaders on board for a long-term plan. Teachers can easily initiate value creation activities without the support or even knowledge of their managers, but as a parent I was totally dependent on the support of school management. Which is perfectly reasonable.

Let the students do the work

Teachers can indeed do some pedagogical planning and preparation of workshops. But it’s the students who should do most of the work in value creation pedagogy. Teachers who find value creation pedagogy a chore may be taking on far too much responsibility and work themselves. The teacher’s most important tasks are to ensure the structure, clarity and focus of the process over time, to ensure that all students participate, to link the work to curricula and knowledge requirements, and to assess students’ creations and actions in terms of how they illustrate what they have learned and are capable of. The rest can often be left to the students. Therefore, one way to get started is to allow students to take a great deal of responsibility in planning how to go about it in practical terms. What value will be created, what skills and abilities will form the basis of the value creation and who they will target. Creativity is and always has been a strong area for young people, if they are given the chance.

The implementation can also be left to the students. In each class there are many students who can take the initiative to contact people in the outside world that teachers sometimes feel they have to contact for them. Letting the students do the talking usually works better than we adults think. Schools also have many more students than teachers, and they need to learn to take initiative, be persistent and communicate in writing and speaking.

Use the power of the pitch

A pitch is a very short presentation of an idea to create something of value for someone. We humans are impatient, so ideally the pitch should take no more than a minute to deliver. First, capture interest in a pithy and preferably fun way (15 seconds), then describe a relevant problem (15 seconds), present a useful solution (15 seconds) and end the pitch with a call to action (15 seconds). Perhaps by the listener saying yes to a proposal for a continuation presented in the pitch, or perhaps by going to a website.

Give your students a lesson in pitching their value-creating ideas to an outsider. To anyone basically. A sister, brother, parent, friend or a complete stranger. It’s best if the person they are pitching to is also part of a natural audience for the value they intend to create. If the idea is to help newly arrived refugee, let them pitch to a newly arrived refugee. But by all means don’t let the best become the enemy of the good. A neighbour born in Sweden can also work. The main thing is that students expose themselves to outside feedback on their ideas. This is bound to make them try harder and feel more passionate about their work. Afterwards, have them reflect in writing to you about who they talked to, what feedback they got, what they learned and how they plan to move forward. A pitch is such a useful tool that the concept will be discussed again in Chapter 6.

Let students explore their feelings

We humans like to be perceived as rational and logical. But deep down we are all very much governed by our rich inner emotional life.[4] This fact can be used by teachers to get more motivated students. Emotional approaches to value creation pedagogy can start from questions such as “Who am I, really, deep down?”, “What bothers me deep in my soul?” or “What do I feel so strongly about that I can walk on hot coals?”. If value creation is linked to students’ own deeply personal feelings through similar questions, it can drive powerful and in-depth learning that lasts for a long time.

The feelings can be both positive and negative. Positive emotions contribute to a sense of total engagement and flow that can make it feel like time stands still.[5] Negative emotions such as anger, worry and anxiety also play an important role. They help to focus students’ attention and help them to take powerful action rather than getting stuck in distraction. [6]

The teacher Maria Wiman suggests that the class makes a list of emotions based on the question “What makes you really angry? “and then plan different value creation activities based on this.[7] Another emotional exercise is proposed by two Danish researchers.[8] Have students stand with their feet in a small cardboard box each, which may represent a life situation when they felt frustrated and limited. The teacher has his or her own box and tells about such a situation to show the way and get the discussion going. Gradually, more and more of the students share their inner emotional thoughts with the class. The exercise ends with everyone stomping on their cardboard boxes, a symbol of breaking free from their limitations. The Danish researchers also suggest that teachers let students draw a diagram of different emotional learning events in life, a kind of inventory of the existential backpack we all carry of major challenges, insightful highlights and hard-won life experiences.

Some caution should be exercised when teaching becomes this emotionally charged. The first person to get a high voltage shock in case of a short circuit is usually the teacher. I myself work a lot with giving emotionally tough challenges to my students at Chalmers. It’s exciting and educational for both me and my students. They learn for life in an emotional rollercoaster. But when it gets too challenging, or if something tough happens at the same time in their private life, the primal force can backfire on me as a teacher. There can be accusations of the most varied kind that I might not have done my job properly. After many years, I’m getting used to it and now take it with a grain of salt. I no longer say sorry, it was not meant to be so difficult for you. Because that’s exactly what it was. But I do understand those teachers who choose not to fully engage their own or others’ emotions in their teaching.

Direct what you are going to do outwards

Students create things in school all day long. Texts, drawings, reports, posters, assignments of all kinds. However, the end result of these creations ends up in most cases in an analogue or digital wastepaper basket, albeit passing through the teacher’s stressed eyes. After the teacher has read and given feedback, the creation is thrown away or left to languish.

One way to think about alternative fates for students’ creations is to ask the following simple question: “For whom can we do this?” or “Who should get to see this?” The question can be asked every time a creative task begins, in just about any subject. If we increasingly have good answers to this simple question, what will happen is that the creations will increasingly be directed outwards to real recipients. Students themselves can take responsibility for making contact with their particular recipient. When students’ creations and performances matter to someone else, teaching becomes important in real terms and school becomes more meaningful for both students and teachers. Teacher Caroline Lorentzon has called this ‘tweaking’ your teaching:[9]

“Value creation pedagogy in the classroom is then simply about doing what needs to be done anyway, but adding a twist – you look for facts outside the classroom as you work and find yourself a recipient beyond the teacher and classmates when it’s time to deliver.”

Tweak a nearby accelerator

I am often asked how value creation pedagogy differs from other student-centred pedagogical approaches. There is much to be said on this issue, and I will therefore return to it in Chapter 7. Here, I thought I would simply suggest that teachers explore various similarities and connections. While you’re at it with cooperative learning, tweak it so that students have an outside recipient they can try to create value for. When you are going to work problem- or challenge-based learning anyway, find a real recipient who can appreciate and benefit from the solutions students are working on. When working on projects with authentic content, direct the projects outwards to real recipients in the outside world. When working thematically, link the theme to outside recipients of value. When working across subjects, think about how you can also bring about value-creating learning processes. Most of the other accelerator pedals you use in your work to make the educational car go faster can probably be tweaked with a drop of value creation pedagogy in one way or another.

Let students submit their opinion piece

A classic example of directing what is anyway done outwards is the argumentative text. Most students will write many such texts during their schooling. Why not submit some of them to the local newspaper or even to the national media? Whether or not the text is published, the writing process will get a very different and more emotional character. When there is an ever-so-small chance, or risk, that the text will be read by many, students’ commitment and diligence increase.

Let students create something for others

Another common approach we have seen is teachers letting students create things for students in other classes or for children in nearby preschools. We have seen students creating board games, computer games, maths problems, rhymes, stories, jewellery, musical instruments, toys, robots, films and much more for other students.

Creating for other students can also involve plays, sketches, readings, theatre, concerts, exhibitions and much more. The recipients are usually younger students or pre-school children, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a lot in what Maria Wiman’s students so often say: “Age is just a number.” If students can create value for adults, they can probably also create value for older students at school.

Sometimes the creation is based on placed orders and specific requests. Bracelets and necklaces can be made with words or phrases requested by the recipient, pieces of music can be requested by someone, lyrics can be written by a group of students and then set to music by other students, a favourite dish can be requested by someone and then served, students can help other students in school based on specific challenges. It’s an extra nice feeling to be able to deliver a tailor-made creation or service to someone. Being able to provide a personal service enhances the perceived sense of care and meaningfulness.

Let students help at school or at home

Many value-creating tasks are aimed at the school or home. Students have made budgets for family finances, fire safety reports and energy audits for the home, interior design projects for the school premises, exhibitions in the corridors and much more. A particularly successful project on values in Sigtuna became a whole book.[10] In it, pupils were asked to carry out everyday value-creating actions such as looking the school restaurant staff in the eye and saying thank you with a smile, saying hello to someone they don’t normally say hello to, being kind enough for someone to say thank you, getting someone who rarely talks at lunch to talk a bit more, supporting a classmate who seems to be on the outside, or getting as many people as possible to take part in a joint activity.

Let students perform outside the classroom

Students are often asked to present and perform in front of their own class. This can be book reviews, news, sketches or presentations of a topic or phenomenon they have studied. One way to add to the learning experience is to have them tell a story to a class other than their own, perhaps even to a different year group or school than their own. Then it will feel more “real”, and they will try harder.

Copy an example or an example school

An easy way to get started with value creation pedagogy is to be inspired by something another teacher has done. In Sweden, teachers have been sharing their experiences on social media for many years and have even written books about their best tips. As value creation pedagogy spreads internationally, teachers will probably want to share their experiences in other languages too. I run a blog in English where I collect different texts and examples of value creation pedagogy, see vcplist.com. We also collect examples in our digital library for action-based learning, see library.loopme.io.

At the same time, I would encourage teachers to share more examples with each other, preferably in a structured way. Information about what teachers do and what effects they see when they work in a value-creation way is today a bit of a thicket. It is not easy to navigate around websites and social media to find good examples. The digital channels mentioned above also have room for many more examples. Please send me texts on how you work with value creation pedagogy in your school, and I can publish them as guest posts on my blog.

It is also possible to draw inspiration from schools that have value creation pedagogy as a holistic idea or pedagogical model. Such schools exist in Växjö, Stockholm, Huddinge, Södertälje, Ånge and Uddevalla. I believe this is a development we will see more of in the future, both in Sweden and internationally.

Use social media to reach out

In the introduction I wrote that interaction with the outside world and integration into everyday life were two key factors in value creation pedagogy. If there is one thing that has made people interact with the world around them every day, it is social media. Many schools have their own accounts on Instagram where they let students post regularly about different things and from different perspectives. Teachers can post their students’ texts in various relevant groups on Facebook. Students can make their own podcasts on different topics. Blogs are also common.

But you have to be careful that students don’t write for deaf ears. On social media, it’s easy to notice if no one is reading or liking what’s being written. On blogs, it’s not as visible. If no one reads or cares, students soon lose engagement and the impact on their learning is lost. So think about how students reach their readers. These tend to be exactly the same principles that marketers always need to follow on social media. Engage readers, create value for them, entertain them, use photos and videos, update often, ask questions, give advice, share interesting facts, organise competitions. [11]

Write to an author, writer or debater

Having students write down their thoughts about something they have read is a common exercise in school. Such student writing can be usefully directed at the person who wrote the original text they were asked to read. It could be the author of a book who is happy to receive feedback from their readers. It could also be writing a response to a newspaper article. It might even get published in the newspaper. Responding to digital contributions in the public debate is both easy and engaging for students.

---

[1] The issues are also described in more depth in Lackéus (2015, s. 29–32).

[2] See Rae (2003, 2007) and Blenker et al. (2011).

[3] See Cooperrider, Whitney and Stavros (2008, s. 16–17) for a review of problems versus opportunities.

[4] See Lakomski and Evers (2010).

[5] See Csíkszentmihályi (2008).

[6] See Derryberry and Tucker (1994).

[7] See Wiman (2022).

[8] See Neergaard and Robinson (2021).

[9] This quote is taken from an email conversation between the author and Caroline.

[10] See Steinberg and Sourander (2019).

[11] See Kerpen (2011), Vaynerchuk (2013) and Kawasaki and Fitzpatrick (2014).