At SelfDesign Learning Foundation, we believe learning is a continuous and cumulative process.
We apply this core belief and guiding value to every aspect of our organizational and educational approach.
As an organization and a community, we are committed to continually seeking to innovate by continuing to explore and create new opportunities for increasing our impact on learners, families, contractors and the broader community. We seek to strengthen who we are by building on our solid foundation to further enhance what we do. And we strive to excel by using data, best practices and research to maintain excellence throughout our organization.
As part of this, we continually monitor and review our processes, procedures, programs, methodologies, offerings, and so on, to see how they’re working. We gather data, track metrics, and collect feedback and other information from our learners, families, educators, support providers and other contractors to get a sense of how they experience SelfDesign. We’re constantly seeking new ways to learn more about ourselves as a community and as an organization.
The purpose of all this, says SelfDesign President and CEO Amber Papou, is to better learn how we’re doing. “We want to know how we’re doing at the day-to-day level, at the month-by-month level and year over year. We try to understand what’s going on at fine resolution and also in the big picture. By continuously learning more about how we’re doing, we are better able to adjust what we do to make it even better.”
The insights we gain from the feedback and data we collect, she says, help us identify how we can streamline our processes, enrich our learners’, families’, educators’ and contractors’ experiences and interactions, and improve things, immediately and over time.
“Recognition of the need for continuous improvement has grown in the world of education, and, in particular, here in B.C.,” says SelfDesign Learning Community Principal Catherine Dinim. “It’s part of our external evaluations with the BC Ministry of Education and Child Care, and it’s always been part of our certification with Cognia.” Cognia is an independent organization that accredits schools around the world.
However, we seek to learn and improve continuously because we believe in it.
“We do it because it better serves our learners and other community members, and that in turn better serves our educational programs and our organization,” Amber says. “We do it because we recognize it is a necessary aspect of growth and self-authorship as an organization. Every day, we seek to continue the process of designing who we are and what we do.”
We’ve applied this continuous learning–continuous improvement approach to many different aspects of our work in the last few years. Join us over the coming months as we feature some of those efforts here on the SelfDesign Blog.
Join us here on the SelfDesign Blog over the coming months as we feature more of how we embrace continuous learning into our community.
