Educational leaders go by many names and titles—principal, chief academic officer, and instructional coach, just to name a few. But regardless of their titles or job descriptions, all educational leaders share a core responsibility: They are learning designers responsible for creating and shaping the learning experiences of their students.
Designers of any system, program, or object have to make important decisions about what to prioritize in the design process. Whether you’re designing curriculum, an airplane, or a toothbrush, certain elements must have priority over others. The mental filters used to make prioritization decisions are known as design lenses.
Some of the design lenses leaders wear have become so familiar that they may not even know they have them on. For example, educational leaders have a natural tendency to prioritize the design of learning experiences that look and feel like the learning they experienced as a student.
Today, certain lenses dominate the design of learning in our schools. These include the lenses of accountability, rigor, and tradition. In the post-COVID urgency to address learning loss, these lenses seem to be out in full force, often making education feel like a solemn affair.
To be clear, elements of rigor, accountability, and tradition aren’t bad. But when they become the primary design filters, they can have detrimental impacts on students’ experience of school and prioritize adults’ interests over students’.
Let’s become more comfortable using joy as a lens for designing learning experiences that students will love to be a part of.
To counter this trend, I’d like to suggest greater use of one design lens that is essential to creating effective learning: joy! Imagine what it would look like if all learning experiences were designed through a lens of joy. How different might schools feel if joy were the underlying design principle?
Recently, the leadership team at Eastern Hancock Schools near Indianapolis decided to prioritize joy in the design of their students’ learning experience. Now, one of the district’s core values is making magical moments for students. Their work is guided by the question, What can we do today to make everyone want to come back tomorrow?
Tom Vander Ark recently captured in a blog the story of how educators in Eastern Hancock Schools go out of their way to make learning fun. They intentionally plan “peak moments” throughout the year to spark positive associations for students. They believe joy is both a choice and an invitation in education, and that it’s the best way to strengthen personal connections in schools and classrooms.
I’ve visited other districts and schools that have embarked on similar paths toward more joy-infused learning design. The effects on school culture and student engagement are palpable: Teachers and students want to be in these schools and are excited about the work they are doing.
The goal of supporting educators in designing more joyful learning experiences was also the driving force behind our creation of the Transformational Learning Principles, a set of evidence-based guidelines highlighting the most essential elements of effective learning. At their core, the TLPs are about boosting students’ active engagement in learning. When implemented, they can guide educators to creating more joyful and meaningful learning experiences.
As management theorist W. Edwards Deming famously said, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the result that it does.” The results of our education system are directly aligned to what we prioritize when designing learning experiences for students. Let’s become more comfortable using joy as a lens for designing learning experiences that students will love to be a part of.
