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n practical terms, any change effort that does not consider the culture into which it is introduced is unlikely to succeed. The worst-case scenario is that the change effort is resisted to such a degree that it is never truly implemented. In many cases, however, the change effort fails to produce the sort of results initially imagined despite the efforts of all involved to adopt the change. Although the new behaviours are adopted, something goes wrong, and it isn't always that the new idea itself is to be blamed. - Maybe it's culture?

"Many educators are aware of Carol Dweck's research on growth mindset. The Stanford psychologist has found that the way students think about and approach challenge makes a big impact on their learning. Students who believe that they were born with a certain amount of intelligence that cannot be changed - a condition Dweck calls a fixed mindset - are often afraid to seek out challenging tasks and are resigned to one's perceived set of abilities. Students who see intelligence as something that can grow and change with effort - known as a growth mindset - tend to persist at difficult tasks, trying new strategies and ultimately performing better in school. Many schools have begun to focus on building growth mindsets in students because of this research. Helping students develop growth mindsets is made even trickier because mindsets about learning can change depending on context. And unfortunately math class is a time when many students have preconceived notions about their abilities. Many adults, including teachers, grew up receiving negative messages about their math ability and can unintentionally pass on unhelpful messages to students through casual words or actions. That's why it's impressive that educators at Two Rivers Charter School in Washington, D.C. recognized a culture of math fear among the staff and worked hard to change teachers' relationships to math as part of their broader strategy to improve math achievement. The school's Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Jeff Heyck-Williams, described their efforts in an Education Week article:"

"Encouraging diverse participation in STEM in middle school is crucial. Students who do not have STEM opportunities in middle school and high school are very unlikely to take those opportunities in college. We are committed to offering creative learning experiences and the best career opportunities for all kids. How do we recruit and retain a diverse student body in elective STEM classes such as computer science and engineering? For your students who don't typically identify as "engineers"-many female and minority students as well as some boys-what motivates them to sign up for, and become invested in, an engineering class or activity? While we don't claim to have completely cracked the code, focusing on this effort has made us better, more culturally inclusive teachers, and we believe our students will be better off in the long term because of sustained efforts to broaden access to CS and engineering."

""Imagine a classroom where everyone started off an academic year with an "A" grade, and in order to keep the grade, a pupil had to show continuous improvement throughout the year. In this classroom, the teacher would have to dock points from a pupil's assessment when his or her performance or achievement was inadequate, and pupils would work to maintain their high mark rather than to work up to it. How would this affect effort, expectations, performance, and assessment relative to current practice?" This is one of the questions we pose in our report Everyone Starts with an A, which explores the application of behavioural insight to educational policy and practice. Using research from behavioural science and our evolving understanding of human nature, we explore how effort, motivation, learning enjoyment, resilience, and overall performance at school can be influenced in ways not often traditionally recognised."

"From Papert's book The Children's Machine: "LOGO was fueled from the beginning by a Robin Hood vision of stealing programming from the technologically privileged (what I would in those early days in the 1960s have called the military-industrial complex) and giving it to children." Who are the "technologically privileged" these days? And are "learn to code" efforts part of a social justice vision, a Robin Hood-like act of stealing programming from them? Or rather, which computer science education efforts have equity and agency at their core, and which might be more about conscripting cheap and compliant labor for today's version of that complex?"

"The internet doesn't come with an instruction manual, but it should-to give users the skills to separate truth from falsehood so they can distinguish between propaganda and the indisputable and confirmable. And colleges should be the place leading students through this reference book. That's the argument of Michael Caulfield, director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University Vancouver, and it isn't just some "hot take" designed to be provocative. He actually wrote the manual. And he has already convinced more than a dozen colleges to adopt it (and more than 100 college libraries to prominently link to it). Recently, he's started research in an effort to prove that it works (and can help preserve American democracy). Plenty of people are talking about the importance of information literacy these days, and many educational institutions see it as part of their mission. And yet it's more complicated than it seems. Earlier this month researcher danah boyd gave a provocative keynote speech at SXSW EDU arguing that media-literacy efforts at colleges are "backfiring," turning out graduates that are good at questioning everything, and selectively believing what their gut tells them is true."

"When 11-year-old blogger Malala Yousafzai began detailing her experiences in the Swat Valley of Pakistan for the BBC, she had no idea what momentous changes were coming in her life. Her father, Ziauddin, a school founder and dedicated teacher, was outspoken in his belief that girls, including his beloved daughter, had a right to an education. As they continued to speak out against restrictions imposed by extremists, Ziauddin received constant death threats, so many that he began to sleep in different places. But it was Malala who was almost killed, shot in the head by a gunman on her way home from school. Her survival and recovery have been little short of miraculous. Instead of being cowed by this horrific attack, Malala began to use the international attention she attracted to advocate for the cause of girls' education worldwide. Through her speeches, her autobiography I Am Malala, the work of her fund, and her travels to places where girls' education is in crisis, she has continued to focus on the effort to give all girls safe schools, qualified teachers, and the materials they need to learn. The film He Named Me Malala both celebrates her dedication to this cause and gives the viewer insight into her motivation. It begins with an animated portrayal of the teenage folk hero for whom Malala was named, Malalai of Maiwand, whose fearlessness and love of country turned the tide of battle for Afghan fighters. From those opening scenes, live action and animation tell the story of Malala's life before and after the attack. We see her at various times of her life: severely wounded in the hospital, teasing her brothers in her new home in England, giving a speech to the United Nations, teaching a class in Kenya, and more. Her efforts are ongoing and they are realized through her organization, the Malala Fund, which "empowers girls through quality secondary education to achieve their potential and inspire positive change in their communities.""

""This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments, everyone can change and grow through application and experience." This is important because it can actually change what you strive for and what you see as success. By changing the definition, significance, and impact of failure, you change the deepest meaning of effort. In this mindset, the hand you're dealt is just the starting point for development. So how does this apply to learning and what can we do to help instill this attitude in our students?"

"I cannot count the number of times I've heard a colleague advise a student to do what makes them happy. Yet I wonder often how many teachers are happy in their jobs. In a 2012 survey, job satisfaction was at a 25-year low, teacher turnover is alarmingly high and costly, and morale is constantly under assault by social and political commentary. But who needs statistics? Just look around during a staff meeting to see the weight educators carry. In an effort to counter these patterns, stakeholders need to build systems of support for each other. It's even better when those support systems are grassroots efforts instead of mandated. One way I've done this for the past several years is through what I call the Hump Day Bump, a compilation of staff-to-staff notes of gratitude and compliments (bumps) emailed to staff each Wednesday."

As with many things in education, the outcome achieved will be a result of all that we do. Efforts to promote and empower student agency, voice and choice certainly falls into this category. We might have the best of intentions but unless each of our messaging systems align, we are unlikely to achieve success. So where do our efforts go wrong and what else might we change so that student agency is genuinely a part of our learning environment?

"In Visible Learning John Hattie basically says that almost everything we do in our efforts to help students in schools has a positive effect on students. However, much of what we do actually isn't terribly effective… despite our beliefs in these practices. (For example: Homework)"

"One question I seem to get a lot about the iPad is what apps do I recommend that are free. I am hearing from a lot of teachers that they have no way to add paid apps and thus are stuck trying to find free apps. My experience is that many free apps stink. They have many adds, require in app purchases to be useful, or are just junk. I tend to stay away from most free apps. So what are you to do if the district controls adding paid apps? My suggestion is to build relationships with the decision makers. Don't just ask for a bunch of apps, instead provide documentation and purpose for a few apps you would like to have. I know this process takes time and effort but if you can show the purpose and learning you have a much better chance. If you need lesson ideas I suggest checking out my Pinterest page, and three of my favorite Pinterest pages: iPadsammy, TechChef4u, and Sue Gorman. Look for apps and lesson ideas there and modify them to fit your standards and kids. If I was starting from scratch this is the $10 iPad app setup I would push for in my kindergarten classroom. (I will be posting a $20 setup later)"

"In less than a decade, Oregon State University went from not offering formal tech support to its faculty to having the director of its faculty tech training program, Jon Dorbolo, named one of this year's top 50 innovators in education. That's because in 2003, Dorbolo and his colleague Mark Dinsmore had a vision for how to turn their scattershot efforts at individual faculty tech support into something more scalable."

"I was teaching a math class probably about 10 years ago, and I remember one of my top students (academically) goofing around and distracting others. I talked to her about her behaviour, and how although she understood the material, others were having issues and she was disturbing their work. During the same class, I remember one of my struggling students, who was often a distraction in class, doing extremely well on an assignment. I went on to praise the student for the effort and how well he worked on this particular assignment. After class, the "high flyer" in my math class came up to me and said something that has stuck to me for awhile."

"Creating is important. In the West, traditional education has concentrated mainly on our heads, on filling them with knowledge. Little time and effort has been put into teaching students to be creative, to think widely (or often, deeply for that matter). In the past few decades, as our societies have advanced technologically, we have somehow arrived at the point where an education that places at least some emphasis on making actual real things with our hands and our minds is seen as second class, as "vocational." This is a mistake."

"A new study conducted by TRU provides a body of research which supports the idea that students use cell phones to learn, and also that schools are not acknowledging or supporting them fully, yet. This research supports the work of innovative educators who are guiding today's generation text and will help in the effort of getting more schools to stop fighting and start embracing student use of mobile devices for learning in school. Rather than banning, the study highlights the fact that if we meet children where they are we can leverage their use of mobile devices for powerful lear ning. T"

"Earlier this year, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York, visitors paraded through the fifth floor to see a retrospective dedicated to the abstract expressionist Frank Stella. Although many of the works on display were four or five decades old, in some ways the show felt tailor-made for the Instagram age: a riot of vibrant colors and textures, 20-foot-long reliefs, and sculptures as jagged and dynamic as 3-D graffiti. Visitors one busy Saturday afternoon stopped in front of artworks, lined up shots on their phones, snapped a few photos, and then moved on to the next piece. Some paused briefly to consider a particular painting; more stared down at their screens, furiously filtering. Few noticed an elderly gentleman sitting on a bench in one of the smaller rooms, watching the crowd engage with his work. The only visitor in the gallery not clutching a phone was Stella himself. Museum directors are grappling with how technology has changed the ways people engage with exhibits. But instead of fighting it, some institutions are using technology to convince the public that, far from becoming obsolete, museums are more vital than ever before. Here's what those efforts look like."

The potential for reliably predicting the outcome of any change effort is surely difficult if not even impossible once the number of influences becomes large. Acknowledging the complexity that exists and seeing the potential for growth, creativity and innovation that can exist within an organisation at 'the edge of chaos' are useful strategies as schools face a period of unprecedented change.