Children as Researchers

The Joy of Not Knowing Even More

The Joy of Not Knowing (JONK) approach has been proven to develop a lifelong love of learning and intrinsic motivation in children. Now Marcelo Staricoff shows how it is enabling children to become leaders within a whole-school learning environment, which is allowing them to contribute in ways that were previously thought impossible.

In two previous articles entitled ‘The Joy of Not Knowing (JONK)’ and ‘Nurturing Creative Thinking from an Early Age’ (CTL, 2013) I described how a whole-school JONK culture and philosophy of education enables children to develop a lifelong love of learning and an intrinsic motivation for wanting to learn. These articles illustrated how the JONK approach, from a very early age, equips children with the skills and dispositions that enable them to become effective leaders of their own learning.  

In this article I will describe how the JONK approach is now also enabling the children to become leaders of whole-school learning and how the infrastructure that JONK sets up is enabling children to contribute to many areas of school improvement, to the school’s strategic decision-making machinery and to the overall philosophy of education of the school. This is why we are now enjoying the JONK approach even more than we ever imagined possible. 

At the heart of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is the vision that organisations that work with children should develop structures and systems that seek and respond to children’s ideas in order to achieve positive change. The JONK approach (Figure 1) sets out to do exactly this within a school setting by creating a values-led ethos, culture and approach to education in which everyone feels equally valued as an individual, as a learner, as a citizen, and as source of unique ideas and innovative creative thinking.

Figure 1: The JONK Ethos Wheel shows how the values ensure that children’s rights are met and the conditions established that enable all children to become successful lifelong learners who are able to make positive contributions to their communities.

It has been fascinating to see how the versatility of the JONK approach has enabled children’s collective voice to be at the forefront of many of the schools’ leadership decision-making processes. There are three areas in which this has had a particular impact and I will now describe these in detail:

  1. Children acting as leaders of school improvement and the school development plan (SDP)
  2. Children as contributors to the school’s model of excellence and enjoyment (MEE) and to the teaching and learning process 
  3. Children leading their own initiatives and introducing enrichment opportunities for all, beyond the classroom setting and beyond the school day. 

Learning Leaders as leaders of school improvement and the school development plan

In the previous articles I described how central to the JONK approach is the JONK ‘Learning to Learn Week’ (LTLW). The LTLW, which launches the academic year, is designed to provide children with all the requirements that enable them to be able to access the curriculum and to become successful individuals, lifelong learners and global citizens. It has been fascinating to see how the LTLW is now also inspiring children to become leaders and influencers of whole-school improvement. 

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