Cathedral’s Investigation & Innovation Hub provides an additional learning space for pupils, beyond their classroom and learning street, to engage and collaborate in investigation, enquiry, problem solving and open-ended projects.

The World Economic Forum stated that, by 2025, the top five skills employers will be looking for include innovation, complex problem solving, critical thinking, creativity and originality. Cathedral’s Investigation & Innovation Hub aims to develop these skills in our young learners and prepare them for life and employment in a fast-changing world.

Let’s take a typical day working for LEGO as an example:

• Workspace set-up: no assigned desks—employees choose spaces based on their tasks and mood, thanks to LEGO’s flexible office model.
• Team collaboration: brainstorming with colleagues, reviewing prototypes and evaluating designs.
• Hands-on building: using bricks to test concepts, refine models, and prepare for product launches.
• Feedback & review: presenting ideas to others for feedback.

There will be similar working practices in any innovative, forward-thinking company including Apple, Audi or even M&S Food.

At the heart of Cathedral’s Active8 approach is an an appropriate balance of adult-led, adult-initiated and learner-led learning. Sitting alongside high-quality direct teaching (whether whole-class or in smaller groups) are several key features which, in many ways, resemble working for LEGO:

• Flexible timetabling, set out on the Active8 task-board, rather than fixed subject blocks;
• Learners leading and taking responsibility for their own learning;
• Learners being able to choose from a range of activities, with the freedom to decide the order in which they complete them, and being personally responsible for managing their own time;
• Learners having free access to learning spaces and resources;
• An emphasis on creativity and exploration, with activities often including collaborative, hands-on learning and open-ended enquiry-based projects;
• Teachers not simply acting as instructors but also as facilitators who guide learners rather than control and direct every activity.

There is a specific emphasis within Cathedral’s Investigation & Innovation Hub on developing the four creativity skills:

CURIOSITY… find out something new

• Inquire
• Observe
• Research

 

OPEN-MINDEDNESS… try something in a different way

• Listen
• Think differently
• Explore

 

IMAGINATION… try out new ideas

• Come up with ideas
• Select from the best
• Invent

 

PROBLEM SOLVING… think differently and don’t give up

• Identify
• Think differently
• Present solutions

To support Cathedral learners to effectively and efficiently collaborate in investigations and open-ended projects, they regularly take on specific team roles:

• Team Captain
• Supplies Manager
• Chief Architect
• Master Builder
• Testing Co-ordinator

Of course, everything described above isn’t just confined to the Investigation and Innovation Hub. Cathedral learners take and apply all of these approaches and skills back in their classrooms, learning streets and beyond.