Transfer of agile working methods into the school environment

As early as 2016, a lively exchange developed between Creaholic and the school management of the Wädenswil Upper School on how agile methodology can support schools with their further development.

Based on this, the first joint training sessions were held at schools. Since 2019, we have been holding training sessions for school management and teachers together with the Iqes team of consultants: The participants are introduced to agile basic values and ways of thinking as well as tools and methods to then begin to apply them. In this way, they experience how they can react to the challenges in the school system by constantly adapting to new situations and by means of conducting small experiments.

Besides having been invited to work on site at schools and with pedagogical institutions, we have been able to share our work multiple times at major business as well as educational conferences. For example, in 2022 we have been invited to the 2. Digitalkongress – Fachtag für digitale Bildung (Baden-Württemberg, Germany) or in 2021 at the Agile Leadership Day (Zurich, Switzerland).

Together with Frido Koch from Iqes Online, Christoph Frei shared experiences and insights on the transfer of agile working methods into the school environment.

Three takeaways from previous conference talks:

• Agility and school development are a perfect match: complexity can be addressed, team collaboration strengthened and at the same time future working environments can be exemplified.

• Agile mindset, methods and ceremonies should be used at all levels of a school environment to create a consistent application and common understanding and thus avoid agility islands.

• In order to achieve rapid and sustainable success when using suitable elements of agile collaboration, these must always be translated and adapted to the respective existing school operation - in terms of language, content as well as context.

In addition to other interviews focused on Developing Schools in an Agile Way and Agile Learning in Schools sets, we were particularly honoured to answer some questions from Agile for Collaboration, an EU-funded project committed to promoting agile learning as a collaborative approach to education in Europe.

The card sets have also been recognised or referenced in various publications, including Handbuch Lernen mit digitalen Medien, Kompass digitaler Wandel, and the Appcamps website. Notably, the University of Teacher Education Vienna and the Centre de Documentation pédagogique from Luxenburg have featured the project in its reading recommendations, highlighting the on-going relevance and impact of the card sets.