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Luminaria Educational Model

Luminaria is reimagining education to help children thrive in and build a more human and humane world of the future.

The Luminaria Model is structured around 5 key anchors to empower students to become effective architects of their future world: 1. Building knowledge from first principles, 2. Whole child development, 3. Multidisciplinary synthesis across SEL and STEM, 4. Delivering over 70% of learning in hands on design and making, 5. Ensuring that all learning has an authentic real world purpose and audience.

Victoria Australia
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Overview

HundrED has selected this innovation to

Victoria, Australia

Web presence

2017

Established

-

Children

1

Countries
Updated
March 2018
Our mission at Luminaria is to empower children to thrive in and build the world of the future — a future world that is anchored in humanity, and realized through invention.

About the innovation

What is the meaning and purpose of Education?

Our world is changing faster than ever before, and our children will live vastly different lives than the ones we know today. For our children to thrive and for human civilization to flourish in this new era, we urgently need to reimagine education.

How are you preparing your kids for a world where their playmates and future colleagues might be CRISPR-designed, or not even human?

We can’t entirely predict what the world of the future will look like. However, we can equip our children to be as prepared as possible for any version of the future world. To be resilient, lifelong learners who approach the world with curiosity and engaged empathy, who are as fluent in emotional intelligence as cognitive intelligence, and who can think independently and originally, and have the skills with which to architect this world ethically and compassionately.

Luminaria Educational Philosophy and Model

We are building an educational philosophy and model that’s built on 5 fundamental building blocks, and is scaffolded through a series of frameworks and tools:

  1. Building knowledge from first principles
  2. Whole child development across multiple axes: social, emotional, cognitive development and well being, capacity for design and making
  3. Multidisciplinary synthesis across SEL and STEM
  4. Delivering over 70% of learning in hands on design and making
  5. Ensuring that all learning has an authentic real world purpose and audience

Our entire philosophy and model are grounded on extensive, evidence based research across multiple disciplines. Here's a brief overview of some of our core foundational building blocks:

  • By learning how to think from first principles, children become much more capable of genuinely inventing rather than merely iterating
  • Additionally, learners are more capable of retaining and using knowledge effectively because they understand the fundamental building blocks and aren’t just memorizing content
  • An understanding of system structures enables students to see the similarities between seemingly different systems. For example, understanding how contagious diseases spread across populations helps students understand how a rumor spreads, how fake news propagates, or how a fashion trend grows.
  • When using systems thinking concepts and tools, many students show increased motivation, engagement, and self-esteem.
  • Learning which is physically active, involves gathering information, thinking, problem solving and attaining knowledge by participating or contributing has a significant advantage over passive approaches. 
  • Cultivating a nurturing, supportive, and safe environment is a fundamental prerequisite for each child's learning success. 
  • We believe that the crucial capabilities of emotional resilience and commitment to personal growth are ones that develop learners to their full potential through patient and dedicated practice, supported by validating relationships. 
  • We believe that every child can become a self confident, self-starting learner in a consistent and nurturing environment, and we work with children individually to strengthen their own intrinsic motivation. 

Impact & scalability

Implementation steps

Learn about the Luminaria Educational Model

We’re reimagining every part of the school experience — from how we craft learning experiences to strengthen childrens’ intrinsic motivation, to how children are assessed and evaluated, to how teachers work in teams, to how students move throughout the school during a day, to how we organize our physical spaces, to what tools students use to solve problems, to how students form collaborative learning partnerships with one another, to how students transform learning into invention for the benefit of real people — and much more, to bring schools into the modern era.

We’re building a set of frameworks for delivering whole school, whole system transformation. All of these frameworks are built upon our 5 educational building blocks.

To dive deeper into the educational model we’re building at Luminaria, please visit http://www.luminaria.org/philosophy/model/.


Learn how to think and teach from first principles

In a world that is defined by rapid and constant change, creativity and invention have now become the fundamental building blocks of societal progress. To be genuinely inventive, rather than merely iterative, we ourselves need to learn how to think differently, and our education systems need to reflect this.

What could be more powerful than to give children the capacity for truly independent thinking? What could be more revolutionary than to give children the superpower to see that if most of the systems shaping our daily lives are human constructed, they can also be reconstructed?

To read more about how you can think and teach from first principles, and the benefits of this method for learners, please read more at this blog post:

https://medium.com/luminaria/why-we-need-to-teach-from-first-principles-357266d89d24

Teach SEL and STEM holistically

For us, STEM isn’t just about coding, but rather the thinking frameworks and capacity that underpin specific skills. We focus on teaching from first principles and with a deep understanding of systems thinking, so that students can learn to see how all the parts connected into a holistic whole, with patterns that span across subject areas.

We also teach STEM holistically, synthesized with social, emotional, and civic context, rather than as content in silos. For instance, when we teach robotics, we don’t merely teach software, electronics, and algorithms, but we expand far beyond that, and teach the human and societal interdependencies as well. Our goal is to equip our children with the skills to build an even more human and humane technological future world.

Visit Us for an Educator Tour

Come and visit our first school implementation, Lumineer Academy, just outside of Melbourne, Australia. During our Educator workshops, we introduce you to first principles and design thinking.

If you'd like to come visit, please let us know by signing up here: http://www.lumineer.edu.au/visit/

How to Guide: Luminaria Ed Model

An Overall How-To Guide By HundrED Spotlight on Victoria

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