Carmel Kent's Reflections on Opening The Harbour in Oxford

Opening The Harbour, a Self Managed Learning centre in Oxford, brought together two strands of my life that had rarely met — my academic and personal journeys. As an academic, I explored teacher training, social learning, learning communities, and AI in education (https://www.oxford-harbour.org/carmel-kent). But it wasn’t until I was personally slammed (headfirst) into the reality of “emotionally-based school avoidance” (EBSA) that I realised that my fortune of joyfully experiencing curiosity-led learning throughout most of my life was not shared with most young people in this country (https://petergray.substack.com/p/69-uk-school-reform-led-to-declines). Like many others now, I was violently woken from a dream about an inclusive education system, to realise that the fundamental human right of learning joyfully, to become self-sufficient citizens in a democratic country, was taken away from so many young people. A human right that the leaders of their democratic country took away in bare hands. I found that whole cultures, familial and communal rich contexts, were left shamefully outside of the school gates (https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/12/10/683). Even more horridly, I discovered that the young people who are affected the most are disabled and neurodivergent young people (Are We Ready to Release the Canaries). And if that wasn’t enough to shock me into action, I realised that this was done cynically by exploiting scientific evidence drawn from the Learning Sciences.

 

I did what I usually do to find my head around puzzles: delved into the same body of knowledge from the learning sciences, to find evidence-based pedagogies and strategies that could paint a different way of learning. Was there an environment that could allow young people, whoever they are and wherever they come from, to enjoy learning while staying true to who they are, and to prepare them to become adaptive adults in an ever-changing world? Was there a proven way to tap into young people’s internal motivation to keep the same curiosity spark they had when they learnt about the world, BEFORE they went into school?

 

It took me a while to find Ian Cunningham’s Self Managed Learning (SML). But once I got there, Ian generously opened the doors to his world, and boy, was that an Alice in Wonderland experience! From theory, into hard evidence, into practice: SML was working. And it was magic—short and long-term impact. The three elements of the Learning Agreement, Learning Group and Learning Community, woven together and supported by a set of educational practices around self-regulated learning, social learning, democratic learning and self-determination, gave exactly the kind of educational framework that I was looking for, allowing young people to self-direct their learning within clear structures, dynamically exploring goals and pathways to achieve them, and finding ways to assess their own progress within a safe, autonomic and a fun(!) environment.

 

Together with Gloria Azcona, a linguistic and a highly appreciated teacher who, like me, woke up from the dream to find another way to support young people,we finally launched The Harbour (https://www.oxford-harbour.org) in 2023. The Harbour is a learning community supporting 18 young people, aged 11-18, who learn outside of school.

 

Since then, I have also served as the Director of the Centre for Self Managed Learning in Brighton, and The Harbour has expanded to work also in schools and to offer a hybrid learning programme for young people who want to explore the online world as well.

 

Being part of an SML learning community is not just a steep learning curve for us educators and parents; it is the most rewarding experience I could have granted myself: the impact on young people lights us up every day. Can you imagine? Every day.

 

We all work hard. For young people, as well as adults, following the SML process can be challenging, especially as it is about developing the skills that they were never challenged with: finding out who they are, where they want to go, which skills and knowledge domains they need to work on and what way could best work for them right now in order to get there. It’s not easy at all, and it is our way to support young people’s development by enabling them to experience the chaos of self-directed learning, but still maintain a clear plan forward and keep themselves accountable for it.

 

We see them joining us with a shattered self-esteem, often with a crashing school trauma. They and their parents usually come to us experiencing burnout, anxiety and a sense of being pushed away from their communities. Within months, and many times weeks, we see them opening up, arriving enthusiastically, never missing a session, learning to trust, taking the lead in our community, developing new interests, starting new projects, and supporting and inspiring others with kindness and maturity. After years of struggling to attend school or take part in any learning, many times being tagged as ‘disruptive, hard or disengaged’, we see a growing sense of pride and self-belief shining through in the way young people manage challenges calmly, learn joyfully and talk with real optimism about their future. And that's worth it all.

Carmel Kent