Education is in crisis. The rapidly changing technological environment coupled with the widespread devastation of our natural environment has left humanity floundering. We are inextricably linked to our environments and each other on a global scale. It is time that our general approach to education reflects this.

Qwisp® offers a new approach to education with human equality and sustainability as the cornerstones. The process is facilitated by the QwispMap®, a simple mind map structure that comprises trigger points of four questions that are repeated yearly in a spiral of continual learning. Learners are guided to understand who they are, what is around them, how they fit into the world, how to survive responsibly, and the consequences of a lack of mindfulness.

By focusing on universal needs, it can be illustrated that the similarities between all living things (plants, animals and humans) create an interconnected and interdependent web. Basing education on this premise facilitates the realisation that good ethics are synonymous with survival and not a disconnected issue requiring isolated self-discipline.

Qwisp® is a curriculum framework designed to be used as a tool for lifelong learning. The Qwisp® educational model can provide children with the practical, intellectual and emotional wherewithal to face life as a challenge with awareness, respect, confidence, responsibility, knowledge and pride in their own sense of having a positive contribution to make to our global cause.

The Qwisp® Concept

Qwisp® is essentially a framework of guidelines on which a comprehensive curriculum, which leads the child naturally from the simple to the complex by revisiting areas of knowledge, can be built. The concept was initially inspired by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and embraces some of the philosophies of Rousseau, Vygotsky, Dewey, Piaget and Bruner.

The Qwisp® framework provides an organising structure for information and a map of the terrain to be learned. It provides a continuum for the education process to flow from early childhood smoothly into primary and high school levels.

It embraces the individual’s creativity and imagination as sources of energy for learning and self-discovery with the emphasis on holistic learning through patterns, covering all subjects and providing many opportunities for philosophical contemplation with scientific rigour.

Spontaneous Energies

The third element of QwispMap: My Spontaneous Energies

Needs awaken all the spontaneous energies that are required to fulfill our needs.

Learning is also a need – we must learn in order to survive – so learning should also awaken our spontaneous energies.

Needs and spontaneous energies can be harnessed into a powerful energy stream for driving a learning process.

Some thoughts on some of our spontaneous energies

Our spontaneous energies are a natural response to our needs:

Needs and Instinct

Instinct is ‘the natural impulse by which animals are guided apparently independently of reason or experience.’ (Chambers Dictionary, 1971)

All living creatures seek to fulfil certain needs instinctively; food, air, water, shelter, safety, love and many more. We know, without being taught, what most of our needs are, but we require guidance in ‘how’ to fulfil them.

Giving ourselves credit for what we instinctively know is empowering and teachers and learners will grow in confidence and independence when they discover how many solutions they can access from their own resources.

If we understand the role that needs play in our existence, we understand how much we can trust our instinctive knowledge.

Needs and Curiosity

Curiosity expresses itself through a myriad of questions. We ask questions with our eyes and voice before we have a vocabulary.
We want to know! We want to understand life and the world.

Our natural curiosity draws us into the exploration of our formative and informative environment. It leads us into the unknown where we find more questions and challenges. We find issues that can remain a quiet curiosity or can kickstart a drive to know . . . all of which instigate problem-solving activities.
So curiosity is a useful tool for our learning expedition.

Needs and Intuition

Intuition is the power of the mind by which it immediately perceives the truth of things without reasoning or analysis. (Chambers Dictionary, 1971)

Perhaps intuition is then what helps us make decisions about things we discover while we’re being curious:

Instinct guides our search for answers to our curiosity questions, we observe the areas of life that hold possible answers and often find multiple options. Intuition will guide our choice of answer to an option that best suits our judgement and the option becomes an answer.

So we could say that we have a kind of independent learning mechanism within each of us and that the following process occurs without much effort:
From a base of instinctive knowledge we venture into the unknown because of our curiosity.

• We make discoveries.
• We weigh up the information that the discoveries offer against our intuition and accept or reject the options as personal truths accordingly.

Apart from curiosity, instinct and intuition offering energy to a learning process at school, they combine to create a learning process in each individual which eventually becomes their personal/self-constructed knowledge.

We also see from the above how spontaneous energies stimulate each other, adding strength to their activity and mind flow.

Needs and Creativity

Through the ages creativity is the human factor that has helped us to survive the changes that we have brought about.

The history of technology is also a record of human creativity. 

Some education systems 'teach' creativity by offering art, music and dance as 'subjects'. These are wonderful forms of self-expression and a very important part of our emotional well-being but they do not always include the enormous capacity we have for problem-solving beyond our emotional lives.

Apart from the arts, creativity includes solving problems from our own resources.

When we combine common-sense with our intuition and instinct for survival, we are unwittingly engaging our creative powers and so creativity becomes an integrated element of our learning process and in its’ turn stimulates our other innate energies so that we set an inner activity in motion.

Left and right brain activities are no longer a separate issue because they simply exist within this process.

Needs and Common-sense

Common sense is a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things that are shared by (“common to”) nearly all people and can reasonably be expected of nearly all people without need for debate.

Everybody has some degree of common-sense. Common sense is a treasure trove of insights, sound judgements and good sense.

Acknowledging common-sense as having a valuable role to play in the learning process does at least five things:

• It strengthens our self-image when we recognise that we can contribute solutions to a problem from our own insights.
• Acknowledging common sense and other spontaneous energies in the learning process assures the learner that not all learning is highly intellectual or only for academic prestation.
• People who don’t see themselves as intellectuals would feel less intimidated by the learning process, giving them the psychological freedom to spread their wings and indulge in their particular strengths and passions. This could spread success rates over a broad spectrum of knowledge and know-how.
• While overvaluing academics in the world of learning we have undervalued vital contributors to society. Valuing common sense would go a long way in redressing this imbalance.
• Addressing the imbalance creates a great sense of inclusiveness, reinforcing the realisation that we are all equal players in the world and equally responsible for its survival.

Education across the globe is in crisis. The unprecedented IT revolution and cross-cultural demands on schools are enormous challenges that are hard to meet. It is increasingly difficult for teachers to facilitate a learner’s development in terms of self-confidence and sense of place in society and the world.

The aims of a curriculum should be to ensure that all children are provided with learning opportunities that recognise and celebrate their uniqueness, develop their full potential and prepare them to meet the challenges of the 21st century. ( Curriculum guidelines for Irish Primary Schools).The focus should be on the child as learner as well as an emotional and spiritual being.

Children’s education should give them hope for their future. It should provide them with the practical, intellectual and emotional wherewithal to face life as a challenge with awareness, respect, confidence, responsibility, knowledge and pride in their own sense of having a positive contribution to make.

‘Sustainable development cannot be achieved by technological solutions, political regulation or financial instruments alone. We need to change the way we think and act. This requires quality education and learning for sustainable development at all levels and in all social contexts. ‘

http://en.unesco.org/themes/education-sustainable-development#sthash.khT23lSg.dpuf

Furthermore, to the detriment of learning, the concepts of context, continuity, natural intellectual development and consolidation are not fully met by any one system of education.

The Qwisp® Concept

In essence Qwisp® is a framework of guidelines on which to construct a comprehensive curriculum, leading the child naturally from the simple to the complex by revisiting areas of knowledge repeatedly but each time with more depth and breadth.

Its’ emphasis on learning through patterns facilitates the introduction of science at a young age.

The framework provides an organising structure for information and a map of the terrain to be learned, with the purpose of learning ever-present. It embraces the individual’s creativity and imagination as sources of energy for learning and self-discovery.

The tool is an open-ended, organic tool that facilitates the bridging of the gap between what a child knows or can do already with what they would be able to do with assistance. It requires the teacher to take the lead in covering the curriculum but allows the learner to set off independently into related areas of their own choice and thus into the realms of the internet and reference books.

The structure provides a continuum for the education process to flow from early childhood smoothly into primary and high school levels.

It is holistic because of the subjects that it covers as well as the fact that it is imbued with a spirit of awareness, respect and responsibility and that it provides much opportunity for philosophical contemplation.

Globally, we are inextricably linked to our environments and each other. Different environments have created different cultures but in our needs we are simply all equal.  

By focusing on universal needs, a powerful undercurrent of similarities between people of all cultures, animals and plants can be created. Awareness of this mutual interdependence is a powerful force in shaping our attitudes to many facets of life and can impact meaningfully on the material, emotional and spiritual make-up of each individual.  

It can engender empathy rather than judgement.

By exploring this interdependence at a primary school level, children can learn how taking care of others means taking care of themselves and vice versa. From this is born the realisation that good ethics are synonymous with survival and not a disconnected issue requiring isolated self-discipline.

Education is in crisis. The rapidly changing technological environment coupled with the widespread devastation of our natural environment has left humanity floundering. We are inextricably linked to our environments and each other on a global scale. It is time that our general approach to education reflects this.

Qwisp® offers a new approach to education with human equality and sustainability as the cornerstones. The process is facilitated by the QwispMap®, a simple mind map structure that comprises trigger points of four questions that are repeated yearly in a spiral of continual learning. Learners are guided to understand who they are, what is around them, how they fit into the world, how to survive responsibly, and the consequences of a lack of mindfulness.

By focusing on universal needs, it can be illustrated that the similarities between all living things (plants, animals and humans) create an interconnected and interdependent web. Basing education on this premise facilitates the realisation that good ethics are synonymous with survival and not a disconnected issue requiring isolated self-discipline.

Qwisp® is a curriculum framework designed to be used as a tool for lifelong learning. The Qwisp® educational model can provide children with the practical, intellectual and emotional wherewithal to face life as a challenge with awareness, respect, confidence, responsibility, knowledge and pride in their own sense of having a positive contribution to make to our global cause.

Qwisp® is essentially a framework of guidelines on which a comprehensive curriculum, which leads the child naturally from the simple to the complex by revisiting areas of knowledge, can be built. The concept was initially inspired by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and embraces some of the philosophies of Rousseau, Vygotsky, Dewey, Piaget and Bruner.

The Qwisp® framework provides an organising structure for information and a map of the terrain to be learned. It provides a continuum for the education process to flow from early childhood smoothly into primary and high school levels.

It embraces the individual’s creativity and imagination as sources of energy for learning and self-discovery with the emphasis on holistic learning through patterns, covering all subjects and providing many opportunities for philosophical contemplation with scientific rigour.

Where to from here?

The Vision

Qwisp® has the potential to become a global educational app. It is also well-suited to form the framework for a series of workbooks for learners who do not yet have access to the internet.

About the Qwisp Design

Qwisp® presents a proposal for one tool, a specifically designed QwispMap® that puts ‘self’ at the centre of learning and yet, is globally applicable. 

Each learning journey takes a high-impact need as its subject matter. The route is repeated at every level. By revisiting areas of knowledge, each time in more depth, the journey is essentially an evolving spiral, constantly growing more complex.

Repetition facilitates memory and reinforces consolidation. Discovery avoids boredom as each level delves deeper into the subject matter.

Learning is constantly contextualised because the learner is in direct contact with the point of reference: the self, and the destination: survival and flourishing, making the subject matter personal and anchored in the familiar. 

The substructure of the QwispMap® is a pattern in itself, a sequence of thoughts. Patterns emerge as learning mechanisms and awaken an awareness of the planet being an interconnected mass of patterns that together form an enormous ecosystem of which we are a part. 

The QwispMap® triggers a network of study topics and lessons, providing leads, further questions and points of debate, multiple options and possible solutions and answers. Learners are led through a thought sequence from which the lessons or research possibilities emanate and inspire philosophical contemplation.

The perfect learning partner for this scenario is the internet as it enables independent study at the learner’s own pace.

The QwispMap® works with 5 interactive components: the self, my basic human needs, my spontaneous mind energies, questions, and my survival and flourishing the energies that ignite Qwisp®.

·     

The Self

The first element of the QwispMap: Me - the Self

Learner Value

We are all naturally curious about ourselves and that curiosity gives us the impetus to learn.

Qwisp® imparts an attitude of taking care of the self in a way that develops an emotionally and intellectually robust character. A person who has centred themselves by having found and developed their inner core is of great value to everyone around them. This can lead to a better understanding and deeper integration of the concept of equality in all life.

Because Qwisp® uses  ’self’ as its point of departure in the learning journey, the learner ‘owns’ the learning journey and ‘owns’ the joys and challenges along the way. There is, therefore, hope that the responsibilities that emerge will similarly be ‘owned’.

We are drawn into the realisation that we are all part of the same interdependent network and that we are all in the same struggle for survival with the same challenges. Self-centredness can diminish selfishness and engender mindfulness, care and empathy.

Needs

The second element of the QwispMap: My Basic Needs

Fundamental needs, like air, water and food, are inherent to every living entity. We are programmed with needs in order to survive and we are instinctively driven to fulfil them.

The needs that Qwisp® learning journeys are based on are the needs that are essential to life and the source of spontaneous energies. These two human qualities in combination have the potential to become an extremely powerful tool for learning the modern art of survival.

Qwisp® separates the needs that are truly indispensable from those that we have come to believe are indispensable, providing learners with a realistic vantage point from which to create a value system.

Learning that is based on needs makes knowledge more accessible to everyone by making the starting point of the learning process an instinctual place and not an intellectual level.

As we grow and develop, our needs shift, keeping our curiosity in constant play with our environment and our minds in step with contemporary life.

Globally, we are all inextricably linked to our environments and to each other by our needs. Using needs as the basis for learning exposes the web of connectivity between all lives on earth and creates a global learning model for humane, peaceful and sustainable societies.

Spontaneous Energies

The third element of QwispMap: My Spontaneous Energies

Our spontaneous energies are a natural response to our needs awakened by our desire to fulfil these needs. Needs and spontaneous energies can be harnessed into a powerful energy stream for driving the learning process.

All living creatures seek to fulfil certain needs instinctively: food, air, water, shelter, safety, love and many more. We know, without being taught, what most of our needs are but we require guidance in ‘how’ to fulfil them.

Giving ourselves credit for what we instinctively know is empowering. If we understand the role that needs play in our existence, we understand how much we can trust our instinctive knowledge.

Our natural curiosity draws us into the exploration of our formative and informative environment. It leads us into the unknown where we find more questions and challenges.

Instinct guides our search for answers to our questions borne from curiosity, we observe the areas of life that hold possible answers and often find multiple options. Intuition will guide our choice of answer to an option that best suits our judgement and this option becomes an answer which will later be proven or disproven through experience.

Apart from curiosity, instinct, and intuition fuelling the learning process at school, they combine to create a blueprint in each individual which eventually becomes their personal, self-constructed knowledge base.

The combination of our common-sense, our intuition and our instinct for survival, ignites our creative powers and so creativity becomes an integral element of our learning process and in turn stimulates our other innate energies.

Acknowledging common-sense as a valuable part of the learning process strengthens our self-image when we recognise that we can contribute solutions to a problem from our own insights. It makes people who don’t see themselves as intellectuals feel less intimidated by the learning process which in turn will reinforce the realisation that we are all equal players in the world and equally responsible for its survival.

Questions for a World in Sustainable Perspective

The fourth element of the QwispMap: 4 questions to lead me on my quest for knowledge and survival

Questioning, in all its forms, is a natural, unstoppable mental activity. Questions are the roots of a learner’s 'tree of knowledge'. Questioning opens the mind to adventure and discovery. The thought activity in questioning awakens other spontaneous energies, promoting creativity and imagination.

The Qwisp® questions build upon this innate mental activity, guiding the learner into a knock-on thought sequence through a spiral learning experience where the knowledge deepens and broadens as their questioning becomes more focused and goal-driven, leading them to discover the ultimate aim of knowledge: for each individual to survive and thrive and help others to do the same. 

Surviving and Flourishing

The last element of the QwispMap: My survival and flourishing

Survival is our strongest instinct. We are wired with needs and spontaneous energies, both of which are crucial to our survival.

In prehistoric times, human activity was focused on fulfilling daily needs. People were wholly dependent on their instincts, intuition, common sense, creativity, and learning by observation to solve the daily challenges of staying alive.

Qwisp® seeks to reinstate the connection between survival, learning, needs and spontaneous energies as this will bring energy to the learning process and give creativity, imagination, reasoning and many more natural mental activities their rightful place in our education and well-being. This will give us a better chance of learning to survive, thrive and secure the sustainable future of our planet.