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The Qwisp Map

The Qwisp Map is the learners anchor and guide, providing a structure to work from, continuity, direction, context, and content, and encouraging them to venture into the universe in search of knowledge. They will return with knowledge and wisdom.

The template has two specific goals:

The first is to lead learners through a thought sequence that will bring them to understanding who they are, how they fit into the world, how to survive with responsibility and the consequences of mindfulness or the lack thereof. The thought sequence is essential to a meaningful understanding of the topic.

The route itself contains our sense of purpose and is a constant reminder of the value of our journey and our destination in the learning process – survival – ours and the planets. It is also a constant reference point for all users: Teachers for their syllabus and learners to understand context all the time.

The second goal is to guide the learner’s journey while simultaneously opening avenues that lead to deeper and wider exploration of the topics of learning and their personal interests.

The core of each journey’s work will be prescribed by the teacher/school but with plenty of leads  for learners to explore their own passions in their own time, or, for faster learners when they are done with the class work. The advantage  is that no child needs to feel left behind or held back; they are secure in the presence of the Qwisp Map and will not lose their bearings easily. If they do, they will find their way back more and more easily as they get used to the map.

The template provides the opportunity to map our entire life journeys, so that we have a clear idea through our ‘aerial view’ of where we fit into the greater picture. This can assist learners in ascertaining where their strengths can best be used when choosing where to invest their energies or in making career decisions.

The template is based on our humanity and has no cultural elements in its’ most basic form, so it does not impose anything cultural onto the user.

Needs and Environment

All Qwisp learning is based on the planetary resources that are essential to us as human beings in terms of what we need to survive. Using them as topics of learning raises the learners awareness of the critical role that natural resources play in our survival. They also easily evolve into conventional subjects when the time is right.

Qwisp aims to make it second nature to humanity to live in harmony with the environment because we have understood that the resources that we are dependent on are in turn dependent on other resources and so on, through a web of interdependence. Consequently, this web of interdependence requires our respect, our guardianship, and a committed ethical approach to the environment. Qwisp is designed to ensure that this understanding is internalised from a young age for lasting and heartfelt effect so that learners become responsible adults making respectful decisions in their place of occupation, be it at home or at a workplace.

Needs and Humanity

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.

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.                 

Using these essential needs as topics can internalise the fundamental sameness of cultures across the world and could free learning from cultural bias.

Using essential needs as topics asserts that nature declared us as equals from the outset.

Learning within this mind set awakens compassion, care, equality, and guardianship.

Pedagogically Speaking

Learning that is based on needs makes the starting point of the learning process an instinctive place and not an intellectual level, making learning more accessible through ease of connection to the subject matter and also through diminished fear of personal intellectual capacity. The learner is less likely to suffer feelings of inadequacy.

Qwisp creates a strong connection between the learner and the learning process, making it a personal experience that is connected to their everyday lives, their common sense and their spontaneous energies.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) wrote that education should be shaped to the child and that the child should be allowed to develop naturally.

Using the self as the origin of a learning process immediately inspires confidence in  young learners while at the same time it anchors their learning in the most familiar part of their lives and gives them a constant point of reference, all of which will benefit their learning throughout their lives. The Learner is at the centre of the journey, this facilitates ownership of the learning process and is the first step to independence.

Starting the learning journey at the ‘self’ introduces the perception that I am at the centre of the universe BUT you are at the centre of your universe. I am as important to me as you are to you. This can lead to a better understanding and deeper integration of the concept of equality among all people.

Despite seeing the world from a self-centred position, we learn that we will not survive if we don’t help everything around us to survive. 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. This engenders empathy rather than judgement.

Qwisp does not condone selfishness but rather imparts an attitude of taking care of the self in a way that develops an emotionally and intellectually robust character, thus being self-centred, in order to have the emotional and intellectual resources that enable us to play our part in caring for and acting responsibly towards the rest of the ecosystem. A person who has centred themselves by having found and developed their inner core is of great value to everyone around them and we all have an inner core with great potential.

On the Qwisp journey the subject matter becomes very personal so that by the time the journey reaches the phase where we consider responsibilities, these clearly belong to me and everyone around me. My function and consumption on earth, however small, is still a function and consumption so I do make a difference.

We learn the difference between selfishness and self-centredness. Where selfish is considered to be ‘void of regard for others’ (Chambers 1983) while self-centredness in our context is ‘centred in self’ (Chambers 1983).

Natural mind energies, such as curiosity, intuition, instinct, imagination, creativity and more, are stimulated by questions, creating a stream of mind energy. The Qwisp Map harnesses them as powerful energies that give impetus and value to the learning journey.

Engaging spontaneous energies into the learning process gives these very personal human qualities their rightful place in learning because they create an interactive relationship of give and take between the learner and learning; they boost self-esteem and give the learner a really good chance of becoming an independent thinker.

They are also a direct expression of our inner beings and therefore express our individuality, help to show us who we are, and play a strong role in problem-solving and innovation.

Some teaching methods have convinced teachers and learners that these energies are not scientific enough for a rigorous education. Qwisp believes that they are the essence of our beings, our original thoughts and, in combination with knowledge, the starting point of innovative ideas.  

Perhaps we will discover that much of the problem with current education is that learners are expected to shut out the core of who they are when they come to school, resulting in frustration, diminishment of self-esteem, and rebellion. They have no voice in the learning structure and are forced to shed their identity. They are under the impression that only the knowledge that comes from outside of themselves is real knowledge.

The questions bore down into each topic, revealing the invisible parts of science - the building blocks of life.

They are sought out in nature, humanity, science, mathematics, music, language and more, revealing the underlying structures and patterns that keep our universe in harmonious action.

It is through this process of deconstruction that learning evolves from the everyday terminology that we use for concepts and for living matter and non-living matter, into the scientific terminology that is used for matter and processes.                                        

This is where a robust foundation for the sciences can be established at an everyday level, and where we see the sciences in our topics before they evolve and are separated out into their specialist paths.                                                                                                               

This process is intended to provide a slipway from basic science education into high school science and beyond.

Patterns are important because they form the underlying structure of all life. 

Cycles are important because they illustrate how different forms of life connect to each other and the planetary cycles.

Deconstructing any matter into building blocks will reveal patterns and cycles that, in turn, will reveal how they connect to their environment. As learning proceeds, connections will multiply to reveal the  interconnection and interdependency of all life on the planet.

These insights reinforce humanitarian teachings and our humanitarian instincts of care and respect for all forms of life.

Researchers have found that discovering and understanding patterns assists learners on various levels:

1. Patterns help us to understand relationships in nature, mathematics, music, language and more.

2.  Understanding patterns on a basic level equips the advanced learner to find patterns and solutions on a complex level and enables them to rearrange and manipulate patterns for problem solving.

3. They learn the role of patterns in understanding and extending scientific knowledge.

4. They can prepare the learner for insights into the patterns and cycles created by ourselves in business, town planning, engineering, medicine and more.

5. Understanding the structural patterns in mathematics, language, nature, music, and art give order to areas of life that we could find overwhelmingly chaotic.

6. Patterns form the underlying structures in all of the arts, science and mathematics:

Qwisp has many pedagogic advantages, for example, three-dimensional learning, context, relevance, and direction.

Two more advantages are the activities created by the  question sequence – looping and spiralling.

As it loops from module to module the loop activity creates a continuum of learning from simple to complex and concrete to abstract, as it moves through the modules, slipping the learner seamlessly through their grades . . .

. . . so that the repetition of the questions will result in a process of learning that spirals more deeply and broadly each year, boring into the detail, covering more facts and deepening understanding.

These two activities also add a measure of consolidation of prevous learning - perhaps consciously, perhaps uncosciously.

Everything that lives is wired for survival.

Survival is our strongest instinct.

In prehistoric times, when life was about living in caves and hunting to stay alive, human activity was focused on fulfilling daily needs; living in reach of water, hunting and gathering for food, finding or creating shelter from the weather and safety from predators.

People were wholly dependent on their instincts, intuition, common sense, creativity and more (spontaneous energies) to solve the daily challenges of staying alive.

We are still wired for survival and indeed survival remains our strongest instinct, but our spontaneous energies have lost their status in our learning process and our set of survival tools.

If we use survival needs as the starting point for our learning, we could rekindle constructive and enriching values in our lives and bring our spontaneous energies back into play. These would give us a better chance of learning to really survive, thrive and secure the future of our planet. This combination would keep us rooted to the ground , taking care of our existence while stirring up the mind energies to create a safe future alongside technology, 4IR and whatever else the future brings.