Across international contexts, an increasing number of learners engage in personalized, self-directed and community-based educational activities that unfold largely outside formal schooling. While these experiences are often rich, relational and meaningful, they remain difficult to document, interpret and formally recognise within conventional, curriculum-based educational frameworks. This poster presents Full Circle Learning (FCL), a documentation and reflection tool developed by Clonlara School, an international off-campus school supporting learners in diverse, non-traditional educational contexts. FCL has been designed to make informal, interest-driven and community-embedded educational practices visible, readable and recognisable as educational achievement, without reducing them to linear curricula or standardised outcomes. The poster draws on a qualitative document analysis of student-created FCL learning reports, conducted using a Grounded Theory methodology, to explore how educational practices are articulated and made meaningful within this framework. Rather than conceptualising education as a linear learning pathway, the analysis reveals multi-layered educational ecosystems composed of social relations, places, everyday practices, material engagements, digital environments and personal meaning-making processes. These ecosystems emerge through participation, mobility and ongoing engagement in everyday life contexts. The development and ongoing refinement of the FCL tool is embedded in the work of a small pedagogical research and think tank unit within Clonlara School, an international off-campus education organisation, where practice-based educational research is used to better understand emerging forms of education beyond school and to iteratively adapt pedagogical processes and tools. By conceptualising education as ecosystems of practices, this poster contributes to debates on educational innovation beyond formal, curriculum-centred schooling.

Authors:
Mireille Schülpke, Clonlara School, United States

About the Presenter(s)
"Rosenrot" Mireille Schülpke holds the position of Pedagogical Research Director of Clonlara School / Ann Arbor / Michigan / USA. As a German citizen, she lives in Paris / France.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Monday Schedule

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