Hands on Learning as an Enabling Space

The Hands on Learning (HOL) method uses a preventative approach that targets at risk young people, to specifically build enduring multi-year relationships with them in a safe, informal setting. It privileges the development of their social skills through teamwork, leadership opportunities, and shared targets, while they remain at school with HOL as a normal part of their schooling experience.

HOL began in 1999 at Frankston High School, a metropolitan school in Victoria, as a way of engaging and retaining students at risk of early school leaving. Several years of success attracted the attention of philanthropic organisations who were interested in expanding HOL to other schools. This led to a Harm Prevention Charity – Hands On Learning Australia (HOLA) – being formed in 2008 to take on this work. As a result HOL is currently being applied by 36 schools across Victoria, Australia. In addition to promulgating the HOL method, HOLA actively helps schools monitor and maintain the quality of their HOL implementations. Part of this involves the collection of data from staff, students, parents, and community partners, and the quotes below are part of data collected over the past 5 years.

The HOL method consists of cross-age teams of ten students working with two HOL artisan-teachers on creative construction projects in the school and local community. Each HOL team is constant in that the same ten students work with the same HOL artisan-teachers every week, for one day. From the students’ perspective Tuesday, for instance, might be their HOL day, so each Tuesday they come to school in work clothes and go to the HOL hut they (or previous HOL teams) built on the school grounds, while the other four days of the week they come to school in uniform and attend their normal classes.

The HOL day is broadly structured as follows: prepare breakfast; go through individual focus plans for the day; first work session; prepare morning tea; second work session; prepare lunch; third work session; pack up and reflect on focus plans and the days events. Weather may impact this sequence, as can any number of other logistical issues associated with construction projects, so having flexibility with the daily structure is important to accommodate the circumstances of each project.

All HOL schools quarantine Mondays from having students for two main reasons. First, there is no down time during HOL, so staff do not go to the staff room at recess or lunch, they spend the entire day with the students, thus Monday is when they are able to order materials and plan for the week ahead. Second, since none of the schools running HOL operate with students on Mondays, it creates an opportunity for HOL artisan-teachers from neighbouring schools to come together at morning cluster meetings where they support each other by sharing their experiences, excess materials, tools, business contacts, and coordinate joint community projects. HOLA also delivers professional development at these, and larger regional meetings on relevant theoretical and practical topics such as trauma theory, how to deal with difficult behaviours, setting appropriate focus plans, choosing good projects, how to build pizza ovens, building earth bag walls, the impacts of poverty on young people etcetera. This is also important because it attends to some of the other layers of respectful relationship involved in creating an enabling space. Just as HOL is a one-day-a-week enabling space for students, the Monday is effectively a one-day-a-week enabling space for the staff.

As outlined previously, the concept of enabling space can be viewed through the tripartite lens of Connection, Control, and Meaning in order to help elucidate what makes a space an enabling one. In this context it is useful to think of these as continuous rather than discrete categories, and the following section explores HOL in terms of these spectra.