Stop Performing. Start Thinking.

By Cameron Paterson.

Cultivating Cultures of Thinking in Australian Schools is an essential read for teachers, school leaders, and education professionals who want to create learning environments that prepare students for the complexities of the modern world. It offers a vision of schooling that challenges the illusion of control that often defines education and invites us to reimagine classrooms as places of thinking.

For much of my career, I equated effective teaching with control. But experience, and the insights of the Cultures of Thinking approach, have reshaped my view. Learning deepens when students are doing the thinking. One story that captures this shift comes from co-editor Simon’s early teaching of Hamlet: carefully planned lessons, layered with enthusiasm, but disengaged students. A sudden realisation changed everything, he had been doing the thinking for them. That truth, that learning is a consequence of thinking, is at the heart of this book.

When I asked my students what advice they’d give teachers, they said:

“Don’t always plan really far ahead. Ask the kids what they want to do and see if you can make it happen.”

“Let them grow into themselves instead of making them be something else.”

Those words describe what this book is about: relinquishing control and listening to students. The atmosphere in a classroom changes when curiosity begins to replace compliance, and thinking replaces mere doing. The shift from control to curiosity lies at the core of this book.

As chapter authors Ryan Gill and Carla Gagliano write,

“If teachers are controlled and dictated to, they may be inclined to control and dictate to their students. Conversely, if teachers are encouraged to innovate, collaborate and inquire, they will promote these processes in their classrooms.”

This beautifully captures a key argument: that the culture of learning for students mirrors the culture of learning for teachers. It speaks to both system-level change and individual agency. It challenges traditional control-based models and calls for a shift toward curiosity, the “from control to curiosity” ethos.

The educators in this book understand that students learn best when they feel known, valued, and respected. Classrooms that cultivate trust and belonging, where students feel seen and heard, become communities of thinking. This book also situates those relationships within a larger story: one of rising student disengagement and disillusionment with school. We urge readers to see this resistance as a signal that something in the system isn’t working.

In the book we meet teachers using thinking routines to make student thinking visible and leaders reimagining staff learning as inquiry. These are lived practices in classrooms from Adelaide to Brisbane, showing how visible thinking can transform how teachers see their role.

At a time when education is battered by standardisation and performativity, our book provides reassurance that alternative stories of schooling are unfolding. Innovation in education begins with a change in how we see our students: as thinkers and meaning-makers.

Perhaps the most radical shift we explore is the call to treat students as co-constructors of learning. Teachers who once felt responsible for every detail now invite students into “secret teacher business”: designing assessments and shaping units of inquiry.

Educational leadership is also redefined. We used to think leadership was about finding solutions and enforcing consistency. Now we understand it as facilitating shifts in beliefs and values, creating the psychological safety for teachers to experiment and question. As Principal Elise Heil observed,

“Teachers now listen more than they speak. It’s made teaching more interesting and more enjoyable. Teachers don’t feel like they constantly have to perform. We have to unlearn the desire for control.”

Leadership becomes invitational, a process of trust-building and collective meaning-making. Genuine progress in schools rarely comes from top-down directives, it emerges through relationships of trust and shared purpose.

Cultivating Cultures of Thinking in Australian Schools acknowledges the resistance and vulnerability that accompany change. Reimagining schools requires patience and humility. Teachers must unlearn old habits; leaders must relinquish certainty. This friction fuels growth. Schools evolve when educators engage in authentic dialogue, the willingness to debate and disagree respectfully.

For educators who feel constrained by the rhetoric of “evidence-based” or “explicit” instruction, we offer a counter-narrative. Evidence matters, and so do wisdom and artistry: the judgment to know when to adapt and when to question. There is no single right way to teach; there are only thoughtful teachers continuously inquiring into what works, for whom, and why.

This collection of stories restores faith in teachers as thinkers and faith in students as capable learners. It shows that the best educators are quietly subversive, they challenge systems of control by creating cultures where thinking is visible and curiosity thrives.

Cultivating Cultures of Thinking in Australian Schools is a tribute to teachers who spark lightbulb moments and remind us that teaching, at its best, is an invitation to think.

Cultivating Cultures of Thinking in Australian Schools

This book is a call to action for educators who seek to move beyond superficial learning and engage students in deeper, more meaningful thinking. At a time when education is dominated by standardisation and a crowded curriculum, this book champions a different path, prioritising student agency, curiosity, and thinking.

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