The NSW Department of Planning, Industry and the Environment underwent an intense period of restructuring that lead to uncertainty and disagreement around their values, purpose, and vision for the future. This was affecting team cohesion, productivity and their collective sense of direction.

Habitus underwent a design thinking and strategic planning process using ethnographic methods to identify and understand what their problem was at a foundational level.

We ran a number of engaging human-centred, experiential workshops which created a psychologically and emotionally safe space that helped staff feel comfortable being honest with each other and sharing their true thoughts and feelings.

We drew out and encouraged diverse opinions to forge a shared vision and purpose that united the disparate teams. Participants collectively defined a realistic action plan for moving forward, identified likely obstacles, and developed shared systems of accountability to ensure their plan became a reality.

The depth of the shared experiences we facilitated enabled individuals to move beyond engaging with each other in silos, as faceless colleagues who were protective of their domains, to see each other as real humans who embraced their differences as collective strengths.

The Disability Trust faced a “wicked” problem; how to turn 16 unemployed and disengaged young people under the age of 24 into disability support care workers, with a career and a future. Their 12 week training program gave them the technical skills they needed to succeed, but they struggled with self-confidence and didn’t believe they could actually go out there and do the job.

Habitus facilitated a multi-day workshop using a Rite of Passage framework in which they were supported to truly take on the identity of “disability support workers”. We asked them to reflect on their experiences, consolidate what they’d learned and connect with each other to form a network of peer support that would sustain them through the inevitable challenges ahead. They left feeling confident and believing they could walk out the door the next day and apply the skills they’d learned through the 12 weeks.

The feedback we received was that our sessions were the best part of the 12-week course and that they brought the knowledge together, created a real sense of community, and instilled the self-belief that was really missing from the group.

Notre Dame faced a challenge familiar to many tertiary institutions; how to engage students while lecturing from the front of a theatre. Poor student feedback lead them to seek external advice, particularly as the subject requiring improvement was was specifically about ‘engaging students in the classroom’.

In educational psychology, we know that engagement is central to good outcomes, and that emotions are not separate from learning and cognition. It is all well and good to be bombarded with theory, but it is irrelevant if students are not open to what is being taught and if they can’t apply and connect it to their personal and practical experiences.

Habitus modelled dynamic teaching practices and worked with students to boost engagement through embodied activities , building social relationships, facilitating robust but respectful conversations, and demonstrating how the physical environment affects our ability to learn. Learning works best when it’s not jut with our heads but in our hearts and our hands too. Learning can’t just be cognitive but must be operational and affective affective.

Students were subsequently seen as meaningful collaborators, rather than as empty vessels to be filled. We helped the course coordinator to actually “flip the classroom” and draw on the students’ individual and collective wisdom to take charge of their own learning. They could then advocate for themselves and create a greater sense of intrinsic motivation with the material because they were genuinely invested in it. Notre Dame measured the effectiveness of our engagement through increased student participation and engagement, as well as positive verbatim and aggregated quantitative feedback.

Brighton Grammar is currently engaged in a number of successful initiatives that support boys in their transition to manhood over the crucial developmental period during years 9 and 10. Through their Boys to Men program, the school provides outdoor educational journeys, local, national and international service programs, and emotional development seminars.

In the words of the school Principal, Ross Featherstone, the aim of the program is for the boys to develop within a wider context where they see themselves as “part of a community, and that they have a role to play in not only making themselves better people, but making the people around them better as well”.

All the ingredients were there, but what they really needed was someone who could drive that change from within. They had engaged external providers to deliver a Rite of Passage program for the boys and their parents, but those providers couldn’t fully understand or appreciate the unique needs of the school community like someone from the inside.

Habitus was engaged to consult with students, staff and key members of the community to identify their challenges and empower the school community to deliver a world class, research-informed and highly professional program for themselves.

Through a two-day consultative design process and ongoing coaching, we helped define and establish an internal position for a key staff member to drive change from within. Through an in depth coaching and mentoring process, we co-designed a Rite of Passage experience for students that facilitated their transformation from boys to men in an inclusive, experiential as well as a psychologically and emotionally safe manner. We trained and empowered staff at Brighton Grammar to deliver the program for themselves on an ongoing basis, reducing systemic risk, financial costs, and building internal capability that positively affected student and teacher engagement across the school. We built on existing structures and facilitated incremental change with minimal initial disruption to achieve maximum buy in from staff, students and parents.

“Dr Monty Badami and Habitus are highly recommended. One of the keys in our work was to really understand the views and values of our community and to work in a coherent way within those views. Monty has a great mix of skills and abilities: he is highly aware and sensitive to his context as an ethnographer, and is also able to be very specific and outcome driven. Monty’s advice has helped shape our programs and experiences for our parents and kids and has been an important part of the success of those programs.”

Dr Ray Swann, Deputy Headmaster and Head of the Crowther Centre