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| Overview |
This two-day workshop invites middle and senior leaders in international schools to reimagine the purpose and practice of assessment through a new lens - one that centres wellbeing, inclusion and belonging. Building on proprietary frameworks and concepts* from The Mona Lisa Effect®, the event will explore how data can be reclaimed as fragments of story, and how assessment can become an act of ethical, relational knowing.
Participants will engage in a dynamic flow of keynote provocations, collaborative inquiries, and reflective tools. Each session builds upon the last, offering not answers but invitations: to align your metrics with the ontological commitments embedded in your mission and vision; to expand your epistemological horizons; and to think differently, lead courageously and, where necessary, begin again.
Key Takeaways Participants will leave with:
- A deep working knowledge of The Data Cycle and its four lenses (Kind, Warm, Street, Slow)
- An understanding of how to apply The Wellbeing Data Wheel to uncover silences and distortions in their school’s data ecosystem
- A felt sense of The Assessment Aesthetic, and how assessment shapes emotional and social identity
- Insights from The Wellbeing Footprint to map the relational impact of assessment across their community
- Exposure to Antidata, drawing on metaphor from multitonal music all the way to particle physics to restore and reshape how we define and listen to data
- New questions, tensions and reflections to take back to school and use as generative levers for change
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| Day 1 |
08:30–09:00 | Arrival & Informal Welcome
Coffee, quiet provocations, unhurried connection.
09:00–09:30 | Opening: The Invitation
Relational framing and invitational orientation. Introduces the weekend as a living, relational ecology, where data is story, assessment is empathy, and change begins with noticing differently.
09:30–10:45 | Keynote 1: The Data Cycle – A Different Kind of Knowing
Introduces The Data Cycle, its sequential lenses (Kind, Warm, Street, Slow), and the reframing of data as fragments of story. Moves from lived experience to structural reimagination - resisting, always, what Adichie recognised as "the danger of a single story."
10:45–11:15 | Morning Break
11:15–12:45 | Workshop 1: Seeing What We’ve Been Taught to Miss
Collaborative and guided mapping of current data practices. Participants explore the hidden signals embedded in what is measured, who is measured, and how. Begins the long, careful work of deconstructing inherited norms.
12:45–13:45 | Lunch
13:45–15:00 | The Assessment Aesthetic – A Provocation and Inquiry
This shorter keynote flows directly into collaborative exploration. What does assessment feel like, and to whom? We explore the emotional, relational and political weight of assessment, from the perspective of the assessed (the student, now and in the future), the assessor (the teacher), the senior leader, the board, and even peers, siblings and parents.
15:00–15:15 | Short Pause
15:15–16:15 | Workshop 2: The Wellbeing Data Wheel
Hands-on collaborative session applying The Wellbeing Data Wheel to participants' own schools. Identifies sources, silences and patterns in how we gather, interpret and use wellbeing data.
16:15–16:45 | Keynote 3: The Illusion of Impact
A short, sharp keynote to end the day. Challenges the myth of linear cause and effect in complex systems, and questions our over-reliance on certainty. A provocation designed to ferment overnight. |
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| Day 2 |
09:00–09:15 | Re-Grounding: Listening Beneath the Noise
Arrival, breath, quiet noticing. A short sensory provocation to re-enter the work, slowly.
09:15–10:30 | Keynote 4: Antidata (or the Synesthesic In-Betweens)
Invites participants into the liminal spaces - the cracks and the shadows - between formal data points, infused with metaphor from multitonal music to particle physics. Explores emotional, sensory and relational knowing. Offers the idea that sometimes, what we cannot measure matters most.
10:30–11:00 | Morning Break
11:00–12:15 | Workshop 3: The Wellbeing Footprint – A Provocation and Inquiry
Building on prior learning, this reflective mapping session explores the relational ripple effects of assessment policies and practices. What’s the impact footprint across your school’s wellbeing ecosystem?
12:15–13:15 | Lunch
13:15–14:30 | Inquiry Clusters: What if...
Facilitated breakout conversations with guiding prompts. Each group explores one radical possibility in depth. Examples may include:
- If it were true that assessment could nurture rather than judge...
- If we stopped grading for a month, what might we notice?
- If report cards were stories, not scores...
- If your data dashboard is telling the wrong story...
Each group harvests its insights visually or verbally for later sharing.
14:30–14:45 | Short Pause
14:45–15:30 | Subverted Panel: Questions We’re Ready to Ask
Curated panel of practitioner-participants. Matthew chairs, lightly. This isn’t about answers; it’s about surfacing the bold, necessary, lingering questions participants are now ready to live into.
15:30–16:00 | Closing: A Place to Begin Again
Participants compose reflective action statements: questions, commitments, or experiments. Final words and a soft but intentional close. |
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| Potential Audience |
This workshop is designed for:
- Middle and senior leaders in international schools seeking to transform assessment and data practices.
- Educators experiencing discomfort, dissonance, or dissatisfaction with traditional models of data use and impact measurement.
- Colleagues holding leadership in curriculum, wellbeing, inclusion, teaching & learning, assessment and strategic development.
- Those looking for frameworks that are curriculum-, context-, and country-agnostic.
If you are hungry for new language, provocation and practice to reimagine your school’s culture of assessment, this workshop offers both structure and spaciousness. |
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| About Matthew Savage |
| Architect of The Mona Lisa Effect®, Matthew Savage is an internationally respected educational consultant and assessment expert, speaker and former school leader, whose work explores the intersection of wellbeing, inclusion and belonging in schools, through a prism of radical new ways of knowing. Drawing on 25 years in UK and international education, he supports schools worldwide to transform data and assessment, leadership and learning, welfare and wellbeing, and culture and climate, into intentional instruments of deep inclusion. Matthew is on a mission to empower educators to see every learner for who they actually are, and create school cultures where everyone - without condition, exception or compromise - is seen, heard, known, and belongs. |
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| Venue: |
Bangkok Patana School
Address: 643 ซอย ลาซาล Bang Na Tai, Bang Na, Bangkok 10260, Thailand |
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| Timings: |
8.30 am to 4.45 pm
Registration at 8.00 am on the 31st January 2026 |
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| Investment |
USD 850 Closing Date 15th January 2026
USD 750 Early Bird Offer Till 1st November 2025
Includes: Certificate of Participation for 16 Professional Development Hours, Lunch and 2 coffee breaks. |
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