Blog: Reflecting on our anti-racist learning through cynefin
Adnodd uses the word cynefino to describe the induction or onboarding period of new staff. The verb cynefino means helping someone feel like they belong within a place. The word onboarding can also feel overly corporate and imply that a new team member must simply comply with expectations.
The enhanced leadership programme gave us time and space to reflect on the term cynefin. It allowed us to explore its meaning and consider how the term is used today, particularly in education. We received an online lecture from Prof Charlotte Willimas who has written powerfully on its meaning for her. She spoke about taking the opportunities to learn our multiple histories and to shape new paths through connecting with places.
So how can this sense of cynefin be realised across classrooms, playgrounds and beyond in Wales?
Adnodd is a commissioning organisation that funds companies and individuals to create high quality learning resources. These bilingual digital resources are bilingual, free to use and accessed easily on the Welsh Government’s Hwb platform. Print resources are also commissioned. These resources are used by practitioners, parents, carers and learners to support teaching and learning of the Curriculum for Wales.
Inspired by Prof Williams’ session and the discussions that followed, we recognised that cynefin is not something static or inherited. It is something everyone contributes to, including those who may feel different from the people around them.
By viewing cynefin as something we contribute to rather than take from, we can see new possibilities for collaboration with people and in places we have not worked with before. Meeting a committed cohort of leaders on the enhanced leadership programme gives us confidence that these will be the very people and places to collaborate with, to mould and shape our cynefin.
From April 2026, we will work with a new supplier on the creation and delivery of antiracist resources. This marks an exciting stage for us and opens an opportunity for new and diverse collaborations. We hope leaders across the North Wales cohort (and the wider DARPL community of practice) will trial these resources during their development, using them with learners in classrooms, playgrounds and beyond. Feedback from a wider range of learners will help us shape higher quality resources that reflect and embody the doing word cynefino. Together, we can create a broader path of belonging and being in these educational places and beyond.
Ali Hanbury and Elliw Roberts, Adnodd