Laura Molan and Monique Rohr travelled from Upper Yarra Secondary College to share the story of their quest to answer the question: “How do we provide opportunities for our students to do better than their best?”

The quest began when the college principal tasked the pair with investigating a new approach to teaching in 2011, one they would eventually dub the “future learners inquiry program”.

It would prove to be a learning experience for teachers and students alike.

“I don't think any of us fully understood the reality of what this was going to be like,” Ms Molan told the audience.

“We had this idea that we’d have these beautiful glass folding doors that we could open and close to suit our needs – what we ended up with was an unfinished building project, no doors and concrete where the walls used to be.”

Ms Molan said the women and their small team of teachers struggled to control the 105 students in their now enormous class, and their initial ideas of forming small and large groups of students did not go to plan.

“This was an absolute disaster,” she said.

“Although the theory made sense and we'd seen it working in schools that we’d visited, our students did not have the training, the social skills or ability to function in this type of environment.

“We were making the fatal mistake of trying to teach the way we wanted to and the way we dreamed it should be, instead of teaching the kids that we had in front of us.”

The teachers decided to reduce the amount of movement and move back into traditional classrooms, rather than trying to force collaboration on students who were not ready.

“When we spent less time on the things that didn't matter like forced collaboration, we were able to take more time to actually teach them how to write,” Ms Rohr said.

“The results we got were far superior to anything that we could have expected.

“Now our kids were writing essays, reports, articles, letters and most importantly, they were quality pieces.”