Welcome to Hesscairn Learning Design Studio
Hesscairn is a learning-design studio space hosted by Stuart MacFarlane MacAlpine.
Read the blog, be inspired by learning designs, get the books, and get in contact with Stuart if you have projects you would like to collaborate on. Stuart does both professional and probono work with a wide range of organisations aligned to his and the wider team’s values.
Joy, elegance and simplicity
Stuart MacFarlane MacAlpine
if you would like to get in contact, you can do so at the email below.
Publications
Hesscairn Guide to Learning
The Hesscairn Guide to Learning delivers the essential manual we never had, challenging foundational ideas about education. This ultimate resource equips parents, teachers, leaders and policymakers with a clear framework to guide the crucial choices they make for young people.
Forged from decades of research and experience designing world leading educational institutions, this guide refines key insights into actionable principles that help you understand the choices you make and the impacts they have. Discover the why, what and how the educational landscape has shifted from an outdated industrial model to a regenerative future in The Hesscairn Guide to Learning.
More than just theory, it's a call to arms. Through a fresh taxonomy and innovative design principles, it empowers you to move from confusion to confidence. This is your map to not just understand education, but master it. Foster meaningful growth and become an active designer of a better system.
AAA+ Hesscairn Guide to Teaching for Understanding
A companion to The Hesscairn Guide to Learning by Stuart MacFarlane MacAlpine
Most teachers already know the feeling. You've planned carefully, taught it well and still, for too many students, the learning hasn't really landed. They remember the task, but they forget the thinking.
AAA+ is written for that moment. It offers a clear, practical model for teaching in a way that helps students not just receive ideas, but form them, own them and carry them into new situations. Stuart MacAlpine is one of the most influential thinkers and practitioners in education today – a genuine innovator whose work spans leading international schools, national curriculum reform, the LEGO Foundation's Centre for Playful Learning and the design of the world's first high school diploma for refugees. AAA+ distils that experience into a model every educator can use.
At its heart are four design questions:
Awareness – What concepts will capture and hold learners' attentions?
Abstraction – How will learners connect those concepts and build big ideas?
Application – How will learners test and transfer those ideas in new contexts?
+ Deliberate Practice – How will learners build the fluency and precision that makes learning durable?
The fundamentals are straightforward. The impact is not. Teachers who work with AAA+ often describe a shift: their students begin to think like learners, not just performers. Big ideas don't just enter the classroom, they leave with the student. Reach further. Teach deeper. Go beyond and make an impact that truly lasts. It starts here.