he immense challenges our society faces bring into stark relief that meeting any of our aspirations will require developing today’s students as leaders who can shape a better future—not only for themselves, but for all of us. Given that the only path to a just and equitable future is one led by those who have the deepest insights about what needs to change and the least investment in perpetuating the status quo, there is a need to focus especially on students who have experienced inequity and marginalization.
Indeed, as educators, we have perhaps the biggest role to play in meeting global aspirations for sustainability, peace, and justice. Realizing this potential will take rethinking prevailing assumptions about the path forward in education, in three respects—the purpose of education, how we develop leadership for fulfilling it, and how we support our educators to be not only locally rooted, but globally informed.
First, we need to prioritize rethinking the very purpose of our education systems.
Most plans for improving education start with changing the elements of the system— the curriculum, teacher development, technology, and so forth. We should take all this on, but we must begin with the crucial step of redefining our purpose rooted in an understanding of today’s realities, our aspirations for sustainable development, and our belief in the importance of every child, particularly the most marginalized.
Our education systems were not designed to develop all students to exert the leadership necessary to tackle injustices in their communities and beyond, to solve the increasingly complex problems facing our society, or to create meaningful careers in a changing economy. Achieving these purposes requires rethinking everything from the outcomes we work towards to the relationship between students and teachers. However, before this can be done, we must come together in communities and countries all over the world to reconsider what we’re working towards. By having these conversations, whether among stakeholders within single schools, school systems, or across whole countries, we will not only discover a new vision for the education systems we want, but we will build a shared resolve to work together to achieve it.
Second, we need to develop “collective leadership” to realize this new purpose.
There is a tendency to define “system change” as top-down and driven by the government alone. Yet, government leadership alone does not explain differences in educational improvement between communities. In communities where systems are changing and children’s outcomes are improving, many diverse people are working together.
From every level of the system, communities are collectively recognizing their agency to address problems, learning constantly, and supporting each other. There are teachers and school leaders showing that something different is possible and doing the extraordinarily challenging work of meeting students’ individual needs and inspiring them to achieve. Students and their caregivers advocate for what they deserve. School system administrators—inspired by those teachers, school leaders, and students— set a vision and make it easier for everyone in the system to succeed. Policy makers and civic leaders create the context, set priorities, and provide resources that speed up progress. Social entrepreneurs and civil society leaders identify and address the gaps in the system. And when systems move fastest, all these actors work together.
If we want to reshape education systems, we need to understand how to develop the collective leadership that is needed and act on those insights. No set of interventions can work sustainably without an intentional focus on developing the people in these systems, their sense of purpose and mindsets, their agency and ability to work together, and their understanding of the principles underlying solutions that are proving effective in similar contexts.
Third, we will need to foster global learning among educators.
Over the years, I have learned that any particular solution we believe in today will surely be seen as insufficient in the future. Creating a system in which all children fulfill their potential will not be about identifying a fixed set of “answers,” but rather about a tremendous amount of effort and continuous improvement over time. We should be investing in learning systems and networks that support educators in gaining inspiration from each other so that they can leverage the ideas and principles undergirding success in different contexts. This can fuel a never-ending cycle of innovation for continuous learning and improvement.
Most consider education to be a deeply local endeavor. And yet, as different as cultures and contexts are from country to country, there are also remarkable similarities at the root of the issues facing the most marginalized students and communities. In countries all over the world, students face extra challenges, including discrimination and poverty. They attend schools that were not designed to meet their needs nor foster their leadership. The prevailing ideology of low expectations for these marginalized students fuels a cycle of exclusion. The solutions to addressing exclusion in education are a lot more shareable across borders than previously assumed, which could provide a huge opportunity for speeding up progress.
We need to work in ways that are both locally rooted and globally informed. While everything in education needs to be contextualized to local circumstances and culture, there are important lessons to be learned from others. We must affirm the identities and histories of the students and communities we work with in ways that are rooted in an understanding of the values they hold dear. At the same time, there is tremendous power in exposure to what works in other communities for shifting mindsets and understandings about what is possible.
We can put the world on a different trajectory through education. We must begin by rethinking long-held assumptions about the path forward. Let us enlist students, parents, committed educators, and any and all innovators and activists determined to remake the world and get going!
a global affairs media network
To Remake the World, Let’s Rethink Education
Image via Adobe Stock.
January 19, 2022
We need to rethink the very purpose of education and prioritize developing people at every level of education systems if we are to achieve our global goals for sustainable development, writes Teach For All CEO Wendy Kopp.
T
he immense challenges our society faces bring into stark relief that meeting any of our aspirations will require developing today’s students as leaders who can shape a better future—not only for themselves, but for all of us. Given that the only path to a just and equitable future is one led by those who have the deepest insights about what needs to change and the least investment in perpetuating the status quo, there is a need to focus especially on students who have experienced inequity and marginalization.
Indeed, as educators, we have perhaps the biggest role to play in meeting global aspirations for sustainability, peace, and justice. Realizing this potential will take rethinking prevailing assumptions about the path forward in education, in three respects—the purpose of education, how we develop leadership for fulfilling it, and how we support our educators to be not only locally rooted, but globally informed.
First, we need to prioritize rethinking the very purpose of our education systems.
Most plans for improving education start with changing the elements of the system— the curriculum, teacher development, technology, and so forth. We should take all this on, but we must begin with the crucial step of redefining our purpose rooted in an understanding of today’s realities, our aspirations for sustainable development, and our belief in the importance of every child, particularly the most marginalized.
Our education systems were not designed to develop all students to exert the leadership necessary to tackle injustices in their communities and beyond, to solve the increasingly complex problems facing our society, or to create meaningful careers in a changing economy. Achieving these purposes requires rethinking everything from the outcomes we work towards to the relationship between students and teachers. However, before this can be done, we must come together in communities and countries all over the world to reconsider what we’re working towards. By having these conversations, whether among stakeholders within single schools, school systems, or across whole countries, we will not only discover a new vision for the education systems we want, but we will build a shared resolve to work together to achieve it.
Second, we need to develop “collective leadership” to realize this new purpose.
There is a tendency to define “system change” as top-down and driven by the government alone. Yet, government leadership alone does not explain differences in educational improvement between communities. In communities where systems are changing and children’s outcomes are improving, many diverse people are working together.
From every level of the system, communities are collectively recognizing their agency to address problems, learning constantly, and supporting each other. There are teachers and school leaders showing that something different is possible and doing the extraordinarily challenging work of meeting students’ individual needs and inspiring them to achieve. Students and their caregivers advocate for what they deserve. School system administrators—inspired by those teachers, school leaders, and students— set a vision and make it easier for everyone in the system to succeed. Policy makers and civic leaders create the context, set priorities, and provide resources that speed up progress. Social entrepreneurs and civil society leaders identify and address the gaps in the system. And when systems move fastest, all these actors work together.
If we want to reshape education systems, we need to understand how to develop the collective leadership that is needed and act on those insights. No set of interventions can work sustainably without an intentional focus on developing the people in these systems, their sense of purpose and mindsets, their agency and ability to work together, and their understanding of the principles underlying solutions that are proving effective in similar contexts.
Third, we will need to foster global learning among educators.
Over the years, I have learned that any particular solution we believe in today will surely be seen as insufficient in the future. Creating a system in which all children fulfill their potential will not be about identifying a fixed set of “answers,” but rather about a tremendous amount of effort and continuous improvement over time. We should be investing in learning systems and networks that support educators in gaining inspiration from each other so that they can leverage the ideas and principles undergirding success in different contexts. This can fuel a never-ending cycle of innovation for continuous learning and improvement.
Most consider education to be a deeply local endeavor. And yet, as different as cultures and contexts are from country to country, there are also remarkable similarities at the root of the issues facing the most marginalized students and communities. In countries all over the world, students face extra challenges, including discrimination and poverty. They attend schools that were not designed to meet their needs nor foster their leadership. The prevailing ideology of low expectations for these marginalized students fuels a cycle of exclusion. The solutions to addressing exclusion in education are a lot more shareable across borders than previously assumed, which could provide a huge opportunity for speeding up progress.
We need to work in ways that are both locally rooted and globally informed. While everything in education needs to be contextualized to local circumstances and culture, there are important lessons to be learned from others. We must affirm the identities and histories of the students and communities we work with in ways that are rooted in an understanding of the values they hold dear. At the same time, there is tremendous power in exposure to what works in other communities for shifting mindsets and understandings about what is possible.
We can put the world on a different trajectory through education. We must begin by rethinking long-held assumptions about the path forward. Let us enlist students, parents, committed educators, and any and all innovators and activists determined to remake the world and get going!
