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Innovation and the Future of Learning

At CRPE, we study how public education can evolve to meet the challenges and opportunities of a rapidly changing world. Our research on innovation and the future of learning examines how schools are rethinking teaching and learning models—from personalized and competency-based approaches to the use of technology and AI—to better prepare students for life beyond school. We investigate how these innovations take shape in real contexts, what barriers and enablers schools encounter, and how systems can support sustainable change. Across this work, we aim to understand how schools and communities can design learning environments that are more equitable, adaptable, and responsive to the diverse needs of students.

  • The Lens    

Teachers Don’t Need to Go It Alone on Personalized Learning

Betheny Gross

This is the eighth installment in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning. When we first visited schools in spring 2016 for this project, teachers seemed to be taking on an unsustainably heavy lift as they transitioned to personalizing student learning (PL).

  • The Lens    

Time to Help Teachers Generate and Use Their Own Evidence on Digital Tools

Betheny Gross, Michael DeArmond

This is the seventh installment in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning. “There are so many digital resources out there, I am lost as to which ones are good.I usually try things that some of the more technology-knowledgeable people I teach with [use].”From “Teachers Know Best,” Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2015, page 21 Teachers in the personalized learning (PL) schools we visit are using a wide range of digital tools—sometimes picking up and dropping them at a rapid clip—but their decisions about which tools to use generally aren’t guided by systematic evidence.

  • The Lens    

Are We Personalizing Learning for the Students Who Need It Most?

Robin Lake

This is the sixth installment in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning. The theory behind personalized learning (PL)—crafting an individualized education experience for each student—holds tremendous potential for better serving all students, especially students who don’t fit the norm.

  • The Lens    

Starting With the “Why” in Personalized Learning

Betheny Gross

This is the fifth installment in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning.  Last spring, on our first visit to 35 schools committed to personalized learning, teachers often told us they weren’t sure what they were supposed to be doing to personalize learning.

  • The Lens    

Six Unifying Education Policy Ideas for 2017

Robin Lake

Polarization was the theme of 2016, and we’d be kidding ourselves to think that will be much different in 2017. Still, there has rarely been more need for new ideas that people can begin to come together around, especially in education.

  • The Lens    

Why Schools Shouldn’t Go It Alone on Personalized Learning

Betheny Gross, Colleen McCann

This is the fourth in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning. Principals and teachers trying to personalize their students’ learning are charged with radically reimagining the classroom.

  • The Lens    

Personalized Learning Can’t Ignore School Leaders

Michael DeArmond, Betheny Gross

This is the third in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning. Over the course of this project we’ve heard a lot from schools about what personalized learning (PL) means for teachers and classrooms, but less about what it means for principals—and that is worrisome.

  • The Lens    

Low-Hanging Fruit: Small Ways Schools Can Make Big Differences as the School Year Begins

Robin Lake

After I sent my kids back to school last week and watched the steady stream of adorable “first day” Facebook posts, I began thinking about all of the little things that schools do, or don’t do, that make a huge difference for students and parents during the first weeks of school.

  • The Lens    

Technology’s Unmet Progressive Promise

Michael DeArmond

This is the second in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning. Twenty-five years ago, I was a young history teacher soaking up progressive teaching methods that aimed to foster deep, personalized learning for my students.

  • The Lens    

Beware the Iconography Trap of Personalized Learning: Rigor Matters

Betheny Gross

This is the first in our series of “Notes From The Field” on personalized learning.  My colleague and I recently visited a middle school science classroom.

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