Education has been in the midst of a global transformation effort for quite some time. While education reform has been a central focus for decades, in the last five years especially the conversation has shifted from reform to redesign—to transforming our fundamental model of teaching and learning from the “sage on the stage” model that emphasizes the acquiring of knowledge, to learner-driven personalized learning. The drivers for this deep change include global shifts in workforce skills and societal demands, mounting evidence on the science of learning and what environmental factors most effectively support learning, as well as the impact of emerging technologies which are revolutionizing the field with their ability to offer more personalized approaches to teaching and learning in alignment with learning sciences research. Taken together, these convergent factors create the context and the conditions and the call for the redesign of education and schooling to meet the needs of learners today and in the future.
In February 2020, WISE launched the WISE Innovation Hub as a platform and research collaborative to support schools in their effort to design their way to the future. Over the course of more than a year, the WISE Innovation Hub worked with three schools of varying demographics and geographical locations, to set up their own “Innovation Labs” – a research, development and innovation unit embedded inside a school to propel the design and implementation of future-focused structures to address critical learning issues, including those related to curriculum, teaching, assessment and learner outcomes. Although this initiative was established before the COVID-19 pandemic, it became a timely mechanism for understanding rapid transformation and innovation in practices at a time requiring this of most schools globally. For more information about the project and the outcomes of this research and school capacity-building project.
