Citizens of the future: Innovations to leapfrog global education

Universal public education is traditionally seen as the one sure means to promote widespread economic and social advancement. Yet, around the world, education is increasingly fueling inequality. Do innovations hold the potential to leapfrog education, ensuring that every young person develops the full set of skills they need to thrive in the future? Through a discussion of new research from the Center for Universal Education, this session will lay the foundation for the day’s focus on innovative practices for teachers and teaching.

In the rush to crowd innovative programming into classrooms across the globe, we often lose sight of the outsized burden that teachers already shoulder. Research shows that teachers in almost every country are regularly tasked with a long list of responsibilities—from administrative duties to assisting in school-wide functions—that have little to do with igniting meaningful learning in their classrooms. To achieve a true leap forward in global education, teachers must be supported by a diversity of people, places, and tools. This session will consider how education innovations can elevate and support teachers to facilitate transformative learning.

Participants will get a chance to mix and mingle over lunch, including having the opportunity to attend an EdTech Deep-Dive session.

Teachers are perhaps the most important actors in students’ educational careers. Time and again, research from the learning sciences point to the fact that changes in teaching practice yield some of the highest returns on student learning. Of course, teachers must be empowered with the skills and knowledge needed to effectively implement such transformative educational practices. As such, any leap forward in global education will undoubtedly rely on a diverse and talented contingent of educators. However, research by the Center for Universal Education has uncovered a worrisome lack of attention to teacher training in innovations across the world. This panel will highlight gaps, trends, and promising practices in innovations that are working to develop the skills and knowledge of educators and school leaders.

The word “innovation” is often thrown around in the education community without clear definition. Participants will get a chance to engage with over 6 innovators from around the world who will bring the term to life through hands-on demonstrations of the sorts of education practices that hold the potential to contribute to a global leap forward.

Education innovation is taking root across the globe with robust communities of experimentation happening in all continents. From the highest-performing countries to the lowest, actors around the world are actively experimenting with novel ways to improve learning. With such a diversity of innovations, how do education stakeholders learn from each other and ultimately determine what practices to adopt? This is where “Innovation Spotters” come in. Innovation Spotters are a diverse cohort of organizations actively searching the globe to find, highlight, and sometimes fund education innovations. But how can these actors translate their spotting work into true educational transformation on the ground and ultimately help education leapfrog? In this session, a panel of Innovation Spotters will discuss the role of innovation spotting and grapple with the question of what comes next for the education innovation community.

Reception and networking. The audience will also have the opportunity to interact with the innovators from the Innovations in Practice session, along with other innovators who are participating in the Innovations Fair, guests can go to tables in side rooms and interact with whatever tools/activities the innovators bring, and ask their own questions.