Equitable Community Based Learner-Centered Ecosystems: A Transformative Vision of Education

Abstract

A transformational vision for education is emerging across the country from a deep place of shared imagining and shared experience. I joined Education Reimagined, a nonprofit dedicated to learner centered education, while historic change was taking place in the country that touched the lives of every citizen; through the profound disruption and isolation caused by COVID-19, the rising awareness and activism for the Black Lives Matter movement, and the crisis in governance exposed by the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. This Capstone examines my work to find and bring together a diverse group of people and engage them in a process to invent multiple systems and templates to structure, support, and bring to life equitable, community-based, learner-centered ecosystems. Through this Capstone, I share my quest to find participants from the Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities for the working group. I investigate the nature of living systems and emergent systems change while making connections to some of the education movements in the past. I analyze my work using the National Equity Project Leading for Equity Framework (National Equity Project, 2020). Finally, I suggest three actions for the education sector: (a) invest in transformational change: gather people across sectors to imagine new possibilities for being in community inspired by living systems; (b) create strong networks to catalyze change: strengthen relationships, do the healing work together and reimagine and reclaim social community; and (c) clear the way: identify policy, structures, and systems that serve as a barrier to transformational social systems where every child is loved, honored, and free.