Consider Your Learning Ecosystem

An ecosystems approach in education views the learning environment as an interconnected system where various elements—such as students, educators, families, communities, policies, and resources—interact dynamically. This approach emphasizes collaboration, inclusivity, and adaptability, recognizing that learning is influenced by a wide range of social, cultural, economic, and environmental factors. It encourages breaking down silos within education and integrating input from different stakeholders to create more holistic and context-responsive learning experiences.

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Resources on Ecosystems

Embrace Complexity

We work in increasingly interconnected and complex contexts in which the old ways of problem-solving and decision-making don’t work. To navigate effectively in this milieu, we must consider the far-reaching effects of actions taken.

Map Your Ecosystem

An ecosystem map provides a view of the relational environment you are working in and can verify, quantify, and validate how to approach the work at hand and where it makes the most sense to invest effort and resources. It tells you who the key actors are, how they are related, and what interactions they need to achieve your goals.

Engage Your Ecosystem

Use a multi-stakeholder approach and incentivize participation to address issues and optimize opportunities collaboratively.

Build Adaptive Will and Skill

Adaptive capacity enables us to move from enduring a challenge to thriving beyond it. It is associated with learning agility, emotional flexibility, openness to experience, critical thinking and collaboration skills, and the ability to receive and give productive feedback.

Resources on Complexity

Videos on Complexity

Systems Mapping: unpacking complexity and identifying opportunity for change

Engaging Stakeholders

Engaging Stakeholders: Multi-Actor Forums Explained

Organize for Collective Impact

Collective Impact is the commitment of actors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem at scale. It describes an intentional way of working together and sharing information that includes a common agenda, shared measurement, and continuous communication.

Continuously Communicate

All players engage in frequent and structured open communication to build trust, assure mutual objectives, and create common motivation using an agreed-upon shared vocabulary.

Start with a Shared Agenda

A shared agenda includes having the necessary stakeholders at the table who agree to an explicit definition of the goal(s) in agreed-upon language, the scope of the landscape to focus on, and measurable targets related to goals.

Measure Together

Organizations use the same measures to assess the effectiveness of the partnership, staffing, funding, and metrics to gauge progress and to hold all organizations accountable. Data is easily accessible to stakeholders using a web-based tool.

Resources on Collective Impact

Distribute Leadership

Networked models of education require leaders across the network to ensure the resiliency and adaptive capabilities necessary for the design and delivery of quality education. Engage a broad range of leaders in positions of authority (formal and informal leaders), experts in learning, and teaching, and from various functions, disciplines, groups, and levels.

Build Leadership Capacity

Leaders should be able to navigate complexity, embrace change, and adjust strategies based on feedback and evolving circumstances. Leadership requires subject-matter experts and people with lived and living experience of the issue to share leadership to develop effective solutions that work in the real world.

Empower Leaders with Time, Resources, and Authority

Ensure that leaders have the time, resources, and authority to access the necessary funding, technology, data, and expertise to carry out their roles effectively. Provide training and development opportunities to enhance their leadership skills and knowledge.

Align Leadership Strategy to Goals

Every group is aware of and agrees on the group’s direction. Alignment requires a shared vision, clear roles and responsibilities, and continuous evaluation and adaptation of strategy.

Resources on Distributed Leadership

Videos on Distributed Leadership

Benefits of Distributed Leadership