Learner-centered ecosystems offer a fundamentally different way of organizing learning around young people and their unique, yet interconnected, learning journeys. These ecosystems are adaptive, networked structures through which learning happens across a community, and responsibility for supporting learners is shared across people and organizations.
Today’s policy environment was designed for a more conventional system. A different policy orientation is needed—one that enables rather than prescribes, is informed by communities, and works across systems to create the conditions for new ways of organizing and supporting learning to emerge and endure.
The development of these Guiding Policy Principles for Learner-Centered Ecosystems began in 2024, when Education Reimagined convened a collaborative of twenty-five leaders from education policy, systems, and practice. The principles were then shaped by our work with communities through the Learner-Centered Ecosystem Lab and refined in 2026 by eleven ecosystem leaders from the Lab.
If you have additional questions about the principles or would like to explore opportunities to collaborate, reach out to our Senior Partner of Policy, Sarah Bishop-Root at sarah@educationreimagined.org.
