Across the country, communities are responding to local challenges and opportunities by cultivating new learning ecosystems. As these ecosystems take shape, they are revealing powerful insights about how policy can be leveraged and adapted to facilitate their development. Together, these insights point to the broader conditions that can enable ecosystems to grow, sustain, and expand.
Our new report, in partnership with Remake Learning, Seeds of Possibility: Connecting Policy to Practice Across Learning Ecosystems, showcases eight diverse learning ecosystem contexts and approaches, highlighting concrete examples that connect policy to practice. Authored by Sarah Bishop-Root and Emily Liebtag, EdD, this exploration examines the creative ways in which each community is leveraging policy opportunities to enable learner agency, learning outside the classroom, earning credit for these experiences, and expanding the definition of an educator.
The themes that emerged from this exploration show that ecosystems flourish when policy is integrated rather than isolated, co-created with communities, and designed for interoperability across K–12, higher education, workforce, and community partners.
We hope this brief sparks new conversations about the policy opportunities in your own context for designing and growing learning ecosystems. Read and share it with anyone committed to creating the conditions for ecosystems to take root and thrive in their communities.
