How: Learning Model

Where Community Vision establishes the why and Learner Outcomes define the what, the Learning Model is the how — the system of conditions, beliefs, experiences, and practices that either brings your outcomes to life or leaves them sitting in a document. A school can have a beautifully written portrait of a graduate and a rigorous set of competencies, and still have students experiencing something completely disconnected from those aspirations every day. The Learning Model is what closes that gap.

This element examines six connected components. Climate and Culture set the foundational conditions — the sense of belonging, psychological safety, and shared purpose without which deeper learning simply cannot take root. Design Principles translate learning science into a shared set of commitments about how learning should feel and function across classrooms and schools, providing the consistent logic that guides instructional choices. Learning Experiences are where those principles become concrete, connecting disciplinary knowledge to real-world contexts and meaningful challenge. Instruction and Facilitation describes the evolving role of the educator — not as the sole source of knowledge, but as a learning architect who designs environments that center student agency and growth. Assessment provides the ongoing feedback and evidence of growth that makes learning visible and informs what comes next. And Professional Learning ensures that educators and leaders have the support, space, and personalized pathways they need to keep developing their own practice alongside their students.

The most important thing to understand as you enter this element is that these six components are not a menu to pick from. They are a system. A school that adopts project-based learning experiences without shared design principles will get inconsistent results. A school that redesigns assessment without attending to climate will find that students do not trust the process enough to take the risks real learning requires. A school that invests in professional learning disconnected from the actual learning model will produce development that does not transfer to the classroom. Coherence across all six is what separates genuine transformation from initiative accumulation — and that coherence starts with understanding what each component is, how it connects to the others, and where your system currently stands.

Getting Smart Resources

Building An Authentic Learning Culture Starts With Imperfection and Vulnerability

This Getting Smart resource examines how authentic learning cultures are built not through polished systems or top-down mandates, but through leaders and educators willingly modeling imperfection and vulnerability. It offers practical perspective on how school culture shifts when adults demonstrate risk-taking, acknowledge mistakes, and show genuine curiosity alongside students. The resource challenges practitioners and school leaders to examine their own behaviors as the foundation for psychological safety, arguing that culture is shaped more by what leaders *do* than by what they declare. For those pursuing learning innovation, this matters because transformation stalls when fear of failure dominates—authentic cultures are a prerequisite for the kind of creative, student-centered learning environments that innovation demands.

Using Schoolwide Design Sprints to Seed Student-Centered Culture

This Getting Smart resource examines how schools can use design sprint methodology—a structured, time-limited collaborative process—to build and embed student-centered culture across an entire school community. It offers practitioners a practical framework for engaging staff, students, and stakeholders in rapid problem-solving cycles that surface shared values and translate them into concrete classroom and school-wide practices. The resource demonstrates how design sprints move culture change beyond top-down mandates by creating participatory ownership of new norms and expectations. For school leaders pursuing systemic transformation, this approach is significant because it addresses one of the most persistent barriers to innovation: shifting adult mindsets and institutional habits at scale, quickly, and with sustainable buy-in rather than compliance.

How to Co-Create Classroom Culture with Students

How to Co-Create Classroom Culture with Students” from Getting Smart is a practitioner-focused resource that examines how educators can shift from top-down classroom management toward collaborative approaches where students actively shape the norms, values, and environment of their learning spaces. The resource offers concrete strategies for involving students in defining classroom expectations, building shared ownership, and establishing relational trust as a foundation for deeper learning. It addresses how co-creation practices connect to broader school culture by positioning students as agents rather than passive recipients of rules handed down by adults. For school leaders and innovators, this matters because classroom culture is a critical lever for equity and engagement — when students help build the environment, they are more likely to invest in it, making co-creation not just a relationship-building practice but a structural shift in how power and voice operate within schools.

4 Principles for Transforming Education Institutions and Systems From the Inside

This Getting Smart resource examines four foundational principles for driving meaningful transformation within educational institutions and systems, focusing specifically on how culture and climate function as levers for change. Rather than prescribing top-down reform mandates, it offers practitioners and school leaders a framework for initiating and sustaining innovation from within their existing structures and communities. The resource is particularly valuable because it addresses a persistent challenge in education transformation: systemic change that sticks requires shifting the underlying culture, not just adopting new programs or technologies. For leaders navigating institutional inertia or trying to build shared vision among staff, this piece provides actionable thinking grounded in real conditions schools face. It positions culture and climate not as soft background factors but as core strategic priorities that determine whether innovation efforts take root or fade.

New Pathways Handbook: Getting Started with New Pathways

The New Pathways Handbook from Getting Smart is a practical guide designed to help schools and districts launch and implement New Pathways, an approach to redesigning high school around meaningful, real-world learning experiences. The handbook outlines core design principles that guide the development of these pathways, offering school leaders and practitioners a structured framework for rethinking curriculum, student engagement, and postsecondary preparation. It provides actionable starting points for teams navigating the early stages of model adoption, making it particularly useful for those new to competency-based or work-integrated learning designs. For educators committed to moving beyond traditional schooling structures, this resource offers a grounded entry point into systemic transformation that connects student learning to career, community, and purpose.

Getting Smart’s Learning Design Principles

Getting Smart’s Learning Design Principles is a framework developed by the education advocacy and research organization Getting Smart to guide educators and school designers in building innovative, learner-centered learning environments. The resource outlines core principles that inform how schools and learning experiences should be structured, addressing elements such as personalization, equity, real-world relevance, and competency-based progression. It serves as a practical reference for school leaders and instructional designers who are moving away from traditional, one-size-fits-all models and need a coherent set of ideas to anchor their redesign efforts. For practitioners navigating education transformation, this resource matters because it translates broad innovation goals into actionable design commitments, helping teams align their decisions about curriculum, culture, and structure around a shared vision of what powerful learning can look like.

Place-based Education

Place-based Education from Getting Smart is a resource exploring how learning can be grounded in the local environment, community, and culture as the primary context for student experiences. It examines instructional models that move learning beyond the classroom walls, connecting curriculum to real-world places, problems, and people that are meaningful to students’ lives. The resource offers frameworks, examples, and insights into how schools can design experiences that build civic engagement, environmental awareness, and deeper content understanding simultaneously. For practitioners and school leaders, it matters because place-based approaches address persistent challenges around student engagement and relevance while also building community partnerships and anchoring learning in authentic purpose—key levers for meaningful education transformation.

Personalized Learning

Getting Smart’s Personalized Learning resource examines instructional and facilitation models that shift education away from one-size-fits-all teaching toward approaches tailored to individual student needs, strengths, pace, and interests. It provides practitioners and school leaders with frameworks, real-world examples, and practical strategies for redesigning how instruction is delivered, how students move through content, and how teachers transition into facilitative roles that support greater learner agency. The resource draws on school case studies and research to illustrate what personalized learning looks like in practice across different grade levels and contexts, making it relevant for both classroom teachers and system-level leaders. For those driving education transformation, it offers a grounded starting point for rethinking traditional instructional structures and building school cultures where learning is more responsive, flexible, and student-centered.

Why High-Quality Learning Opportunities Must Be Personalized to Each Learner

This Getting Smart resource examines the case for personalized learning as a foundational instructional model, arguing that high-quality learning opportunities cannot be one-size-fits-all but must be tailored to individual learners’ needs, strengths, and contexts. It explores how educators and school designers can move beyond standardized delivery toward approaches that account for each student’s pace, interests, and readiness, offering frameworks and perspectives to inform instructional and facilitation decisions. The resource is particularly relevant for practitioners and school leaders rethinking how teaching and learning are structured, as it directly challenges traditional classroom models and provides conceptual grounding for redesigning instruction. For those leading or implementing learning innovation, it offers a rationale and entry point for shifting culture and practice toward more responsive, learner-centered approaches.

Next-Generation Durable Skills Assessment (Getting Smart) – Exploring the importance of assessing durable skills that are critical for student success.

The Next-Generation Durable Skills Assessment resource from Getting Smart examines how schools can effectively measure competencies like collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and adaptability — skills that persist and transfer across contexts throughout a student’s life. It makes the case that traditional assessments fall short in capturing these capacities and offers frameworks, examples, and strategies for designing evaluations that reflect what students actually need to thrive in work and civic life. The resource draws on emerging practices from innovative schools and districts to show what credible, meaningful durable skills assessment looks like in practice. For practitioners and school leaders, it provides both the rationale and practical direction needed to shift assessment systems beyond academic content knowledge toward a more complete picture of student readiness and capability.

Assessment as Revelation, not Destination (Getting Smart) – Reframing assessments to reveal learning progress rather than just a final judgment.

Published by Getting Smart, “Assessment as Revelation, not Destination” challenges the conventional view of assessment as a terminal verdict on student performance, arguing instead that assessment should function as an ongoing window into how learning is actually developing. The resource reframes assessment design around the idea of surfacing insight—making thinking visible, identifying where students are in their learning journey, and informing instructional decisions in real time rather than after the fact. It offers practitioners a conceptual and practical shift away from high-stakes, endpoint-focused evaluation toward formative, learner-centered approaches that treat assessment as a continuous source of information rather than a judgment. For school leaders pursuing learning innovation, this matters because it directly addresses one of the most persistent structural barriers to deeper learning: assessment systems that reward performance on a single measure rather than capturing growth, process, and understanding over time.

It’s Not About The Grade, It’s About the Growth: 5 New Mindsets for Hybrid Assessment | Getting Smart (Getting Smart)

This Getting Smart resource reframes assessment away from grades and toward growth by presenting five specific mindsets that educators can adopt to shift how learning is measured and valued in hybrid and blended learning environments. It challenges traditional grading structures by offering concrete conceptual shifts practitioners can use to redesign assessment practices that better reflect student progress, competency, and learning over time. The resource is particularly relevant for school leaders and instructional designers working to move beyond compliance-based evaluation toward more authentic, learner-centered models. For educators navigating the tension between institutional grading expectations and meaningful feedback, this piece provides both philosophical grounding and practical direction to begin transforming how assessment functions within their schools or systems.

The Future Of Learning Is Smart Measurement Rather Than Dumb Assessments (Getting Smart) – Advocating for smarter, data-driven measurement in learning assessments.

This Getting Smart article makes the case for replacing traditional, one-dimensional assessments with smarter, data-driven measurement systems that more accurately capture the full range of student learning and development. It challenges practitioners and school leaders to move beyond standardized testing as a primary metric, advocating instead for approaches that leverage richer data to inform instruction, personalize learning, and track growth over time. The resource outlines what distinguishes intelligent measurement from blunt assessment tools, offering a conceptual framework for redesigning how schools think about evidence of learning. For education leaders pursuing transformation, this piece matters because assessment design is often the lagging edge of innovation—schools can change curriculum and pedagogy while leaving outdated measurement systems intact, which ultimately undermines progress. It serves as a provocation and a starting point for teams ready to align their assessment philosophy with the deeper learning outcomes they claim to value.

Portrait Model

The Portrait Model from Getting Smart is a framework resource that guides schools and districts in developing “portraits of a graduate” or “portraits of a learner”—articulate, community-driven documents that define the knowledge, skills, and dispositions students should develop across their educational experience. The resource helps education leaders move beyond standardized test scores as the singular measure of success, instead anchoring curriculum, instruction, and assessment to a broader, locally defined vision of what graduates should know, do, and be. It offers practical guidance on the process of co-creating these portraits with community stakeholders, ensuring that school priorities reflect the values and aspirations of the families and communities they serve. For practitioners leading transformation efforts, this resource matters because a well-developed portrait serves as a north star for systemic change—aligning professional learning, school culture, and instructional design around a shared, forward-looking definition of student success.

Portrait of an Educator Gallery

The Portrait of an Educator Gallery, developed by Getting Smart, is a curated collection of educator profiles that highlight innovative practitioners who are reimagining teaching and learning across diverse contexts. The resource offers school leaders and practitioners concrete examples of what transformative educator practice looks like in action, showcasing the mindsets, skills, and approaches that define effective teaching in innovative learning environments. By making these portraits publicly accessible, the gallery functions as both an inspiration tool and a practical reference point for schools working to articulate, recruit, or develop the kind of educator identity needed to drive meaningful change. For leaders engaged in redesigning their schools or professional development systems, the gallery provides real-world models that ground abstract ideals in human stories, making the case for what educator growth and transformation can look like at the individual level.

Charting a Course for Educational Transformation: The Power of Aligned Portraits

Charting a Course for Educational Transformation: The Power of Aligned Portraits, published by Getting Smart, examines how learner portraits—articulated visions of what students should know, do, and be—can serve as a foundational alignment tool for systemic school change. The resource guides practitioners and school leaders through the process of developing and operationalizing these portraits so that curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and culture all point toward the same north star for student outcomes. It offers practical framing for why misalignment between stated values and actual school structures undermines transformation efforts, and how a well-crafted learner portrait can close that gap. For educators pursuing deeper innovation, this resource matters because it shifts the conversation from isolated program initiatives to coherent, whole-system design grounded in a clear and shared vision of the whole child.

Podcast: Rebecca Wolfe and Ryan MacDonald on Educator Competencies

This Getting Smart podcast features Rebecca Wolfe and Ryan MacDonald in a conversation focused on educator competencies and what effective teaching and leadership look like in modern learning environments. The episode explores the competencies, mindsets, and skills that educators and school leaders need to thrive in innovative, student-centered schools, connecting directly to the concept of educator and leader portraits as models for professional growth. For practitioners and school leaders pursuing education transformation, this resource offers concrete framing around what to look for, develop, and cultivate in staff — making it directly useful for hiring, coaching, professional development design, and school culture-building. It matters because shifting toward innovative learning models requires not just new instructional strategies but a redefined understanding of what excellent educators actually do and believe, and this podcast helps leaders articulate and operationalize that vision.

3 Ways to Reimagine Professional Development in Districts

This Getting Smart resource examines how school districts can move beyond traditional, one-size-fits-all professional development models toward more personalized, job-embedded, and continuous learning experiences for educators. It outlines three concrete approaches districts can adopt to redesign PD structures, likely addressing shifts such as peer-based learning, competency-driven growth, and leveraging instructional coaching or technology to support teacher development. For practitioners and school leaders, this resource matters because outdated PD models remain one of the most persistent barriers to sustained instructional improvement, and rethinking how adults learn in schools is foundational to any meaningful transformation effort. Districts looking to build cultures of continuous improvement will find this a practical starting point for challenging the status quo of sit-and-get professional learning.

Educator Roles as a Catalyst for Transformation

Getting Smart’s resource “Educator Roles as a Catalyst for Transformation” examines how redefining and redesigning the roles educators play within schools can serve as a powerful driver of systemic change. It explores how shifting away from traditional, isolated teaching roles toward more flexible, collaborative, and specialized configurations—such as lead teachers, learning designers, and mentors—can better meet diverse student needs while strengthening professional culture. The resource connects role redesign directly to professional learning, positioning how teachers work and grow together as inseparable from how schools evolve. For practitioners and school leaders, this matters because sustainable innovation requires structural changes to how adults are organized, not just changes to curriculum or technology, making role transformation a foundational lever for building future-ready learning environments.

Harmonizing with Microcredentials: 7 Steps to Reimagine Your School’s Professional Learning

This Getting Smart resource outlines a seven-step framework for schools and districts looking to redesign professional learning through microcredentials—stackable, competency-based credentials that teachers earn by demonstrating specific skills. The guide walks practitioners and school leaders through a structured process for building or adopting a microcredential system, covering everything from identifying priority competencies to aligning credentials with existing evaluation and compensation structures. It offers practical guidance for making professional development more personalized, self-directed, and tied to measurable growth rather than seat time. For education leaders pursuing transformation, this resource matters because it reframes teacher learning as an ongoing, evidence-based practice that mirrors the competency-based models many schools are working to implement for students—creating coherence between how schools develop staff and how they want students to learn.

Transforming Professional Learning With Micro-credentials

Getting Smart’s resource on transforming professional learning with micro-credentials examines how stackable, competency-based credentials can replace traditional one-size-fits-all professional development models in schools. It outlines how micro-credentials allow educators to pursue personalized, evidence-based learning pathways that recognize demonstrated skills rather than just seat time or course completion. The resource provides practical guidance on how districts and schools can design or adopt micro-credential systems that align with instructional priorities and teacher growth goals. For school leaders driving innovation, this matters because it reframes professional learning as an ongoing, individualized process tied directly to classroom impact rather than compliance, making it a meaningful lever for building teacher capacity and sustaining systemic change.

Additional Resources

A spotlight on the practices needed for community schools to thrive

Brookings
This Brookings resource examines the specific practices and conditions that enable community schools to succeed as a model for educational transformation. It spotlights the cultural and climate elements that distinguish thriving community schools from those that struggle, offering practitioners and school leaders concrete insight into what effective implementation actually looks like on the ground. The resource is particularly valuable because community schools—which integrate wraparound services, family engagement, and community partnerships—require intentional culture-building that goes beyond structural changes alone. For leaders exploring this model, the resource provides a grounded framework for understanding how school climate functions as both a foundation and a driver of sustainable, whole-child education reform.

Changing School Culture: A Case Study

NASSP
This NASSP case study examines how a school successfully transformed its culture and climate, offering practitioners a concrete, real-world example of what meaningful cultural change looks like in practice. It provides school leaders with an on-the-ground account of the strategies, challenges, and decisions involved in shifting a school’s environment, moving beyond theory to show how change actually unfolds. For educators exploring learning innovation, culture and climate are foundational—without addressing the human and relational conditions of a school, structural or instructional reforms rarely take hold. This resource matters because it gives principals and leadership teams a reference point for benchmarking their own efforts and understanding the levers that drive sustainable transformation. As a case study format, it supports reflective practice and professional dialogue, making it a practical tool for leadership teams working through similar change processes.

Rebuilding School Community and Culture

NASSP
The National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) offers this resource focused on rebuilding school community and culture, addressing the foundational conditions necessary for meaningful learning environments to thrive. It provides school leaders with frameworks, strategies, and practical guidance for diagnosing and strengthening the relational and organizational fabric of their schools, particularly in contexts where community cohesion has been disrupted or weakened. The resource draws on evidence-informed approaches to school climate, helping practitioners move beyond surface-level initiatives toward systemic cultural change that supports both student belonging and staff engagement. For education innovators, this matters because no instructional model or transformative learning design can take root in a school where trust, shared purpose, and positive relationships are absent—making culture and climate work a prerequisite, not an afterthought, to sustainable school improvement.

Caring Communities: Linking School Culture and Student Development

Aspen Institute
Caring Communities: Linking School Culture and Student Development is a resource from the Aspen Institute that examines the relationship between school culture and climate and the holistic development of students. It presents a model for understanding how intentional community-building within schools—characterized by belonging, trust, and shared values—directly supports academic, social, and emotional outcomes for young people. The resource offers practitioners and school leaders frameworks and evidence-based insights for designing school environments where students feel genuinely known and supported, rather than simply managed or instructed. For educators driving transformation, this matters because culture is often the invisible architecture that determines whether instructional and programmatic innovations actually take root or fail—making it essential to treat climate-building as a core strategic priority rather than a soft add-on.

Digital Promise Powerful Learning Design Principles

Digital Promise
Digital Promise’s Powerful Learning Design Principles is a research-backed framework developed by Digital Promise that outlines the core conditions and instructional approaches that make learning experiences genuinely effective for students. The resource articulates specific design principles—such as ensuring learning is relevant, social, and challenging—that educators and school leaders can use to evaluate, build, or redesign learning experiences across contexts and subject areas. It bridges learning science research and classroom practice, giving practitioners a shared language and concrete criteria for assessing whether instructional design truly supports deep student engagement and understanding. For leaders pursuing systemic learning innovation, this framework serves as both a diagnostic tool and a design guide, helping teams move beyond surface-level change toward coherent, evidence-informed transformation of teaching and learning.

High Tech High Design Principles

High Tech High
High Tech High’s Design Principles outline the foundational commitments that drive one of America’s most closely studied project-based learning schools, organized around equity of access, authentic work, collaborative design, and teacher as designer. The resource articulates the specific structural and philosophical choices HTH made to create schools where students engage in intellectually rigorous, publicly exhibited work connected to real-world contexts. For practitioners and school leaders, it serves as a concrete reference point for understanding how values translate into institutional decisions — from how teachers are hired and given autonomy, to how schedules and assessments are structured. It matters because HTH has demonstrated measurable outcomes in college access and engagement for a diverse student population, giving these principles credibility beyond theory. Leaders exploring innovation can use this resource to interrogate their own school’s design logic and identify where structural changes, not just instructional tweaks, may be necessary to drive genuine transformation.

EL Education Design Principles

EL Education
EL Education’s Design Principles resource outlines the foundational beliefs and structural commitments that define the EL Education model, a comprehensive K-12 approach rooted in the legacy of Outward Bound and developed over three decades of school design work. The resource articulates core principles around student achievement, character, and crew culture, explaining how high academic expectations, meaningful work, and authentic assessment interconnect to drive both mastery and identity development. Practitioners gain a clear framework for understanding why EL schools are built the way they are, with explicit attention to how curriculum, instruction, culture, and leadership all align under shared values rather than operating as isolated initiatives. For school leaders pursuing coherent, whole-school transformation rather than piecemeal reform, these principles offer a tested philosophical spine that can anchor instructional decisions, professional development, and school culture conversations. This resource matters because transformation efforts frequently stall without a unifying model, and EL’s design principles provide

Big Picture Learning Design Principles

Big Picture Learning
Big Picture Learning’s Design Principles outline the foundational commitments that define the Big Picture Learning school model, a network-based approach that has reimagined secondary education around personalized, interest-driven learning. The resource details core principles such as learning in and through the real world, rigorous individualized learning plans, authentic assessment, and strong advisory relationships that place each student at the center of their educational experience. It provides practitioners and school leaders with a clear framework for understanding how Big Picture schools structure time, relationships, curriculum, and accountability differently from traditional schools. For those exploring learning innovation, this resource matters because it offers a coherent, research-informed philosophy that has been tested across hundreds of schools globally, giving leaders concrete language and conceptual anchors for redesigning systems around student agency, relevance, and equity.

Designing for Learning Primer

Transcend Education
The Designing for Learning Primer is a foundational resource from Transcend Education that guides practitioners and school leaders through the principles and practices of intentional learning experience design. It offers a structured framework for rethinking how students engage with content, skills, and each other, moving beyond traditional instructional defaults toward purposeful, coherent learning environments. The resource helps educators examine the design choices embedded in their current models and develop the conceptual vocabulary and practical tools needed to build something more aligned with how students actually learn. For leaders pursuing school transformation, it matters because sustainable innovation requires more than adopting new programs — it demands a deeper capacity to design and iterate on learning experiences with clarity and intention.

4 Steps to Design an AI-Resilient Learning Experience

MIT
This MIT resource outlines a four-step framework for designing learning experiences that remain meaningful and rigorous in an era where AI can complete many traditional academic tasks. It guides practitioners through rethinking assessment and activity design so that the core of learning — critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and sense-making — cannot simply be outsourced to generative AI tools. The resource sits within a broader model focused on designing experiences rather than delivering content, pushing educators to shift from task completion as evidence of learning toward deeper engagement that AI cannot replicate. For school leaders and practitioners navigating AI integration, this framework offers a practical, principled starting point for future-proofing curriculum design without resorting to AI bans or surface-level restrictions. It matters because it moves the conversation from compliance and control toward genuine pedagogical transformation grounded in what humans uniquely bring to learning.

Understanding by Design Framework

McTighe and Wiggins
The Understanding by Design (UbD) framework, developed by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, is a curriculum planning approach centered on “backward design” — starting with desired learning outcomes and assessments before determining instructional activities and experiences. The framework guides educators through three stages: identifying desired results, determining acceptable evidence of learning, and then planning learning experiences that build toward those goals. For practitioners and school leaders, UbD offers a structured methodology for moving away from coverage-driven teaching toward purposeful, meaning-focused instruction that prioritizes transfer and deep understanding. Its emphasis on designing coherent learning experiences around authentic performance tasks makes it particularly relevant for schools pursuing inquiry-based, competency-driven, or project-based models of education. As a foundational model in instructional design, UbD provides a common language and planning architecture that supports school-wide alignment and sustained pedagogical transformation.

Gold Standard Project-based Learning Design

PBL Works
PBL Works’ Gold Standard Project-Based Learning Design is a research-backed framework that defines the essential elements of high-quality project-based learning, distinguishing it from less rigorous “dessert projects” that lack depth or intentionality. The resource outlines seven key design elements—including challenging problem or question, sustained inquiry, authenticity, student voice and choice, reflection, critique and revision, and public product—alongside key teaching practices that educators need to implement PBL effectively. For practitioners and school leaders, this framework serves as both a quality benchmark and a practical design tool, enabling teams to audit existing projects, build new ones with fidelity, and align professional development efforts around a shared, evidence-based standard. Its significance for education transformation lies in its ability to shift instruction from passive content delivery toward active, meaningful learning experiences that develop the deeper competencies students need beyond school.

Design-thinking

d.school
The d.school’s design-thinking resource introduces educators and school leaders to a human-centered problem-solving framework developed at Stanford University, offering practical methodologies for approaching complex challenges in teaching and learning. It guides practitioners through core design-thinking phases—empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test—with a focus on designing meaningful experiences rather than just delivering content. The resource provides tools, facilitation guides, and real-world examples that help educators reframe how they understand student needs and co-create solutions with their communities. For those pursuing learning innovation, it matters because it shifts the paradigm from top-down curriculum delivery to iterative, responsive design that centers the lived experience of learners. This makes it particularly valuable for school leaders looking to build cultures of creative problem-solving and adaptive thinking across their organizations.

Unlocking Student Potential: Aurora Institute’s Virgel Hammonds on the Power of Competency-Based Education

Carnegie Foundation
This resource from the Carnegie Foundation features a conversation with Virgel Hammonds of the Aurora Institute exploring competency-based education (CBE) as a model for redesigning how students progress and demonstrate learning. It examines how CBE shifts the focus from seat time and standardized pacing to mastery of skills and knowledge, allowing students to advance when they are ready rather than on a fixed schedule. Practitioners and school leaders will find practical framing around how CBE challenges traditional grading and promotion structures, and why that shift is central to creating more equitable and responsive learning experiences. The resource matters because it connects a clear theoretical case for competency-based approaches with the broader work of systemic education transformation, making it relevant for leaders actively rethinking school models, credentialing, and student agency.

Strategies for Building Agency through Student Dialogue

Digital Promise
Digital Promise’s “Strategies for Building Agency through Student Dialogue” is a practitioner-focused resource that examines how structured dialogue can serve as a mechanism for developing student agency in the classroom. It offers concrete instructional and facilitation strategies designed to shift classroom dynamics so that students take greater ownership of their learning through purposeful conversation, questioning, and peer exchange. The resource sits within a broader framework of learner-centered instruction, making it relevant for school leaders working to move away from passive, teacher-directed models toward environments where students co-construct meaning and direct their own intellectual engagement. For educators navigating the practical challenges of implementing student-centered approaches, this resource provides actionable entry points that connect dialogue as a pedagogical tool directly to outcomes like self-direction, critical thinking, and deeper learning.

CBE Starter Pack: Empowering Students

Aurora Institute
The Aurora Institute’s *CBE Starter Pack: Empowering Students* is a practical resource designed to help educators and school leaders implement competency-based education (CBE) with a focus on shifting agency and ownership to students. It provides concrete strategies, frameworks, and tools for redesigning instructional and facilitation practices so that learning is personalized, student-driven, and tied to demonstrated mastery rather than seat time. The resource addresses one of the most critical levers in CBE implementation — how teachers move from delivering content to facilitating learning — making it directly relevant for schools in the early stages of transitioning away from traditional instructional models. For practitioners and leaders navigating learning innovation, this starter pack offers actionable entry points into a model that has strong evidence for improving equity and student outcomes, particularly for learners who have been underserved by conventional approaches.

Building 21’s Teacher Competencies to Facilitate Competency-Based Learning

Aurora Institute
Building 21’s Teacher Competencies to Facilitate Competency-Based Learning, published by the Aurora Institute, is a practitioner-facing framework that defines the specific skills, dispositions, and practices teachers need to effectively facilitate competency-based education (CBE). The resource breaks down facilitation into concrete, observable competencies—spanning areas such as personalized learning design, formative assessment, and learner agency—giving schools a structured lens for both professional development and instructional coaching. Rather than offering abstract principles, it grounds CBE implementation in the day-to-day work of teaching, making it directly applicable for school leaders redesigning instructional models or evaluating educator readiness for personalized learning environments. For systems moving away from traditional, time-based instruction, this framework provides a practical starting point for aligning teacher growth with the demands of competency-based transformation.

Student-Centered Environments Foster Independent Learners

The Learning Accelerator
This resource from The Learning Accelerator examines how student-centered learning environments can cultivate independent, self-directed learners through intentional instructional and facilitation approaches. It explores the practical design of classroom models where teachers shift from direct instruction toward facilitation, giving students greater agency over their learning pathways, pace, and process. The resource likely addresses concrete strategies, structures, and conditions that practitioners need to make this shift effectively and sustainably. For school leaders and educators pursuing meaningful learning transformation, it offers grounded insight into how instructional design choices directly shape students’ capacity to take ownership of their education—a critical competency for long-term academic and life success.

Learner-centered Instruction

Ontario Tech
Ontario Tech’s Learner-Centered Instruction resource examines pedagogical approaches that shift the focus from teacher-led delivery to active student engagement, positioning learners as central participants in the construction of knowledge. It offers practitioners frameworks and strategies for redesigning instruction and facilitation practices, including how to structure learning experiences that promote inquiry, collaboration, and student agency. The resource addresses the practical dimensions of transitioning from traditional transmission models to environments where students take greater ownership of their learning process. For school leaders and educators pursuing instructional innovation, this resource provides grounding in a model that has strong alignment with contemporary evidence on deep learning, student motivation, and equitable outcomes across diverse learner populations.

Instructional Transformation Matrix

Center for Educational Leadership University of Washington
The Instructional Transformation Matrix, developed by the Center for Educational Leadership at the University of Washington, is a research-grounded framework that helps educators and school leaders assess and shift the quality of classroom instruction across a continuum of practice. The tool maps instructional approaches from teacher-centered, low-rigor delivery toward student-centered, high-rigor facilitation, giving practitioners a concrete way to visualize and name where current practice sits and where it needs to move. It offers specific descriptors across multiple dimensions of instruction, making it practical for coaching conversations, classroom observations, and professional learning communities. For leaders pursuing meaningful learning transformation, the matrix provides a shared language and diagnostic lens that moves improvement efforts beyond vague expectations and into actionable, observable instructional shifts.

Steps to Creating Authentic Assessment (Albany State University) – Practical steps for developing authentic assessments that reflect real-world learning experiences.

Albany State University
Albany State University’s “Steps to Creating Authentic Assessment” is a practitioner-focused resource that walks educators through a structured process for designing assessments grounded in real-world application rather than traditional testing formats. It provides concrete, actionable steps for developing tasks that require students to demonstrate knowledge and skills in meaningful contexts, moving beyond rote recall toward genuine performance and understanding. The resource is particularly valuable for school leaders and instructional designers looking to shift their assessment culture, as it offers a replicable framework that can be adapted across disciplines and grade levels. For educators pursuing deeper learning transformation, this resource directly addresses one of the most persistent gaps between progressive pedagogy and classroom practice—ensuring that how students are evaluated actually aligns with how they are being taught to think, create, and solve problems.

Design Authentic Performance Tasks and projects

ASCD
ASCD’s resource on designing authentic performance tasks and projects provides educators with a structured framework for creating assessments that require students to apply knowledge and skills to real-world challenges rather than simply recalling information. It offers practical guidance on constructing tasks that are meaningful, rigorous, and aligned to learning goals, helping teachers move beyond traditional tests toward evidence-rich demonstrations of understanding. The resource draws on established backward design principles, supporting educators in building coherent connections between curriculum, instruction, and assessment. For practitioners and school leaders pursuing learning innovation, this matters because authentic assessment is a cornerstone of deeper learning models—it shifts the classroom toward relevance, student agency, and transferable competencies that better prepare learners for complex, real-world demands.

Skills for the Future Assessment Framework

ETS/Carnegie Foundation
The Skills for the Future Assessment Framework, developed by ETS and the Carnegie Foundation, is a structured model designed to guide educators and institutions in building assessment systems that measure competencies beyond traditional academic knowledge, including critical thinking, collaboration, and adaptive problem-solving. The framework provides practitioners and school leaders with concrete criteria, design principles, and alignment tools to evaluate whether their assessments are capturing the skills students will need in postsecondary and career contexts. It bridges the gap between what schools currently measure and what employers and higher education institutions increasingly demand, offering a shared language for redesigning assessment practice at the classroom, school, and system level. For leaders pursuing genuine learning transformation, this resource matters because it challenges the dominance of standardized content-recall testing and offers a defensible, research-backed alternative that connects assessment design directly to future readiness outcomes.

Portrait of a Leader: For Educators, By Educators

KnowledgeWorks
KnowledgeWorks’ *Portrait of a Leader: For Educators, By Educators* is a practitioner-developed framework that defines the competencies, dispositions, and mindsets educators and school leaders need to drive meaningful learning transformation. Built from the ground up with educator input, the resource moves beyond traditional administrator evaluation checklists to articulate what effective, forward-thinking leadership actually looks like in practice. It offers schools and systems a concrete reference point for hiring, professional development, coaching, and self-reflection aligned to innovation-focused education. For practitioners and leaders navigating systemic change, this portrait provides shared language and a coherent vision of leadership that centers learner outcomes and equity rather than compliance or bureaucratic performance metrics.

Lindsey Unified School District Look-For’s

Lindsey Unified School District (CA)
The Lindsey Unified School District Look-For’s is a practical observational framework developed by Lindsey Unified School District in California that defines what effective student and educator practice should look like in action across classrooms and schools. The resource outlines specific, observable indicators aligned to the district’s Learner and Leader Portrait models, giving administrators and instructional coaches concrete criteria for identifying whether the district’s vision for learning is actually being realized in practice. Rather than relying on abstract goals, it translates portrait competencies—such as agency, collaboration, and critical thinking—into tangible, visible behaviors that can be documented during walkthroughs and classroom visits. For school leaders pursuing systemic transformation, this tool bridges the gap between aspirational frameworks and daily instructional reality, making it easier to align professional development, coaching conversations, and school culture to a coherent, student-centered vision.

Glenbard Township High School Profile of an Educator

Glenbard District 87 (IL)
The Glenbard Township High School Profile of an Educator is a competency framework developed by Glenbard District 87 in Illinois that defines the dispositions, skills, and mindsets expected of effective educators within their system. The resource articulates a shared vision of teaching excellence that goes beyond content delivery, emphasizing qualities such as professional growth, relationship-building, and adaptive practice. For school leaders pursuing learning innovation, it offers a concrete model for hiring, evaluation, coaching, and professional development that aligns educator behavior with broader institutional values and student-centered goals. It matters because districts attempting transformation often lack coherent, human-centered definitions of what good teaching looks like in practice, and this profile provides an actionable blueprint for building and sustaining a culture of continuous improvement among staff.

Valuing Professional Learning Microcredential

Digital Promise
The Valuing Professional Learning Microcredential from Digital Promise is a competency-based credential designed to help educators and school leaders demonstrate their understanding of high-quality professional learning and its direct connection to improved teaching practice and student outcomes. It guides practitioners through a process of examining, articulating, and evidencing why intentional, ongoing professional development is essential rather than incidental to school improvement. Participants engage with frameworks for evaluating professional learning effectiveness and build the capacity to advocate for and invest in meaningful educator growth within their institutions. For school leaders pursuing systemic change, this microcredential offers a structured, recognized pathway to shift professional learning from a compliance activity to a strategic driver of instructional transformation.

Teachers as Leaders and Change Agents.

NGLC
Teachers as Leaders and Change Agents is a professional learning resource from Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) designed to support educators in stepping into leadership roles that drive meaningful school change. The resource explores how teachers can move beyond classroom practice to influence school culture, instructional systems, and innovation efforts, positioning them as active architects of transformation rather than passive recipients of reform. It offers frameworks, strategies, and insights for building teacher leadership capacity within schools pursuing next-generation learning models. For school leaders and practitioners, this resource matters because sustainable education transformation depends on distributed leadership — empowering teachers to lead change from within is one of the most effective levers for shifting school culture and improving outcomes at scale.

The Learning Accelerator Resources & Guidance for Innovation & Improvement in K-12 Education

The Learning Accelerator
The Learning Accelerator offers a curated collection of resources and practical guidance designed to support K-12 educators and school leaders in driving innovation and continuous improvement, with a specific focus on professional learning models. The platform provides tools, frameworks, case studies, and actionable strategies that help practitioners design and implement high-quality professional development aligned with blended and personalized learning approaches. Rather than offering generic training content, it grounds professional learning in real school contexts, making it directly applicable for leaders looking to build teacher capacity at scale. For practitioners navigating education transformation, this resource matters because it bridges the gap between innovative instructional models and the adult learning systems needed to sustain them, ensuring that change efforts are supported by coherent, evidence-informed professional practice.