Giving Compass' Take:

•   Julia Freeland Fisher and Ace Parsi at the Christensen Institute discuss why individuals designing education innovation strategies need to think about equity in learning. 

• Why should equity be a factor in education systems? How will teachers have to keep iterating their roles to think about all types of students? 

• Read about why equitable design in edtech is also valuable and important. 

Innovation isn’t an outcome; it’s a process. How we approach that process will inevitably influence our outcomes.

Bearing this in mind, one of the primary challenges facing a number of efforts around education innovation—including a number of personalized learning initiatives—is that they are built upon simplified models and assumptions.

What if we were to think about innovation differently, starting, rather than ending, with an equity lens? Rather than creating a reactionary taskforce once an initiative has already rolled out, we might create dedicated affinity groups of marginalized populations, be proactive in identifying the weaknesses in our models and create thinking communities and partnerships to grapple with those challenges.

Answers to a few questions can help anchor the design process in equity:

  1. Is the vision guiding an initiative inclusive and does it incorporate all students?
  2. Who are the stakeholders who have been invited into the conversations, or as Hamilton might say, the room where it happens?
  3. Have you set up a space to talk about addressing underlying biases related to race, culture, gender, sexual orientation, and disability status?
  4. How have you set up a system to act on what you’ve learned?

Read the full article on equity in learning by Julia Freeland Fisher and Ace Parsi at Christensen Institute