The Ripple Effect: How Learner-Centered Environments Support Every Student

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Hi, this is Aurora from the Educating All Learners Alliance,
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and today we're speaking to Dr. Kara Schoenfeld from Education Reimagined.
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Education Reimagined is a national nonprofit on a mission to make learner-centered
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education available to every child in the country.
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Dr. Kara Schoenfeld is a partner of research at Education Reimagined,
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a former K-12 teacher, and a parent of a neurodivergent child.
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Thanks for joining us today, Kara. It is great to chat with you,
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and it's good to have you here.
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It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
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Our work has crossed paths many times. Ila and Education Reimagined.
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Kara, we've had the pleasure of having some great conversations.
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So let's kick it off and let's talk a little about your background.
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You have an extensive background in education research, but was there a specific
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spark or any personal experiences that drove your passion for learner-centered education?
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Thank you for asking that. It actually is very personal to me.
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It started in my own childhood.
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I was a child in my conventional public school, and I really was not doing well there. I wasn't seen.
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My talents as an artist weren't acknowledged or really known,
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and I was starting to fall through the cracks.
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And my parents had the insight to pull me and put me in a really well-established
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progressive elementary school that had been created during the progressive era,
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so like in the turn of the century. And so.
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I saw firsthand the difference of what it was like for me to be in a school
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environment like that, that was learner-centered. So that was the first thing.
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The second thing I would say was then as I actually became an art teacher and,
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later in my teaching career, when I was working on my master's,
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I found out about Big Picture Learning,
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which is a network of schools across the country and internationally now, too.
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And they were opening up a school in Philadelphia.
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And I just really resonated with their model. So I actually got to teach in
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a school that was learner-centered.
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And then I would say the final piece was when I worked on my doctoral dissertation,
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I studied unschooling, which was, I would say, one of the more extreme ways
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that you can center learning around a child.
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So I went from being a child to being a teacher in the setting to being a researcher
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of this arena of education.
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And Big Picture Learning is one of our ELIP partners. They're fantastic,
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the work that they're doing, and I just love how the pieces of the ecosystem
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all kind of come together like that.
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For listeners who might be new to this concept, could you help us unpack what
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exactly do we mean when we talk about learner-centered education?
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What sets it apart from traditional schooling?
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Yeah, so this is something I spend a lot of time thinking about,
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but I love the word itself. it's learner-centered.
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So in a lot of conventional schooling models, it's not centered around the learner.
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It's centered around something like, say, a system, a set curriculum,
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others dictating what should be learned and when and how.
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But learner-centered really does center around the learner. So you can almost
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picture the learners in the center.
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They're there with their strengths, their interests, and their goals.
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And that becomes the keystone for the whole education experience. So,
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With that, there's also a high level of strong relationships and deep levels
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of care, usually in learner-centered education.
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We adopt a mastery or competency-based approach where you progress based on
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your own development and your own ability to show what you've learned,
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opposed to seat time or,
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okay, now you're this age, so you have to advance to this.
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And one of the things I particularly love about Education Reimagines' way of
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framing learner-centered ed is that it is very important that it be not just
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contained within a school,
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that it be really brought to life with real-world learning experiences.
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And that can happen in many ways. But basically, the learner is connected in
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different ways to the community.
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So what they're doing feels grounded in real life, opposed to isolated.
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And, you know, you have to wait till you graduate before you get to get to have
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those real life experiences.
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Education Reimagined conducted this incredible multi-case study alongside a
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team of practitioner researchers to explore how learner-centered environments
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can support youth with learning differences.
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I had the privilege of interviewing several of the practitioners and researchers
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for previous podcast series, Needs to Strengths.
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So looking at that data through your lens, both as a researcher and a parent,
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what were some of the biggest takeaways for you?
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Yeah, so I should start by saying, before I came to Education Reimagined,
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as a parent, I was so hungry to find out my child had just gotten diagnosed with ADHD.
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And I was so hungry to find out, what does this mean? What does he need?
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And I, of course, would turn to research because that's my background.
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And I was just like, if I could study anything, it's this. It's learner-centered
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ed, and it is neurodivergence.
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Like how are learners being supported in these environments?
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And sure enough, I start this position and they say, hey, guess what?
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We have a grant in the works for this exact thing.
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So from the start, it felt quite miraculous that this even happened.
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And the study itself was really special. As you mentioned, Aurora,
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it had usually with a case study, you just dive really deep.
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We did dive deep, but we did it across three different settings. Right, right.
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Schools, learning environments don't necessarily have to be schools to be learner-centered.
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They can be out-of-school time. They can be...
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There's different contexts. It can be programs, but we did pick three schools
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because they were all public.
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And all of them have over 40%.
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Actually, it was even higher, but over 40% of their learners have IEPs or 504s.
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So we specifically chose them. And we did the case study because we wanted to see through lines.
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Every learner-centered environment is slightly different, but we wanted to see
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what carries through with our findings.
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And what even made it even better was that, as you said, we got to work with
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a team of practitioners.
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So these are school leaders, principals, organization leaders,
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researchers, educators, and we all together, there were 16 of us,
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went to the three different sites.
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And the site leaders went to those sites with us, too.
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Right. It was this very like it was a system of they saw each other's schools
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in action. Right. They saw. Right.
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Or learning environments. I like that distinction, too, that a learning environment
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isn't necessarily a school.
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In this case, they were all schools, but they went to see each other as well.
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Yeah. And it's so important because sometimes in research you have you're the
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participant or the researcher, but they got to play both roles.
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So what that does for our research is it enriches it in a way that you just,
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unless you are an insider, unless you're someone who's living it.
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You're going to miss things.
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And even for someone like me, I was living it, but I haven't in 10 years or longer.
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So it was just a phenomenal experience to learn from these practitioners.
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And I hope if the listeners here are interested in hearing more,
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they will go to the, the, the five minutes with podcast. So.
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You asked about the findings. Yeah. We were so excited. We kind of came in hypothesizing
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that we would have positive results showing that learner-centered schools are
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supporting youth with learning differences well.
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But we didn't realize quite how well.
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Oh, great. Yeah. Great. And in what ways?
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And I would say the main thing it all starts with is mindset.
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Said what we found is there was just a different way of thinking about,
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differences about human variability rather than it being oh this is a problem
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to be fixed it was from the get-go of,
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we're designing education systems around differences because we're all different
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and that meant that meant the world of difference that was a really powerful,
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finding for me as a parent.
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Because in theory, I thought I was really adopting a strengths-based mindset.
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But as I went to these schools and talked to the co-researchers,
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I realized I had a lot more growth to do in that area.
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From the way I spoke about my child to the things I focused on in my mind.
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I know that is part of human condition to look at the problems and go for it.
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But These schools really embody a different way.
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They really embody, we're going to look at this child and see what's great about them.
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The other few things that we found, we conducted a lit review,
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and we found a lot of the practices that they were doing are supported by evidence,
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and established evidence.
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So we looked at nine different specific learning differences.
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So when I say learning differences, what we meant is what sometimes can be classified
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as learning disabilities, like dyslexia, dyscalculia,
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dysgraphia would be another one.
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We also looked at attention deficits as one.
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We also put in autism, anxiety.
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Those were things we were seeing. And we had some students with dyspraxia,
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which I got to learn about. Oh, interesting, yeah.
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When we looked at the research on them, we were seeing that the schools are
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doing them because they're in systems that allow them to put those practices into place.
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Right, right. And enable the educators to do that, whereas educators in other
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systems might know best practices, but they can't implement them.
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Yeah, they don't have the systems there to support them.
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We also found that the schools, because we wanted public schools,
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they were so creative in how they were navigating policies and conditions.
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And we actually published a whole brief on just that. We have a policy expert on our team.
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And that was really interesting where they didn't see barricades.
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They saw different possibilities. Yeah, I feel like I did an interview specifically around,
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compliance and how to, you know, make some of the restrictions kind of work,
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how to work within the boundaries without compromising rigor,
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without compromising quality, without compromising the student experience.
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It's incredible what folks that can do in the public school system when they've
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got the right mindset and the right supports.
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Absolutely. And what was neat was that we were in three different states.
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So we had one of the schools in New York, one of them was in Minnesota,
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and one of them was in Wisconsin.
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So each of them was navigating different state regulations and local contexts.
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And one of them was a charter. So the one in Minnesota was a charter school.
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The one in New York was actually another big picture learning school.
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And that was a school within a school model. So it was nested within the high school.
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And then in Wisconsin, that was the, we love to call the smallest school district,
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in Wisconsin, and they served a highly transient youth population.
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And yeah, so there were three public schools, but very different context,
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policy, and just even how they're set up.
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Yeah. And I would just say to wrap it up in this with this question,
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because this is a great question I could keep going,
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was we saw a lot of trauma healing, personal growth and academic growth,
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which I can talk more about if you're interested in.
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And we also saw that it wasn't just the learners who were receiving the benefits.
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And this is part of what really surprised us, is we saw it extending to their peers.
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Educators were staying with the profession longer. We saw families,
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which the stories always made me cry because it was the parents talking about
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immense relief that they felt.
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And then also because it's out in the real world, you saw a lot of mentors and
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community partners getting influenced, particularly about their thoughts on relationships.
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Most of our schools served high school students, some middle school students,
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but shifts in teens, perceptions of teens, and particularly teens with learning differences.
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It really showed them how capable and creative and outside-the-box thinkers they were.
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Your research revealed that learner-centered schools can create a ripple effect
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of impact. Can you walk us through what that looks like exactly?
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I think what was really interesting was, so we're centering around the learner.
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Let's first start with the ripple effect. It starts with the learners. Yeah.
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So one of the things that if you look at research, particularly when you look
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at like ADHD research, there is a strong need for interest-driven pursuits,
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for that intrinsic motivation to be activated.
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The learner-centered schools we studied were all about that.
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So rather than saying, well, you have to learn math and you have to learn algebra,
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it starts with what are you interested in?
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What excites you? And then we'll figure out how to build the math into that.
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So for example, there was one learner in one of the schools that didn't have
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any interest in learning math, but his father was a welder.
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And he decided for his internship, big picture learning schools have internships
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twice a week or more where they go out and the youth are out in the community
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working. He decided to work with a welder.
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And when he set the goal, he wanted to make a welded toolbox for his father.
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And when he realized, oh, I need to learn angles and calculations.
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And it was something he cared about. It was something he was interested in.
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And then the math was needed for that.
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So you have a totally different starting position than something that's imposed from the outside.
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And that supported, I mean, all of a sudden his relationship with math changed.
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You had one other youth, I'm going to tell one more story with this one,
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you know, wasn't as interested in science, but he was interested in bowling.
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So he did this whole project based on the physics of bowling.
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I was going to say physics right there, right?
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Exactly. And that's where all of these academic subjects come from.
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They're built into the fabric of living, and we've parsed them out for whatever reason over time.
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But what learner-centered education is doing is it's re-weaving it in.
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To the lay person we may think that algebra is disconnected from real life we
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as educators know like there's a reason why we teach algebra in school and it's not just to.
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Torture kids who don't like math but what you just said for whatever reason
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we've parsed that out the academic study from the real life application in many systems
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it's been separated and so learner center of education is bringing that back,
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bringing those connections again.
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That's just incredible. As somebody with ADHD too, it's like that idea of interest,
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novelty, personal connection to something. That's incredible.
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I was trying to support my son this morning as a parent.
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To support his nervous system by breathing in through his nose and out through
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his mouth. And he didn't, he was resistant to his nose.
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But my eight-year-old's really into chemistry. So we looked up why,
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exactly why breathing through your
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nose is more supportive than breathing through your mouth for calming.
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And it turns out there's, oh my gosh, nitric oxide that, you know this,
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that happens when you breathe through your nose, that doesn't happen through mouth breathing.
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And we broke that down into the chemicals he wanted to know about the molecular
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structure. And then all of a sudden, he's bought in.
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Right. And he's probably regulated also because it's also been a good diversion as well.
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And he's bought in. That's incredible. Yeah. And I give that example because
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a lot of what I saw in these schools, I've learned to adapt as a parent.
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So it doesn't have to be, you don't have to find necessarily a learner-centered
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school to take on a learner-centered way of thinking about being with young people.
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So it starts with learners, the impact we saw. And I talked about,
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you know, academic growth. We also
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see a lot of expanded ideas about like possibilities for their future.
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A lot of times they're, like I said, out in the real world, so they're getting
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exposure and they're getting these professional skills that they wouldn't get
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if they're just isolated in a school dynamic all day.
00:17:44.305 --> 00:17:49.230
So you see they know how to talk to adults they know how to I mean big picture
00:17:49.230 --> 00:17:53.749
learning we explicitly taught professional skills interview skills things like this,
00:17:54.336 --> 00:17:59.260
and then we saw because it has this positive effect on the learners a positive
00:17:59.260 --> 00:18:02.810
effect on their peers we saw a lot of peers supporting each other.
00:18:03.620 --> 00:18:05.640
Feeling like family with one another um,
00:18:06.419 --> 00:18:10.645
noticing each other's strengths, because that's what the educators are modeling.
00:18:11.330 --> 00:18:16.428
And then the educators, you know, it's like all the children or all the students are my students.
00:18:16.677 --> 00:18:19.307
There isn't like, this is my caseload, that's your caseload.
00:18:19.307 --> 00:18:26.237
It is this network of support where not one person feels like they have to know the child.
00:18:26.237 --> 00:18:30.787
And the one at the school in Wisconsin, And what I loved is they they would
00:18:30.787 --> 00:18:38.577
see who the student graduate gravitated towards and they would have their own special person.
00:18:38.577 --> 00:18:42.781
So there was all these adults and the adults came and brought their own interests.
00:18:43.384 --> 00:18:47.585
And the learners who were interested in the same thing would connect to them and learn from them.
00:18:47.892 --> 00:18:50.983
That's the way the schools were designed to be able to to make that happen.
00:18:51.215 --> 00:18:54.657
And then, like I said, the families, you hear parents saying,
00:18:54.657 --> 00:18:57.857
you know, I don't have to come to school. I don't have to battle with my child
00:18:57.857 --> 00:18:59.266
to come to school every day.
00:18:59.591 --> 00:19:03.947
I, you know, my child feels so accepted. One parent said, I walk away every
00:19:03.947 --> 00:19:06.490
day feeling like it just can't be this easy.
00:19:07.227 --> 00:19:12.440
Wow. Which is, I can, someday maybe, I really could relate to that.
00:19:13.334 --> 00:19:16.107
And then I said, yeah, with community partners, we saw the big impact too.
00:19:16.107 --> 00:19:21.157
So if an educator or a parent wants to start implementing these practices in their community,
00:19:21.857 --> 00:19:26.347
today, tomorrow, you know, next Monday, what's the best first step that they
00:19:26.347 --> 00:19:30.444
could take to shift the focus onto the unique needs of the learner?
00:19:31.067 --> 00:19:36.547
There was a quote from one of the school leaders that said that the focus isn't
00:19:36.547 --> 00:19:42.105
on how smart are you, the focus is on how are you smart.
00:19:42.650 --> 00:19:44.943
I love that. Isn't that great? I love that.
00:19:45.785 --> 00:19:47.532
So that's where you'd start.
00:19:49.137 --> 00:19:54.895
What are you interested What do you care about? What ignites that passion?
00:19:55.512 --> 00:19:59.127
And then once you really know that,
00:20:00.012 --> 00:20:06.378
Keep that focus in your mind. Like shifting a mindset is doable,
00:20:07.023 --> 00:20:09.124
but it takes intention and practice.
00:20:09.571 --> 00:20:14.837
So think about the way, if you're an educator or a parent, think about the way,
00:20:15.470 --> 00:20:18.275
what you're noticing about your child.
00:20:18.670 --> 00:20:24.635
Are you focusing on the wins? I track my child's behavior every day and there's always a daily win.
00:20:24.955 --> 00:20:28.785
And when he was little, we always did, we did a wonderful list where every night
00:20:28.785 --> 00:20:32.668
we were writing down everything wonderful about him from that day.
00:20:33.138 --> 00:20:38.258
So I think it takes intention, but we all can shift our mindsets.
00:20:38.920 --> 00:20:44.915
And it's about catching when you don't and being kind to yourself.
00:20:45.443 --> 00:20:49.845
And then thinking about not just how you're thinking about the child in front
00:20:49.845 --> 00:20:54.168
of you, but how you're speaking to them and to others.
00:20:54.774 --> 00:20:58.045
That's something I- That's a great point. Catch myself all the time that I'm
00:20:58.045 --> 00:21:04.095
like, oh, there I go. I'm focusing on the deficits again and just use that to
00:21:04.095 --> 00:21:05.804
see where I am and move forward.
00:21:06.082 --> 00:21:11.167
So I really emphasize mindsets because I think it really makes a tremendous difference. And then.
00:21:12.856 --> 00:21:20.012
I would say building on that practice, it's really this idea of how can I build,
00:21:20.679 --> 00:21:25.532
my child or the student I'm working with? How can I get their interests woven
00:21:25.532 --> 00:21:27.249
into whatever we're doing?
00:21:27.938 --> 00:21:32.065
How can I make this connect to what they're passionate about and what they're excited about?
00:21:32.894 --> 00:21:38.473
And if you're in a situation where your child isn't at a learner-centered school,
00:21:39.109 --> 00:21:40.992
because hopefully there'll be more.
00:21:40.992 --> 00:21:46.762
That's what our organization wants to do. But you can ask the teachers if that's
00:21:46.762 --> 00:21:51.038
something that they might be willing to think about or work with you on.
00:21:51.259 --> 00:21:55.781
Or when they bring stuff home from school, think about how you can enliven that,
00:21:56.708 --> 00:21:58.769
with experiences or connections.
00:21:59.394 --> 00:22:03.719
And I would say, like, particularly for students with learning differences,
00:22:04.425 --> 00:22:09.498
just being creative, like just being really creative about,
00:22:10.322 --> 00:22:14.601
like, the way the school leaders were with policy and conditions. Be the same.
00:22:16.100 --> 00:22:19.661
How can you, if you're having trouble reading, what are those ways,
00:22:19.661 --> 00:22:24.801
what tools can you use? What are other ways to get that content so you can shine
00:22:24.801 --> 00:22:26.524
and you can show how smart you are?
00:22:28.525 --> 00:22:32.841
If something takes a long time for you to practice and you have to keep trying
00:22:32.841 --> 00:22:36.443
it over and over, like be creative about ways you can do that.
00:22:37.211 --> 00:22:43.501
So it's a fun process. And those different ways of learning and needing to show
00:22:43.501 --> 00:22:45.883
how you can learn are really celebrated.
00:22:46.399 --> 00:22:49.342
And enjoyed as opposed to a burden.
00:22:50.414 --> 00:22:55.221
Yeah, so one of the things I liked was there was a learner at one of the schools,
00:22:55.221 --> 00:22:58.859
the school in Minnesota, and that student had autism and ADHD.
00:22:59.516 --> 00:23:03.609
And that student, like they just gave him something simple, like sentence starters.
00:23:04.155 --> 00:23:09.727
Like that student, you know, it's like, I feel, I, and just something very simple like that.
00:23:09.942 --> 00:23:16.652
So they could just know that they're cared about, know that they have what they need to thrive.
00:23:17.219 --> 00:23:20.941
Just small modifications make a really big difference. But approaching it with
00:23:20.941 --> 00:23:24.051
creativity, I think, is huge. Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:24.691 --> 00:23:29.401
And there's also a lot out there, you know, learning from each other and other
00:23:29.401 --> 00:23:33.221
teachers, other parents. There's so much about community, which is,
00:23:33.221 --> 00:23:35.038
I think, a really key part of this.
00:23:35.437 --> 00:23:37.929
So we're just about at the end of our time.
00:23:38.688 --> 00:23:42.503
And there's so many great things going on with your work at Ed Reimagined,
00:23:42.828 --> 00:23:47.451
how can folks stay involved, get in touch, or learn more about your work and
00:23:47.451 --> 00:23:49.562
about this, especially about this research?
00:23:50.391 --> 00:23:56.023
Yeah, how can folks get involved? So our website is education-reimagined.org.
00:23:56.488 --> 00:23:59.261
If you want to learn about learner-centered education and more,
00:23:59.261 --> 00:24:05.281
we have a newsletter with great articles about the schools and different ways
00:24:05.281 --> 00:24:07.805
of thinking about learner-centered that come out every month.
00:24:08.464 --> 00:24:13.724
We have a whole page dedicated to this research. Like I said, we ended up doing...
00:24:14.577 --> 00:24:20.092
Five different briefs. So if you're interested more in the policy side,
00:24:20.092 --> 00:24:24.462
if you're interested on that research that I mentioned.
00:24:24.462 --> 00:24:29.922
So if you want to see, well, what's the research on dyslexia and how does that
00:24:29.922 --> 00:24:34.588
connect to learner-centered practices from the study, you can go to that particular brief.
00:24:35.028 --> 00:24:39.205
And then also we have a YouTube channel, Education Reimagined YouTube channel,
00:24:39.612 --> 00:24:44.582
and we have some beautiful videos on there if you want to really see how these schools come to life.
00:24:44.582 --> 00:24:49.082
The one school in Wisconsin, we just put out a short video. I think it's about
00:24:49.082 --> 00:24:52.298
six minutes, but it's showing how they approach learning differences.
00:24:52.664 --> 00:24:58.382
So I definitely encourage you to check it out and learn more about what learner-centered
00:24:58.382 --> 00:25:00.823
schools may be operating in your community.
00:25:01.072 --> 00:25:06.252
Nice. And it's all free, open access. That's a big part of the ELO model as
00:25:06.252 --> 00:25:08.043
well, right? We want folks to be able to.
00:25:08.710 --> 00:25:12.482
Yeah. Well, Kara, it's been great talking with you. Thank you for joining me
00:25:12.482 --> 00:25:13.821
today. It's been great chatting with you.
00:25:14.587 --> 00:25:18.292
Thank you so much. It was a real pleasure. I'm really grateful for all of,
00:25:18.292 --> 00:25:22.029
for you, for the work you do, and for all those who took the time to listen to this.
00:25:22.488 --> 00:25:27.199
And to learn more, check out their website at education-reimagined.org.
00:25:27.814 --> 00:25:31.162
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast
00:25:31.162 --> 00:25:33.485
platform and follow us on social media.
00:25:34.037 --> 00:25:37.654
I'm Aurora from ELA, and this was a deep dive with Education Reimagined.