For decades, quantitative, randomized control trials (RCTs) have been considered the gold standard of education research. The What Works Clearinghouse even prioritizes studies that randomly assign participants to conditions and show statistical significance. However, at last month’s American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Annual Meeting...

How do you unite a diverse set of organizations that believe in the same cause but haven’t worked collectively yet? And how do you ensure meaningful change and impact results from bringing the leaders of these organizations together? This is exactly the challenge the organizers of the Educating All Learners Alliance (EALA) faced in launching their...

It’s easy to conjure a mental image of a science fiction-inspired dystopian future when we hear cautionary tales from the classroom about ChatGPT completing homework assignments, anecdotes of the chatbot fooling a human into bypassing bot controls in its stead by claiming to be a person with a visual impairment, or even an admission from the...

As spring transitioned into full swing, we had some celebrating in order at The Learning Accelerator (TLA)! We welcomed Shanice Maxwell as the Associate Director, Talent, Culture, and DEI Initiatives at TLA. A former educator who brings her background in organizational behavior and human resources to the role, Shanice says she’s excited to bring...

Recently, districts from across the U.S. converged at Dell's Innovation Summit to tackle problems of practice around innovating in schools, including: designing innovative learning models, implementing new structures of high school through a conference-style approach, and creatively leveraging human capital. For one district, Newport News Public...

Creativity is the competence to leverage self-interests, motivation, imagination, and prior knowledge in flexible ways1 to generate, evaluate, or improve ideas; imagine new ways of solving problems;2 forge new connections — across content and people;3 create new understanding; or communicate thinking through writing, drawing, voice, music, or any...

While artificial intelligence (AI) has been present in schools for years through adaptive learning and feedback tools, this new wave of generative AI tools, headlined by ChatGPT, feels different due to their ability to make unique, sophisticated responses and answer a wide range of prompts that can do the heavy lifting of critical thinking instead...

Technology has a knack for raising alarms in education: the advent of tools like the radio, calculators, television, and smartboards have all caused a stir. OpenAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, ChatGPT, has introduced us to the latest hyped technology, AI. While history warns us to be cautious and bearish about new technology in...

This article originally appeared in the Learner-Centered Collaborative's Blog. Conversations in the education sector have converged in the past several weeks around three seemingly unrelated topics: pandemic recovery, educator shortages, and ChatGPT. Evidence suggests that schools continue to exist in a state of pandemic recovery, with students...

At a recent conference session on student-centered learning, the facilitator asked participants to wrestle with the question, “When did you become an independent learner?” My discussion partner Charli — a high school student who wouldn’t describe herself as an ‘independent learner’ — wanted to know when I became one. Her question struck a chord...