Subscribe to Our Podcast
This podcast highlights developing trends in K-12 education, postsecondary and lifelong learning. Each week, Getting Smart team members interview students, leading authors, experts and practitioners in research, tech, entrepreneurship and leadership to bring listeners innovative and actionable strategies in education leadership.
Find us on:
From Compliance to Contribution: What Happens When Students Do Work That Matters
What if the most important outcome of a learning experience was not a credential but a shift in how a young person sees themselves? Nikki Stancampiano and Reem Al-Adhami share how the PAST Foundation's work-based learning program moved students from compliance to contribution, and from career exposure to genuine identity formation. This piece is essential reading for leaders designing learning experiences that build agency, belonging, and purpose alongside academic skills.
Why the Experience of Experience Matters: Designing learning through experiences that actually have an impact
What actually makes a learning experience valuable, and why do so many students point to school as the place that falls shortest? In this deeply researched piece, educator and doctoral faculty member Chris Unger unpacks the difference between faux experiences and authentic ones, drawing on Kolb, Lave and Wenger, Schon, and field case studies from innovative schools across the country. For any education leader thinking seriously about learning design, this is the framework you have been looking for.
What Makes Dual Enrollment Actually Work: Sustainable, Aligned Funding & Data-Informed Evaluation
The final installment of our four-part series with Britebound asks the questions most districts quietly avoid: where does your dual enrollment funding actually come from, and are you measuring what happens after a student leaves? This post explores how funding design can either anchor students to high school support systems or quietly pull them away, and why tracking participation numbers alone is no substitute for tracking persistence. If you are building or scaling a dual enrollment program, this one is worth the full read.
The Creolization of Recognition
What if our recognition systems are still doing the quiet work of colonization, even when they claim inclusion? Simone Ravaioli of Instructure explores creolization as a generative framework for redesigning how we validate learning across cultural and epistemological borders. Drawing on thinkers like Tyson Yunkaporta and Serge Ravet, this piece challenges education leaders to move beyond Recognition of Prior Learning toward relational protocols that let different knowledge systems meet as equals. It is a critical read for anyone shaping the future of credentials, competency frameworks, or equitable recognition.