Evolving Education: Shifting to a Learner-Centered Paradigm

It's time to create a new normal.

It's time to leave behind practices that don't best serve all learners and educators, and to prioritize what matters most: relationships, connection, purpose, flexibility, agency, and authentic learning. Education must evolve. Looking to learners will help us see what's working, what's challenging, and, ultimately, what's possible. To ensure that all of those learners thrive, we'll need to use insight from our own experiences, research from the field, and new tools and approaches to adapt our practices.

In Evolving Education, Dr. Katie Martin advocates for a much-needed shift to a learner-centered teaching model. Learner-centered education creates purposeful, personalized, authentic, and competency-based experiences that help students develop skills that empower them to learn, grow, and solve problems that matter to them and others. Following on Martin's previous book, Learner-Centered Innovation, Evolving Education offers a deeper dive into how educators can harness new technologies, learning sciences, and pedagogy that center learners and learning. After all, Martin argues, if we truly want to develop knowledge, habits, and skills in students, we have to know them, love them, and help them see the full beauty of who they are and what they can become.

"Evolving Education clearly articulates how to redefine success, create powerful learning experiences, and support them with enabling conditions. This would make a great book study for any school faculty or community group."

-Tom Vander Ark, CEO of Getting Smart

"Katie Martin absolutely nailed it in Evolving Education. A learner-centered paradigm requires that we examine beliefs and biases and disrupt systems that do not serve each and every learner. This work requires innovation, creativity, flexibility, and heart. This book is the perfect mix of incredible storytelling, inspiration, and concrete strategy."

-Katie Novak, EdD, author of UDL and Blended Learning