The Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) Education Partnership
Schools and Communities Learn for a Sustainable Future
The SoL Education Partnership is a multi-year effort to form strong collaborative relationships within, between, and among schools and communities to create systemic change for a sustainable future. The formation of a National Learning Community springs from the recognition that lasting transformation in education requires innovation at the curricular, institutional, and community levels and that schools and communities—interdependent systems—must learn and change together to instigate, sustain, and scale up these innovations and best practices. The foundation of our effort is the ongoing work of content experts and site practitioners who are deeply committed and actively engaged in school-community partnerships for a sustainable future.
A Community of Practice: Our community of practice is unique in that it is defined by the integration of four fields of inquiry—education for sustainability, organizational learning, systems thinking, and youth engagement.
Education for Sustainability. An approach that equips students, teachers, and school systems with the new knowledge and ways of thinking needed to achieve economic prosperity, participate democratically, secure justice and equity, and all the while regenerate the health of ecosystems, the gift upon which all life and all production depend.
Organizational Learning. A framework to help schools and communities of practice achieve a shared vision among their constituents, enable personal mastery, surface mental models, and facilitate team and partnership learning.
Systems Thinking and System Dynamics. Through the use of system dynamics mapping and modeling tools, systems thinking enables students and teachers to surface recurrent patterns, simplify the growing complexity of our environment, and act with increased effectiveness.
Youth Engagement/Youth Leadership. A set of principles that allows for the creation of authentic, meaningful opportunities for youth to serve as equal partners in their schools and communities and empower them to gain the ability, authority, and agency to make decisions and implement change in their own lives and in the lives of others.
We believe that in order to ensure truly sustainable communities, schools and communities must learn together to sustain innovation and best practices that can make a significant contribution locally and regionally. There is great value in joining forces. We believe that collectively we can make a significant contribution to sustainability by increasing the capacity of our schools and communities to work together in elegant, seamless, and sustained collaboration. We hope that through our work we can manifest more system change for a sustainable future by creating stronger collaborative learning relationships between schools and communities. We seek to engage schools and communities to envision their desired futures and raise the current realities to meet these visions.
Read the 2009 SoL Education Journal SoL Education Journal 2009
For more information about this program visit www.soledplaza.org.
Contact: Leah Mayor, Director of Education and Research, at 212/645-9930 ext 16, email
