What We Noticed Digging Into The Data

Who's In The Dataset

How Do They Work?

Ecosystem Role

Entities were initially categorized into ecosystem segments, then by their type. In some cases, entities within the same segment might have two types of activities (e.g. provide system technical assistance and professional learning).

Learning Supports

Learning support providers are those entities creating tools, resources, and services that interact with learners in learning environments directly. We identified 171 entities in this segment.

• The majority of entities fell into two categories: Supplemental materials, units, and experiences (30%) and additional student supports and wraparound programming (29%). Given the mapping diligence was focused on entities providing specific learner-centered supports (e.g. personalizing, whole child), this overrepresentation likely represents tools and resources offering supports beyond traditional instructional materials to meet these needs.

• Learning platforms, which often offer multiple forms of support in an enterprise fashion (e.g. assessment functions along with content) comprised 16% of entities

• 7% of entities coded to two categories, combining functions like assessment and supplemental curriculum (e.g. specific intervention for a skill of learning domain) and supplemental content with wraparound support (e.g. a social emotional program with tutoring and mentoring)

Capacity Builders

Capacity builders are those entities working to build the capacity of the people, systems, and models operating around learners. We identified 220 entities in this segment.

• System redesigners, that is entities working with districts and school management organizations (both charter and private) to undertake more systemic redesign of conditions along with learning models, comprised roughly 1/3rd (34%) of all capacity builders

• Process technical assistance providers, entities working to support more general change, improvement, and leadership processes were the smallest segment (10%).

  • 62% of these entities focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion services and supports.

• As was the case with learning supports, capacity builders often categorized into multiple types, combining certain services with others (e.g. model design and professional learning).

  • 15% of capacity builders fell into two types. Of these entities, 70% combined some form of adult learning support (platform, network, training) with their other services.

Informers

Informers seek to influence the behaviors of other actors supporting learners and new environments and setting conditions. They often work as the translators between other segments, helping build understanding and producing resources that support the transfer of ideas, practices, and systems. We identified 127 entities in this segment.

• ThinkTanks and research entities made up roughly 1/3rd (32%) of all informers, followed closely by advocacy/policy entities (30%)

• Only two entities (1.6%) were identified as playing a sector-level quality control role, though some ThinkTank and Research activities do capture information about and build understanding of quality-related metrics

Condition Creators

Condition creators create opportunities for success, adoption, and scaling of learner-centered innovations through policy, funding, and demand building. We identified 64 entities in this segment.

• We did not attempt to map public policymakers at this time.

• General funders (75%) were entities that had provided philanthropic or venture support for specific learner-centered initiatives and entities. As we dug in to do diligence on their models and priorities, it became clear that for many general philanthropies-- as opposed to venture capital organizations focused on new tools, intermediary funders providing additional sector services, and philanthropies also engaged in informing work-- individual grants did not necessarily imply sustained strategic support.

  • For this reason, we excluded these general funding entities from the public database and map.

• Demand builders and organizers, such as parent and educator unions, made up 11% of entities

What Change Are They Trying To Make?

Focal Point for Change

Across roles, entities were focused on different levers or focal points for adding value and driving change within the ecosystem.

• Entities focused on bringing new learning models and experiences as well as better tools and resources made up the majority of actors. (27% and 26% respectively).

• Roughly 10% of entities focused on changing adult roles and building the capacity of talent (people and systems); this felt surprising given the sheer number of adult learning capacity builders we identified. However, as we examined the "why" for these entities many of those adult learning, their tools and services focused on changing adult skills, behaviors, and mindsets in order to support other specific aims, such as the implementation of instructional materials or different classroom models.

Digging into the data by segment helps provide some additional insight. These data are provided in the tables below, but some highlights include:

• Organizations focused on adult roles tend to be capacity builders and nonprofits. They make up the highest number of public entities in the dataset and overwhelmingly are accessed by learners through public systems.

• Better tool and resource entities tend to be learning supports and forprofit; they tend to operate at global and national levels.

• Entities engaged in mindsets and vision change are most often nonprofit, but split between capacity-builders and informers of change.

• Entities fostering the development of new learning models and experiences tend to be capacity builders and nonprofits.

• Policy and research and understanding entities are overwhelmingly informers and nonprofit and at a "mature" stage of growth and development.

• System transformation entities are most often capacity builders, though they also include condition creators. They include forprofit and nonprofit entities.

Mission Commitment to Learner-Centered Innovation

During deeper diligence, the team looked to see if entities had an explicit commitment in their mission statements about driving specific learner-centered models and outcomes (specifically activities, services, and supports intended to make learning more personalized, mastery-/competency-based, and supportive of whole child development, particularly across non-traditional academic domains and/or settings).

• Only 45% of organizations had a mission or vision that explicitly named this type of learner-centered innovation as core to their models and purposes.

Mission and Operating Horizons

Each entity was assigned a mission and operating "horizon" (see Provocation #3 in the Pre-Reading Materials), the former drawn from mission and vision statements, and the latter categorized on operating activities:

• Current: Work that offers improvement or efficiency to optimize experiences within traditional structures

• Innovation: Work offering new models, tools, and approaches that offer a modernized or redesigned learning experience within the current operating frame though orienting towards enabling future-oriented models

• Future: Work requiring or enabling a shift to a new, dramatically different operating paradigm, often through offering a "pocket of the future in the present." This work is focused on wholesale sector transformation and disruption and cannot scale without significant sector change

Unsurprisingly, the mission horizon entities articulate are ahead of those they actually operate in. While this implies the need to shift conditions for operations, it also implies that the set of entities ready to support more fundamental change is likely larger than it might appear based on behaviors alone.

Digging into the data by segment helps provide some additional insight:

• Learning supports are most likely to state a mission in the innovation/future but operate in current horizons. This is similar to tools, which are most likely to have both current mission and operating horizons. These entities depend on adoption across many environments for scale and often exert less control over the model and conditions in which they operate

• Entities with "private" learner access points are most likely to have a future-oriented mission and operating horizons

• Entities focused on changing adult roles and development, resources and tools, and policy tend to operate in current horizons as well as articulate innovation-focused missions (rather than the future). Again, this could be attributable to the market forces and scale at which they operate, as well as their relative lack of control over the implementation of actual learning models

• Horizon seems to relate strongly to organizational size; larger organizations orient and operate more towards current horizons