Podcast Episode #114: Human-Centered Learning with Katherine Prince

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One of the United States’ foremost educational futurists, Katherine Prince, leads KnowledgeWorks’ exploration of the future of learning. As Vice President of Strategic Foresight, she speaks and writes about the trends shaping education over the next decade and helps education stakeholders strategize about how to become active agents of change in pursuing their ideal visions for the future learning ecosystem.

Katherine’s Background

Before joining KnowledgeWorks in 2006, Katherine supported large-scale changes in working practice at Britain’s Open University and helped federal agencies and other clients increase service quality by incorporating a customer perspective into their organizational planning. 

Katherine holds a BA in English from Ohio Wesleyan University, an MA in English from the University of Iowa, and an MBA from The Open University with emphases on creativity, innovation, and change and on knowledge management. She also earned a certificate in Foresight from the University of Houston. Katherine serves on the board of trustees of the Union Institute and University and is a member of the Association of Professional Futurists.

KnowledgeWorks

Since 2007, Katherine has worked with education stakeholders around the country to explore how they might transform education to create better possibilities for all young people. For the last fourteen years, Katherine has worked at KnowledgeWorks, a non-profit social enterprise that seeks to foster meaningful personalized learning that enables every student to thrive in college, career, and civic life.  As Senior Director, Strategic Foresight, she leads the work on the future of learning.

Katherine and her colleagues look ten years out to explore how trends shaping education today might impact learning. About every three years, they publish a full forecast on the future of learning (see Recombinant Education: Regenerating the Learning Ecosystem). They use those insights as to the basis for working with education stakeholders around the country to examine strategic possibilities and to explore how each of us might act as agents of change in creating positive futures for all young people.  They also produce other publications and provocations to help people explore the implications of future trends.

In addition to helping others consider strategic possibilities, Katherine gets to dream for herself.  In November 2015, she had the chance to share her vision for the future of learning as part of TEDxColumbus. Her talk, “A Vision for Radically Personalized Learning,†explored the possibility of truly putting students at the center of the expanding learning ecosystem.

Katherine Prince has been leading KnowledgeWorks’ efforts to explore the future of learning for some time now, exploring different possibilities. The newest paper she helped author goes one step further by asserting hope for the future with human-centered learning.

KnowledgeWorks hosted a webinar featuring Katherine and one of her teammates about this topic and other elements from the paper. It led to great discussions and had attendees from across the country and around the world.

Questions as we discussed making sense of Human-Centered Learning:

1. The rapid changes and disruptions affecting the world require a deep shift in the way we see education in society and view the relationships between learners and educators and within and across communities. Why do we need a vision of human-centered learning?
2. What would happen if we reoriented teaching and learning systems, expectations, and experiences to put a comprehensive view of human development at the center?
3. At its core, human-centered learning is care-based. It cultivates love and belonging for students, as well as for the many adults who play a part in students’ learning journeys. What are the signals of change where some education organizations are prioritizing love and belonging in their systems, structures, practices, and learning experiences?
4. In human-centered learning ecosystems, How are leadership structures and processes actively inclusive of many forms of difference? Can you share organizations that are advocating for and enabling equitable policymaking and design through inclusion, shared responsibility, and coordination among constituents?

Download the paper by clicking on this image:

Katherine’s Contact Information 

• KnowledgeWorks
  Katherine Prince on LinkedIn
• Katherine Prince’s Profile on KnowledgeWorks
• Katherine’s Twitter page and follow her @katprince

Additional Resources

• KnowledgeWorks’ strategic foresight page
• Podcast on Getting Smart on Navigating the Future of Learning 
• KnowlegeWorks’ 2018 Forecast: “Navigating the Future of Learningâ€
• “Navigating the Future of Learning: A Strategy Guideâ€
• Strategic Mindset at KnowledgeWorks (Tedx Talk)
• Foundations for Flourishing Futures: A Look Ahead for Young Children and Families©
• KnowledgeWorks On Redefining Readiness (2017 podcast with Katherine Prince)

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