The Future of the Educator: A Collaborative Inquiry
By Lindsy Ogawa and Bobbi Macdonald (Education Reimagined), Bonnie Benjamin-Phariss (Mosaic), Katie Martin (Learner-Centered Collaborative), Tyler Thigpen, Caleb Collier, Amber Bryant, and Brittney Toles (Institute for Self-Directed Learning), Michael Strong (The Socratic Experience), and Andrew Frishman (Big Picture Learning).
Right now, the role we’ve long called “teacher” is being fundamentally redefined—pushed by the rapid advancement of AI and pulled by a growing movement toward learner-centered models.
That’s why six organizations came together for The Future of the Educator: A Collaborative Inquiry: Education Reimagined, Big Picture Learning, Learner-Centered Collaborative, the Institute for Self-Directed Learning, Mosaic, and The Socratic Experience. Each organization contributed a foundational essay, peer organizations offered critical responses, and each chapter ends with a rejoinder. The point wasn’t to “win” an argument. It was to surface what’s actually changing, where we truly align, where we honestly don’t, and what that means for the next decade of educator practice.
Our heart for this project
We’re living through a moment where it’s easy to retreat into camps. People sort themselves quickly: traditional vs progressive, public vs private, direct instruction vs inquiry, accountability-first vs agency-first, “AI will fix it” vs “AI will ruin it.”
This inquiry was our attempt to do something harder and better: to have constructive dialogue across lines of difference for the sake of children, educators, families, and the long-term health of the education field and ultimately our nation. Not by blurring distinctions or pretending tensions don’t exist, but by treating each other as serious professionals who are trying—often under real constraints—to do right by learners.
In what follows, we name the common ground we’ve found, the tensions we’re still working through, and the practical implications for leaders, funders, and policymakers who are shaping the conditions educators will work inside—because the future of the educator won’t be decided by rhetoric, but by design choices.
What we broadly agree on
We agree that the most important work in education is increasingly the work that cannot be automated. As AI handles more routine explanation, practice, and feedback, the educator’s contribution shifts toward the deeply human craft: noticing learners, building trust, guiding reflection, setting conditions for meaningful work, and helping young people make sense of who they are and what they’re for.
We agree that self-direction isn’t assumed; it’s developed. Learner agency doesn’t flourish in “anything goes” environments, and it doesn’t flourish in compliance-driven environments either. It grows when learners experience meaningful choice inside clear expectations, tight feedback loops, and strong relationships.
We agree that the educator role is expanding and specializing. The future isn’t one heroic teacher doing everything. It’s a set of roles—advisors, guides, coaches, designers, community connectors—working together so learner-centered models are sustainable and not dependent on exceptional individuals.
We agree that AI changes the environment, but it doesn’t change the moral center of the work. We can be excited about AI as a scaffold while staying clear-eyed about risks: inequity, surveillance, shallow performance, academic integrity confusion, and the temptation to automate away the very human experiences that develop judgment, character, and belonging.
Importantly, we agree that if adult learning doesn’t change, student learning won’t either. New models require adult formation: a visible craft, shared language, coached practice, and systems that make professional growth real, not just inspirational.
Where we disagree (and why these disagreements are useful)
Our disagreements aren’t mostly about whether learner-centered education is good. They’re about sequencing and strategy.
One disagreement is where transformation begins. Some of us spend most of our time designing new learning environments where constraints are fewer and iteration is faster. Others are focused on how learner-centered practice becomes accessible at scale through public systems and broader ecosystems. That leads to different views on what “scaling” means and what kinds of infrastructure are required.
Another disagreement is how much the existing grammar of schooling can hold this shift. Some of us believe meaningful transformation can happen inside traditional systems with the right redesign and guardrails. Others believe the current structures—testing regimes, schedules, grading norms, coverage expectations—are so misaligned that the field will need parallel pathways and new institutional forms, not just reform inside the old ones. This is not a new debate in our field, but…
A third disagreement is about balance: how to hold the line between adult authority and learner agency. How much direct instruction is essential, and when does it become a crutch? How do we protect educator sustainability while also protecting learner ownership? What does “high expectations” look like when pathways are personalized and outcomes are more varied?
A fourth disagreement is about professionalization: how the educator’s craft becomes legible, coachable, and trustworthy at scale. Should the field prioritize new role definitions and apprenticeship-style preparation, or work primarily through existing licensure, staffing structures, and teacher prep pipelines? Put differently: what changes fastest—practice, policy, or the profession itself?
These are real design questions and tensions. And the field gets healthier when we can name them without talking past one another or assuming bad faith.
Wonderings for the field
For leaders: If we keep trying to “add learner agency” as a program inside an unchanged institution, we’ll keep burning out educators and confusing families. This work requires role redesign, schedule redesign, and assessment redesign. It requires making mentoring and advising structural, not extra. It requires clarifying what’s non-negotiable, what’s adaptable, and what evidence of learning looks like in a model built for variability. Truthfully it’s a years long journey that asks for patience, disciplined iteration, and the humility to keep learning in public—because you’re not just changing a set of practices, you’re rewiring the culture, the operating system, and the adult skill set that makes learner agency safe, credible, and sustainable.
For funders: Some of the highest-leverage investments right now aren’t flashy pilots. They’re infrastructure: adult formation systems, coaching capacity, tools that reduce administrative load, and measurement approaches that are rigorous without forcing sameness. Ecosystems don’t build themselves.
For policymakers: Educator policy is now inseparable from accountability policy. If policy continues to reward compliance outputs over human development outcomes, learner-centered models will remain fragile or niche. If policy evolves toward clearer floors, meaningful growth measures, authentic proof of learning, and multiple pathways to readiness, the educator’s evolving role becomes more feasible—and more publicly trustworthy.
For new alternative learning environments: If you’re building outside the conventional system—an SDE center, microschool, pod, hybrid homeschool model, or family-led environment—don’t assume freedom alone will do the work. Young people still need strong adults, clear rhythms, real feedback, meaningful accountability, and thoughtful culture design. The opportunity is not simply to escape old structures, but to build something more coherent, humane, and durable from the start.
For all of us: AI makes the stakes sharper. The question isn’t whether AI will enter learning. The question is whether we will let it accelerate shallow performance, or redesign learning so that tools amplify humanity, deepen ownership, and protect the slow work of becoming.
How we hope this gets used
We didn’t create this inquiry as a branding piece. We created it as a tool for the field.
We hope educator and leader prep programs use it to ask better questions about what they’re preparing educators to actually do.
We hope school and system leaders use it as a discussion text with their teams: What do we agree on? Where do we disagree? What does our model require from adult roles, not just student behaviors?
We hope funders use it to clarify what they’re underwriting: not just innovation theatre, but the operating systems that make learner-centered learning durable.
We hope policymakers and advocates use it to see the full design landscape—so debates about “what works” become less ideological and more grounded in conditions, tradeoffs, and evidence.
We also hope families following alternative paths—whether through homeschooling, microschools, pods, or self-directed learning communities—use it to reflect on what kind of adults, environments, and supports best help young people grow in agency, purpose, and flourishing.
Most of all, we hope it helps more people enter the conversation with curiosity instead of certainty—and with the humility to learn across lines of difference—because the future of the educator will be built by coalitions, not by camps.
If you’re leading, funding, or shaping policy for K–12, we hope this gives you both language and permission to convene the right people, ask the harder questions, and take the next practical step—so more educators can do the kind of work that makes learners (and our communities) genuinely stronger.
