Elevating Joy, Belonging, and Cultural Understanding to Address Education’s Problems

Last month, the Learning Sciences Exchange held its biennial summit, bringing together hundreds of education innovators to talk about outside-of-the-box ways to transform education and bring insights from the science of learning much closer to the children who can most benefit from it.

Three big themes animated the day—all grounded in research on how kids learn best: Joy, belonging, and cultural understanding. These elements, according to many of the day’s speakers, need to be infused throughout learning environments if society is to overcome many of the seemingly intractable problems that face education.

The theme of the event was Seeing and Solving Through Multiple Perspectives (all attendees received colored sunglasses to bring the point home), and it convened creative problem-solvers from around the world working across disciplines and cultures to address significant educational challenges for young learners across the globe. Speakers ranged from the founder of the Center for Scholars and Storytellers and the senior VP of curriculum and research at Sesame Workshop, to researchers, nonprofit leaders, media makers, educators, principals, and school-district leaders, covering topics including authentic family engagement, next generation assessments, and co-designing solutions with teachers and students.

The heart of the event focused on learning and hearing from fellows in the Learning Sciences Exchange. The fellowship program brings together learning scientists, journalists, education leaders, social entrepreneurs, and entertainment professionals to tackle tough problems by thinking collaboratively and trying out solutions by building prototype tools and resources. Fifteen LSX fellows spent the past two years collaborating, learning from one another, and sharing their diverse range of expertise and talents. Together they designed innovative ways to promote joyful learning to homes and schools, foster middle-school students’ sense of belonging, and games designed particularly for migrant children to create inclusive, welcoming classrooms communities.

In panel discussions and video stories, they described how they had to step outside their comfort zones to learn from each other and design something together. As shown in the video clips below, they talked about the experiences that led each team to design human centered, research based prototypes for educators and caregivers, centered around the questions: How can I use these in my classroom and community? How can we ensure that we are including children and teachers at the earliest stages of design?

Joy Lives Here

When we are joyful we are better able to learn. Research shows that joy enhances our ability to learn by improving attention, concentration, executive function, and memory. Joy Lives Here is a social awareness campaign based on the fact that children love to learn through music and song. The accompanying Joy Kit features a set of cards detailing 15 skills and examples of how to experience everyday moments of joy from cooking a meal, picking out an outfit or cleaning up a mess. Designed to be experiential and culturally relevant, the Kit fuels the learning processes in the brain.

Building Belonging

Science shows that social belonging matters in education. A strong emotional connection can be crucial for fostering meaningful learning which in turn correlates to positive participation in democracy and society. When students' sense of belonging is threatened, they often underperform.

To address this, LSX fellows developed practical tools for middle school educators aimed at empowering students to find their voices and develop agency to shape the future.

The result is Building Belonging, a growing website for educators that includes lesson plans and classroom activities designed to support students' identity development and highlight the unique assets they bring to their schools and communities.

SuperDiverse Gamekit

Research indicates that students feel less identity-safe when they don’t see themselves reflected in their books, language, or online environments. Thus, understanding their own culture and the culture they are part of is crucial. When empathy, curiosity, and confidence are activated, children feel safer and more engaged.

To enhance cultural understanding, the LSX fellows leveraged game theory as a strategy. Acknowledging that kids learn best when they are active, engaged, and can discover things themselves, they co-designed and tested the SuperDiverse Gamekit with young people from 16 different countries. This kit includes a variety of games and activities, along with a facilitator’s guide, to build inclusive, welcoming classroom communities, particularly for children from migrant backgrounds. Key components include Cultural Bingo, Mystery Box, and Emotion Mural.

The next cohort of fellows for the Learning Sciences Exchange are seven professionals who will be helping to take the program to the next level—showing what is possible when cross-sector groups of fellows are assigned to help tackle challenges already identified by an education organization. Three of the new fellows are leaders of schools or school systems in southwestern Pennsylvania that work with Parents as Allies, an innovative family engagement program that is now working to build a sustainable model that can scale up.

Next steps for LSX more broadly include working closely with subprograms at New America—the Early and Elementary Education Policy program (EEEP), Educator Quality and English Learner initiatives, the Teaching, Learning, and Tech program, initiatives on learners with disabilities, and the PreK-12 Policy program—to foster cross-sector and participatory design approaches that help set conditions for transforming policy and practice to align with the science of learning. This summer’s Hackathon Using AI and Open Educational Resources for Accessibility, developed with the Teaching, Learning and Tech program’s build4good interns, is one example, where students, educators, technologists, and experts in accessibility came together to develop new solutions for students who are learning English or for students with disabilities.

And this week’s hybrid event, Learning, Joy, and Equity: A New Framework for Elementary Education, hosted by the Children’s Equity Project and EEEP and featuring speakers from the teaching, parenting, leadership, research and policy points of view, is another great example. These events and frameworks show how drawing on ideas from different fields, disciplines, and perspectives can lead to new momentum, ultimately creating better learning environments for children, especially those too often marginalized, overlooked, or unwelcomed in today’s systems.

The photograph at the top of this blog post shows the founders of the LSX program, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Golinkoff, and Lisa Guernsey, using sunglasses as props to describe the theme for the summit, "Seeing and Solving Through Multiple Lenses."