When we understand that learning happens everywhere, the opportunities to improve support for learning are unlimited.

This is the big idea that drew me to step into my new role leading the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI), a nearly 40-year-old research and evaluation non-profit focused on expanding ideas about when, where, and how learning happens.

And yet, a few weeks into my role, I’ve been struck that when I talk to people about learning, their automatic association is often with young people in classrooms. I have conversations that start with me saying that I lead the Institute for Learning Innovation, and the response is about how their child loves school, or about how young people are being failed by schools, or about a memory of something that happened during their schooling. It has been fascinating. For most people, most of our learning across our lives happens outside of schools. It happened in our first jobs, and in our afterschool programs. It happens on family trips or walks around the neighborhood. It happens as we find ourselves in new situations, realizing that we need new skills for what’s ahead.

As an organization that has been championing the idea of free-choice learning for decades, at ILI, we want to shift the narrative about learning only happening in schools – and instead focus on how learning can be supported and advanced in all sorts of places based on what we know about the science of learning. Learning is shaped by our experiences and is highly dependent on relationships. Connecting with interests and sparking curiosity help learners to be fully engaged in the process of learning.

Can schools create better opportunities for learning by shifting from wrote models of schooling to integrating the science of learning into how classrooms are organized? Absolutely. Are there so many other places where learning is happening in ways that spark curiosity and encourage exploration? Of course!

If we shift our understanding of how learning happens to include the classroom but not exclude all the other places where we learn and grow each day and over our lives, the power of learning can be unlocked on a grander scale. This is what we seek to do at the Institute for Learning Innovation – to expand notions of when, where, how, and with whom learning happens most effectively and to unlock the transformative power of learning.

Our work seeks to understand and amplify the critical role that families play in learning across the lifespan. We work with organizations that serve families and help them improve their outreach, program strategy, and impact in their work with families. We also partner with family-serving organizations with resources and strategies that support the process of learning.

Our work also seeks to advance conditions that support thriving ecosystems for learning, including healthy and productive partnerships among organizations that contribute in meaningful ways to the learning ecosystem – like Museums and Science Centers partnering with schools or community-based youth organizations, or networks of youth and community serving organizations organizing to expand access and opportunity for learning.

Of course, the work of changing how we think about learning is a larger task than any organization can do alone. We know that there are champions for these broader ideas about learning who are doing great work across the country and around the world. We work with many of them and are seeking to expand our networks. Together, we hope to amplify the stories of how learning happens and continue to build a movement of learning champions who understand that learning happens everywhere and that supporting learners is powerful and can change the world.