Enacting a Portrait of a Learner: Policies, Practices, and Professional Learning for a Student-Centered Approach

• In Event: Promoting Competence-Based Education: Landscape, Assessment, and Practices

Abstract

Objectives
· Examine the strategic process a school district used to develop the Portrait of a Learner aligned to the values of the local school community to plan and support implementation.
· Explore what it means for adult learners to implement a student and community-driven vision.
· Explore the ways in which a Portrait of a Learner can inform local policies, practice, and professional learning.

A Portrait of a Learner is designed to provide school communities with a shared vision for the student learning experience. A school district in Nevada engaged in a year-long journey with a research organization to develop a Portrait of a Learner that represented student and community assets, strengths and a vision for all learners. In this session, leaders from the district and the research organization share their journey to develop and implement a student-driven Portrait of a Learner and aligned professional learning to make the Portrait a reality for every student.

Schools, districts, and states across the country are developing Portraits of a Learner and Graduate Profiles in service of their school community. When not used effectively, they are - at best - a resource that sits on a digital shelf. The journey and learning in the district inform what it takes to reorient a system to serve every learner, starting with a focus on the assets of students and their communities. We believe that this focus advances student academic, social and personal success.

This session will discuss the intersections and distinctions among personalized learning, deeper learning, formative assessment, and culturally responsive and sustaining education and how, together, these approaches are moving the field toward a more coherent student-centered approach. Educational equity is a central organizing tenet of the four instructional approaches examined that inform the Portrait of a Learner implementation work in the district. We examined the intersections among these student-centered approaches and found that instructional elements in each nurture identity, agency, equity, and community for students. This session will draw from the research supporting these approaches and help practitioners imagine and plan toward education systems that prioritize identity, agency, equity, and community in meaningful ways, using a Portrait of a Learner / Graduate Profile as a lever for change.

This session explores what it means to have a student-centered, equity-driven, and future-focused approach to learning that is supported and modeled at every level of the education system. Through a strategic process to develop and implement a Portrait of a Learner, this model builds on student and community assets, and fosters leadership across the system to create systems that sustain deep learning.

Authors

• Cali Kaminsky, WestEd

• Andrea Browning, WestEd