Creating Capacity for Innovation Across Education Systems

We convene stakeholders and catalyze educators to implement and scale the most effective approaches to education. Tomorrow’s learners deserve innovative*, collaborative and agile schools. To ensure that all learners succeed in a rapidly changing world, the Friday Institute creates capacity for innovation and adaptation across educational systems through dynamic resources, a community of partnerships and our corpus of research.  

*We define innovation as the application of novel and scalable ideas, tools and practices that advance education.

Over 76,000 educators from all 50 states and 160 countries have participated in online professional learning for educators. Over 76,000 educators from all 50 states and 160 countries have participated in online professional learning for educators.

Online Professional Learning for Educators

Friday Institute online courses are built on research-based models of effective professional development and learning communities that focus on job-embedded, peer-supported and self-directed learning. Since its start in 2013, over 76,000 people from all 50 states and more than 160 countries have registered for these courses. With the onset of COVID-19, the project saw a tenfold increase in participants in the spring of 2020—serving more than 25,000 participants and making 2020 the project’s most successful year of courses.

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Teaching New Literacies and Inquiry: A Grassroots Effort to Bring About Educational Change in Kenya

This case study co-authored by Friday Institute Executive Director Hiller Spires, Ph.D., was conducted with teachers in Kenya who participated in a professional development series on new literacies and inquiry. In this study, the authors focus on the challenges for educational transformation in Kenya and the changes that are being made by pioneering Kenyan educators after their participation in the professional development series.

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Two students work on laptops in a classroom Two students work on laptops in a classroom

Friday Institute’s Longtime Commitment to Digital Learning Helps Change North Carolina’s Education Landscape

After years of behind-the-scenes research, planning, collaboration, facilitation and evaluation, the Friday Institute’s instrumental role in the North Carolina Digital Learning Initiative led to every single student (1.5 million) and teacher in all 115 school districts in North Carolina having access to unlimited broadband in their classrooms—the first state in the nation to tout this accomplishment.

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