Creating Capacity for Innovation Across Education Systems

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 71,000 people from all 50 states and more than 160 countries have registered for these courses.

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.

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.