Vision of Student Success

A Collectively Developed

Vision is a collective and ongoing conversation which enables

a community to come to an agreement on what it wants to

be true for students in the long term. In particular, a vision

expresses what a community wants to be true for students

when they leave school. Visions of student success drive

lasting, transformative impact in classrooms and education

systems. This is a pattern across the globe.

is concept of a vision for student success is at the intersection of purpose (what we want) and people (who gets

to decide). A vision of student success should be collectively created, locally rooted and globally informed.

A vision is collectively created through co-construction with educators, students, families, and communities and

should continually evolve in genuine human partnership. When collectively creating a vision for student

success, consider:

• Who is involved in the process of creating and evolving the vision?

• Who hosts the discussion?

• Where do the discussions take place?

See examples from around the world of the process of collectively creating vision.

A vision is locally rooted when grounded in the history, culture, and values of a particular place, emerging from

the people in that community. When constructing a locally rooted vision for student success, consider:

• What are the local challenges and opportunities facing children?

• What are the aspirations of students and families?

• What are the histories that shape the community? What are the traditions and values?

See how Anseye Pou Ayiti (Haiti) view depth of local engagement as at the core of their works.

A vision is globally informed by reﬂecting global aspirations, considering what has worked in other countries

and communities, and engaging with global factors that interconnect us all. When developing a globally

informed vision of student success, consider:

• What are our aspirations for students to enable them to grow as citizens who contribute to creating a

world that is more inclusive, sustainable, and peaceful?

• What has inspired you from other places around the world?

• How would we make aspirations like the UN sustainable development goals a reality in our community?

• What economic and other trends are shaping the world that our children will be living in when they

leave school?

See how a teacher at Teach For Armenia approaches global citizenship in her community.

Global Learning Lab DETAILED INSIGHTS

2019

Visions Reect Education Communities

The process of collectively creating vision grows the pool of people who are part of the

conversation, drawing into these critical conversations people too often currently excluded.

A vision of student success cannot be neatly separated from who decides on that vision; vision

is a process of growing enfranchisement or engagement with education.

Visions Reect Frontiers of Knowledge

There are always new insights to learn from, for example in the form of developments in the

science of learning and inspiring examples from other communities. These new insights might

inspire and shape new decisions.

Visions Reect a Changing World

The world is constantly changing, and our vision for education should engage with that. For

example, as the challenges that we collectively face shift, so too our collective aspirations for the

next generation evolve.

Vision is an ongoing process of broadening and deepening engagement with the purpose of education,

realigning actions based on the insights generated from this process, and doing so while learning from

experience. Vision is never ﬁnally settled and resolved, it is a living process. Seeing vision as process, and not

just product, helps us to see why the vision for student success should emerge from the community, rather

than being imposed or adopting the vision of someone else. It is not the place of any external organization or

expert to tell others what their vision for education ought to be. Sustainable visions that empower all

children arise from, and are sustained by, local context and communities.

WHY VISION MATTERS

Millions of children lack the education, support, and opportunity they need to thrive. e obstacles they face

—poverty, hunger, discrimination, trauma, and school systems that do not provide them with the education

they need—can be overwhelming. When millions of children aren’t learning, it aects us all—perpetuating

poverty, dividing societies, and weakening economies. Meaningful, sustainable change requires leaders who

are rooted in their local culture, challenges and opportunities, and who believe in the potential of all children

and their communities.

Teach For All’s core purpose is to develop collective leadership to ensure all children have the opportunity to fulﬁll

their potential. Collectively created, locally rooted and globally informed visions of student success are proving

critical to developing collective leadership to improve education and expand opportunity for all children, so they

can shape a better future for themselves and the world around them. Moreover, virtually every dicult question

faced by partner organizations in Teach For All—from whom to recruit and select, to how to train and support

teachers, to what form of alumni support to provide—must be informed by a vision of students’ success.

VISION IS A LIVING PROCESS, NOT A FINISHED PRODUCT

One way to think of a vision is as a statement that answers the why of education. It tells us the intended

outcome of school for students. For example, the vision at Enseñá por Argentina has four core aspirations

for students: “ey believe in education as an engine of change. ey value continuous learning. ey see

themselves as agents of change. ey are leaders in their communities.”

A clear vision statement can be helpful in some cultures and contexts. However, in some cases there

may not be any neat expression of vision. Whether or not there is a vision product, the process of

engaging with the community in an authentic, ongoing dialogue is always vital. is is because:

While reﬂecting on purpose and engaging in open and honest conversations with the community can at times

seem like a distraction from the burning demands of day-to-day work, in reality those challenges are all more

eectively addressed by considering their relationship to vision. ere are three sets of reasons for focusing on

vision:

Head

Strong research

and arguments

for spending

time on vision

Hands

Practical

reasons for

attending to

vision

Heart

Ways in which

our values draw

us towards

vision

After 25 years, if there is one thing I could do dierently

from the beginning with Teach For America, it would be to

ensure that everything we are doing was aligned to local,

collectively contextualised visions of student success.

Wendy Kopp | Co-Founder, Teach For All

& Founder, Teach For America

TEACH FOR ALL’S EVOLVING LEARNING ABOUT VISION

Teach For All’s learning on vision has shifted over the years as it gets challenged by insights and experiences

from across and beyond the network. For example, Teach For All used to emphasize the product of vision:

vision as an audacious goal for us to drive towards. is has changed to an emphasis on vision as a process

through which the community comes together to share their long-term hopes for children. is process

determines the purpose of education for that community, and binds people together in a common eort to

make it a reality.

Another shift has been in the focus of vision. A decade ago vision was often used by Teach For All partners to

describe changes in the education landscape: for example, how many of dierent kinds of schools would be

created. Now the focus is on students. e most powerful visions center on what success means for students

when they leave the education system. is is the foundation of the work of education. Ideas about what

changes to schools and systems might be necessary ﬂow from the student vision.

With the help of students, families, educators, and policy-makers across and beyond the Teach For All

network, these insights are certain to continue evolving.

Please share evidence and insights at [email protected].

HEAD

Vision is critical to lasting, powerful impact.

In the research and literature on leading change, much emphasis has been placed on the role of vision.

Students and studiers of social change have found that the organizations and individuals that have the most

lasting, powerful impact have vision at the core of what they do. Across the history of social change, there are

always unifying visions. For example, think of Martin Luther King’s speech in which he crystallized his vision

for civil rights, with the words “I have a dream”.

ere are some clear reasons why vision is seen as essential:

Imagine a Different World

Articulating a vision makes it possible to visualize an alternative possible future for students. This generative

process of imagination helps build a sense of possibility that a different future is within reach.

Break the Cycle

Current education systems across the world are failing to serve many students. Without a vision for a different

future, the momentum of the status quo makes it likely the future will look like the past. Visions help push

against this inertia.

Build a Movement

The process of creating a vision in itself builds the investment, belief, motivation, and focus of those working to

achieve it. Those who work alongside each other to develop a vision that truly reﬂects shared interests and values

harness and focus this collective energy of a community.

Foundation for Plans

A vision makes it possible to backwards plan. A shared sense of the end-goal creates a foundation for setting

and working towards shorter-term goals. This builds conﬁdence that daily actions are aligned with longer-term

aspirations.

HANDS

Vision is essential to make aligned, intentional decisions.

ose of us working to create equitable education

systems across the world have many dicult and

pressing decisions to make. Teachers have to decide

what to prioritize in their lessons. Program designers

have to decide how to balance developing fellows to

have impact in the classroom today, and cultivating the

capabilities to have impact tomorrow as alumni.

Citizens building coalitions to grow education systems

that truly reﬂect our values, have to decide how to tell

their story to inspire and galvanize others.

ese are not abstract questions. ey are immediate,

practical and require decisions now. Amidst the Photograph from Teach First Israel

pressure of these choices, it can seem like attending to

vision is a luxury or a distraction. Yet the classrooms and communities that are most powerfully transform-

ing the life chances of students have vision is at the heart of what they are doing.

Without working on vision, there is simply no way to answer the practical questions of how to transform

the life chances of students in the classroom; how to design programs that grow inspiring leaders; or how to

build a wider movement to drive change. Both the process of developing a vision, and the product that arises

as a result have practical benefits. The process is about an ongoing, authentic conversation with the

community. The product is the working definition of student success you collectively commit to as a result

of that conversation.

e following table looks at the practical beneﬁts for stakeholders of both the process and product of vision:

Role Process Product

Teachers

• Builds credibility and trust with students and the wider

community

• Ensures what you are doing genuinely reﬂects the

values of those who you are seeking to serve

• Engages you in a journey of continuous learning in

partnership with the community

• Reduces potential barriers of power and distance that

might separate

• Provides a foundation to assess student progress

• Allows you to clearly communicate what you are aiming for

• Serves as a support to bring you back to your core priorities

Teacher

Coaches

• Connects your work with the students and

communities you are serving

• Deﬁnes what you are aiming for, which allows you to

backward plan for the teacher mindsets / skills / behaviors

needed to get there

Program

Designers

• Brings teams together around shared aims

• Reduces risk of organization being seen as imposing on

the community

• Builds stronger relationship with key stakeholders

• Shifts the emphasis from the aims of the organization, to

the aims of the community

Policy

Makers

• Ensures policy is based on the genuine interests of the

community

• Provides sources of innovation and diversity

• Increases legitimacy of policy decisions

• Allows multiple stakeholders to unite around common aims

• Provides a foundation for common evaluation of progress

HEART

Vision is at the core of ensuring education systems reﬂect our values.

At Teach For All, our vision is that by 2040 we will see communities in every part of the world enabling all of

their children to have the education, support and opportunity to shape a better future for themselves and all

of us. ese communities will be inspiring and informing a worldwide movement to achieve this everywhere.

It is clear that this is not the current reality for the vast majority of people. In most communities, knowing

certain facts about the parents of a child—where they live, how much they earn, what their ethnic

background is, etcetera—makes it possible to make a very accurate guess as to how well they will do at school.

e education systems that Teach For All partner organizations are seeking to challenge and change were

built for dierent children, times, and purposes than the children in our partner organizations’ classrooms.

In many countries, education systems were built to develop efﬁcient workers in the industrial

age. The future our children are living into is fundamentally different.

In many countries, education systems were originally designed for a “mythical average”—and

without the beneﬁt of frontier neuroscience breakthroughs about the very nature of learning.

In many countries, education systems were originally designed for a narrow subset of children

with certain privileged identities.

In many countries, education systems were put in place by powerful people or institutions

(including colonizing invaders, dominating groups of privilege, etc.) without consideration of

deeply held cultural values and historical contexts.

Photograph from Teach First Israel

ese factors have shaped what is taught, how it is taught, and the

nature of schooling as a whole. e problem is not that education

systems are broken, the problem is that they are inequitable by

design. Inequity in education is not an accident of history, it is a

direct result of the vision that has guided our schools, sometimes

explicitly, sometimes implicitly. So rather than trying to perfect our

current education systems, communities need to reimagine them.

is requires a clear vision of what communities want for their

children, and a process that truly includes all voices.

e process of reimagination calls us to recognize that the histories

of our education systems are overwhelmingly in conﬂict with the

values of diversity and inclusiveness. ere are many communities

who have been systematically marginalized, and who experience the

shadow of our education systems. For example, in colonized

contexts, such as New Zealand, there has been a cumulative impact on the indigenous Maori population of

an education system that neither included their voices in true partnership, nor reﬂected their values. If there

are to be truly inclusive education systems, those who have been marginalized are vital in rejuvenating the

practice of education. ose who have themselves experienced inequities should guide and lead this work.

CONCLUSION

Vision enables us to change the tide.

What is the purpose of education? And who gets to decide? For too long, we at Teach For All, and many

others working in education, have assumed answers to these questions. ose assumptions have led us

to incomplete or incorrect visions of student success that are being imposed on students, families, and

communities rather than co–constructed with students, families, and communities. is has to change.

All partners across the Teach For All network share a commitment to equity: we believe that demography

should not be destiny, that we should remove the predictability of failure or success based on background. Yet

we know that there has never been a time and place where this has been a reality. Given this, it seems highly

unlikely that if we keep operating in the same ways we have in the past, that we will achieve our goals. If we

let the inertia of the current system drive us, we are likely to repeat the patterns of the past. If we want to

change the ﬂow, we will need a dierent kind of energy and approach.

Visions allow us to concretely declare what we want to be true for our children, which allows us to

conﬁdently determine how to align our individual and collective actions towards achieving them. Collective

visions are respectful of, and responsive to, the local context of people, place and time, which make them

eective in generating sustainable collective action towards making them a reality.

Vision-aligned work calls us to look outward to have a systemic-

perspective on our work, seeing the complex histories and contexts

in which we are working. And it requires us to look inward at the

ways in which we are behaving, and the ways our own perspective

and mindset might be replicating, or transforming, the systems in

which we work. We see this type of vision-aligned approach as an

essential ingredient in our aim to achieve our goals as a network.

Teach For All’s Global Learning Lab supports

learning among classrooms and communities

that are helping students grow as leaders of a

better future for themselves, and all of us.

Photograph from Teach First Israel