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The Holy Grail in learning and education is context. The problem is that education is focused on generic outcomes. And as soon as you shift to that conversation, you forget about context of the learner. You forget that learning is social, and about identity, and fundamentally connected to what the learner cares about.

I saw a video of you talking recently. You said starting with outcomes and working backward was a big mistake. You said we should start thinking about the student and then design forward. What does that actually mean, and is that related to what you’re saying about context? In education, we traditionally think about content. We think about content as the outcomes we’re striving for. Does a kid know X? That’s what all our tests measure, and that’s how we lose the kid.  We lose the kid to our focus on content—we talk more about STEM than we do about kids. 

People talk about kids learning content and then testing them on that content. People like Katie and Will are thinking about designing the context for participation. That’s the Holy Grail.  Its through participation that learning happens.