Zero‐Based Design: Engineering Biodiversity of Learning
Ira David Socol, Pam Moran, Chad Ratliff · 2018
To think about creating a biodiversity of learning, this chapter discusses new ways of thinking about how ecosystems change. That happens with removing barriers that wall off the potential for change. Next, it also looks at the concept of terroir, used so beautifully as a metaphor by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze in Walk Out Walk On - that the soil and climate of two different continents produce variations in crops even when the seeds planted are the same. Together the concepts of biodiversity and terroir combine to support the idea that schools in different localities need the freedom to be different. The chapter further discusses a model that the authors believe is simple enough to follow but that challenges the philosophy of many in the education sector. Moving from the current scientific management system demands a different kind of approach to change that is not iterative but rather zero-based in design.