Dennis W. Cheek, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
Learning is at the very core of what it means to be human. Even before we are
born, our senses are already at work as we process information from the outside
world. An intricate dance begins between our inner self as known through
thought, emotions, and self-regulation, and our outward self as known through
perception, speech, and behaviors.
The late Jonas Salk, physician and inventor of the polio vaccine, wrote in
1972's Man Unfolding of the complex interplay among chance, choice,
change, and challenge that animates and makes possible all of life and that
enriches and characterizes human life throughout the lifespan. Before a child
enters kindergarten she has already mastered at a highly proficient level at
least one language (often two or three), grasped in amazing detail fundamental
aspects of the social and physical world, formed friendships and bonding
relationships with others both near and far, and learned important life lessons.
Above all, one is impressed by the seemingly endless curiosity of children about
the world, the ways in which it seems to work, and that endless query to
others—"why?"
Educational programs at the Kauffman Foundation seek to prepare the next
generation of entrepreneurs and skilled workers for success in the economy,
society, and daily life. While we cannot identify in advance which young people
will become the next wave of successful entrepreneurs, nor at what age the
“entrepreneurial spirit" will seize them (up to age eighty and beyond), we
believe that the dispositions, habits of mind, skills, and knowledge they
acquire will benefit everyone. The success of these future entrepreneurs will
require fluidity in skills, concepts, problem solving, decision making, and
judgment that are daily applied in the realms of the sciences (including
mathematics), engineering, and technology and design. Both tacit and explicit
familiarity with and understanding of the human-designed world (i.e., the world
of technology) is fundamental knowledge essential for life and active
participation in the world as an entrepreneur, leader, and economic, spiritual,
and social contributor to society.
This brings us to the question of how such skills, capacities, dispositions,
and knowledge are to be encouraged and developed among students. We find it
helpful to always keep the concept of learning as the central focus
of how we think about, evaluate, plan, and execute our grantmaking related to
children and youth.
Learning is a concept with much broader connotations and applicability than
education—a word that conjures up immediately a particular set of structures and
functions that are the serendipitous outcome of history, culture, political
power, geography, economics, and sociology. Learning is a fundamental aspect of
human life throughout our days on Earth and provides a point of linkage among
our lives as citizens, employees, business owners, and social creatures.
There is much we do not understand about how people learn, whether at the
fundamental physiological level of perception, attention, and memory or in the
more cognitive dimensions of goal orientation, problem solving, information
processing, organizing, and decision making. Proceeding from what we do know,
the Kauffman Foundation seeks out or develops programs or strategies that
involve children and young people in real-world, active dimensions of learning
such as:
- hands-on, minds-on programs like Project Lead the Way, U.S. FIRST Robotics,
and U.S. FIRST LEGO® League;
- internships and job shadows through UpLink, Kansas City's regional hub for
the formulation and provision of teacher externships, career speakers, student
internships, job shadows, and mentoring;
- immersive and other online experiences like GeoWorlds, The JASON Project's
Operation: Resilient Planet, or VISTA's Year in Health Sciences; and
- mobile learning through programs such as Sports Bytes, which uses cell
phones to engage young people in learning mathematics, engineering, technology,
and science (METS) content related to sports.
Yet just innovating at the program level fails to move systems and learning
as a whole forward in ways commensurate with the learning challenges we face in
America and around the globe. In this vein, we seek to leverage leadership
capabilities, targeted research, ideas, partnerships, and extensive social
networks, such as:
- Tackling complex problems related to advancing learning that require
significant changes in how policymakers think about learning in highly
structured environments such as schools. As an example, we supported the
creation of the first-ever set of tools to improve school boards' understanding
of teaching and learning in METS. (See the essay by our partners in this venture.)
- Defining significant problems and organizing one or more coalitions to
enable this vague concept of immersive education environments to materialize. If
we can make it real, we will have a large and immediate impact on learning. (See the essay by our director of Future of Learning Initiatives.)
- Undertaking a thorough analysis of existing research, and setting a new and
powerful research agenda to seek fuller answers on how to develop the next
generation of entrepreneurs within a framework that pays serious attention to
the developmental sciences, as well as learning and performance across the
lifespan.
- Creating a new vocabulary that facilitates thinking about, planning for,
and bringing into existence new learning environments and new conceptualizations
about how people, ideas, and systems can be organized to maximize human learning
potential.
We are daily renewed by the challenges and opportunities before us as we join
with others of like mind to create new and more powerful ways to advance
learning and improve the human condition through the not-yet-fully realized
power of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial grantmaking.
