By: Hassan Hassan
Over the last decade the education innovation community worked to include a greater emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion. This included a talent-base that was more representative of children in our schools and increased philanthropic funds to combat systemic racist and support learners from color. In the last few years, 4.0 has also evolved its approach to better serve our mission. After we were founded in 2010 as 4.0 Schools, our early approach was heavily informed by the user-focused principles of “design thinking,” which focuses on building and testing prototypes and which dominated commercial product design, school reform, and social entrepreneurship at the time.
However, just as others have reckoned with the ways in which their approach to teaching and schooling was insufficient to combat systemic racism and educational inequity, we too began to notice that our model’s focus on individual stakeholders and building out solutions wasn’t doing much to address the inequitable systems and outcomes that burdened communities. The ultimate goal of 4.0 is to reimagine and run education. You can also read about how to get in touch with us. Communities rather than education
