Designing Democratic Schools and Learning Environments

This open access book explores democratic schools and learning environments globally. The book focuses on a newly developed framework for democratic education. The authors describe existing schools and concept schools—those that are ideas but not in operation. The first section includes the editors’ own journeys. Pillar 1 includes schools that emphasize the open flow of ideas and choices, regardless of their popularity. Pillar 2 maintains that it is impossible to have a high quality education that ignores equity. Chapters explore how many diverse ‘marginalized’ communities experience education and some innovations that hold great promise for inclusion. Pillar 3 provides examples of schools where active engagement, consensus and compromise support the ‘common good.’ Pillar 4 investigates schools which organize students, parents, social institutions and the larger community collaboratively to achieve its goals and to solve theirs and society’s most urgent challenges. Linda F. Nathan brings over four decades of experience in designing schools and nonprofits, including serving as the founding principal of Boston Arts Academy, the city's first public high school for the visual and performing arts. Currently, she supports and mentors educational leaders nationally and internationally and is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, USA. Jonathan F. Mendonca is the CEO of Shikha Institute of Education & Co-founder of Barefoot Edu Foundation, a non-profit that builds school leadership for the twenty-first century across three states in India. He has served as an educator, educator trainer, institute builder and policy advocate improving the quality of education through human centered systems and policies. Gustavo Rojas Ayala currently serves as the general director for Mexicanos Primero Sinaloa, Mexico, a non-profit that advocates for children’s right to education through research and policy analysis. He has extensive experience leading school intervention projects aimed at increasing educational justice in underprivileged communities in Chile and Mexico.