Decades of education reform have changed curricula, tweaked assessments, tinkered with teaching and held principals accountable. The one thing they have never done is treat students as active partners in the process. Yong Zhao argues this is precisely why reform has failed — and why a fundamentally different approach is now both necessary and possible.
Zhao’s case is built on a striking observation: after decades of government-led reform across most developed nations, the basic indicators of educational quality have barely moved. Students have been the recipients of change, never its agents. His response is not to abolish schools but to transform them — creating what he calls a global learning ecosystem in which students become genuine owners of their learning, supported by their local schools but no longer confined by them.
Written for educators, policymakers, parents and students, this is a book about what learning could look like if we stopped trying to fix the existing system and started building the conditions for something genuinely new.
https://sk.sagepub.com/book/mono/learners-without-borders/toc