Director's Welcome


Dear Friend,

The mission of the Forum on Education is to define the changing forces that are shaping how people learn, work, and live in contemporary America, and to demonstrate how individuals and educational institutions can apply new knowledge to thrive in the future.

Indiana University created the Forum on Education in 1995 to integrate the institution's renowned intellectual and technical resources to stimulate a conversation on public education and life-long learning.

Forum projects aspire to assist public and other human service agencies in understanding and coping with change, and consequently, to address how our educational institutions must respond.

The Forum’s process is a simple one. We pose critical questions and provide various options so that educational institutions and individuals can develop strategies to cope with change. Our programming promises to present multiple perspectives. It will document examples of effective practice in their natural environments. We work with leading educational professionals to inform our products with the very latest techniques and research.

Forum Accomplishments:

• Created the public radio program: America’s Learning to link policy makers with stakeholder groups. The program ran for two years.
  
  
• Convened a conference on Complex Adaptive Systems with leadership teams from three states to explore "new visions of unifying schools."
  
  
• Produce videotapes (18 at last count) focusing on ways to transform schools to better serve all students. Our Schoolwide System of Support series is our most recent accomplishment.
  
  
• Serve as an academic book publisher and distributor.
  
  
• Support a Personalizing Learning Agenda by applying the principles of scale described by Elmore to eleven school districts in Michigan.
  
  
• Conducting an investigation on a research based study of district and school capacity building and its relationship to school improvement through the UCEA Center on Special Education Leadership and School Practices consortium.
  
  

Professor Leonard Burrello - Director