The Future of Education

Honoring Human Variation at Scale challenges a foundational assumption of modern schooling: that efficiency requires standardization. Many of today’s educational tensions stem not from students changing too quickly, but from systems that are incapable of changing rapidly enough.  Schooling systems in much of the world were designed for a more predictable era—one defined by fixed knowledge, linear progressions, and uniform pacing. This session introduces Facilitated Interdependent Language Learning (FILL) as a living example of a different design, one that organizes learning around individual goals, transparent competencies, and shared responsibility rather than courses and calendars. Originating in the world language classroom in a US public high school, FILL demonstrates how learners studying different languages, at different proficiency levels, can learn side by side while remaining accountable to clear, meaningful standards. The power of the approach lies not in its content area, but in its architecture: it honors human variation without sacrificing rigor. Viewed through a wider lens, this same architecture has implications well beyond languages, offering new ways to imagine learning in mathematics, science, and the humanities—disciplines often constrained by pacing guides rather than curiosity. Participants will explore how learner-generated targets, proficiency-based assessment, interdependence, and the productive use of mistakes can reshape school structures for the age of learning. Artificial intelligence enters this ecosystem not as a replacement for educators, but as a collaborative partner that expands learner agency, supports reflection, and makes personalization possible at scale. The session invites educators and leaders to rethink not how to improve existing systems, but how to redesign them around how humans actually learn.

Keywords: Facilitated Interdependent Learning, Human Variation, Proficiency-Based Assessment, Learner Agency, Interdependence, AI-Supported Learning

REFERENCES

1. ACTFL. (2012, updated). ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines and NCSSFL–ACTFL Can-Do Statements. American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

2. Christensen, C. M., Horn, M. B., & Johnson, C. W. (2008). Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. McGraw-Hill.

3. Fine, S., & Mehta, J. (2014). In Search of Deeper Learning. Harvard University Press.

4. Zhao, Y. (2012). World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students. Corwin.