Digital Promise Announces New Center for Learner Pathways to Prepare Learners for a Skills-Based Future

The 21st century is marked by rapid technological advancements, economic shifts and globalization. These changes challenge traditional notions of success and how individuals must prepare for life, learning and career pathways. The once linear journey of acquiring a degree followed by a stable, 30-plus-year career is being replaced by a nonlinear, ever-evolving path where adaptability, personal agency and recognition of transferable skills are key to long-term success. Preparing learners for this reality requires transforming connections across the early-childhood-to-workforce continuum to create greater alignment while rethinking how we teach, assess and recognize learning.

The Center for Learner Pathways is Digital Promise’s call to action to transform learning–and how we recognize it– to better prepare people for a self-directed, skills-based future. In our most recent report, Exponential Change Brings Exponential Choice: Navigating Life, Learning, and Career, we present a case for rethinking how society understands pathways to success in life and career and the essential changes our systems and institutions must undergo to support this new vision. We also respond to the reality learners of all ages face—particularly those who have been historically and systematically excluded—to ensure they can achieve agency, well-being and economic security.

The Center for Learner Pathways aims to connect partners across sectors and geographies, build lasting systems-level alignment that supports learner transitions and create resources and solutions that bridge research and practice to enable learner advancement and cross-sector transformation. We inspire through people-first storytelling and evidence of innovations that transform how people develop, demonstrate and showcase their skills. We bridge the last miles between learners and opportunity, education and workforce, and innovation and policy.

Our vision is that all learners can:

• Leverage their agency and competencies to navigate ever-evolving pathways to opportunity (see our San Diego STEM Pathways work for more information).
• Earn postsecondary credentials that provide economic security.
• Activate technology to navigate lifelong powerful learning and career journeys.

Join us in creating a world where every learner has the support, recognition, and opportunities they need to succeed. To learn more, visit our webpage.