Learning Sciences Exchange (LSX) Fellowship

The application portal will close on July 15, 2024 at 11:59 p.m Eastern Daylight Time.

This link (https://newamerica.smapply.org/prog/lsx) takes you to the page for registering with our application platform (SurveyMonkey Apply) and filling out the application form.

The ideal LSX Focus Fellows candidate is someone who is well-positioned to collaborate in teams and who has experience working with families or schools. We seek candidates who are also able to bring insights back to their communities and their respective fields to make a positive impact on children’s learning.

Candidates should be mid-career and experienced enough in their own fields to understand the value of seeking out new opportunities for collaboration and communication of ideas across different sectors.

In addition to seeking those who want to improve learning experiences and build better systems for today’s kids, we are seeking individuals with diverse perspectives and experiences in one of five sectors:

• Researchers in family engagement, child development, cognitive science, and other fields across the learning sciences
• Social-impact entrepreneurs who have built or are deeply involved in non-profit startups or other new initiatives to advance family engagement and/or children’s learning
• Education journalists with experience reporting on schools, social science, kids, and families through short- or long-form pieces, podcasts, or other media
• Entertainment producers and game developersfocused on products and services that support learning
• Education leaders in schools, districts, and professional-development programs (Please note: education leadership fellows will not be chosen through the open 2024-25 Call for Applications. They will be selected in a separate process.)

The application form requires applicants to choose which sector best represents their work; applicants will have the option of also choosing a secondary sector if desired.

Yes. For example:

• Across geographic boundaries. Fellows may apply from the continental U.S., Canada, and Mexico. In this cohort, we seek fellows who are physically located no more than three time zones away from Washington, DC, to allow for ease in scheduling remote meetings. (In the past, the LSX program has included fellows from many more countries across the globe, but we have limited the geographic spread for this particular cohort.)
• Across social groups. We seek fellows with varying and diverse experiences individually and in their communities emerging from identities related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability, or socioeconomic status.

Applicants will be notified of their status in mid-August 2024. We will make a public announcement at the LSX Summit on September 18th, 2024 in Washington, DC. Fellows are expected to attend that event.

For this 2024-25 cohort in partnership with Parents as Allies, we will be selecting three education leadership fellows and one fellow from each of the remaining four sectors (research, social-impact entrepreneurship, journalism, and entertainment), resulting in 7 fellows to be chosen in all.

This is a one-year fellowship. It starts in August 2024 and ends in July 2025.

We are seeking fellows who are interested in working on projects to enhance the learning of children ages 2 to 12 and to enhance connections between parents and teachers who work with children in these age ranges.

The 2024-25 fellows cohort will be the first cohort to represent our latest iteration of the Learning Sciences Exchange program. In this new iteration, we are partnering with education organizations that have already identified a problem to focus on, as opposed to the previous LSX cohorts who were expected to both identify a problem and collaborate on solutions to solve it. Because the fellows will be focusing on a particular problem, we are calling them Focus Fellows. In this 2024-25 cohort, we are partnering with Parents as Allies, an innovative family engagement program, and working to address problems of sustainability and outreach identified by education leaders at Pennsylvania schools that are deeply engaged in PAA initiatives.

LSX Focus Fellows will have the unique opportunity to learn from deep discussions with each other across the five sectors represented in this program (research, education leadership, education entrepreneurship, education journalism, and entertainment). Over the year, fellows will work together to address challenges related to sustainability and outreach in the Parents as Allies program.

Through webinars and other professional learning workshops, LSX fellows will also learn how to communicate research and elevate insights from the learning sciences for new audiences. Fellows will meet in person twice during the 2024-25 year. First, they will meet in Washington, D.C. at the LSX Summit on September 18th and participate in an in-person orientation in D.C. on September 19th. Second, they will meet for school site visits in Southwestern Pennsylvania in the first quarter of 2025. Throughout the school year, they will meet remotely each month in facilitated Zoom sessions.

Each fellow will receive a $1500 stipend, and all travel costs are covered for in-person meetings.

In addition to demographic information, LSX Fellowship applicants are asked to note which sector they represent and to submit short personal statements on the assets they bring and their experiences in working with schools or families (200 words); what they hope to gain from the fellowship (200 words); what they have learned from working on a collaborative team (200 words); a description of a particular area of study or project they are currently tackling or would like to embark upon (200 words); a résumé or CV; and three work samples. Samples can be uploaded as PDFs or Word docs that are published pieces and/or that contain links to previous projects, published articles, videos, or other materials that help showcase their interests and talents.

Yes. Over the course of the one-year program, LSX fellows will be responsible for collaboratively developing a prototype product or strategy to test at a school or schools that would help support sustainability of the Parents as Allies program. In addition, LSX fellows will be expected to provide input through surveys as well as guidance on memos and publications that describe what they have learned.

No. Because we are seeking applicants who have already had some experience in their respective fields and are eager to explore intersections with other fields, we expect that we will primarily attract applicants who are in the middle of their careers. However, less experienced persons are also encouraged to apply if they feel comfortable enough to bring new insights back to their respective fields while also helping to advance interdisciplinary approaches to communicating and applying the science of learning.

No. The expectation is that fellows will continue in their current jobs throughout the fellowship time period. The time commitment includes the two multi-day events detailed above, as well as monthly group Zoom meetings (60-90 minutes each) and several one-on-one meetings with specific fellows (as well as educators and parents) as needed from September 2024 through the end of June 2025.

Yes. All communications about the fellowship and all meetings, workshops, and presentations will be conducted in English.

Fellows will be expected to attend two in-person events:

1. The LSX Summit and LSX Focus Fellows Orientation on September 18-19 in Washington, DC
2. Site visits and prototype testing at schools in southwestern Pennsylvania in February or March 2025.

We know that talented people across these sectors and across multiple countries are working on initiatives with significant implications for the way societies and policymakers support children’s learning and develop successful education systems. Yet each sector is isolated from the next and new ideas rarely cross boundaries. A mutually enriching, reciprocal exchange is sorely needed. The LSX program was designed to create a shared culture and shared language for communicating about the science of learning and ways to improve education systems, thereby amplifying lessons learned and helping to activate research-based approaches to supporting students, their families, educators, and school systems more broadly.

Several examples illustrate the power of such an exchange. Entrepreneurs in education are eager to harness new tools to scale-up approaches that recognize learning variabilities and to support students who may not have access to high-quality teaching and learning strategies. Leaders in schools or education systems are increasingly seeking closer alignment with research on what works to activate learning and help today’s students thrive. Those in the entertainment industrywant access to new ideas grounded in science and research for, say, video game development or television shows. Scientists and researchers benefit by hearing the questions asked by experts outside academe and can bring lessons back to their labs and universities, encouraging colleagues to focus more directly on how to design experiments that relate to what is really happening in today’s schools across different regions of the world. And education journalists gain insights for new stories and are better able to spot new trends and patterns in the field of teaching and learning by interacting with others across the five sectors.

All fellows, no matter their background, are learning how to communicate findings from science in digestible ways to appeal to educators and an interested public. (See our collection of prototypes created by previous cohorts and video stories about what they learned.)

Yes! It is a public event, held in person in Washington DC and streamed online on September 18. We invite anyone to register who is interested in how to harness the power of collaboration and cross-sector creativity to solve education issues. (See this event video and recap from our last event, in 2022). We will be opening the registration page in August.

We encourage you to subscribe to The Exchange (our newsletter), follow @lsxfellowship on Twitter/X, and check back with the Learning Sciences Exchange program page.