The Pearson Foundation helps educators do all they can to ensure their students succeed.

Together with corporate, nonprofit, and academic partners, we deliver innovative, scalable learning programs to schools and support learning initiatives that establish and document best practices for students and educators. We’re particularly interested in the ways that digital and mobile technologies help students learn and better share what they know. We’re also exploring ways in which these and related innovations help teachers to engage students and prepare them for graduation and college success.

Much of our effort is focused on work we manage ourselves and in concert with leading partner organizations. In 2011, for example, we launched two new programs that aim to provide educators with perspectives with the potential to significantly improve their own schools and better student outcomes.
 
The first, “Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education,” is a global investigative video series that documents policies and programs that local education leaders credit with improving student achievement – success demonstrated by the strong performance of their countries in the latest assessment from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
 
The second, the innovative My Voice survey of student aspirations, gathers and analyzes student perceptions of their school experience and their relationships with school staff and parents, and shares this information with school leaders in a way that allows them to better understand the judgments and concerns of the students they serve.

These programs complement the Pearson Foundation’s continuing BridgeIT mobile learning initiative. This partnership with Nokia brings teacher training and digital resources to remote classrooms around the world.  We also continue to explore—with Nokia, the MacArthur Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, and others—new ways mobile and digital resources are changing the way students learn and share what they know.  We collect and share these efforts in ongoing research, video documentaries, and leadership summits and present them online at newlearninginstitute.org.

In addition to supporting these ongoing initiatives, the Pearson Foundation helps exemplary educational organizations to serve their members, explore best practices, and share the results of their efforts with broader education community. In recent years, this work has focused on partnerships with groups including UNESCO, CCSSO, CoSN, America’s Promise, the National Academy Foundation, the NEA Foundation, New Leaders for New Schools, and the Women’s Refugee Commission. We also provide financial and in-kind support to a host of other great non-profits and associations whose mission is similar to our own.

When we can, we also try to support and supplement the work of these great organizations with video-based documentation of innovative learning practices and approaches; and with research that identifies key findings worthy of further, broader study.