Education Ecosystem

As a child I would lose myself in the illustrations of Richard Scarry. Every image was filled with people doing, being, living side-by-side. These books often contained little plot and were mainly vocabulary driven. They helped explain communities by simply showing the many ways we live together through relationships.
As an observer of community and school life in Greece for the past month, I've felt like I was living in a Richard Scarry Busy Town book. The pastry chef, the bread baker, the woman who works in the bakery, the delivery driver and the customers are some of my favorite characters in my imaginary Busy Town Athens, but there are millions of other characters - over 3 million in fact.

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What does this have to do with an education ecosystem?
The global pandemic of 2020 and beyond shined a sobering light on the way our interconnectedness helps us thrive and when those connections break down leads to fear and anger.
Education systems are systems of interconnectedness but in order to continue to shape global citizens for the 21st century and beyond we must see the larger ecosystems we occupy so that we can sustainable, responsible, innovative education becomes our norm.

Ecosystems defined

In 1935 Arthur Tansley first proposed the concept of the ecosystem. He offered a "unified framework within which to study both plant and animal communities together" interacting and interrelating. (A. Holland, in Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (Second Edition), 1998). He proposed the idea of looking at the whole system and argued that trying to understand and organism in isolation presented an inaccurate understanding. “Ecosystems are dynamic, iterating systems” (A.K. Salomon, in Encyclopedia of Ecology, 2008). Furthermore, in 1942, Lindemann elaborated on ecosystem theory to understand the "flow of matter and energy in ecosystems and how these flows influence and are influenced by population and community processes” (de Laplante, in Ecological Paradigms Lost, 2005).

Why an Education Ecosystem?

The concept of an education ecosystem bubbled up around 15 years ago but for a concept so grounded in understanding interconnectedness and the complexity of how life interacts, the application of the term feels very lacking in humanity. In a literature review it appears most often as a buzzword brought into use to promote learning technology in the form of systems, apps, programs and products. Just as Lindemann brought a dynamic understanding to Tansley's original framework, I'm examining the education ecosystem in Greece to understand the "energy" of welcome and the "flow" of belonging.
How do individuals and families experience these flows?
How are they influenced by the institutions of learning?
How do community processes influence the sense of belonging in this system?
This is a complex system.