EducationHouse@UNGA80 - TACL

23 September 2025 - New York, USA 

~80 participants | Global

By: Teach For All

What distinguishes transformational classrooms around the world?

In communities and countries worldwide, a small number of outlier, transformational classrooms are reorienting their efforts to prepare young people as the leaders we need for that uncertain future. Innovative teachers and students are showing us what it takes to develop the critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration students need to collectively shape a better future for themselves and all of us.   

At Education House, Teach For All hosted an exploration of the emerging insights from our ongoing global studies of those transformational classrooms.  Over the past eight years, we have hosted over 6,000 people from over 30 countries to virtually visit and learn from transformational classrooms across the globe. Through online and in-person learning experiences, we have collectively explored the common attributes of those classrooms that are having the most meaningful impact on students’ lives and futures.  

We are finding inspiring and actionable patterns in the purpose, lenses, strategies and student outcomes that distinguish those transformational classrooms. We call this emerging map of distinguishing patterns in transformational classrooms around the world Teaching as Collective Leadership (TACL).  In these classrooms, teachers, students, and families are determining purpose and learning together in pursuit of not just individual attainment but also the common good.

These transformational classrooms, and the provocative cross-cultural discussions they are generating, are beautiful, inspiring, and hopeful. They offer tangible guidance not only to a more meaningful, fulfilling way of teaching and learning, but also to the systemic changes necessary to make transformational classrooms the norm instead of the exception.