About the Leapfrog Institutes

The Leapfrog Institutes aim to build positive futures for PreK-21 education and the communities that we serve.

A part of the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota, Leapfrog Institutes partner with educators to envision and work ahead of their contemporaries in teaching, research, innovation, and service. Leapfrog is a paradigmatic jump into best case uses of existing and leading-edge technologies in hardware, software, and knowledge-based intellectual formats. The Leapfrog Institutes:

• Serve as a hub for promoting intellectual leadership.
• Collaborate with PreK-12 institutions on the development of innovative teaching and the construction of schools of innovation.
• Collaborate with post-secondary institutions, industries and governments on the purposive use of technologies in education and learning.
• Continue action research and scholarship through the development of Web-based co-seminars with global partners, exploring advanced linkages between Leapfrog-oriented institutions ranging from now and into long-term futures.

Our mission is to build positive futures for human capital development through the infusion of creativity and innovation in education. We accomplish this mission through collaborative development and delivery of services with educators, industry, and the communities we serve.

Our members are school districts and other organizations that aim to lead a paradigmatic jump into the best case uses of existing and cutting-edge technologies in hardware, software, and intellectual formats.

Leapfrog Institutes staff

• Arthur Harkins, Ph.D., is co-director of the Leapfrog Institutes and is an associate professor in Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development (OLPD) at the University of Minnesota. He is a faculty member in Comparative and International Development Education within OLPD and an adjunct member of the Department of Sociology. With others, he recently co-developed a CIDE doctoral concentration in Global Youth Policy and Leadership in OLPD. Harkins is Faculty Director of the University’s Graduate Certificate in Innovation Studies and a member of the transdisciplinary Master of Liberal Studies faculty.
• John Moravec, Ph.D., is co-director of the Leapfrog Institutes and is a faculty member in the Innovation Studies and Master of Liberal Studies graduate programs at the University of Minnesota. He is a co-initiator of the Invisible Learning project, co-founder of the Horizon Forum, a roundtable on the future of education at all levels; and is the editor of Education Futures. His approach is global in scope, and he actively collaborates with colleagues in the United States, Latin America, and Europe.

What is leapfrogging?

Leapfrogging means to jump over obstacles to achieve goals. It means to get ahead of the competition or the present state of the art through innovative, time-and-cost-saving means. Leapfrog denotes leadership created by looking and acting over the horizon. Leapfrog creates the future in the present based on what is found over the horizon. Leapfrog first acts to create proximal futures, and then solidly grounds the most promising futures within the present. This process marks an extension of Vygotsky’s and Dewey’s work, while ever looking toward the future.

One example of Leapfrogging is Finland’s jump to wireless phones, saving that country the cost of deploying an expensive copper wire system. Another example is present in some of the Kent, Washington public schools, which now permit students to use wireless Web devices to help them access information to better pass tests. Leapfrogging has become a major strategy of developing countries wishing to avoid catch-up efforts that otherwise portend a high likelihood of continued followership. A similar approach to gaining the lead rather than assuming a persistent runner-up role.

Leapfrog institutions relentlessly disrupt themselves to compete successfully in the global knowledge and innovation economy. They work ahead of the competition in teaching, research, innovation, and service. They avoid playing catch-up.

Nine key leapfrog principles

1. Using advanced technologies to emulate leading edge work forces, including a shift from memorization through chaotic open sourcing to knowledge production and associated innovations.
2. Proaction vs. reaction, anticipating and building preferred new eapfrog-oriented futures, rather than simply responding to current challenges and trends.
3. PreK-16+ knowledge production and innovation, developing beyond old paradigm students who are simply able to recall information.
4. Leadership vs. followership, demonstrating the potential and capacity to drive new genres of knowledge and innovation cultures in the 21st century.
5. Raising staff productivity as knowledge and innovation workers, utilizing the strengths of pre-k/16+ institutions as diverse learning and action organizations.
6. Innovative modes of knowledge distribution, identifying, creating, and utilizing new and future-oriented formats for sharing school-produced knowledge, and the selective applications of knowledge to innovation projects.
7. Globalism and internationalism, fostering development of inter-culturally competent and socially responsible cosmopolitanism among students, staff and faculty who develop and practice Leapfrog learning skills.
8. Creative learning and research environments that better facilitate the creation and sharing of new knowledge, together with its innovative applications.
9. Partnering with administrators, faculties and parents, who must provide the mission and organization for bold actions by employing such as those permitted by the formation and use of supportive “Leapfrog Practices” based on the Leapfrog Principles.