About the LFCs
The LFC’s build off the work of MLFC’s world-class faculty. They reflect MLFC’s approach to leveraging scholarship to develop tools, products and resources with — and for — interdisciplinary teams of educators and community members.
Meet the director
Kathleen King Thorius is director of the Learning Futures Collaboratives at MLFC, and also a professor of special education. Across roles, she is recognized for coupling rigorous inquiry with entrepreneurial building and collaborative execution to influence how educational systems think, decide, and act to ensure all students thrive.
As a scholar–practitioner known for turning ideas into action, Thorius has led research and improvement efforts with hundreds of school districts, multiple state departments of education, and numerous public and private institutions. Under Thorius’s leadership at ASU, the Learning Futures Collaboratives function as knowledge-entrepreneurship labs convening faculty, doctoral students, educators, community leaders, and government and NGO partners to think, build, and enact solutions for educational transformation. Operating at the intersection of research, practice, and policy, the Collaboratives dismantle silos and accelerate the movement of evidence into scalable, equity-centered improvement efforts.
As a scholar, her portfolio includes over $25 million in funded projects. From 2010-2025, she led several U.S. Office of Elementary and Secondary Education-funded Equity Assistance Centers, which have supported K-12 public school integration since 1972. Thorius also founded the Great Lakes Equity Center at Indiana University Indianapolis, building it into a national hub for research, technical assistance, and educational resource development. She is co-editor-in-chief of Exceptional Children, the #1-ranked journal in special education; co-editor of Sustaining Disabled Youth; and Ability, Equity, and Culture; and author of Equity Expansive Technical Assistance for Schools. Contact King Thorius at Kathleen.King.Thorius@asu.edu
How the collaboratives work
While there is no one type of LFC, they are all on the same journey of pursuing solutions through knowledge and community-focused networks. Each one:
- Focuses on an education-focused need or topic
- Starts out with seed funding to generate and foster ideas
- Is expected to generate some quantifiable output
Each LFC’s work aligns with one or more of three entrepreneurship pathways.
- Pathway 1: Teaching and Learning Ecosystem Knowledge Entrepreneurship
LFCs that transform learning ecosystems through embedded, actionable educational research. - Pathway 2: Policy and Social Influence Knowledge Entrepreneurship
LFCs that shape educational policy, governance, and public understanding through research and meaning-making relationships. - Pathway 3: Platform and Solution Knowledge Entrepreneurship
LFCs that build and scale technology-enabled educational platforms and solutions.
Guided by Principled Innovation®
The work of the LFCs is inspired by the Principled Innovation® Framework, an approach that guides educators, leaders, students and communities in catalyzing ideas and forming solutions that create positive change for humanity. The Framework, developed at MLFC, is now one of ASU’s nine design aspirations.