Many of us see the problems facing humans, other animals, and the environment, and yearn to contribute to solutions.
However, today’s global challenges are systemic, interconnected, and compounding, and many of the standard tools and mindsets being taught have not evolved to match the complexity of these problems. We’re left feeling like we don’t have a clear path to turn our compassion into action.
That’s why the Institute for Humane Education (IHE) created the Solutionary Framework—a roadmap for assessing local and global problems and creating ethical, actionable solutions.
The framework supports changemakers, advocates, and passionate professionals who want to drive meaningful change. IHE has been recognized for bringing the framework to K–12 schools to help the next generation develop the crucial mindsets, thinking skills, and sense of agency to address the complex challenges they will inherit.
The Solutionary Framework guides people to see beyond the surface level of problems and work toward solutions that address their root and systemic causes. Grounded in humane education, the framework ensures problem-solvers consider all humans, other animals, and the environment when exploring issues and considering solutions. The result: solutions and mindsets that are holistic and systems-oriented.
The framework supports the development of transformative and transferable skills. It is designed to help people:
Unlike many frameworks, the process does not end with writing down a solution to a problem, but with implementing one. The result is empowerment, connection, and real change.
Shaped by real-world application and years of experience working with students of all ages and people with varying interests and concerns, the steps outlined in the framework can be used to solve problems across cultures and sectors. The beauty of the framework is that it is specific enough to provide clear direction and adaptable enough to be relevant in virtually all settings.
The four phases take users on a journey from inquiry and inner development to outward action. The framework is simple to understand and follow while being profoundly impactful for developing critical, systems, strategic, and ethical thinking and promoting compassionate, collaborative action:
1. Select an issue to learn more about.
2. Identify a specific problem to solve.
3. Develop a problem statement and guiding questions.
4. Learn more through data analysis and stakeholder perspectives.
5. Determine the impacts and causes of the problem.
6. Explore what others have done to solve the problem.
7. Identify leverage points for action and brainstorm possible solutions.
8. Choose a solution that addresses the causes of the problem; does the most good and least harm for people, animals, and the environment; and is feasible to implement.
9. Make an action plan.
10. Implement an actionable part of the solution.
11. Share with others.
12. Assess, reflect, and celebrate.
To get a more in-depth understanding of the Solutionary Framework and how to use it to address the problems you’re seeing in your community, workplace, or our world, read The Solutionary Way: Transform Your Life, Your Community, and the World for the Better. Authored by IHE co-founder and president, Zoe Weil, with a foreword by Jane Goodall, The Solutionary Way is a comprehensive guide to using the framework to create meaningful change at any age, in any setting.
Educators use the Solutionary Framework to guide student-led inquiry-to-action projects that address problems that students care about in their schools and communities. The framework takes project-based learning to a deeper level, emphasizing systems thinking, perspective-taking, and implementation. This approach to educating K-12 students using the Solutionary Framework has been recognized by HundrED as one of the most scalable innovations in education as part of the 2025 Global Collection.
Our online Solutionary Micro-credential Course is a transformative professional learning experience that will prepare you to use the framework with your students. We’ve trained educators from around the world who are now facilitating solutionary projects with students across a wide range of teaching settings and contexts.
Our free teaching resources include a Solutionary Guidebook that walks educators through teaching with the framework as well as solutionary teaching units, activities, and examples.
Solutionary learning is an eye-opener to create lasting solutions for the challenges faced in the real world. It is an approach that aims to help people achieve the best solutions to problems … with no harm to the environment, animals and people … It is a tool that enables educators to mold a world of solutionaries that will bring the much-needed change.
After working on a solutionary project, my students have tools they did not have before and can use them in their lives beyond the classroom to solve problems wherever they go. They’ll remember to look for what’s underneath a problem, and they understand systems thinking and mental models.
The Solutionary Framework provides practical tools and a clear structure that helps teachers guide students through identifying issues, researching causes, and designing ethical, sustainable solutions. It encourages deep learning and civic engagement, making education more meaningful and impactful. It’s a transformative approach that aligns perfectly with 21st-century teaching goals.
The solutionary framework is a profoundly useful tool for shifting student & educator thinking around what is possible in the classroom and about the utility of project-based learning.
A solutionary identifies inhumane, unsustainable, and unjust systems and works to transform them in ways that do the most good and least harm for people, animals, and the environment. When we educate young people to be solutionaries, we are equipping them with skills that extend far beyond the classroom and giving them experience with a next-level problem-solving process they can use for life. This type of purpose-driven education has the possibility to transform our world!
A key element of the Solutionary Framework is that it focuses on systemic solutions and guides changemakers to stretch beyond humanitarian or bandaid responses to problems (that don’t stop these problems from persisting). It emphasizes the need to consider all stakeholders—human and non-human—when evaluating who and what is impacted by a problem, and to come up with solutions that do the most good and least harm for everyone. This approach makes the framework uniquely powerful and far-reaching.
Young people today are growing up amid rapid technological upheaval, climate change, growing divisiveness, and rising rates of anxiety and depression. Our current model of education is not equipping them to understand and address these and so many other issues deeply relevant to their lives and future. Through solutionary learning, students gain essential problem-solving skills and a sense of agency that helps them turn their anxiety into action. Rather than leaving young people feeling helpless, students who participate in solutionary projects gain the knowledge, skills, and motivation to become active contributors to a better world, while also deepening academic learning through meaningful, real-world application.
The Solutionary Framework can be used with students at all grade levels. It can be applied across content areas, and it can be combined with other instructional frameworks, such as Design Thinking, Trauma-Informed Practices, or Habits of Mind. Students in the early grades can benefit from time spent cultivating compassion for other people, animals, and the environment. Problem identification and solution development might come later, when students are a little older. Supporting students to take meaningful action at all levels is key. Sometimes students devise wonderful solutions, but are not in a position to implement them. That is okay. The framework is designed to help students determine feasible, solutionary solutions within their sphere of influence to implement.
“Changing the world one child at a time.” Those words have inspired my work for more than four decades in education, and they continue to inspire me now. We are at a pivotal point in the evolution of our world. We are facing a climate crisis, a health crisis, a crisis of racial justice, a crisis in our treatment of animals, a crisis of media bias. The list goes on. And perhaps our greatest crisis is our consistent struggle as a society to simply come together respectfully, intelligently, and ethically to solve our problems and save our planet. We need solutionaries. We need young people who have been educated not only to think critically, creatively, and systemically about real-world issues, but also to be passionate, persistent, and humane in their implementation of real-world solutions. And that is IHE’s mission: to support teachers and educational institutions in preparing young people to become solutionaries – and the next caretakers of our planet.
IHE offers a healing vision and a tangible pathway forward for a struggling world. As Executive Director, I am excited, humbled, and deeply honored to join with others to promote that vision and that pathway in ways that make them foundational to systems of education throughout the world – and to each child who is committed to making that world a better place.
Passionate about preparing young people to lead lives of joy and purpose, Steve Cochrane has had a remarkable journey through the field of education. It is a journey that has taken him from the campus of Princeton University, where he served as an admissions officer and an assistant dean of students, to the classroom of a public elementary school, where he had the privilege of teaching – and learning from – his fourth and fifth grade students. Steve has been a dorm director and associate dean of admissions at Wheelock College in Boston. He has also been an elementary school principal, a middle school principal, an assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, and, prior to his work at IHE, he was the superintendent of the Princeton Public Schools in Princeton, New Jersey where he was honored with the award of County Superintendent of the Year. In each of these roles, Steve has collaborated with others to prioritize innovations in learning, wellness for students, equity, and a belief that every child should be supported and inspired to achieve their highest potential.
Steve received his undergraduate degree in English from Princeton University and his master’s degree in educational administration from Harvard. He is a competitive road cyclist who also enjoys the thrill of mountain biking. Steve and his wife are both vegans and advocates for holistic health. They currently reside in Spencerport, New York, with their two dogs and a very large Maine Coon cat.
