Our human learning path begins at birth. From infancy, the learner embarks on a course that nourishes the innate love for exploration and discovery. A community expecting lifelong learning and lifelong contributions from its members acts to remove whatever blocks this natural process of growth.

Just as every individual is unique, every learner's learning path is unique. Each individual, formally and informally, moves in and out of these roles throughout their life, gaining a level of mastery of each, as appropriate to his or her life stage.

Here are the roles:

Learner. An explorer, innovator, self-developer, model-builder and action-taker who is receptive to ideas and guidance, able to reflect and act creatively, learns how to access information and create value from it for self and others. A unique set of contacts, family, peers, facilitators, sponsors, experts, and community members, comprise the Learner's constantly evolving learning network.

Facilitator-Guide. One who helps others frame their experience, providing information, concepts and models, linking to new information and avenues of exploration, encouraging further exploration, guiding discussion among learners and removing blocks (both conceptual and material) to the creative process for an individual or team. The Facilitator crafts and delivers challenges that spark individual and team innovation and provokes Learners to break through imagined limits. A Learner works with one or several facilitators; in each case, the learner and facilitator together create a learning contract and invent appropriate experiences and products. Learners engage in many projects simultaneously, incorporating strands from the core curriculum to weave the necessary framework of understanding and mastery.

Sponsor-Advocate-Advisor. The Sponsor provides the feedback and boundaries that ensure the learning path is effective and balanced, that options are clearly seen, that effort is required and rewarded, and that performance assessments, provided as feedback, are understood and interpreted correctly. The Sponsor's challenge is to optimize the performance of the individual Learner's network. The Sponsor and Learner together plan the Learner's next steps, taking into account the whole person, the individual's talents and interests, and the need to ensure breadth in the curriculum as well as depth in areas of special interest. The Sponsor provides continuity and perspective.

Expert. The Expert develops specialized knowledge to a high degree in a given body of knowledge and is a resource to others. Everyone has expertise to share; everyone applies their expertise to create value for themselves and others, as participants in this learning environment.

Steward. The Steward applies talents and knowledge in service to others, in stewardship of the community and ultimately of the world. Stewardship means holding a vision for yourself, your community, and your world, and being committed to actualizing that vision. The only way to steward anything is to engage with what we are stewarding in a cybernetic, whole systems manner. By learning anticipatory design, we steward our future as well as our present. Stewardship encompasses stewarding what we value, what we invent, our personal growth, the growth of others, the health of our communities and the natural environment. Stewardship arises from the philosophy that "all life is sacred" rather than "everything is a commodity."

(source)