Christopher Pommerening on Human-Centered Learning, Learner Autonomy, and the Future of Education

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Vocal.Media

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/12/09

Christopher Pommerening is a German entrepreneur, investor, and education innovator who has dedicated his career to reimagining learning for the 21st century. Based in Barcelona, he is the founder of Learnlife, a global movement of “learning hubs” designed to replace outdated, standardized models of education with personal, co-created, and autonomous approaches. Drawing on his 27 years in the technology and startup sector, Pommerening combines entrepreneurial vision with a deep commitment to human-centred learning. His work emphasizes relationships, lifelong learning, and learner agency, aiming to inspire ecosystems of change that help individuals flourish in diverse cultural contexts worldwide.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When you think of education in a tech-heavy, AI-driven era, what does it mean to you philosophically as an opener?

Christopher Pommerening: First, we need to ask ourselves: What is the role of humans in a future shaped heavily by technology and artificial intelligence? What kind of world do we want for ourselves and for children going forward?

If we look back, digital technologies have constantly reshaped how people live and learn. Television changed attention and entertainment habits. The internet opened vast new ways of accessing information. Social media then introduced what researchers often describe as “dopamine-driven” usage patterns—platforms designed to trigger reward-seeking behaviours and sometimes create addictive cycles.

The interesting question is: how will AI differ from those earlier technologies? Some experts predict that while social media created behavioural addictions, AI could lead to forms of dependency—outsourcing thinking and decision-making to machines. That dependency may risk dulling human skills and awareness over time.

This raises a deeper point: if people are not self-aware, if they lack what we might call self-understanding, their essence—creativity, empathy, independent thought—could begin to erode over the coming decades. To avoid this, we must cultivate that self-understanding and then build healthy relationships with whatever tools we use, including AI. Only then can we navigate the future responsibly.

Jacobsen: What about Gen Z and younger generations—the ones who are truly social media natives, not just digital natives? How does that affect their approach to education?

Pommerening: Do you mean the fact that, because they grew up with apps and digital platforms, they often expect everything to be digital and app-based?

Jacobsen: People still read, but the framework has changed. Their style of reading is different. Someone scrolling through tweets or Instagram quotes is processing text in short snapshots. That affects how they approach longer or more complex forms of reading.

Pommerening: That is true. However, the larger question is: what is most important for us as humans? It is relationships.

Around ten years ago, we began exploring the most progressive and innovative educational practices worldwide. Our research team visited, both virtually and physically, about one hundred of the most innovative schools. We studied their practices and compared them with findings from roughly 600 research reports on education and learning.

One of the most influential studies we encountered was by John Hattie, an education researcher from New Zealand. His Visible Learning project synthesized over 800 meta-analyses covering millions of students. Hattie’s work identifies which factors have the most significant positive or negative effects on learning outcomes. What stood out is that some of the most broken elements in education are structural—such as overemphasis on standardized testing—while some of the most effective elements involve teacher-student relationships, feedback, and student self-belief.

The top factor is actually relationships. This matters because, regardless of which generation we belong to or how we view the world today, relationships are fundamental. That includes our relationship with ourselves, our peers, our families, our society, and even with our planet. We need to understand those relationships first before we can create a healthy relationship with digital devices.

Once we do that, we can start to understand the impact of behaviours such as constant swiping, consuming only short-form texts, or looking at blue screens all day—especially at night. If we understand what those habits do to our bodies and minds, we can begin to make more intentional choices about how we want to learn: what kinds of content we prefer, in what formats, and how we balance analog and digital approaches. From there, a completely different way of learning begins to emerge.

Jacobsen: So, how do you calibrate these human-centred or learner-centred alternatives? In many countries, standardized tests and examinations remain dominant. They provide a universal metric, but they are also depersonalized. Given your visits to a hundred schools and your research into innovative models, how can we create an individualized approach that is still viable within broader educational systems?

Pommerening: Let me go back to what we found when we studied education systems worldwide. As you mentioned, most systems are built on standardized, grade- and exam-based structures – still today the status quo in most parts of the world.

About 10 to 15 years ago, leading voices in educational innovation began talking about personalized or individualized learning. The strength of this approach is that it recognizes the learner as an individual and adapts learning journeys to fit their needs better, while still connecting to what the system demands. However, the limitation is that education remains performance-driven, measured against standardized tests. It is still something done to the learner, with the teacher directing the process.

That is where we are today and what we call the second level of education transformation. However, if you look ahead, the fundamental transformation happens when the role of the educator shifts from instructor to guide, mentor, and co-creator. When learners and educators co-design learning journeys together, the process becomes aligned with the learner’s own passions, inspirations, and interests.

At that point, learning becomes truly meaningful. The learner realizes education is not primarily for the system, for exams, for grades, for parents, or even for a diploma or university degree. It is for them, here and now, as part of their own personal journey.

Pommerening: That is what we call the third level: co-designed and co-created learning, which comes after personalized education. Then there is a fourth stage, which we see as the ultimate stage—personal autonomous learning.

At this point, full agency shifts to the learner. The learner is equipped with the capacities to become a lifelong learner: self-awareness, self-management, self-regulation, self-responsibility, self-directedness, and self-determination. These qualities together build an autonomous lifelong learner.

At that stage, the learner can take complete ownership of their learning path, becoming the designer of their own experiences and exploring any field. In a sense, this resembles what often happens when students first reach university: suddenly, they must learn how to learn, often without much preparation.

Now, imagine a system that begins building that capacity from the age of five or six. By fostering learner autonomy early on, human-centred learning can help individuals develop lifelong learning skills from the very beginning.

Jacobsen: What about partnerships for lifelong learning—so that you can experiment in different ways and scale this model over the long term and across cultural contexts?

Pommerening: We once believed that scalability would primarily come through technology. My own background is in technology startups; I have spent about 27 years building and investing in companies. It seemed natural to assume paradigm shifts in education would also come through technology.

However, what I discovered is that learning involves every human sense. True transformation and paradigm shifts require physical, real-world environments. That realization led us, in 2018, to create a new kind of school—though we prefer to call it a learning hub. The idea was to design the most life-ready, future-focused school in the world, implementing our framework in practice.

The hub serves as a community base where learners and guides gather, then venture into real-life contexts to continue their journeys—across the city, in workplaces, or in nature. The hub is a symbol of rootedness, providing a base community from which learning extends outward and continually returns.

This hub has now been in place for seven years, and the framework is fully implemented. It has grown into a vibrant community of learners, learning guides, parents, and supporters. We have found that the best way to inspire other cultures and regions is not through mass technology rollout, but through establishing lighthouses—real-world models of future learning in different cultural settings.

Our next step is to build these lighthouses with partners—whether they are foundations, governments, school networks, or groups of entrepreneurial families—so that the model can adapt and thrive in diverse contexts.

Pommerening: By creating hubs in various regions worldwide, societies can be inspired by this innovative approach to learning. Around Barcelona, we have already seen how powerful this can be. Over the past few years, many system-centred schools have reached out, asking for support in transforming into this new model.

An ecosystem has grown around our hub. Many schools in the Barcelona region are now in the process of adopting this framework. If we can establish similar hubs across the world, the same amplifying effect can unfold in other regions as well.

Jacobsen: What about the people who were part of the pilot projects? Have some of them come back to join your team and contribute to further innovation?

Pommerening: Yes, definitely. In 2017, we established a global network of thought leaders in education. It now includes between 800 and 900 people. Some have contributed only briefly, while others have been deeply involved in shaping aspects of the learning framework.

Many of these contributors have since joined as learning guides, and some are building or launching new learning hubs in other parts of the world. That is very inspiring. In fact, one of our recent graduates is preparing to take her first professional role within Learnlife.

It is also rewarding to see the different paths learners take after graduation. Some continue to university, many become entrepreneurs, and others remain within Learnlife to carry the vision forward.

Jacobsen: Any favourite educational quotes?

Pommerening: Yes—one comes from Albert Einstein. I do not recall the exact wording in English, but it is along the lines of: “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.” That quote symbolizes the kind of education system built more than 150 years ago. You can imagine all the animals standing before a tree, each being told to climb it, despite having vastly different abilities.

However, each animal is a wonderful species with unique talents. The same is true for humans: every person has superpowers waiting to be discovered. Our responsibility is to create environments and connections that allow these talents to flourish.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for your time today. I appreciate your expertise. It was nice to meet you. 

Pommerening: Thank you very much.

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