The 21st century has suffered ignoble beginnings with terrorism, a deadly pandemic and near global conflict all vying for headlines in the still young century. We are facing unprecedented challenges – political, social, economic and environmental – driven by accelerating globalisation and the disappointments of interdependence. We are now also witnessing the downside of global supply chains and structures; a faster and dizzying rate of scientific and technological development; environmental degradation fuelled by an increasingly accelerating climate change. At the same time, those forces are challenging us for new responses, providing us with many opportunities for human advancement and ingenuity. The future is uncertain and unpredictable, but we need to take it on with resilience and inventiveness; to be open and ready for the challenges and setbacks.
Children entering education now will be young adults in 2040. Innovative educational and employment strategies need to be devised to prepare for the new and emerging landscapes. Schools and educational establishments must prepare their charges for an ever-evolving employment sector, to train them for jobs that have not yet been created, for technologies that have not yet been invented, to solve problems that have not yet been anticipated. It will be a shared responsibility to seize opportunities and find solutions.
To navigate through such uncertainty, new thinking, diverse skill sets and toolkits are necessary. The passive approach to education no longer fits the bill and can’t survive, but needs to be replaced by a more inclusive, participatory, and mutual/joint approach. Students will need to develop curiosity, imagination, resilience and self-regulation; to respect and appreciate the ideas, perspectives and values of others; and to learn to cope with failure and rejection, and to move forward in the face of adversity. Their motivation will be more than factors contributing to the creaking conveyor belt of securing a good job and high income; they will also need to care about the well-being of their fellow human beings, their communities and the planet. More empathy, more tolerance, more humanity.
Education can equip learners with agency and a sense of purpose, and the competencies they need to shape their own lives and contribute to the lives of others, but education needs to evolve apace with the shifting societal, national and international backdrops. Answers to two far-reaching questions will guide thinking and strategies according to a recent OECD report, from which this article draws background:
- What knowledge, skills, attitudes and values will today’s students need to thrive and shape their world?
- How can instructional systems develop these knowledge, skills, attitudes and values effectively?
There are many factors influencing what educational establishments and institutions may look like in the near future, in 20 years: unprecedented global forces and unforeseen technologies and paradigm shifts will drive the ways students want to learn and teachers want to instruct. The future of education will require educators to be more entrepreneurial, collaborative, creative and innovative. Additionally, students will be even more tech savvy, demanding, confident and focused as consumers of education.
Today’s learners are digital natives. They are accustomed to mining for information and meeting those needs with a click of a button in a user-friendly, personal and customisable way. Future educators will have to face the fact that students will need (and want) to learn in a flexible, personalised format — for some, this may mean having a more technology-focused classroom. Students will want their learning experience to meet their interests, time constraints and academic needs.
In addition to personalisation, students want a more active and less passive role, to have a greater voice in their education instead of simply listening to a lecture. Since higher levels of thinking and learning require more student ownership, education will become more project based— a pivotal theme moving forward. Schools will need to allow students to choose what they learn, how they learn and what projects they participate in.
In addition to having more project-based instructional models, schools will need to examine their core curriculum. Contrary to the old-school traditions housed in English, math, social studies and science, educational institutions will need to redesign curricula and courses to reflect the skills mandated by emerging economies and technologies. Skills such as, inter alia, coding, graphical illustration, design, and financial literacy will have to be integrated and taught in classroom curricula.
Cross cultural dialogue, tolerance and understanding have never been as important as in today’s world. Media can contribute as much towards these elements as they can towards misinformation, conflict and dissonance.
A necessary adjunct to the skills outlined above concerns Media Literacy, a potent weapon to counter the forces of disinformation and misinformation. People are entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. It is important to distinguish between fact and opinion. Online fake news has, sadly, become the new norm.
Media literacy is a 21st. century approach to education. It provides a framework to access, analyse, evaluate, create and participate with messages and information in a variety of forms – from print to video to the internet. Media literacy builds an understanding of the role of media in society as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy.
The next generation of students will expect more of a mentoring relationship from their teachers, which is not the norm in schools today. Moves will continue away from ‘what to think’ to ‘how to think.’ Since more students will be learning and gathering information without attending school in person, future teachers will have to embrace various ways of staying connected and engaging with their students via social media, creating online communities. Many of these models have, inadvertently, been essayed during the Covid lockdowns and deprivations.
Young people continue to demonstrate agency in the public sphere – from online campaigns raising awareness about violence against women to social movements fighting inequality, racial discrimination and climate change, young people actively participate in the public debate through non-institutionalised channels. But more is needed in response. Educational institutions can help by promoting participatory democracy from an early age through the establishment of junior councils, by the creation of the necessary dialogue structures to ensure youth have input into policies and programmes that affect their lives and livelihoods. Education is very much a two-way street, not a one – way system with ‘route barre’ signs to partnership, ownership and inclusiveness.
