Seek The Truth
What’s Worth Learning?
This is an incredibly powerful and important question as more and more people ponder education in the 21st century and try and imagine what it will look like. The only thing we know with certainty about the future is that change is inevitable.
We know that children entering our schools now as Year Ones, will work in jobs and use tools, that haven’t yet been invented. We know that knowledge is increasing incrementally at an incredible rate. Engineering and technology knowledge is becoming obsolete within 5 years (Kevin Richardson).
Peter Serge from M.I.T. School of Business believes schools as the finite organizations that we know, will not exist within 50 years. We not only live in a world and a future of change, but the pace of change is also increasing.
David Perkins is from the Harvard Graduate School and was formerly Director of Project Zero within that institution. He asks a recurring question at all forums – with his students, at conferences and within schools; “what’s worth learning?” He talks about ‘education for the unknown’ and what pupils might need to learn in the changing future. Others ask a similar question and also wonder what forms education may take or what ‘schools’ might look like in the future.
Just a couple of years ago, we talked in terms of;
• Technology changes
• Creation of life long learners
• A thinking skills curriculum
• The importance of languages
• Globalization
• Networking as an educational and employment tool.
Some generalities about future learning are of interest. Our children live in an international world and an increasingly interconnected world. The term ‘educator’ has taken on a far wider meaning and ‘teachers’ are not the only teachers.
Disney is more influential than Duke
Spielberg outweighs Stamford
MTV outscores MIT (Benjamin Barber)
Future learning will be I.T. dominant and delivered. Teachers will be less obvious and intrusive. More learning will be 1:1 in nature, might be about negotiated topics, will be within a real life and authentic context and within a parameter of teaching one child at a time (in a NZ context, personalized learning).
Already there are some very innovative projects in action in the United States. One is the Met School in Providence and grown to 54 other Met Schools.
Substantive funding came from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The philosophy of the Met Schools is based around the question of ‘what’s good for kids?’ It involves smaller schools, personalized learning, real life contexts with the support of parents and mentors. Students are actively involved in their learning and its design. The philosophy of Met Schools is encompassed in their slogan “one child at a time”. (see also Big Picture Learning).
The second innovation is the Microsoft School of the Future in Philadelphia which as you would expect is highly geared towards digitally dominant learning. Their definition of 21st century learning includes reading, writing and maths along with problem solving, effective communications and critical thinking.
A focus of the school is collaboration, integrated technology, continuous learning access anytime/anywhere, real life contexts and student centered learning.
This gives us a bit of a clue about how education in the future is evolving
• Greater use and delivery digitally
• More personalized learning
• Authentic real-life learning contexts
• Life long learning
• Focus on critical thinking skills
Another U.S. innovative development is the Florida Virtual School. This is a distance education provider with all courses delivered electronically. It is compulsory for all students in Florida to enroll in at least one distance course, in the period of their schooling.
Clearly, on-line learning will very much be a feature of future school and will contribute to both personalized learning and life-long learning.
However, these are all trends and don’t answer the question; what’s worth learning? If we return to David Perkins, from his questioning of ‘what’s worth learning?’ the constant response is that conventional disciplines don’t really rate in terms of responses (although most people might regard the ability to read, write and enumerate as a given). His list of what’s worth learning in the future is;
• Understandings of wide scope - the ability to apply or use
from the disciplines conventional subjects
Peter Serge from M.I.T. School of Business believes schools as the finite organizations that we know, will not exist within 50 years. We not only live in a world and a future of change, but the pace of change is also increasing.
David Perkins is from the Harvard Graduate School and was formerly Director of Project Zero within that institution. He asks a recurring question at all forums – with his students, at conferences and within schools; “what’s worth learning?” He talks about ‘education for the unknown’ and what pupils might need to learn in the changing future. Others ask a similar question and also wonder what forms education may take or what ‘schools’ might look like in the future.
Just a couple of years ago, we talked in terms of;
• Technology changes
• Creation of life long learners
• A thinking skills curriculum
• The importance of languages
• Globalization
• Networking as an educational and employment tool.
Some generalities about future learning are of interest. Our children live in an international world and an increasingly interconnected world. The term ‘educator’ has taken on a far wider meaning and ‘teachers’ are not the only teachers.
Disney is more influential than Duke
Spielberg outweighs Stamford
MTV outscores MIT (Benjamin Barber)
Future learning will be I.T. dominant and delivered. Teachers will be less obvious and intrusive. More learning will be 1:1 in nature, might be about negotiated topics, will be within a real life and authentic context and within a parameter of teaching one child at a time (in a NZ context, personalized learning).
Already there are some very innovative projects in action in the United States. One is the Met School in Providence and grown to 54 other Met Schools.
Substantive funding came from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The philosophy of the Met Schools is based around the question of ‘what’s good for kids?’ It involves smaller schools, personalized learning, real life contexts with the support of parents and mentors. Students are actively involved in their learning and its design. The philosophy of Met Schools is encompassed in their slogan “one child at a time”. (see also Big Picture Learning).
The second innovation is the Microsoft School of the Future in Philadelphia which as you would expect is highly geared towards digitally dominant learning. Their definition of 21st century learning includes reading, writing and maths along with problem solving, effective communications and critical thinking.
A focus of the school is collaboration, integrated technology, continuous learning access anytime/anywhere, real life contexts and student centered learning.
This gives us a bit of a clue about how education in the future is evolving
• Greater use and delivery digitally
• More personalized learning
• Authentic real-life learning contexts
• Life long learning
• Focus on critical thinking skills
Another U.S. innovative development is the Florida Virtual School. This is a distance education provider with all courses delivered electronically. It is compulsory for all students in Florida to enroll in at least one distance course, in the period of their schooling.
Clearly, on-line learning will very much be a feature of future school and will contribute to both personalized learning and life-long learning.
However, these are all trends and don’t answer the question; what’s worth learning? If we return to David Perkins, from his questioning of ‘what’s worth learning?’ the constant response is that conventional disciplines don’t really rate in terms of responses (although most people might regard the ability to read, write and enumerate as a given). His list of what’s worth learning in the future is;
• Understandings of wide scope - the ability to apply or use
from the disciplines conventional subjects
• Ways of knowing and the knowledge - knowing how to learn & thinking
arts skills
• Ethical understandings - personal values and behaviours
• Personal & societal understandings - social responsibilities
• Horizon themes – digital horizons
- artistic horizons
- civic horizons
Wrapped within the contexts of both personalized and authentic learning.
This is going to require a change in the way we teach and learn. The increased digital presence, more personalized learning, more negotiated and authentic learning, changing the teaching focus from achievement objectives to key competencies including thinking skills and the creation of lifelong learners is already quite far down the track for many schools. We need to do more in teaching children how to learn and incorporating personal, societal and ethical understandings into their learning. The revised NZ Curriculum and the Key Competencies of Thinking, Participating & Contributing, Relating to Others, Managing Self & Using Language Symbols and Texts present an obvious vehicle to incorporate these areas into our teaching and learning.
In considering the future and deciding what’s worth learning, schools need to be thinking of the pathway ahead, their strategic journey. A very pertinent quote would be;
“ if you don’t know where you are going,
you are certain to end up somewhere else”
These are challenging and exciting times ahead for education and change should be embraced as an opportunity to do better.
