flickr photo shared by mrkrndvs under a Creative Commons ( BY-NC-SA ) license
I recently got in a conversation with some colleagues about the future of education. It was the end of a long day and we pondering on how schooling might be different in ten years time. These are some of the ideas that were bandied around:
- Detentions: If we have to depend upon daily detentions to maintain learning then who is really in control?
- Workbooks: Is there really a place for endlessly answering other people’s questions?
- Notion of Pass and Fail: If students focus is on whether they will pass or fail something then have they already failed? Maybe the focus should be on creating beautiful work?
- Rubrics About Growth: Too often rubrics come to measure specific content and skills that are being covered at that point in time, how can these be adapted to be more growth minded? With an towards development rather than improvement?
- Facilitators not Teachers: Instead of being the font of all knowledge, how can change the role of the teacher to being that of a facilitator, helping students find their own problems and solve them? The meddler in the middle, rather than the sage on the stage.
- Projects not Menial Tasks: Why aren’t units of work focused on building and creating meaningful projects?
What was interesting was that all of the predictions made about the future, have already been enacted somewhere in the past. The question then is why are they not more mainstream? Why are such thoughts too often seen as the exception to the rule?
Will Richardson’s argument is that we are in need of drastic change in education. For some this means a revolution, while for others it is about support. Whatever the change is, it starts with one person trying to make a difference. Richardson suggests 10% at a time. Maybe this is bringing a new practice into the classroom, working collaboratively as a team on a problem or simply flipping the roles and becoming more of a learner. The next step after this is to scale the change and help it grow and spread.
Richard Olsen’s suggest that many of the challenges with change in education often come down to our belief about learning. Something that far too many take for granted. It is here then that the conversation needs to be had, to make visible as far as possible our thoughts, inconsistencies and beliefs. This then is part of the purpose of the Modern Learning Canvas. Not as a tool that pushes people in any specific direction, but rather helps them understand their present context and clearly plot the next iterative step forward.
As Matt Esterman highlights, we know the future is coming, next we need to seriously act on it. The first step with any change though is calling out the elephant in the room. Identifying the perceived problem and talking about the issues. However, the question remains, how might we make the changes for students today, rather than wait for another tomorrow?
For those looking for ideas and inspiration, here are a some books that have helped guide my thinking along the way:
- Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom By Sylvia Libow Martinez & Gary Stager
- OPEN: How We Will Work, Live and Work in the Future by David Price
- From Master Teacher to Master Learner by Will Richardson
- How To Come Up With Great Ideas and Actually Make Them Happen By Ewan McIntosh
- Start with Why by Simon Sinek
- Scaling Innovation and Creativity by David Culberhouse
- Monsters of Education Technology by Audrey Watters
- Experiences in Self-Determined Learning edited by Lisa Marie Blaschke, Chris Kenyon, & Stewart Hase
- The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies by Doug Belshaw
- A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger
Feel free to suggest more.
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Predicting the Future Yesterday by Aaron Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.