Education is necessary and has been for many years now.
This pandemic has taken a toll on education and had a big impact on it. However, young people can have easier access to all that education means with the new educational opportunities.
Learning should be motivating, engaging, and even playful; while also supporting the multilingual environments.
We can do this through the use of technology – while some regard it as something you cannot get away from, the young generations embraced it and believe that being hyper-connected is a must. They find all they need to at just a button press. Thus, children and young people are far more digitally savvy than their parents.
Being digitally savvy can also make you see the actual advantages of technology and not just the disadvantages; that exist but can easily be overcome by the benefits.
The education feels many changes, especially in the higher grades and K-12 ones. As we all depend on the economy and the workforce, the education system that students need now is not made of learning by heart but becoming and discovering.
Challenges of the future of education
While there are many developments in the education area, there are also some challenges that education must face. Schools, educational institutions and programs have to deal with:
1. Multiculturality
2. Fight early school, leaving
3. Allowing people to develop as reflective and responsible persons.
4. Reducing the barriers between the education world and the work world.
5. Helping people adjust to the fast-changing work environments once they enter the working world.
Moreover, the future as far as jobs and everyday life looks very technological. However, technology affects what we will need to learn and how we will learn in the future. Thus, more than learning the required technical skills for the future, technology will also affect learning.
According to the European Internet Foundation, the key to adequately preparing learners for life in a digital world is to “redesign education itself around participative, digitally-enabled collaboration within and beyond the individual educational institution”. (Linton & Schuchhard, 2009.) By 2025 it will become the dominant worldwide educational paradigm. Flexibility and diversity will increase, and we must be prepared for this.
There are also concerns about the accessibility of ICT to the more vulnerable people, to those who do not have access, and policy actions are expected to solve the situation. Embracing technology to drive future growth is a great thing, but we should consider all the challenges that might appear and see how we can counteract them. Making sure that education is available to everyone is a reality.
Tips on shaping the future of education
The societal trends are ever-changing, and education needs to respond and act. It needs to address and narrow the gaps in the education world. The centralised education style is outdated. We need today and in the future a tailor-made education, a flexible curriculum, a tight collaboration between the schooling system and the societal players, and direct connection and engagement with future employers.
1. Personalisation in the education department
Unlocking the future of learning depends a lot on the personalised learning plans made for each student that correlate to their passions and their overall activities in their daily lives. This is an excellent opportunity as not all children have the same development path – some have special needs, some are migrants, and they first need to overcome language barriers, some have slower-paced learning.
The personalised learning system is excellent for teachers as well. It will help them recognise children’s different needs, see where they need help with their learning, and what fields they excel at.
In a survey of 1,400 teachers, the majority agreed that the future of education looks centred around self-paced and personalised learning.
How to support this?
The personalised education style needs some technologies to make it happen without interrupting and affecting the quality of the teacher’s interactions. Thus, tools that support the monitoring of the scheduling, the different educational projects are a must.
2. Collaboration between the education department and the society
Becoming a fit for future students needs openness to what happens globally. Thus a direct collaboration between schools and the community is an excellent tool. This will enable students to have a correct view of society and help them find their way in the world.
Creating an openness for young people to collaborate with other young people from different social, cultural or age groups. It will help students understand the ever-changing, diverse and uncertain world we live in.
More than just collaboration between the education department and the society, the partnership between individuals will increase; thus, each young person will grow their knowledge in interaction with others in the context of practical applications and tasks.
3. Hybrid learning
More than ever, hybrid learning is here to help us. While some may feel blocked by this virtual learning style, it is the future. It is what allows us to stay connected to young people worldwide, faster, more secure, more manageable, cheaper, more accessible and anytime from anywhere.
Intercultural exchange programs help them develop and surpass boundaries easier.
Moreover, the hybrid learning system helps young people shape their learning experiences. Physical or virtual boundaries will soon become obsolete, and integrating learning environments in your everyday life will be easier. Using tools such as artificial intelligence, chatbots, and video-based learning will allow students to access everything they want.
No longer worry about commuting and other scheduling as you will be able to learn from anywhere, at any time.
At Spark School, we try to cover the needs of our students and are open to communication to help get to know them better. This hybrid system allows us to offer the education that will help each student develop as a whole.
4. New learning objectives
Currently, we are more about the grades and the level we are at shown on the paper. In the future, it will be more about skills than knowledge. It is the shift from knowing what to know-how.
Learning objectives that include respect, tolerance, responsibility, and cultural awareness will be essential. More than these values, the transversal skills such as problem-solving, critical skills and effective communication, self – confidence, independence are the future of a fit for the future person.
5. A reshaped curricula
Information and Communication Technologies is the driving force of all the socio-economic changes taking place. Thus, it will also include the learning process and how education will deliver.
The pedagogical strategies and the curricula will suffer a vast reshaping as ICT becomes a necessity. Once fully adopted, it can help teachers make things easier, have results at the core of their fingers, and help young people adapt their learning process to their needs.
What can schools do?
Especially the formal traditional education institutions that exist today can react to changes and offer the flexibility of Learning needed for the busy world we live in.
We also need to think of how education can reach the unreachable young people across the globe and develop a solution to integrate them into the education system.
Work with parents to explain the importance of being more involved in their children’s education while also allowing them to grow individually.
Show flexibility in responding to the changes and the needs of students to have a personalised learning strategy that will help them grow as a whole.
The tailor-made learning pathways that teachers will have to do need to be formatted to engage and motivate while also remaining relevant and challenging.
Will there be any fundamental courses?
While personalised learning takes over, there will be some key blocks that education needs to focus on, such as mathematics, verbal, science and digital literacy. These are necessary for each individual to understand the world and the environment and contribute to their future.
“The future will be about pairing the artificial intelligence of computers with the cognitive, social and emotional capabilities of humans so that we educate first-class humans, not second-class robots” OECD, Trends Shaping Education report.
Conclusion
The learner will stay at the centre of the education instead of the learning process. At the same time, knowledge will have its importance as well. Skills and attitudes will be the focus of education. The emphasis put on individual needs and learning will be integrated into the lives of young people. The idea is to create a whole where young people can thrive while also actively involved in society.
As the world becomes more digitised, education losses are relevant. Thus the education system must respond to the needs of today, not of yesterday. While there is no need to reform the education system, there is a need to transform it and make it answer the world’s needs, help teachers be open about teaching more than what the curriculum obliges them to teach and even transform the curriculum to come in their help.
Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), on education “Learning is the easy part. What is much harder for humans is to unlearn things and relearn things as the world is changing.” “We treat students as consumers. Parents are clients; teachers are service providers. That model will no longer work. Today is about making everyone an active participant in the learning environment.”
