Educating for the future? Rethinking our goals for the 21st Century

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Dr Garry Falloon is a Professor within the Department of Educational Studies at Macquarie University and VFFF Chair of Teacher Education. His opinion piece recently featured in the Australian Financial Review.


The world is awash with information. Never before in the history of humanity has so much information been available to so many, so easily, from so many different sources and in so many different forms. And our children don’t escape this. They too are bombarded with messages from social networks, gaming platforms, websites and the myriad of other media – both digital and non-digital, that they interact with on a daily basis.

2017-08-03-jo-stephan-4In making sense of all this, there is an assumption that young people have the skills to sort fact from fiction, reality from fantasy, or spin from truth; and that education systems foster and reward these capabilities. However, I’m not so sure this is the case.

Not that many years ago when access to information was not so convenient, deciding what to learn was a much easier process. This information was usually delivered by teachers or textbooks, and the measure of one’s learning success was simply passing an exam. Back then, what was considered useful information was adjudicated by one’s teachers, who defined this in terms of what they expected (or often hoped) would be tested at the end of the year.

Back then things were simple. All kids needed to do was remember the information (often ‘facts’) long enough to reproduce it in some form for the test. Forgetting it after that didn’t really matter, as having deep understanding had little to do with passing, or learning for that matter.

But nowadays things are very different – what was once considered ‘knowledge that lasts a lifetime’ no longer exists. Technology has expanded the range of environments our kids inhabit, enabling them to tap into hugely diverse, rapidly changing, and often conflicting information sources, as they struggle to build accurate and balanced views of what’s happening in the world. This demands a much different skillset to that described previously, and we need an education system that delivers it.

So, assuming an important role for education is preparing our young people for their future, how are we doing?

The credible Forbes International recently released a report from a survey of 260 large employers (including IBM, Chevron and Seagate) that investigated what they considered to be the top 10 abilities needed by graduates. The top 5 were:

1) working as part of a team

2) making decisions and solving problems

3) communicating verbally with others

4) planning, organising and prioritising work

5) obtaining and processing information.

What’s interesting in the report is that an ability to remember facts was not mentioned, and job-specific technical knowledge only came in at number 7. It could be reasonably argued that the desirable skills highlighted by Forbes are not unique to the workplace, but also hold currency as valuable life skills in their own right.

Despite profound, often technologically-linked influences on almost every aspect of our lives, a scan of the current educational assessment landscape reveals that little seems to have changed.

Nationwide standardised testing and international ‘apples vs oranges’ education system comparisons like PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) appear to have considerable influence over educational policy that filters down to classroom level. These manifest in a narrowly-focused, ‘teach to the test’ curriculum that pretty much defines learning as a diet of contextually-devoid numeracy and literacy skills teaching.

Such policies appear based on the assumption that ‘more is good’, and that standards will improve if we do more of the same, and measure it more often. Despite teachers’ best endeavours, their efforts to build the type of future-focused competencies described above are being stifled by dated assessment and reporting processes that effectively pitch schools against each other, rather than fostering innovation, collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and expertise that will help raise educational standards for all.

So, what needs to change?

What is apparent is that information is no longer a scarce commodity. What should really matter is how we teach our children to use this information to build robust knowledge, and realigning our assessment and reporting systems to facilitate these outcomes and support the type of future-oriented skills and capabilities our children need. We need to remember that information is simply the building blocks of knowledge – it is not knowledge itself.

Faced with these ‘information avalanches’, our young people desperately need ethical, critical, analytical and evaluative thinking skills to help them sift through the myriad of facts, opinions, ‘alternative facts’ or half and non-truths – verifying and validating information and using this to solve problems and build balanced and well-informed knowledge and perspectives.

It is difficult to see how such outcomes can be adequately assessed or reported on using multiple choice, pen and paper tests. Today’s education should provide students with opportunities to apply knowledge to solve ‘real world’ problems, work collaboratively in teams, accept responsibility, and above all, think critically and independently.

Everyone with an interest and concern for our young people, from parents and teachers, to universities and government, should value and foster such competencies if we really are serious about educating for the future.

 

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  1. I am extremely passionate about life long learning and employability skills coming together. I would welcome direction/info on where in the education system there is focus on skills and competencies children need for the future? Cheers

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