...the first task of futures research must necessarily be to critique the assumption that there is an inevitable future to which we must simply adapt or resist.Keri Facer and Richard Sandford’s 2010 article exploring the possible directions education might take 25 years into the future offers both an interesting look forward as well as a fascinating look back to see what possible worlds were in the minds of researchers a decade ago.
The article is an informative piece of educational prognostication. Many of the trends and future challenges the authors identified have emerged as predicted - even the challenge of a post-crisis education dictated by a pandemic (that’s pretty specific!).😷
What really impressed me was the litany of critical insights and evaluative frameworks the authors provided to consider the possible futures of education intertwined with technology.
As the opening quote observes, when considering a future for education, particularly when it’s framed through the lens of technological change, it is important to remember the evolution of education is uncertain. The future does not need to be dictated by the past. It could follow many paths. Outcomes are as dependent on unforeseen cultural forces as they are on carefully planned institutional interventions. The key is to (re)build from the bottom up.
As such, the first challenge in educational futures research is to answer the question: What do we see as the purpose of education?
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| Andertoons.com |
While I think Facer and Sandford’s take on the purpose of education is essentialist, learner agnostic, and overly prescriptive, they are able to spin some interesting scenarios out of it. From all of them, I think the one we are most likely to see come to fruition in some form is the ‘Independent consumer’ scenario from World 1: trust yourself’.
Independent consumer – a highly atomized education system in which individuals are able to choose from a complex menu of standardized provision from private, public and not for profit sectors.We’re already seeing elements of this emerge. Resources are available online to provide the curious with guidance and encouragement as they embark on their self-directed learning journey.
- Colleges and universities have begun making their coursework and lectures available online.
- Learning platforms like EdX, Coursera and LinkedIn Learning offer pay-to-learn synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities.
- Free sites like Khan Academy have become essential study aids for primary students.
- Free code academies seem to continuously pop in and out of existence like overexcited positrons.
- Specialty communities have emerged like Stack Overflow for programmers and E-Learning Heroes for Articulate developers (and even a few very helpful subreddits like r/AskScience).
Again, the authors understand that the standardization process is a bottom-up process, not top-down, and it begins with defining the specific values you choose to build your learning worlds upon.
Any futures work...needs therefore to be clear about the values underpinning the visions it is presenting.These values will form the foundation for every learning decision designers make as they build future education interventions.
Competition or collaboration? Individual performance or group progress? Life readiness or job readiness?
The learning visionaries of today who will build the learning organizations of tomorrow will make those decisions and will define the evolution of education into 2045 and beyond.
Two scenarios I believe are likely to emerge in the next 15 years that were not included in Facer and Sandford’s imagined worlds are the ‘Education economy’ and ‘Bridging the divide’.
I think a natural progression of the ‘Independent consumer’ scenario would be for these self-directed and intrinsically motivated learners to assume control of the educational means of production and begin creating learning content to share with others within an exchange framework. Reputation building through the success of pre-recorded content could lead to live webinars, lunch-n-learns and 1-to-1 tutoring sessions.
Creators could build communities similar to channel subscribers on YouTube, but the platform itself would not monetize the content. Some form of virtual currency would be exchanged directly between creator and learner so that work and the reputation of the creator would determine their ultimate success.
Educational technology is most often thought of as an in-the-chair experience, but ICTs have begun to be used as enabling technologies to organize events and inspire environmental activism.
On Twitter, the #Trashtag challenge went viral inspiring thousands of people to clean up their favorite local outdoor spots. Similarly, the #2MinuteBeachClean challenge on Facebook was so successful it spawned a non-profit that helps others kick start similar efforts in their communities.
Citizen Science, scientific research conducted by the general public, has also gained in popularity due to the proliferation of ICTs.
The Education Economy
All of the scenarios proposed in the article consider the learner as the (often passive) recipient. Corporate interests or learning institutions would presumably construct these worlds for learners to benefit from and would, as a result, most likely reflect the values of those organizations.I think a natural progression of the ‘Independent consumer’ scenario would be for these self-directed and intrinsically motivated learners to assume control of the educational means of production and begin creating learning content to share with others within an exchange framework. Reputation building through the success of pre-recorded content could lead to live webinars, lunch-n-learns and 1-to-1 tutoring sessions.
Creators could build communities similar to channel subscribers on YouTube, but the platform itself would not monetize the content. Some form of virtual currency would be exchanged directly between creator and learner so that work and the reputation of the creator would determine their ultimate success.
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| Tenor.com |
Merging Two Worlds
Another likely scenario to emerge is the targeted development and use of technology to move learners offline and outside.Educational technology is most often thought of as an in-the-chair experience, but ICTs have begun to be used as enabling technologies to organize events and inspire environmental activism.
On Twitter, the #Trashtag challenge went viral inspiring thousands of people to clean up their favorite local outdoor spots. Similarly, the #2MinuteBeachClean challenge on Facebook was so successful it spawned a non-profit that helps others kick start similar efforts in their communities.
Citizen Science, scientific research conducted by the general public, has also gained in popularity due to the proliferation of ICTs.
Safecast4 was launched as citizens' initiative to monitor the radiation levels in Japan after the nuclear accident in Fukushima in 2011. By now, it has become the largest monitoring network in history.
Crowdsourcing and leveraging the power of collective action for the advancement of science and the common good will be an integral part of social learning as it matures across the next two decades. It will be interesting to see how all of these separate parts will be integrated together into a unified learning environment.
2045...here we come!
Palacin-Silva, M., & Porras, J. Shut up and take my environmental data!.
Hi Spencer,
ReplyDeleteI think you raise many interesting points! For example, I really like your idea of how evolution of education can be driven by cultural forces from bottom up. Then, you mentioned that standardization as an important factor in this bottom up process. I'm curious about how you would define standardization. Can you give us an example? Correct me if you have different interpretations, but I personally understand standardization as a series of curriculum design shaped by our cultural values and social needs. I also think your idea of educational economy is really cool, where we have our own virtual community to exchange information and create values as a living / working space rather than just a learning tool. Thank you for the great post!
Thanks for the reply, Ningcong! You've asked an excellent question. If we follow Facer and Sandford’s recommendation and build an internally consistent education system from the bottom-up, we would begin to define the foundations of our platform well before where most would. The question, "What do we see as the purpose of education?" is, in truth, a secondary question. Even defining the values your system would support and promote is not quite deep enough. What about defining our basic psychological needs and then identifying the associated values of each of those needs and start there? Nope. Deeper still.
DeleteWhat is (for lack of a better term) the inherent nature of a human? Are we all "red in tooth and claw"? Or are we fear-driven prey animals? Is our behavior genetically determined to keep us alive just long enough to reproduce or does our environment have a significant influence on our attitudes, our opinions, and how we act and interact in the world? What if there is no 'either/or' at all and out nature is plastic and variable based on our experiences? What if each human is born with a pre-wired, but malleable, temperament and everything else is simply potential? What then?
We would be open to integrating any value; investing in any life goal. So, what then would constitute a successful life lived? Financial success? Academic achievement? Religious devotion? Mitigating suffering? Self-actualization? Deep social connection? Persistent happiness? Personal contentment? Some of them? All of them? Something else?
There are, in fact, approaches to answer these questions, I think. But however you answer them, whatever you decide, that is where you begin to build up. What values are integral to this goal? What behaviors must result from these values to realize this goal? What type of environment promotes these values and behaviors? And finally, what sort of educational framework would provide this environment? What must it include to enable and empower learners to reach that goal?
Apologies! I could go on and on...it's a fascinating topic!
Hi Spencer; to echo Ningcong, I want to chime in to add that you provided a very insightful and thought provoking post!
ReplyDeleteThe educational economy scenario that you proposed is one that is very viable as we [society] currently engage with products and services in a very similar way. The description that you provided of “user-generated” content for education reminds me of the functions of sites such as “Yelp” and customer reviews that are available on Amazon. While the nuances of the merchandising and restaurant industries are quite different from those of education, the user generated education and feedback culture is one that provides a viable template for the Educational Economy.
In considering what this might look like in practice, I imagine platforms and spaces where educators (self selected or formal) are able to deliver content and learners are able to design their personalized educational experiences based upon the format, content, and goals of their desired course content as well as tips and insights from previous users/ learners. This is an interesting concept that aligns with current behaviors and access ICTs.
I am curious about what challenges and consideration might arise with such a scenario.
Great post! Thank you.
Hi Spencer, I enjoyed your post. I too selected the Trust Yourself world, from the social media perspective (as I usually do, hah). I think the trend toward educational customization or personalization is an interesting one. My research topic for this class is on reframing the discussions around xMOOCs. One of my findings, is that there has been a great deal of energy spent about getting a better sense of learners data, motivations, goals, hopes, dreams and desires in order to (one hopes) improve the platform. This is all well and good, but the "massiveness" bit of xMOOCs also means massive diversity so it is hard to take a user-centered approach (incidentally, I argue for a video-centered appraisal in lieu of that). Aside from that though, it does make one wonder, to what end all this personalization? Where will that take us? Are we compromising common experiential ground for something made "just for us"? One does wonder ...
ReplyDeleteHi Spencer:
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your second scenario regarding the use of ICT’s to spurn collective action for learning, education, and the advancement of science. I think we too often focus on the negative effects that have been created by the development of ICT’s (and there are a lot!), but we should also focus on the positives. I’m reminded of Langdon Winner’s article Do Artifacts Have Politics? In this instance, the artifacts are ICT’s and politics can be rephrased as “effects on the common good?”. Hopefully by 2045, we can unequivocally say “Yes! ICT’s play a positive role in society through awareness, education, and the drive to action”. We’ve seen the beginnings of it already with the push for social & environmental justice these past couple of years, and if this trend can continue over the next few decades, ICT’s should play a large part in helping to make society (and the planet in general) better.