EDUCATION & ‘the FUTURE’ – exploring a problematic

Transcript:EDUCATION & ‘the FUTURE’ – exploring a problematic:
EDUCATION & ‘the FUTURE’ – exploring a problematic relationship Professor Keri Facer, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, AHRC Leadership Fellow for the Connected Communities Programme @kerileef @ahrcconect ‘The Future’ is everywhere in education Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today’s computers on a 50-year-old mainframe (Gates, 2005) So make no mistake. Our future is on the line. The nation that out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow. (Obama, 2010) We can’t go on like this. If we carry on excusing this kind of failure, we face a future of where [sic] our most stubborn social problems get worse, not better, and where our economy gets left behind, as countries out-educate and out-compete us. So nothing else will do: we need big change in the way we do education in our country. (Cameron, 2010) You have to fulfil your potential. What do you want to be when you grow up? Where’s that going to get you in the long run? This is really important for your future! The educational contract: Invest in education now and the student (and society) will be better in future So – what sorts of futures do we tend to imagine education needs to prepare for? The Beyond Current Horizons Project… … Applied Foresight Process - insights into technology change 2035 and beyond.. And implications for education Drawing on expert insight – over 85 academics from UK, Europe, US Drawing on public and student insights – over 1500 young people, publics Exploring – preferable, possible and probable futures (Wendell Bell) Core questions – what are the big trends, critical uncertainties, what different scenarios might these lead to? Tech Developments Constant connectivity - to people and to networks, the personal cloud Massive computing power on demand (translation & NHLI) Merging digital and physical – internet of things, augmented landscapes, augmented bodies Proliferation of data, data trails Reconnection of physical and virtual – internet of things, augmented reality (e.g. BIO) Rise of biotech, personal genomics, cosmetic pharmacology Rise of biotech – personal genomes, bespoke medicine, cosmetic pharmacology When asked whether healthy children under the age of 16 should be restricted from taking these drugs, unsurprisingly, most respondents (86%) said that they should. But one-third of respondents said they would feel pressure to give cognition-enhancing drugs to their children if other children at school