Summary: Predicting the future is not just about writing down expectations for the future, nor is it just about letting people in the entire field of education understand what is coming, but really trying to encourage everyone to regard themselves as a promoter of positive change in creating the future.
People like to predict the future and also like to read predictions about the future. But predictions about the future are rarely reliable, and many are not realized.
KnowledgeWorks is an education-focused nonprofit organization with a team dedicated to the future of education, and has published comprehensive estimates for the next 10 years every three years since 2006. They stated very carefully that these estimates are not “predictions” of the future, but “some insights into the possibilities that may happen in the future” , as Jason Swanson wrote in late 2015, when he was starting a blog series to review how their first estimates became a reality.
But for KnowledgeWorks, the prediction of the future is not just about writing down expectations for the future, and then quietly waiting to see if the world will really become what they imagined. The Future of Navigation Learning: Estimated 5.0, released last week, provides educators with specific ideas about what to do now to achieve the future they want.
This estimate describes the current reality that educational organizations, including schools, are increasingly inconsistent with what people expect from them.
“The new era may exacerbate the current inconsistency and deepen existing inequalities, or may also inspire new frameworks for life, work and learning,” the estimate reads, “The choices we make today will not only determine whether people can develop rapidly in the near term, but also who is most likely to develop rapidly in the future.”
The estimate points out five key drivers of change over the next decade: automation; technology that affects our brain function; narratives about success and achievement; changing community landscapes (because of the economic and climate impacts) and the work of “citizen superpowers.” Whether individuals, nonprofits or volunteer organizations, they are working hard to fill gaps in traditional governance. Katherine Prince, senior director of strategic vision at
KnowledgeWorks, said these drivers can be incredible, overwhelming, frightening or exciting. Given the expectations for the future, the release of the forecast aims to create some roadmap for realizing what it looks for the future. "The future estimate proposed by KnowledgeWorks is not just to let people in the entire field of education understand what is coming, but to really try to encourage everyone to regard themselves as a positive change driver to create the future."
The estimate released by this time is intended to help people become positive drivers of the future. This estimate poses a number of key questions after each of the drivers of change to help readers think about their role in future change. For example, the 5.0 is expected to imagine that in the future, people can use products to improve brain performance.
Prince said some companies have asked employees to take drugs such as Adderall to make their minds sharper at work. If the technologies created in the future have similar effects but may not be used evenly, only wealthy or with wider interpersonal relationships will have the opportunity to use these technologies, which will exacerbate the existing gap in learning achievement. Even if this technology is widely available, educators may have to consider the ethical boundaries that require students to use brain enhancement techniques. The question raised in the report is: "How can learners retain the right to decide when and how to use new cognitive tools while meeting new expectations for educational performance?"
Estimation 5.0 imagines the possibilities of future education. Prince has found a future education model that is particularly easy for current educators to understand - on how to make teaching and learning systems oriented towards the comprehensive development of human beings.
“We have seen an increasing interest in combining social and emotional ability development with academic mastery,” Prince said, adding that there is also an increasing interest in personalized learning, supporting trauma-affected students and focusing students’ progress on content mastery.
The final chapter of this estimate points to some existing schools and educational programs that can see the future education model. For example, I Promise School, created under the joint initiative of the LeBron James Family Foundation and Akron Public Schools, provides wraparound services that contribute to the overall development of children.
This estimate is rich in content and has a lot of information to be absorbed. Prince imagines people reading all chapters at once and then back to read what they find most useful at a certain time. Prince and her team don't think people will read the estimate only once.
Although Estimation 5.0 describes some unstable visions for the future, Prince finds that this forecast for the future is generally inspiring.
She said: "I think contact with the future can give us a better understanding of what might happen, and it also makes us more cautious about the choices we need to make today."
