Today (16^th June) in our early morning (GMT) discussion we discovered that much of what the rest of the Future(s) project teams have reported mirrors the process in New Zealand. The significant difference of course is that in NZ the state has already embraced these ideas and they are moving into classrooms. For some of the rest of us this “advanced” thinking seems far away.

As we have seen the discussion of education and the skills our children need for the world they will inherit centres on the dichotomy between external control (often exerted through schooling) to internal control or self initiation (exerted in projects like the Hole in the Wall). While not completely confirmed by our participants yet, it seems that we believe students need both: to be able to reconcile to outside authority when necessary and to equally be able to tap their own inner dynamic resources of creative action.

According to the NZ education website they focused on “the skill development necessary for participation in society” – a key question very similar to ours. While I won’t repeat what you can read for yourselves in the NZ document (now uploaded to the discussion forum under (Documents to Share – the four general headings are:

1. Operating in Social Groups
2. Acting Autonomously
3. Using Tools Interactively
4. Thinking
   
   

Our discussion this morning ranged across learning environments as we went through:

a) the school/deschool discussion  (follow the Read More link if interested)

(NZ being able so far to maintain the middle ground between a system that teaches within a controlled environment yet fosters creativity),

b) the disrupting class suggestion that by the year 2024 over half the courses in the world will be taught online, and

c) personal learning environments.

As we went through the Personal Learning Environment diagrams (the links for which are in the Discussion Resources navigation point on the far right above) we finished our conversation with a little on assessment. Leading to this evenings topic which centres on assessment we were reminded that assessment drives education agendas – so much so it impedes teacher creativity. This suggests then that any new models of education need not only include student driven topic choices but student-planned assessment of those learned skills. I would foresee that in a similar fashion to how groups using participatory action research (PAR) negotiate how they will measure the outcomes of their act cycles before they start to implement those actions.

Written by :

alanajames