According to current trends in education, one of the six possible scenarios discussed as part of the future(s) of education project, designed by the OECD, show schools as being such huge bureaucracies that they are able to weather the changes in the outer environment without substantial change in their way of doing business. In this case we will likely see the prevailing learning environment in most locations continuing to be the classroom with a single teacher, who then is responsible to a hierarchy of individuals who run the organization. Separate schools will report further to another level of hierarchy and so on as required by size to manage the all the operations. These organizations will maintain their power due to the fact that they are certified to assess and bestow graduation credentials which remain seen in the rest of the world as having currency.
Because people will live longer, life long learning will become a client base and meeting those needs with both curriculum and counseling will be seen. This scenario also includes a consistent drive for improvement and for the inclusion of those populations marginalized by the system. Because of these last two, some systems will contain efforts to flatten the hierarchical structure, include diverse populations at all levels, mix up students by age or ethnicity by different sorting criteria, etc.
Technology is a tool for learning and although there is a continued effort to narrow the gap, there continue to be great variety of skills between teachers, students, and schools in both the types of technology used and its role in teaching, curriculum and pedagogy.
People see teaching not as a career but as a stage in a career and the mobility of teachers within and without the system continues. Teachers pull curricular resources from an increased number of sources which they share across networks.
The OECD itself says:
This scenario shows schools in powerful, bureaucratic, systems that are resistant to change. Schools continue mostly with “business as usual”, defined by isolated units – schools, classes, teachers – in top-down administrations. The system reacts little to the wider environment, and operates to its own conventions and regulations.
You can follow this link to read more about the geopolitical and attitudinal conditions that likely predict and support this scenario of greater bureaucracies for the management of schools.
