Changing Education Paradigms

Changing Education Paradigms by Sir Ken Robinson

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

Steve Jobs went to college at the age of 17, and  (quote) "After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out." (end of quote). His Commencement address at Stanford in 2005 can be seen here.

Connectivism

Connectivism is a learning theory which is being developed by Stephen Downes and George Siemens. The main idea is that learning is supported most efficiently in social networks and learning processes are realized through Personal Learning Networks (PLN). George Siemens describes the theory in this video clip (2007).

Learning in a fun way!

Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds, exports a Finnish learning concept to the world.

Promoting creativity will become the foundation of all education

It is our task as teachers to prepare our students to work life. Oivallus report gives an excellent 

analysis of work life and the skills required.

Oivallus was a three-year project aiming to grasp the future. It explored the future competence 

needs generated by a network economy.

Summary

One objective of the education system has historically been to prepare people for the requirements of an industrial society – for jobs that had strictly defined tasks, allocated in advance. Employees worked largely separately from eachother and learning one skill was sufficient for a long time.

We have been moving towards an information society or an experiential society for a while now. What is becoming crucial is the capacity to work in a new way to achieve new or improved solutions. To rise to the challenge, companies are changing the way

in which work is performed.Mechanical thinking by the book will seldom be the case in the future. Strict instructions are being replaced by guidelines and the goals of work are becoming more and more vague. People have to define the content and the rules of their work on their own or together with others.

In order to prepare for the aforementioned future, promoting creativity will become the foundation of all education. Creativity should be understood as divergent thin­king: imagining alternative solutions to problems. Education that promotes creativity adopts methods from work life: experimenting with others without the fear of makig a mistake will be encouraged. This is why future education will focus on skills in add­ition to knowledge and working in groups instead of working in isolation.

Adopting a broad range of learning methods prepares students for work that is performed in a variety of ways. We will move away from a fragmented curriculum towards learning that is based on problems and phenomena. This enables us to handle more and more complex environments. Learning expands as schools are opening up to the society that surrounds them. Structures of education will support collaborative teaching — at the end, teachers are the ones who enable the change towards education that promotes creativity. The way in which learning is assessed is at the core of the change. What is assessed will be taught and learnt.