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.
This is my initial comment as I was afraid to loose this blog from Tarja (which i almost did).
ReplyDeleteNoted the above mentioned content. I agree that there is a need to promote creativity as the foundation of learning/education. I refer to your thoughts on "Creativity should be understood as divergent thinking: imagining alternative solutions to problems" We must encourage our students to have imagination and confidence apart from just equipping them with the required course content theories.
From teaching at the health sciences department; when the students do work placement & practicum after/whilst learning theories; they are constantly exposed to learning by doing activities/hands on where they need to use tho make their own decisions & use creativity to solve any work related problems. Hence I agree and support your thoughts on this matter.
From Oivallus Report, 2011:
ReplyDeleteGreat effort done on research and to understand the ways of working now and in the future in order to find the ideal method of teaching towards experimental society which not only self-guided but ready to take risks. When I read this area on risk taking is being encouraged……I remember at my work in the hospital, where we spent so much money annually to manage risk / risk management. In the healthcare we cannot afford to make mistakes especially when dealing with patients. However I believe there are some areas where risks may be explored to improve services. What do you think here? I welcome any comments on this matter for healthcare or education etc.
Meanwhile I agree with the IBM’s T model expert whereby apart from having deep substance competence one needs to have other areas of competence and be enthusiastic about them. This is very true at work here. One has to be creative and pro-active to find options to solve if not prevent problems at work.
An interesting report,
ReplyDelete1-I can see the trend in using a lot of technology in education nowadays but I have to say sometimes, I prefer the traditional way for teaching some of the concepts, especially in medical labs. I like the easy access of information whenever you need and whatever you want.
2-Creativity certainly makes a difference, if the students are interested in what they learn and motivated they produce wonderful results; my husband teaches grades 5,6 & 7 history and social studies, he made a lot of students projects according to the curriculum which engaged the students all the year through, and encouraged them to read and dig information from books, journals, internet… the amazing thing is that even the weak students wanted to participate to get the certificate of participation and the picture with the supervisor as a result of excellent work, weak students of course had to work in groups with the strong ones… by the end of the year even the parents were excited to see their children producing a good piece of work… so you need a creative teacher to have a creative students..
3-In my opinion, the most effective way of learning is combining it with work, several universities now apply this approach which I think students get the maximum benefit of skills and knowledge, and they will have a smooth transfer from education to real life.
4-“Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, do with me and I understand” the Chinese proverb…. I totally agree.