Building Learning Futures

Professor Keri Facer, Education and Social Research Institute, MMUk.facer@mmu.ac.uk

@kerileef

What is education for?

• About offering possibilities – understanding what is, what might be, what you want to be, what you don’t want to be. It is a right and a privilege. [PD, Mum, Office Manager]

• [the purpose of education is]To open the minds of those being educated to provide them with the tools to reach their full potential. [DR, footballist, management accountant]

• To help people realise their potential and have a greater understanding and appreciation of the world and all its inhabitants. [JD, electrician]

From Richard Hall, DMUSee also www.purpose/ed.org.uk

The educational contract:Invest in education now and the child (and society) will be better

in future

But what sorts of futures are we imagining?

• How old will you be in 2035?

• Think of a child in starting school – how old will they be in 2035?

WHAT SORTS OF FUTURES MIGHT BE IN DEVELOPMENT?

www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk

TECHNOLOGY

Constant connectivity - to people and to networks, the personal cloud

Massive computing power on demand (translation & NHLI)

Merging digital and physical – internet of things, augmented landscapes, augmented bodies

Bio-technical diversity

Complexity and chaos

• Rise of biotech – personal genomes, bespoke medicine, cosmetic pharmacology

• When asked whether healthy children under the age of 16 should be restricted from taking these drugs, unsurprisingly, most respondents (86%) said that they should. But one-third of respondents said they would feel pressure to give cognition-enhancing drugs to their children if other children at school were taking them.

Nature, 2009

KNOWLEDGE

Collective intelligence/global brain

= value in ‘finding the place for expertise’

= data streams and data mining

Embodied knowledge

= reconnecting mind & body, academic and craft skills

DEMOGRAPHICS

By 2035 50% of population of Western Europe aged over 50, with a further 40 year life expectancy, 25% aged over 65Competition for public resources? Intergenerational conflict? New intergenerational cohesion - older adults as active citizens/ partners/ co-workers/ learners? Global intergenerational relationships? Lifelong over 500 years?

WORKING IN THE ‘KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY’

International competition for creative roles – high skills, low wages

Centralisation of creativity/autonomy in ‘global talent’ in major multinationals

Casualisation of middle class roles – crowdsourcing, freelance, amateur/volunteer effort

Losing the ‘rungs on the ladder’ and potential for radical polarisation

Image by: H.I.L.T Flickr Stream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/

We work and we borrow in order to work and to borrow. And the jobs we work toward are the jobs we already have. Close to three quarters of students work while in school [college], many full-time; for most, the level of employment we obtain while students is the same that awaits after graduation. Meanwhile, what we acquire isn’t education; it’s debt. … This is the prospect for which we have been preparing since grade-school.

Wewanteverything (2009: US Student)

ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL DISRUPTION

Energy shocks and constraintsClimate disruptionBreakdown?

Technological, demographic, knowledge, economic and environmental changes mean that we cannot count on a ‘business as usual’ future

How then do we fulfil the educational contract ?

We’ve survived disruptive change before

The end of the 19th century saw electric light, phonographs, wireless cinema, extreme poverty, early globalisation, mass production

Invented playgrounds and new school spaces, universal primary education, widening access to higher education and laws banning child labour

A rich educational imagination

‘Learning’ practices are already changing

• Schools no longer hold the monopoly on: information, access to teachers, assessment

• Kahn Academy/folk educators• School of everything, Skillshare,

The Really Free School, Futureversity

• Microsoft/ Redhat• Virtual/online schools

• Not to mention… free schools, academies, trusts, foundations

A new educational imagination for our current times ?

• We need schools that rise to these challenges:– Technological Challenge – Support young people and educators to

critically reflect upon technological and scientific change in their own lives, for learning and in society

– Demographic Challenge - Build bridges between generations, and enable generations to learn together and from each other

– Knowledge Challenge – recognise young people as connected with significant knowledge resources and able to contribute to common projects beyond the school walls

– Economic Challenge – offer strategies for young people to build economically sustainable futures that are not reliant upon certification

– Environmental Challenge – exemplify environmentally sustainable practices as employers, producers, purchasers and institutions

• Schools that are laboratories for young people and communities to experiment in the design of better futures

Some inspirations and building blocksThe democratic challenge - • Human Scale Education/ Democratic

Education• Collaborative Schools – eg Shimna, OrkneyThe technological challenge -• ESSA Academy – rethinking the individual

in educationThe demographic challenge - • Grey Gamers – intergenerational learningThe economic challenge• Co-operative Schools and Co-operative

Education• HighTechHigh• Self-sufficient schools in Latin AmericaThe environmental challenge• Riverside• iEarn/ Earthforce• Sustainable Schools - e.g St Christopher’s,

Wrexham

Schools that are building: – New human relationships within

and between schools– New models of governance– New community partnerships

and support– New businesses & social

enterprises

Future building schools – at the heart of their local communities

• In the face of constant calls for change in how we do education, we need to remember to create a space for asking why.

• We need to keep an eye on the future

Thank you

Key collaborators on Beyond Current Horizons and other educational futures work:Professor Dave Cliff, Professor Helen Haste, Professor Sarah Harper, Professor Rob Wilson, Professor Carey Jewitt, Professor David Buckingham, Professor Rupert Wegerif, Professor Nick Lee, Professor Alan Prout, Professor Josie Taylor, Professor Claire O’Malley, Richard Sandford , Dr Ben Williamson, Dan Sutch, Dr Mary Ulicsak, Dr Jessica Pykett, Dr Vanessa Pittard, Dr Robert Wood, Dr John Morgan, Robin Widdowson, Dr Patrick Hazlewood, Clara Lemon, Dr Steve Sayers, Joanne O’Hagan, Dr Richard Hall, Professor Anna Craft, Dr Nicola Whitton, Professor Mike Sharples, Simon Mauger, Dr Cathy Lewin, Professor Michael Fielding, Professor John Schostak, Dr Adam Nieman,

Professor Harry Torrance, Professor Maggie Maclure and the wider Create research group at MMU.

Permission to use images under Creative Commons Licence from:(three ages) icultist http://www.flickr.com/photos/icultist(rusted car) H.I.L.T http://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05London Metropolitan Archive