“Most Likely to succeed”

This video demonstrates that our changing world not only demands that we look at changing education subjects, but it demands that we change how we teach and what skills and competencies we prioritize. We will soon live in a time where computers can replace most people’s jobs. The future economy is not going to value the skills that we have been educating children for. A committee of 10 men came up with the set subjects that children have learned over 100 years ago and this curriculum has had little movement or change today. The issue is that technology is moving so fast that we need to predict the skills that will be needed and educate children for the future not the present.

“According to a report published by Dell Technologies and authored by the Institute For The Future (IFTF) and a panel of 20 tech, business and academic experts from around the world, states that 85 per cent of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t even been invented yet.” –Leo SaLemi

So, what kind of skills are children going to need for the future?

Linda Darling-Hammond believes that the types of skills that make people successful in this changing world include resilience, resourceful, growth mindset, determination. Previously learning content was the most important goal for school but now content is available at the touch of your finger.

We now need to produce people who are innovative, creative and willing to fail and try again.

The focus needs to be on skills and not a retention of knowledge.

Many are predicting that jobs of the future need people who can Critically think, collaborate, work independent and think outside the box.

This transition to this type of learning can be represented in many ways including inquiry based and project based learning. These types of learning focus more on the skills of creating knowledge and understanding, sharing knowledge, building on previous knowledge as well as problem solving and innovation.

Examples of this include the work being done at a school called High Tech High. It is a school that is changing the way children are expected to learn and show their learning away from testing towards creating a skill and mind set.

Moving towards these ways of increasing ability instead of knowledge can be seen in pedagogy such as Project Based Learning, Inquiry Based Learning and Knowledge building.

Project Based learning is an easy way to achieve children working on these skills. In Project Based Learning children need to critically think through problems tasks or research to move forward their project. Students have space to develop and increase their capacity by using and sharing and growing their strengths through exploring their project. Children are given the autonomy to use and practice these skills and their knowledge to collaboratively work together to create new learning.

Similar to Project Based Learning and Problem Based Learning, Inquiry based learning has a similar goals, only the focus often starts with a solving a question. It often still requires innovative thinking, collaboration, trial and error, and resourcefulness.

The best example of this I have seen is in knowledge building pedagogy where students:

• Learning from a social construction lens (learn best when we create learning together).

• It looks deeply at what knowledge the children already have and the builds on it.

• Inquires focus on real ideas and problems and uses skills to seek out learning.

• Interactive deep questioning, dialogue and continuing improvement of ideas not tasks

• Shows learning through a project where the learning process and progress is the focus.

These methods used together in teaching can not only promote engagement and participation from students but support them to deeply engage in learning using the skills that are needed for the new world.

Visit High Tech High’s website to see all the great things they are doing!

https://www.hightechhigh.org/

Competency: Learning Design