Reconceptualising learning collectively: A whole-school reform for fostering twenty-first-century competencies

Abstract

The rapid dissemination of information outside the physical silos of schools has led to the discovery of new information and transformation of concepts that often rendered content knowledge obsolete, even before the students enter the workforce. Therefore, in envisioning future learning, we posit that there is a need to reconceptualise schools as multifaceted spaces for fostering communities of learners who tinker deeply with evolving knowledge instead of physical locales for acquiring static knowledge. To achieve this, schools need to cultivate and leverage on expertise across different levels of the school system to bring about changes to the seemingly impervious structures and rules of schooling. Along this vein, the chapter is an attempt to elucidate Nan Chiau Primary School’s journey in (1) contextualising educational imperatives to its school mission and (2) harnessing professional capital to reconfi gure its ICT-mediated curriculum and capacity building structures to fulfi l the above mission. We contend that the buoyant discourses amongst stakeholders have culminated in distributed knowing. Future learning in Nan Chiau Primary School is thus a collectively imagined landscape which eventuates into sustainable structural, cultural and cognitive changes-all accomplished through whole-school effort to align macro-infl uences and micro-implementation of using technology for learning.