The future of education according to the fourth industrial revolution

Abstract

The current study falls in line with the contemporary effort aiming towards raising the societal awareness about the impacts of 4th Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0) in education. The study aims to reveal the impact of IR 4.0 on the dimensions: control learning, learning opportunities, Instructional activities and social implications. To achieve the aim, a questionnaire was designed including 30 items that were distributed into the previous four dimensions and was applied on 77 pre-service science teachers at Sohar University in Sultanate of Oman in the academic year 2019/2020. Findings showed variations in the pre-service science teachers’ perceptions about implications of IR 4.0 on education. They believed that block-chain, Cloud Computing and cyber security will be used in a wide range in the future to improve learning opportunities and keep student’s data and activities for a long time. On the other hand, they referred that the teaching-learning processes will occur with no values and low level of students-teachers interactions. Also, they predicted that robots and machines will work instead of humans even in educational jobs in the future. According to the findings, the study suggested to implement significant transformations in instructional programs, curricula, learning environment, liquid instructional skills and teachers-students roles to deal with IR 4.0 technologies and products.