Projecting the Nature of Education for the Future: Implications for Current Practice

Abstract

Ensuring that education serves the needs of a rapidly and ever-changing society is one of the defining challenges of education providers. This paper projects future trends in education based on documented evidence predicting shifts in education (teacher education in particular) and how they affect how the academy should prepare its products. The study views education for the future, not in terms of discarding subject content, but in terms of utilising content as a means rather than an end. This transforms the focus of both instruction and assessment from students assimilating content knowledge, to them developing habits that make them adaptable to the changing world and empower them to become change-agents. Accordingly, the teaching environment needs to respond to the dynamics of technological developments, and to changing student profiles. Also requiring change is the authoritative position of the teacher as the repository and dispenser of knowledge, and the learner’s passive role as the consumer of knowledge. Knowledge is co-created within the teaching-learning context. The paper recommends further delineation of current trends that define 21st century education, and what they determine for the future.