Educating ofr the future
Educating for the Future
Preparing the coming generation for the challenges of the 21st Century
By Lars Broslet
The Future of Work
Rapid changes are occuring in industries and labour markets across the globe. New technologies are changing all levels of production, distribution and consumption. These changes are disrupting performance roles, means and methods of labour, which incurs a change in the need of skills and behavior of workers in all sectors of the economy.
The drivers of these changes are centered around artificial intelligence, robotization, big data analysis, the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing. These combined trends are forming a nexus around a deepening connection between machines, humans and knowledge, both by developing new ways of thinking and focussing on emotional intelligence and human connection.
Changes and challenges
Automation
Artificial intelligence and robotization combined with big data analysis are forming a connection between knowledge and machine, often referred to as machine learning and automation. What this, in essence, means is that more work in the future will be done by smarter machines, both physical and digital, than what we have seen before. This will affect different sectors of labor differently. Some areas will most likely see more or less full automation in the next 10 - 15 years, such as resource extraction, logistics & transport and basic manufacturing but it would be a mistake to buy in to the sentence “a robot will take your job” too much, most areas will experience an augmentation more than an automation in the foreseeable future, meaning that machines will come to play a more important role in areas such as the service industry.
Augmentation
Most jobs in the service and knowledge work sector will not become obsolete but the way that this work is performed will change. Automation processes will take over some aspects of the work performed; manual work, repetitive tasks, fact checking, low-levels analysis, management and organisation of resources, while other parts will be supported and augmented.
What this means is that the focus of workers will have to change, from day-to-day management actions to higher level initiative, overview and creative thinking. In the future the gap between hard and soft skills will become less clear, smart skills will be what companies will be looking for.
Machines will help us to get from A to B but humans will define what B looks like and where it is.
Change of employment roles
This concretely means that there will be a change in how work is organized, with the brunt of much work being done by machines and software, greater flexibility is needed in the workforce. There will be a decline in stable long term employment in many sectors and a rise in short term contract and freelance work. More importantly, this also means that workers will have to keep learning constantly throughout their career, which is far from the norm today.
New jobs
The automation and augmentation process will not just limit work opportunities. Together with IoT and new platforms, both online and offline, new markets and jobs will be created, just as we have seen more recently with things like Uber and AirBnB, and just as changes in production have done so in the past. 15 years ago job titles such as Content Creator, SEO-expert, SoMe Marketer, Chief Privacy Officer, Big Data analyst did not exist.
In 15 years the pupils of today will have jobs that doesn’t exist today.
Broader competition
In the future, more and more products and services will be internet-based and connected through IoT. Networks of distribution will be expanded and optimized and reach a larger base of upper and middle-class consumers around the globe and especially in rising economies in Asia, Africa and South America. This means larger markets but this, at the same time, expands available workers on the “global labour market” with work more and more independent separated from geography, competition for jobs will expand to global levels. These two factors create what can be called “broad competition” - more markets and consumers but also more job applicants, separated from local talent bases. This requires changes in the skills and mindset for the workers of the future, but also from the companies side. - (!!!!!!!!!!!)
The challenges
These combined factors create a set of challenges both for employees and companies in the future. The skills needed are higher level thinking skills such as:
Contextual thinking
Initiative, planning & strategic thinking
Creative thinking, innovative mindset and flexibility
Emotional intelligence and human connection
Therefore, the crucial question will be: How can education accommodate these needs?
Recommendations
Lifelong learning
The nature of work and industry is changing and it will continue to change. The goal is not to prepare young people of today for the current changes in employment, the goal is to prepare them to prepare for changes in the nature of work. In other words, the challenge for students today is to learn how to learn, in order to be able to keep learning throughout their career.
The idea of setting aside a person for 10 years in school with optional additions of three or five or eight years of higher education to make them ready for employment is a method devised in a stable and relatively predictable labour market. The workers of the future will need constant reskilling and upskilling and what is needed is not a set of predetermined, neatly packed skill sets but a continuously evolving knowledge and skill acquisition mindset, in other words, lifelong learning. The specifics of the architecture of such an education system is to broad for this paper but the two important central points are conceptual understanding and love of learning.
Love of learning
In order for students to continue to learn and acquire new skills throughout their life, it is of vital importance to encourage curiosity, knowledge sharing and excitement about new and complicated concepts. In this regard the way that schools are teaching today can be more of an obstacle than a facilitator. How many students finish school hating calculus, German grammar, or latin? A school might pride itself of high average grades but if this is achieved solely through discipline the students might be high-performing but experiencing learning as nothing but hard work and will never pursue new knowledge and skills out of curiosity and joy. That is why a paradigm shift is needed.
The specifics of such a shift is too big for this paper but endeavors such as; learning through play, through exploration and games, providing challenges more than instructions, encouraging collaboration and teamwork and introduction of secondary sources of learning, should be examined.
Conceptual & Creative Learning
As many, including Ken Robinson, have noted, the core of school systems (in the Western part of the world) results from enlightenment ideals, in a time where order, atoms and steam machines were the crux of human development. School children are trained in the same way factories are processing materials; separated into clearly defined boxes, with information as resources put into one end and a useful product coming out of the other, with all l sectors neatly and clearly divided.
This model will not work in the future. The core of the problem consists of two elements: Clear separation of knowledge fields and learning as information storage.
I propose two general ideas in order to solve this.
Domain over Field opdel domain (grunschole) og Field (højere/vocational schools)
In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention” He makes an important distinction between field and domain in relation to creativity, but this distinction goes much further. Domain is the area of reality that a given subject matter covers and field is the profession that relates to and govern this domain. The field is medicine, the domain is “the function of the human body”, Litterature is the field, the “human written word” is the domain, Law and politics are the fields, the “governance of human behaviour” is the domain.
The modern school system, broadly speaking, is focused on the fields of knowledge more than the underlying domains. This inhibits conceptual understanding and creative thinking.
Schools should strive to foster understanding of domains. and then vocational schools and universities will “put the field on top” of the underlying knowledge of domains. School children should not be taught math in preparation of becoming mathematicians, but to understand the concept and use of math. Litterature should not train literary critics but teach understanding of written human communication and symbolic interaction.
Importantly, this is not to say that facts and details should be removed from the curriculum, but it is to say that the focus should be on the concept more than the detail. It is important to know that the French Revolution happened in 1789, but more important to understand the underlying causes, implications, promises and dangers of the revolution.
One way of achieving this in an educational setting could be to separate courses according to “themes” rather than subject fields. Use “the function of the body” as a center and approach it from the angle of physics, chemistry and biology in parallel, or “genetics” from scientific, political and philosophical perspectives, or a specific theme in human society and look at it through the lenses of economics, history, civics and language use, together.
Ground Schools should enable understanding of domains - the “intuitive” feel of the essence of the subject, which higher institutions of learning then can specify, add detail to and make useful in professional settings.
This enables the students to adapt and reflect upon the fields as they grow into them and to relate appropriately when fields change, evolve and when new fields of knowledge emerge. It will also vastly increase the ability of students to be creative. By understanding the underlying domain they can draw perspectives and solutions from different fields and find new and useful solutions hitherto not seen.
3. Del
Regarding the second part. Learning as information storage, again, has a mechanical understanding of the universe as its underlying principle, perpetuated by the “harddrive” as a metaphor for human memory. This is a widely misguided understanding of human consciousness.
The brain is organic, it’s malleable and in constant motion. Memory is not a static retrieval of information from the brain, it is a creative and contextual act; details, moods, timeframes, experienced purposes, they all change each time a memory is recalled, depending on the current context, mood and mindset of the recaller.
Education is today, of course, more sophisticated than merely hearing + taking notes = memory & skills, but at its heart, most learning is still being performed by a lone teacher giving information to the students and the students reading books and are then tested and measured against how well they remember and understand the text. And in most cases you can find the answer in the back of the book but you are not allowed to do so. I propose a different approach.
Learning through guided but open challenges
Teachers should aim at giving students a challenge, a concrete problem to solve. This method engages them actively from the get go and challenges their fact finding skills, initiative, cooperation skills, curiosity, critical source reading, analytical thinking and self-guiding approach to understanding the world.
When they come back it is then the teachers role to evaluate the facts, arguments, assumptions, lines of reasoning, ethical concerns etc. together with the class. It becomes the job of the teacher to help students evaluate the more sound ideas from the unsound ones, to check facts and sources, to encourage and guide analytical reasoning and communication of ideas and so on.
This prepares the students for a life and a world with very few simple and straightforward answers. It teaches them to engage contextually and mindfully in their lives. It teaches them to take initiative and not just wait passively for a person or a book to provide them with the information they need, and thus trains them in analytical thinking, creative approaches to problems, constant evaluation and co-operation.
The last recommendation I will give is about the importance of play and freetime as a source for creative thinking, innovative mindset and flexibility, emotional intelligence and human connection.
Play and freetime
The time of children are being more and more tightly governed. School days are longer, time spent on homework longer and more demands are being put on extra-curricular activities in order to prepare the youths of today for a demanding and uncertain future. The underlying assumption is that more time spent on skill-development and guided behaviour limits “wasted” time “unproductive” behaviour and thus makes them better prepared for work and life. This assumption is too straightforward.
This might work in a world with clear needs of skills, static employment roles and predictable tasks. The future needs flexible, original, innovative and creative workers, and there is nothing in the universe more creative than children on a playground.
Johan Huizinga underlines the importance of play in his seminal book from 1938 Homo Ludens. Children engaged in active play on a playground train themselves and each other in all aspects of human life.
In the social realm they play out: The performance and negotiation of social roles, power structure and its consequences, social justice, personal boundaries, knowledge-sharing, cooperation, competition, identity formation and negotiation and the value of social interaction itself.
In the physical realm they exert themselves to the absolute limit (try keeping up with four-graders playing tag for an hour)
In the cognitive realm they train: Imagination, narrative cohesion, logic (yes, there are logical underpinnings in arguing over whether or not aliens would attack a pirate ship full of ninjas) understanding others complexly, separation of fact and fiction (creating monsters in your mind helps you separate the imagined from the real ones) understanding symbolic and literate action, proprioception and contextual thinking.
These are all vital aspects of human life but are even more vital in an unpredictable future that demands imagination and creativity.
These aspects cannot be taught or guided from the outside, at best they are appropriated and used to other purposes and thus loses their efficiency. It is of vital importance that we set time aside for children to play freely in the real world without the interference of teachers and without the distraction of phones or other outside media and interruptions.
Not just out of a feeling that “kids should be allowed to have fun” but because it is a highly efficient, low-cost/high-gain teaching experience and invaluable preparation for the future.
Conclusion
The nature of work is being changed and disrupted by factors such as automation & augmentation of work-related tasks which transforms employment roles, global competition, the nature of work and the skills needed by the workers of the future.
The skills most needed in the future are contextual thinking, initiative, planning & strategic thinking, creative thinking, innovative mindset and flexibility, emotional intelligence and human connection.
Schools and education can help develop these skills through the idea of lifelong learning encouraged through fostering a love of learning through more engaging and playful educational approaches.
They can use conceptual and creative learning by changing the paradigm of field focus to one of domain focus and teaching through open challenges, more than instruction and by ensuring that children have time and space for interruption- and purpose-free play.
If these aspects come together and are fulfilled we will have a future generation who are co-operating, engaging creatively and critically with the world and have the flexibility of mind and human capital to take on the challenges of work and life in the future.
They will be prepared to be prepared.
Lars Broslet
26.10.2018
Quotes from the World Economics Forum:
“ When determining job location decisions, companies overwhelmingly prioritize the availability of skilled local talent as their foremost consideration, with 74% of respondents providing this factor as their key consideration”
WEFFW_VII
“Nearly 50% of
companies expect that automation will lead to some
reduction in their full-time workforce by 2022 (...) with many respondents highlighting their intention to engage workers in a more flexible manner, utilizing remote staffing beyond physical offices and decentralization of operations.” WEFFW_VIII
“1) large-scale decline in some roles as tasks within these roles become automated or redundant, and 2) large-scale growth in new products and services—and associated new tasks and jobs— generated by the adoption of new technologies and other socio-economic developments such as the rise of middle classes in emerging economies and demographic shifts.”
WEFFW_VIII
“Data Analysts and Scientists, Software and Applications Developers, and Ecommerce and Social Media Specialists,(...) Customer Service Workers, Sales and Marketing Professionals, Training and Development, People and Culture, and Organizational Development Specialists as well as Innovation Managers. (...) wholly new specialist roles related to understanding and leveraging the latest emerging technologies: AI and Machine Learning Specialists, Big Data Specialists, Process Automation Experts, Information Security Analysts, User Experience and Human-Machine Interaction Designers, Robotics Engineers, and Blockchain Specialists.” WEFFW_VIII
“By 2022, no less than 54% of all employees will require significant re- and upskilling. Of these, about 35% are expected to require additional training of up to six months, 9% will require reskilling lasting six to 12 months, while 10% will require additional skills training of more than a year.”
WEFFW_IX
“Skills continuing to grow in prominence by 2022 include analytical thinking and innovation as well as active learning and learning strategies. (..) ‘human’ skills such as creativity, originality and initiative, critical thinking, persuasion and negotiation will likewise retain or increase their value, as will attention to detail, resilience, flexibility and complex problem-solving. Emotional intelligence, leadership and social influence as well as service orientation also see an outsized increase in demand relative to their current prominence.”
WEFW_IX
“two-thirds expect workers to adapt and pick up skills in the course of their changing jobs. Between one-half and two-thirds are likely to turn to external contractors, temporary staff and freelancers to address their skills gaps.”
WEFW_IX
“New technologies can drive
business growth, job creation and demand for specialist
skills but they can also displace entire roles when
certain tasks become obsolete or automated.
WEFW_IX
“According to the global employers surveyed for this report, four specific technological advances—ubiquitous high-speed mobile internet; artificial intelligence; widespread adoption of big data analytics; and cloud technology—are set to dominate the 2018–2022 (...) By contrast, technological and social trends expected to negatively impact business growth include increasing protectionism; cyber threats; shifts in government policies; the effects of climate change; and increasingly ageing societies.”
WEFW_6
“Opportunities for new and emerging technologies to drive inclusive economic and business growth over the 2018–2022 period are manifold, yet concrete and viable mechanisms for preparing the global labour market (...) remain elusive. A mindset of agile learning on the part of both company leaders and workers will be needed, starting with an ability to reimagine the routines and limits of today’s jobs as part of a comprehensive workforce strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
WEFW_6/7
“businesses are set to expand their use of contractors doing task-specialized work, with many respondents highlighting their intention to engage workers in a more flexible manner, utilizing remote staffing beyond physical offices and decentralization of operations. Respondents expect increased job creation in such project-based, temporary and freelancing roles, pointing to structural labour market transformations in terms of contractual arrangements and employment relations as well as occupational profiles. In summary, while overall job losses are predicted to be offset by job gains, there will be a significant shift in the quality, location, format and permanency of new roles”
WEFW_8
“The rise of workplace automation in its many forms has the potential to vastly improve productivity and augment the work of human employees. Automation technology can help remove the burden of repetitive administrative work and enable employees to focus on solving more complex issues while reducing the risk of error, allowing them to focus on value-added tasks”
WEFW_11
“ Therefore, central to the success of any workforce augmentation strategy is the buy-in of a motivated and agile workforce, equipped with futureproof skills to take advantage of new opportunities through continuous retraining and upskilling”
WEFW_12
“ companies surveyed for this report highlight that, overwhelmingly, their key success metric for reskilling and upskilling initiatives is increased workforce productivity—chosen by 90% of respondent employers—followed by retention of highskilled workers, enabling workers in frontline roles to make the best use of new technologies and increased employee satisfaction.”
WEFW_14
Broader issues you cannot address here but you could think about:
Which connections do you see between education and economy policy?
Speaking of policies, which level (local/national/international) would be the most appropriate for your recommendations?
Which means/resources are needed to implement your recommendations?
What about the different types of school? Could your recommendations already be implemented at a kindergarten level? How?
What about the teachers/educators, who are the first and most important agents of change?
In relation to this, what about evaluation and grades in the 21st century?
How do your recommendations relate to what we know from the sociology of education (meritocracy and so on)?