Future focused learning - playing the prediction game.

In education publications and blogs, I am constantly seeing articles that are focused on “pedagogy for the future”. They discuss everything from coding to micro-learning. I believe that all teaching and learning is inherently future focused and there is a danger in trying to predict what the future as educators through these buzzwords.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines another buzzword used in education, pedagogy as “The art, occupation, or practice of teaching". In other words, pedagogy is the ‘how’ of teaching. Pedagogy is the art, occupation of practise of shaping learners into citizens of the society of the future.

Therefore, the ‘future-focused pedagogy’ is a tautology because pedagogy is already future focused. As teachers we are naturally focused on developing students’ capacities and capabilities. These are the capabilities that will best serve them as adults and future citizens in society. A very real danger as educators is that we are making considerable value-laden assumptions behind what capabilities future citizens actually need. 

So what to teach students? 

One trend in education in the last 20 years has seen students focusing on certain subjects because it lined up with something trending in the public discourse, everything from climate change to using social media to share stories.

The attention of a student is tremendously valuable. We should stop teaching them whatever makes us feel good.

In recent years the media has directed their attention to stories about robots taking our jobs, and the disruptive power of artificial intelligence. This is directing society to consider the challenges to our economy. This explains the prevailing enthusiasm for directing students into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Globally, much attention has focused on STEM over the last decade or so, with computer science and in particular coding receiving ever greater emphasis.

However, this is based on a very dangerous assumption, one that supposes that everybody can just build and make and code their way out of the predicted joblessness and social restructuring.

A recent TED talk by one of the Code.org team is called “Computer Science Is for Everybody,” and it’s misguided at best.

Hadi Partovi learned how to code at exactly the right time. His journey is available to a smaller and smaller percentage of learners. He may be right that robots will be flipping burgers; but he misses the point that computers are on the way to writing better programs too. (See Jeremy Howard’s “The Wonderful and Terrifying Implications of What Computers Can Learn.”)

Computer science does provide logic, problem solving and creativity skills, there are better ways to introduce these concepts, especially in many of the world’s poorer classrooms.

So is there anything I could teach a class of students that will actually confer an advantage upon them and allow them contribute to their future society? I think there is and it doesn't involve trying to anticipate what professional skills will be in demand when they leave school.

So let us now return to the question posed at the beginning: Can the future drive our pedagogy? The future is unknowable until it is has arrived, we can have ideas about what the future is ‘likely’ to be like: hover boards, alien overlords, global warming wasteland...... but these are just stories, our selection from a range of potential possibilities.

Keri Facer, in her book Learning Futures, explores some of these potential futures ahead of us. In doing so, she emphasises that these stories of potential futures are precisely that: stories. And the nature of stories is that they can be manipulated and changed, that they are not set in concrete. The future is the consequence of a whole series of decisions that are made right now. As Facer says:

“The future is not something that is done to us, but an ongoing process in which we can intervene.”

Therefore we must ensure that our pedagogy is future building, a term that, “implies we have power and agency to create the future we want.” 

The social entrepreneur network Ashoka’s prioritizes the teaching of empathy. Expanding empathy allows the strengthening of communities. There is no better way to teach this than by role modelling. 

When we don’t know what course of studies will lead to a successful contribution to society, we can ask: How can I make learners likely to seek out and capitalize on the opportunities unique to their future?

Pedagogy should allow learners to not only become “confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners”, but adopt this vision to see themselves as learners already. 

It’s easier to anticipate the needs of people than the needs of industry and any educator who really wants to make broad statements about what is good for “everybody” needs to keep that in mind.