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 on the basis of documented evidence which predicts the shifts in education (teacher education in particular) in terms of how it should prepare its products. The study views education for the future as not discarding subject content, but utilising content as a means rather than an end. The shift transforms both instruction and assessment to developing students not just to imbibe content knowledge, but also habits which make them adaptable to the changing world, as well as empowering them to become change-agents. Accordingly, the teaching environment needs to respond to the dynamics of technological developments, and to changing student profiles. What changes 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 acquisition is now a co-creation within the teaching-learning context. This paper recommends further delineation of the current trends that define 21st century education, and what they determine for the future.