The 2020 Forecast and Ohio

Image

The 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Education addresses coming challenges for education worldwide, and it offers provocative insights into what may lie ahead for Ohio.

Education belongs to everyone

One of the most striking aspects of the forecast is a trend that literally turns education on its head.

As knowledge has become available to anyone at any time, without the mediation of a teacher or school, parents and students have gained new power to make choices. Rather than the traditional institution that delivered knowledge to students with almost assembly-line uniformity, education has become a marketplace service providing personalized activities.

Now that trend is going even further. People who were once education's customers are now its creators. Social media mean anyone can create new learning experiences and share them with a broad audience. One need look no further than the number of online instructional videos created by enthusiasts — and the number of times they've been viewed — to know that education no longer rests solely in the hands of professionals.

With learners and their parents taking on active role in choosing and creating education opportunities, education must be reframed with the learner at the center. The adults whose needs have too often driven education must find ways to address the needs of learners and share authority.

The challenges for educators are many. Can the top-down hierarchy in place today give way to a more flexible, collaborative structure more suited to these evolving ways of learning? What role will education professionals play in a world populated with new learning providers? Will communities find ways to regulate and monitor this free-wheeling education environment?

The new neighborhood school

Schools as we’ve known them for the last 20 years probably won’t continue. Already, virtual schools and home schooling have joined bricks-and-mortar schools. Workplaces, travel destinations and other locations have also become places of learning.

But even as schools – and the communities around them – change, the forecast sees an ongoing and critical role for them.

In the future, we likely will live in denser cities, face shortages of fuel and other vital resources, cope with threatening pandemics and environmental changes -- and yet benefit from the innovations and enhanced capacities generated by global cross-cultural collaboration and open sharing of knowledge.

Tomorrow’s centers of learning must be life-affirming organizations that promote health, environmental vitality, academic growth, student wellbeing and connections across their communities.

These new roles for schools raise many issues. Can educators coordinate their mission with those in health care, social services and other fields? How will our education system balance out the increasingly unequal distribution of resources and opportunity caused by these changes? What skills and abilities will be most important to learners moving into this uncertain future?

Arenas of change

The 2020 Forecast expects the changes to be played out in six arenas:

  • Self – Advances such as brain exercises, new medications and sophisticated prosthetics have begun to alter our physical selves, and the coming years will bring more innovations to enhance our performance. At the same time, bio-distress caused by climate change, pollution, war, natural disasters and more will stress our brains and bodies. Schools could respond to these new norms by becoming centers for health, environment and community.  
  • Organizations – Young people who have grown up adept at using technology and the opportunities it creates are bringing enhanced capabilities into the workforce and civic organizations, extending their scope and capacity. Like other institutions that prosper in this amplified environment, public schools will need to embrace new leadership structures and models of learning.
  • Systems – In an uncertain and volatile world, institutions will need strategies for flexibility, innovation and collaboration to thrive. School communities will need to form new partnerships and networks, become fully transparent about processes and outcomes, and move beyond the traditional boundaries of community or institution.
  • Society – Online forums, interactive media and changing ideas of community are creating a new civic discourse. As public dialogue becomes more global, new forms of collective action will emerge. School administrators and teachers will need to learn how to communicate and interact in a world where engaged “educitizens” exercise more influence over learning.
  • Economy – New technologies for small-scale design and fabrication allow designers and consumers to manufacture their own products. Local economies will be transformed by these changes, with schools likely serving as hubs of design knowledge and new skills.
  • Knowledge – The ability to make sense of vast amounts of information has never been more vital. New tools that generate visible data can help make sense of the flood of information and will require us to develop skills in pattern recognition. Schools will be called on to teach skills that contribute to our collective sensemaking and to develop new ways to convey knowledge.

Learn more about the 2020 Forecast for education. »