Overview of issues and themes in international education and pedagogical transformation, set againsrightsand opportunities from perspectives of global citizenship. Keynote presentation at ICOFE Conference in Open University of Hong Kong, July 2016.

1. Open Horizons and Global Citizenship:
the disruptive innovation of collaborative
pedagogy
Dr. Alan Bruce
ULS Dublin
Hong Kong: 6 July 2016
ICOFE
Open University of Hong Kong

2. A time of questions
• What is really going on in our world?
• What will an uncertain future bring?
• Where does digital end?
• Where does human begin?
• What are we learning?
• How are we learning it?
• Why are we learning it?
• What do we value……..?

3. Setting the Scene
1. Educational change and globalized innovation
2. Impact of socio-economic transformation
3. New learning needs and digital resources
4. Global citizenship for global learning
5. Open horizons and strategic vision

4. 1. Educational change and
globalized innovation
• Globalized realities
• Contours of pervasive change
• Crisis, challenge and the impact of growing
inequality
• Education and learning in a transformed
world
• Innovation and technology
• Embedding excellence through global
learning

5. Anticipating the future (OECD
1994)
Future learning and employment needs (Jobs
Study)
•Policy change
•Flexibility
•Entrepreneurship
•Internationalization
•Technology

6. The future is now…
• Potential provision of universal schooling now
realized
• Internationalization is the norm
• Technology pervasive but unevenly accessible
or applied
• ‘Flexibility’: weapon or tool?
• Entrepreneur: leader or false god?
• Policy: shaping or copying?

7. Defining directions
• Excellence
• Innovation
• Leadership
• System change
• Reform
• ‘The chemistry of widespread improvement’
(Michael Fullan)

8. Comparative analysis (McKinsey
2010) – 20 countries
Key interventions:
1.Revise curriculum and standards
2.Set appropriate pay for teachers/principals
3.Enhance technical skills for teachers
4.Improve student assessment systems
5.Quality data systems
6.Improve policy and laws

9. Student demandUNESCO 2009

10. Change dynamics
• Sustained and systemic
• Accelerating
• Multidimensional and simultaneous
• Structural incapacity to incorporate required
modifications and adjustments
• Deep uncertainty in terms of future options
• Unprecedented levels of challenge

11. Global education: threat or
opportunity?
• Defining policy goals and aims – shaping strategy
• Learning without borders
• Robust probing of social realities required
• Standards, quality and assessment
• Moving from curriculum to learning competence
• Learning to learn – the challenge of adaptability and curiosity
• Learners immersed in and emerging into this changed
constellation – of which teachers often know little

12. Global and Open Learning
• Understanding the concept of Open is critical
for future educational policy
• Open often deeply contradictory
• Open exists in changing, conflicted world
• Not enough to be passive observers – must
engage

13. The Innovation Mantra
• Innovation supporting learning
• Innovation supporting work
• Re-evaluation of traditional methods and structures
• Changing needs and creativity
• Responding to impact of globalization
• Change without changing – ‘innovation with
precedents’
• Facing new realities – using evidence, connecting
issues, thinking outside the box

14. Global Innovation Index 2015
Edition
• Understanding human aspects behind innovation essential for design of policies
to promote economic development and richer innovation-prone environments
locally.
• Key role of innovation as driver of economic growth and prosperity, and a
broad horizontal vision of innovation applicable to emerging economies: GII
includes indicators that go beyond the traditional measures of innovation (e.g.
R&D)
• Rankings:
Switzerland 1
USA 5
Finland 6
Ireland 8
Hong Kong 11
Korea 14
China 29

15. Resourcing Innovation
• Talent management initiatives
• Accurate forecasting of future skill needs
• Linkage with leading universities
• Human Capital
• Organizational Capital
• Network Capital
Transfers of economically useful scientific knowledge from universities to
industry generates substantial economic growth as the experiences of
classical high technology regions (e.g. Silicon Valley) and emerging new
technology centers around the world demonstrate
• Listening
• Linkage
• Leading

16. Innovative sustainable education
• Learner centered
• Competence driven
• Community focused
• Pervasive technological presence
• International cooperation
• Collaborative learning process
• Curiosity

17. 2. Impact of socio-economic
transformation
• Globalization – accelerating and pervasive
• Crisis and re-structuring since 2008
• Stratification and inequity – issue of social justice
• Labor market transformation
• Mobile capital and global investment linkage
• Issues on inclusion – token or real?
• Access, quality and innovation in education
• Generational demographics

18. Globalized realities
• Patterns of constant change
• Permanent migration mobility
• Outsourcing
• Obsolescence of job norms: flexibility and adaptability
• Knowledge economy
• Ecological pressures
• Diversity as the norm
• Impact of pervasive ICT and instantaneous communications

19. A Transformed World
• End of old certainties
• No return to ‘normal’
• Pervasive instant media
• Planet of Slums (Mike Davis): hypercities of the future
• Informal economies
• Constant connectedness and information explosion

20. Refugee realities

21. Crisis since 2008
• Seismic shift in human relationships
• Competitive pressures
• New forms of work organization
• New diversities
• Structural imbalances accelerating
• Identity and threat of difference
• End of welfare: demographic time-bombs
• Knowledge, innovation and democratic deficits

22. Reality on our doorstep

23. Learning in Age of Uncertainty
• End of linear models of learning
• Cognitive dissonance: what is needed is not
being provided
• Alienation in a changing world
• Labor market flux and the loss of autonomy
• Adaptability and innovation as norm, not
exception
• Globalized paradigms/fractured community

24. 3. New learning needs and digital
resources
• Impact of universal schooling
• The university revolution – from distance
learning to MOOCs
• Impact of legislation and policy
• Technological revolution only starting
• From psychology to engineering – the altered
environment
• Shaping the mind – struggles with attitudes

25. OECD Report on ICT 2015
• Various interpretations
• Seized on by vested interests
• Linkage to PISA results
• Confuses technology and computers
• Integrating technology with education is the
imperative
• Integrating education with a globalized world is
the aim
Question is about role of education system in 21st
century in addressing systemic challenges

26. The bottom line…
An assumption of stable work patterns and linear
economic development is no longer possible
Learning systems must innovate and respond
accordingly

27. What about schools?
• Creativity and ICEAC Study (IPTS 2011)
• Teachers: 91% agree ICT enhances creativity
• Theory stronger than practice:
• Only 46% of teachers use play
• Only 41% use multidisciplinary work
• Only 50% believe creativity can be assessed
• Only 58% had training in ICT classroom use
• Only 25% claim ICT quality in their schools is excellent
• Institutional resistance to change: ethos of
control, discipline and hierarchy
• Innovation only exists in pockets – not generalized

28. OER: impact on education
research and policy
• Widened access
• Improved cost-efficiency
• Quality of teaching and learning
• Three impact areas:
• Lifelong Learning
• School Education
• University Education
IPTS Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (Sevilla)

29. Open Education 2030 (IPTS)
• Communication with Self; Other; World
• Personalized learning management to navigate
to future competencies
• Demonstrated capability and ability in context
of change
• From teaching to facilitation
• Ubiquity; telepresence; interoperability
• Competency based assessment
• Waves of innovation
• Adult learning networks

30. School and community

31. Leadbetter’s insights
• Critical issue of motivation (extrinsic and
intrinsic)
• Centrality of innovation
• Instilling purpose:
education + technology = hope

32. The Creanova project (2008-11)
Key findings: school and work
Collaborative learning
Experimental design
Innovation as policy
Discovering Vision 2010

33. Drivers of changeErnst & Young 2012

34. Technology trendsBroadband Commission 2013

35. Age of the MOOC?
• Critical shift in distance and e-learning
• Major impact: scale and impact of online
learning
• Questions remain on pedagogical approaches
• Shift from dedicated structures of past (OUs;
media labs; academic departments) to broader
universal non-expert actors
• Quality, values, standards
• Ownership and control

36. Supporting learning
• Focus of motivation
• Problem solving focus
• From curriculum to competence
• Content to meaningful action
• From formal teaching to creation of bonds and
links
• Mentoring
• Models of best practice

37. 4. Global citizenship for global
learning
• Engaging with diverse communities
• Developing massive outreach to sectors
• Community empowerment
• Outreach, access and validation
• Legislative foundations
• New technologies – mobile telephony
• Shared learning and linkage to other universities

38. Education and Global
Citizenship
To enable learners
•To develop a sense of shared destiny through identification with
their social, cultural, and political environments.
•To become aware of the challenges posed to the development of
their communities through an understanding of issues related to
patterns of social, economic and environmental change.
•To engage in civic and social action in view of positive societal
participation and/or transformation based on a sense of individual
responsibility towards their communities.
Sobhi Tawil (2013)

39. Global Citizenship
• Fostering inclusion in contradictory socio-economic environment problematic
• Scale of economic disruption reflected in wars, genocide, ethnic cleansing, health
issues and extraordinary movements of people either as economic migrants or
refugees – now permanent and accelerating dimension of globalized life
• Global Citizenship - Global Education First Initiative (2012).
Education must fully assume its central role in helping people to forge more
just, peaceful, tolerant and inclusive societies. It must give people the
understanding, skills and values they need to cooperate in resolving the
interconnected challenges of the 21st century.
• Citizenship reformulated in terms of rights and obligations and potentially new
forms of post-national citizenship.

40. Inclusive global citizenship in
learning systems
• Changes produced in human and technical aspects of the
globalization process shape how global education addresses various
learning communities previously excluded by reason of prejudice,
discrimination or remoteness.
• Critical importance of innovation and vision as key priorities to
develop learning to combat socio-economic marginalization.
• Pervasive globalizing process means intercultural learning strategy
needs parallel international understanding of how cultural diversity
impacts learning needs of populations subjected to unprecedented
levels of change.

41. Embedding learning
• Sense of community (threatened by growth of social dysfunction,
racism, violence and despair) best preserved in contexts where
people learn and develop at their own pace knowing that their
development feeds into processes of creativity and innovation for
all.
• Global citizenship as concept and method offers a viable way to
liberate education and its associated technologies to serve learning
needs in ever more creative and innovative ways.

42. Further steps
• Increased application on new knowledge
• Open and distance learning technologies
facilitating learners and staff competence
• Transformation of traditional teaching role to
mentoring, guiding and facilitation
• Development of network of innovative best
practice at international level

43. Planning for change in global
learning
• Skillbeck Report (2001)
• Challenges and changes are within institutions
• Changes are ubiquitous
• Changes are systemic
• Changes are radical
• Evolving Corporate Universities Forum (Istanbul 2012)
• attract, retain and enhance highly skilled employees
• invest in developing a culture of learning throughout the
organization
• spread a common culture as engines of strategic change
• ability to promote importance, value and contribution of a learning
culture
• ensure integration of HRM systems and policies with learning
initiatives
• build genuine partnerships with world-class learning institutions

44. 5. Open horizons and strategic
vision
• Creating shared meaning in uncertain times
• Providing support and inclusion
• Valuing difference as a critical advantage
• Maintaining creative evidence
• Demonstrating research capacity
• Breaking out of boundaries
• Learning: emancipatory not a supply chain
• Shaping futures not reacting to them

45. Planning a vision
• Stakeholders in universities are wide-ranging, both internal
and external
• Pressures on corporate and academic worlds are similar, if
different in detail
• Universities to survive must be relevant and visionary
• Universities are now expected:
• To be more outward looking
• To provide leadership and service
• To make efficiency gains
• To maintain standards and quality
• To obtain new and additional revenue sources

46. Anticipating the future
• Excellence goes beyond mechanical quality
measurement systems
• Critical role of diversity and equality approaches
• Gender and inclusion – the centrality of women
• Demographics and youth intervention
• Competitiveness and sustainability
• Education as business or a place apart?
• Offering critical space and alternative
perspectives

47. Policy opportunities for Global
Learning
• Engaging with diverse communities
• Developing massive outreach to sectors
• Community empowerment
• Outreach, access and validation
• Legislative foundations
• New technologies – mobile telephony
• Shared learning and linkage to other
universities

48. Future directions
• Training of trainers
• Multilingualism
• Developing skills – competence transmission
• Developing attitudes – securing motivation
• Developing buy-in – loyalty and commitment
• Autonomous learning
• Risk taking
• Review, evaluation and research

49. Responding to change
• Flexibility
• Diverse learners/digital immigrants
• Learning outcomes
• Pedagogical design - integrated learning
• Social capital and inclusion
• Visions of excellence

50. Transformative learning
• Planning for constant change
• Learning to learn and un-learn (Toffler)
• Fostering innovation and creativity
• Moving beyond purely econometric targets
• Three Cs:
• Critical reflection
• Courage
• Curiosity

51. Quality and leadership
• Designing for quality
• Engaging stakeholders: specialists, researchers,
providers
• Thinking outside the box
• Lateral thinking: migrants, minorities and contested
spaces
• Credibility, validity, authenticity, results: global
learning as a stepping stone to competence and
excellence

52. Conclusions
• Education at a crossroads: both structure and process
• Labor market and education increasingly connected
• Planetary focus is on mobility, skills and innovation
• Impact of increasing inequality: access and resources
• Crisis as the norm
• Performance, standards, quality, reproducibility and
added value at the heart of competence
• Sugata Mitra:
Comprehension/Communication/Computation
• Innovative learning demands imagination and vision

53. Architectures of learning

54. 謝謝
Dr. Alan Bruce
ULS Dublin
abruce@ulsystems.com
Associate Offices: BARCELONA - HELSINKI - SÃO PAULO - CHICAGO