The document discusses findings from the Beyond Current Horizons project in the UK, which aimed to develop long-term future scenarios for education through 2025. It outlines probable futures such as an aging population, increased human-machine collaboration, and greater access to information. Preferable futures emphasized quality learning experiences, tackling inequality, and preparing individuals. Key issues for education include developing curriculum around human-machine relations, lifelong learning, and ensuring fairness in a complex learning landscape.

1. Taking the 21st Century Seriously: Lessons from the UK’s ‘Beyond Current Horizons’ Project Professor Keri Facer Education and Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University Keynote to the ICTLHE Conference, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, November 2009 [email_address]

2. Overview Thinking about ‘the future’ in education About the Beyond Current Horizons Project Probable Futures Possible Futures Preferable Futures Challenges for education

3. Before we start… How old will you be in 2025? What do you think the world will be like in 2025? What are you basing your beliefs on?

4. THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE IN EDUCATION

5. Thinking about ‘the future’ in education is too often… Tricky … I haven’t got time to think about the future, I’m just trying to get through today Tacit & invisible ‘ this is what happened in the past, this is what we’re doing now’ Tokenistic & rhetorical ‘ tomorrow’s children will need X so we must do Y…’ Taken for granted ‘ the future knowledge economy of the 21 st century’ Technologically determinist ‘ futuristic schools’ (building on Noel Gough, 1990)

6. Problems with these approaches to the future Disempowerment of educators and young people These approaches do not give anyone a purchase on how change might come about and what they might do about it Vulnerability to fads we haven’t tested the multiple possibilities, and so we have to change each time new ‘futures’ come along Lack of awareness of ‘special interests’ e.g. dominance of ‘technological’ accounts, dominance of commercial perspectives No accountability to future generations there is no mechanism for examining how decisions now might shape the future and who will benefit from these decisions (e.g. PFI?) No mechanism for assessing how current provision will meet young people’s future needs

7. THE BEYOND CURRENT HORIZONS PROGRAMME www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk

8. BCH Programme Aim To build a set of long term future scenarios for education in the context of social & technological change 02025 and beyond Socio-technical change conceived of as co-produced. So we need to examine potential technological affordances and the social developments that may shape, amplify or resist them.

9. The programme Funded by Technology Futures Unit, DCSF (UK) and led by Futurelab from 02007 - 02009 Comprises developing an understanding of: Preferable futures: online and face to face engagement activities with education stakeholders Probable & possible futures: social scientific and technical reviews of evidence, horizon scanning events and discussions

10. Process Consultation with over 130 organisations and individuals from diverse educational institutions Involvement of hundreds of people through online consultation Commissioning over 80 reviews of research in fields as diverse as neuro-science, demography, cloud computing, childhood studies Identification of a set of significant socio-technical developments with implications for education Development of a set of 6 long term scenarios for education

11. PROBABLE/POSSIBLE FUTURES…

12. 1. Ageing Populations Over 50% of the population of Western Europe aged over 50 by 2030 with a further 40 year life expectancy. Over 25 % aged over 65. Population ageing a global phenomena, not just restricted to Europe/US Late life learning increasingly important. Late life inequalities will emerge. Intergenerational learning & intergenerational teams – wisdom + responsiveness Lifelong learning in the context of radical longevity?

13. 2. Working and living alongside machines becomes increasingly normal Devolving responsibility to machines: simple manual tasks or outsourcing the management of complex systems Cosmetic Pharmacology & Intelligent Prostheses (Brain-computer interfaces) Different generations with different degrees of comfort in delegating power and responsibility to machines. Growing computers – ethics? Image from Andrew Harrison, DEGW Patterned (Flickr): Creative Commons License

14. 3. We will have the capacity to ‘know more stuff about more stuff’ Social trends toward accountability and security, The decreasing cost and increasing availability of digital storage capacity, The development of new forms of bio- and genetic information, The ability to digitally tag almost any physical object, space or person, The ability to represent information in more diverse media; Image by Noah Sussman Tumbollage (Creative Commons License applies)

15. 4. The personal ‘cloud’ The capacity to connect to a network, and be constantly connected to knowledge, resources, people and tools Expectations of ‘perpetual contact’ with diverse networks and communities, both physical and virtual. Mobile/distributed families creating new notions of ‘absent presence’ My filter systems/friends – shaping what information I get Image by Noah Sussman – Creative Commons License Applies

16. 5. Distance matters less, geography still counts Access information, people and resources anywhere Familiarity & social etiquette of working at a distance Increased international migration & decreased ease of frequent travel Place plays a role as identity marker & shapes regulatory/legal issues Place shapes cultures of innovation, economies and exchange Lars Plougmann: creative commons license applies

17. 6. Weakening institutional boundaries Cultural shifts: younger age groups merging working and leisure practices Demographic shifts: adults needing to balance caring, working, learning, relationships The linear temporal structure of education -> work -> retirement is eroded The spatial structure of education/work/family is eroded Brande Jackson: Creative Commons License applies SJ Photography: Creative Commons License applies Cindy47452 (flickr): Creative Commons License applies

18. 7. Challenges to the ‘knowledge economy’ narrative Polarisation of workforces: Rise of elites in major organisations Capacity to offshore work to low cost environments Automation What cannot be automated/offshored? – Caring? - Currently undervalued/underpaid Troy Holden: CC license applies Jessica Mulley: CC license applies Fiona L Cooper: CC license applies

19. 2025 ? Networked, ‘augmented’ people, in an increasingly ageing population, working later in life and in intergenerational teams, working and living in collaboration with diverse machines that take on roles we see as human today, operating across multiple locations, in the context of increasingly sharp and extreme socio-economic divides New divides emerge around access to information, augmentation, participation in specific social networks?

20. PREFERABLE FUTURES FOR EDUCATION – WHAT DO PEOPLE WANT FROM EDUCATION IN THESE CONTEXTS ?

21. Educational aspirations Promoting understanding, social interaction, caring and co-operation Tackling socio-economic inequalities Offering the highest quality learning experiences for all, with the quality of human interaction as central to these experiences Preparing individuals for the world of work

22. ISSUES FOR EDUCATION TO ADDRESS

23. A curriculum for ‘human-machine’ relations? The networked learner Learning to learn with technologies – what are the strengths of humans and machines? Assessment with technologies – what can you do when connected? When should we learn with and when without our new technologies? New modes of interacting with people and machines in socio-technical systems Building trust, recognising intellectual property, collaboration Ethics & responsibility what are we responsible for? What are the limits of our understanding? What knowledge should be shared/ what secured?

24. Fairness in a complex learning landscape ? Formal Education losing its monopoly on pedagogy and resources : 12min.com & school of everything The role of formal education - Quality control? Mentoring? Assessment? Peers? Critique/Reflection?

25. Education beyond inequalities In the context of/ in resistance of: Climate change, Economic inequalities, Race to the bottom Alternatives? Beyond ‘growth’ as an objective in itself Global collaboration/ co-operation Valuing informal economies and community economies

26. LIVING WITH CHANGE IN THE 21 ST CENTURY

27. We have coped with change before Industrialisation - Electric light, phonographs, wireless cinema, early globalisation, mass production Invented playgrounds and new school spaces, universal primary education, widening access to higher education and laws banning child labour

28. Coping with change by building strong ‘preferable futures’ Pessimism is a luxury of good times. In difficult times, pessimism is a self-fulfilling, self-inflicted death sentence. (Evelin Lindner) My aspiration for education: Educational institutions that are resources for generating fair and democratic educational responses to the challenges of the next twenty years . What is yours?

29. Thank you [email_address]

31. Tools for exploring possible futures www.millionfutures.org.uk www.visionmapper.org.uk www.powerleague.org.uk

32. Acknowledgements & Links This socio-technical trends described here are derived from the work of the Beyond Current Horizons project which I led while Research Director at Futurelab. The research team at Futurelab included Richard Sandford, Dan Sutch, Steve Sayers and Mary Ulicsak. The implications for education presented here should be understood to be the views of the author and not the BCH programme, its participants or its funders. All members of the advisory group, challenge leads and review authors along with the full text of the final report from the programme can be found at: www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/outcomes/reports/final-report-2009/ Images/photographs are attributed to their author where possible. They are used under Creative Commons license which means that they can be displayed elsewhere, but only with attribution, and they should not be modified in any way or used for commercial purposes. They were (almost) all sourced from Flickr. The futures tools can be found as follows: www.millionfutures.org.uk; www.visionmapper.org.uk; www.powerleague.org.uk;