Essay: Trends in Education and Education Technology over the next three to five years.

Introduction
From an administrative point of view, the Global Education system is divided into two types – centralised and localised. On top of that there are also two dominant approaches to teaching and learning – post-Confucian in which learning is dispensed to the student by the teacher, and post-Socratic in which the student learns more through inquiry and exploration with a teacher’s guidance. All modern education systems are a mix of the two, but it’s important to understand which is more dominant in any market as this will play a role in the development of education and education technology over the next few years. Finally, there is a significant difference between developed and developing economies and societies which determines the strategic requirements of each country’s education system.
Education moves extremely slowly. Because we are more or less on the cutting edge of both teaching/learning and technology we tend to be exposed to schools, teachers and experts who are highly innovative. The vast majority of teaching and learning worldwide hasn’t changed much over the last five years and is unlikely to significantly change during the next five. There are, however, a number of significant goals, pressures and needs within the education system that are becoming more pressing and for which technology would provide very useful support.
Centralised and developing education systems
In centralised education systems (especially in developing countries) the dominant requirements are:
1. An improvement in the quality of teaching and learning
2. Standardised assessment and outcomes to international standards
3. An increasingly urgent demand for technical and vocational skills
4. Quality content mapped to the national curriculum
5. An increasingly urgent need for teachers to be trained and supported in the classroom
From a classroom technology point of view this means that over the coming years assessment and content mapped to the national curriculum will continue to be paramount. In centralised education systems this puts the emphasis on standardised networking across schools with libraries of curated content – essentially the model we have implemented in Moscow. As far as resources are concerned, the big demand is not only for content, but comprehensive guidance on teaching the content – so that each learning resource comes with instructions and examples of ‘how to teach’. This is especially important in developing countries where the teachers’ knowledge and skills are low. Online teacher communities will continue to become more and more important as centres for the sharing of resources, practice and mutual support.
Subject-wise, although traditional emphasis has always been on STEM subjects, the overriding priority for education systems is, and will continue to be, literacy.
In most countries Technical and Vocational Education will become increasingly important, especially as economies move from the production of simple commodities (agriculture, raw materials) to complex (manufactured goods, technology and services). The biggest challenge for TVE from a teaching and learning perspective is assessment – how do we define competencies and skills in this sector, and how do we assess and certify them to international standards? Technology that allows for the assessment of complex skills both in the classroom and onsite (through mobile devices) would be extremely valuable. There is also an opportunity to use A.I. for this, as it will allow for the assessment of intricate tasks and projects beyond simple testing.
We are seeing a move away from high stakes international testing (such as PISA, TIMS etc.) and the use of statistics and Big Data in education. There has been little evidence to date that these systems are useful to course correct or inform policy and practice. Despite the efforts of bodies like the OECD these tests struggle to assess the complex competencies and skills that will increasingly be needed over the next few years. While they have certain political currency, the impact on classroom practice appears to be largely negative as teachers are under increasing pressure to compile data, which detracts from teaching itself, and teach to the test. National boards, like OFSTED in the UK, are now moving away from the statistical ‘evidence of progress’ towards inspections focussed on the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom and we are seeing similar trends worldwide.
In summary – for centralised and developing education systems the next three to five years will see:
1. The need for standardised and central administrative control over resources, content and the implementation of technology in the classroom.
2. An increasing focus on Technical and Vocational Education and a growing demand for effective systems to assess complex skills and competencies.
3. A focus on the need to train and support teachers with content, online communities and ‘how to teach’ guides.
4. A pressing need for the standardisation of assessment in the classroom, both summative and formative.
De-centralised Education Systems and trends in pedagogy
In de-centralised education systems, and in developed economies, we are seeing a continuing move towards enquiry-based learning and the notion of self-aware students and self-aware practitioners. This refers to the emphasis on teaching students how they learn, and how to plan and organise their own learning (a good example is the work of the highly influential educator John Hattie and his Visible Learning programme which is being increasingly adopted worldwide).
This means that future technology will need to support students who are developing their own portfolio of skills and competencies, and who will be learning through projects that encompass a range of subjects. We are also seeing a shift towards Blended Learning, combining experiential education with technology, so that the latter becomes one tool among many, and to ensure that physical experience (making things, doing experiments with laboratory equipment) and social interaction continues to be the core focus of classrooms.
De-centralised education systems tend to encourage pockets of excellence and innovative practice. In reality these can end up being isolated, even within schools where one or more ‘super teachers’ experiment with new technologies and pedagogies and the rest of the staff carry on as before. Over the next three to five years, Change Management and teacher training and support will continue to be a priority to ensure that all staff are brought to the same level. Online teacher communities and support networks (e.g. Edmodo) are and will be a vital part of this.
From a technology perspective the rise of mobile devices and apps has led to a rapid shift away from large one-program-does-everything model towards Playlist Learning and Teaching. With this approach, students and teachers are building and using their own highly personalised collection of apps to learn and teach both inside and outside the classroom. In the short term this has led to a huge demand for curated libraries of content. Long term this shift allows for the development of Diamond Age Primers – artificial intelligences that work with a student or teacher to build a flexible curriculum for learning in response to the interests, intellectual development, skills and needs of the individual.
One student-one device teaching is currently problematic and, without standardisation, will continue to be so. There is still a demand for physically and technically robust student devices that can be controlled by the teacher and administration and which are handed out as and when the lesson demands. Beyond that we are seeing a reluctance to provide students with expensive tablets which they then use continually in and outside the classroom – mainly because of the expense and technical support issues. BYOD also raises a number of issues that are making teachers and administrators reluctant to adopt it – lack of standardisation, the need for device management software to be installed on pupils’ private devices which raises ethical issues. We are also seeing a backlash against phones in school full stop – as demonstrated in France last year. Their banning of phones in schools has widespread support as concerns about children’s exposure to screen time is fuelled by the media and some experts in the field of Neuroscience.
In summary – for de-centralised education systems the next three to five years will see:
1. A continuing move towards self-aware students and teachers who understand their own approach to learning, and who will plan and develop their own personalised curricula.
2. A move from large all-encompassing teaching systems towards Playlist Learning, whereby students and teachers will build their own set of personalised tools from curated libraries of apps
3. Technology ceasing to be centre stage in teaching and learning and becoming part of a blended learning approach combining experiential, social interaction and technology.
4. Student devices in the classroom will continue to be a contentious issue. However, there is a need for simple and robust devices that can be used and when the lesson demands. Outside the classroom personal devices will have an increasingly important role to play in playlist and self-aware learning.
5. Assessment will move away from examinations, tests and certificates towards portfolios and peer validated competence playlists (the model that’s used by LinkedIn).
Disruptors
There are a number of disruptors that will strongly influence education and education technology over the next few years.
Neuroscience
Modern neuroscience is still very young but is having a significant impact on educational thinking, mainly because of the wow factor. While it is giving us new insights into the learning process, we have to be careful simply because many of its findings are still conjectural. It is also a two-edged sword as people with anti-technology agendas are using it to promote their arguments. Over the coming three to five years we will see new discoveries, the refining and/or rejection of theories, and the need to make sure that education technology engages with the field in a mutually beneficial way.
The key findings that are significant from a technology point of view are as follows:
1. The optimum experiences through which the brain learns are more in tune with gaming than formal education. Repeated trial and error with constant failure, short tasks and rewards, multi-sensory input with an emphasis on visual 3d and a sense of ‘false danger’ all massively boost cognition and create a sense of immersion.
2. Emotional security has a massive physical impact on cognition. Safe, positive and emotionally secure situations are necessary for learning. This underscores the need to tackle cyberbullying.
3. Certain activities are better suited to non-technological solutions. A good example is texts. Neuroscience indicates that reading a physical book boosts cognition and enhances a wide range of skills to a greater extent than reading text on a virtual screen. We are already seeing a move back towards books in the classroom, especially in literacy classes.
4. The impact of screen use on developing minds continues to be controversial. There is no peer-reviewed evidence that iPads and phones negatively affect development. The moral panic about screen use is similar to the moral panics about novels, films, TV, comics and video nasties that the popular press whipped up over the last two hundred years. We do need to be mindful of the arguments coming out of this quarter and respond to them in a measured way, backed up by robust statistical evidence.
5. A number of theories that still have currency in education have been refuted. These include Left Brain/Right Brain theories and Multiple Learning Styles or Intelligences (the VAK model). We must make sure that we no longer refer to, or use these theories to inform product and marketing, even if some of our clients still use it in their practice. Similarly, we must avoid inventing our own theories of education and learning, and instead align ourselves to future peer-reviewed and validated research and thinking.
Game-based learning
As pointed out in the section on Neuroscience above, gaming and game-based learning appears to be the optimal way to learn. Over the next few years games and gaming will increasingly take a significant role in learning.
It is important to separate out Gaming from Gamification. Gamification is basically gaming-lite, whereby students get points, rewards, badges and reach levels as they learn. This is no different from the motivational gold stars or scouting badges used over the last hundred years or so and while it has some positive effects, does not have the significant impact on, or potential for, education that actual games have. The key points about gaming for education are as follows:
1. The increase in Massive Multi-Player Online Role-Playing games has a huge potential for teaching and learning as this allows groups of students to interact. More sophisticated simulation-based games focussing on co-operative and project-based tasks (as opposed to fighting and levelling-up) will become increasingly important. Open-world sandbox games where the players create their own scenarios and goals are particularly rich.
2. Education games will need to have the same production values as commercial games. The impact of one-task one-game educational games (e.g. ‘pop all the balloons with prime numbers’) is fast diminishing outside early years education.
3. As Blended Learning becomes more important in the classroom, collateral resources for games will be needed. For example, in the case of How to Train Your Dragon, worksheets, literacy activities, physical experiments etc combined with the online game will have a significant impact.
4. Physical games and paper and pen games (such as the original Dungeons and Dragons) will have as much of a role to play as computer games.
5. Learning game design will become as important for education as playing games. There is a potential opportunity here for game building kits that allow students to create both electronic and physical games.
6. The take up of Virtual Reality in the classroom is likely to be slow due to practical and financial considerations. This may change as the headsets become cheaper, though classroom management issues will mean that teachers will probably prefer to have the students engaging with VR via screens in the short term.
7. VR builders will be as important, if not more important, than VR experiences. The ability of students to create VR worlds and games will open up the opportunity to teach a huge range of skills. Students should not only have the ability to drag and drop assets and create paths and triggered events in VR worlds but should also have the ability to create and skin assets themselves with simple 3D tools.
In conclusion – Neuroscience and Gaming are probably the two biggest potential disruptors in the near future. They are closely linked, as brain research indicates that the mechanisms of games are more in tune with the way we learn than current classroom practice. Introducing a wide range of game scenarios into the learning process will have a significant impact. This should not just be playing to learn, but also giving students the ability to create games, simulations and worlds in sandbox mode, and also to provide teachers and learners with access to rich collateral resources and activities that will allow games to be used with the growing implementation of Blended Learning.