In the twenty-first century, educators around the world are being told that they need to transform education systems to adapt young people for the challenges of a global digital knowledge economy. Too rarely, however, do we ask whether this future vision is robust, achievable or even desirable, whether alternative futures might be in development, and what other possible futures might demand of education. Drawing on ten years of research into educational innovation and socio-technical change, working with educators, researchers, digital industries, students and policy-makers, this book questions taken-for-granted assumptions about the future of education. Arguing that we have been working with too narrow a vision of the future, Keri Facer makes a case for recognizing the challenges that the next two decades may bring, including: the emergence of new relationships between humans and technology the opportunities and challenges of aging populations the development of new forms of knowledge and democracy the challenges of climate warming and environmental disruption the potential for radical economic and social inequalities. This book describes the potential for these developments to impact critical aspects of education – including adult-child relationships, social justice, curriculum design, community relationships and learning ecologies. Packed with examples from around the world and utilising vital research undertaken by the author while Research Director at the UK’s Futurelab, the book helps to bring into focus the risks and opportunities for schools, students and societies over the coming two decades. It makes a powerful case for rethinking the relationship between education and social and technological change, and presents a set of key strategies for creating schools better able to meet the emerging needs of their students and communities. An important contribution to the debates surrounding educational futures, this book is compelling reading for all of those, including educators, researchers, policy-makers and students, who are asking the question 'how can education help us to build desirable futures for everyone in the context of social and technological change?'

This book provides an overview and analysis of current tensions, debates and key issues within OECD nations, particularly Australia, the USA, Canada and the UK, with regard to where education is and should be going. Using a broad historical analysis, it investigates ideas and visions about the future that are increasingly evoked to support arguments about the imminent demise of the dominant modern educational model. Focusing neither on prediction nor prescription, this text suggests the goal is an analysis of the ways in which the notion of the future circulates in contemporary discourse. Five specific discourses are explored: globalisation; new information and communications technologies; feminist; indigenous; and spiritual. The book demonstrates the connections between particular approaches to time, visions of the future, and educational visions and practices. The author asserts that every approach to educational change is inherently based on an underlying image of the future.

This book provides an overview and analysis of current tensions, debates and key issues within OECD nations, particularly Australia, the USA, Canada and the UK, with regard to where education is and should be going. Using a broad historical analysis, it investigates ideas and visions about the future that are increasingly evoked to support arguments about the imminent demise of the dominant modern educational model. Focusing neither on prediction nor prescription, this text suggests the goal is an analysis of the ways in which the notion of the future circulates in contemporary discourse. Five specific discourses are explored: globalisation; new information and communications technologies; feminist; indigenous; and spiritual. The book demonstrates the connections between particular approaches to time, visions of the future, and educational visions and practices. The author asserts that every approach to educational change is inherently based on an underlying image of the future.

We task fewer industries to think about the future than we ask from education. In societies where constant change is the norm, schools today must prepare students to be successful in environments and contexts that may differ greatly from what we experience today. But, are we really thinking about the future? With contributions from four continents, this book reveals a ‘snapshot’ of some of our best thinking for building new education futures. Diverse experiences, visions, and ideas are shared to help spark new thinking among educators and policymakers, provoke conversation, and facilitate new ideas for meeting human development needs in a rapidly transforming world. Edited by John W. Moravec Chapters authored by: Leona Ungerer; Lisa B. Bosman, Julius C. Keller, & Gary R. Bertoline; Audrey Falk & Russell Olwell; Silvia Cecilia Enríquez, Sandra Beatriz Gargiulo, María Jimena Ponz & Erica Elena Scorians; Robert Thorn; Erling N. Dahl, Einar N. Strømmen & Tor G. Syvertsen; John W. Moravec & Kelly E. Killorn; Pekka Ihanainen; Stefania Savva; Gabriela Carreño Murillo; Erik Miletić

"Threshold Concepts in Practice brings together fifty researchers from sixteen countries and a wide variety of disciplines to analyse their teaching practice, and the learning experiences of their students, through the lens of the Threshold Concepts Framework. In any discipline, there are certain concepts – the ‘jewels in the curriculum’ – whose acquisition is akin to passing through a portal. Learners enter new conceptual (and often affective) territory. Previously inaccessible ways of thinking or practising come into view, without which they cannot progress, and which offer a transformed internal view of subject landscape, or even world view. These conceptual gateways are integrative, exposing the previously hidden interrelatedness of ideas, and are irreversible. However they frequently present troublesome knowledge and are often points at which students become stuck. Difficulty in understanding may leave the learner in a ‘liminal’ state of transition, a ‘betwixt and between’ space of knowing and not knowing, where understanding can approximate to a form of mimicry. Learners navigating such spaces report a sense of uncertainty, ambiguity, paradox, anxiety, even chaos. The liminal space may equally be one of awe and wonderment. Thresholds research identifies these spaces as key transformational points, crucial to the learner’s development but where they can oscillate and remain for considerable periods. These spaces require not only conceptual but ontological and discursive shifts. This volume, the fourth in a tetralogy on Threshold Concepts, discusses student experiences, and the curriculum interventions of their teachers, in a range of disciplines and professional practices including medicine, law, engineering, architecture and military education. Cover image: Detail from ‘Eve offering the apple to Adam in the Garden of Eden and the serpent’ c.1520–25. Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553). Bridgeman Images. All rights reserved.

Social sciences.

This volume weaves together a variety of perspectives aimed at confronting a spectrum of ethico-political global challenges arising in the Anthropocene which affect the future of life on planet earth. In this book, the authors offer a multi-faceted approach to address the consequences of its imaginary and projective directions. The chapters span the disciplines of political economy, cybernetics, environmentalism, bio-science, psychoanalysis, bioacoustics, documentary film, installation art, geoperformativity, and glitch aesthetics. The first section attempts to flesh out new aspects of current debates. Questions over the Capitaloscene are explored via conflations of class and climate, revisiting the eco-Marxist analysis of capitalism, and the financial system that thrives on debt. The second section explores the imaginary narratives that raise questions regarding non-human involvement. The third section addresses ’geoartisty,’ the counter artistic responses to the speculariztion of climate disasters, questioning eco-documentaries, and what a post-anthropocentric art might look like. The last section addresses the pedagogical response to the Anthropocene.