By Ryan Schaaf
What will education look like in the years ahead, and how do we get there? What should future generations learn, and how should schools and training prepare learners for a global workforce where talent competes across borders and against increasingly capable software, robots, and artificial intelligence? To imagine this more clearly, let’s take a short leap forward.
Picture the year 2040. A student named Alexa prepares for school, packing a single, all-in-one device that includes her personal digital assistant — a pocket-sized intelligence agent. That morning she and a team of classmates work on a project to reduce the school’s waste. Using her device, Alexa researches local environmental practices, consults an environmental scientist remotely, and collaborates with peers to design a persuasive, evidence-based presentation. The team presents their recommendations to the entire student body and then uses data tracking to measure whether their efforts actually reduce school trash over time.
Back in 2020, Alexa’s day illustrates a set of authentic learning experiences and the kinds of skills that education should cultivate. Which abilities did Alexa and her peers demonstrate, and does today’s education system routinely offer learning experiences that develop these skills?
Seven Essential Skills for the 21st Century
Harvard fellow Tony Wagner identified seven “survival skills” modern students need: critical thinking and problem solving; collaboration across networks and leading by influence; agility and adaptability; initiative and entrepreneurialism; effective written and oral communication; accessing and analyzing information; and curiosity and imagination. Alexa’s project touched on each of these — she analyzed information, collaborated across a network, adapted to new feedback, communicated persuasively, and used curiosity and initiative to pursue a real-world problem.
Learning in the Future
In A Brief History of the Future of Education: Learning in the Age of Disruption, my co-author and I offer eleven forecasts about how learning will evolve. These predictions highlight how the experience of education must change to remain relevant in an increasingly digital, connected, and automated world.
Learning will be Just-in-Time
Today’s information moves quickly and often becomes obsolete. Much learning will shift to a just-in-time model, where learners access the knowledge and tools they need at the moment of need rather than relying on pre-packaged blocks of content delivered on a fixed schedule.
Learning will Happen Anytime, Anyplace, in Virtual and Physical Spaces
As networks spread and mobile devices become ubiquitous, education can embrace flexible digital tools that support personalized virtual learning environments. Learners will be able to learn from others across the globe, at any time, and at their own pace.
Learning will be Lifelong
Career paths will involve recurring changes, and the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn will be essential. Schools must prepare learners for continuous skill development throughout their lives.
Learning will be Personalized, Learner-Centered, and Nonlinear
Access to on-demand learning resources allows interest and need to drive learning rather than the clock or a fixed curriculum. Education will adapt to individual learners’ goals, strengths, and learning pathways.
Learning will be Whole-Minded
Research on brain function reminds us that effective learning engages more than memorization. Digital-age learners build new cognitive patterns over a lifetime, so education must support creativity, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and deeper understanding.
Learning will be Real World
Memorization has its place, but future learning will prioritize applying knowledge to real-world, real-time problems. Authentic tasks help learners transfer skills to new contexts and prepare them for life beyond the classroom.
Learning will Be Based on Discovery
Digital learners are used to interactive, multimedia environments that let them control the path and pace of inquiry. Education should restore the experience of discovery, curiosity, and surprise rather than replacing exploration with pre-determined answers.
Learning will be Focused on Processing Multimedia Information
Media consumption and production are now core skills. Learners must be fluent in communicating with multimedia — combining text, audio, video, and interactive media — as effectively as earlier generations used prose and speech.
Learning will be Collaborative
Digital networks shift knowledge from individuals to groups. Schools should embrace social learning structures that enable collaboration across time zones and communities, teaching learners to co-create and lead by influence.
Learning will be Assisted by Thinking Machines and Big Data
Intelligent digital assistants and analytics will handle routine tasks and provide adaptive support, freeing educators to focus on higher-order facilitation. Technology will not replace teachers but will transform their role from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side.”
Learning and Evaluation will be Holistic
Assessment should reflect the authentic activities learners encounter outside school. Holistic evaluation measures skills such as problem solving, collaboration, creativity, and perseverance, aligning school tasks with real-world expectations.
These eleven forecasts should prompt educators and policymakers to reexamine how schools are organized, what counts as learning, and how teachers work with emerging technology. If learning changes, so must the roles of those who teach.
About this article
This article is part of The Brief History of the Future of Education series, based on the newly released book A Brief History of the Future of Education, written by Ian Jukes and Ryan L. Schaaf. The series explores why schools must rethink traditional approaches, examines how disruptive innovation affects teaching, profiles the learning attributes of digital generations, predicts learning environments twenty years from now, identifies essential next-generation skills, and considers new educator roles required to remain effective.
About the Author
Ryan Schaaf is an Associate Professor of Educational Technology at Notre Dame of Maryland University and a faculty member in the Digital Age Learning and Educational Technology program at Johns Hopkins University. His work focuses on integrating gaming into learning, studying the traits of modern learners, and exploring emerging technologies and trends that improve education. Follow him on Twitter @RyanLSchaaf.
This article was originally published by The Learning Counsel, a research institute and news media hub focused on the shift to digital curriculum in education.