It’s been quiet on the BCH blog as we’re preparing for a three day event to develop the scenarios that build from the evidence collated as part of the programme so far.  Whilst that is going on, below is an overview of the responses from the Citizens Panel.

As part of the Public and Stakeholder Engagement of beyond Current Horizons a Citizens Panel was established to ask members of the public questions about the future of education. The Citizen’s Panel was sent a ten question survey that included both ordering questions and free text entry. Questions included asking about the immediate goals of education, as well as hopes, fears and expectations for future education. An additional seven questions were included to gather demographic characteristics of the respondents.  Over 500 responses were made to these questions.

The response from the Citizen’s Panel is that having the most appropriate skills for work is the most important job of the education system. This emerges from the qualitative and quantitative questions and is felt strongly across the demographic groups. People have a real worry that an education system out of step with economic reality will leave young people disillusioned and out of work and Britain lagging behind the rest of the world. It is likely that the strength of feeling about this has been influenced by the current economic climate

A number of questions ask the panel to try to look into the future. Perhaps unsurprisingly, age is the most important factor influencing the results. Younger people are more likely to look at current trends and project them into the future, whereas older people are more likely to draw inspiration from the past. The generation gap is very apparent with lots of negative views about children and young people expressed throughout the responses.

The Citizen’s Panel believe that the education system is likely to be very different in 2025, especially in terms of technological developments, but they are keen to stress that certain academic standards are timeless. There is a perception that too many people leave education without basic numeracy, literacy and communication skills and this needs to be addressed (though not, they hasten to add, with too great a reliance on bureaucratic testing.)

The Panel want the current gap in educational achievement between advantaged and disadvantaged children to be closed. There is a significant ‘Bristol effect’ here as state schools in the region are known to be struggling. The Panel do not want to see a two-tier system based on the ability to pay developing further in Bristol or elsewhere.

Finally, the panel want to see better quality teaching in the classroom. They want teachers and future teachers to have more control in the classroom, a more engaging teaching style and to rely less on boring self-directed study for pupils. They think that this could be achieved in a number of ways such as attracting a higher calibre of staff through higher pay, reducing workloads and better training and support.

The three presentations will be made available online (probably through Slideshare) but they are aimed at different audiences – so a quick run down below for those who want to start filling in those new Christmas calendars!

BCH is appearing three times at the BETT show – a free trade show for anyone interested in new technologies for education, held at London’s Olympia. Be great to meet some of you – and there’s also a brilliant freebie for anyone who visits us there!

The first is on Wednesday 14th January (3pm) , which will share some of the early developments of a toolkit to support strategic thinking and planning for educational change. The session will be particularly of use to education leaders involved large scale investments in education, such as Building Schools for the Future and Primary Capital Programmes. The toolkit builds on work from Futurelab and the evidence developed as part of the DCSF/Futurelab  Beyond Current Horizons The presentation will share some of this background before showcasing some of the developments of the toolkit that brings together a number of resources to support educational visioning; collaborative workshop techniques, and that uses a range of evidence to inform strategic planning. A quick 30 minute burst of how BCH may be of use to you in the New Year (on the DCSF’s Policy into Practice stand)

Second is a presentation on Saturday 17th January (12.30), also on the DCSF’s Policy into Practice stand. This presentation will provide more detail about what the programme is trying to achieve and present some of the emerging findings. In particular, it will present some of the current and emerging socio-technological trends and the implications for realising the goals of the Children’s Plan as well as the potential impact on learners, teachers, industry and learning institutions in the future. Particularly of use if you want to understand why long-term futures thinking is of use in education.

The third presentation is also on Saturday 17th January (2pm), in Seminar room C of Olympia. This presentation is more geared for teachers as it will introduce and share the ‘Innovations Handbook‘, the new, free resource from Futurelab that aims to help teachers and school leaders to develop innovative approaches to learning and teaching by offering practical tools, advice and argument to support changing practices. The presentation also talks about Beyond Current Horizons but the focus will be more about how emerging trends challenge current practice. In particular, by presenting both ‘Beyond Current Horizons’ and the ‘Innovations Handbook’, the aim is to offer visions of long-term futures whilst providing the tools for teachers and schools leaders to shape their schools’ near term futures.

And finally – there may be a brief outline of BCH at the BETT TeachMeet – but more importantly that event will provide a great opportunity to hear, first hand, some of the amazing work going on in schools at the moment.

The Citizens Panel is made up of members of the public who have been sampled against a number of different demographic characteristics.  Their views, along with those of the Citizens Council, will be used to reflect (not represent) a public perception of the possible futures described elsewhere within BCH and to comment upon how ‘education’ should respond.  The responses have only come into the lab this week – so a first view of the overall comments through TagCrowd.  These are the words most commonly used.  Make of it what you will.  We’ll be doing detailed analysis over the next few weeks in order to inform the scenarios, but a flavour for you to mull over the weekend.

As with many tag clouds, the larger the word, the more it is used – so in this case, the larger the word, the more times the word has been used by the Citizen’s Panel.  Some of the key words are expected, relating to the question prompts – these are simply contextual words.  It is interesting to look at the words used at second/third level of frequency.  To see what terms are being used, what issues are raised regularly.   The warning, of course, is that this is not research analysis; this is not providing any context for the word use, but that by looking at the span of words and the regularity, it provokes some thought about the issues being raised.

Some interesting words to look out for with the Children’s Plan in mind: parents, health, happiness, safety, success and jobs.

Just worth a browse before we get into the detail of reflecting the Citizens Panel’s perceptions about educational futures.

Education Futures is led by a great group of thinkers and researchers and is

Exploring a New Paradigm in human capital development, fueled by
globalization, the rise of innovative knowledge societies, and driven
by exponential, accelerating change.

They have been working in this area for 4 years (almost to the day!) and are keen to share their work and ideas about future thinking. We’re hoping to share our work with them, and also looking forward to seeing more about what they’re developing – should create some great work for us all to learn from.

However, there is a middle way between the demand for change and the need for consistency – and that is simply based upon reflecting upon the most appropriate practices for the aims of education.  If we take the aims of the Children’s Plan as these core educational goals, then a number of different practices are needed to reach the wide range of demands set out.

Some of practices are challenged by possible futures: what does ‘being healthy’ mean in an aging population where advanced pharmaceuticals and treatments challenge our current definition – and what does this mean for the way we educate young people to be healthy?  In the same way, what are the practices that support young people being active citizens in a world of complex multiple identities and diverse and dynamic communities?

Some of the challenges persist; some of them are newly defined, and some of the current practices are made even more important (whilst other new practices are needed to emerge).

There’s a new question posed on Million Futures which asks about this issue.  What are the things that we want to persist: the practices, aims, values and mechanisms that we want to take from today into future educational practices?  Not continuity for the sake of continuity, but continuity in the face of the new and continuing challenges facing education.

One such ‘Voice of Education’ is Richard Millwood, currently leading CORE and the development of the National Archive of Educational Computing, Richard was a key part in building Ultralab (and the many activities that has involved) and has an incredible ability to bring together hindsight and insight.

The bold text are questions posed to Richard, the lighter text his reponses.

If you could talk with the Oracle at Delphi (or ask questions of the data we’re collecting and generating), what would you want to find out to inform educational policy and practice?

I’m not too fond of static data-of-the-moment – rather I would ask for live data relating to learner satisfaction with learning activity – something which could feed-back into learning environments to inform both learner and teacher.

On a slightly longer time-scale – feedback to the system on learners’ next steps in learning or career.

In scanning the horizon, we often look for ‘weak signals’ – new developments and ideas that may play out in the future in many different ways.  What current developments (policy, practice, tech etc) have you noted that you think have possibilities for making a big difference to education in the future?

Collaborative documents, both synchronous and asynchronous as found in SubEthaEdit and GoogleDocs. The capacity to identify individual contributions to collaborative outcomes may be a clue to helping us to recognise learning achieved in group work.

Forecasters talk of ‘inflection points’ as a way of identifying big changes to come – they are often highlighted by ‘things that don’t fit’ (for example the mis-match between car crashes and developments in sensing technology).  Can you highlight any real world problems within education, with possible developments/solutions outside of it?

The problem of ‘authority’ in knowledge as observed in the debate between supporters and opponents of Wikipedia. Solutions will come from a re-alignment based on real-world utility – people will ‘vote with their feet’ by their use of collectively authored sources.

The problem of marking summative assessment products, as we move towards personalised learning and digital creativity in expression. Sustaining fairness, cost-effectiveness and validity may mean adopting more widely the radical technology-supported methods such as those proposed by Alistair Pollitt and employed in the eScape project.

What do you not want to see in any education in 2025?

A continuation of an overemphasis on selection, elitism and individualism at the cost of collaborative learning & attainment.

What are your hopes for education in 2025?

A democratic and fair system for accessing learning at all ages that fulfils citizens needs and interests, as they identify them.

Comment
There’s plenty in this short Q&A that is of interest, for examples notions of voice and empowerment, but one element specifically is assessment.  Assessment is often seen as a force that controls practice – sometimes to its detriment (perceptions here of ‘teaching to the test’) and sometimes to its benefit (the wide range of practices undertaken by sprinters and their coaches, as they absolutely know the specific details of their measured performance).  Richard points to collaborative authoring environments, not solely from a standard point of view referring to how they can support collective and collaborative endeavour, but of how they can be used to help identify individual activity, as well as the benefits of working with others.  As one of the challenges to collaboration is the individual nature of assessment, investigating how collaborative technologies can support the identification of both individual and collaborative acts is an important step in reducing the resistances of change in developing collaborative practice.  The marvellous eScape project that Richard refers to also highlights how the processes of learning can be made explicit through appropriate use of digital technologies, allowing more formative assessments.

If digital technologies can be used to make explicit these developments and they are linked to the live-student data, Richard refers to, a truly dynamic learning environment can be created that builds around the learners’ interests, satisfaction and of the moment needs.  Personalisation indeed.

Despite many invites the attendees comprised a CABE enabler and some teachers who had been involved in the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) process – the three local authorities invited could not attend that day – although they are seen as key users. Local authorities are not only involved in BSF (an obvious case of long term education planning) but extended schools, general ICT procurement which could influence curriculum design, and overseeing curriculum implementation.

The day had two main conclusions. The first was that scenarios were not seen as a useful tool when it came to planning, and the second was the need for case studies.

To my mind the first is counter intuitive; although I have spent a lot of time investigating scenarios recently so may be biased. I would have thought that seeing possible futures would have broadened thinking, and certainly testing ones plans in a variety of situations would ensure robustness.  Yet the concerns expressed are far more immediate, they need something practical for next year, possibly even five years into the future, but they are not looking 20 years ahead. Is this because all the measurement factors are immediate? Is this because they feel they’re recipients rather than leading the process so they don’t need to think about the “big picture”? My conclusion is I need to talk to more people but I do hope that with the CABE now supporting school involvement those in, or about to start, the BSF process feel more empowered.

Case studies, the second conclusion, would illustrate how stakeholders could broaden their thinking, use the tools that are to be provided, and inspire them. Which is evidently lacking when faced with a toolkit to help without examples of how and why it works. I can understand the need for explanation, but am now faced with the challenge of creating them. So if you know of any examples where the testing of robustness of long term plans has been essential, or where there was real involvement from all the stakeholders, let me know. Thanks.

Not only is O’Reilly’s post interesting because it contextualises some of his comments about web 2.0 – particularly his absolute focus on the user’s role in successful web 2.0 applications (applications win if they get better the more people use them), but it highlights different types – or levels of use of cloud computing.  O’Reilly labels them: ‘Utility Computing’, ‘Platform as Service’, and ‘Cloud-based end-user applications’.

All of these have implications for the way in which some educational services can be organised and delivered.  The implications of ‘Utility Computing’ of mass procurement of infrastructure; supporting developers of educational resources, to providing the necessary computational power for high level simulations and games.  The implications of ‘Platform as Service’, potentially with lower barriers to entry than that described as ‘utility computing’ is the possibility for more specific applications being developed from existing APIs for education.  This level of cloud computing allows those closer to the end user to develop more specific application:  what tweaks would you make to Google Docs to use it more effectively in your classroom?  How would a collaborative mindmapping tool be different if it were designed for your students and location?  The possibilities of greater customisation and development for local need becomes more apparent and potentially opens up routes for greater collaboration between developers and educators/students.

The most obvious implications for education though come in O’Reilly’s category ‘Cloud-based end-user applications’.  Any web 2.0 tool you care to think of, that provides the structure or tools for learners to build on their own input, is part of ‘the cloud’.  Learners accessing the tools they need, when they need them to make sense of their own data.  The possibilities of harnessing this potential in education is that we can really support the mobile learner where it is not the technology that is mobile, but the learner and – importantly – their personal data and information.  The possibilities of cloud computing for enhancing education, if not defined are certainly becoming clearer.  The task now is to investigate the preferable nature of these opportunities.

There are many ways to think about the broad aims of education: those set out in the Children’s Plan; the broad range of aims set out in the Big Picture Curriculum; the aims of the Every Children Matters agenda, or the detail within the National Curriculum.  All of these set out a mixture of aims of education.

But then there is the nuance of how these different aims are valued to a greater or lesser extent by different parts of the community.  For example, the relationship between the economic drives for education (preparing people for future work etc) and the social/personal drives for education (enabling people to reach their potential).  But this is not an easy seesaw to balance, and the difficulty in articulating the ‘aims’ of education becomes more complex as the detail of the discussion becomes more granular.

One of the Powerleagues we have set up is there to prompt discussion – and capture the outcomes – around this subject.  How do you prioritise the different aims of education? And if not prioritising them, how do you ensure that the education system meets the demands of all of its stakeholders?  An interesting front page of the National Schools Partnership highlights that 45% of the population have a direct relationship with schools:  in 30,000 schools, 1 million people are employed, there are about 10 million pupils and about 15 million parents.  And that is schools alone: the figures increase when other educational institutions are taken into consideration, and they increase again when you consider who else have a direct, yet different, relationship with schools: future employers, those reliant upon the workforce etc.

So the question that emerges jumps up and down to be answered is how can these people, who have a direct relationship with formal education, be involved in articulating what they expect of schools and of the education system.  How can their voices and expectiations be collected, collated and used to inform the development of the education system that is appropriate for the society that we want?

Million Futures and Powerleague are great sites for our programme and ‘engagement’ with a wide range of people.  But where are the vehicles for a wider ‘Public Understanding of Education’ or the methods to create a public debate about education?  Answers on a postcard…

The majority of organisations that I have spoken with have, at most a 5 year vision, many a 3 year strategy and all a 1 to 2 year plan – so having conversations about 15 year futures is difficult and often the first conversation is about justifying why long term futures work is important and why it is worth investing the time to talk about it.   In the world of education where there are so many competing time pressures – with such a range of timescales – I thought it useful to state some of the specific values of long term futures thinking.  I’d be please if others added to the list (I will as the programme develops).

1. Who is education for?

The ‘formal’ education in England lasts from 4 – 19, that’s about 15 years of formal education.  Young children making the most of the ‘back to school’ shopping trips for stationery and daps getting ready for the first year in Reception class will be leaving secondary school in 2023, potentially leaving university in 2026 and entering the world of work.  If one of the aims of education is preparing the young for the world and for work then having an idea of what they’re being prepared for might be quite useful!  Investigating the sorts of changes that might occur, socially and technologically is important then in informing the sorts of skills, knowledges and aptitudes that we need to foster in formal schooling.  Having an understanding of the possible future of work and employment similarly could inform the curricular needed, the qualifications understood by industry and the options young people will have.  Preparing young people for the world outside of formal education means that we need to be informed about what that world will look like when they leave formal education.

2. Informing immediate actions

I mentioned in an earlier post that one of the main criticisms of big investments such as BSF is that they’re too short-sighted in terms of investment, essentially rebuilding current schools, rather than really investigating what education and schooling is for at the beginning of the 21st century.  In the same post I mentioned cones of uncertainty – that if we can think hard about long term futures (where our thinking is less certain), as we regress that information in time to shorter term futures, our cones become denser with information and more certain.  The final step then, having investigated the wide range of possible futures, is to make decisions that take into account the preferable futures, probable futures and possible futures so that our immediate actions and investments are as fully informed as possible.

3. Creating preferable futures

Throughout BCH we talk about futures, rather than the future.  This is because our collective actions got to create the future we will inhabit – there is no set future that we’re all mindlessly stumbling towards.  The notion of agency then, the ability to act in the world, is a really important reason to think about long term futures.  Which parts of the evidence BCH is highlighting do you welcome?  Which parts make you shudder?  Then what are you going to do about it?  What actions or investments must we put in place to ensure that the future that is realised is the one that we want?  Having a good understanding of possible futures can inform our actions to create the desirable futures.

4. Systematic thinking informing current actions

Ahh, you say – but you’re not telling us what will be in 2025, you’re making observations of what could be.  How can we make reliable decisions now based upon observations rather than statements of fact?  The short answer is that BCH is a systematic approach to looking at evidence, trends and opinions in understanding a whole range of probable, possible and preferable futures.  It is not about future gazing but about creating informed stories of the future upon which we can test current plans and policies.  Linking back to point 2, if we use a systematic and reliable approach to thinking about the future we can be much better informed about the decisions we need to take now.

5. Rapidity of change

Almost every education/technology conference I go to and most of my RSS feeds remind me of the speed of change, how practices and tools change with new developments, new possibilities and new demands.   Moore’s Law continues to hold true; Web 2.0 tools are being created more quickly that bring a new set of tools to my browser each day; personal communication devices are being developed with more functions etc etc.  Yet balanced with this are the arguments that education is not bringing about the ‘transformation in practice’ that is called for.  We need to be aware of what things are changing quickly and which are remaining constant.  At the heart, we need to ensure that we’re aware of what we want to remain and what changes we want to take advantage of.  To me this is about developing  an understanding of the shared values of education – being clear about its purpose and therefore how different changes might help us realise them.  Starting with the Children’s Plan as a central way of doing this, we can question how the aims of the plan can be realised in different futures, and of course which aims will be challenged.

Other suggestions?  Add a comment or use one of the engagement tools.