Meeting the needs of an uncertain future

How do we best prepare young people for an economic and social prosperity in an uncertain future? Martin Westwell ponders how we can change education to meet this future.

How do the ever-increasing changes in the modern world affect the way we think, behave and learn? When we think about the future and make predictions about what life will be like in twenty or thirty years time, we can be sure of just one thing. We will almost certainly be wrong!

To go a couple of steps beyond peering into a crystal ball, if we look at the trends of the past and then project them into the future, it seems that we are experiencing an exponential rate of change that is constantly transforming our world. By thinking about the future in this way, Ray Kurzweil has predicted that over the next 25 years we will experience the same amount of technological change as we have over the past 100 years. If the trend continues, the next century will enjoy an incredible 25,000 years of change at the current rate.

Regardless of the specifics, the future will be characterised by change and, to a very large extent, science education will need to help prepare young people for a dynamic environment filled with uncertainty. Richard Riley, the US Secretary of Education in Bill Clinton's administration, summed it up when he said that 'We are preparing our students for jobs that don't exist, using technologies that have not been invented, to solve problems that we haven't even considered yet.'

We can take electronic media as an example of technological change. From television programs to DVDs, gaming platforms to social online networking, the technology is creating new environments in which young minds develop, which in turn change the way that children of all ages think, behave and learn. There is no doubt that violent media causes violent and fearful behaviour in those who use it—particularly boys, and particularly the young. A violent environment elicits changes in the brain that help the individual to be more successful in that environment. The values of contemporary Australian society say that this response is 'bad' and inappropriate. In contrast, a child growing up in the brutality of say Sierra Leone is more likely to survive if his brain rewires in such a way to foster violent responses. It is all too easy to criticise the technology itself when it's how we use the technology in a particular context that makes a difference, not something inherent in the wiring and electronic components. The electronic environments that young people inhabit can improve their problem solving, their decision-making, their interpersonal skills and even their happiness. Studies have shown a correlation (if not a causal effect) between the degree of expertise in highly complex skills, such as performing key-hole surgery, and the ability to play computer games. Previously, and rather naively, we might have said this was due to improved hand–eye coordination but there seems to be much more to it than just that. It is about assessing a situation, taking in information, developing a strategy and acting.

Then there is checking for errors, watching for unpredictable events, modifying the strategy, making a further decision and acting again. This process repeats every moment in both life-saving surgery and Super Monkey Ball II on the GameCube.

Young people's current experience of the world is different from ours, and their future experience of the world is likely to be highly complex and almost unrecognisable to us. We are selling young people short if we tolerate approaches that leave them with simplistic thinking based on outdated information that has little meaning or significance in the 21st century. It is confounding that many people still advocate an unsophisticated 'back-to-basics' approach in education.

The meaning that young people attach to their classroom learning is influenced by a host of factors including their values, parental engagement, their perceived success and failures, their view of further pathways in education and work, the meaning attached by other people including their peers, and their lifestyle choices including the electronic environments they choose for themselves. The more the school experience can co-opt these components to generate meaningful learning, the better. A sophisticated, interconnected conceptual framework is required for each individual if they are going to be able to incorporate new information and concepts into their understanding of the world, and stay ahead of the game.

Interestingly, new research from the emerging field of neuroeconomics tells us something about how we, as decision makers, are influenced by the uncertainty that surrounds the future.

When people are faced with making decisions, there is always a degree of uncertainty. Sometimes we call that uncertainty 'risk', where we have a good idea of the possible outcomes and the probability of each outcome. Simple examples of dealing with risk include rolling a dice or flipping a coin. Rarely are real life decisions so simple! Usually the decisions that we make are under conditions of ambiguity rather than risk, where we do not necessarily know the probability of the possible outcomes or even what the outcomes might be. By looking at the activity in the brain while decisions are being made under risky or ambiguous conditions, researchers have found that ambiguity is not dealt with as an extreme form of risk, and so we think about the two in completely different ways.

Making risky decisions uses parts of the brain that deal with number and the cognitive analysis of risk and benefit. When ambiguity is added to the decision-making process, parts of the brain that deal with emotional responses start to kick in, making us feel uncomfortable and directing us to try and find some familiar ground. As the authors of a study in this area concluded, 'People often prefer the known over the unknown, sometimes sacrificing potential rewards for the sake of surety. Overcoming impulsive preferences for certainty [may be required] to exploit uncertain but potentially [beneficial] options.' In other words, the ambiguity that surrounds the future elicits an impulse that pushes us towards familiar territory or back-to-basics. This response can inhibit innovation and leadership and leave us lagging behind the young people who are embracing (and shaping) the future. The lowest common denominator in a changing world is our impulse to stay the same and resist change. Those who recognise and overcome this impulse are the only ones who can reap the rewards.

A 2006 Futurelab report about teachers' learning noted that 'change in education may now be thought of as a constant condition rather than an event'. As the world changes, education will need to change too and there is a lot of catching up to be done. This constant condition of change can only be maintained when teachers are given the space to innovate and the mechanisms to engage with the latest evidence about learning. This evidence may come from the findings of researchers in either education or the emerging neuroscience of learning (though this should not to be confused with the scientifically dubious 'brain-based learning' approaches such as preferred learning styles, etc.). This combination, along with the existing expertise and experience of teachers, their values, their understanding of their students and the context in which they operate, will have a transformative effect on education. It is not the imposition of stop-start reinvention after reinvention of the past, but a smoother evolution that takes account of the emerging future to prepare learners, whether teachers or students, for the ride of their lives.

Martin Westwell is director of Flinders Centre for Science Education in the 21st Century at Flinders University in South Australia

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