EDUCATIONAL SCENARIO. FORESHADOWED DEVELOPMENTAL TRENDS FOR THE NEXT DECADE (2000-2010)
Developed by the Student Learning Team to
support/explain their Strategic Options
Team Leader: Ann Newman, Principal, Wollumbin High School
STUDENT LEARNING: HOLISTIC APPROACHES TO TEACHING / LEARNING / THINKING and THE PURPOSE of SCHOOL
SCENARIO: (Based on Scenario Shells 2 & 3 , See Draft White Paper Appendix I)
The core business of schools is learning and education has changed from a teaching system to a learning system. There are many routes to learning and places for learning but all centre on the learner and are co-ordinated by schools.
Learning is customised and allows for individualised planning of programs for learners within a system that co-ordinates learning in and out of school. There are designated safe and friendly places for learning and have community expectations that learning will occur. Those who control education have resourced the reconfiguration of learning spaces and places to provide flexibility to suit the learning needs of a wider variety of people and the changing needs of society.
Education and learning are becoming increasingly valued in the community and we are moving towards a learning society. School is only one of the many learning environments contributing to education in the community. Conditions are such that there is an appropriate place or environment where all people can pursue learning when and how they choose within a standards reference framework. All have the right to lifelong learning. The interrelationships between the many and varied learning environments will coordinate lifelong learning processes and practices.
Teachers have become facilitators of learning or knowledge navigators. The use of technology in teaching and learning has freed teachers to spend more time analysing student needs and developing individualised learning programs. Teacher/learner relationships are more individualised. There is a much greater emphasis on the way learners learn and the metacognitive processes involved in learning. Compulsory ongoing training of teachers occurs so that current teaching/learning/thinking practices are clearly understood and implemented in all learning environments.
A multi-faceted, diverse and dynamic curriculum exists to cater for the increasing demands for different types of learning. The emphasis is on flexibility and adaptability to cope with rapidity of change in the various institutions of society especially work and family. Changes in perceptions of life stages of development eg. childhood and adulthood have led to a re-examination of the purpose of schooling with respect to the socialisation of young people.
Curriculum content has been challenged by information technology, the need to shift towards a sustainable/renewable environment and resistance to intellectualism. This had led to a critical curriculum being developed to promote a generic core of functional skills and knowledge to be used for holistic approaches to learning and an integrated curriculum over which the learner has some autonomy. It has also addressed a shortage of teachers in some traditional subject areas and the move, caused by technology, away from humanism and people skills.
Achievements in learning are measured in accordance with an agreed standards framework between the various learning environments, This allows recognition of learning across the learning places. Teaching, learning, thinking and validated assessment practices have replaced content based teaching.
Teachers show an increasing concern for the whole student and some are committed to the intellectual challenge this provides. This is offset by an ageing teaching population,
Schools are part of a broad education system which has been increasingly politicised. They are staffed not only by teachers of learning but also paraprofessionals or social workers to meet welfare demands. Teaming and networking feature strongly in this system.