Professor Erik P.M. Vermeulen raise in his blog post Aug 13 2017 the urgent question as many international researchers, including myself has raised during the last couple of years: How to Prepare the Next Generation for the Uncertain Things to Come about how to prepare the next generation for an uncertain future.
He as many others emphasize that The future will be full of tremendous opportunities, but it will also be a world of tremendous uncertainty. Such uncertainty creates a huge challenge for educators. With the current pace of innovation and shorter innovation cycles, it seems obvious that new technologies are going to continue to transform every aspect of how we live and work. Constant technological disruption is the new normal. “Old world” concepts, models, paradigms and ideas will no longer be relevant. The fig as below illustrates the evolution form around 1980 until 2025, which is also predicted by te UNESCO SDG 2030
Accordingly we have to raise the urgent questions on why, what, whom, when, and how, as we have to reconsider what should we be teaching our students today? and also that Education needs to become much more “forward-looking” and skills-based.
The most urgent question according to Vermeulen is about: How then do we prepare the next generation for dealing with unknown future problems? He gives some answers as the five #, which are aligned with the UNESCO SDG Goals and also 21st century skills
#1 — Creative Thinking
#2 — Entrepreneurship
#3 — Teamwork
#4 — Ethics
#5 - Interdisciplinary learning
So the second important question, besides what is according to Vermeulen about; How should we teach the next generation? and What teaching methods do we need to employ to be more effective as educators in the digital world?
The largest risk for universities is that if they don’t adapt to this new reality, they will go the way of the “dinosaurs”. Lumbering giants ill-suited to a different and fast-changing environment.
Read the full post here
