The Future of Education

Digitalization is a megatrend, which influences many spheres of modern people’s life. Education is not an exception, although it found to be more conservative and more resistant to changes [1]. Emerging technologies act as a mean of new opportunities in education, which in turn launch systematic transformation. We could expect (and partly already obtain) bench of processes “rethinking what is important to learn” and “rethinking the process of learning” [2]. However, such a transformation seems to remain underestimated and underexplored from an analytical point of you. We believe it timely and important to look at how trends are believed to manifest themselves, how they are connected to digitalization, as well as consider the benefits and risks. We frame our analysis with the perspective of Foresight theory. Following this theoretical approach future in the current research future is treated as measurable, manageable, alternative and consensus. To the investigation is based on the “possibilities of the present” and the “novelty surprise”, what reflected with the concepts of big challenge (megatrend) and weak signal correspondently [3,4]. The report is built upon two resources of data. Firstly, we will use interviews with international experts (Organization of Economic Cooperation Development, N=17). With the help of the open coding, all mentioned trends were revealed and aggregated into several groups. Also, an attempt has been made to draw the relationships among highlighted trends. Secondly, with the report, we intend to discuss the results of the brainstorm session took place at the international summer school (Moscow, 2019). The researchers and students from all over the world (USA, Brazil, South Africa and others) with different research backgrounds (sociology, economics, pedagogy, law, engineering) work in small groups and after combine the into Trend map and list of possible risk associated.

Keywords: Digitalization; educational trends; foresight.

References:
[1] Schneckenberg, D. (2010). Overcoming barriers for eLearning in universities—portfolio models for eCompetence development of faculty. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(6), 979-991.
2] Halverson, A. C., & Collins, R. (2009). Rethinking education in the age of technology. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.
[3] Ballantine, J. H., Hammack, F. M., & Stuber, J. (2017). The sociology of education: A systematic analysis. Routledge.
[4] Facer, K. (2013). The problem of the future and the possibilities of the present in education research. International Journal of Educational Research, 61, 135-143.