Teaching for Tomorrow: A Blueprint for Future-Proofing Our Schools, Students & Educational System

By Michael McQueen

Over a century ago, the great educationalist John Dewey remarked, "If we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow."

This insight is more relevant than ever before.

As we brace for a perfect storm of technological and social change, the need for educational transformation has never been greater.

In this landmark book, 6-time bestselling author and trends forecaster Michael McQueen explores:

• The 10 megatrends that will dominate the coming decades
• 4 'capability gaps' in today's students that may leave them ill-equipped for what lies ahead
• The key paradigm shifts educators will need to make to remain relevant in turbulent times
• A range of proven strategies for making innovation and agility part of the DNA in education

The time is now to ensure our educational practices are fit for the future - and that our students are too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543960136

Book preview

Teaching for Tomorrow

A blueprint for future-proofing our schools, students and educational system

Copyright © Michael McQueen 2019. Published by The Nexgen Group Pty Ltd

www.michaelmcqueen.net

ISBN: 978-0-646-99437-6

eISBN: 978-1-543-96013-6

Cover Design by Jennifer El-Chah of Loved, Locked, Loaded

Edited by Allison Hiew

Typesetting and layout by Julie Hodgins

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced to a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Endorsements

"Teaching for Tomorrow is an exciting book because it gives the reader a powerful glimpse of the future. This is essential reading for any who wish to ensure their educational offering remains relevant in the years ahead."

Dr. Tim Hawkes OAM

Award-winning Educator and Author

This book is a must-read for any educator or administrator who wants to stay ahead of the inevitable change we all must face in the near future. Written in Michael’s characteristically readable and comprehensible style, this book offers very practical strategies for classroom practitioners. I fully endorse it.

Dr. Ian Lillico PhD BEd FACEL Churchill Fellow

Executive Director of BoysForward Institute

Michael offers a great insight into what’s on the way for educators and how to drive innovation in a school environment.

Dr. Sharon Parkes

Principal – Warners Bay High School

Michael provides a comprehensive, challenging and exciting look into the future. A must read for every educator who is devoted to truly making a difference.

Karen-Tui Boyes

CEO - Spectrum Education New Zealand

As educators, we don’t often have the opportunity to look up from the present and consider what the future will hold. However, our students need us to do this far more often and Michael offers a great chance to do so.

Ross Bowerman

Senior School Teacher

Michael provides up-to-the-minute insights into many current issues facing educators today. His insights are thought-provoking and are a powerful catalyst for change.

Okke Klaassen

Senior School Teacher

Michael’s research is insightful, inspiring and challenging. It provides educators with an opportunity to reflect on current teaching practices while considering what is needed to equip our students for the future.

Alison McGufficke

Stage One Primary School Teacher

Michael challenges our existing paradigms while giving practical strategies for moving forward. As educators, we must expose ourselves to new ways of thinking if we are to stay relevant to our future students.

Melanie Melcum

Director of Teaching and Learning – Belmont Christian College

Michael’s insights are valuable as a teacher but also as a mother of two small children. I now have a clear sense of where the future is heading and the confidence to know how to prepare for it as an educator.

Erin Colling

Secondary Visual Arts Teacher

Michael really challenges you to adopt a future-focused paradigm as an educator.

Jenny Parrett

Principal – James Fallon HS

Michael offers clear guidance on the future needs of our students and how these will impact education.

Ben Berrima

Principal - Chifley College Shalvey Campus

Michael’s message is one that needs to be shared with all school educators.

Julie Waters

Principal - Mendooran Central School

Michael offers a fascinating insight into what will shape society in the coming years.

Melanie Meers

Principal – Anson Street School

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael McQueen understands what it takes to thrive in a rapidly evolving world.

Widely recognised for having his finger on the pulse of business and culture, he has helped some of the world’s most iconic organisations and brands navigate change and maintain relevance.

As a leading specialist in social shifts, organisational transformation and educational trends, Michael features regularly as a commentator on TV and radio and has written six best-selling books.

Michael is a familiar face on the international conference circuit, having shared the stage with the likes of Bill Gates, Dr John C. Maxwell and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. He has spoken to hundreds of thousands of people across five continents since 2004 and is known for his high-impact, research-rich and entertaining conference presentations.

Michael was recently named Australia’s Keynote Speaker of the Year and was inducted into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame.

He and his family live in Sydney, Australia.

www.michaelmcqueen.net

Introduction

Part 1 – The World of Tomorrow

10 megatrends that will shape the future

Chapter 1 – Trend #1: The Age of Automation

Chapter 2 – Trend #2: The Dominance of Data

Chapter 3 – Trend #3: The Demise of Driving

Chapter 4 – Trend #4: The Triumph of the Tiny

Chapter 5 – Trend #5: The Printable World

Chapter 6 – Trend #6: The End of Ownership

Chapter 7 – Trend #7: The Rethink of Retail

Chapter 8 – Trend #8: The Era of Empowerment

Chapter 9 – Trend #9: The Reign of Blockchain

Chapter 10 – Trend #10: The Reworking of Work

Part 2 – Mind the Gap

The 4 capability gaps leaving today’s student ill-equipped for the future

Chapter 11 – Capability #1: Self-direction

Chapter 12 – Capability #2: Tenacity

Chapter 13 – Capability #3: Originality

Chapter 14 – Capability #4: Acuity

Part 3 – A New Paradigm for Pedagogy

The 4 shifts necessary to ensure our educational systems are fit for the future

Chapter 15 – Shift #1: Shift from Content Delivery to Capability Building

Chapter 16 – Shift #2: Shift from Authoritarian to Authoritative Teaching

Chapter 17 – Shift #3: Shift from Expounding to Experiencing Learning

Chapter 18 – Shift #4: Shift from Self-Esteem to Self-Efficacy

Part 4 – Making Educational Change Stick

5 keys to making change and innovation part of the DNA of educators

Chapter 19 – Strategy #2: Spare No Sacred Cows

Chapter 20 – Strategy #3: Embrace Risk and Failure

Chapter 21 – Strategy #4: Adopt a posture of Creativity

Chapter 22 – Strategy #5: Think Revolution Not Evolution

Chapter 23 – Strategy #6: Leverage Collective Wisdom

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

References

Introduction

Every now and again there are moments in life that stop you in your tracks. Amidst the frenetic pace of modern existence, these are the moments that bring into sharp focus the scale of the change we’ve seen in recent years.

In late November 2015, one of these moments occurred for me. Having just had our first baby, my wife and I were excited to take him over to meet his great-grandmother at her nursing home. As my 95-year-old grandmother stared lovingly at her newest great-grandchild, the thought that struck me most was what this moment represented.

As I reflected on the 95 years that separated the two humans looking into each other’s eyes, I imagined just how different their worlds would be.

Consider the fact that when my grandmother was the age of my son, only 20 per cent of people could read and write. In many parts of the ‘civilised world’ women were not allowed to vote, only 14 per cent of households had bathtubs and 95 per cent of births happened at home.1

While it is truly amazing to consider how much the world has changed over recent decades, the even more compelling notion is to consider what lies ahead.

Having spent 15 years studying the dominant trends shaping the future, I have little doubt that we are standing at the precipice of the most significant period of change our world has known.

Historian and United States senator Ben Sasse agrees: ‘When people say we’re at a unique moment in history, the historian’s job is to put things in perspective by pointing out that there is more continuity than discontinuity, that we are not special, that we think our moment is unique because we are narcissists and we’re at this moment. But what we are going through now – the past 20 or 30 years, and the next 20 or 30 years – really is historically unique.’2

Political scientist and international relations expert David Rothkopf agrees that we are at a significant and historical moment. That said, in his excellent book The Great Questions of Tomorrow, Rothkopf does liken this current point in history to one experienced by our fourteenth-century forebears: ‘As was the case during the fourteenth century, we too are living in what might be described as the day before the Renaissance. The epochal change is coming, a transformational tsunami is on the horizon, and most of our leaders and many of us have our backs to it.’3

Rothkopf suggests that this lack of awareness of and preparedness for what lies ahead is a function of our very human nature. As humans, we operate with a range of biases and we expect the world to confirm them. As a result, we mishear, misread and misinterpret events around us. We live in a world where 85 per cent of the time today’s weather is the same as yesterday’s weather; people tend to let the immediate past shape their expectations of the future.4

Something London Business School Professor Gary Hamel casually said to me backstage at an event in Singapore resonated with me strongly: ‘You can’t outrun the future if you don’t see it coming.’

What struck me about this simple observation was just how true it is. While each of us is vulnerable to getting caught up in the immediate and the urgent and thus ‘missing’ the looming changes heading our way, those in the education sector are perhaps more vulnerable than others.

I have worked with well over 100,000 educators around the world since the early 2000s, and the one thing every teacher and school leader I have encountered shares in common is their degree of busyness. Schools and college are hectic places. Added to this, it’s easy for educational institutions to operate in something of a vacuum – detached from the trends and priorities of business and industry.

One of the great privileges of my work and research over the years has been the way it has allowed me to span the worlds of education and industry. While I began my career with a specific focus on generational trends and their impact on classroom learning, recent years have seen me focus more on helping business leaders identify the key technology and marketplace trends that will define their future.

One of my primary goals in this book is to summarise the trends and patterns I’ve been exposed to in the business world and put them into an educational context. After all, while it’s valuable for today’s industry leaders to be prepared for the changes that lie ahead, it is even more important that educators stay abreast of these impending seismic shifts in order to equip today’s students for the world of tomorrow.

To this end, the pages ahead are broken up into four parts:

In part 1, we’re going to look to the future. We’ll explore the 10 megatrends that will shape the world that today’s students will inhabit and inherit in the years to come.

In part 2, we’re going to look at four capability gaps. We will examine the latest research highlighting the ways our students could find themselves ill-equipped for what lies ahead – and how educators can work towards closing these gaps.

In part 3, we’ll explore the theme of educational transformation. Showcasing best practices from around the globe, we’ll look at the four paradigm shifts that educators and educational systems must make in the years ahead if we are to become future fit and equip students to be too.

In our final section, we’ll explore some of the keys to making change stick in schools and educational systems. It’s all well and good to talk about the need for change and highlight the ways change can occur, but if nothing actually changes, then nothing will change .

While looking to the future can be daunting, we cannot afford to ignore or underestimate the changes that lie ahead. John F. Kennedy said in 1963 that ‘To even stand still we have to move very fast’. Those words are perhaps truer today than ever before.

As a wise colleague of mine recently reminded me, ‘Individuals who get startled by the future weren’t paying attention.’5 Now is the time to sit up and pay close attention to the changes that are coming so we’re ready for them – and our students are too.

Part 1 – The World of Tomorrow

10 megatrends that will shape the future

About fifteen minutes into a presentation I delivered recently at a school principals’ conference, I had that terrifying moment that every educator knows well. Looking out at the audience, it seemed I was missing the mark. Faces were blank and the energy in the room seemed ‘off’. Had I inadvertently caused offence? Perhaps I was unknowingly contradicting a speaker from the previous day?

Trying to ignore that self-critical voice that can so often get the better of us at moments like this, I pressed on and in no time the group warmed up.

At the end of the presentation, I wondered what the audience feedback would be about these awkward opening minutes.

Much to my surprise, each of the attendees I spoke to during the lunch break gave generous and glowing reviews. As this response was so different to what I was expecting, I eventually plucked up the courage to specifically ask a few delegates how they’d found the first section of the keynote address.

‘All that stuff you shared about new technology trends was absolutely terrifying and unsettling but fascinating at the same time,’ one audience member shared. Others standing nearby voiced their agreement. ‘We had heard about some of these things in the media but had no idea just how fast it was all progressing or how advanced the technology was,’ she continued with a distinct tone of awe.   

Through subsequent conversations over the lunch break, I quickly came to realise that what felt from the stage like audience disengagement was actually an emotion closer to disbelief or disorientation.

In the months since this experience, I have come to realise that many educators find themselves in a similar position to that group of school principals. The world is indeed changing more rapidly than most of us realise, and this can be a confronting truth.

While it is not my intention to start this book with an unsettling tone, I am aware that the ten trends we will explore in the pages ahead can be both fascinating and frightening in equal measure. This tension is deliberate and in many ways healthy considering the scale and significance of the changes that lie ahead – and the impact they’ll have on our students.

David Bowie once remarked that ‘Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming’. So let’s tune our ears and turn our attention to what the world of tomorrow will hold.

Chapter 1 – Trend #1: The Age of Automation

For many of us, the very mention of Artificial Intelligence (AI) conjures up futuristic notions of Skynet and the malevolent robots that rose up to destroy humankind in the Terminator film series.

In reality, however, Artificial Intelligence is already here and it’s not out to kill us – well, not yet, anyway. Our computers are smarter than most of us realise and they’re getting smarter by the minute.

I had an eerie moment of realisation two years ago when searching my iPhone camera roll for some photos of a trip to the Cotswolds in the UK a few years ago. I opened up the search bar and started typing the word C-o-t-s-w but only got up to the third letter when an album of images popped up featuring me and my heavily pregnant wife assembling a cot for our soon-to-be-born son, Max.

What made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck was the fact that I had never given these photos a caption or category that could have indicated the content of the image. My phone had somehow ‘inspected’ the image and identified that it indeed featured a cot.

I quickly discovered that my phone was far from unique or special in its ability. In the weeks that followed I noticed that Facebook had begun recognising the faces of friends in the photos I was about to post without me having to manually tag them. The AI-driven technology that underpins this somewhat unnerving development has achieved an astonishing degree of accuracy in recent years. For instance, the error rate of image-recognising software fell from over 30 per cent in 2010 to roughly 4 per cent in 2016.6 Facebook’s own face recognition software can correctly identify the faces of individuals in images 97.25 per cent of the time – a degree of accuracy only marginally lower than our 97.53 per cent strike rate as humans.7

The AI spectrum

When we talk about Artificial Intelligence (or learning algorithms, deep learning or machine learning, as it is sometimes labelled), it’s important to clarify that it exists in various forms across a wide spectrum.

For the purposes of our discussions here, we’re going to discuss AI in terms of three broad categories8:

1. Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI). A long way from the sort of rudimentary AI that beat chess players in the late 1990s, ANI is ‘narrow’ only because it is specialised to the function for which it has been developed. Just because ANI has a limited scope does not mean it’s of limited potency or significance. Much of the technology running our smartphones, online purchases and social media apps is in fact ANI.

2. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). This second level of AI is where things get even more interesting. AGI is generally referred to as ‘human-level AI’, because it describes the capacity of a computer that is as smart as a human across the board – a point often referred to as ‘singularity’. This is the stage where computers possess the ability to plan, reason, problem-solve and comprehend abstract and complex ideas. Once we have conquered AGI, computers will possess the power to learn from experiences and develop intelligent conclusions as fast as, or perhaps even faster than, the human brain.

3. Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI). Now this is the scary Skynet stuff. ASI is the point at which computers possess an intellectual capacity far greater than that of human beings. Furthermore, they would possess the capacity for social skills and general knowledge that would increase exponentially over time.

It is this third level of Artificial Intelligence that worries many of today’s leading thinkers, including Elon Musk, Frank Wilczek and the late Stephen Hawking. Both Hawking and Wilczek have argued that ‘the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all’.9

In even more evocative language, Hawking and Wilczek have warned that the creation of a truly thinking machine could be the end of the human race – suggesting a super-intelligent computer may well be capable of ‘outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand’.10 They concluded that dismissing all this as science fiction might well turn out to be ‘potentially our worst mistake in history’.11

While this may all sound melodramatic, remember that these are some of the world’s brightest scientific thinkers and they are not prone to hyperbole or embellishment.

Similar voices of concern are emerging in the business world. Legendary innovators including Elon Musk and Y Combinator’s Sam Altman have expressed genuine concerns about the implications of super-intelligent computers. Musk has described them as ‘a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization’12 that could well lead to World War Three.13 Again, remember that Elon Musk has an appetite for progress that rivals almost anyone alive at the moment.

For all the detractors and voices of caution, there are others who suggest that Artificial Intelligence is really nothing to worry about at all.

In February 2018, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai suggested that Artificial Intelligence will save us, not destroy us: ‘AI is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on. I think of it as something more profound than electricity or fire.’14

A few months before Pichai’s comments, Mark Zuckerberg publicly clashed with Elon Musk on the issue, arguing that super-intelligent computers will not destroy humanity but deliver significant improvements to our quality of life.15

Despite this optimism, even Zuckerberg’s early forays into Artificial Intelligence have indicated that he and others should tread carefully. In August 2017, the Facebook AI Research Lab (FAIR) was forced to shut down a controversial chatbot experiment when the two unsupervised bots began to develop their own short-hand language to communicate with each other.16

Now, the good news is that we aren’t close to AI developing anything close to the powers described by some of its most ardent detractors.

Just how long it will take to create AGI, for instance, is a source of much debate. Some, such as Google’s director of engineering and pre-eminent AI expert Ray Kurzweil, believe computers will reach AGI by 2029 (followed by ASI in 2045). In case you are unfamiliar with Kurzweil’s name and reputation, he is definitely someone to have on your radar. In addition to being a celebrated inventor, engineer and entrepreneur, Kurzweil has been awarded 20 honorary doctorates as well as the American National Medal of Technology. He has also been inducted into the U.S. Patent Office’s Hall of Fame and Inc. magazine named him the ‘rightful heir’ to Thomas Edison.17 So when Kurzweil makes a prediction about the future of technology, it is worth paying close attention to.

Despite this, many believe that Kurzweil’s forecast and timeline are ambitious at best. When hundreds of the world’s brightest scientific minds were surveyed recently, the average estimate given was that we would pass the AGI threshold by 2040.

Regardless of the timeline, one thing every expert agrees on is this: it is only a matter of time before humans will be outwitted by technology. Reflecting on the significance of this, David Rothkopf points out: ‘There has never been a moment when our species did not possess the most powerful intellectual capacity on the planet.’ Rothkopf suggests this distinction is unlikely to survive the twenty-second century.18

The Rise of the Robots

Beyond the theoretical and ethical implications of AI, it is the impact it will have on countless industries and professions in the coming years that is most compelling as we consider the future our students will know.

Speaking at a conference in Hong Kong recently, I shared the stage with one of the leading thinkers in this area – a man named Martin Ford. Ford’s bestseller The Rise of the Robots is perhaps one of the most important books examining how AI will shape the future workplace and society more broadly.

As we look to the future, I’d suggest there are five major industries and professions that will be most affected by AI and robotics. These five sectors are of special significance because they are the very ones that many of our students are expecting to enter post-school:

1. Travel and tourism

At Manchester Airport in England, an extraordinary device is roaming the floor of the departures lounge floor. Manufactured by Intellibot, this robotic janitor uses laser scanners and ultrasound detectors to navigate around people and obstacles while cleaning the floors. If it encounters a human while it’s doing the rounds, in a polite voice it says ‘Excuse me, I am cleaning’ as it manoeuvres around the person.

As amazing as this may sound, it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to automation technology transforming the travel sector.

After all, once you’ve dodged the robot janitor and cleared baggage claim, you may well head to a driverless train that will shuttle you from the airport to your hotel. Once at the hotel, you will either check in using an automated self-serve kiosk or approach the reception counter only to be greeted by a robot.

Once you get to your room, your mobile phone will automatically unlock your door and set the music, room lighting and temperature to the desired settings the hotel has remembered from your last visit.

To order room service, you open the hotel app on your smartphone and place your order. Within 15–20 minutes, a robotic delivery unit will arrive at your door with your meal.

While this may seem far-fetched, every single one of these automations is already a reality somewhere in the world and growing in popularity by the day.

At the five-star Japanese Henn-na Hotel for instance, guests are currently met with a humanoid robot who greets you and checks you into your accommodation. It’s a similar story at the Hilton chain where the company has recently developed a 2-foot-tall robotic concierge to be stationed at the hotel’s reception desk. Named ‘Connie’ for the chain’s founder, Conrad Hilton, this robot will answer questions about the hotel’s services, tell you how to find the gym or advise when the bar will close. 19 Then there’s the Aloft Hotel in Cupertino, California, where room service deliveries are currently provided by ‘Botlr’ – a short, poker-faced servant-on-wheels.20

2. Healthcare

Of all the industries set to be revolutionised by AI and robotics, perhaps the most exciting is healthcare.

Take a company like Buoy Healthcare, which has developed a technology that uses AI to make diagnoses based on the symptoms a patient describes or submits via photograph.21 Or consider Toronto-based company Cloud DX, which is leveraging the power of large data sets and machine learning to identify tuberculosis, pneumonia and bronchitis by teaching AI to detect subtle differences in the way a cough sounds.22

In a similar vein, new tools like SkinVision use AI to monitor suspicious skin lesions while a startup named Arterys uses AI to analyse cardiac images to make diagnoses in record time.23

Japanese researchers recently demonstrated a computer-assisted system capable of identifying and analysing polyps found during a colonoscopy in less than a second. The endoscopic system uses a magnified view of a colorectal polyp to study its features and compare it with the 30,000 endoscopic images used for machine learning. Researchers said they were able to predict the pathology of the polyp with 86 per cent accuracy.24

Beyond the world of diagnostics, automation is proving to be a game changer in surgical wards too. A full 40 per