Teaching Tomorrow: A Creative Guide to Teaching Today and in The School of The Future.

By Joseph Eneh

According to Richard Elmore, there are only three ways to improve student learning at scale: You can raise the level of the content that students are taught. You can increase the skill and knowledge that teachers bring to the teaching of that content. And you can increase the level of students’ active learning of the content. What this means is that schools don’t improve through political and managerial incantation; they improve through the complex and demanding work of teaching and learning.
This book is about increasing students learning of content and future-readiness by increasing the level of skills and knowledge teachers bring to the teaching of the content. The teacher is the pivot of education. The fulcrum on which the whole processes revolve. Whatever change, improvement, innovation, etc., that we want to achieve in education must have the teacher at the centre of it.
This book is designed to help teachers position themselves properly in this age of creativity and innovation, driven primarily by technology, to be drivers of innovation and development through appropriate practices in pedagogy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716861567

Book preview

regards.

Chapter 1: The world we live in today

In our world today, it seems nothing stands still. The world is very different from what it was, say, quarter of a century ago. Think about the changes you yourself experienced for the last 10 years or so, do you get a sense that things are changing at a stunning pace? What are we to look forwards to few years from now? The changes are everywhere.

Take, for instance, the changes we have experienced in the workplace. The concept of work is has changed. There have been innovations that have tech-driven jobs over traditional manufacturing jobs. Automations enhanced by technology has already replaced certain tasks in several industries. Due to this, the demands now and in the future are for peculiar skills, which involve expert thinking and complex communication.

These changes in the workplace and in society at large have implications for education and schools. There is now a growing need for us as educators to re-imagine how we organize teaching, learning and assessment. This is an exciting challenge and one that is being informed by the needs of society. Looking back, the school system and classroom environment we have today, were designed for a set purpose and a particular set of conditions. They were relevant for that time – in those days, life was more predictable, and futures had a reasonable degree of certainty. The society that this education system served looked different to how our society looks today. Back then, skills our education system were required to develop were of a particular nature. The question now is, will these types of skills now adequately enable our students to live full and productive lives in today’s environment? Have our education systems kept pace with the type of skills our society now requires?

The reality is that today’s classroom has not changed so much from what we used to have. Sure, we might be using computers today, and smart boards have replaced white boards, which replaced chalk boards, we are still all too often very close to that traditional classroom experience. With teachers standing in front of the class, lecturing the students, delivering content which may not be related to their students’ current or future lives, and then testing the content that has been delivered. The fact, though, is that, it is not only the school system that is caught in this web of change; society at large is indeed trying to cope with a constant rate of change. It does not have time to reflect on what changes need to be made to education systems in order to ensure future generations can cope effectively with this rapid pace of change and be able to learn constantly throughout their life time. For never before have we had to cope with such a rapid relentless pace of change.

Many would agree that the industrial model of education which dominated most of the 20th century is not appropriate for the 21st century. This model of education focused on preparing citizens to work in factories and other establishments that will require repetitive work-related tasks. We live in a global technological world. And there is a need to think about how we can change our educational systems to better meet the challenging needs of living and working in a 21st century global society.

Currently, the amount of information in the world is currently doubling every 2 years. Most students today, by the time they graduate, it is possible that the career they will eventually join is not in existence today. Will the traditional model of schooling develop the necessary skills students require? As a teacher, think of the following; how is the workplace changing in the 21st century? What are the key capabilities employers look for in today’s workforce?

Growing up in the world of today, our children are surrounded with and have access to a myriad of digital devices which they use to try to make sense of the world around them. That will definitely affect their education. Think of the way digital devices have changed your own life.  Your mobile phone for instance, how much do you depend on it? Have these devices changed the way you live and work? How you communicate and interact with your family, your friends, your colleagues, etc. If these tools are having such an impact on how we live our lives, perhaps it is time for us as teachers to consider what learning environments are needed in the 21st century.

There is an onus on society to prepare young people to live and work in an intensely connected 21st century society. The internet, in particular is playing key role in expanding the amount of new information and knowledge that is being produced on daily basis. For example, in the time that you are reading this page, over half a million new email messages would have been sent. Consequently, the answer is not on knowing information but being able to access it, interpret, analyze it, and evaluate it. So how do