commitment necessary for broad and meaningful change.
Do not confine your children to your own learning, since they were born in another time.
—Chinese Proverb
But aren’t all visions directed toward the future? In a word, no. As we noted in the introduction, we believe that an impediment to deep and lasting reform of education systems stems from educators’ inability to envision a compelling future of a truly modern learning environment. Too often, school visions and the strategies educators develop to meet them are concerned with fixing the present as opposed to embracing the future. If our aspirations do not spring from the understandings gained through an informed inquiry into the future, our students are likely to be constrained to an education rooted in the past.
A truly futures-oriented vision gets us to the future more directly. If real change is going to happen within our schools, we believe that we need to leapfrog the present and get right to the future. Consider how China leapfrogged from a primitive telecommunications infrastructure straight to mobile phones (The Economist, 2016). If China had plodded along the path of constructing traditional telephone landlines, this transformation would have taken decades. It is time for schools to consider meaningful leaps rather than tentatively tiptoeing forward.
To that end, this chapter focuses on how you or your core leadership group can develop a knowledge base and a future-focused orientation, engage in a community-based inquiry into the future, and consolidate that inquiry into an informed vision. From there, you will learn how communication plays a key role in these processes and begin to understand how you move from vision to mission. We wrap up by examining how you will come to define the operational outcomes you seek.
Developing a Knowledge Base and a Future-Focused Orientation
A knowledge base—one based on shared knowledge, understandings, and insights into the future our students will inhabit—is the necessary starting point for informing your school’s or district’s view of the future. It allows an education community to engage in a positive and knowledgeable dialogue about the future and the concomitant educational preparation for it. We cannot rest on existing perceptions, simple generalizations, preconceptions, or our own past experiences with education. A solid knowledge base, one built on expected trends and drivers of change in the future, will help the community gain the understanding and develop the foresight to drive the change it seeks.
Here, we are in luck. Volumes have been written about the future and, in particular, about the future of teaching and learning. Popular books abound on the subject, both in mainstream publishing and within the field of education. Indeed, education experts have added much to this discourse since the release of the first edition of this book. Several organizations engage in futures-oriented research, and their work adds great value to our understanding of how the future may evolve and emerge. (See appendix A, page 187.) One such organization is KnowledgeWorks, which is best known for developing seminal documents such as the Map of Future Forces Affecting Education (2006), 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning (2008), Forecast 4.0—The Future of Learning: Education in the Era of Partners in Code (2015), and Forecast 5.0—The Future of Learning: Navigating the Future of Learning (2018).
KnowledgeWorks (2018) explores five drivers of change.
1. Automating choices (such as the rise of artificial intelligence and personalized learning opportunities)
2. Civic superpowers (such as redefining civic engagement)
3. Accelerating brains (such as technology and changing cognitive abilities)
4. Toxic narratives (such as effects of negative environments on wellbeing)
5. Remaking geographies (such as volatility in times of rapid globalization and migration)
The report explores the various ways in which these drivers interact with three key players: (1) educators and students, (2) educational systems and structures for teaching and learning, and (3) various societal factors. It suggests possibilities for what modern learning could look like and poses a set of what if? provocations; for example:
What effects might artificial intelligence and automated systems have on learning and life? How might technology-enabled civic engagement reshape educational governance and decision making? How might educational accountability expand to support a broader perspective on learner development and well-being?
Building a deep knowledge base offers you a rich opportunity to engage different elements of your educational community in a futures-focused dialogue. Involvement of various school constituents is key, and having a plan to engage members of your community appropriately and inclusively is an important part of building a shared and informed understanding of the forces that will shape the future and your educational responses to them. You cannot predict the future, but you can engage with it to better understand what might emerge to affect your students and their schooling.
In addition to reading and discussing futures publications such as the KnowledgeWorks reports, you might enlist a speaker for a professional development day or an evening meeting for parents. Or, you could initiate a study group or book club with teachers. Viewing a series of thought-provoking, futures-oriented TED Talks is also a stimulating way to engage staff and parents in the process. Additionally, be sure to involve students, as they are generally keen to talk about their future.
Through deep, rich, and collaborative engagement, we can inform the hearts and minds of our communities with an eye to the future. This knowledge base is the foundation of your why? for school transformation, and you should not assume that all involved stakeholders will understand it. Without a foundation to help articulate the Why change? question and outline the drivers of change most pertinent to students’ lives, you may end up with a less powerful premise than you will need to move the work forward. In the next section, we outline a simple process for engaging your community in this important collaborative learning.
Notes From the Field
In our work with schools and districts, we note that there is often an impatience to get on with it. In the rush to identify things to implement, educators often don’t take the time to learn and to derive focus and meaning from that learning. If we asked a teacher why he or she didn’t just give all students the big ideas and understandings of the course on day one and save everyone a lot of time, that teacher would likely say something like this: “Learners need to arrive at understandings. They will never really learn if they don’t make meaning first.” That statement is correct. So, why would adult learners be any different?
Consider this cautionary note: it is important to develop a knowledge base before continuing to the next step of actually generating a vision for modern learning. Without a knowledge base, we cannot develop an informed view of the future and take appropriate actions in response to it. In the absence of solid information, community input is likely to be all over the map and impossible to forge into a unifying vision. You are likely to end up with a wide variety of personal perceptions (some informed, some not), assertions based on false assumptions and misunderstandings, and contradictory points of view that are not drawn from evidence or research. Assumption and personal preference without real knowledge or understanding will result in an unstable foundation incapable of supporting the vision of modern learning you seek.
Engaging in a Community-Based Inquiry Into the Future
A key part of our change leadership strategy involves engaging the school community in a collaborative exploration of potential
