Continuous learning, cultural awareness, change expertise, adaptability and effective communication skills, and the ability to learn from failure. These are just some of the competencies that participants in KnowledgeWorks’ session on the future of work identified as important for graduates. Finding resources for problem solving, time and project management, reflective leadership, and a sense of responsibility to the broader community are also expected to help all young people thrive, regardless of future jobs.
The question – what will come out of the jobs of the future – is unanswerable, so helping young people, and other education and employment stakeholders, to plan for the many possible futures is crucial. From today’s vantage point, we can identify two key drivers of change that will shape the future of learning, work, and life readiness:the rise of smart machines and the decline of full-time work. But we don’t yet know the extent to which we will face technological unemployment or how much support individuals will have to cope with the changing employment landscape.
A new foundation for readiness
In the face of such uncertainty, stakeholders need to help people develop our uniquely human attributes while developing flexible skills that we can apply in a variety of settings. Placing the development of social-emotional skills at the center of learning promises to help individuals build the foundation necessary to cope with life’s uncertainties. The new foundation of readiness demonstrated below illustrates how redefining readiness from the inside out – focusing on human development rather than trying to prepare learners for any particular future job – can provide a platform for future success.
This new foundation of readiness is built on human qualities that are central to how we relate to each other and the most difficult to encode. The development of social-emotional skills needs to be supported in an integrated way, along with the mastery of content and the application of skills and knowledge to specific contexts. Educational institutions need to support students as they prepare for their first careers while helping them develop the adaptability and resilience needed to adapt to a changing economy and the mindset required to solve complex problems.
Flipping the Focus of Education
Creating a new focus on senses and connections will help educational institutions and systems align with a readiness-ready future where essential skills and practices will be more important and enduring than specific content or job- and task-related skills.
For K-12 education, shifting the focus of learning to whole-person development could mean.
- Curriculum needs to be reversed, core social-emotional competencies shape the design of inquiry programs, and school and classroom rituals underlie the learning climate and culture.
- Students need to be grouped in new ways to follow flexible learning pathways.
- Classrooms need to become more fluid and open to new ways of organizing learning.
- School schedules need to change to allow for more interdisciplinary collaboration, deep reflection, and personalized learning.
- Educator roles need to be reconfigured to focus less on content or grade-level specialization and more on foundational skills and practices and interdisciplinary, phenomenological, or challenge-based learning.
- Community partners need to be key assets in introducing new types of learning experiences that stretch students’ comfort zones and expand their ambitions.
- K-12 schools and districts need to explore when and where it is more appropriate for them to act as mediators of learning experiences rather than direct providers.
At the higher education level, institutions may need to.
- Focus more on supporting deep personal development, as well as context- and discipline-specific skills and knowledge.
- Diverse products and business models, multiple formats and structures to engage learners and increase access.
- Contribute to student-driven and student-designed support ecosystems that evolve over time and reflect student strengths, weaknesses, and needs.
- Help learners plan their careers and lives and respond to changing circumstances.
- Enable learners to fit in and out of learning experiences according to their career development needs.
- Collaborate more broadly with work partners.
- Shift the focus of teacher professional development to support the development of students’ essential skills and practices and the acquisition of continuous learning related to relevant job skills.
Strategies for redefining readiness
The above recommendations reflect a significant shift in education systems and regimes. Redefining job readiness will also require many contributors to work across sectors to develop comprehensive and coordinated strategies to prepare all people for possible future employment prospects. Key levers include empowering people to bring about change, reorganizing education and other structures to accommodate future needs, and encouraging society to rethink approaches to preparation.
At the human level, empowering educators and curricular innovations are expected to help educators design learning experiences that improve students’ readiness for work and life. Providing educators with the appropriate data, time, partnerships, and support to engage in their own experiential learning, explore new pedagogical approaches, and develop curricular innovations can help them reorient their learning to future readiness needs. Developing personalized approaches to learning and integrating career pathway exploration can be part of this shift. In addition, providing competency-based educational opportunities at the K-12 and higher education levels can enable students to draw from real-world learning experiences to demonstrate that they have mastered the skills they need. Workplaces can contribute by incorporating mentoring or other learning support responsibilities into job descriptions at every level and prioritizing continuous learning and professional development for employees.
At the structural level, encouraging cross-sector partnerships and coordination can help create a more comprehensive and effective approach to preparation. As the employment landscape changes and people require new types of education, training, retraining, and social support, education and employment stakeholders must be able to build long-term partnerships and find ways to improve people’s readiness and well-being throughout their lives. Developing a networked approach to lifelong learning can help learners access a wide variety of learning experiences and interact with experts. Utilizing community resources-not just education systems and institutions-and working across traditional geographic boundaries can help redefine readiness as a collaborative and cross-sectoral effort.
At the societal level, engaging people in a broad and inclusive conversation about the changing nature of work and how education and employment stakeholders can prepare young people promises to build public will for change. We need to approach readiness as a societal issue, not just an education and employment challenge. As the nature of work, employer-provided benefits and opportunities change, disparities and inequalities are likely to increase unless stakeholders take concerted action to adapt social infrastructure to reflect emerging realities. In addition, regional preparedness approaches need to be responsive to local circumstances and assets. Developing an aspirational vision that capitalizes on each region’s unique strengths, resources, and values can help communities create signature learning ecosystems that support learners to thrive regardless of future endeavors.
Supporting Future Readiness
As these possibilities emphasize, supporting future readiness will involve working within and beyond existing education systems and institutions. It will also involve prioritizing human development and structuring learning in ways that enhance and expand opportunities. In addition to leading the way in preparing people for the future of learning, working and living, education can play a leadership role in helping communities find new iconic identities in the face of economic, demographic and climate-driven change.