After the time of emergency comes the time for recovery. The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt such an unprecedented, detrimental blow to education, sending teachers and learners behind their separate screens, and all that has been left behind is learning loss and widening disparities in educational and employment opportunities. While a one-size-fits-all approach to education reform is unlikely to work, several common threads could aid in addressing the world’s most pressing issues in education found in the technologically-driven Education 4.0. According to Catalyzing Education 4.0: Investing in the Future of Learning for a Human-Centric Recovery report, there are key enabling actions within each of the three identified opportunity areas that may be taken by various stakeholders, individually or jointly, to support accelerated investment in the universal adoption of Education 4.0.
Firstly, the introduction of new assessment mechanisms:
- Educators should focus on the practical application of skills as indicators of skill development, use real-time data to inform pedagogy, identify concrete instances of how skills will be applied in the workplace and create assessment scenarios that enable children to apply those skills in collaboration with the private sectors;
- The private sector should work with educators and the public sector to demonstrate the need for and jointly design new assessment mechanisms based on practical applications of skills in real-world scenarios that children may encounter in the workplace of the future;
- The public sector should create skill passports that track individuals from childhood education to the workforce, which might help them identify potential current or future skills gaps in national workforce development and encourage engagement and inclusion in learning across diverse populations.
Secondly, the adoption of new learning technologies:
- Educators should provide feedback on new technologies as Education 4.0 enablers, promote the availability of the practical and feasible technologies in local schools that can best enhance classroom teaching, pedagogy, and communication, and participate in focus groups for the development of new technologies;
- The private sector should work with educators to demonstrate how these technologies will be used by students in their future workplaces to raise awareness about the potential of new technologies for skill development and also work with ministries of education to identify infrastructures that support inclusive learning and innovative pedagogies;
- The public sector should co-create action plans for connecting schools nationwide to the internet and accessing relevant digital tools and platforms to ensure that new technologies in classrooms are developed with inclusive practices and common standards in skill development and learning experience.
Thirdly and lastly, the empowerment of the education workforce:
- Educators should provide colleagues in the education sector with incentives and time to engage in lifelong learning, as well as work with the private sector to understand the environments in which children will be operating once they enter the labor market, and leverage these interactions to ensure curricula and learning experiences better prepare children for the future;
- The private sector should provide opportunities for educators to receive formal and non-formal training in skills required for the jobs of the future, especially digital skills necessary to enable Education 4.0, to ensure classroom instruction and curricula reflect expectations in the workforce;
- The public sector should support and provide incentives to attract highly qualified individuals to the education workforce, recognize that learning takes place in formal and non-formal settings, provide resources for parents and extracurricular educators to help drive Education 4.0 implementation, and provide individual learning accounts to those in the education sector to continue to develop their skills.
Credit: https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Catalysing_Education_4.0_2022.pdf
