Page 39 - Ignite Change: Unleashing thought leadership - A roadmap to thougth leadership

Further disruption to learning is the availability of knowledge online – through

Google, paid online learning platforms (eg. Udemy and LinkedIn Learning), MOOCs
(eg. EdX and Coursera), podcasts and Youtube, knowledge is in now, literally, in

everyone’s palms.

Generational theory

Although the way we learn has not inherently changed, the pervasiveness of
technology and the context of learning has. This means that students who enter the

schoolsystem will do so in a different context from the one their teacher had. An
approach that looks critically at how the era a person was born in affects their

learning is the ‘generational theory’ (Codrington, 2008). According to this theory,

every generation may have unique education needs, depending on the global forces
at play during their formative years. In addition learners’ specific contexts, such as

the country they live in, could influence their needs.

The ‘generations’ can be divided (roughly and not without contention), into the
following:

– GI (born 1900-1920s

– Silent or Veteran (born 1929-1945)
– Boomers or Baby Boomers (born 1946-1960s)

– Generation X (born 1968-1989)

– Millennials or Generation Y (born mid 1980s-present)

Currently, we have the emergence of Generation Z, who were born in the mid to late
1990s. In South Africa, this generation is also known as the ‘born frees’, since many

of them were born after the dawn of democracy.

Karl Mannheim (1893-1947), one of the fathers of this theory, held that people born

during roughly the same time develop a ‘generational consciousness’ since they
share a social and historical location that continues to define their values

(Codrington, 2008). Historians William Straus (1956-) and Neil Howe (1951-) further

developed this theory. Currently in high school, Generation Z are the students, who,
according to Phillip Preville, are serious-minded, success-focused and steeped in

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