Page 10 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

The Learning Intent of this resource
This resource is designed to provide learners and educators with a framework that describes the most effective and efficient approaches for learning, based on an emerging scientific model for how the brain learns. The two most prolific cell types in our brain are the glia and the neurons. The brain changes its ratio of these cells as we age to provide us with the 4 +(1) learning systems that enable the extraordinary learning capabilities that we humans have at our disposal.
A series of paradigm shifts that are emerging in the education sector, sees the teacher-dominated, limited information access, text-based, teaching paradigm of the last 200 years giving way to an overwhelmingly rich, multimedia, collaborative, learning-based paradigm. Almost every aspect of education must now be reviewed, as the fundamental purpose of ‘school’ is revisited, with each community establishing its own unique learning goals.
The following are the six pillars that this resource focuses on:
1. School leadership and staff have clarity surrounding the purpose, vision and
mission of school and establish learning as your central purpose.
2. A focus on increasing the agency of the learner over their learning and effectively applying the competencies that underpin the learner’s increasing independence.
3. A shift in how we view intelligence, based on how the brain learns, and how well we can apply the resulting and optimised learning process.
4. An understanding of the role of technology and creating optimised learning environments that
are designed to support the application of the Learning Process.
5. Educators will assess their practice using the Action Learning Process and apply formative assessment methods to assess the learner’s understanding.
6. To implement concept-based learning domains and competencies, based on building conceptual understanding, with learners creatively leveraging that understanding to be innovative and ingenious.
These six pairs of stand-out components all need to be implemented in order everyone to be above to become independent lifelong learners. This resource is one of a suite of resources that merge to become the Global Curriculum Project. The other three resources are the Global Competencies, The Global Learning Domains and the MapmyLearning app. This project has been experimenting with the emerging model for how the brain learns, to create a far more equitable learning environment, by focussing on a conceptual approach to curriculum and enabling our young people to take increasing agency over their learning.
The rationale for this is that last century 20% of people were deemed sufficiently intelligent to go on to university to learn how to tell the other 80% what to do, how to do it and then judge how well it was done. Well into this century, that need for a 20:80 ratio of ‘smart’ to ‘not-so-smart’ has become completely reversed to become 80:20. Low-paid menial jobs that required minimal thinking have mostly been, or are becoming, automated, replaced by robots, 3D printers or more complex ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) technologies. We now need about 80% of people to be able to be competent, independent, lifelong learners that can adapt quickly to changing societal trends, demands and expectations, as well as have the capacity to learn and be innovative and ingenious, along with being technologically literate.