his short report was compiled from a collective intelligence gathering of World in 2050’s (W2050) Senior Fellows (Education & Work Committee). The meeting took place under the Chatham House Rule, so specific ideas will not be directly attributed to any specific Fellow. W2050 Senior Fellows and Brain Trust members attending the committee meeting were: Danielle De La Fuente, Euan Wilmshurst, John Goodwin, Dr. Karen Edge, Manjula Dissanayake, and Dr. Noah Sobe. Also present were Diplomatic Courier Editor Melissa Metos and W2050 Executive Director Dr. Shane C. Szarkowski.
Rather than hyper–fixating on the future, consider for a moment: How are we setting students up to thrive now, in ways that will also help them thrive later? And what does it mean to ‘thrive,’ particularly in this time of polycrisis? The answers lie beyond the traditional education model, according to participants in a W2050 Senior Fellows Committee on Education and Work—who met in July to discuss how to overcome access gaps and provide learners the skills they need to thrive in these complicated times.
True accessibility means relationship–based learning
While the problems of our education systems may sometimes involve discrimination, accessibility as a core issue seldom discriminates, geographically speaking. Whether you’re a student in a private school in the EU or a refugee camp in Thailand, classrooms all over the world have an accessibility problem—which is about more than just physical access or simply being allowed to participate. It is also about inclusion—students being safe, heard, and welcome in that environment regardless of background or identity.
In discussing inclusion, our committee members wanted to be very clear that this means being safe and heard, rather than feeling safe and heard. This requires healthy, meaningful student–teacher relationships, so the needs and preferences of the student can be genuinely recognized and cared for. Prioritizing these relationships challenge conventional approaches to ensuring a student has what they need in the classroom—which focus on learning materials and access to technology. Furthermore when a category of students (rather than an individual) is recognized to have specific needs not met by the primary education system, often a smaller, separate system will be built—think of refugees. More student–centered education practices that privilege relationships would solve these problems, within the existing system. Challenges with implementation are two–fold. First, our perception of the teacher’s role in education needs to evolve. Secondly and critically, teachers suffer from a systemic, severe lack of support and training. Professional and personal development—among other things, to help teachers root out their own biases and, in some cases, built–in discrimination—for teachers as well as modernized support not only needs to be funded, but reformed toward more relational, student–centered learning.
The accessibility dilemma is made far worse by the polycrisis. Governments are already under immense strain, which is reflected on their education systems. The migration of displaced people—fleeing from conflict, climate impacts, or extreme poverty—will only make that strain worse. How can we ensure the most vulnerable refugee children have a place to learn where they are safe, heard, and welcome? Equitable, future–ready education systems will need to learn to solve that problem.
An education for these troubled times
Our current education systems aren’t doing a very good job of preparing learners to thrive amid polycrisis. To do so they must not only be resilient to disruptions caused by the polycrisis, but also designed specifically to help students thrive today and tomorrow in a world that is increasingly troubled. A big part of that accessibility will have to do with transferability. With around a billion involuntarily displaced persons around the world, and that number only likely to grow, the number of migrant students whose learning environment has drastically changed will grow as well. How do we assure these students have their needs met—that their academic competencies and gaps be recognized, that their individual needs and preferences be seen, and that they are safe and welcome? The answer is system–level collaboration. While there is no cookie–cutter template for a successful student–centered learning environment, core concepts and strategies are wholly transferable. Thus, collaboration can create more inclusive and effective education systems that empower all students, even the most vulnerable.
Core concepts include social and emotional learning, alternative literacies such as digital literacy and climate literacy, and the critical thinking skills to apply these concepts to a dynamic, evolving world. Digital literacy gets a special mention here, as EdTech has long been touted as a way to supercharge education and empower students. Yet exponential technologies can also disrupt learning and marginalize already vulnerable children. Technology has typically and disproportionately benefited the upper echelons of society. Teaching digital literacy will give less advantaged learners more intellectual tools to benefit from technology, while also providing them with tools to protect themselves from misinformation online.
An education that legitimately gives learners tools to have more agency and thrive in their environment is an education that students are more likely to want. This along with a relationship–based approach to learning solves another potential access hurdle: the absence of a desire to be in the classroom. By giving learners an environment where they want to be, learning things that empower them and are useful, we can solve this access problem. This type of education has another benefit—it not only prepares students for the next grade, but prepares students to be healthy individuals and active citizens no matter what personal and professional path they take.
Our education systems today are missing that; they are not empowering us. Changing that requires how we think about education, shifting focus to relationships and building future–ready skill sets.
Priorities for creating accessible, inclusive learning environments
Curricula for flourishing today and tomorrow: In order to strive for life–long learning, we must create future–ready curricula with learning objectives that students actually desire, including skills necessary to thrive not only in the job markets of today and tomorrow, but also to be resilient to polycrisis pressures. This approach removes intangible barriers to accessibility, including the motive to gain access. Only by first providing what is desired by students can we work on meeting students’ individual needs. In addition to this student–centered learning approach (where student preferences are taken into real consideration), teaching skills that are particularly relevant today—social and emotional learning, critical thinking, relationship building, and digital literacy—are part of the flourishing process. To update curricula further, things like civic literacy and climate literacy will help learners to operate as naturally as possible in the context of today's world, granting them the opportunity to contribute positively to society. Pushing back on the traditional education system, thriving students must be set up to succeed personally and professionally—beyond the four walls of the classroom and that first out–of–school job.
Build a stronger student–teacher relationship: Reorienting the role of the teacher is the first step toward building a stronger student–teacher relationship. Giving teachers these relational responsibilities—seeing them as agents of inclusivity—both shifts and increases their duties, especially today. Thus, we need to give them better systemic support and continual professional development—akin to a doctor, lawyer, or psychotherapist. While the specific kind of personal and professional training may vary based on location and the individuality of the teacher, a few things are undebatable: Teachers need to be paid a living wage and be physically healthy (the latter of which necessitates a more manageable workload). Only then can we ideate on the best tools and training that can act as teachers’ assistants to create an accessible learning environment. For example, AI that can observe student behavior and flag hard–to–notice trends in a full classroom like neurodivergence.
Privilege fixing existing systems over creating more specialized sub–systems. Governments and IGOs/NGOs can be tempted, when faced with pockets of learners with needs outside the apparent ‘norm,’ to create more specialized sub–systems. While well–intentioned, this approach is inflexible and unresponsive to changing needs of students. Instead, we need to reform our existing education systems to be genuinely inclusive—which is about access and safety and a sense of welcome, but is also about learning skills and competencies that students desire because they are immediately useful.
Mobile services to ensure geographic and needs–based access: Building more schools is important, but so is making sure that students can get to that school and receive the type of support they need. Mobile services not only bring education services to the learners, making education more easy to geographically access, but they also allow the implementation of services that are more tailored to an outlier group of student needs. Refugee children are the most obvious need group here, but in many places around the world, the rural poor and nomadic groups could benefit from mobile services. In tandem with mobile services, there’s a need for mobility of qualifications and learning attainment—a ‘learning passport.’ This would enable individual learners to maintain their educational qualifications if migration is desired, or even forced due to a socio–economic reason.
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Teaching learners to thrive now, so they can thrive later
Photo by Todd Quackenbush on Unsplash.
September 3, 2024
W2050 Senior Fellows met to discuss how to set learners up to thrive in today’s complicated world. To create a truly accessible learning environment, we must move toward relationship–based learning and update outdated curricula.
T
his short report was compiled from a collective intelligence gathering of World in 2050’s (W2050) Senior Fellows (Education & Work Committee). The meeting took place under the Chatham House Rule, so specific ideas will not be directly attributed to any specific Fellow. W2050 Senior Fellows and Brain Trust members attending the committee meeting were: Danielle De La Fuente, Euan Wilmshurst, John Goodwin, Dr. Karen Edge, Manjula Dissanayake, and Dr. Noah Sobe. Also present were Diplomatic Courier Editor Melissa Metos and W2050 Executive Director Dr. Shane C. Szarkowski.
Rather than hyper–fixating on the future, consider for a moment: How are we setting students up to thrive now, in ways that will also help them thrive later? And what does it mean to ‘thrive,’ particularly in this time of polycrisis? The answers lie beyond the traditional education model, according to participants in a W2050 Senior Fellows Committee on Education and Work—who met in July to discuss how to overcome access gaps and provide learners the skills they need to thrive in these complicated times.
True accessibility means relationship–based learning
While the problems of our education systems may sometimes involve discrimination, accessibility as a core issue seldom discriminates, geographically speaking. Whether you’re a student in a private school in the EU or a refugee camp in Thailand, classrooms all over the world have an accessibility problem—which is about more than just physical access or simply being allowed to participate. It is also about inclusion—students being safe, heard, and welcome in that environment regardless of background or identity.
In discussing inclusion, our committee members wanted to be very clear that this means being safe and heard, rather than feeling safe and heard. This requires healthy, meaningful student–teacher relationships, so the needs and preferences of the student can be genuinely recognized and cared for. Prioritizing these relationships challenge conventional approaches to ensuring a student has what they need in the classroom—which focus on learning materials and access to technology. Furthermore when a category of students (rather than an individual) is recognized to have specific needs not met by the primary education system, often a smaller, separate system will be built—think of refugees. More student–centered education practices that privilege relationships would solve these problems, within the existing system. Challenges with implementation are two–fold. First, our perception of the teacher’s role in education needs to evolve. Secondly and critically, teachers suffer from a systemic, severe lack of support and training. Professional and personal development—among other things, to help teachers root out their own biases and, in some cases, built–in discrimination—for teachers as well as modernized support not only needs to be funded, but reformed toward more relational, student–centered learning.
The accessibility dilemma is made far worse by the polycrisis. Governments are already under immense strain, which is reflected on their education systems. The migration of displaced people—fleeing from conflict, climate impacts, or extreme poverty—will only make that strain worse. How can we ensure the most vulnerable refugee children have a place to learn where they are safe, heard, and welcome? Equitable, future–ready education systems will need to learn to solve that problem.
An education for these troubled times
Our current education systems aren’t doing a very good job of preparing learners to thrive amid polycrisis. To do so they must not only be resilient to disruptions caused by the polycrisis, but also designed specifically to help students thrive today and tomorrow in a world that is increasingly troubled. A big part of that accessibility will have to do with transferability. With around a billion involuntarily displaced persons around the world, and that number only likely to grow, the number of migrant students whose learning environment has drastically changed will grow as well. How do we assure these students have their needs met—that their academic competencies and gaps be recognized, that their individual needs and preferences be seen, and that they are safe and welcome? The answer is system–level collaboration. While there is no cookie–cutter template for a successful student–centered learning environment, core concepts and strategies are wholly transferable. Thus, collaboration can create more inclusive and effective education systems that empower all students, even the most vulnerable.
Core concepts include social and emotional learning, alternative literacies such as digital literacy and climate literacy, and the critical thinking skills to apply these concepts to a dynamic, evolving world. Digital literacy gets a special mention here, as EdTech has long been touted as a way to supercharge education and empower students. Yet exponential technologies can also disrupt learning and marginalize already vulnerable children. Technology has typically and disproportionately benefited the upper echelons of society. Teaching digital literacy will give less advantaged learners more intellectual tools to benefit from technology, while also providing them with tools to protect themselves from misinformation online.
An education that legitimately gives learners tools to have more agency and thrive in their environment is an education that students are more likely to want. This along with a relationship–based approach to learning solves another potential access hurdle: the absence of a desire to be in the classroom. By giving learners an environment where they want to be, learning things that empower them and are useful, we can solve this access problem. This type of education has another benefit—it not only prepares students for the next grade, but prepares students to be healthy individuals and active citizens no matter what personal and professional path they take.
Our education systems today are missing that; they are not empowering us. Changing that requires how we think about education, shifting focus to relationships and building future–ready skill sets.
Priorities for creating accessible, inclusive learning environments
Curricula for flourishing today and tomorrow: In order to strive for life–long learning, we must create future–ready curricula with learning objectives that students actually desire, including skills necessary to thrive not only in the job markets of today and tomorrow, but also to be resilient to polycrisis pressures. This approach removes intangible barriers to accessibility, including the motive to gain access. Only by first providing what is desired by students can we work on meeting students’ individual needs. In addition to this student–centered learning approach (where student preferences are taken into real consideration), teaching skills that are particularly relevant today—social and emotional learning, critical thinking, relationship building, and digital literacy—are part of the flourishing process. To update curricula further, things like civic literacy and climate literacy will help learners to operate as naturally as possible in the context of today's world, granting them the opportunity to contribute positively to society. Pushing back on the traditional education system, thriving students must be set up to succeed personally and professionally—beyond the four walls of the classroom and that first out–of–school job.
Build a stronger student–teacher relationship: Reorienting the role of the teacher is the first step toward building a stronger student–teacher relationship. Giving teachers these relational responsibilities—seeing them as agents of inclusivity—both shifts and increases their duties, especially today. Thus, we need to give them better systemic support and continual professional development—akin to a doctor, lawyer, or psychotherapist. While the specific kind of personal and professional training may vary based on location and the individuality of the teacher, a few things are undebatable: Teachers need to be paid a living wage and be physically healthy (the latter of which necessitates a more manageable workload). Only then can we ideate on the best tools and training that can act as teachers’ assistants to create an accessible learning environment. For example, AI that can observe student behavior and flag hard–to–notice trends in a full classroom like neurodivergence.
Privilege fixing existing systems over creating more specialized sub–systems. Governments and IGOs/NGOs can be tempted, when faced with pockets of learners with needs outside the apparent ‘norm,’ to create more specialized sub–systems. While well–intentioned, this approach is inflexible and unresponsive to changing needs of students. Instead, we need to reform our existing education systems to be genuinely inclusive—which is about access and safety and a sense of welcome, but is also about learning skills and competencies that students desire because they are immediately useful.
Mobile services to ensure geographic and needs–based access: Building more schools is important, but so is making sure that students can get to that school and receive the type of support they need. Mobile services not only bring education services to the learners, making education more easy to geographically access, but they also allow the implementation of services that are more tailored to an outlier group of student needs. Refugee children are the most obvious need group here, but in many places around the world, the rural poor and nomadic groups could benefit from mobile services. In tandem with mobile services, there’s a need for mobility of qualifications and learning attainment—a ‘learning passport.’ This would enable individual learners to maintain their educational qualifications if migration is desired, or even forced due to a socio–economic reason.
