Now showing items tagged teaching

In a world that is becoming more and more futuristic by the minute, there are few places that need our attention as urgently as education. While innovations and changes may represent exciting strides towards the future for those of us already in the adult world, they place urgent demands on the knowledge and skills of today’s students - the ones who will actually inhabit the future that is approaching.

Today’s students need to be equipped within innovative classrooms with adaptable skills for their unpredictable futures. However, for teachers, the disruption of the pandemic to students’ learning, the speed at which technologies like ChatGPT are infiltrating the classrooms and ever-increasing layers of bureaucracy mean integrating innovation and creativity in the classroom is often far beyond their capacity.

‘Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.’[1] We have all heard the adage, so much so that it is often dismissed as a cliché.

While most of us know this statement and agree with the philosophy behind it, the reality is that very few teachers and schools genuinely involve students in learning and make education active. Despite John Dewey’s urging over a century ago to embrace experiential education and abandon the model of students being passive receivers of learning, the ‘expounding’ approach persists.[2]

The landscape of higher education has been changing for decades. Just like the traditional lecture format and the university methods of assessment, the concept of the modern exam is outdated. This year has seen exams evolve in a way that may seem futuristic but only serves to deepens the trends of the past.

The classrooms of history have been deep in a process of change for decades, but this year has accelerated that transformation more than ever. With the classrooms of the future rapidly becoming those of today, the old idiom has again been proved true: necessity really is the mother of invention.

Perhaps the most common fear of teachers in a classroom is that of losing control. The fear of students running amok and dominating the room is enough to send many teachers back into the traditional authoritarian format, where silent and repetitive work is the key means of learning. In my experience of working with schools and teachers, the words ‘Project-Based Learning’ are often quick to conjure up these fears.

Think back to your teachers at school. What characterised them? In schools, the approaches to teaching and authority tend to group themselves into four key categories.

These categories apply just as readily to forms of leadership that we come across in workplaces, teams and the public sphere. The traps that teachers fall into are just as dangerous for leaders in any industry and the potential for both harm and good is just as strong.

The need for change in education has been an urgent topic of interest in recent years. As it is perhaps the most future-focussed industry that exists, equipping the innovators, workers and leaders of tomorrow, its vulnerability to current disruption is a necessary area of concern.

For years, it has been clear that education needs to evolve. Many teaching methods felt outdated when I was in school, let alone for current students who are preparing for a future that is fast-approaching.

The adults of tomorrow need to be equipped with skills that enable critical, creative and innovative thinking, but the teaching of today continues to drill existing knowledge and tired paradigms into students.

When it comes to teamwork, teaching and leadership, encouragement is essential. Reminding team members of their value and spurring on their progress with intentional and intelligent affirmation is crucial for a team that is moving forward.

But how can we be sure that the praise we are giving in our workplaces and classrooms will lead to mastery and genuine confidence rather than dependency and insecurity?

It may sound like something out of a sci-fi film, but technology firm Promethean recently trialled the use of an interactive hologram teacher in a London classroom. Known as a ‘HumaGram’ this holographic educator is touted as being highly interactive and extraordinarily lifelike.[1]