Considerable attention is given to the question: What knowledge should a teacher have?. Besides general knowledge, culture and standard pedagogical competencies, the teacher of the future will need new skills and personal characteristics in order to meet contemporary challenges. As information becomes more easily accessible, the role of the teacher is changing. Teachers of the future will need both more authority… and, paradoxically, less authority. In order to achieve these demands we need a new world of ideas and methods in education.
Many of us think a lot about the future, what it will be like to live a world where many of the existing jobs have disappeared. Some people think that technology will replace teachers. Others think that teaching will continue exactly as it’s done for the last one hundred and fifty years – question and answer, homework, and tests. Even today we are starting to experience a slow - or sometimes dramatic - change. Knowledge or fact can be looked up in an instant on Google. The teacher really has to help the student come to know how to evaluate the information, to tell right from wrong, true from fake, shallow from deep. This is the job of a well-prepared teacher. Alas, many teachers are not prepared enough for a demanding role as such as that of the leader of young people. The reason being is that they excessively consider themselves teachers in the classical sense in order to come to terms with their pupils although they try with all their hearts.
So when we think the future and the skills that students will need, the question is: How do we deliberately develop these? What lies ahead for our students in the future? Did educators of twenty years ago know that so much of our world would be based on computers and technology now? Could they have known what skills would be needed in the job market today? Unlikely, but yet they had to do their best to prepare their students for this world anyhow. Nowadays, educators are still charged with the same task – preparing students for the unknown.
We may not know exactly what lies ahead for our students in the future, but we have the seemingly intuitive ability to understand what skills they will need once they get there. To ensure that students will be able to navigate through stormy and unknown seas, we need to encourage the development of Initiative, Agility and Adaptability. Our students need to be comfortable with the idea of change and be willing to adapt to the changes around them. Teachers can create a very dynamic environment in which students switch work and complete a task based on team effort. Let them know that you are available and willing to listen to any of their ideas about improving the lesson. Help them organize their ideas and put them into practice – even if an idea may fail. It can be a valuable lesson about how to measure performance and improve the idea. Not by any means should students be afraid of trying because they are afraid of failure.
Many of us think a lot about the future, what it will be like to live a world where many of the existing jobs have disappeared. Some people think that technology will replace teachers. Others think that teaching will continue exactly as it’s done for the last one hundred and fifty years – question and answer, homework, and tests. Even today we are starting to experience a slow - or sometimes dramatic - change. Knowledge or fact can be looked up in an instant on Google. The teacher really has to help the student come to know how to evaluate the information, to tell right from wrong, true from fake, shallow from deep. This is the job of a well-prepared teacher. Alas, many teachers are not prepared enough for a demanding role as such as that of the leader of young people. The reason being is that they excessively consider themselves teachers in the classical sense in order to come to terms with their pupils although they try with all their hearts.
So when we think the future and the skills that students will need, the question is: How do we deliberately develop these? What lies ahead for our students in the future? Did educators of twenty years ago know that so much of our world would be based on computers and technology now? Could they have known what skills would be needed in the job market today? Unlikely, but yet they had to do their best to prepare their students for this world anyhow. Nowadays, educators are still charged with the same task – preparing students for the unknown.
We may not know exactly what lies ahead for our students in the future, but we have the seemingly intuitive ability to understand what skills they will need once they get there. To ensure that students will be able to navigate through stormy and unknown seas, we need to encourage the development of Initiative, Agility and Adaptability. Our students need to be comfortable with the idea of change and be willing to adapt to the changes around them. Teachers can create a very dynamic environment in which students switch work and complete a task based on team effort. Let them know that you are available and willing to listen to any of their ideas about improving the lesson. Help them organize their ideas and put them into practice – even if an idea may fail. It can be a valuable lesson about how to measure performance and improve the idea. Not by any means should students be afraid of trying because they are afraid of failure.
Written & Edited by E.Kerr
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