What might education focus on post COVID19?

In Australia, schools are just beginning to return after the long summer vacation. Teachers are turning their thoughts to what the new school year might look like, preparing for professional learning days and readying classrooms for a fresh year of learning that we all hope will look more like those we remember pre-COVID. In other parts of the world, schools are entering a new calendar year and where the challenges of remote learning continue to dominate their thinking. On the horizon is the prospect of a post-COVID world thanks to the development and distribution of hopefully effective vaccines.

As we move towards this brighter future with the fear of a global pandemic somewhat alleviated, what might be our next steps? How might we apply the lessons learned so rapidly, and brutally during this past twelve-month period? Might COVID be a catalyst for the reinvention of education that so many have been calling for?

In his book, “The Infinite Game”, Simon Sinek advises readers to look beyond the short term gain. Rather than seek the immediate win by playing a finite game, we are urged to consider how we might best engage with the infinite game where there are no fixed rules, no set players and the game has no end. The concept of finite and infinite games was developed by James Carse in 1986:

THERE ARE at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. (Carse, 1986 p3)

Infinite games have infinite time horizons. And because there is no finish line, no practical end to the game, there is no such thing as “winning” an infinite game. In an infinite game, the primary objective is to keep playing, to perpetuate the game. (Sinek, 2019 p4)

Education is most definitely an infinite game. For everyone involved, particularly in modern times, it meets all of the requirements of our definition of an infinite game. The players routinely change. So too do the rules and the goal posts move just as frequently and are at best fluidly defined by the changing tides of society, politics and culture. There is no endpoint. It might be argued that when we are talking formal education, we are defining a period of time from the moment one enters their first year of schooling as a Kindergarten or Foundation student until they leave with a formal qualification. In modern times such a neatly framed definition of our time in education is laughably ill-conceived. There is little if any doubt that education, and through it learning, is something we shall engage with until long into our sunset years.

Despite this, schools seem to adopt an unhealthy embrace of the finite game. Each school year seems to be viewed as a game with winners and losers. The measures of success are taken as the assessments students complete and the culmination of these is the final school leaving qualification and its associated ranking of students. This exam preparation focus distracts us from the infinite game that we should be giving our attention to. Instead of asking what grade I got for that last assignment, our students should be wondering how it drove them toward their next learning goal. If we were to play an infinite game, our focus would be on how each learning moment better prepares us to achieve the primary objective of playing-on, perpetuating the game of learning.

During our COVID adventures with remote learning, at least after the initial shock and rapid responses to the most immediate challenges, educators grappled with new challenges and found exciting solutions. Many of these allowed us to move a step away from playing the examination focused finite game. We recognised that a prime goal was to develop in our learners, new levels of independence. Unable to control every moment of their learning, we confronted a reality in which partnerships between learners and educators became essential. Remote learning also revealed to us that education could occur across boundaries of time and space. Freed from the constraints of the physicality of the classroom learning took on new shapes, new forms and achieved new possibilities. Our students saw their role in learning differently too. They were able to take ownership of the process in ways they did not have access to in a traditional setting. The almighty timetable and daily schedule became somewhat more flexible. Learning was less a thing that happened to them during set hours of the day and more a thing that they could choose to engage with in an almost à la carte fashion.

In a post COVID world, how might we continue to build learners who own their learning? What approaches to learning and pedagogy might we continue to engage that are supportive of independence and learner agency?

Such skills and dispositions are both timely and timeless. The World Economic Forum routinely publishes a list of the most desirable skills for the workplace of the not too distant future. For 2025 their top five connect beautifully with a vision for education focused on playing an infinite game. Each has value now, tomorrow and long into the future. Each is resistant to changing circumstances. Each equips a player in an infinite game with the capabilities they need as they adapt to changes in the game and to play as drivers of change.

1. Analytical thinking and innovation

2. Active learning and learning strategies

3. Complex problem solving

4. Critical thinking and analysis

5. Creativity, originality and initiative

6. (WEF - Future of Jobs Report 2020)

These are skills that we can develop and learn but never truly master. Nor are they pieces of knowledge or base capabilities which are likely to become irrelevant with time. We shall continue to call upon these dispositions over time, and we can refine and relearn how we approach each as new challenges and opportunities emerge. As society continues to evolve, new strategies, tools, modalities and ideologies are bound to emerge, but our capacity for engagement with these changes will be defined by these skills.

Education, as a finite game, will always tend to undervalue these skills. They are too easily seen as obstacles to the teaching of essential content required for exams. To win the finite game of education, one’s needs are seen as best served by privileging the specific knowledge and skills assessed in the next test. Time spent on teaching active learning strategies, innovation, creativity and initiative is too easily seen as a series of distractions which stand in the way of achieving the more immediate goals. Like a player in a soccer game, we are focused on scoring the winning goal but blind to the reality that there is no winning goal to be had in this game.

Perhaps this is the ultimate challenge for education post COVID, to shift our focus towards how we prepare our students to play the infinite game of education.

By Nigel Coutts

Carse, James. (1986) Finite and Infinite Games (p. 3). Free Press. Kindle Edition.

Sinek, Simon. (2019) The Infinite Game (p. 4). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

What might it take to bring real change to education?

I had the pleasure recently of listening to Michael Fullan thanks to ACEL (Australian Council for Educational Leaders). Like many thought leaders who are looking closely at the current state of education, Michael builds a strong case for radical change in education. Like others, Michael believes that the circumstances we find ourselves in now as a result of COVID19 might be the catalyst for change that education has long needed. There is a perceived opportunity to shift the dial, to reimagine what education might be like rather than retuning to what was normal in pre-COVID times. “The education goal is not just to survive COVID-19, but to end up with something significantly “better” than was the case in 2019.” (Fullan 2020)

The case for change is well known and well documented. The current model of education has its roots in a distant past. It reflects the need for a workforce that was able to carry out well-known procedures with high levels of repeatability. The world of work would require a great deal of routine cognitive labour, and the education would supply the highly standardised workforce that was needed. The result today is a system, that despite reforms around the edges and despite two decades of talk about embedding 21st Century skills, has stalled and is failing to motivate the young people who depend upon it for their futures. 

According to Fullan, the system has not progressed for five key reasons:

• The failure to connect students with purpose

• The failure to challenge students with high expectations

• Inadequate learning goals

• The continued use of old pedagogy

• Failure to build relationships and belongingness

What is needed is a focus on Deep Learning. Fullan details a multi-part process to achieve this through a focus on the 6Cs (character, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity & critical thinking) with practical pedagogies, learning partnerships, learning environments and leveraging digital affordances. If these factors are considered within the frames of broader changes to schools, district and systems along with addressing aspects of equity and with a desire to engage the world, change becomes possible. A more detailed understanding of Fullan’s conception of a new model for education is detailed in his book with Joanne Quinn and Joanne McEachen, “Deep Learning: Engage the World Change the World” and details on how it might become a reality through nuanced leadership and systems change can be found in the following books which are highly recommended.  

• Nuance: Why some leaders succeed, and others fail. By Michael Fullan

• The Devil is in the Details: System solutions for equity, excellence, and student well-being. By Michael Fullan & Mary Jean Gallagher

Early in his presentation, Fullan makes an important point about change, and it connects strongly with why now might be the time to see real change take place. “It’s not going to happen by drift.” The model so far for change in education has been one of slow change, gradual reform around the edges with the core barely touched. This is reflected in the research conducted by Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine who went “In Search of Deeper Learning” and found that it was more likely to occur on the edges of education in co-curricular activities. We might all want change, but we want it to occur very slowly so we never feel the pain and we would prefer if it doesn’t happen in the educational heartland of traditional classes. 

The slow pace of change is why we are still talking about introducing 21st Century Skills as we enter the third decade of the 21st Century. It is this pace that means students in classrooms across the globe are losing interest. It is why we continue to confront issues of equity. Combine a slow pace of meaningful change towards a new more enlightened vision for education with a rapid drive towards heightened levels of standardised testing (an unceasing desire to measure attributes of learning that increasingly matter less), and we have a system that is in need of radical change. The question is, will COVID be the catalyst for this change?

Other industries have confronted change on this sort of scale. Famously many leading players in these industries missed the boat. Kodak was one of the leading players in photography. Big Yellow was the much-loved film used by many and its place in pop culture was cemented when Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel sang its praises in “Kodachrome”. But despite playing a leading role in developing digital imaging technology, Kodak failed to transition into the new world of digital photography. They persisted with a product that was no longer fit for purpose. As the world demonstrated an increasing desire to share images instantly and through the emerging internet and social media worlds, Kodak stuck with film. Instead of embracing radical change that played on the edges by making film easier to load and by promising faster turn around times for development. While Kodak played on the edges and took a slowly, slowly approach to change, others leapt in and embraced the possibilities for a new industry centred on digital photography. 

Is now the time for a new player in the field of education to emerge? What are the possibilities for an organisation with the mindset of a tech start-up to disrupt education? What if instead of playing on the edges, someone approached education as though it was a fresh field. How might we imagine an education system fit for the purposes of today if we started from nothing instead of trying to repurpose a system past its use-by date? 

Maybe this is the challenge that we confront as we consider what comes next. Instead of thinking about evolution, we need to go back to the beginning. What if there was no education system to be evolved but instead a realisation that we need one to meet the needs of our young people. How would we come to understand those needs, and what might our response look like? Almost certainly it would not look like the education system we have today, but just as certainly it is unlikely to be like anything that our current system is likely to slowly ‘drift’ towards. 

By Nigel Coutts

What skills might our students most need beyond school?

It is tempting to make predictions of the skills that our students will need beyond their time at school. Such wondering can be a useful guide as we contemplate what we shall focus on with our curriculum. Unsurprisingly, there is no shortage of predictions for future skillsets published by educators, economists and analysts. What might we learn from such lists, and how should education systems respond?

Last week I considered the question of how we prepare for unknown unknowns. Those who seek to gaze into the future are hoping that the conditions we see in the economy and the worlds of work and society today are reliable indicators for the trends of tomorrow. The number of such reports seems to be increasing, and the frequency at which they are updated appears to be shortening. It appears that these are indeed postnormal times when the pace of change is such that predictions of the future have a short lifespan. Sardar describes these “postnormal times” as “Ours is a transitional age, a time without the confidence that we can return to any past we have known and with no confidence in any path to a desirable, attainable or sustainable future.” (Sardar, 2010)

The volatile and unpredictable nature of our current times is reflected in the titles of the research papers which seek to predict how education systems might best respond. The Australian Secondary Principals’ Association (ASPA) commissioned “Beyond Certainty: A process for thinking about futures for Australian education”. Economists, PWC have published a range of articles including “A Smart Move” in 2015 with an emphasis on the importance of STEAM disciplines and more recently “Workforce of the Future: The competing forces shaping 2030” that suggests we may have beyond a STEAM driven imperative. The Foundation For Young Australians (FYA) has published numerous papers with titles such as “The new work basics”, “The new work smarts” and “The new work mindset” emphasising that the world of work is changing for young people and that flexibility in these times of ‘newness’ is essential. A report prepared for the NSW Department of Education on the critical implications for school education of artificial intelligence and other emerging transformations was titled “Preparing for the best and worst of times” playing on the fear and promise of modern times. 

Perhaps the most prolific predictor of future times is the World Economic Forum. On an almost annual basis, they have published a series of predictions for the world of work in the short and near future. These reports show a subtle and consistent shift in the skills predicted to be of most value and the trend is most certainly towards flexible, adaptable skills and lifelong learning. The results of the 2018 “Future of Jobs Report” is summarised in the image below.

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Click image to enlarge.

The clear pattern is that the ability to solve complex problems with critical and creative thinking skills continues as do the importance of active learning and learning strategies. If the WEF is right, our young people will need to be analytical thinkers who innovate, understand complex systems and possess emotional intelligence and leadership capabilities. On the decline, by contrast, are skills for memorisation, management, technology use and base skills for reading, writing, math and the darling of so many classrooms “active listening”. 

Skills continuing to grow in prominence by 2022 include analytical thinking and innovation as well as active learning and learning strategies.
World Economic Forum - The Future of Jobs Report 2018

The continued emphasis on the skills of “Active learning and learning strategies” is significant. In times of change, the ability to learn, unlearn and relearn is crucial. This was predicted by Alvin Toffler’s 1970 text “Future Shock” where he wrote:

“By instructing students how to learn, unlearn and relearn, a powerful new dimension can be added to education… Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the man who can’t read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.” (Toffler. 1970 p211)

This is also noted by Professor Alan Reid, the author of the ASPA’s “Beyond Certainty” report who points to the importance of “meta-learning” alongside general capabilities and a contemporary curriculum comprising disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning. Indeed learning is described by Reid as “a key to living in the 21st century”, and an understanding of learning is deemed crucial. 

Meta-learning is the capacity to understand oneself as a learner and the process of learning. It goes beyond metacognition, taking in new understandings about learning in fields as disparate as neuroscience and the functioning of the brain, emotional, sensory and social learning, cognitive psychology, and learning and physical movement. Learning about learning is fundamental in an information/knowledge society where knowledge is expanding at an exponential rate. (Reid. 2018 p6)

By acknowledging the importance of learning to learn and with that the capacity to be self-navigating learners, these reports recognise that the future is assuredly full of unknown unknowns. The best preparation for such a future is to own the capacity to learn and even teach oneself fresh skills on demand. Rather than developing a specific skills set adaptability is the key to success in an ever-changing future, and it is adaptability that PWC describes as “the key to the future”.

One clear lesson arises from our analysis: adaptability – in organisations, individuals and society – is essential for navigating the changes ahead. It’s impossible to predict exactly the skills that will be needed even five years from now, so workers and organisations need to be ready to adapt (PWC. 2018 p31)

What then are the implications for schools? How do we ensure that our students are presented with opportunities to understand how they learn and to take charge of their learning? How do we do this in a culture of standardised testing and an overcrowded curriculum that allows little time for deeply reflective meta-learning as described by Professor Reid? When will our students experience and engage in genuine creative problem solving that requires innovation and critical thinking? Will these be a part of their time in schools or will they be put on hold and first experienced by young people as they enter the world of work?

By Nigel Coutts

PWC (2018). Workforce of the Future: The competing forces shaping 2030. PWC

Reid, A. (2018). Beyond Certainty: A process for thinking about futures for Australian education. Australian Secondary Principals’ Association (ASPA)

Toffler, A. (1970). Future shock. New York: Random House.

World Economic Forum (2018) - The Future of Jobs Report 2018. Centre for the New Economy and Society

The challenge of educating for unknown unknowns

It is almost precisely eighteen years since Donald Rumsfeld uttered his now well-regarded commentary on the danger of “unknown unknowns”. At the time his remarks brought more confusion than clarity and reinforced for many a belief that politicians use words to conceal the truth. Somehow though, Donald’s words from 2002 seem to fit the world of today, and the challenges confronting educators all too well. 

Here is Rumsfeld’s reply:

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones. - Donald Rumsfeld (2002)

When we consider what our children will need to learn from their time at school, we must consider known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. But what does this mean and how might we respond?

Known knowns are the most straightforward points to deal with. These are the pieces of knowledge, the skills and dispositions we know our children will need in the lives they are likely to live. We know they will need fundamental skills for communication and mathematical reasoning. We know that they will need to know how to interact with others, how to build and maintain relationships. They will need to know how to balance their lives and maintain a healthy and happy disposition. A sense of empathy will serve them well as will respect for diversity. They should be aware that they occupy a world governed by social norms that change and evolve and which have been shaped by our collective pasts. They should also be aware that they share their world with many other people and that not all these people benefit from the privileges of power experienced by others. An awareness of the politics of power and the impact that this has on the world they share is vital. They will need to understand that our world is fragile, beautiful and fierce. A capacity to reason logically, a desire to seek evidence in support of claims made by themselves and others and a great sense of curiosity seem vital. Definitely, they will need to understand that volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity abound, and that change is the one constant they can depend upon.

These are the known knowns, and one might expect our education system to be able to meet these needs very well. In some ways, we are doing well, and there is a definite move in the right direction. This is countered by calls for a return to basics, even if those doing so are unclear on what these might be. Our students do seem to spend a lot of time memorising facts, rehearsing procedures, preparing to utilise outmoded methods and solving problems with well-known solutions. We claim that critical thinking, collaboration and creativity matter most and yet our high-stakes testing focuses on individual knowledge best achieved through rote memorisation. It is in this way that we perhaps most fall down as much of the good work we do in building dispositions that matter is undone by an assessment regime which values base skills and recall of facts. And in place of devoting time to problem finding, curiosity, wondering, and reflective thought, we bombard our students with more and more content delivered in discrete packages even though we know information is ubiquitous. 

In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world. (Harari, Yuval Noah)

We must also consider the “known unknowns”. These are things we know will change in the future, and are likely to play a role in the lives our children will live, but their exact form is unknown. Technology will continue to play a significant part in our daily lives, but our best predictions of what this might look like may well be wrong. Artificial intelligence is likely to play a role in the world of work that our Kindergarten students of today will experience, but what impact will it have? Climate change is another known unknown. We know that our climate is set to continue to change, but the exact effect that this will have remains uncertain as is the nature of our response to it. The worlds of work, politics, and society are all set to change and evolve as they have always done, and as is always the case, we might only guess at what shape they will take. 

In response to these “known unknowns” we can develop strategies which are likely to serve our children well. If they understand that they can be the masters of technology and utilise it to meet their needs, then they might be better prepared for the technologies which evolve in the coming decades. Knowledge of the science of climate change, and a desire to utilise the power of science to understand and shape the world, might be the best preparation for an unstable climate. The ability to think flexibly, to ask questions and approach the world with a positive scepticism seems like the right disposition for whatever might confront us in the areas of work, society and politics. The development of these dispositions and understandings should not be an add on, but a core component of our curriculum and we must continue to seek pedagogies which serve the needs of our learners in these domains. 

Lastly, we come to consider the “unknown unknowns”, that which we do not know we don’t know. At this point, even the best crystal ball fails to meet our needs. We are now beyond the point of imagination and have accepted that there will be aspects of our futures and our children’s futures which we might not predict. How do we prepare for these “unknown unknowns”? Our best path of action might be to retain our sense of curiosity and wonderment and make space in our curriculum for the imagination of educators who are travelling with their students into an unknown future. 

Educating for the unknown, far from an unapproachable paradox, can be an alluring and inspiring agenda. Rather than counseling despair, educating for the unknown favors a vision of learning aggressive in its effort to foster curiosity, enlightenment, empowerment, and responsibility in a complex and dynamic world. It favors a broad and visionary reach for meaningful learning. (David Perkins - “Future Wise”)

These are indeed exciting and challenging times. They are times that require the very best from us as educators. Our role extends far beyond the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next. The challenge of the unknown, calls on us to educate our children so that they may confront it, armed with knowledge, intellect, curiosity, creativity, empathy and a desire to understand. To be that person who prepares a young mind for success in the modern world is undoubtedly the most rewarding of endeavours and is the great privilege that comes with being a teacher. 

By Nigel Coutts

Harari, Yuval Noah. (2018) 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Random House. Kindle Edition.

Perkins, D. “Future Wise: Educating our children for a changing world”, San Francisco, Josey-Bass, 2014, 274 p.

The future of Schools

Ask the average adult to describe a school and you are likely to get similar responses. There will be a focus on the places and spaces in which their education occurred, the teachers who taught, the rows of desks, the daily schedule of classes and breaks. They may reflect on the subjects they enjoyed and those they didn’t. If you asked the same question of your typical octogenarian the response would be similar and if you could travel back in time you would receive a similar response from those whose experience of school would not include electric light. It makes you wonder what makes a school and what might a school be like?

Karl Weick the organisational theorist wrote in 1976 an article titled ‘Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems’ in which he asks the questions ‘Why do all educational organisations look the way they do, and why do they all look the same?’ He suggests that the common structural and organisational elements in schools are not a result of the true task of education but a consequence of the certification and registration process. The implication being that if schools were designed to best serve their fundamental task they would look different and there would be differences between schools as a result of their intentions and purposes.

The unflattering description of the physical layout of most schools reveals much in common with factories. Raw product enters at one end, is acted upon through set processes and at the opposite end of the factory processed products exit ready for the workforce. Along the way the child learns how to fit into society, how to complete core tasks required for dutiful citizenship and is presented with the knowledge of content expected of an educated person. Pink Floyd’s gruesome portrayal of a school as a production line for humans resonated with its audience not only for its gore but also its metaphorical accuracy. Thankfully schools have a greater calling and are moving away from this archaic model.

The modern classroom is a space full of light and colour, with flexible furnishings and a degree of comfort not present in the classrooms many adults recall. Students are encouraged to take charge of the space and arrange its physicality to meet their needs. Design decisions are based around engagement, creativity, expression, imagination and an understanding of education as an active process that the student chooses to engage with. So important is the physical space that authors and architects for education OWP/P published a book titled ‘The Third Teacher’ as a tome for anyone wishing to enhance the effectiveness of their learning spaces. 

HAMILTON SOUTHEASTERN SCHOOL DISTRICT SENIOR ACADEMIES - Third Teacher +

In this classroom you will likely find the teacher located somewhere amongst the students. The role of the teacher is transforming from the deliverer of content and enforcer of behavioural norms to one of facilitator of learning. Learning as an educational term is under re-evaluation as the profession and society considers what it means to learn. Once defined through connections to the recall of facts and the application of formulas and methods, learning is now seen through a wider lens. Learning is a process that you must learn to do, a process that involves imagination, problem finding, questioning, design thinning, collaboration, reflection and knowledge creation. The modern teacher is skilled in enabling dispositions, attitudes, habits of mind and thinking skills within their diverse learners. A successful lesson will be one that generates a new list of questions, not a set of answers. 

The students in this classroom are adept at asking questions but they do not expect easy answers and they do not rely on their teachers to be the source of their learning. They approach their learning with a sense of possibility and openness that the students in the Pink Floyd clip have had beaten out of them. They should experience a learning system that encourages creativity and prepares them for a world that will value them for their ability to find problems and solve them in unique ways.

What might the school day be like? The ever creative Finns are exploring a model of learning that does away with traditional subjects. Students instead of discretely studying mathematics or language will explore themes with opportunities to develop a wide mix of dispositions and skills around the exploration of central ideas. This model of themed learning is described as having more in common with how individuals learn outside of a school-based setting where they operate within a group to explore a set of closely linked ideas and find solutions to the problems they encounter along the way. Such a change will bring with it fundamental adjustments to the timetabling of the school day, the structure of schools around faculties and the compartmentalisation of knowledge that comes with this. The skill set of the art teacher, the mathematician, the scientist and the language specialist will be combined around a central theme with the students benefiting from the sharing of knowledge that this model creates as their teachers collaborate. 

If the process of modernising schools identifies a clear intent for schools with an equally clear model for how this is best achieved will schools still all look the same? Will a shift from schools as factories for the fodder of the industrial age workforce to a focus on the production of creative problem finders and solvers produce a greater variety of schools? Will Weick see a diversity of organisational structures? As we shift from the one-model fits all system of the past to a new model that celebrates flexibility and individuality will this be reflected by a diversity of school systems that follow? Will there be a common experience of school in the future or will the loosely connected structures, tasks, intents and people of a yet to be invented educational model centred on the networked individual even form an organisation that we can meaningfully refer to as a school?

By Nigel Coutts