education experts conference

education experts conference

The Future of Education: Insights from Leading Experts

1. Introduction to Education Experts Conference

The conference will feature a mix of expert panel discussions, presentations of the full report, alongside dedicated time to hold participant-led workshops, immerse ourselves in the data and evidence, and brainstorm practical solutions for policymakers. Over the two days, we will focus on: Creating effective schools in Africa – the future for education; Re-envisioning education: from the official system to effective and relevant community/parallel systems; The future of rural African schools; Teacher motivations, supports, and training; Creating effective community schools; The role of multi-grade teaching in re-visioning the rural and village schooling; and The future of UBE in rural Africa.

The conference brings together authors of the report, contributors to the webinars, and leading multi-grade and rural education experts for a two-day exploration of the future of education and the role that multi-grade teaching plays in creating effective African schools. We are delighted to welcome you to the conference and extend a warm welcome to all of our presenters. This is an incredibly exciting two days in which we will be drawing on the extensive expertise of our panelists as well as generating rich new conversations and insights.

Introduction Welcome to the Education Experts Conference: The Future of Education, where we will be hearing from leading education experts and practitioners about the role that multi-grade teaching can play in helping rural schools function effectively within their communities. This conference is an initiative of IIEP-UNESCO, who in 2018 published the report, “Multi-grade Teaching in Primary Schools: A Six-Country Study.” Alongside this report, IIEP-UNESCO and the Global Partnership for Education have hosted a series of community of practice webinars.

2. Keynote Presentations and Panel Discussions

This second installment describes the keynote presentations and panel discussions that took place at the Education Experts Conference. We convened leading thinkers and researchers to share their insights on the future of education, asking them to address the essential question: What’s over the horizon? The first keynote presenter at the Education Experts Conference was Dr. Jordi Quoidbach, Director of the Consumer Data Research Centre. His work centers around happiness and well-being, and how people perceive, experience, and navigate positive and negative socio-economic shocks. This talk drew on the Center’s extensive data collection on the educational experiences and outcomes of the Center’s alumni from all around the world. It focused on the characteristics that are consistent thread from the moment a child enters school to their experience in the workforce. The panel was moderated by IDRC Vice-President Debbie Grantham.

We received numerous requests to share information on the Education Experts Conference that took place on November 26, 2018. The conference brought together leading experts from around the world to help our organization anticipate some of the key developments that we already see on the horizon. In the coming weeks, we’ll be posting a number of resources that provide ideas, information, tools, and a variety of perspectives that we believe will be of interest. In addition to text summaries, we also have visual recordings of many of the panel discussions from the conference. These materials may help education leaders take stock and think about what may happen—good and bad—and what we need to do to bring about better futures for learning.

3. Innovations in Teaching and Learning

Educators of the future envisage a state of affairs in which institutions of learning become more place-based, making efforts to be integrated and ground for research and service for communities and the sort of ecosystems that they hope they are contributing to. Institutions are actively harnessing advancements in digital technologies and their supports for wellbeing and social justice, rather than passive recipients of externally shaped forces or trends in the socio-digital environment. Live interaction between experts who work between the faculty and professional staff is valued, and new educational services are forming in this gap. In these systems, lecturers are informed by partnerships with learners and the networks in which they engage. This contributes to new forms of consultancy and ongoing work with the education sector, with the users of formal and informal education, and with public bodies and industry.

Innovations in teaching and learning were highlighted throughout the conference, reviving new visions, new attitudes, new methodologies, and new technologies that are igniting a new era of education. This section will be focused on these innovations, setting the pace for Liden and Bak’s narrative in the next section of the policy implications identified by participants as a result of the discussion at the conference. This section starts, though, with a turn to the discussion of the past, as Coker points out in their review of the history of education, these innovations are not the norm and they are certainly not unprecedented. The section will argue for the need to historicize the discussion of the present, as the new, and explore what light such histories shed on the present.

4. Policy Implications and Recommendations

Leaders move policy. Roughly one-fifth of the future trends in education that industry and education experts presented in this report directly affect policy. They also provide several strategic insights that will contribute to the design of innovative new education policies. Therefore, it is important for policymakers to be aware of what is on the horizon. Based on the input from the panel experts and knowledge from the literature, we have outlined a general set of recommendations that we feel will inform policy development worldwide. Drawing on the scientific expertise that has gone into the development of this report, we purposively advance such transformation and politics worldwide. The following covers the policy implications and recommendations from industry and education experts.

The report, “The Future of Education: Insights from Leading Experts,” aims to answer the fundamental question of what direction education will take in the future. It presents the consolidated views of a team of education experts and scholars who were invited to the Education Experts Conference held on March 30th and 31st, 2022. In this series, the fourth section will cover a few of the policy implications and recommendations that the leading education experts discussed based on their core insights and trends. This report has been produced by the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, Concordia University, and the National Educational Association of Disabled Students.

5. Conclusion and Call to Action

That is why now is the time for collective impact. We do not need the silver bullet for change. We have the knowledge and expertise to shift any systems that are not serving the people they are created to support. This is not the responsibility of a small group of experts or within academia: this is everyone’s work. And small steps are not enough; we require an ecosystem approach with multiple initiatives that collectively enable the future of education to be realized. Radical collaboration with scaling in mind will make the shift to a paradigm that much easier. The focus of the future of education is to build human capacity; grow opportunities for creativity, critical thinking and entrepreneurship; and enable identity and belonging. Working to shape the educational environment is a multi-dimensional and complex challenge of systems thinking. We have an opportunity to support the transformation of education from mass generalization to a rich blend and intersection of formal and informal, broad and deep learning in environments that are dynamic and globally interconnected.

It is clear from the presentations and discussions at the Education Experts Conference that the future of education cuts across multiple domains. We know the key drivers of change at the foundational level, and we are able to articulate aspects of that future landscape. Yet we are still on the frontline of the massive shifts that will underpin how we are going to live and work over the coming decades. Equity-minded and inward-looking systems and processes will no longer serve us. There is an urgency to make the shift in this era, as issues of importance come upon us more quickly and the rate of acceleration increases. The status quo is no longer an option; neither is incremental decay. By maintaining a small mindset, we limit the development of solutions and strategies that will have an impact at scale.