Dan Sutch www.futurelab.org.uk dan.sutch@futurelab.org.uk

Preparing For Tomorrow By Leading Today

www.futurelab.org.uk

The challenge…

“We need the combined expertise of industry, academia, practitioners and policy to design and implement the tools, the technologies and practices that will revolutionise the way we learn”

Lord Puttnam

futurelab.org.uk/events

futurelab.org.uk/resources

Space Signpost

My-E

Mobi Missions

Ecolibrium

Exploratree

Astroversity Moovl

Enquiring Minds

Fizzees

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Developing Leaders for Tomorrow

• How do we lead and create change in education?

• What’s happening tomorrow? (or how can we prepare for the future?)

The title begs two important questions...

•futurelab.org.uk/resources

•Process of innovation

•Practice of innovation

goes hereBeyond Current Horizons www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk

Context for change

Future challenges for education

Other experiences

“In the end I like what we did, but I wouldn’t call it schools for the future. I’d call it schools for the very near future. So what was missing from my point of view was having some real ‘blue skies’ thinking and then reining it back into something that you could deliver in the next say, five or ten years.” Alsop Architects, talking about BSF exemplars

“We’re always just fire-fighting and thinking about next week – we need something to help us raise our sights to the longer term question of ‘what is this all for’” England, Children’s Services Director

“I have to plan, I have to make serious and long term decisions that will affect education in my local authority for the next 20 – 50 years – but I haven’t got any tools to help me think that far ahead, I have no idea what the possibilities might be” Local Authority Education Advisor

“What I’m worried about is that we are just taking for granted what ‘the future will be’, we’re not actually asking whether that is likely to happen or not , or what other things might happen, and if we’re not doing that, god knows if we’re actually preparing children in the right way” Award-winning Head teacher, England

The BCH programme is aiming to build a challenging and long term vision for education in the context of socio-technological change 2025 and beyond

Long term futures programme intended to

• Enhance the ‘futures thinking’ capacity of the UK education system

• Inform current strategy, decision making and planning

Futurelab running the programme in partnership with DCSF

What is futures work?

•Systematically talking about things yet to occur

•Not predictions – offering multiple futures

• Possible

• Probable

• Preferable

•Range of tools & approaches

• Usually supporting a scenario

Section title goes hereActivities & outcomes

Building the evidence

•Establishing academic team

• International reputations

• Wide range of domain expertise

•Commissioning original research

• 65+ papers within 5 research areas

• Economics, neuroscience, social science

•Developing appropriate methodology

• Recognising emerging data trends

Research

•Reviews from BCH

• 65+ original evidence reviews

•Over-arching papers

• Reviews relevant across all research areas

•Enabling audience to engage with BCH research

• Accessible & searchable

Public & stakeholder engagement

•Why

• Representing wider values & aspirations

• Ensuring relevance to broad audience

•What

• Workshops & seminars‗ 2007-08 – Parent/carers, Student, Teachers, Baby boomer workshops, ‗ 2008-09 - Citizen’s Council, Citizens Panel, expert interviews

• Web-based engagement tools‗ Million Futures, Power League, online survey

millionfutures.org.uk

powerleague.org.uk

Scenarios

•6 alternative futures for education

• Broad sociotechnological changes

• Implications of these changes for education

• Ways in which education might respond to these changes

•Prompting & catalysing debate

• Intended for a wide audience – policy, academia, system leaders within education

Titlevisionmapper.org.uk

A few trends & questions

Information landscape

•Denser, deeper, more diverse – “know more stuff about more stuff”

•Gather, store, use, share more data about more of our world than at present

• Social movements towards accountability & transparency

• Increased availability of data storage

• Digitally tag entities in extended world

• New forms of bio/genetic information

What does this mean for what we teach and when we teach it?

‘Digital natives’ grow up

•Facing their own technological changes

•More reliant on tech. for learning & work – more support needed

•Parents/grandparents grew up with tech. – able to/expect to monitor children & be in contact

• Over 50% population over 50 by 2030

• Extended life expectancy

• Adult-child relationships changing

What does this mean for relationships and involvement of parents in education?

Institutional boundaries

•Weakened & porous

•Information not tied to institution

•Blurring ‘work’ & ‘leisure’

• Personal networks/expertise/brand

•Education/work/retirement no longer differentiated

• Working life longer

•Public/private roles merging

What does this mean for where learning takes place – and when people access it?

A challenge to consider...

•Designing educational practices for networked individuals

• Networks change the nature of knowledge

• Individual no longer sovereign

‗ Pervasive technologies

‗ Cognitive enhancement

‗ Distributed intelligence

• Role of social networks amplified

‗ Always had a role

‗ Greater part in filtering & managing data

Titlevisionmapper.org.uk

•futurelab.org.uk/resources

•How do we act to bring about

•‘preferable’ futures?

The successful exploitation of ideas generated at the intersection of invention and insight, which leads to

the creation of social or economic value.

Putting the ideas into practice

• Poor goal definition

• Poor monitoring of results (standard and non-standard)

• Poor participation in teams

• Poor alignment of actions to goals

• Poor communication and access to information

• Teachers and peers

• Teachers professional development

• Teachers independence and influence

• Time to understand• Time to personalise

• Support network• Time to understand• Time to personalise

• Enaction of innovation

• Confidence in new approach

• ITT and CPD• Access to training

• Management of tools

• Time constraints

• Understanding new approach

• Understanding new approach• Assessment constraints

• Curriculum constraints

• Curriculum constraints

• Confidence in new approach

• Personal desire

• Personal interests

• Teachers adapting to change

• Imposed practices• Separation of new

practice with personal beliefs

• Inspection and review

• Fear of unknown• Challenge to ‘power’

Places to start...?

•2 Futurelab projects that may provide a stimulus to ‘try something new’.

•Both are open enough to be made locally appropriate.

Preparing for tomorrow by leading today

•Distributed leadership – building from insight and invention

• Think systematically about possible futures to ensure our actions help bring about the preferable futures we want to see

• Linking to others who can support you/who you can support (networks, groups and linking)

3 questions to ponder...

•Asset Mapping

•- in your regions, what ‘expertise and resources’ can you build upon? (geographically and online)

•Initiating innovation

• - what challenges do you think we need to begin addressing, locally and nationally?

•Oracle at Delphi

• - what would you want to know of 2025 to inform your strategies and planning?

Section title goes hereThank you

Dan Sutch

dan.sutch@futurelab.org.uk

Slideshare.net/Dannno

Twitter.com/Dannno

www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.ukwww.visionmapper.org.ukwww.flux.futurelab.org.ukwww.millionfutures.org.ukwww.powerleague.org.uk

www.futurelab.org.uk