Food For Thought: Future of work

A short Food for Thought this week that I shared with Studio 5 before their parent meeting last week and with SLTA to be discussed regarding the creation of an AtL skill continuum that unifies the key components of learning at ISHCMC with our three programmes, our mission and our Learning Principles.

This 29 minute presentation by Heather McGowan, The Future of Work, links very well with thinking regarding the impact of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Lots of excellent materials and research covered in the presentation and the overriding conclusion that work in the future will be about continuous learning. This links strongly with Yuval Harari's thinking and how to avoid the impending move in work from exploitation to irrelevance. Of course this can be achieved by staying up to date and continuously learning. But to do this as Heather McGowan points out you have to be constantly learning new things to stay relevant. Therefor you need to be taught how to learn at school so that you can apply this through your life at work. As we have said many times this further relates to the need to focus on the skills related to how to learn rather than just the content of the learning.

Of course there are opposing points of view and we do need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water, but at present I do believe we are going in the right direction and have to prioritize the development of AtL skills, their development and measurement through assessment for next year. Next week I am going to post a provocation that to some degree questions our mission and pedagogy, and in others may strengthen it, by ensuring it is part of what we take into account when we think about how students learn.