This workshop was performed in two groups with participants representing the ed tech industry, educational publishing, research, K-9 education, and business organizations. The first part of the workshop, that was based on stock photos of the “future classroom”, generated similar discussions in both groups. The participants noted that most images were taken inside, in a traditional classroom. They further agreed that most images show collaborative situations, focusing on the students rather than on the teacher. When the teacher was indeed present it was in the traditional role as “the sage of the stage”. Both groups appreciated the emphasis on collaboration and exploration visible in the images but also found them to be less futuristic than expected. The lessons and teaching spaces in the images look the same as they have done the last 30 years and even more innovative technologies such as robots and VR-sets can be found today in schools and maker spaces around the country. “Technical gadgets in a traditional physical learning space” as one participates sums up, and jokingly adds “with the addition that everyone is happy in the future”, referring to the typical stock photo aesthetic of smiling people. What is however missing from the images is the single most common digital device used today, namely the smart phone that is only visible in one of the images.
The lack futuristic visions in the images led the participants to reflect over the difficulties in imagining something outside the present. To visualize it in one single image off course adds to this challenge which might explain the prevalence of traditional classrooms to represent schooling. Still, the participants found this to be one of the greatest deficiencies in the images and stressed that education must take place also outside the classroom and be made more available for the learners. One groups also emphasized the role of the teacher in the future classroom, opposing the idea that technologies can replace teachers or turn them more into ”guides on the side”. A third theme that emerged in the critique against the dominant imaginaries of the future classroom was the relation between individualized learning and social training that needs to be combined and balanced in order to educate “citizens with subject specific knowledge” as one of the participants put it.
Below follows a description of how each group visualized these ambitions in a map of the future classroom.
The future classroom as a node
One of the groups envisioned the future classroom as two connected spaces, one physical classroom and one online environment. For the participants, this was a question of equal access to education where a hybrid solution would benefit both students in rural areas and those who find social interactions difficult and therefore want to limit their time in the physical classroom. At the same time, the participants stressed the importance of combining these spaces to ensure that the school becomes a place to meet in person and not only a place for knowledge transfer. The physical classroom will also host the practical and ascetical subjects that the participants envisioned as having a more prominent role in the future classroom than they have today.
While social interactions where mainly thought of as something that is trained in the physical classroom, they also take place online and the participants discussed the need of adult present also in these spaces after school hours or in brakes, a “digital playground supervisor” as they referred to it. Another central occupation in the school envisioned here are the administrator who oversees scheduling and synchronizes the online an on-site learning for each student. This does not have to be a person but can also be solved by using AI, suggests one of the participants. This tie into a discussion in the group about the use of data, and how it could be used to improve education to a much larger degree than in today’s school.
The difficulties to imagine something outside the present that was identified in the discussion of the stock photos encouraged the participants to rethink established conventions in schools, such as the division in different subject and grades, and they agreed that the ideal future school should be organized differently, based on school-readiness and interests rather than on age. Since it is impossible to tell what kind of society or job market the future will bring, schools need to be flexible and focus more on social and generic skills than on specific occupations, they argued.
As summed up by one of the participants, the vision of the classroom as a connected space where the learner picks his or her own way through the educational system is based equally on “soft values” such as social skills, citizenship and collaboration, and on “hard values”, stressing data driven methods to make use of all the data that is collected in schools to inform and improve education, visualized in the map as data going into a bin and coming out as a graph.
The slow future classroom
The second group created more of a mind map over possible educational futures, reflecting the lack of consensus in the group regarding weather we need a physical place or not and the affordances of technologies. One participant represented the school as a snail carrying its house on the back, “something that you always bring with you” and that “allows learning to happen anywhere” while others stressed the need of a physical space to meet and to engage also with practical subjects and hands-on learning such as having a school greenhouse for gardening and learning about nature.
Although the group did not fully agree on the set up or location of the classroom, they did however share the same view on some core values in education, one of them being lifelong learning and the ability to create engagement and make knowledge come alive. Some participants stressed the possibilities with digital technologies such as VR to come closer to subjects like history and get an empathic understanding of what it was like living in a different time under different circumstances, while others meant that traditional media such as fiction book can be used for the same purpose, without exposing the students to the biases that can be built into digital tools. Most participants proposed a combination of technologies along with an emphasis on the teacher as a mediator and animator of knowledge. The teacher was also brough up in relation to the vision of the school as a (slow) snail, where they where put fort as central for helping the students to process and reflect upon all the impressions and inputs they encounter during a day.
Like the other group, the participants also agreed on the importance of including different knowledge forms and to give more space to practical and aesthetical subjects. Schools today are more “learning about” than “learning through” explained one participant and another one suggested that although we cannot know what the future job market will look like, skills that we need and value such as crafts, cooking and agriculture re now paradoxically being deprioritized in schools. The need of practical skills and a holistic view on knowledge is also put forth as an argument to “exit the classroom” but to which extent and how is not established in the group.
Summary and key insights
- Education should be more individualized and adjust to the needs of the students. This can be done through abandoning age grouping or by offering a combination of online and offline teaching.
- Schoools are important places for social interaction and this function must be guarded if education becomes more hybrid.
- Teachers are important and the teacher role needs to be strengthened.
- Schools should invest more in practical/aesthetical subjects and outdoor education.
- The data generated in schools should be used to inform and improve education.
- Experience and empathy are important and can be facilitated using digital technologies as well as old media such as books or teachers.