Future-focused learning and teaching

We are currently in the process of having forum meetings with our parents regarding the 'Basics' at our school.  This whole process of hearing what parents' views are about current education practices, is very informative and worthwhile.
This had me again looking into Effective Pedagogy and my action promoting student learning.  While in the process of doing this, I came across this excellent, meaningful information on teaching for 21st century learners.

Questions to be asked:
What does future-focused learning and teaching look like? What ideas and principles underpin it? What makes it different from other teaching and learning practices? How do we change our practice to become inclusive and build an environment where akonga/learners, teachers, and whānau work together?

Future-focused education - what does it mean?

• How can education prepare students for living in the 21st century?
• How can schooling change to meet the opportunities and challenges of the 21st century?
• How can we prepare students to address "future-focused" issues such as sustainability, globalisation, citizenship, and enterprise?

Bolstad, R. (2011)

Literature suggests we need to be future-oriented and adaptable, adopting a more complex view of knowledge, that incorporates knowing, doing, and being. Alongside this we need to rethink our ideas about how our learning systems are organised, resourced, and supported. Educators need to consider:

• Personalising learning – how can you use technologies to build the school curriculum around the learner and more flexibly to meet learners’ needs?
• Building an inclusive learning environment - how you use technologies to:
  • engage learners, family/whānau, and communities in co-shaping education to address students’ needs, strengths, interests and aspirations?
  • provide access to anywhere, anytime learning?
  • support assessment and evaluation processes so that these are dynamic and responsive to information about students?
• Developing a school curriculum that uses knowledge to develop learning capacity – how can you use technologies to enable students to create and use new knowledge to solve problems and find solutions to challenges as they arise on a “just-in-time” basis?
• Rethinking learners’ and teachers’ roles – how can you use technologies to create a “knowledge-building” learning environment where learners and teachers work together?
• Building a culture of continuous learning for teachers and school leaders – what opportunities to participate in and build professional learning are afforded by technologies?
• New kinds of partnerships and relationships - how can technologies be used to facilitate this?

Bolstad, R & Gilbert J, et al. (2012)

  

^{Providing higher order, authentic learning experiences allowing students to use technologies to explore content. The principle of ako affirms the value of the pair and group learning approaches in which students interact with their peers, teacher, tasks, and resources. These are very effective approaches for teaching and learning.}

Ka Hikitia - Managing for success: The Māori Education Strategy 2008–2012

Teaching for 21st century learners
Dr David Parsons, Associate Professor, Massey University explains the need to teach higher level thinking skills and develop key competencies using technology to prepare students for the 21st century

Note: (Questions and information was quoted from TKI - enabling e-learning | teaching)