The Educational Landscape of the Twenty-first Century

Browsing Twitter recently I read a tweet by Mike Herrity (@mikeherrity), “The educational landscape of the 21st Century. Moving towards a new paradigm in learning.” Intrigued, I hit the link, and watched this RSA Animate based on a speech by Sir Ken Robinson in which he shared his thoughts on the challenges facing the public education system.

Although his comments about ADHD have attracted some negative responses it seems to me that Sir Ken otherwise presented an absolutely razor sharp analysis of past and present educational systems. A system that starts off with anything up to 98% of its primary school children judged to be extraordinarily good at divergent thinking and which then over the space of ten years causes this skill to be depleted is one that is broken. Current trends in educational reform don’t appear to be shaping up to change the paradigm. Some would argue that even now we are not seriously looking towards the future and are still chained to the past.

I don’t know about you but I find it irritating when problems are highlighted but no solution is suggested. Well, as luck would have it, just before half term I came across another link tweeted by Damien McHugh (@dmchugh675) and it struck me that what I was seeing was one way of seriously shifting the paradigm. Have a look and see what you think….