Learning Beyond the Classroom
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Learning Beyond the Classroom

Education for a Changing World

Tom Bentley

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eBook - ePub

Learning Beyond the Classroom

Education for a Changing World

Tom Bentley

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About This Book

Education has become one of our major concerns, at the heart of any strategy for prosperity and social cohesion. But young people are having more difficulty than ever before in adapting to the world they will enter as adults.
Tom Bentley argues that if education is to meet the emerging challenges of the twenty-first century, we must recognise that learning takes place far beyond the formal education sector. We cannot rely solely on dedicated teachers to deliver the understanding and personal qualities young people will need. Instead we must connect what happens in schools to wider opportunities for learning.
Drawing on a wide-ranging review of educational innovation and on contemporary analysis of economic, social and technological change, this book shows that creating an education revolution requires us to think far more radically about young people and the options for reform, and outlines a vision of education fit for the twenty-first century.
Tom Bentley is a senior researcher at Demos, the independent think-tank. He was born and educated in East London and at Oxford University. His research areas include: young people, education, the future of work and combating of social exclusion.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2012
ISBN
9781134673018
Edition
1

1
INTRODUCTION

The things you learn in school are to do with education and to get jobs. Youā€™re not really using them in actual real life.
(18-year-old, Birmingham)
This book argues that if we want education to be effective in the next century, adult society must take up an active partnership with the people who so far have been largely left out of the debate: with young people themselves. It argues that there are two crucial tests of an effective education system: how well students can apply what they learn in situations beyond the bounds of their formal educational experience, and how well prepared they are to continue learning and solving problems throughout the rest of their lives. To do this, education must be both broader and deeper. Broader, because it must include a wider range of learning experience, experience of roles and situations which mirror those we value in society. Deeper, because it must nurture a greater understanding in young people: understanding of themselves, their motivations and goals in life, and of the subjects and disciplines they study.
The implication of these two tests is that education must become more open, using a range of resources much wider than public infrastructure, taxpayersā€™ money, contracted parental obligations and the skills of increasingly worn-out professionals. It must be able to use human, financial, social, cultural and informational resources from the whole of society to stimulate and develop young peopleā€™s ability to learn and understand for themselves. This learning will not take place only inside schools and colleges, but in communities, workplaces and families. It requires a shift in our thinking about the fundamental organisational unit of education, from the school, an institution where learning is organised, defined and contained, to the learner, an intelligent agent with the potential to learn from any and all of her encounters with the world around her.
Without such a change the education system will be unable to meet the demands of the twenty-first century. More than this, I argue that the current system is already failing to provide the preparation that young people need in order to thrive. Our assumptions about what education is for, and about how it works, must change. This might seem surprising. Over the last twenty years, education has become one of our most urgent priorities as a society. Participation and attainment have risen, and public spending has increased. We probably know more about how the system is performing than ever before. But despite this, we are reaching the limits of what the current system can do. Even if it manages to achieve ambitious targets for numeracy, literacy, basic skills and qualifications, it will not meet the needs of its students unless it changes more radically.
The most important reason for this argument is the nature of change in wider society. Over the last twenty-five years, the ways we live, work and communicate have been transformed, and the changes will continue. Learning is only effective when it relates meaningfully to a wider social context, and for us the context is changing dramatically. One of the clearest illustrations of this change is the way in which young peopleā€™s role in society has become such a potent and frequently debated issue. Is young peopleā€™s behaviour getting worse? When do they stop being children and become adults? Is drug-taking a normal part of their lives? Will they be able to support the needs of an ageing population? Are they damaged by family breakdown? Who is responsible for young people, and when?
At the heart of these questions is a curious paradox. Living in a time of rapid and unsettling change pushes us to think harder about young people. On the one hand, we are spurred to guard and control them more tightly, trying to protect and pass on what we value and ensure that they do not fall prey to risks and threats. On the other, we want them to be creative and enterprising, to learn from the mistakes of previous generations and to solve problems where we have failed, such as sustaining the natural environment and creating meaningful work for everybody. We are torn between the desire to prepare young people properly for an uncertain future, and the recognition that we do not have all the answers for them. Added to this is the fact that younger people tend to adapt on their own, embracing many changes quite spontaneously, and producing cultures and ways of thinking which can seem alien and threatening to those of us who are more set in our ways.
Education is no stranger to this paradox. On one hand we hear political rhetoric converging around the need for a ā€˜flexibleā€™, ā€˜high-skillā€™ workforce, able to thrive in a labour market where the pace of innovation continually rises, and where jobs for life are disappearing. On the other we are concerned that young people learn the values and obligations of citizenship, that they learn right from wrong, and that they achieve standards set for them by adults and experts. We want them to understand the essence of what is valuable in a world increasingly characterised by diversity, mobility and choice.
This seems much harder at a time when the old structures and norms which supported duty and traditional ways of living are breaking down. National institutions have steadily lost the trust and esteem of citizens. Marriage is less popular and less successful. Traditional elites have felt their positions threatened by unforeseen change. Education, the preparation of young people for the challenges and responsibilities that they will face in adult life, becomes at once more important and much more difficult.
The first big question to be faced is the place of education in an information society. The changes of the last two decades have been fuelled by one basic transformation: the fact that information can be collected, synthesised and communicated with more speed, precision and power than we have ever known before. Information and communications technologies are shaping every sphere of our lives, from personal relationships to the structure and content of work, economic investment to leisure, human reproduction to patterns of transcontinental migration. With these capacities has come a growing appreciation of the extent to which we are connected and interdependent (Mulgan, 1997). To make sense of these connections, to turn them into opportunities rather than threats, we must use information to create, share and use knowledge. The explosion of information means that much of it is useless and trivial, requiring us to sort and synthesise, to spot connections that matter, to distinguish meaningful messages from the noise that surrounds them. This is another reason why education is so important. To make full use of the resources that an information society offers, we must be able to handle the overload, to develop capacities which can make sense of it all without screening out things that might be valuable.
The ubiquity of information and knowledge in society poses a stiff challenge for education systems. If people can gain access to knowledge on demand through the internet, the Open University, interactive television or firm-based universities, what is compulsory education there for? The days when state education provided the main opportunity for most people to learn effectively have gone. The private sector in Britain already spends more on education and training than the public sector. Public education systems must not only provide good-quality learning in themselves, but also full access to the knowledge resources offered elsewhere. Such resources are constantly growing and shifting, requiring educators to adapt more rapidly and responsively than ever before.
The second question is about values. In any society, the function of education in the first two decades of life has been partly to develop in young people the values, attitudes and understandings which society holds dear. Even in secular, supposedly ā€˜value-neutralā€™ systems, the liberal virtues of individual freedom, tolerance, mutual respect and fairness have been implicitly cherished. Education helps to glue society together, transmitting common values and cultural heritage, promoting messages about what members of society owe to each other. But when the world is connected in countless, unprecedented ways, when peoples and cultures travel with increasing lightness and speed, and societies are becoming more porous and mixed, how can education act as a common core? The proportion of ethnic minorities in Britain is predicted to double over the next twenty years to more than 10 per cent. We are learning that the value differences between generations, in Britain and elsewhere, are increasingly sharp. When value changes come from all directions, formed and shaped by complex, fluid processes, can education hope to frame and instil a common core by making decisions at the top of the system and then transmitting them down the chains of command? Will it be able to keep up, to stay relevant to the needs and concerns of the people it is supposed to serve?
This question brings us to the third major challenge for education. How can it motivate young people to concentrate, work purposefully and learn for themselves? The information age provides a dazzling array of distractions and alternative pursuits with which formal education has to compete. A recent study found that two-thirds of people aged between 16 and 25 believe that schools do not prepare people for real life. How can education convince its students that what it offers is worth having? Information penetrates our lives with increasing power, whether we like it or not ā€“ a fact that is illustrated by the debates about internet pornography, teen magazines and the influence of television. Equipping and motivating young people to learn, not just in the first two decades but for the rest of their lives, is an urgent priority. But the tools with which we control their behaviour and their access to previously guarded information seem increasingly ineffective. The problem brings us back to our starting paradox. How do we instil in young people what we really value, passing on the wisdom that society has managed to accumulate, while simultaneously equipping them to solve problems and meet challenges which older generations do not know how to solve?
In this book I argue that the seeds of solutions to this paradox are already here. In the worlds of work and relationships, we are beginning to understand that high performance flows, not from the rigid imposition of external structures and constraints, but from the distribution of responsibility and a commitment to honesty, transparency and shared goals. When these conditions are met, the true constraints on performance and fulfilment begin to appear, and the means to overcome them can be created. My analysis is rooted in projects which are pioneering new, effective approaches to learning and educational achievement.
At the core of the argument is the idea that our conception of knowledge must shift to include, alongside knowledge of what to say, how to say it, and knowledge of oneself, the ability to do (Drucker, 1993: 24). In Chapter 2, alongside indicators of underachievement and distress among young people, I examine evidence that many of them are unable to apply what they learn at school in situations where it might actually be useful. The way that education is organised encourages an artificial distinction between knowing and doing. This is also a historical divide, between knowledge and manual workers, and between academic and vocational education. But the distinction between formal, theoretical knowledge and practical skill is being eroded by the fact that the systems by which we organise life increasingly incorporate technology which can process information, ā€˜the action of knowledge upon knowledge itself (Mulgan, 1997: 20). Learning how to apply knowledge in unfamiliar situations is more and more important. It requires practice in environments which closely resemble those in which we will eventually do so for real. And yet schools and classrooms resemble less and less the situations in which the rest of us live, work and learn. I argue that, for young people, who want to be a part of society from an increasingly early age, learning environments should as far as possible be those in which adults demonstrate their ability to do, as well as to know in more abstract ways.
Despite our efforts so far, formal education is not equipping young people with the resources they need to thrive in adulthood. As one young man in a recent study by the Industrial Society put it, ā€˜I think a lot of the time at school ā€¦ they teach you knowledge but they never teach you how to learn.ā€™ Chapter 2 looks at the dimensions of this failure. They include the brittleness of understanding which conventional educational success often inculcates, lack of readiness for the world of work, growing psychological distress, the failure of relationships, and political alienation. When set against the challenges that we face, from the demands of personal relationships to the threat of global warming, these problems are grounds for serious concern.
The beginnings of solutions to these challenges are already here. First, they flow from recent advances in our understanding of intelligence and the ways in which humans learn. Intelligence is both broader and more flexible than educationalists and psychologists have assumed in the past. In particular, the idea that we can be emotionally intelligent opens up a whole new range of educational opportunity. The habits of thoughtfulness and emotional self-management established in childhood and adolescence will have a profound influence on a personā€™s success and wellbeing for the rest of their lives. Opportunities to develop emotional competence are a crucial part of the new landscape of learning.
I then look at a number of projects and initiatives which, in various ways, are taking up the challenge of learning out of school. Some are based in schools and connected to the curriculum, while others are completely independent. Some are very new, while others are more established. Their focus varies widely, but they are all contributing to the goal of opening up learning, making a wider range of resources available to young people, and helping them to become active, self-managing learners. Much of this work is new, and its long-term impact has not always been evaluated, although there is clear evidence of effectiveness in some projects. In Chapter 5 I examine some of the common characteristics of successful ā€˜active learning projectsā€™, and the ways in which they contribute to young peopleā€™s development and understanding.
From this point, I look at how the active learning embodied in our range of examples can be used to tackle three of the most important concrete challenges facing our education system: learning citizenship and morality, developing employability, and tackling underachievement and exclusion. I argue that, in each of these areas, the solutions lie in involving young people in a much wider range of contexts for learning, and in giving them real responsibility for what they are doing, while retaining an emphasis on rigour and achievement which is found in the best academic education. At each stage, I set out the major changes in context ā€“ in employment and the economy, in social values and morality, and in the cultural and economic factors which influence educational attainment. The arguments imply that we should think of young people not as ā€˜pupilsā€™, in the sense of a transparent space into which information can flow, but as ā€˜intelligent agentsā€™, that is, as active learners who have the potential to make all of their encounters with the world more intelligent. Because the kinds of learning that I describe take place as much outside the classroom as in it, the argument means that, over time, schools will become neighbourhood learning centres, offering learning opportunities to a wide range of people in their local areas. Their provision will be more diverse and more flexible, offering services to adults as well those of school age. Schools will become brokers as well as providers, forging partnerships with employers, voluntary and religious organisations, parents and young people, to extend and enhance opportunities for learning.
At the heart of the argument is the recognition that learning can take place in any situation, at any time, and that to improve the quality of education we must overcome the historical mistake of confusing formal, school-based instruction with the whole of education. This does not mean that learning is easy. Developing understanding and the capacity to thrive is challenging and difficult, and to do so successfully requires discipline, rigour and consistent effort. But if we continue to focus our efforts to improve the abilities of young people on the institutions which contain them, we will soon reach the limits of progress. If we want a quantum leap in educational performance, we must be prepared to think more radically, and to develop young peopleā€™s capacity to learn in society, rather than at one remove from it.
The last chapters of the book examine the implications of the argument for the way we organise and think about education as a whole. I argue that systems of assessment must become both more broad-ranging and more coherent, using more information and involving learners more actively in assessing themselves, as well as drawing on the judgement of a range of experts and authorities in the field.
Young people are not empty vessels waiting to be filled with the wisdom of ages. From the earliest age they begin to convert their experience into assumptions and theories about the world. Their learning should incorporate and reflect these assumptions, and challenge them to become deeper and more sophisticated. But too often, school-based instruction encourages them to place what they learn in a narrowly-bounded category, failing to give them the means with which to compare it to the other assumptions and experiences that make up their world view. Overcoming this failure is partly a question of good teaching, but it also depends on direct experience: the chance to test out formal knowledge in a range of circumstances, to observe other people using such knowledge in varied and valuable ways, and to learn how conflicting perspectives can be reconciled.
Developing understanding in this way, I argue, depends on our ability to create learning relationships: patterns of interaction which are meaningful because they facilitate the exchange of knowledge and insight, and the synthesis of such knowledge into wider understanding. If learning takes place in a wide range of contexts, we need to focus on the connections between people and contexts which support effective learning. Rather than thinking of these factors as characteristics of institutions, as we are used to doing with schools, we should see them as factors which support learning relationships.
This argument does not seek to denigrate the value which schools and teachers currently help to create. Many schools already excel at learning relationships. Centres of learning excellence have a vital place in the vision that emerges from this book. But reform must focus as much on the connections between educational institutions and the communities in which they sit as on the internal effectiveness of the institutions themselves.
The aim should be to make the most of the resources available to support learning, by making their provision more flexible, open and responsive to the needs of each individual learner. But it is impossible to do this while adults and professions retain tight control over exactly where, and how, each individual learns. Motivating young people to take their place in the world with intelligence and consideration for others depends on allowing them to take responsibility for what they do. But responsibility cannot be exercised without real choice. This, perhaps, is the greatest risk attached to changing our view of education in the ways that I argue we should: it requires us to take more notice of, and be more responsive to, what young people say about themselves, about us, and about the quality of their learning. If we want young people to be responsible, and to absorb what society values, they must be able actively to engage with it. Taking such a step is certainly a risk, but only when it has been taken will we truly have made the transition from an information society to a learning society.

2
THE CHALLENGES

I guess I could call myself smart. I mean I can usually get good grades. Sometimes I worry though, that Iā€™m not equipped to achieve what I want, that Iā€™m just a tape recorder repeating back what Iā€™ve heard. I worry that once Iā€™m out of school and people donā€™t keep handing me information with questions ā€¦ Iā€™ll be lost.
(Emily, 15)
Our growing preoccupation with education has produced a wide range of responses. In the UK, participation in higher and further education has increased dramatically. Standards of attainment in schools have, on the whole, risen: more pupils gain qualifications at ages 16 and 18. Control of education has been centralised. The Nati...

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