The Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication, from the flagship landgrant university of Texas, Texas A&M University at College Station, as well as the Association of Professional Futurists in the USA, invited me to share my thoughts about the future of education. Inclined to see this question in the perspective of competence domains which will be important during the next decade or two, I have brought together a number of these domains which we have been and still are studying at the Education and Competence Studies group of Wageningen University.These domains can also be framed as future-oriented learning outcomes, educational objectives, or as 21st century skills.
- Ambiguity handling
- Argumentation
- Balancing interests
- Complex problem solving
- Computational thinking
- Creativity – creation
- Diversity policy
- Entrepreneurship
- Ethics – integrity
- Global competence
- Inclusion
- Intuition
- Mindfulness
- Negotiating meaning
- Professional identity
- Resilience
- Sustainability
- Transformation
- Uncertainty handling
Some of these competence domains are featured in the edited collection which I am working, which will appear in 2016. Now that this list is compiled, a next thing to do is to validate this and to elaboratet in terms of descriptions and examples. The way to teach and learn these competencies is also a challenging issue. I am not sure whether the futuristic education technologies which are being developed now, in which we may see:
- Telepresence of avatar teachers and mentors
- Virtual reality based working groups
- Bionic brains with nano memory cells and
- Intelligent learning robot-supported performance
may enable this, as we speak about inherently open competence domains, whereas the advanced technology-supported learning solutions are rather focused on closed subject matter related content domains.
