The future is uncertain, but it doesn’t arrive unannounced. Signals of change are powerful early indicators of what lies ahead, and anyone hoping to shape the future should take notice and consider what these signals might tell us.
KnowledgeWorks’ recently published forecasts – Charting a New Course for Education and Nurturing What’s Next: Imagining the Future of Education in Southwestern Pennsylvania – both include signals of change and show the ways trends are unfolding, how leaders and communities are enacting plans in light of these insights and the emerging issues that we might need to contend with as these changes play out.
Signals of change
The signals of change highlighted below are examples of emerging shifts and can serve as a guide for anticipating what’s next and influencing the future.
The Southwest Colorado Education Collaborative: Nine school districts in rural Colorado banded together to provide learners with opportunities to take their learning beyond the traditional classroom and into nature in partnership with higher education and business leaders.
Assemble’s Ramp Up Fellowship: This fellowship program teaches 18–24-year-olds how to work with youth while teaching in out-of-school time and community spaces.
The Watson Institute: This network of private schools created an immersive learning environment for special needs students that leverages laser projectors, fog and vibration machines and sensory inputs.
River Grove Elementary School: In response to years of close encounters with extreme weather and wildfires, Oregon’s Lake Oswego School District opened a 79,000-square-foot facility that can function during prolonged, large-scale power outages resulting from extreme weather and withstand earthquakes.
Making sense of signals of change
Each signal is intriguing on its own and can spark ideas, questions and conversation. Taken together, they show how some leaders are preparing for the future and invite others to reflect proactively on their own plans with a future lens.
How might we leverage partnerships in creative ways that build our organization’s resilience for the future and serve students’ current and emerging needs?
Each of the signals above shows schools or education organizations building relationships with other providers or collaborators to build approaches they couldn’t build on their own. As the landscape of learning providers expands and schools and communities contend with ongoing disruptions, networks and partnerships can create buffers and provide stability for learners.
What are our most pressing needs and highest aspirations? Are there ways technology could get us closer to where we need to be?
Each of the signals above shows technology being leveraged in creative ways, but always with purpose and in service of something larger. Whether meeting the needs of students with special needs, connecting young people to opportunity or building climate-ready infrastructure, technology can be leveraged to meet student needs and realize the aspirations of the learning organization rather than being treated as the end goal.
As challenges mount and resources become uncertain, how might we achieve multiple goals with one solution?
Each of the signals above show how a single approach might serve multiple aims. Challenges such as teacher shortages, social fragmentation, reduced funding for special education and extreme weather do not occur in isolation. Effectively managing these challenges and finding opportunities within them requires approaches that account for the complexity of the current landscape. Identifying solutions that can meet a variety of needs can increase the impact of any intervention.
Shaping the future today
Shaping the future requires noticing change and reflecting on what it might mean for the future. Clues to what’s on the horizon and how we might shape it are all around, if we take the time to look.
