2020 Forecast 
Creating the Future of Learning

Publication
September 20, 2010

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

  • Many of our fundamental relationships are being reimagined and recreated in ways that will disrupt the status quo
  • This forecast on the future of learning is organized around drivers of change, or major forces of transformation that will shape the future
  • This publication highlights the need for “schools” and centers of learning to be life-affirming organizations—for learners, their families, educators and the broader community

The publication 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning reveals how many of our fundamental relationships – with ourselves, within our organizations and with systems, societies and economies – are being reimagined and recreated in ways that will disrupt the status quo and challenge our usual disruptions.

The 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning is organized around six drivers of change, which are major forces of transformation that will shape our efforts to remake learning.

  1. Pattern Recognition: An extremely visible world demands new sensemaking
  2. The Maker Economy: Personal fabrication technologies and open-source principles democratize production and design
  3. A New Civic Discourse: Rearticulating identity and community in a global society
  4. Platforms for Resilience: Creating flexibility and innovation amid system failures
  5. Amplified Organization: Extended human capacity remakes the organization
  6. Altered Bodies: Experimenting at the intersection of environment and performance

Looking across the drivers of change, the 2020 Forecast highlights the need for “schools” and centers of learning to be life-affirming organizations—for learners, their families, educators and the broader community. It also emphasizes the need for learning to be an ongoing process whereby we all become engaged citizens of a global society. Third, and perhaps most importantly, this forecast illuminates the vital need for everyone concerned about learning—not only education “insiders” but also the influential innovators on the periphery—to get involved in actively creating the future of learning. Our ability to meet the next several decades’ social, economic, health and climate challenges depends on our heeding these messages from the future.

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