Our attention now shifts to Education 4.0, which puts premium on mobile learning, individualized learning playlist, flexible and customized curriculum and hands-on and practical application of knowledge.
Society will be de-schooled to give way to a diverse learning eco-system driven by learners and their interests and no longer will schools dominate decisions about what and how to learn. Credentials of mastery can be obtained from diverse providers and platforms. Teachers’ role will be challenged by other learning agents. The entry of iGen learners in our schools challenges us to imagine how education of the future would look like.
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Are Philippine schools designed to cater to this new type of learners? Do we have the teachers that are fit for iGen learning requirements? Are Philippine teacher education institutions (TEIs) producing the competent teachers the country needs?
We need teachers who will not just be facilitators of learning, but also innovation catalysts. We definitely cannot future-proof our schools overnight. Nor can we immediately make innovators out of our teachers. The culture nor the system is simply not there yet. We must therefore undertake a major rebooting now to upgrade our education ecosystem.
The question now is how do we make teacher education future-proof?
We need to re-define even re-invent teacher education vis-à-vis the future.
As Rothman advised, teachers need to be provided with meaningful, tech-focused, professional development as they transition from a traditional learning model to one that is transformational.
The teacher education curriculum should be innovative enough to include, for example, a) coding and application development to equip our pre-service teachers with the skills needed to develop digital solutions to their teaching-learning problems; b) design thinking for innovation; and c) teaching applications that would work best in handling the “content of the future” using software, hardware, digital, technological and social media.
There is a need to build an education ecosystem that involves not only the schools to take care of the education of our children, but also a strong support from the business sector, the community and the parents. As the saying goes, “It takes a village to educate a child.”
We need to level up the technology infrastructure in the country to reach even the remotest barangay in the country for inclusive education to serve its purpose. Learners from these geographically-challenged areas must also benefit from Education 4.0. No one should be left behind.
We cannot continue doing more of the same things. The time is now to start the process of re-booting our education. We should stop playing catch up.
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Ma. Antoinette C. Montealegre, D.A. is the officer-in-charge at the Office of the President of the Philippine Normal University and the concurrent Vice President for Academics. - Ma. Antoinette C. Montealegre, D.A.