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What will the future of education look like?
Stephen Dexter, secondary school principal at Stamford American International School in Singapore shared with The Educator Asia that schools are “going to turn from a place where students go to learn things to more of a space”.
We sat with Dexter, who has more than 20 years’ experience in education, to find out how education will likely transform and what school leaders can do to prepare for the changes.
“I don’t believe that [schools as a place of learning] is going to go away anytime soon because there are a lot of social reasons why we need places for young people to go to – there are obvious things like performing arts, athletics, community engagement – but the things that people do at these spaces are going to shift,” he said.
Particularly, he sees secondary students spending less time engaged in specific subject lessons, such as math, chemistry or English class, and being more engaged in broad-themed topics that will challenge the way they think.
“There’s going to be more community partnership, interaction with industry and less of a student being in front of a teacher getting knowledge because they can get a lot of knowledge on their own.”
Student learning will thus have to be approached in a more creative and interdisciplinary way. This will change the role of the teacher “dramatically”, Dexter added. He foresees that educators graduating from teaching schools will be more focused in tackling the “how” in learning.
“They’re going to have to know how to create situations where students are going to be challenged with a variety of competencies and learning disciplines, and be more broad-based, interdisciplinary and more of a facilitator of learning rather than a content or subject expert,” he said.
The role of the leader
With learning and teaching bound to shift in the next decade or so, how can educators prepare for the transformation?
The secondary school principal believes that it has to start with leadership – and the importance of making time to push for change. He is painfully aware of the weight of the task but is adamant about its necessity, which is why he does it “on the side”.
“[Establishing innovative programs can be] somewhat experimental – they take time. You need to train teachers; you need to educate your community; you have to demonstrate success and show what success looks like…you also have to satisfy things like the SATs,” Dexter said.
“You still need to train students to be able to pass the industry standards to show the world that they can do other things as well. You can’t just go into a project-based school environment and have the students fail at the industry standard.”
Which is why he thinks that one of the best ways to push for change is to pilot small projects and scale them up as opposed to trying to transform a school wholesale.
One example of a successful change model is the American School of Bombay, shared Dexter.
The school established a different structure with staffing that is geared towards innovative practice and piloting of new projects. They brought in alumni and industry experts and prototyped a new teaching model on the side, before scaling things up.
This way, Dexter said, was better than gathering the teachers when they’re tired at the end of the day and try to introduce a new untested model.
“The schools that are really changing the industry are the ones that do it in-house but on the side, and they pilot, experiment and show some research as well as their outputs. Then they try to scale it up with people who want to be part of it.”
He shared with us that he is personally “not quite there yet” in terms of building a successful change model but is always looking to build and create innovative programs for the school.
He tries to tackle the task “on the side” while also connecting with bodies that are trying to change the education model, such as the New England Association of Secondary Schools and Colleges in the US.
The association has built an alternative model which aims to change accreditation so that schools would need to change their structure to meet the competencies, learning outcomes and impact of education.
Churning good grades no longer enough
Change is thus inevitable for almost every aspect of education, which is why Dexter is a firm advocate of leading the charge.
“The job of the leader is to create a vision and demonstrate in a meaningful way what success can look like because ensuring that students are just doing well in class and getting good grades is no longer [our main] job.
“The leader in education now has to be able to demonstrate in a much more creative and inspirational way that children are learning, and not just through a very simple formula of kids going to class and having their teacher teaching them things.
“We have to paint that vision and have the courage to make some people angry because it’s different and change can be scary.”
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How Asia’s best schools train their teachers