Education for the knowledge economy

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper reports aspects of a study that addresses shifting priorities in education and training that are consequences of historical change. It deals broadly with teacher renewal, in an environment where there is sufficient policy research, experience in dealing with school-based ‘problems’ and speculative writing to underscore a need for a change in what is traditionally detailed as the role and function of education, schooling and teaching. The paper contrasts teaching and schooling as it currently exists in an emerging ‘Knowledge Economy’ where new electronic communication media have emerged; there is a rapid, and increasing pace of technological innovation and shorter technology and product life cycles and new economic communities, whose prime function is the distribution and exchange of goods across national and continental borders. Given these conditions, the prognosis is that a ‘worker’ in the ‘Knowledge Economy’ will have characteristics including: an ability to adapt to constant change and uncertainty; capacity to work in knowledge and service based economies; and participate as constructive members in cohesive social communities. Accordingly, the paper proposes that such social changes and the emergence of the Knowledge Economy will entail a different education and schooling system to that which presently exists. The main premise of this proposition is that current schooling and teaching reflects the features of an industrial society and if society has changed, so then should the education and schooling system. In turn the associated teacher education system is also affected. More specifically, the paper reports the impact that an emerging Knowledge Economy is having on schooling and teaching and by association, that of teacher education.