UWCSEA WHITE PAPER 6 May 2022 EDUCATION AS A FORCE: equipping changemakers for purposeful futures
Building the Future of Education, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2021
“We are not the victims of change or its powerless spectators; we constantly shape the future ourselves. The future is always in the making, and it is our work.”
“The future will always surprise us,” Schleicher says. “We don’t know the future, but it’s very clear; we understand the broad trends that influence that future, and that these could shape different futures. The better we become at imagining alternative futures and understanding their consequences, the better we will be prepared for the future that eventually arises.”1
At the climax of celebrations to mark 50 years of UWC South East Asia (UWCSEA) in Singapore, the College convened a forum of students, teachers, alumni, parents, working professionals and thought leaders in education from around the world to share their thinking on the topic of Learning to Shape the Future.
Experts agree that the world is changing fast. Some of the jobs once sought after by baby boomers, millennials and Generation Z are starting to morph or disappear entirely, and new types of jobs are constantly being created.
The aim was to seed conversations about the next 50 years of teaching and learning at UWCSEA by honouring a long-held belief that a diversity of viewpoints is at the heart of shaping an inclusive holistic education.
There is an urgent need for the workforce of today to upskill and reskill to close a growing gap created by technology, according to advisory firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. The company’s Global Chairman, Bob Moritz says the future of work is the “biggest societal challenge” of our time.2
Andreas Schleicher Director for Education and Skills, OECD
TRENDS SHAPING SOCIETAL CHANGE
An unknowable future
In his keynote address at the UWCSEA Forum Learning to Shape the Future in April 2022, titled Learning for a High Tech Era, Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) outlined several macro-level drivers of change. Among them, how climate change will disrupt our lives a lot more than the Covid-19 pandemic already has, and how advancements in artificial intelligence will lead to a growing number of jobs being automated; meaning that many of the skills that were once considered essential for a given career could soon become obsolete.
It’s a period of change that Schleicher compares to the 18th-century Industrial Revolution when mechanisation and large-scale manufacturing rendered obsolete the craft-production skills of many workers in Europe and the United States. “It created so much social pain,” Schleicher says, “because they were not prepared for the new ways of working.”
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“The better we become at eventuallythebethetheirandalternativeimaginingfuturesunderstandingconsequences,betterwewillpreparedforfuturethatarises.”
He highlighted a trend in economic growth drivers away from tangible assets, to intangibles like knowledge— which can be attributed to the rise of big technology firms like Facebook and Google. He also pointed out that companies are no longer created by big industry, but rather by big ideas.
In order to navigate the unknown, business leaders and, more recently, educators have taken a view that has proven to be a reliable constant since it was first conceived in the late 1980s: that the world is volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous (VUCA).
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Ellie Alchin Director of Teaching and Learning, UWCSEA Dover
The changing way of work
In response to this pivotal shift in mindset, the World Economic Forum created the Good Work Alliance, a partnership which aims to leverage a “post-pandemic reset” opportunity to establish new work standards that ensure “a healthy, resilient and equitable future of work.”4
The CEO of LinkedIn, Ryan Rolansky calls it the Great Reshuffle: “a moment of change unlike anything we’ve seen before in the history of work … a time when everyone is rethinking everything.”3
MAKING SENSE OF THE FUTURE
While multiple trends point to the fact that the world of work is in rapid flux, they can only go so far in revealing what the future might actually hold. Of course, it is unpredictable. The demand for different types of technical knowledge and skills will continue to evolve along with the approach to work itself. Traditional linear career paths in a single industry will continue to make way for zigzagging pathways consisting of multiple roles and industries, and rounds of reskilling and upskilling.5
Alongside a changing job landscape is a significant shift in the way people approach work. The Covid-19 pandemic mainstreamed remote and hybrid work and the disruption drew employers and employees to question—like never before—what it means to have a more balanced and holistic approach to an individual's professional life that accounts for wellbeing, inclusion, equity, purpose and values.
“To educators and education policy makers, this is a troubling message. How can they educate learners for jobs that have not yet been created, to use technologies that have not yet been invented, or to solve social problems we cannot yet imagine?” wrote the OECD in its 2021 report Building the Future of Education. “But we are not the victims of change or its powerless spectators; we constantly shape the future ourselves. The future is always in the making, and it is our work.”6
“The whole idea of our navigategotusingthebeingcurriculumconcept-basedisaboutpreparedforunexpected,andwhatyou'vetotohelpyoutheworld.”
In 2011
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The Qualities and Skills identified in the Profile converge strongly with those unveiled in a 2021 study by the OECD that showed qualities such as curiosity, responsibility, sociability, empathy and emotional control were as important as cognitive skills in providing children a “fully packed tool box” to help them navigate the world as adults.8
Alchin says that while UWCSEA has always been teaching these skills, articulating the curriculum led to an important development. “We realised that traditional subject areas could be the vehicle through which we develop transferable skills. So while we, of course, teach for conceptual understanding, we also teach so that students will be learning collaboration in a Maths classroom or empathy in a History classroom,” says Alchin, who has had a 25-year relationship with the College. This holistic, interdisciplinary approach has allowed for teaching to be adaptive and responsive to world events where appropriate, so that content remains current. For example, studying the war in Ukraine as a way of Educating for a VUCA world UWCSEA Profile Statements 2021
Extracted from UWCSEA Guiding
Nick Alchin, Head of East Campus, describes them as timeless skills that will remain relevant regardless of how the world changes. “Being a decent human being, a critical thinker, being able to communicate your point while being an active listener; these skills are not going out of fashion, and they never will.”
“Our decision to move from content to concept-based is directly about preparing kids for life beyond school.
The curriculum articulation project led to a more intentional focus on developing social and emotional Qualities and Skills that would prepare students to navigate challenges throughout their lives. These were embedded into the UWCSEA Profile ensuring that students would have the opportunity to learn and practice them in all five areas of the Learning Programme, and to reinforce this learning through participation in the College community.
UWCSEA got to work on a significant undertaking to articulate its K–12 curriculum, bringing a more deliberate approach to empowering students to live the UWC Mission throughout their lives. It was this six-year process that led to the embedding of the College’s Educational Goal, Values and Mission Competencies, and the wide adoption of a concept-based approach to teaching and learning in which students are introduced to concepts and conceptual understandings as they engage in knowledge and skill learning.7
FUTURE-PROOF QUALITIES AND SKILLS
What's absolutely central to concept-based understanding and learning is that it’s about developing transferable understanding that can be applied in new contexts. The whole idea of our concept-based curriculum is about being prepared for the unexpected, and using what you've got to to help you navigate the world,” says Ellie Alchin Director of Teaching and Learning, Dover Campus.
“We realised that traditional subject areas could be the vehicle through which we transferabledevelopskills.”
Another key piece, she says, is helping students to understand their own likes, dislikes, passions and values.
“If we help students to be able to recognize systems, understand how parts can connect in non-linear ways to produce unintended consequences, and equip them to be able to develop a toolkit of ways to influence systems, then we can help them ride the wave of complexity that they may encounter when they leave school.”
Carla Marschall, Director of Teaching and Learning at East Campus, says agency and ownership is a key piece that will continue to define a UWCSEA education regardless of what the future might look like. She describes the teaching of systems thinking in many different parts of the learning programme as a good example of why, because being effective in a VUCA environment stems partly from understanding the interconnectedness of the world and the complex interplay of systems.
4 | UWCSEA White Paper 6 understanding conflict. “Why did it happen? What are the historical roots? And it's not to say that this conflict is more important than, say, what's happening in Syria or parts of northern Kenya. We're responsive to world events because they allow us to motivate and inspire and allow students to see the real-world relevance of their studies,” says Alchin.
AGENCY AND OWNERSHIP
Nick Alchin Head of UWCSEA East “Agency implies a sense of responsibility to participate in the world and, in so doing, to influence people, events and circumstances for the better.”
The Future of Education and Skills: Education 2030, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 2018
A concept-based approach also gives students agency and ownership over their thinking, which is essential for navigating a VUCA world and the constant demands posed by a rapidly changing world of work. UWCSEA’s approach is mirrored in the work of many educational futurists, but perhaps best described by the OECD in the 2018 report The Future of Education and Skills: Education 2030: “Future-ready students need to exercise agency, in their own education and throughout life. Agency implies a sense of responsibility to participate in the world and, in so doing, to influence people, events and circumstances for the better. Agency requires the ability to frame a guiding purpose and identify actions to achieve a goal.”
Importantly, students learn to transfer their understanding to different environments and other parts of the UWCSEA Learning Programme. They might draw on or further develop their Qualities and Skills during an excursion as part of the Outdoor Education programme or when making choices and commitments to external organisations in the Service programme. The Activities they choose might help them hone in on their desires and passions, and find their tribe.
As the founder of a multi-billion dollar business, Li’s remarks underscore how much the world of work has expanded from rewarding technical skills and know-how to placing importance on values, behaviours, attitudes and dispositions as an indicator of future success.
Helping students to develop these Qualities and Skills in addition to gaining knowledge and understanding is a key facet of a UWCSEA education as it strives to equip individuals not just for university but to mobilise their learning to shape a better world throughout their lives.
At UWCSEA’s Forum Learning to Shape the Future
“When you enter the working world, I hope you will do so with your values intact, I hope you will work more on your soft skills, not only worrying about your hard skills, and I hope that you will take every chance you get to use new technologies to uplift others.”9
Forrest Li Founder, Chairman and CEO, Sea
Forrest Li, Founder, Chairman and CEO of gaming and e-commerce company Sea, offered three pieces of advice to students which point to the importance of knowing oneself in the world of work:
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This building of character happens in many different ways. One entire strand of the five-part Learning Programme, Personal and Social Education, is dedicated to how students come to understand themselves and their relationships. Through age-appropriate group activities and mentoring, students learn how to communicate feelings and needs, solve conflicts, navigate relationships and take responsibility. They learn about self-management, wellbeing and leadership. Building confidence and resilience are key parts of the programme that set them up to take on challenges not just in their life at school, but also beyond.
BUILDING CHARACTER STRENGTHS
Getting to know oneself
“When you enter the working world, I hope you will do so with your values intact, I hope you will work more on your soft skills … and I hope that you will take every chance you get to use new technologies to uplift others."
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Nick Alchin, Head of East Campus, says there is a deliberate moral aspect to the design of courses and programmes developed by UWCSEA. “SEED is not just about running a business or thinking of an idea. It's about what effect a business will have on society and on other people. If that's built into the students’ assumption and their basic view of how they see the world, you're producing students who will go on and make the world a better place.”
The most recent course and programme developments in the Grade 9 and 10 High School programme on both Dover and East campuses build on decades of work in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary course and conceptbased curriculum design, some of which is outlined in the UWCSEA White Papers 1 through to 5.
Rather, it is about developing a disposition in students to feel responsible for shaping a better world in their future endeavours—whatever they may be—and to empower them to embrace the challenges this will pose by cultivating a strong sense of self, an adaptable and flexible mindset, an ability to think critically and consider diverse views and opinions.
EFFECTIVENESS IS INDIVIDUAL
Students’ skills, values, qualities and dispositions are also developed in indirect ways through unique interdisciplinary courses and real-world scenarios as evidenced in the below three courses designed by UWCSEA:
A project-based learning initiative in which students work collaboratively with some 17 partner organisations—from the Singapore Zoo to Mercy Relief—and emerge with inventions and ideas that challenge old ways of thinking.
1. Critical Perspectives, Grade 9 and 10, East Campus This interdisciplinary course explores identity and belief systems through the frame of Sustainable Development.
3. Change Makers, Grade 7, Dover Campus
As Li described in his talk, it was his love for gaming that led him to start Garena the company that eventually grew to become Sea. Its success validated his belief that ideals and dreams should drive careers. “If you try, you will always be able to find a way to work on things you care about,” he says, adding that when the company evaluates talent it values qualities like commitment, discipline, responsibility, collaborative skills and a willingness to learn over pure technical ability. “Because every industry is a team sport. No individuals can achieve great heights alone.”
“SEED is not just about running a business or thinking of an idea. It's about what effect a business will have on society and on other people.”
2. Social and Environmental Entrepreneurship Development (SEED), Middle School, East Campus This course teaches students about business and the importance of its impact on people, societies and the environment.
It’s important to note that the strong focus on morals and ethics stems from the UWC Mission which advocates for peace and sustainability, but it does not mean that graduates of UWCSEA are expected to take up jobs in NGOs or charities.
Nick Alchin Head of East Campus Courses for a better world
At the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Psychologist Professor Howard Gardner and his colleagues at The Good Project have been researching the question “What is good work?” for more than 25 years. One of their most important findings is that “good work” is composed of three E's:
• Ethics - workers have a sense of what it means to be ethical and behave in an ethical way10
“In Grade 10 we start telling students that you are not going to university just to get a career and that there are jobs that don't even exist yet in the world. So they start exploring their skills and thinking about the question: What problems do I want to solve in the world? In Grade 11, it becomes more individual where students examine their values and how they link with their skills, and then think about the problems they might want to solve,” says Shruti Tewari, Interim Head of University Advising at Dover StudentsCampus.receive guidance on fulfilling any practical requirements related to their choices while also learning how to prepare for uncertainties they might encounter at university and beyond.
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• Engagement - they care about their work and it has meaning for them
“It's about lighting a fire and building capacity for students to go out and do things that we can't even imagine.”
Pamela Kelly Wetzell Head of Advising,UniversityUWCSEA East Passion, purpose and good work
“We're trying to equip students with skills to navigate whatever they come across. So it is not about opening their heads and pouring new information in. It's really about lighting a fire or building capacity for them to go out and do things that we can't even imagine,” says Pamela Kelly Wetzell, Head of University Advising at East Campus.
His research, while predominantly US-based, revealed that in secondary and tertiary education “few outlets allow students to grapple with ambiguity, complexity, and their own opinions and beliefs.” These are essential components in preparing students to flourish in their work lives according to The Good Project, an initiative setup to fill this education gap.11
At UWCSEA students get an early and structured introduction to aligning their passions, skills, values and beliefs with possible career pathways. In High School, they are asked to think more seriously about how they see themselves shaping a better world, as they are given more freedom to tailor their remaining education and they embark on choosing universities and potential careers.
• Excellence - the worker knows what they’re doing
“We're looking at partnerships with NGOs, industry, universities and, of course, what matters to us as a school,” says Damian Bacchoo, High School Principal at East Campus. “For students to lead fulfilling and relevant lives we have to provide different ways to flourish, and work-aligned course development is going to be a real feature for us.”
ALIGNMENT THROUGH INTENTIONAL PARTNERSHIPS
As a College that’s committed to innovating in education, work to iterate the curriculum is ongoing. There’s a clear focus on being able to give students more choice in their educational pathway to match their different ways of learning. This sort of agency can lead to greater motivation to learn according to the OECD which says that, “These students are also more likely to have ‘learned how to learn’ – an invaluable skill that they can and will use throughout their lives.”12
In the past, conversations that suggested what was necessary for an education to prepare young people for the future world of work have tended to revolve around discussion of whether the curriculum would include topics like coding, AI, blockchain and frontier technologies. This expectation was driven, understandably, by the immediate need for skilled professionals who were able to create and navigate these new technologies. And while there is space for those topics to be explored in the curriculum, it is the timeless traits, the knowledge, skills, qualities and dispositions that allow students to excel in futures that are unknown. At UWCSEA these are captured in the Mission Competencies which are expressed when students mobilise their learning in complex, real-world situations in service of the Mission. For more detailed exploration of the Mission Competencies, please refer to UWCSEA White Paper 5 ENACTING A MISSION: individual competencies for a lifetime of peace.
The Future Extracted from UWCSEA Guiding Statements 2021 UWCSEA Mission Competencies
CONTINUOUS ITERATION
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The College has already launched UWCSEA-designed Courses for Grade 9 and 10 that align with the UWC Mission and offer an alternative, modular learning pathway to the examination based two-year (I)GCSE. As it looks to do the same for Grades 11 and 12 in the future, co-creating with entities outside of the educational world is likely to play a part.
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[5] Why Today's Professionals Are Taking The Career Road Less Traveled, Anant Agarwal, Forbes 2018 anantagarwal/2018/10/31/why-todays-professionals-are-taking-the-career-road-less-traveled/?sh=262846ea466bhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/
[1] Learning for a High Tech Era, Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) speaking at the UWCSEA Forum Learning to Shape the Future, April 2022 https://youtu.be/GLYE11AnO0Y
[8] OECD Findings: Learning that drives Student Success, Nick Alchin, October 2021 http://nickalchinuwcsea.blogspot.com/2021/10/oecd-findingslearning-that-drives.html
“This is an area where we need to be working in partnership and having our thinking informed by employers: for teachers to engage directly with employers who are already in some of the areas that are going to influence the world of work for the future, with the idea of co-creating specific curriculum. And, listening to students as to what they want to see reflected in the curriculum.”
[9] World of Work - Towards the Future, with Forrest Li, UWCSEA Forum To Shape The Future, 2022 https://youtu.be/3svUozzK2es
[3] Navigating the Great Reshuffle, Ryan Roslasnsky, CEO at LinkedIn, September 2021 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/navigating-great-reshuffle-ryanroslansky/ [4] Good Work Alliance, World Economic Forum https://www.weforum.org/projects/partnership-for-new-work-standards
Damian Bacchoo High School Principal, UWCSEA East
[7] Concept-based Teaching and Learning, UWCSEA Website https://www.uwcsea.edu.sg/our-big-ideas/cbtl
[11] Lesson Plans, The Good Project https://www.thegoodproject.org/lesson-plans
[2] Upskilling: Bridging the Digital Divide, PwC https://youtu.be/8HE43CFLiag
[12] Student Agency for 2030, Concept note. OECD, 2019 agency/Student_Agency_for_2030_concept_note.pdfhttps://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/teaching-and-learning/learning/student[13] DEI Gets Real, Dagny Dukach, Harvard Business Review, Feb 2022 https://hbr.org/2022/01/dei-gets-real
[10] Good Work For Our Time: From Ideas to Impact. Howard Gardner, Harvard Graduate School of Education, UWCSEA Forum To Shape The Future, 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0xJvDIcKY8
With a 60-year old Mission that has an orientation toward action, describing education as a force and defining peace and sustainability as enduring concerns that will lead to a better world, it could be said that UWCSEA was set up from the beginning to approach education with a focus on the future. But as the world of work continues to evolve through innovation, the impact of humanity and the forces of nature, education has to continue to adapt. “There is a role for schools to play. And I think we're on the cusp of that,” says Carma Elliot, UWCSEA College President.
“For students to lead fulfilling and relevant lives we have to provide different ways to flourish and work-aligned course development is going to be a real feature for us.”
[6] Building the future of education, OECD, 2021 https://www.oecd.org/education/future-of-education-brochure.pdf
Efforts are also underway to evaluate how to bring more diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) into the curriculum and to the College itself, following several watershed events in recent years and a renewed global effort in the world of work and beyond to finally implement DEI in a way that brings about real change.13
It’s about maintaining a dialogue with all the stakeholders, says Elliot, while keeping the Mission in mind.
Dover Campus 1207 Dover Road, Singapore 139654 T +65 6774 2653 | E uwcsea@uwcsea.edu.sg East Campus 1 Tampines Street 73, Singapore 528704 T +65 6305 5353 | E uwcsea@uwcsea.edu.sgOOTP-2122 Scan the QR code to read more on how UWCSEA is Reimagining Education. Scan the QR code to read all the UWCSEA White Papers.