10 Implications To Consider Around What School Will Look Like in 2020

Over at ASCD’s Edge Walter McKenzie takes a look at how Andre Mamprin’s 6 Elements of  Knowledge Ecology Framework can inform the transformation of public education in the twenty-first century.  Mamprin has been studying organizational culture and knowledge management over the years, and he has developed this framework designed to transform top-down, hierarchical Industrial Age organizations to lean, informed, responsive organizations for the Information Age.

McKenzie offers these implications as we consider what school will look like by 2020.
Following some of his implications are my reactions.

1. Public education shares a common vision nationwide
• Does there really need to be a common vision for the nation, or could different education institutions have different visions?  What is the common vision you were thinking?  
2. Schools become a network of personal learning communities
• How are you envisioning a personal learning community?
3. Trust and risk-taking are modeled by everyone
4. District and building Leaders are facilitators of inquiry and innovation
5. Teachers are process experts, not content experts
• I love the idea of teachers as process experts but would perhaps change the title to learning facilitators and also, expand the idea of who the learning experts are.  They might be community members, students, experts who are skyped in or connected through webinars. It could be an OER class.  
6. Mentoring takes place at all levels, free of age and grade labels
7. Students and faculty use their own tools on an accessible campus network
• I also love the idea of personally owned devices being allowed. I can’t believe districts like the one I work in ban kids from bringing digital devices to school. Our disconnected school environments are not preparing students for their connected world.  
8. Students and faculty are free to pursue research based on insight
9. Students and faculty create and publish new knowledge
• Completely agree that students and faculty must be creating and publishing new knowledge.  This takes care of itself if we take this a step further and just say that there shouldn’t be a line between school life and real life.  If it’s not directly relevant for life (not someday, but today), stop wasting the time of our students.
10. Public education is a clean, clear connection to college and career readiness
• I’d recommend you revise #10 to just career readiness.  As I wrote in my Huff Po education piece (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-nielsen/the-college-myth-why-coll_b_827633.html), college is not a path that brings more profit or opportunity for everyone. Assuming it’s the magic ticket is misleading and should not be the destiny for all. 

To read the whole post visit Walter McKenzie’s Knowledge - Diversity - Ecology.

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