Recipes for Systemic Change - Helsinki Design Lab

Challenge Excerpt57a dynamic culture of complexity that the children of todaymust learn to navigate if they are to succeed.Education must leverage diversity and differences amongindividuals into opportunities for greater achievement.Its challenge is to adjust existing structures to better servestudents of unique cultural backgrounds, talents and intelligences.A successful education system in the future willbe defined by how well it handles diversity and enables allstudents to participate and thrive.At the core of this challenge is the transition from amonolithic, institutional definition of education to a moreholistic understanding of learning. Today’s classrooms mustevolve and expand into more comprehensive and adaptablelearning environments, reaching more students moreeffectively. Furthermore, classrooms must be seen as onlyone of many venues for learning. Doing so will only increasethe value education can deliver amid this emerging culturaland economic landscape. Education cannot afford to becomecomplacent nor remain static.Discrete skills such as reading, writing and arithmeticmust now be complemented by fuzzy competencies such asthe ability to deal with uncertainty, communicate acrosscultures and integrate disparate kinds of expertise. Studentsmust learn to navigate faster-paced and more fluid work environments,where divergent thinking, creative problem solvingand flexibility are not only valued but highly rewarded.In the last century, education was developed to meetthe curricular needs of the industrial age. Now that we haveentered a different era, education systems have not yet fullyadapted to the pressures and opportunities of the new economyand its more challenging emergent landscape. Studentscannot only think of themselves as members of their communityor nation, but must instead gain deep understandingof their responsibilities as global citizens.Although current dropout rates are modest by internationalstandards, Finland cannot afford to wait to see if thisis an early indicator of a growing trend. There is a need fora genuine and fundamental shift away from a highly effective,but arguably brittle system toward one that can deliverworld-leading education to a diversifying population. Theconsequences of inaction are real.The opportunity for this Studio was to frame this transformationand identify the key dynamics within educationthat will help develop an improved system for today and thefuture—one that enables youth to keep pace in a changingworld.This excerpt is taken from the Education StudioChallenge Briefing which is reprinted in theappendix. > P141 for more.