Paradoxes in Education (Learning in a Plural Society)

The world of 2017 is unrecognisable. In September, a robot, YuMi (with incredibly expressive nuances) will conduct a Tuscan orchestra while Andrea Bocelli sings Woman is Fickle (La donna è mobile) from Verdi’s Rigoletto. University students have invented a ‘rowbot’ which is faster than the Cambridge and Oxford boat crews in the annual regatta and they are challenging rivals to compete in a new hi-tech event: the Rowbot race. The Australians have developed Hadrian X which can lay 1000 bricks an hour – a task that would take two humans a day or two. De Laval International’s cow-milking robot is being deployed in America to challenge the humans! All routine jobs will soon be carried out by robotic machines. This situation is depressing students who are striving to find jobs and feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of life. Education promotes compliant rather than creative learners, employing out-dated teaching models, which aimed to prepare pupils for routine work in factories and other places. Today, these mundane tasks are being taken over by artificial intelligence, so greater attention to learning needs and personal development is required for higher-level work, to be ahead of our new robot rivals! Students must acquire excellent abilities to communicate, collaborate and create, for coping with a rapidly changing, challenging, complex world.

This book is the output of the first UK Doctorates by Professional Record, who have studied present society needs, formulating and implementing new ideas into their practice, to make learning more holistic, relevant and fun! Their suggestions encourage us to reflect, review and refine our present, outdated systems and produce a blue-print for a brave new world. Stories will make you smile at successes and wince at the failures. Sharing experiences, supports, energises and expands learning. The authors hope that students will not leave school hanging on the negatives but will in future be swinging with the positives, that a radical new approach to learning brings for them.

Chapters in this book are contributed by: Jonathan Adeniji, Max Coates, Richard Davies, Rob Loe, Pauline Lovelock, Riccarda Matteucci, Elizabeth Negus, Kim Orton, Luke Sage, Rosemary Sage, and Sera Shortland.