Future-ready schools are now developing globally. Charting the future means having a clear vision and strategy on how to get there. This involves recognizing existing strengths and past successes, and adapting these so that schools enable students to have knowledge, competences and skills for the world of tomorrow.

Leaders of future-ready schools know that children now starting school now will likely end their working lives around 2080. Parents increasingly see that the world of work is dramatically changing
and that their children need a school to provide learning experiences that they themselves did not have when they were at school.

School leaders recognize that these new generation parents are increasingly active in questioning the old school models, and are making decisive choices often at considerable cost about where and how they want their children to study, learn and develop for their future lives.

360° is about re-shaping our schools today so they embrace the future, pedagogically strong, financially secure, and sustainable. Extending over about two months the 360° process enables
leadership to:

• Engage with external evaluation of existing operations which identifies strengths and any shortcomings
• Consider strategic and practical steps to become future-ready, stronger and even more successful.

The 360° process involves two stages:

• Diagnostics
• 3-5 Year Strategic Foresight Plan

Diagnostics

The Diagnostics focus on

• Where are we now?
• Where do we want to be?

according to 70 Key Development Indicators (KDI’s) covering aspects of the school as a professional community, teaching and learning, image and branding, and future-readiness.

Strategic Foresight Plan

The Strategic Foresight Plan focuses on

• What do we need to do now to be a high-performing School
  of the Future?

The plan describes actions that can be taken in the school to strengthen any Key Development Indicators which are identified by the external experts, in agreement with school leadership, as
needing attention to ensure future readiness.

In the 1970s interdisciplinary learning emerged and quickly became controversial. Now, 50 years later, especially after the expansion of hybrid teaching during the pandemic, it is rapidly becoming a signature educational driver in leading edge schools and colleges.

Interdisciplinarity is central to academic innovation because many subjects in schools and discipline-based degrees do little to develop the social and analytic competences needed for contemporary life and career development.

MED is providing professional development training for academics in North America to develop interdisciplinary learning experiences, and for teachers across Europe through phenomenon-based learning.

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Interdisciplinariedad – El Nuevo Zeitgeist Educativo

En la década de 1970 surgió el aprendizaje interdisciplinario y rápidamente se convirtió en un asunto controvertido. Ahora, 50 años después, especialmente después de la expansión de la enseñanza híbrida durante la pandemia, es un elemento educativo característico en las escuelas y universidades de vanguardia.

La interdisciplinariedad es fundamental para la innovación académica porque muchas materias en las escuelas y títulos basados en disciplinas hacen poco poe desarrollar las competencias sociales y analíticas necesarias para la vida contemporánea y el desarrollo profesional.

MED brinda capacitación de desarrollo profesional para académicos en América en el desarrollo de experiencias de aprendizaje interdisciplinario y para maestros en toda Europa a través del aprendizaje basado en fenómenos.

Event opening speech for NIS centre of Excellence, Kazakhstan in seminar on teaching, artificial intelligence and the future.

Event opening speech at University of Guadalajara, Mexico on how experience of the pandemic provides opportunities for change management processes in higher education.

July 2021, Spanish sub-titles, 17 mins

Excessive noise reduces the capacity to think, learn, and particularly to remember. Controlling noise is one of the most urgent and meaningful actions we can do to improve learning outcomes in our schools.

Read more on the blog at Realvi.

In a world full of myths about learning languages, there are some fundamental truths.
There are two ways to learn a language
we can learn in a language, or we can learn about a language
In is the natural way – just like we learnt our first language
About is the unnatural way – what we call traditional language teaching

Learning in a language enables you to have one unique powerful thinking system
Learning about the language usually means you have two disconnected systems in your brain
One system is additive – the two languages work together
Two systems are subtractive – one language can work against the other
Learning in a language helps you think creatively and develop new ideas
and now, research shows the advantages we experience if we learn language in a natural way

These are how we perceive the world around us and solve problems
how we think more flexibly and deeply
the way we remember things
how we filter and process information
and how we understand, relate to, and communicate with other people

Learning the unnatural way – learning about a language – is now the most common approach in our schools
Learning the natural way – learning real things and language at the same time, has become the signature language learning approach of the 21st century

One positive experience of 2020 has been to recognise how inter-connectedness underpins not only our health and security, but also how we teach and learn. Education in 2020 became a profound stress-test where inadequate teaching approaches failed to migrate into rapidly introduced hybrid contexts. It revealed the success of integrated approaches such as CLIL which promote multiple types of inter-connectedness. 2021 brings us a window of opportunity to realize meaningful and sustained improvement in education. Now we can move forward with even more certainty on how to realistically systemise bilingual education in our schools and universities.

The 2020 experience of the rapid transition to remote teaching has been demanding for both educators and students. Studies in different countries indicate certain needs that now need to be either introduced or enhanced in teaching. These apply to physical-presence class teaching as well as HyFlex contexts where teaching and learning is applied through synchronous online, synchronous in-person, asynchronous, or variations of these.

Why language education often fails and how language learning brings us profound advantages

En español
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Advances in technology continue to reveal scientific understanding of the advantages on mind and brain for those who know more than one language.

A 2020 update review of the landmark 2009 meta-study on neuroscientific insights into languages and creativity produced for the European Commission, has just been published in Finland.

The Impact of Language Learning on Mind and Brain reveals six key advantages for people who use more than one language.

The advantages relate to our neural architecture, our memory, how we think, learn, understand other people, solve problems, and safely navigate the information-rich digital world.

The scientific evidence-base on languages, mind and brain has expanded in the last decade.

This science provides insights on the design of educational practices. One of these is to re-think the teaching of languages as separate subjects. Another is to consider providing opportunities for young people to learn topics through an additional language.

This paper provides a succinct summary of the key issues involved in understanding success drivers for languages in education. It argues that knowledge of more than one language, even if partial, can provide people with advantages not accessible to monolinguals.

https://educlusterfinland.fi/bilingual-advantage

Information: david.marsh@educluster.fi

Marsh D., Díaz-Pérez, W., Frigols Martín, M.J., Langé, G., Pavón Vázquez, V., Trindade, C. (2020) The Bilingual Advantage: The Impact of Language Learning on Mind & Brain. Jyväskylä: EduCluster Finland, University of Jyväskylä Group