Outline of Issue

The world of education is like an island where people cut off from the world are prepared for
life by exclusion from it. Maria Montessori. (Montessori, 1949) This statement remains true
today. To authentically educate a children for the future there needs to be realistic
opportunities to be immersed in the current concrete world not to be excluded from it.
The issue facing education today is that we need a paradigm shift in how education is provided
previously:
1. Students had no choice but to sit in classrooms and diligently work through set
exercises or activities a trend that was actively supported by family opinion and social
expectation of the time.
2. Society and parents actively supported the schooling of the child and not all students
were expected to go on to higher education.
3. Schools
were
preparing
the
majority
of
students
for
an
industrial/agricultural/manufacturing workforce.
Today the context in which education is set has radically changed:
1. Children attending schools come from a far more diverse range of family conditions
and backgrounds then previously.
2. Many children come from single parents families experiencing difficult economic
issues or both parents may work long hours or have students heavily involved in
structured after school activities which leads to less parental support.
3. Parental expectation is that children will be taught at school and any discrepancies are
the responsibilities of the school/teacher and not the child, therefore this is often less
support for the teachers/schools.
4. For the most part, teachers havent been trained to teach students how to think. The
textbooks and tests we have used in the past were not designed to teach and assess
the ability to reason or analyse-and they remain substantially the same today.
(Wagner, 2008)
5. Children have more privileges and access to knowledge then every before but less
guidance on how to interpret it. Children have more free time but engage in less active
types of entertainment.
6. Also in schools there is now an increase in the variety of students with widely ranging
abilities and backgrounds who expect to stay at school.
7. Curriculums are often diverse but crowded with multiple pressures being applied from
a range of sources.
8. This generation does not use technology they live it. (Rosen, 2007, p. 2)
9. There is no one best way to teach, just as theres no one best way to learn (Ferris,
2011, p. 310) technology gives us the advantage of being able to engage and
individualise to a greater extent.
10. The fundamental point being missed to summarise the words of John Seely Brown in
(Wagner, 2008) he says that the older generation defined themselves by what they
wear and own; this generation defines itself by what it creates and co-creates with
others.

These components combine to place all sorts of pressures on the teacher, students and the
education system. The outmoded teacher talk system no longer works when students are
more used to an instant style of information access they no longer need to rely on the teacher
to be the provider of knowledge. According to (Wagner, 2008) the major problem in
education is the adults, not the students. They came through the system, and they were
successful...It's all they know. This is apparent in the fact that despite some changes in
schooling structure in reality the actual context of the education system and how it is
presented in the majority of schools remains the same. Industrially based, one age per class,
a pass fail/mentality, teacher as authority and student as learner. I would liken many of our
classrooms today to that of an 18th Century cage at the zoo. If you compare an 18th Century
cage at the zoo with the enclosures more commonly seen in the modern zoos of today and
relate that comparison to many of our schools it is obvious that we are still in that transition
phase. Ive use the pictures below to highlight the difference between the two and to show
that when viewed through this lens schools still have a long way to go.

Figure 1 18th Century Classroom

Figure 3 18th Century Zoo Enclosure

Figure 5 20th Century Zoo "Enclosure Example 2

Figure 2 20th Century Classroom

Figure 4

20th Century Zoo "Enclosure Example 1

Figure 6 Montessori working on own topic in multi age environment

Figure 6 illustrates a Montessori classroom with a three year age span, teacher as guide and
truly individualised program is probably the closest to the ideal model for the 21 st Century.
However this model for various reasons has failed to translate into the public sector and
therefore is only accessible to a few due to limited availability, cost and the requirement for
highly skilled and trained Montessori staff.
While it may take some time to design and developed buildings for schools that are similar
to the examples shown in Figures 7 and 8 (taken from (Gregory, 2011) ) technology and the
right mindset from educators will enable a figurative transformation through the use of the
computer and access to web 2 tools.

Figure 7Fuji Kindergarten in Tokyo ground view

Figure 8Fuji Kindergarten in Tokyo aerial view

The prime issues then are:

Need to be a Paradigm Shift in the way education is provided. To summarize John

Seely-Brown (Seely-Brown, Symposium and public lecture , 2013, p. 13) the world is
changing and changing exponentially. It is no longer enough to know how to know
future citizens of the world need be prepared to function in a world of scalable
learning. (Seely-Brown, Symposium and public lecture , 2013) Students need to be
able to know how to thinkto reason, analyse, weigh evidence, problem solve no
longer the domain of the elite they are essential survival skills for all of us. (Wagner,
2008)
Students are Tech savvy but not media literate. Digital natives, Millennials,
Neo-millennials, the Net Generation, all labels given to the children of today for
whom technology is both vital and invisible. (Ebben, Kivatisky, & Panici, 2011, p. 172).
For the students technology is a part of their everyday world it is not more any more
amazing to them as colour TV was to us it just simply is. Access and utilization of
many of these tools by students however is primarily done for entertainment
purposes. Students are not media literate What we as educators need to do it to
utilise these tools of technology to enable our students our students to become truly
media literate as they function in an online collaborative, research-based environment
researching, analysing, synthesizing, critiquing, evaluating and creating new
knowledge! (21st Century Schools, 2010).

(Barber & Cooper, 2012, p. 8) propose that tools like blogs and wikis allow teachers to create
simulating learning opportunities that do not undermine the importance of communication
and collaboration in the construction of knowledge, but positively emphasise and reinforce
it. They go on to further say that such tools, used well, allow us to couch learning in creative,
problem based situations that engage children in authentic activities that align well with the
key objectives of the primary curriculum.