Mapping Future Education and Training: Group Concept Mapping Study

The report presents the results from a Group Concept Mapping study conducted within the framework of ‘A foresight on Learning, Innovation and Creativity: New ways to learn new skills for future jobs (FORLIC)’ project. Thirteen experts with either technical or social sciences educational background mostly from academia and Europe participated in the study. They were asked to first individually generate ideas about the future of education. Then they had to first sort the ideas in groups according to similarity in meaning and rate them on two scales: importance and feasibility. Multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis were applied to depict emerging structure in the data. The analyses identified twelve clusters, namely: Technology in Education, Tools and services enhancing learning, Open education and resources, Assessment, accreditation and qualifications, Globalisation of education, Roles of institutions, Individual and profession driven education, Role of teacher, Life-long learning, Formal education goes informal, Individual and social nature of learning, and Epistemological and ontological bases of pedagogical methods. Among them, there are some more technology-oriented clusters such as ‘Technology in education’, and ‘Tools and services enhancing learning’. ‘Open education and resources’ bridges more technology-oriented clusters and the clusters ‘Globalization of education’ and ‘Assessment, accreditation and qualifications’. Technology facilitates the access of people to open education and resources. Open educational resources require adequate form for assessment and accreditation on both national and international level. There are further four clusters (‘Role of teachers’, ‘Role of Institutions’, ‘Individual and profession driven education’ and ‘Formal education goes informal’) which suggest a shift in taking responsibility for own education from institutions to individual. Finally there are two clusters (‘Individual and social nature of learning’ and ‘Epistemological and ontological bases of pedagogical methods’), which are learning-oriented. They discuss issues related to cognitive and social aspects of learning as a basis for the design of effective, efficient and appealing learning environment. One of the most important findings that emerged from the sorting is the very central place of the cluster ‘Life-Long Learning’. The cluster is a connection point for all other clusters. Life-long learning needs to take into account issues related to technology, learning and teaching, and change in the role of institutions, teachers and learners. The analysis of the rating data indicates that the learning-oriented clusters score higher on importance than the technology-oriented clusters but lower on feasibility.