ONE WORLD ONE SCHOOL Education’s forthcoming fundamental transformation Mike Douse and Philip Uys Download - PDF for free http://www.globe-online.com/oneworldoneschool.pdf - Kindle and paperback https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0861B163X The authors have produced articles on various facets of education (for example: secondary curriculum, convivial pedagogy, educational psychology, educational planning, democracy) with each title including the phrase “in the Time of Digitisation”. By including ‘Douse’, ‘Uys’ and "in the Time of Digitisation’ in online searches in ResearchGate, Google Scholar and elsewhere, these may readily be accessed and enjoyed Suggested reference: Douse, M. & Uys, P.M. (2020). ONE WORLD ONE SCHOOL - Education’s forthcoming fundamental transformation. Online: self-published. ISBN: 9798626785883; ASIN: B0861B163X. Available http://www.globe- online.com/oneworldoneschool.pdf; Kindle and paperback https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0861B163X March 2020 ISBN: 9798626785883 ASIN of Kindle version: B0861B163X ASIN of printed version: B085RTJ4ZV Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Page 1 of 183 CHAPTERS AND SYNOPSES 1. INTRODUCTION 2. EDUCATION’S FORTHCOMING FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION This key chapter aims at explaining, describing and justifying what we see is an inevitable and – if handled properly – highly welcome holus bolus transformation of schooling worldwide, matching the Digital Age revolutions in, for example, banking, entertainment, manufacturing, politics, advertising, information, architecture and design, culture and social inter-action generally. 3. ONE WORLD ONE SCHOOL Here we offer a range of statements regarding the Global School, inevitably and regrettably imaginary and a few years ahead of their time. 4. ABOVE AI AND BEYOND ICT Here we focus on Information and Digital Technology and Artificial Intelligence. 5. CURRICULORUM What should be taught [from pre-school through to university postgraduate] and who should decide? 6. AND GLADLY TEACH How should that be taught – how should learning best be facilitated – what pedagogical principles apply – and what is the Global School teacher’s role? 7. THE PSYCH OF ED What should educational psychology involve within a universal, non-competitive, learner- directed education system? 8. PLANNING THE UNPLANNABLE How might that universal, non-competitive, learner-directed education system be planned for, managed, supported and evaluated? 9. ÉGALITÉ ET FRATERNITÉ Will the Global School embody democracy (‘Yes!’) and should it be used as a vehicle for spreading democratic ideals (‘No!’)? 10. ‘VOCATIONAL’ AS OPPOSED TO ‘EDUCATIONAL’ Should the Global School be geared to the requirements of the labour market (‘No!’) and, if not, how should the ever-evolving needs of the worldwide Digital Age economy best be met? 11. SPEAK UP AT THE BACK! How may we apply the ‘debate’ as the basic Global School methodology? 12. DEBATABLE CONCLUSIONS Page 2 of 183 1. INTRODUCTION It started with a study. In mid-2016, a major international donor resolved to understand how its development aid programmes in the education sector could best take Information and Communications Technology (ICT) on board. The present authors – Mike Douse and Philip Uys – were contracted to carry out this substantial and interesting exercise. The expectation was that we would identify the kinds of ICT applications that worked well, develop some principles associated with those benefits, highlight the kinds of approaches that should be avoided and, based upon these findings, provide practical advice on how best educational authorities in the many countries supported by the development partner could be enabled to derive optimum benefits from this new and rapidly evolving technology. And, indeed, this expectation was shared initially by us two consultants ourselves. Mike had been involved in education internationally since the 1960s, as teacher, head teacher, university academic, the foundation Director of Australia’s Disadvantaged Schools Program and, in recent decades, designing, implementing and evaluating international educational interventions, mainly for the European Union but also for the United Kingdom’s aid agency DfID, for UNICEF and the World Bank, and for some developing countries (such as the Sudan and Bangladesh) directly. Although he had taught secondary school Computer Science (along with mathematics and economics) in times long gone by, he was (and is) an educationalist rather than any kind of ICT specialist (as well as a published poet and, as will be returned to below, deeply involved in fostering school student debating internationally). Philip was then a Director of the Division of Learning and Teaching at Charles Sturt University in Orange, Australia and an Associate Professor of Educational Technologies. He had previously been involved in technological innovation in Southern Africa, South Asia and the Antipodes, including the application of learning technologies and open education resources to enhance efficiency and quality; he is now a freelance consultant. Philip had published widely in these and related areas, including educational innovation and quality assurance, and had conducted consultancies for an array of development partners in a range of countries. Mike and Philip had worked together in Botswana for the British Council in 2003 and had maintained contact ever since then. An Absence of Evidence But, as Mike and Philip began to gather information on how ICT had been applied in schools and colleges from Calcutta to California, and from Port Harcourt to Port of Spain, an entirely unanticipated general finding emerged. Several hundred applications were encountered, ranging from the establishment of well-equipped computer rooms across entire national secondary systems in one Gulf State nation, through the development of self-taught English Language, Mathematics and Computer Science programmes, to an internet-based monitoring system for trainees on teaching practice in distant primary schools. Systems used by open universities were studied, applications within TVET were examined, the literature (reports, books, numerous journal articles and conference presentations) was scrutinised, and the publicity materials of the purveyors of hardware and software were perused. Page 3 of 183 We went through, and greatly admired, the Open Book of Educational Innovation (Licht, Tasiopoulou and Wastiau, 2017), welcoming its definitions and examples of ‘Technology- supported innovation’ and what it calls ‘ICT-enabled innovation for learning’. We have appreciated also its consideration of “teaching and learning processes that cannot be as easily implemented without technology, for example personalisation, authentic learning, social learning, peer-to-peer interactions, et cetera” (ibid). So much fascinating work in progress, very many claims of ‘success’, several hints at how some of these initiatives might make learning more enjoyable but, shining through this admirable compendium, glows the clear- cut message that, unless the underlying educational setting is overhauled, individual initiatives, no matter how innovatory, will not alter the fundamentally obsolete situation. Three clear conclusions materialised: • Just about all of the initiatives were expensive: so much so that, even were they to work brilliantly, they would be far from cost-effective and, in most instances, beyond the budget of the great majority of the world’s schools and education systems; • Where success was reported – and there were many instances of such declaring – the claims, when examined closely, emanated from those conducting the innovations or endeavouring to market the equipment and/or the software involved: and • Amongst all of the ICT educational applications reviewed, there was very little indeed that was objectively effective, let alone readily replicable. As we reported, “…excited claims of effective ICT applications on learning abound but, in many instances, encountering convincing evidence proved as elusive as establishing concrete proof of clairvoyance”. Our inevitable conclusion was that “…we should no longer simply be talking and planning in terms of ICT assisting contemporary approaches and arrangements”. We ventured to take this further, notwithstanding the original parameters of our study as contracted. We began asking ourselves why isolated ICT initiatives had not succeeded and we concluded that modern technological-based approaches were unlikely to work well within an ancient teacher-led, examination-driven learning system. Moreover, we started to consider what the overall – as opposed to the specific – educational consequences of ICT (along with AI) would be, recognising, as we put it in our discussion paper, that we were “…envisaging a thoroughgoing surge forward into a fresh dimension”. And we suggested for the first time that “… much as it is now possible to conceive all of the world’s libraries as the one worldwide library, so also, in a sense, all of its educational institutions may be conceptualised as the one universal or Global School”. Indeed, we stopped referring to ‘ICT’ and started talking about ‘digitalization’ (sic) and we entitled our report (Douse and Uys, 2017a): ‘The Impact of Digitalization on Development’ although, and maybe to meet some kind of contractual requirement, we kept the sub-title: ‘Using ICT in Education’. Evolving Understanding Mike and Philip continued to take forward the analyses of evidence and consequent realisations of their explorations of ICT in education worldwide, building