Education 2040: Curricular, Pedagogic, Structural and Other Implications of Letting the Learners Lead

Contemporary technology, along with the tangible/virtual duality of present-day learner consciousness, are, in the authors' opinion, necessitating and enabling a fundamental educational transformation. A central feature of this development will be 'letting the learners lead', including (from secondary onwards) their identification of the content of their curriculum. This paper considers how this pedagogical innovation might operate in practice. Nine United Kingdom (specifically South Wales) senior secondary students were invited to decide what they would "like to learn in the coming academic year". The group then explored how their agreed set of subjects (including, for instance, Sign Language; History of Coal Mining in My Locality; Mental Health and Me; Being Ready for the Next Pandemic; Pantomime…) might best be learned. These approaches and findings were shared with, understood by, and generally supported by a group of upper secondary school students in Australia and, to a lesser extent, by another group in Bangladesh. Dialogue with a small number of professors and other United Kingdom professionals also took place. The tentative conclusions and implications are that (a) university entrance requirements are predominantly aimed at student selection rather than at covering necessary pre-tertiary knowledge; (b) if, somehow, the competitive element -- including the allocation of grades -- could be eliminated, then giving learners the opportunity to shape their curricula becomes feasible; (c) letting the learners lead is seen (by a sample of them) as realistic and (with some reservations) desirable; (d) much of this learning would involve on-line research through the confident utilisation of familiar devices and systems (i.e. how 'non-school' information is now acquired); (e) there would also be on-line and face-to-face discussions with experts and practitioners; (f) teachers, with radically restructured roles, could offer valuable coordination and encouragement; and (g) the school as 'place' (as opposed to 'process') may wither away as the transformation proceeds. The authors are keen that their provisional findings should be tested by educational planners and researchers in other educational situations across the world.