EDED11355 Futures

This course will provide opportunities for students to engage with three significant challenges currently faced by all sectors of Australian education. First, it acknowledges the fact that current educational practices are shaped, not just by global forces, but by the ways Australian governments and educational authorities interpret and respond to these pressures. Second, it recognises that individuals negotiate the changed and changing circumstances associated with globalisation in generationally and culturally specific ways. Third, it identifies educational settings as key sites where different attitudes towards the past, present and future can collide, and acknowledges that educators need particular skills to teach across generational and cultural divides. With this in mind, the course will provide students with resources to make sense of current debates associated with schooling, globalisation, change and futures education. It offers, also, a framework for thinking about processes and consequences of change, the role of individuals within any change process, and the different ways in which ‘the future’ (and all the implied changes) is conceptualised by various cohorts. In addition to this, the course provides students with the opportunity to develop strategies for teaching in cross generational and culturally diverse contexts.