Sie sind auf Seite 1von 16

SCHOOL EDUCATION IN THE

GLOBAL INFORMATION ECONOMY

NIGEL A.L. BROOKS

THE BUSINESS LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION


SCHOOL EDUCATION IN THE
GLOBAL INFORMATION ECONOMY

The achievement gap in school attainment levels between the United


States and other countries is widening. The consequence is a problem for
entrepreneurship, employment, and the economy at large.

Causes for concern in school education...

According to a report entitled “Economic Impact Of The Achievement


Gap In America's Schools” by the consulting firm of McKinsey & Co.,
attainment levels are declining in the United States while at the same time
improving in other countries.

For example:

1. In 1995, the United States was tied for first in college and
university graduation rates...

...but by 2006, the country had dropped to 14th

2. Forty years ago, the United States had one of the best levels of
high school attainment...

...but in 2006, it ranked 18th out of 24 industrialized nations in


high school graduation

3. In 1970, the United States had 30% of the world's college


graduates...

...but today, it has less than 15%

Finland and Korea ranked numbers 1 and 2 in PISA mathematics tests, and
numbers 2 and 1 in PISA science tests in 2006, whereas the United States
ranked numbers 25 and 24. The United States ranked number 18 in PISA
reading tests, and number 29 in PISA problem solving tests in 2003.

PISA is the Program For International Student Assessment organized by


the Organization For Economic Co-operation and Development for 15
year olds around the world.

Source: McKinsey & Co.

2
According to the United Nations Education Index, which is measured by
the adult literacy rate and the gross enrollment ratio, the United States
ranked number 20 in 2007, with Australia, Denmark, Finland, and New
Zealand jointly ranked number 1.

Source: United Nations

According to a report entitled “Measuring Innovation: A New


Perspective” by the Organization For Economic Co-operation and
Development, the United States:

• Ranked number 3 in the percentage of patents filed by firms


under five years old...

...with Norway ranked number 1 and Denmark ranked number 2

• Ranked number 11 in venture capital investment as a percentage


of GDP in 2008...

...with Finland ranked number 1 and Sweden ranked number 2

Source: Organization For Economic Development and Cooperation

Interestingly enough, the results are not dissimilar to Transparency


International's Corruption Perceptions Index. The countries with the least
perceived corruption include:

• Denmark (ranked 1)

• New Zealand (ranked 2)

• Finland (ranked 4)

• Sweden (ranked 4)

• Australia (ranked 8)

• Norway (ranked 10)

• United States (ranked 22)

Source: Transparency International – Corruption Perceptions Index – 2010

3
Is the relationship between education and corruption related to what values
are taught in schools or because money for education is diverted
elsewhere, or both?

Causes for concern in the relationship between education,


entrepreneurship, the economy and employment...

Education, innovation, and entrepreneurship are key drivers of the


economy, which in turn creates employment opportunities. Closing the
achievement gap between the United States and top performing countries
(Finland and Korea) could add between $1.3 and $2.3 trillion to the United
States' gross domestic product according to McKinsey. In 2010, the
United States' budget deficit is $1.3 trillion.

Some educators are concerned that the United States' education system:

 Destroys creativity and divergent thinking

 Fails to teach children “how to learn how to learn”

 Relies too heavily on multiple choice testing versus other


methods of assessment

 Fails to promote teamwork – a key ingredient for success in arts,


sports, and employment

 Addresses the needs of the industrial age as it was eighty years


ago or so, not the information age as it is and will be in the
future

 Is more concerned about developing university professors than


contributors to the future economy in the information age

Source: Sir Ken Robinson – Changing Paradigms and Nigel A.L. Brooks – The Business Leadership
Development Corporation research

4
The structure of the economy is changing fast through disintermediation
caused by improving information, telecommunications, and transportation
technologies, which in turn contribute to globalization:

 Middle management white collar jobs are being eliminated


because information technology improves communication flows
and performance reporting from shop floors and front lines to
executive management

 Engineering white collar and shop floor blue collar jobs are
being eliminated because computer aided design and
manufacturing and process control technologies require less
human intervention

 Clerical white collar jobs are being eliminated because


information technology is automating administrative and
operational processes

 Blue collar jobs are being eliminated because manufacturing can


easily be shipped offshore to lower cost producers that accept
designs electronically, and then send products via sophisticated
container shipping ports and vessels

Improved supply and demand chains on a global basis between suppliers


and end-customers have reduced the need for vertically integrated
enterprises, eliminating jobs that will never be replaced. As globalization
continues, enterprises will continue to consolidate to obtain benefits from
economy of scale, thus causing further job elimination.

Job creation is a result of entrepreneurship in emerging and growth


enterprises, and intrapreneurship in growth and mature enterprises.
Without entrepreneurship, jobs in new areas of the economy will not be
created; without intrapreneurship, enterprises will cut costs and expenses
in order to remain profitable, which means loss of employment – not job
creation in existing areas.

The consequence is that the workforce has to be reeducated to become


knowledge workers in a global information-based economy, and that all
individuals have to be more adept at promoting themselves in an
environment of job uncertainty. However, teamwork will be important as
technology permits collaboration across functional units within
enterprises, and between them across the world.

5
Young people entering the work place today have to be prepared for
lifelong learning because technology will erode both current and future
jobs, especially as robotics technologies become mainstream. They have
to be prepared to be self-sufficient in the future economy because job and
social security as their parents and grandparents knew it are less likely to
exist.

Innovation has to be fostered to drive entrepreneurship to create future


jobs. Fostering innovation means encouraging creativity first in school
systems.

Source: Nigel A.L. Brooks – The Business Leadership Development Corporation research

Mobile technology that can deliver multimedia content ubiquitously is fast


being introduced into the marketplace, and is being assimilated by young
people.

Online education and learning systems are being introduced into both
public and private schools, primarily delivered through desktop and laptop
computers, both in school and at home. Mobile devices are becoming a
vehicle for accessing online curricula, and already some schools are
permitting their use in the classroom.

Source: Arizona Republic and Education Week

Such technology can eliminate the need for textbooks, enable the student
to proceed at their own pace, monitor progress at each step in learning the
curriculum content, and enable the teacher to tutor each student
individually. It can also employ interactive problem solving techniques to
stimulate critical thinking.

One example of an online learning system is the Virtual Classroom Suite


from Education 2020, which is a web-based, teacher-led instructional
approach.

6
According to a “meta-analysis” released by the U.S. Department of
Education in 2009, online learning has definite advantages over face-to-
face instruction. The study found that students who took part or all of
their instruction online performed better, on average, than those taking the
same course through face-to-face instruction only. Furthermore, those
who took “blended” courses – those that combine elements of both online
learning and face-to-face instruction appeared to do the best of all.

Source: Inside Higher Ed, U.S. Department of Education: Evidence-based practices in online learning

Whereas this technology can deliver educational content for middle and
high school, college, and university curricula, according to one 24 year old
tutor:

“The kids get it. It's the parents and teachers that are
afraid of it!”

Source: Nigel A.L. Brooks – The Business Leadership Development Corporation research

Is addressing the achievement gap enough?

Innovation is about developing new ideas; creativity is about bringing


them into being – both activities stem from vivid imagination. Without
innovation, it is not possible to find new activities or better ways of
performing existing ones; without creativity, it is difficult to adapt to new
situations.

Entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial activities are functions of mindset and


action: the mindset to turn innovative ideas into value; the action initiated
from a willingness to take risk to realize the value.

Sometimes it is necessary to be wrong in order to be right – success comes


from lessons learned from failure. Thomas Edison once declared that he
had not failed when attempting to develop the light bulb – he had just
found 10,000 ways that would not work.

Will passing examinations be sufficient preparation for the uncertainty of


life in the future? Some educators believe that to stimulate creativity and
innovation, it is necessary for children to develop problem solving and
critical thinking skills early in life.

7
According to D.N. Perkins, the basic goals of education strive for
retention, understanding, and active use of knowledge and skills, but in
reality are hard to achieve.

Source: D.N. Perkins – Harvard Graduate School Of Education

According to John M. Carroll in his book “The Nürnberg Funnel,” the


conventional method of education is teaching or “instructionalism,” where
a teacher located in a conventional classroom informs students about a
particular domain (subject area). He suggests that learning is the act of
constructing knowledge from information in the world around the student
based upon a learning paradigm by Seymour Papert. Papert calls this
paradigm “constructionism” in his project entitled “Constructionism: A
New Opportunity For Elementary Science Education” and his book
entitled “Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas.”
Constructionists believe that the knowledge is derived from mental
activity, whereas instructionalists view that the mind processes and mirrors
the world. Papert's work is influenced by ideas from Jean Piaget, the
father of constructivism, who argued that humans generate knowledge and
meaning from an interaction between their experiences and their ideas.

Source: John M. Carroll – The Nürnberg Funnel; Seymour Papert – Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and
Powerful Ideas; Jean Piaget – various works

According to Edith Ackermann, constructivism offers a window as to


what children are interested in and are able to achieve, whereas
constructionism focuses on learning to learn, and making things in
learning.

Source: Edith Ackermann – Piaget's Constructivism, Papert's Constructionism: What's The Difference?”

Making things is about models of the real world, which is what


mathematical physics is all about.

Seymour Papert, Nicholas Negroponte, and Alan Kay launched the One
Laptop Per Child initiative to put constructionist learning into practice in
the developing world.

Source: laptop.org

8
The Sugar “desktop environment,” which is delivered with the Fedora
operating system for XO computers used in the One Laptop Per Child
initiative, and available for use on other platforms including Mac OS/X
and Windows, has been designed with the goal of being used by children
for learning. This environment enables applications (known as activities)
to be run that encourage constructionist learning. Sugar encourages
problem-solving, collaborative learning, and critical thinking in children
aged 6 through 12. One of the consequences is that children are learning
to program as early as 8 years old.

Source: sugarlabs.org

Edubuntu is a free education-oriented operating system available to


children aged 6 through 18. It is designed to enable educators with limited
technical knowledge to set up an online leading environment with ease.

Source: Canonical

The Intel Computer Clubhouse Network is an international community of


100 clubhouses located in 20 countries provides an out-of-school learning
environment for skills development. Yasmin Kafai, Kylie Peppler, and
Robbin Chapman explain the concept in their book “The Computer
Clubhouse: Constructionism and Creativity in Youth Communities.” This
initiative is aimed at providing young people with “practical 21st century
skills.”

Source: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0807749893

Both instructionalism and constructionism approaches are necessary to


teach the curriculum prescribed nationally and develop problem solving
and critical thinking skills necessary for encouraging creativity.
However, according to Theodore Levitt, creativity is thinking up new
things, innovation is doing new things.

Source: Theodore Levitt – Creativity Is Not Enough

Creativity is about ideas, but innovation is about ideas and productivity –


the entrepreneur has to turn mindset (innovative ideas) into action to
achieve value (innovation). The demands on the school system are high in
terms of trying to close the achievement gap and prepare students with the
knowledge and skills required for the entrepreneurial, innovative, and
technological world of the information age.

9
Key questions:

 What changes should be made to the curriculum? For example,


should disciplines such as computer programming, business
management, and personal finance be part of the baseline or
discretionary?

 What can be done to improve problem solving and critical


thinking methods?

 What changes should be made in teaching methods? To what


extent should online education methods augment, coexist, or
replace traditional classroom methods, and if so – how?

 Should the role of district leadership, administrators, teachers,


parents, and students change, and if so how?

 Should partnerships be established between schools and


businesses, so that students have a better appreciation of the
characteristics of the emerging workplace?

 What can be done to ensure that equal opportunity is provided to


all students such that they can make decisions in their future
careers and personal lives that are sustainable environmentally,
economically, and socially?

Discussion and potential answers to these questions can be posted at:

http://nigelalbrooks.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/school-education-in-the-
global-information-economy/

10
INFORMATION SOURCES

McKinsey & Co – The economic impact of the achievement gap in


America's schools:

http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_practices/Educ
ation/Knowledge_Highlights/Economic_impact.aspx

United Nations – Learning and education statistics:

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/sconcerns/education/ed2.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development – Programme


For International Student Assessment (PISA):

http://www.pisa.oecd.org/pages/0,2987,en_32252351_32235731_1_1_1_1
_1,00.html

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development – Measuring


Innovation: A New Perspective:

http://www.oecd.org/document/22/0,3343,en_41462537_41454856_44979
734_1_1_1_1,00.html

Sir Ken Robinson:

http://www.sirkenrobinson.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LelXa3U_I

Transparency International:

http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cp
i/2010/results

Arizona Republic:

http://www.azcentral.com/php-bin/clicktrack/email.php/9496193

11
Education Week:

http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2010/10/20/01mobile.h04.ht
ml

Inside Higher Ed:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/29/online

U.S. Department of Education – Evidence-based practices in


online learning:

www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-
practices/finalreport.doc

Education2020:

http://www.education2020.com/

John M. Carroll – The Nürnberg Funnel:

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=4779&ttype=2

Seymour Papert – Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas:

http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful-
Ideas/dp/0465046746

Edith Ackermann – Piaget's Constructivism, Papert's Constructionism:


What's The Difference?”

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu

One Laptop Per Child:

http://laptop.org

Sugar Labs:

http://www.sugarlabs.org

12
Edubuntu:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edubuntu

The Computer Clubhouse:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0807749893

Theodore Levitt – Creativity Is Not Enough

http://hbr.org/2002/08/creativity-is-not-enough/ar/1

13
For more information...

For information about audiobooks, books, earticles, ebooks, and eseminars


offered by The Business Leadership Development Corporation visit
www.etailia.com

For more information about the discipline of enterpriship visit


www.enterpriship.com

To assess your individual competencies in thirty minutes or less, claim


your opportunity for instant access when you go to
www.individualcompetencies.com

14
About Nigel A.L Brooks...

Nigel A.L Brooks is a management consultant to entrepreneurs, business


enterprise owners, executives, and managers, and the enterprises they
serve. He specializes in developing the entrepreneurial, leadership, and
managerial competencies that build sustainable advantage from vision to
value. He is an author and a frequent speaker.

He obtained his professional experience as a partner at Andersen


Consulting (now Accenture, Ltd.), as a vice president at Booz Allen
Hamilton, Inc. (now Booz and Company), as a senior vice president at the
American Express Company, as president of Javazona Cafes, Inc., and as
president of The Business Leadership Development Corporation. He has
been a contributing editor for the Bank Administration Institute magazine,
and has served on boards of entrepreneurial networks. He was educated at
the University of Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom.

His clients are in the financial services, food services, high-tech,


manufacturing and distribution, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, professional
services, retail and wholesale, transportation, and government industries.

He has experience in North and Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

www.nigelalbrooks.com

About The Business Leadership Development Corporation (BLD)...

The Business Leadership Development Corporation is a professional


services firm that works with entrepreneurs, lifestyle business enterprise
owners, executives, and managers, and the enterprises they serve.

BLD develops entrepreneurial, leadership, and managerial competencies


that achieve performance excellence by building sustainable advantage
from vision to value through:

 Strategic Management Consulting


 Executive Coaching and Mentoring
 Professional Training via The Center For Business Leadership
Development (CBLD)
 Motivational Speaking

www.bldsolutions.com

15
THE BUSINESS LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION
13835 NORTH TATUM BOULEVARD 9-102
PHOENIX, ARIZONA 85032 USA
www.bldsolutions.com
(602) 291-4595

© Copyright 2008-10: The Business Leadership Development Corporation


All rights reserved

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen