• Challenges the individual. No one in this program would say “But I thought getting an education degree was easy!”
• Is rigorous enough to attract intellectual, innovative, thought-leaders
• Robustly develops a student’s ability to solve problem, become a critical thinker, and work collaboratively.
• Is packed with upper level courses in history, ethics, mathematics, law, economics, policy, research, engineering, biology, anatomy, chemistry, and computer sciences (just to name a few).
• Is academically challenging so that becoming a educator is professionalized at the level of doctors, lawyers, MBAs, etc.
• Stresses global, national, and local issues. Students would not only understand where Cambodia is, but have some understanding of its politics, culture, history, and relationship to the rest of the world.
• Mandates each student study abroad.
• Mandates the individual gain proficiency in a foreign language.
• Forces the pre-teacher to act on the tenants of social justice and peace education. This individual would be a skilled conflict mediator.
• Produces teachers who are intercultural leaders.

The main draw back would be that this individual may be too marketable for the teacher education profession. With skills like these, what Fortune 500 or innovate start-up company would not be banging on this person’s door? This individual would be a cosmopolitan and in high demand. Thus, if such a teacher education program were created, how could we retain such individuals. Isn’t this the person you want to teach your children? Why are we not doing more to create cosmopolitan educators? What is your vision? Are there revolutionary programs out there? I would love to hear about innovative approaches currently underway.

(Jayson Richardson is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, University of North Carolina-Wilmington.)

Maya Frost has taught thousands of people how to get calm, clear and creative. Her eyes-wide-open approach to everyday awareness has been featured in over a hundred print and web media outlets worldwide, ranging from Ladies’ Home Journal to MSNBC.com. In 2005, she and her husband sold everything and left the US. The unusual part: they had four teenage daughters at the time. Her book, The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition, and Get a Truly International Education, is packed with the lessons they learned (and loopholes they discovered) that ANY US student can use to completely avoid the traditional path to that college degree and blast forward with sizzling 21st century skills, a sparkling college diploma, flaming enthusiasm–and no debt. (Random House, May 2009)

Jayson is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership in the Watson School of Education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His research interests include international / intercultural education and global school leadership. He is particularly interested in how nations and societies can find innovative ways to build a 21st Century knowledge-based workforce.

Jayson has served as a project manager / consultant on various educational technology grants with Seward Incorporated out of Minneapolis, MN. He has also worked as a mathematics teacher on the Navajo Indian Reservation, in inner-city Indianapolis, and in East London, UK. At various levels, he has been involved in international teaching, international service learning, and intercultural education for over 14 years. Jayson earned is PhD in comparative and international development education from the University of Minnesota, a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction / English as a Second Language from Indiana University, and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics education / Spanish from Purdue University.  (You can view his UNCW faculty profile here.)

Welcome back, Jayson!

She has lived and worked in multiple countries, including Thailand, the U.S.A., and her native country, Japan. Her work experiences include both governmental and non-governmental organizations, mainly in the fields of international aid and development.

Additionally, he has extensive teaching experience in urban education, and is currently working for BlueSky Charter School, Minnesota’s first fully online high school. He has been teaching English and has just accepted a position as the school’s Curriculum Coordinator.

Over the next week, Jayson will explore the impact of technology on education in less developed states.

Brock is a former Fulbright Scholar and has been a recipient of a National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health. In the past he has worked for Xerox PARC, Oracle, Americorps, and as a raft guide for the Yellowstone Raft Company. Dubbels currently teaches for the Minneapolis Public Schools and in is licensed for k12 Media, k12 reading, and 7-12 Language Arts, and also serves on the District Technology Advisory Committee. He is currently working to complete a doctorate with David O’Brien in Learning and Literacy at the University of Minnesota, where he designed and currently delivers a course for the university called Video Games as Learning Tools as well as courses for reading acceleration for the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities.

Especially important to us at Education Futures: His current work involves the use of video game technology and activities to develop reading comprehension and increase engagement to help students accelerate beyond benchmarks and minimum learning standards.

Watch this profile from WCCO-TV’s News At 10 (Spring 2006 — also noted by Education Futures).

Brock’s Website: http://brockdubbels.efoliomn2.com/

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Arthur Harkins is teaming with me at Education Futures as a regular blogger.

A short bio: Arthur is an associate professor in international development education at the University of Minnesota and faculty director of the University’s graduate certificate in Innovation Studies. Arthur’s major interests lie in converging technologies and their effects on 1) education, 2) workforce requirements, and 3) civic life. Arthur and I are working together on Leapfrog education futures projects in:

• North America: projected educational and social effects of Vinge’s and Kurzweil’s Technological Singularity;
• Eastern Europe: development of Sustainable Innovation supported by knowledge-producing education;
• China: projected uses of handheld, Internet-enabled devices for “ethical cheating” in classes and tests; And,
• Latin America: deployment, with FLACSO Mexico, of a laboratory to act as a launchpad for developing systems-based educational futures.

With George Kubik, Arthur recently authored StoryTech: A Personalized Guidebook to the 21st Century. He has published numerous articles in On The Horizon, a refereed UK journal of educational futures. With George and me, he is writing an article that explores “tempogenesis” (intentional convergences of virtual time travel, proximal futures, grounded futures, and alternative presents).

Famous for changing the color of their skin, chameleons are more like mood rings,
with their color changes reflecting mood, temperature, light, and other stimuli.

Based in the analysis of Hatano (1982), Brophy, Hodge, Bransford (2004) wrote a short and interesting work in progress where they analyzed the idea of adaptive expertise as the “ability to process information quickly and identify solutions to common problems as a display of competency in a particular skill and/or depth of domain knowledge”.

Considering the accelerating changes of the present and the unpredictable chaotic up coming future, the authors describe the importance of empower “learners to have flexible knowledge that allows them to invent ways to solve familiar problems and innovative skills to identify new problems. We suggest that the more desirable definition of expertise relates to students ‘adaptive-ness’ to identifying and solving novel problem”.

This adaptive expertise is based in the idea that “without a fluent and flexible use of knowledge a person will not be able to identify and expand on that creative idea”, that’s why the “life long learning and adapting to new situations is a critical component to succeeding in the workplace and in personal affairs”.

With pedagogic models established in the 19th century, teachers who were born during the 20th century and students from the 21st century the society (schools, enterprises, governments) demands citizens able to develop “innovation skills that will assist in their abilities to solve routine problems and identify new problems”. This kind of expertise will allow “the ability to identify new opportunities in this continuously transforming environment for change that make them more productive and profitable”.

Instead of routine experts our Learning Society requires citizens “who begin by identify what they know about the problem and what more they need to define in order to solve the challenge. The learner expands on these thought first by comparing them with their peers, then comparing them with experts familiar with aspects of the initial challenge”.

References:

1. Work in Progress – Adaptive Expertise: Beyond Apply Academic Knowledge (Sean Brophy, Lynn Hodge, and John Bransford).
2. Hatano, G. Cognitive consequences of practice in culture specific procedural skills. The Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 4, 1982, 15–18.

Images Source: © 1996-2007 National Geographic.

Cristóbal studied his Ph.D. in the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona. In addition he has been teacher of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey and Universidad de Colima. In Flacso he manages projects related to innovation, distance education and knowledge management supported in the information and communications technologies. Recently, he’s been researching knowledge, “collective intelligence,” the “architecture of participation,” and the phenomenon of “wisdom of crowds” and its application in the learning environment.