Education Changes for a Better Future by Tilia

Education Changes for a Better Future by Tilia - May 2020 Scholarship Essay

Education as a whole is a system reliant upon practices that people who choose to pursue the career of an educator were taught in their years leading up to becoming an educator. With the notion that those who taught us have all of the answers and know what is best, educators will often utilize the ways they were taught despite promising new methods that may have greater benefits for students. With that, education has not changed much in the last 50 years but steps have been made to work towards changing the ways in which instruction occurs and how to best benefit students. Fifty years from now, I see more digitization of education, greater accessibility with technology and flexibility in education methods, and an increased focus on student learning.
Humans have long since been fascinated by the ideas of robots and advanced technology. At this point in time, online schooling is not only offered, but has become our main method of education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Having that transition brought about suddenly, it has exposed issues to help improve our current systems that people are taking notice of. In the past, there has been a push for online textbooks to be available due to the cost which has digitized education even more. Another big aspect to digitization in education is digital inking. With digital inking, you are able to take handwritten notes and convert it to text, as well as, write on previously existing documents. I believe that education will transition towards more digitization in the years to come and will continue to 50 years from now.
Awareness of mental health concerns has increased efforts towards more flexibility in education. Opportunities that may show more promise include: online opportunities, a greater understanding of mental health or inability to attend physical classes for a given reason, and implementing different methods and styles of education that utilize different tools in the classroom. Classrooms will need to adapt to individualization taking into account students’ needs, preferences of learning, availability, and non-traditional modes of learning.
In our current time, there has been a push to change education to improve student learning. In a way, movements are like Newton’s laws of physics. “Things in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force” applies because we have started to make changes in the way education is done. Promise exists in implementing good teaching strategies when a teacher is paired with an instructional coach to support the teacher and implement strategies; research indicates that without an instructional coach, a teacher has 5% chance of implementing good strategies whereas with an instructional coach there is a 90% chance of implementation (Joyce and Showers, 2002). With this movement to change education practices to improve student learning, I believe we will see great changes in education continue.
Education is a system of people that are reliant upon what they were taught to continue to teach others. It takes time to make changes but I believe that 50 years from now, we will see those changes we are working towards today be utilized. I believe that education will be more digitized, more flexible, and will have a greater focus on student learning. With these changes, we will see that good teaching is good teaching no matter the modality. Education is an incredible process that shapes everyone in different ways and the steps we take today to improve or change the methods of education will have an effect on the future of education.