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Preface
Also, each effect demands an equally strong counter-effect, begetting demands equally active receiving. The present must therefore be prepared already for the future. (Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ideen über Staatsverfassung)
I wrote this book to open up a conversation about how the new world of skill demands in a post knowledge era, will look like. And to stimulate an exchange about how higher education might evolve their institutions to better align teaching and learning in the light of these new demands. Writing this book was both easy and hard. Easy, because I have the privilege to be fully immersed into the global community of learning innovators in higher education and also businesses in our own institution and across the entire field of higher education. Hard, because the ideas I am presenting here – that we are entering a post-knowledge era with Future Skills on the rise and that higher education institutions will change its shape and appearance – are both nascent and contestable. In the book I try to say some new things – and hopefully some true things – about how higher education is changing.
The book is meant to look ahead, to provoke and to inspire. That is why I chose such a title: Future Skills – sounds strange, at least at first sight it does! The title is creating doubts and it annoys. At least from an educational science point of view it is fair to say that dealing with the subject of Future Skills is a paradox in itself already. Why? Skills, i.e. abilities and competences, are per se aimed at mastering future challenges. So why impregnate such a future concept again with the addition “Future”? If you, however, take time and deal with the subject of Future Skills more in-depth it quickly becomes clear that there is more at stake. More than just finding a new terminology for the concept of competence.
Future Skills initiatives are currently being developed all over the world in various shapes and forms, many of whom are discussed in detail in this book. Some are sectoral, for schools or universities, others national, e.g. the initiative Future Skills Canada or also international, e.g. from the OECD, the EU or the World Economic Forum. All approaches have one thing in common – they all reflect the changed social conditions for work, education and life and analyse important Future Skills. Many of these concepts focus on skills for employees in a digitised world. In particular those are focussing on digital data-related skills which originated already in the 1990s and 2000s and were discussed there as digital or information literacy. These approaches are now often enriched with important intercultural communication and cooperation skills.
In other Future Skills approaches, the topic appears as a continuation of the concept of lifelong learning, in order to ensure a fit between constantly changing requirements on the one hand side and the capabilities of the individual to cope with them on the other hand side. Often this comes along with a strong focus on an economic impetus of participation of the individual in the labour market, sometimes also coloured differently as Skills for Life. And in fact, it is hard to find approaches that attempt to establish a more holistic educational reference frame within a widened understanding. This brief analysis already shows that there is obviously more at stake than just a renaissance of the concept of competence in a new shape and form. Apparently, there is a need to charge the concept of competence and give it direction. The underlying reason is a societal change of the magnitude of a tectonic shift alongside with huge pressures on organisations to change their mode of operation, their way of working, and in consequence also asks for a profound change in the higher education sector. It asks the question how the university as an institution can master the future and the question as to what the future of higher education looks like.
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Referência: Future Skills Book – Next Skills. (2022). Retrieved 21 October 2022, from https://nextskills.org/exploratorium/future-skills/
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