Forecasting the Future Over Three Horizons of Change

Making predictions about the future is an inherently risky activity. Rarely is the imagined future of education accurate; more often than not it tilts heavily in either an overly optimistic or a deeply pessimistic direction. For example, in the early 1920s Thomas Edison predicted that “the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and ... in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks” (Oppenheimer 1997). This prediction was followed 40 years later with psychologist B. F. Skinner’s assertion that the dawn of the machine age of education had finally arrived and that “with the help of teaching machines and programmed instruction, students could learn twice as much in the same time and with the same effort as in a standard classroom” (Oppenheimer). Well, the proliferation of motion pictures has not fully withdrawn the desire for educational print, and the teaching machines (whatever you imagine those to be) have not yet displaced the will for teachers and students to gather together to learn in classrooms.

For many years, I have found my research, teaching and scholarship with one foot in curriculum studies and one in emerging technologies. I am most intrigued by the way technology is taken up in the field of education and society, and prefer to explore the sociological implications of technologies to enhance learning rather than the physical technologies themselves. Even more important to me is how technology is (re)presented, or should I say marketed, as an object of desire and an item of necessity for educational progress. Let me attempt to forecast some of the effects of technologies on education within three horizons of change.

The first is the short-term horizon of one to two years, with the trends well along the way to becoming a reality. The second horizon is a midterm forecast of three to five years, which is likely to be accurate, but remember that funny things can happen on the way to the future (think biomedical innovations, global economic crisis, climate change chaos and pandemics). The last is the long-term horizon, which pushes 10 years into the future – a much hazier view that allows for a far-reaching prediction of a world where people and things are always digitally connected (think Marshall McLuhan’s Global Village). In discussing these predictions, I hope not to overestimate what will emerge in two years while underestimating the state of affairs in a decade’s time. I am certain, however, that we live in a time of exponential change, and what we imagine might take 50 years will likely happen within the decade. The path ahead will be riddled with dynamic changes to educational practice defined by speed, complexity, risk and unanticipated events (funny things happening on the way to the future). What follows may be just a glimpse of Canadians’ multidimensional future.

Read More