The author is grateful to the Department of Children Families and Schools and to Futurelab in Bristol for their support of the Beyond Current Horizons (BCH) programme of research of which this paper is a small part. The author is especially grateful to the 4 individuals who agreed to form the Working and Employment Challenge Steering Group: for this part of the BCH project:

• Professor Lorna Unwin, (Dept. of Lifelong and Comparative Education, Institute of Education);
• Professor Ewart Keep, (Deputy Director, SKOPE, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff);
• Penny Tamkin, (Programme Director, the Work Foundation);
• Professor Alan Brown, (IER Warwick and TLRP Associate Director).

They all gave generously of their time and energy, trying to help keep the project focused and on track.

The author is also grateful to each of the authors who were commissioned to produce the Review Papers, without which the current document could not have been completed.

Lynn Gambin helped produce some additional Quick Reviews, (to fill a few key gaps not covered by the main reviews).  Thanks are also due to her and to Luke Bosworth, Amanda Kerry and Jackie Wilson for helping to locate, collate and synthesise the enormous amount of material covered and convert it into the present draft. Helpful comments and suggestions were also made by a number of colleagues also working on the BCH programme, especially Keri Facer and Richard Sandford from Futurelab and Dave Cliff.

None of these bears any responsibility for any remaining errors. The final set of judgements made, and the views expressed, should be attributed solely to the author.

1.      Introduction

1.1      Background: Aims and key research questions

This report considers how the nature of work and employment is likely to change over the next few decades, in the context of developments in technology and other key drivers of change. It summarises the main trends in employment patterns and other aspects of work. The aim is to establish a long-term vision of the context for education in the second quarter of the 21^st century. Some tentative conclusions about the possible implications for education are then developed.

1.2      Structure of this report

The structure of the remainder of this report (which constitutes the “Synoptic Report” for the Working & Employment Challenge area) comprises two main parts.

Section 2:  Evidence and Insights

This section summarises the evidence gathered during the review process and the related events and insights in the Working and Employment Challenge area that was relevant to the BCH programme. In particular, it highlights:

1. The existing observable social and technological practices in the challenge area which can reasonably confidently be expected to continue to 2025;
2. The factors, for example events or changes in social values, which might play a significant role in shaping future developments in the challenge area;
3. The key uncertainties in the challenge area that may lead to radically divergent future developments, and what might act as the lever for such divergence.

Section 3:  Implications for Education

This section moves on to consider the potential future challenges or opportunities that these trends and factors might present for education. It also considers what evidence there is for policy actions to be taken. This includes what existing educational practices or evidence might provide insights into potential responses to these challenges or opportunities and why.

2.      Key issues and trends: A summary of the evidence and insights generated in the Working and Employment Challenge

2.1      Work and Employment at the start of the new millennium

Paid work in the formal economy is the major activity occupying most people’s waking hours. It is also the prime source of income, as well as representing one of the main ways that most people identify who they are. Rates of participation in the formal economy (the proportion that are economically active) are currently around 85% for males and 75% for females of working age (16-60/65). A significant proportion of the remaining time is taken up by work in the informal economy (housework, caring for family members, care of the home, etc). The “grey economy” also accounts for a significant amount of activity for some people. This includes activities ranging from conventional work (often outside the auspices of the tax authorities) to criminal activities.

Since the 19^th century people have got used to the idea of fixed places of work, leading to a clear distinction between formal work and informal work. This has often had a strong sexist dimension. For many years the male was seen as the breadwinner, while the female role focused more on the home. Two world wars and various other factors have changed both attitudes and behaviour, so that there is now a somewhat more even distribution between the sexes. Women now account for almost half of total employment, although many of the jobs they do are part-time and there remain strong patterns of occupational and sectoral segregation.

Technological change (for example, advances in equipment to aid domestic work) has facilitated new ways of organising the allocation of time to different activities including work and leisure/play. The demographic mix within the formal labour market has shifted dramatically in favour of women’s involvement. Many social norms have changed as a consequence. Expectations of the importance of work and how it fits into people’s lives have also changed.

More recently, information and communications technology (ICT) has had significant impacts on the possibilities for locating work (both locally and globally). ICT allows people to work in very different ways (“distributed work”) but there are often significant human and other barriers and constraints preventing some people from taking full advantage of the opportunities this opens up. Sen (1999) has developed what he terms a capabilities approach to highlight these problems. “Capabilities” as defined by Sen cover a much broader range of issues than the personal capabilities of the individuals concerned as usually described. It also includes various external factors that limit what is possible for those individuals in the circumstances in which they find themselves.

These developments have significant implications for employers, employees and education and training providers. The way that work is structured and organised requires careful consideration, if the opportunities opened up are to be fully exploited to everyone’s best advantage. These issues are discussed in more detail in the reviews by Round (2008) and Atwell and Costa (2008).

2.2      Key Drivers of change

There is a general consensus that there are three main drivers of change in the labour market and the world of work.  These are technological change, globalisation and demographics, (see, for example, Karoly and Panis (2004), Wilson et al. (2007), BCH (2007) and Gambin and Wilson (2008)). The first two drivers in particular are strongly linked, indeed in some respects globalisation can be seen as simply the way individuals, organisations and countries have responded to technological change, depending on the economic constraints they face, and their social and political values.

The key drivers of change as far as employment and work in both the formal (market) and informal economies are concerned, are therefore technological change and demography. Together with political, regulatory, legal infrastructure and social values, plus behaviour, these determine patterns and levels of employment, and the significance of work in the formal economy.

However, as the papers by Cliff et al. (2008), Baldry (2008), Bosworth (2008), Wilson and Gambin (2009) and Harper (2008) make clear, neither technological change nor demography are strictly speaking exogenous.  Everything depends upon everything else.  But for many purposes it makes sense to regard these as external factors impinging on work, employment and education, rather than being shaped by them.

2.2.1   Technological change

Recent technological change has been dominated by the impact of information and communications technologies (ICT), although other technologies may be becoming of equal or greater import over the next 20-30 years (see Cliff et al. (2008) and Dixon (2008)). ICT has been the key technological development over the past 30 years and looks set to dominate events over the next 30 years, albeit sometimes in combination with other technologies such as biotechnology or nanotechnology. ICT has resulted in huge changes in both processes and increasingly also in products and services. These are dramatically changing the worlds of work, employment and education.

Dixon’s paper reviews some of the key trends and possible future developments, including drawing out some implications for learning and education. Recent and near future developments in ICT include real time speech recognition and translation, artificial intelligence and robotics. These developments enable ICT to take over many aspects of work including automation of many functions in service as well as manufacturing operations. Shorter more customised production runs are also facilitated. This has resulted in an explosion of new products and services, as well as new ways of producing them. ICT requirements from employers are often far from clear; they are very heterogeneous. But ICT skills will remain a key area for focus in Education for the foreseeable future.

As noted above, mobile technology enables an increasing amount of work to be done at any time and place (a key aspect of so called “distributed work”). The development of improved communications, as well as transport and logistic services, has revolutionised the relationship between customer and supplier. In many markets key tasks and operations can now be subcontracted to the other side of the world. This brings with it problems in managing distributed work and flexible working patterns, (both locally and globally), which requires new forms of education and training for both managers and employees in general.

ICT has resulted in dramatic changes in both products and services and ways of doing things. This has had significant impact on employment patterns and levels in different locations as individuals, organisations and countries have adjusted and responded to the threats and opportunities that this has offered up. One important consequence is a requirement for a core of very highly qualified experts who understand the technology in depth, plus a more general cadre of high skilled workers to operate it. However, as noted below, not all jobs will be high level ones related to the information/knowledge economy.

Technological change is having a dramatic impact on the structure of employment as well as many other aspects of the way work is conducted. ICT in particular has revolutionised the way business is done, created new markets and offered the possibilities for people to exert much more control over their working lives. It seems certain the pace of change will continue if not accelerate. However, it is important to recognise that just because something is technically possible does not mean that it will inevitably happen. As Baldry (2008) emphasises, outcomes are shaped by social and economic considerations and constraints. Simple extrapolations based on technological determinism, and based on the false idea of a fixed “lump of work”, have resulted in many previous projections of the impact of technology on employment looking very silly, (for an explanation of the “lump of work fallacy” see Box 1). In the 1970s for example the doomsters predicted the collapse of employment and the paperless office would be the prime outcomes of the coming ICT revolution (see, for example, Jenkins and Sherman (1979)). Both were far wide of the mark. This does not mean to say that developments over the next decade or two will not have profound implications for employment and the world of work, but it does illustrate the dangers of simple extrapolation, taking no account of social and economic behaviour and the power of markets to adjust to new circumstances.

Much of the debate on the impact of technological change and globalisation in recent years has focused on its biased nature which has tended to favour skilled labour (so called skill biased technological change (SBTC)). Generally, technological innovations in production methods result in improved productivity. In the short-run, holding all else equal (e.g. output levels), rising productivity implies falling demand for labour. But with biased technical change the demand for some, types of labour may increase.

More generally, economic theory suggests that, in the long term, productivity (output per person hour worked) is primarily determined by technological change, where this is generally defined to include efficiency gains due to re-organisation of working methods and working conditions. In many models this is treated as exogenous (falling like manna from heaven). In so called endogenous growth models (see Bosworth (2008)) it is linked to investment in human and physical capital. At the macro-level, therefore, there is no long-run trade-off between employment and labour productivity growth.

In the long run, if labour markets are functioning efficiently, changes in employment can be expected to reflect changes in the overall size and composition of the labour force, and, in turn, broader demographic changes. The final outcome will also be influenced by the various factors that affect the functioning of the labour market, (such as labour market (and other) policies, and labour market (and other) institutions).

Box 1: The Lump of Work Fallacy

It is clear that dramatic further technological changes are in prospect (Cliff et al, 2008).  But just because something is technically possible does not mean it will inevitably take place. Impact depends on take up and implementation, which is moderated by economic forces costs and benefits) and other factors (such as changing social values), and shaped by existing values and infrastructures.  As noted above, initial estimates of impact of ICT on work and employment in the late 1970s were way off beam.  This reflected the “Lump of work fallacy” (see Box 1 for further general discussion).

In thinking about possible futures it is important to avoid technological determinism (Baldry, 2008).  There are plenty of useful things to be done, including care of people and care of the environment. The question is how to ensure that such jobs are created, and offer a living wage.

2.2.2   The growing importance of virtual worlds and virtual markets

Castronova (2006), Heeks (2008) and others have highlighted the potential of virtual worlds and the internet for generating value in the real world.

There are many positive aspects of such virtual worlds:

• There are many opportunities for translation to real world; sale of virtual world information/assets for real world dollars, so called “gold-farming”;
• Virtual worlds can be used as training environments and vehicles, building up practical experience in low cost and unique ways;
• There are benefits for team work and communication;
• Development of new ways of being (having fun and being happy).

At present these remain relatively minor in terms of income and employment in a UK context. While the “games” industry is worth many billions of US dollars, the scale of gold farming and related activities is much less significant (although quite important for some developing countries, including China (Heeks, 2008)).

More human centric work can be better fitted into new styles of working based on on-line communities (Zhao et al (2007). Online communities can be an important source of work:

• Open source software (OSS);
• Scientific communities facilitated by cyber infrastructure (CI);
• eBay type operations and markets (eBay traders together form one of the largest “sectors” of employment in the USA);
• Creating products and obtaining benefits by working collaboratively in cyberspace.

Most of these activities represent more competitive (individualised/atomised ) markets, rather than monopolistic markets dominated by the “firm” or large corporation. This opens up the possibility of individuals generating their own employment opportunities rather than relying on the State or major corporations to provide them with jobs and employment. This might involve operating in the informal as much as the formal economy. These possibilities are taken up in Section 2.7 below.

Of course there are also negative aspects of such technologies.  These include:

• Exploitation of people over the net;
• Malign intent, (malware, viruses, botnets, etc) ;
• Big brother (both by the State and large corporations);
• Pornography and related activities;
• Criminal activity, identity theft, etc.

Some of these also have a positive economic face. For example, virus protection and other security software is quite big business. The market capitalisation of Symantec and McAfee combined amounts to some $16-17bn, so there is big money in protection and prevention. Estimates of the negative economic impact (e.g. clean-up costs) of malware are c.$0.5bn for the bigger and more pernicious outbreaks. So there are real economic costs and opportunities in these areas.

The development of “expert systems” has led some to suggest that many professional jobs will disappear. While IT systems can be designed to substitute for humans, there are still real limits to how successful this is, as anyone caught up in automated telephone answering systems can testify. Similarly access to the internet for “expert” information is no substitute for an in-depth education and years of professional experience.  Contrary to the views of an immigration official that “skill shortages of Indian chefs was not a problem since anyone can read a recipe”, execution of many complex professional, technical and craft jobs requires real knowledge and understanding that cannot be obtained by simply tapping in to “Google” or checking out Wikipedia.

2.2.3   Globalisation

Although Globalisation can in may respects be seen as an outcome of technological change moderated by economic and other factors, it is worth considering it as a separate driver for some purposes. A key issue is the way in which the technological changes outlined above have resulted in the economic playing field upon which the UK competes with the rest of the world, including developing countries, being flattened.  As Friedman (2007) argues in his popular book “The World Is Flat“, this is having dramatic implications for the world of work across the globe. Reduced transport and communication costs open up the possibility of outsourcing to take advantage of significantly lower costs for labour and other factors of production. Improvements in global communications are affecting the distribution of work geographically across labour markets on a global scale. There is now much less certainty about where work will be done in the future and by whom. Increasingly there is a single global market for everything, including people. Capital, people and jobs are increasingly mobile and less constrained by national boundaries.

Some commentators such as Brown et al. (2008) argue that this undermines the comfortable view held by some that the UK and other developed economies can retain and indeed expand on the numbers of high level jobs associated with the so called knowledge economy. They paint a much more pessimistic view about the impact of globalisation on the UK and, in particular, stress the low likelihood of the UK being able to reach the promised land of the knowledge economy for all but a few of its workforce.

2.2.4   Demographics

Demographics is the other main driver of change affecting the labour market and economy. Harper (2008) sets out the key trends. Perhaps the most significant change in terms of work and employment is the gradual increase in the average age of the population. Casey (2008) examines the changing trajectory of working lives resulting from this, focusing on what will be the impact of an ageing workforce and longer working lives. His review explores the significant implications this will have for the world of work, employment and education.

It is clear from the reviews by both Harper (2008) and Casey (2008) that the UK, along with many other developed economies, faces a three-fold challenge:

• an ageing population and workforce as the ‘baby boom’ generation approaches retirement;
• increased life expectancy; and
• a falling birth rate.

In combination these open up a gap in the dependency ratio between the economically active and the retired population. The projected change in dependency ratios raises major concerns about the sustainability of the pensions system, and rising costs of health care, especially for the elderly. This is likely to result in the need for later retirement and life long learning.

Casey (2008) highlights a number of tensions. In some respects the long-term trend has been for working lives to contract, with later labour market entry associated with longer time spent in formal education and earlier retirement. However recent concerns about pension provisions have been exacerbated by the financial meltdown associated with the “credit-crunch”, and the talk now is about extending working lives to enable people to build up pension rights. Of course, as economic circumstances pick up, previous trends towards early retirement may resume.

Increases in the average length of lives are also leading to more people considering working longer to fill their lives with something meaningful, as well as topping up incomes and pensions.

Often this involves the need to change jobs (as noted above) the idea of a single job for life has become less and less realistic as an ambition for the vast majority of the workforce. Increasingly it is only the public sector that offers such possibilities.

For those in employment approaching their 60s, the idea of hanging on to their current jobs, thinking “this will see me out”, is often no longer an option. There is an increasing need to think about retraining and re-skilling to maintain employment status.

Even for those that have retired there is often a reassessment and subsequent search for post-retirement work and related activities (possibly in the formal economy but equally in the informal economy, such as voluntary work).

Subject to what might happen via migration, the average age of the workforce is due to rise significantly. Employers will have to adjust to an ageing work force and then learn to live with that older workforce.

Life long learning will also need to focus increasingly on an ageing population and one with different needs.

At the opposite end of the age spectrum, many younger people are happy to operate as portfolio workers, flitting in and out of engagement with the formal economy as it suits them. But as they mature and acquire responsibilities they may need to find and secure a “proper job”, with more security and stability. This may become increasingly difficult in the immediate future as the impact of the recession bites, and previous modes of working become less easy to replicate.

Recent events in financial markets have exacerbated pressures on most pension schemes (both private and public). Many people will have a long and relatively comfortable retirement, but many others may face poverty, loneliness and a growing need for care. This will put pressure on the State and the extended family, forcing many to stay in jobs longer to improve their pensions and to pay for care for both themselves and their parents. However, as argued by Giullari and Lewis (2005), the “commodification” of care does not necessarily meet the emotional needs of the cared for nor the carer.

In addition there are a number of demographic issues relating to migration. Political changes (especially enlargement of the EU), as well as other factors, have made movement across national boundaries much easier. This has resulted in big increases in cross border flows of people. Although they are not so significant in numerical terms as the implications arising from the other demographic factors outlined above.  The UK government has argued that such flows have helped to meet labour shortages, and inward migrants often contribute a dynamic boost to their new countries.  However, the much greater flows of inward migration that the UK has experienced in recent years also pose many problems for the labour market, for education and for policy makers in general.

All these demographic developments pose particular problems for employers. They will need to change their recruitment and retention policies to attract and retain the staff they will need. This may reinforce trends towards more flexible working practices, including less abrupt retirement transitions, and require targeting of groups such as older workers. Another important aspect which can be included under this heading relates to the increasing role of women in the formal economy.

Work, employment and education are shaped by many institutional and political factors which have a demographic dimension.  There are two specific policy changes that are important in thinking about future developments.  These reflect decisions already made; first, to (effectively) raise the minimum school leaving age to 18; and second to raise the official retirement age of women to match that for men. These will be matters of historical fact in the future scenarios to be considered as part of the BCH programme, although as noted elsewhere they may bring with them many problems of adjustment in the short-term.

Another aspect of demography to bear in mind is the difference in birth rates between different groups in the population. Dex (2008) notes that the proportion of children from disadvantaged backgrounds coming through schools is likely to be increasing, since the poor are having more children and the rich are having fewer. For similar reasons the proportion of children from teenage pregnancies may also be expected to increase unless recent trends are halted or reversed. This will all have implications for educational priorities.

2.3      Changing patterns of work and underlying trends in sectors and occupations

The sectoral and occupational structure of employment has changed slowly but steadily over the past century and more. Two centuries ago the economy in the UK (and in Europe more generally) was predominantly agricultural. The industrial revolution resulted in the dramatic advance of manufacturing and industry as a key source of employment. Despite this, just 50 years ago, soon after the establishment of the European Community, much of Europe was still pre-industrial, and heavily dependent on agriculture. This is changing very rapidly and only a few members of the expanded EU now have significant proportions of their workforces employed in agriculture. In the UK it now accounts for less than 2% of all jobs.

Trends towards the so called “knowledge” and service economies have gathered pace over the last 10 years (see the analysis by the Work Foundation (2006), based on Eurostat estimates). The so called information revolution has resulted in the transformation of employment patterns, with much greater emphasis on service based employment, focused on knowledge and information acquisition, processing exploitation and dissemination. This includes a very diverse mix of jobs, ranging from high level professional and managerial occupations to those working in call centres and doing routine clerical support jobs.  According to the Work Foundation, amongst the EU15, employment in knowledge based sectors rose by almost a quarter over that 50 year period compared with an average increase of just 6% for the economy as a whole.  In the UK the overall share of knowledge based employment had risen to around 50%, one of the highest amongst the EU15. These trends are confirmed by more recent analyses, such as in official publications like Employment in Europe 2008, and in more academic studies such as Wilson et al. (2008).

Gambin and Wilson (2008) provide a general review of both conventional and non- conventional views of the prospects for work and employment, including research on possible future trends The conventional approach, based on examination of well established trends and patterns of behaviour, emphasises continuity and the need for education to prepare people for a world in which skills at all levels will be needed to succeed in the labour market. Less conventional approaches highlight the possibilities for both utopian and dystopian visions, which could have rather different implications for education.

Pink (2005) argues that a third revolution is now imminent. The first (industrial) revolution swapped fields for factories, while the second (information) revolution replaced brawn with brains. Pink suggests that the third revolution will involve a shift from “left” to “right-brain” economic production. The “left brain” is mainly associated with logical thinking. This is an area that computers are well suited to deal with. Developments in ICT such as speech recognition, GPS systems, the internet, etc, are making it possible to accumulate, analyse and apply information automatically, so that systems can replace people in many areas of service work, as well as in manufacturing. Systems can be designed to deal with routine enquiries, make bookings, and providing standardised professional advice. Expert systems are also becoming increasingly feasible, with the very best knowledge and practical experience about how to do most things available on-line. In contrast, “right brain” activity is associated with more creative thinking that cannot be so easily replicated by computers.

Gambin and Wilson focus primarily on paid employment in the formal market economy. Dex (2008) considers the future of both paid and unpaid work. Her paper covers some common ground with that of Round (2008) but focussing more specifically on the place of work within the family. They both consider some of the key trends in paid work, home-working and unpaid work They outline some of the links between these trends and social benefits, as well as general attitudes to work. Dex (2008) also highlights the loss of deference in society and the implications of this for schools, as well as a number of more general educational implications.

The trends in informal work are not clear cut. On the one hand the importance of the formal economy is in many ways growing, with women in particular taking an increasingly important role in the formal economy, with rising labour market participation rates amongst those of prime age (25-55). The employment rates for both males and females have also risen steadily in recent years encouraged by the State on the grounds that this is the best way to ensure social inclusion. On the other hand informal activity remains very significant for most people, and in many respects technological change is helping to encourage such activity, while some changes in social values (rejection of materialism, concerns about the environment, etc) are encouraging people to reject market/ capitalist solutions).

Gambin and Wilson’s review focuses on key trends at both a UK and pan-European level. They draw upon the recently published Working Futures results for the UK, as well as CEDEFOP projections which present an initial attempt to examine Europe’s labour market as a whole. Although both sets of projections were carried out before the current financial crisis broke, the emphasis is on longer term trends to 2020.  They suggest that although the growth of the so called “knowledge economy” will continue, it is the services sector more generally that will provide the main source of new jobs, both nationally and across Europe as a whole.

Gambin and Wilson’s (2008) review sets out in some detail the various drivers of change. It is argued that the changes in employment patterns expected largely reflect a continuation of previous long-term trends, driven by technological change and demography, moderated by economic factors. In combination these have resulted in shifts in patterns of consumer demand as incomes have risen.

As in the UK, the analysis confirms that Europe as a whole has been experiencing a sustained shift in employment away from the primary sector (especially agriculture) and traditional manufacturing industries towards services and the knowledge-intensive economy.  This general trend is predicted to continue, albeit with some exceptions as a few Eastern and southern European countries benefit from inward investment in some manufacturing (as a result of their lower labour costs).

Despite these changes, employment in many new EU Member States still relies to a great extent on agriculture and manufacturing, but this is changing rapidly. By 2020, the primary sector (agriculture and mining) is anticipated to decline from almost 8% of total employment in 1996 to less than 4% in 2020.  Manufacturing employment also is projected to fall from 20% to below 15% over the same period.  By that time ¾ all of jobs in the EU will be in services.

The Cedefop projections suggest that over 20 million additional jobs might be created between 2006 and 2020 in the EU-25+ (EU-25 plus Norway and Switzerland). This projection was undertaken before the scale of the impact of the recent financial crisis associated with the “credit crunch”, and its effects on the stock market and the real economy became clear. The main driver of the long term increase in employment is demographic change and the expected growth of the population and labour force. These are unlikely to be radically affected by short-term events.  Assuming that an economic collapse of the scale last witnessed in the 1920s can be avoided, such longer term trends are likely to be reasserted.

The Cedefop projections suggest that the construction sector will only show modest growth with fewer than half a million new jobs being created between 2006 and 2020. Distribution, transport, hotels and catering together are projected to see employment grow by more than 4.5 million over the same period, while non-marketed services (which includes education and health)  are expected to increase by slightly more (4.9 million). Business and miscellaneous services are projected to see the brightest prospects, with more than 14 million additional jobs being created between 2006 and 2020. Although the employment prospects for areas such as banking and insurance are likely to have been dented by recent events, the potential for growth in jobs in areas such as other business services and childcare and social care (which form part of miscellaneous services) will remain strong.

Underlying these trends is an assumption of continued innovation, technological and organisational change, and development of the so called “knowledge economy”. UK and other European governments have argued that future employment prospects and economic performance will depend upon continued investment in human capital to maintain competitive advantage compared with the rapidly developing countries of the Far East and elsewhere. There is increasing recognition of the importance of R&D and innovation in maintaining economic growth and competitive performance. While this is mainly tied up with education at the highest levels, there are implications for education more generally, in particular, the role of those qualified in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects. While these are not the only kinds of skills required, a sound foundation of science and technology is regarded by many as fundamental to continued economic success. These issues are discussed in more detail in Section 2.9 below.

The projected sectoral changes set out in the Cedefop work suggest that there will be significant implications for the occupational (and other) skills needed in the future. Skills can be defined and measured in various ways (for detailed discussion see Wilson et al. (2007) or Leitch (2006)). The most common definitions and measures used relate skills to either the occupation that people have, or to the qualifications they hold. Changes in sectoral structure have a direct impact on the pattern of demand for occupations and qualifications. They are also linked to other aspects of skills (variously referred to as key, core or generic skills, such as literacy, communication skills, etc). These changes are being reinforced by changes in the patterns of employment (skills demands) within sectors. Technological changes are a key driver here, affecting the pattern of demand for skills, these are being reinforced by changes in how work is organised and how jobs are performed within sectors.

A key trend identified is the shift towards demand for highly skilled workers. In general there is a rising demand for higher level occupations, typically requiring higher level qualifications (i.e. at degree level) and various types of generic skills.

The review by Green (2008) focuses upon the changing demands for generic skills. Drawing upon results from detailed surveys of employers, both in the UK and in many other countries, he suggests that generic skills, such as communication skills, problem solving skills, team working and ICT skills, are increasingly valued in modern economies and labour markets. Systematic studies of trends in the UK reveal a number of significant trends in the demand for a range of such skills. This has clear implications for education if the UK is to equip young people with the types of skills they will need to succeed in the labour market of the mid 21st Century.

Almost 40% of those employed in Europe are now in higher-level jobs such as management, professional work, or technical jobs, that typically require a university degree as an entry requirement, and this share is expected to rise further. This reflects the continued growth of the so called knowledge economy.

However, at the same time, there is a clear trend towards a growing number of lower level service jobs in hotels and catering, distribution and other areas. Increases in employment are therefore also projected for many jobs requiring no or lower levels of skills such as elementary occupations. Although there will be fewer jobs for some groups such as agricultural workers and clerks, the continued growth of the service sector will result in many less skilled job openings in areas such as hotels and restaurants.

The changing patterns of employment by sector and occupation are therefore projected to lead to a job polarisation (i.e. job growth at both higher and lower-levels of the occupational spectrum, with the demand for many jobs in the medium-level occupational layer becoming thinner). Technological change (especially ICT) and related organisational changes have increased the productivity of many medium skilled workers, with machines often doing routine and predictable work (both manual and non-manual) that was previously done by such workers. New technologies are less successful in substituting for labour skills where the work involves some element of discretion and response to human interventions, even in work typically done by low skilled workers. There are many tasks that, despite major technological developments in ICT, cannot be undertaken by machines or computers. Consequently the demand for low skilled workers is likely to remain for some time to come.

However the picture is quite complex and other research such as the forthcoming “Jobs Project” report by the European Foundation for Living and Working Conditions suggests that while polarisation has occurred, it is not a uniform phenomenon across all counties in Europe. The polarisation of employment opportunities has a gender bias and significant implications for equality and social inclusion (see Wilson et al. (2008) and Wilson (2007) for more extensive discussion).

However, some authors such as Brown et al. (2008) fear that the changing features of modern capitalism described under the heading of globalisation above mean that future patterns may be less benign, with businesses and capital being much less tied to particular locations and less prepared to accept long term responsibilities to their workforces in a new “flat world”.  This could result in a much less rapid increase of demand for graduates than Leitch and others suggest.

The Leitch Review set up by Gordon Brown considered the UK’s optimal skill needs in some detail looking forward to 2020 and beyond (Leitch 2006 and 2006). Leitch along with other independent reviews (e.g. Wilson et al. (2007) has confirmed that the UK still has a serious problem with basic skills (especially literacy and numeracy). A significant proportion of the workforce still has no formal qualifications. Many lack the basic skills of literacy needed to function properly in a modern economy.  Most commentators suggest that the need for skills at all levels is likely to rise over the next 20 years. The analysis suggests increasing needs for both for higher level skill (with increasing job opportunities for high level occupations (needing degrees, etc) as well as for some lower level occupations (needing basic skills). The need for basic literacy and numeracy skills is also projected to rise (both in terms of the numbers and proportions of jobs where such skills will be regarded as essential as well as in terms of the breadth of such basic skills with literacy in particular being expanded to cover other dimensions than simply oral and written communication using conventional media (see discussion in Jewitt’s Challenge paper).

2.4      Location of Work and Learning

One of the major impacts of ICT has been its potential for changing the location of work. For many years pundits have predicted the end of conventional work patterns, emphasising the scope for remote working and telecommuting. In fact change has in many respects been less dramatic and rapid than they have suggested. Felstead (2008) provides a more considered assessment of the changes that have taken place in recent years and the prospects for the future.

Take-up has been much slower than many predicted, due to resistance from both employers and employees for a variety of reasons (including the need for social contact and fears of loss of control).  The majority of today’s workers still work in offices everyday, despite the fact that ICT allows many of them to work anywhere. Felstead argues that the potential for further increases in teleworking, homeworking, etc, is significant. Reinforced by pressures to operate in a greener fashion, such changes could accelerate in the next few decades, with significant implications for education and learning. Most existing offices are designed to minimize operating costs and preserve hierarchy and status, rather than inspire creativity and fuel collaboration among workers. The level of job satisfaction for most workers in this situation appears to be in decline. There are therefore good reasons to consider alternative approaches. Despite this, Felstead considers that the most likely path will be for much slower change than the advocates of such flexibility predict.

Atwell and Costa (2008) focus more specifically on the potential for integrating personal learning and working environments. Their review covers drivers of the development of present learning and working environments and probable, possible and preferable futures in this area. It considers whether the idea of the “industrial” model of schooling may be becoming dysfunctional, and suggests that long established trends towards the separation of learning and working environments may be reversed. This could have very significant implications for education.

Other more general aspects of the location of work across geographical areas are considered in Green (2008a). Her review focuses on various aspects of location and place. It highlights the way in which location can influence economic prosperity and labour market outcomes, in both positive and negative ways. It also considers how education can help to engender positive virtuous circles, as opposed to negative and vicious ones. There are also important tie-ins here with some aspects of the “green agenda”, including links between the economy, technology and the environment.

In the US and UK there has been a great deal of emphasis recently on creating “Green jobs”.  As EMSI (2008) demonstrate “Green jobs” are NOT occupationally specific. They are more related to sectors, especially on the outcome of particular activities aimed at driving households or other organisations to act in more environmentally stable ways (e.g. reducing energy use or pollution, or improving the environment in measurable ways). These might include various types of construction activity including refurbishment to achieve green objectives; investment in new transport systems, energy production transmission and use, waste management, scientific activities connected with these issues, etc.

Identifying sectors and public and private funding aimed at achieving these ends can help to identify changing skill needs associated with it. In a few cases these may be unique to green type activities (e.g. environmental specialists) but more generally will cover the full spectrum of occupations.

2.5      The meaning of work

Work has many different meanings. There is no single generally agreed definition, either in general parlance or amongst different academic disciplines. A number of the Review Papers commissioned for the Working and Employment Challenge touch on these issues.

Overell (2008) argues that this is a complex matter. For many people work is a key element in defining who they are. His paper focuses on the meaning of work, and identity, covering the quest for meaningfulness and purpose. It includes a discussion of topics such as “craftsmanship”, “professionalism” and the nature of occupational identity. The search for meaning is generally regarded as a positive thing. However, Sennet (1976 and 2008), amongst others, has argued that this is not always the case. The search for meaning can be counterproductive and the cause of unhappiness (see detailed discussion in Overell (2008)). There is also evidence that for some people work is becoming less meaningful and, if some more pessimistic expectations are borne out, this could become more not less common. Brown et al. (2008) argue that the future vision of a knowledge-based economy, with meaningful and well paid work for all, may be a

mirage. For many people such high expectations will be dashed.

The issue of identity is taken up in slightly different context by Bimrose (2008). She argues that the role of careers information, advice and guidance (IAG) is becoming an increasingly important element in helping people to understand themselves and their place in the world. In an increasingly complex economy and labour market, providing well informed information, advice and guidance in a holistic manner is a key element in ensuring a match between what individuals choose to study and the kinds of skills and qualifications that they will need as they leave formal education and enter the world of work and employment. This review emphasises that career guidance is very much at the centre of societal change and can be seen as an attempt to help all individuals attain their potential (not just those at the upper end of the spectrum). This can also help in promoting broader societal aims, including enhanced economic performance. She emphasises that current practice in the area of much careers guidance lacks cohesion and needs radical reform.

Other review papers conducted for the Working and Employment Challenge also touch on these matters. Hogarth and Bosworth (2008), as well as Powdthavee (2008), both begin their approach to the issue from a traditional economic perspective. Work (primarily employment in the formal economy) is seen as the main means of obtaining an income for most people, a necessary “evil” to ensure bread on the table, clothing on backs and a roof overhead.

Powdthavee’s (2008) main focus is on the drivers of “happiness”. In traditional economics approaches work is regarded as something to be avoided (or something to pay others to do), as opposed to leisure or play, which along with income is regarded as contributing positively to “utility”. Powdthavee suggests that recent research suggests that “happiness” is only loosely related to income. If anything it is relative income that is important, but it is clear there are many other factors that influence happiness or “Subjective Well Being” (as measured by asking respondents direct questions about their lives). Such results suggest that there may be a need for people to be better educated about what makes for happiness and well being. This line is reinforced in the latest report from the Children’s Society (2009).

Subjective Well-being is crucially dependent on employment/unemployment. The strongest results suggest that Subjective Well-being is negatively affected by unemployment (separate/ independent of any impact on income). The stigma attached to unemployment is still very strong for most people. The implication is that it is much better to keep people in jobs than give them unemployment benefit.

However, there is some evidence that this may not be the case for a growing minority. The evidence reported by Dex (2008), suggest that the impact may be modified (reduced) if many people in the same area/community are also unemployed. There is also some evidence that some young people have different attitudes from previous generations motivated by a strong work ethic.

The evidence presented by Powdthavee (2008) also suggests that Subjective Well-being may also be negatively affected by long hours of work (raising work-life balance issues), but the links are complex and the direction of cause and effect uncertain.

He also explores the link between Subjective Well-being and education. Again the results are somewhat mixed. Generally, it appears that education may exert a positive effect but it can also lead to unsatisfied expectations. The link between Subjective Well-being and leisure choices is also covered. This includes time spent watching TV, time off work in the formal market economy, voluntary activities, etc). Much of the evidence is mixed, with unclear directions of cause and effect.

Powdthavee (2008) suggests that more emphasis should be placed on understanding what determines happiness in general education, in particular, getting people to understand that higher income is not necessarily the route to happiness. There are however, dangers of a moral hazard and of producing a self-fulfilling prophesy here, with a strong risk of undermining incentives and motivation.

Round’s (2008) review highlights the possible value associated with voluntary work (related to both the care of the environment as well as other people), and suggests some possible links here to green, sustainability and related issues. But the reliance of the market economy on incentive systems, based on rates of pay and images of the “good life” followed by celebrities, suggest that developing alternative life styles and mechanisms for distributing incomes and work may not be so easy. Thus although there may be some tendencies towards less conventional values and attitudes towards work in the formal economy the latter is likely to remain at the centre of most people’s lives in the UK for the foreseeable future.

The management of the workforce also raises a number of tensions relating to issues of control, autonomy and discretion. As noted by Green (2008), there are indications that much work is becoming more closely controlled and that individual workers have less discretion and autonomy over their work. This is closely linked to measures of worker satisfaction and individual happiness.

2.6      Why work is important

The discussion in a number of the reviews (especially Overell (2008), Powdthavee (2008) and Dex (2008)) highlight that the positive aspects of work (income, self esteem) are a key element in well being. While well being is usually not very precisely defined it is generally agreed that it encompasses more than material living standards. Powdthavee’s (2008) review confirms that, while there is no simple answer to what determines well being and happiness, having meaningful work certainly helps, while being unemployed has very negative effects.

The possible future balance between paid and unpaid work is one of the many topics taken up by Dex (2008) who, along with Felstead (2008) and Atwell and Costa (2008), consider likely trends in the location of work (home-working , telecommuting , etc) as well as the location of learning activities. They suggest that, while some tendencies towards increased home-working and involvement in unpaid work will continue, the role of paid work (in the formal market economy) will remain central for most people. Dex’s (2008) review focuses particularly on the place of work within the family. It outlines the links between these trends and social benefits, as well as general attitudes for work. For a minority living off state benefits will remain significant, and general attitudes and motivation to work will be difficult to turn around. Some of these and other more general trends in paid employment are also picked up in the review by Gambin and Wilson (2008). These are discussed in more detail below.

The reviews by both Overell (2008) and Powdthavee (2008) suggest that productive work is one of the keys to well being. Traditional economic approaches emphasise that work (especially in the formal economy) provides income as well as socio-economic status. A job is one of the main means of ensuring social inclusion (see Wilson et al. (2007) for a more detailed discussion of the role of skills in raising individual incomes as well as the probability of finding and retaining employment).

As noted in Wilson (2008) life satisfaction is not the same thing as happiness, but evidence presented in the Atlas of European Values suggests that Europeans generally are quite happy compared with the rest of the world. Having a formal job makes a crucial difference to life satisfaction. Survey evidence reported by Liddle and Lerais (2007) suggests that most people appear to be satisfied with the jobs they have. Even when they are short of money, 84% of Europeans declare themselves very satisfied or fairly satisfied with their working conditions. Conversely concerns about unemployment are confirmed as a crucially important negative influence. Having people in paid work is also of crucial importance for the State (as well as individual citizens) because it increases national output and tax revenues.

As trends towards a knowledge economy gather pace, with increasing proportions of the workforce employed in higher level occupations, many jobs could (should?)  become more satisfying and less routine. Such jobs, employing better educated workers, are generally more vocationally orientated, as well as offering higher incomes, which (all else equal) should increase job satisfaction.  However the trends set out in Section 2.3 suggest that not all jobs will fall into this category. Over the period to 2020 and beyond, there will also be growth in the number of less intrinsically interesting jobs. Not all jobs can be made fulfilling and rewarding. Many will remain relatively undemanding, routine and repetitive, but not subject to substitution by machines.

2.7      Boundaries of work

Overell’s (2008) overview considers various other issues related to the meaning of work, including semantic and philosophical debates, as well as social scientific perspectives. His review poses the general rhetorical question of whether people “work to live” or “live to work”, as well as raising more general issues about the meaning of work and links to happiness and fulfilment. The distinction between work and leisure is in some situations much less clear cut. What some would regard as leisure or even play, others do for a living. Sports-people, artists, entertainers and others earn a living doing what many would regard as play.

But this blurring of boundaries is not solely restricted to professional and related groups. Many other people see their work as a vocation that defines their lives.  This covers wide parts of the occupational spectrum, including many professional and associate professional jobs (e.g. doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers and scientists). Many of these types of jobs have seen substantial job growth in recent years as highlighted below. Pride in work is not restricted to such areas. For many craft workers there is a natural tendency to take pride in the application of hard earned skills and natural talent. Such aspects can be seen in many other jobs, although perhaps with less emphasis compared with the aspects of drudgery and mindless repetition that characterise many routine and elementary occupations.

If someone is in the right job for them from this perspective, work can cease to be regarded as something to be avoided and becomes play or at least an activity from which positive utility can be obtained. When an activity becomes something that has to be done (often, but not necessarily, associated with externally imposed deadlines and targets and loss of autonomy) there is a danger that it becomes a chore. The classic economic distinction between work and leisure then comes back into play. This can apply as much to the professional footballer and musician as to those in more conventional jobs. Self motivation and discretion, rather than external control and target setting, are probably the crucial distinction. Even without external constraints and demands people can stress themselves by self imposed targets that are not easily achievable. Success at the highest levels in such activities requires considerable effort, perseverance and dedication, all of which are normally regarded as attributes of work rather than play.

This evidence suggests that work and employment are closely tied up with identity and personal perceptions and esteem. Round’s (2008) review emphasises that while work in the formal (paid for market economy) may play a crucial role here, work in the informal economy may be for some people just as important.

Round (2008) focuses upon the boundaries between informal and formal work. The former includes a range of activities from housework, care of family members and DIY through to the so called “black economy” (more frequently now referred to as the “grey economy”), and criminal activity. Round (2008) challenges the “commodification” thesis that argues that market based work in the formal economy is driving out informal activity.  He highlights that even in developed countries informal work remains a key part of most people’s lives. His analysis draws on a range of research, documenting such activity, and highlights some of the possible implications for education and learning. These include the need to explicitly recognise the importance of such activity and especially the difficulties that those working informally can face in accessing education in a Life-long Learning context.

It is clear from the broad range of research evidence reviewed that the boundaries between work, play and leisure, and between formal paid work and informal work, have shifted significantly over the past half century. This is as a consequence of technological developments, as well as changing social values and economic circumstances. Further substantial change can be expected over the next 50 years.

It is also clear that both individuals and society more generally often have ambivalent attitudes to work and employment. On the one hand, as in the more traditional economics approach, work is seen as something to be avoided and minimised.  On the other hand, taking a broader sociological and psychological perspective, work is often regarded as a key element in how individuals are perceived, both by themselves and others, and crucial to feelings of self-worth and personal esteem.

The reviews referred to here, as well as other evidence covered below, suggest that paid work in the formal economy is likely to remain the normal means of generating income for the vast majority of households. However, it is also clear that most people also engage in various forms of informal and domestic work. In some cases this veers into the grey economy (tax avoidance) and, at its most extreme, criminal activity. On a more positive note, voluntary work is also an important part of many people’s lives.

Technological developments, especially those associated with ICT, seem likely to open up many new opportunities for informal activities often linked to virtual worlds rather than conventional realities.

2.8      Work-Life balance

There has been a long running debate on “Work-Life Balance” which is dealt with in Hogarth and Bosworth’s (2008) review. This begins with a discussion about the traditional economic analysis of the choice between work and leisure. It highlights the long term negative trends in the number of hours worked in the formal economy in a typical week, as well as more general patterns of work over the life cycle (increasing length of holiday entitlements and (until recently at least lower) the falling age of retirement)). It also touches briefly on other aspects of working patterns such as some increasing trends to use of unsocial hours/ shift-working. They emphasise general trends towards greater flexibility in working patterns (both from an employer and employee perspective). They consider how these choices have been shaped by technology, as well as economic and other considerations. The latter will include the effect of changing attitudes and values, as well as regulatory interventions by the State.

There are many other concerns about undesirable trends in Work-Life Balance. As noted by Hogarth and Bosworth (2008), there is evidence of increasing stress resulting from work intensity, despite long-term trend reductions in average annual hours worked in most countries, and improvements in accident rates, etc.  Many workers report that work has become more stressful and that their working hours are incompatible with family and social life. This seems likely to be exacerbated over the next few years, as the structural economic changes highlighted in Sections 2.3 are raising the demand for skills and forcing ever more rapid changes in work organisation, content and pace.

A related factor is job insecurity, with (as noted by Dex (2008) and others) general trends towards increases in various forms of less secure employment (such as self employment, part-time employment and short term contracts), many of which seem likely to continue to 2020 and beyond. For many, the idea of a single job for life has disappeared. There will be the need to re-educate and re-train to refresh and update skills and knowledge required to take part in the formal economy, as well as some aspects of the informal economy (see Round (2008) for more details on the latter).

Despite negative trends overall in the length of the official working week, there is still a strong culture in many organisations in the UK of long hours worked in the formal workplace (although perhaps not as extreme as in the USA). A study by the Families and Work Institute, (2005) in the US showed that one in three American workers feel overworked, with half claiming to be “overwhelmed”. Such behaviour is seen to be an indication of dedication. Attitudes in the rest of Europe seem to place a less positive view on such behaviour. Such practices can be argued to place too much emphasis on labour input as opposed to output, ignoring negative impacts on productivity. Attitudes on the continent appear to place less emphasis on “presenteeism” (being seen to be in the office or work environment for long hours).

For some time there has been public policy concern at a European level about extended hours and over-work. The working time regulations are a clear indicator of this. Overwork is argued to be a prime cause of both physical and mental illness. The pace and intensity of work is increasing in the modern workplace. Britain still has much longer working hours than many of its European neighbours. While pressure from the State (especially at European level) seems likely to continue to reduce weekly hours, economic considerations are likely to work in the opposite direction.

The simple division between work and life assumed in much of the discussion of a work-life “balance” is of course debatable. For many people life and work overlap and interact. Drawing a clear cut boundary between the two is not straightforward. As noted in the previous section many people gain meaning to their lives through their work (whether paid or not). However, this does not mean that there are no conflicting tensions between demands from the workplace and the home, either for the individual or the household.

Attitudes to work are also changing. While many may still define themselves by their work, others increasingly define themselves in other ways (for example by the hobbies or other activities they devote themselves to). Work for an increasing number of (especially) younger people is just a means to an end. A recent survey for Business Week in the USA is indicative.  The results suggest that whereas for the older generation (55+) 28% live to work, for those aged 25-34 this falls to 16%. The vast majority of the younger generation work to live and they do not appear to regard the vocational aspect of working as so important as older generations did.

2.9      Education and work

There are many links between work, employment and education. Much of the recent socio-economic discourse on this topic has emphasised the role of education (and training) in preparing people for work and providing them with the skills, knowledge and attitudes they need to succeed in the workplace (see Green (2008) and Bimrose (2008)). Education has always been seen as having a crucial role as preparation for work. This has various aspects, including social conditioning and instilling of attitudes, as well as imparting knowledge and work related technical skills.

There is a large body of evidence suggesting that education makes a huge difference to individual employment prospects (see the various Skills in England assessments conducted annually since 2002 which provide a comprehensive review of the research evidence (e.g. Wilson et al., 2007)). Better educated and qualified individuals are much more likely to find and retain jobs. They also tend to end up in better paid jobs. Individuals investing in the acquisition of qualifications tend to have higher incomes and increased productivity.

As noted in Wilson (2008), previous generations of schools in Europe and the US can also be seen as aimed at producing workers suitable for the factories, offices and other workplaces (instilling discipline, attitudes and basic skills). Educational systems in the second half of the 20^th Century were designed to deal with the relatively standardised requirements, a homogeneous population and the relatively well established social order of the post-war industrial society. These circumstances are however changing, which has some significant implications for education.

Of course, education has many other roles in addition to preparing individuals for work:

• Understanding of  the world and society;
• The ability to take part in civil society (citizenship, social capital);
• Broader cultural and social aspects;
• A consumption activity (learning for its own sake);
• Contribution to the “knowledge, innovation, research & development (R&D) triangle”.

The latter is especially significant for long term economic development. The links between education and work and employment are not just a one way process, with work and employment implying a demand for certain types of education.  Education, through its role in the “knowledge, innovation, R&D triangle” plays a crucial role in determining the path that scientific technological, economic and social developments take. Competitive pressures from globalisation are placing an increasing emphasis on these links. Ensuring the right skills are in place to be able to innovate and compete at the leading edge of scientific, technological and economic developments has become a top priority for governments across the world.

Education can therefore be seen as a key driver of change rather than simply a passive response to the needs of the labour market and the economy. Education’s role in innovation and technological change is reviewed in Bosworth (2008). He argues that, despite the assumptions adopted in some economic models, technology does not simply fall like manna from heaven. It is dependent on investment in human capital in the form of R&D and knowledge.  The R&D, knowledge, innovation triangle is a key element in the drive for improvements in productivity and economic competitiveness. Education, especially at the highest level, plays a key role in this process, with Universities being key players in much research, development and innovation. Bosworth’s review focuses on the nature of the relationships involved, and on the implications for work, employment and education.

Bosworth (2008) emphasises that this implies a demand for:

• Those qualified in STEM subjects (possibly quite small in number but playing a crucial role);
• Management and leadership;
• Entrepreneurship.

A particular concern highlighted in a number of official reports in both the UK and other countries relates to the crucial role of those qualified in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects. This is emphasised in a growing body of research evidence reviewed in Wilson and Gambin (2008). This emphasises the fact that much investment in new technology is dependent on a solid base of science, technology, engineering and mathematics personnel. Although not all technological developments rely on such skills, they do lie at the core of most technologies. A firm foundation in such disciplines is probably a key element to achieving prosperity. The implication for education of encouraging the study of such subjects in school through to University is therefore an important issue that needs to be addressed. Bosworth (2008) also emphasises that it may be important for the general population to have a sound grounding in such disciplines, if they are to be able to critically appraise scientific issues and to make informed judgements about products and services based on such knowledge.

Innovation therefore needs people with management, leadership and entrepreneurial skills plus STEM and related skills (Wilson and Gambin, (2008). But it is not just about a core elite.  For markets to grow, a well informed population is needed to act as customers for the new products and services produced.

Many of the reports reviewed in Wilson and Gambin (2008) suggest that there is evidence that not enough young people in the UK are choosing to undertake science and engineering studies. This may be a problem across Europe more generally (see Wilson, 2007). Many young people shy away from difficult technical subjects such as mathematics, physics and engineering. There are also concerns about vicious circles arising from a lack of good teachers in these areas, further discouraging young people to take up such choices. Careers guidance and advice also has an important role to play here.

The “knowledge triangle” requires a sound science, technology and engineering foundation if the UK (and the EU more generally) are to compete successfully in the global economy. This requires high level skills in this area. Countries such as China are currently investing much more heavily in these areas.

Of course it is not just about science and technology, other aspects such as innovation and design in the more creative and cultural industries and services will also be very important. The UK has many people working very successfully in these areas. There will also be a large range of jobs in the future associated with the care of the environment and care of people. But much of this is underpinned by a sound understanding of science, technology (especially ICT) and engineering.

Other Challenges within the BCH programme are also covering the issue of general “creativity”, but it is also important to retain a more technical or economic definition of “creativity”. The common conception of “The Creative Industries” seems to be about making films or music, creating art, fashion and design. The work of people like James Dyson, Alec Issigonis, Frank Whittle and Barnes Wallis. The significance of innovation in engineering, technology and science can be crucial and world changing. See for example Christiansen’s (2008) work the Innovator’s Dilemma/Solution, etc. Such innovation and creativity in industry more generally has an economic impact that dwarfs impact of fashion-design and the “creative” media. But combing science and art disciplines is not easy. All too often school timetables work against this, with physics and other pure sciences set against the arts and humanities.

The role of education in encouraging entrepreneurship and improving management and leadership is also a key feature of much recent research, (see Tamkin, 2008). Having the right resources and skills is of little value if they are not managed appropriately. Tamkin’s review emphasises the importance of leadership and good management, as well as entrepreneurship (see also Wilson and Gambin, 2008).  These factors become increasingly important for economies to compete successfully in global markets. This applies both at national and local levels, and in public and private sectors.

Based on this general body of evidence, governments from around the world have tended to place increasing emphasis on the importance of the economic benefits of education (based on the idea of investment in human capital). This has often been linked to ideas about the knowledge economy and it has been suggested that the UK needs to invest more heavily in skills to take advantage of these trends.

Some have questioned whether or not the evidence represents cause and effect. Ideas such as credentialism, and the so called screening hypothesis, suggest that education does not actually increase productivity, as implied by the human capital model, but simply helps to identify more able individuals. Others (Brown et al. 2008) suggest that future employment growth in the “knowledge economy” may be a mirage, and that the demand for the highly qualified could fall off, as competition from abroad undermines the advantageous position that older graduates have held, and as huge increases in the supply of well qualified people across the world swamp the market.

The idea that initial education can be provided at the start of people’s lives that will serve them until they retire has become increasingly outmoded. Unwin (2008), focuses on the ongoing need for learning in the workplace, especially the more vocational aspects. She emphasises not just the general need for life long learning but focuses on what workplace learning might look like; what kinds of leaning practices will be important; who will pay; who is responsible; and delivery mechanisms.

Brown (2008) takes this a step further, focusing on the idea of developing expertise and moving beyond a focus on workplace competence, assessment and qualifications. His paper focuses on trends in the specifications of “expertise” in different jobs and what people in them are expected to do. It highlights problems with a competence based approach, especially one focused around sectors, emphasising the complex nature of many jobs, which cut across discipline and sectoral boundaries. He also highlights the importance of collaborative working and supporting of others in the learning process, rather than an emphasis on individual achievement and acquisition of qualifications.

The workplace is also an important site for learning. Education does not just take place in classrooms and at the beginning of people’s lives. Unwin (2008b) considers these issues in some detail. The quality of much learning in the workplace is very variable and existing practice may ingrain inequality.  When done well, it can lead to self development, and the formal education sector may have some real lessons to learn. In many cases, however, employers often resort to external means to obtain skills rather than trying to grow them in-house. Recent upward trends in use of migrant workers in many sectors is a clear example of this (see MAC 2008) for more detailed discussion.

Some individuals see real relevance to learning at work and a chance to shine at work. But the trends are mixed; there are falling numbers doing apprenticeships of the traditional kind and concerns about the quality of many new modern apprenticeships. Problems in finding places for apprentices are only likely to be exacerbated by the current recession, as employers cut back on both employment and training.

It is also worth recalling that educational establishments are also themselves workplaces, but that there is often failure to follow best practice in approaches to learning and related matters (see the discussion in Unwin (2008b) for various examples).

Keep (2008) provides a broader overview of the links between the labour market, skills and education. This focuses upon a number of key trajectories (both historical and over the future) in the labour market generally, including: occupations, work organisation and management. As well as changing employment patterns it also considers pay, earnings and incentives, highlighting a growing polarisation between and within occupations. Keep argues that this has significant implications for the incentives for investment in education. His paper considers the different types of incentives to learn and invest in education, both financial and non financial. He suggests that for many people there is a lack of incentives for learning which needs to be addressed urgently. He concludes by drawing out the implications for economic and distributional outcomes, including who benefits and why, and how education might influence this. The paper highlights some of the problems of barriers to access such as class, (path dependence, implications for identities) and financial resources.

Of course, in principle, education can help to challenge and reduce such barriers. The present liberal, free market orthodoxy relies on market forces to determine rates of pay (although the UK does have minimum wage) imposed by regulation. In some other countries, (e.g. Scandinavia) social values impose a much narrower distribution of incomes and rewards, with a broader way of valuing the work people do than the size of the pay packet. This raises the question of whether further government intervention is necessary in the UK to change market signals (e.g. raising the minimum wage or trying to changing social attitudes towards inequality, as in the Scandinavian model). It also raises the question of whether or not the educational system can help to reinforce or replace weak market signals.

The UKCES is currently undertaking an in-depth review of investment in training and education by both individuals and employers, looking at the barriers and rewards to such investment. This is still to report but may throw some further light on some of these issues.

2.10    Other aspects of work that are also changing

Other sociological factors, governance, culture and environment are also key drivers of the changing face of work and employment. Associated with the broad changes in employment structures described above are many other social and related changes. Liddle and Lerais (2007) set out some of the underlying currents accompanying these structural changes. These include increased emphasis on individualisation, household restructuring (including increasing divorce rates and more people living on their own), and the changing role of women in the formal economy. Other aspects include some indications of movement away from consumerism and increased concerns to meet the new challenges related to the environment. As both Liddle and Lerais (2007) and Dex (2008) note, there are many complex links with the Welfare System and concerns of how to deal with problems of inequality and social exclusion.

The paid work ethic lies at the core of the present Government’s social and economic policies. Policies such as Welfare to Work and the New Deal, emphasising the importance of employment opportunities for all, have been central to its strategy to assist a whole range of disadvantaged groups, including the long-term jobless, lone mothers and the disabled.  All these groups have been encouraged to join the formal economy and take up paid work. Active participation in paid work is presented as a crucial test of social citizenship. A small minority of the population have resisted or avoided such engagement. This raises concerns about how to achieve a set of shared values as well as ensuring general consent to established rules and laws. A significant number of people are dependent on benefits, and given the current state of the economy this is likely to become of increasing significance in the short-term at least. This is also linked to issues of child poverty.

A number of the Review Papers suggest a significant increase in various forms of flexible working, (e.g. Dex, 2008). The term flexible working has been widely used and encompasses a vast range of different practices (for an extensive review see Bosworth and Wilson (2007)). This includes various aspects of time and location, patterns of working, as well as contractual status. A key issue is whether flexibility refers to the interests of the worker or the employer. Flexibility for one may mean uncertainty and precariousness for the other. Traditional discussions of flexible working cover aspects such as part-time working, self employment and sub-contracting all of which have shown some tendency to rise in recent years (see Gambin and Wilson (2008) or Bosworth and Wilson (2007) for more detailed discussion). More recently new technologies have facilitated the development of remote forms of working (including home working, although the latter has a much longer history, quite separate from the effects of ICT).

Many commentators and some researchers have emphasised that “jobs for life” are no longer the norm. But there is still a remarkable stability in most working lives in the UK according to more considered research. Taylor’s (2004a) review of the ESRC programme of research in this area confirms that these patterns are changing but only very gradually.  Undoubtedly many things are changing and 50 years from now things will look as different as today’s labour market does from that of 1959, which was dominated by industrial forms of working (focused on primary industries and manufacturing rather than services).  But many features will remain unchanged.

3.      Implications for the Beyond Current Horizons programme

3.1      The Children’s Plan

The DCSF launched the Children’s Plan in 2007 (DCSF, 2007). In considering which of the trends and issues identified in Section 2 are most likely to impact on education and related matters it is helpful to highlight some of the key points set out in the Plan. Its key aims and objectives are based around:

• Supporting parents and families in bringing up children;
• Enabling children to fulfil their potential and develop as far as their talents can take them;
• Enabling children and young people to enjoy their childhood as well as to grow up prepared for adult life.
• Ensuring children’s services are designed around the needs of children, young people and families rather than around professional boundaries;
• Prevention of failure and identification of potential problems in advance.

The Working and Employment Challenge is especially critical for the second of these, focusing on what employment and work in adult life might actually mean in 2025 and beyond. It also has a critical role to play in the last issue, helping to identify what might be the big employment risks in future, and highlighting how education (and training) can help to avoid failure and disappointed expectations, including avoidance/prevention of children ending up as “not in education, employment or training” (NEETs), and prevention of disengagement and exclusion from society as adults.

3.2      Stylised facts: Key Trends and Issues

3.2.1   Work

Much of people’s daily lives is taken up by work, be it paid or unpaid or in the formal, informal or grey economy. Work is crucial to the economy and society as a whole. Directly or indirectly it meets both basic needs for food, clothing and shelter, as well as luxury goods.  Directly it generates the goods and services produced or enables them to be purchased. Indirectly it satisfies many non-materialistic needs, some of which are often achieved as much by the act of undertaking it.

Many people attach value to work for reasons other than its immediate economic benefits, including the fact that it helps to establish identity and provides a sense of purpose, self worth and self esteem, as well as offering opportunities for social interaction and personal relationships.

Despite the traditional economic view of work as a “bad thing” (something to be avoided or minimised because it takes up time that could otherwise be spent in more enjoyable (leisurely) pursuits), many people (possibly the vast majority) enjoy work, particularly its social side. For some people, work provides them with an important social network and may provide a main avenue through which they meet friends and potential partners. This idea of work as a social venue/hub is likely to continue to be important.

Many people also view work as having intrinsic values, helping to define who they are. Most people appear to be satisfied with their work. Productive work is considered one of the keys to well being. For people who are intrinsically satisfied and fulfilled by the work they do, there may be a blurring of the line between work and play/leisure.

Some people take up work that defines them – such as religious figures, teachers, and health/medical professionals. Some people take up work in activities that are generally viewed as leisure activities – such as professional athletes, people working in creative sectors (musicians, painters, actors, etc).

Others may also find internal fulfilment in having a job that creates a finished product of which they are proud (e.g. craftsmen, artists, etc.). For people who are driven by intrinsic motivation, and for whom fulfilment is considered a priority, work that is satisfying is as important for their well-being as well as its economic productivity.

On the negative side, work may be an activity in which some people participate only to meet the general societal expectation that they should work. Such people may resent the fact that they have to do menial jobs to secure a relatively poor income. Others may resent the fact that they lose part of their incomes in the form of taxation to support others who are able to work but do not do so. There are complex relationships between work, income and status that have bearing on such attitudes.

3.2.2   Key drivers of change and implications for employment patterns

The two key drivers affecting work and employment will be technology and demographics, but these will be shaped by political, social and economic factors. Globalisation, it has been argued, is best regarded as an outcome of these inter-related factors.

Changing patterns of international trade will undoubtedly have a significant impact on the fortunes of many sectors and significant implications for the jobs and incomes of many people. This is not a zero-sum game however. Success for other countries does not necessarily imply negative consequences for UK employment. However, the UK like other developed economies will need to constantly strive to keep pace with developments in other countries (let alone move ahead in the game).

Technological developments mean that many products and services can be produced at ever decreasing cost by ever fewer people. This raises important issues about control of such technologies and how incomes and rewards are distributed.

There are many dramatic technological developments on the horizon which will have significant implications for employment and work, including how it is done and where it is undertaken. Those linked to ICT are likely to be especially significant. Although in some respects ICT may be reaching its natural limits, and is regarded by some to be “played out” in strictly technical/scientific terms, its implications for employment and work are far from finished. The potential for further dramatic changes in productivity are likely to be significant for the foreseeable future.

But the take up of these developments is not inevitable. Just because something is technically feasible does not mean it will happen. What does happen will depend on both the benefits and costs. These may be both economic and social, and include various constraints and obstacles to be overcome. It is important to avoid adopting a technological determinist view. What will happen will be tempered by social and economic factors and behaviours.

There is often an important element of path dependence when technologies are taken up, decisions and actions made early on may predispose economies and societies to particular paths.

It is also important to recognise the “lump of work fallacy”. There is not a fixed amount of “work” to be done that technology can take over, inevitably leaving people previous employed in doing such work “unemployed”. Society can reorganise itself to create new jobs that are valued and desirable.  Markets are powerful mechanisms that can help to ensure societies and economies can adjust to the shocks caused by technology and other factors. Previous mechanistic extrapolations of the impact of ICT have failed to recognise these factors, and as a result grossly overestimated the negative impact on employment, etc. In principle, there is no limit to the “work” that can be done in caring for each other, and caring for the environment. The problem is in designing institutions and systems that can provide the incentives and mechanisms to ensure that such work is valued.

3.2.3   Conventional trends and views

Formal paid work in the market economy is likely to remain crucial to the well being (income and employment) of the great majority of families and households in the UK for the foreseeable future. Formal work will continue to be both the key source of income and status, as well as a key element in identifying how people see themselves.

Informal work will however also remain important, and this can have rather different requirements for education and learning than those from formal work.

Patterns of work in the formal economy will continue to change, with many trends obvious.

• Specialisation, use of capital, implementation of new technologies, etc, will result in continuing structural changes by sector (growing importance of services and “weightless” activities associated with the knowledge economy.
• Demand for skills will continue to rise in many areas, but there may be some polarisation.
• There will be increases in demand for many higher skilled occupations and for formal qualifications, especially at higher levels. But not all jobs will require a PhD; polarisation means rising demand also for occupations such as sales, personal service occupations and unskilled low skilled work.
• There are also strong trends in patterns of employment status (towards increased part-time working, self employment, temporary work, etc).

But many trends will probably be less extreme than some commentators and the media expect, for example in areas such as homeworking and teleworking, etc, which have grown much less rapidly than predicted and which will probably continue to change only slowly. There is likely to be a growing need for generic skills, such as:

• literacy;
• numeracy;
• communication;
• team working;
• problem solving;
• IT skills;
• management and leadership.

Falling hours worked per life time (part of the fruits of technological change) will continue to be taken in the form of greater leisure (less time spent doing work in the formal economy). Key trends in this area include:

• a long term trend of falling average hours per week working in the formal economy;
• falling days per week (longer weekends);
• falling weeks per year (longer annual holidays);
• falling years per lifetime (earlier retirement).

Although there are some opposing trends, such as presenteeism (and the long hours culture), as well as staying on at work until a later stage in the life cycle because of extended lifetimes and concerns about pensions.

While projections are always hedged with caveats the most likely outcome over the medium to long term seems to be that globalisation will continue the patterns summarised in Section 2.7 (and described in much greater detail in Wilson et al. (2008 and 2009).

Subject to avoiding a major slump, the most likely developments in employment patterns present a reasonably optimistic picture for the UK.

• Technological change will result in structural changes by sector, and changing demands for occupations and different types of skills:
• These structural changes, will involve job losses as well as new jobs;
• There will be rising demands for many skills (as measured by occupations; qualifications (especially at higher levels); and key/core/generic skills of various kinds);
• But there is also likely to be polarisation, with growth in numbers of general and more mundane service jobs, as well as jobs for those working in the knowledge economy.

Technological change will also open up new opportunities for employment (as well as learning) in:

• Activities related to the environment and climate change;
• Virtual worlds.

Ways of distributing income will continue to evolve (including the use of both market and non market mechanisms).

The boundaries between work, (formal and informal), rest, recuperation, leisure, play, are probably becoming more blurred.

There is increasing recognition of the importance of R&D and innovation in maintaining economic growth and competitive performance. While this is mainly tied up with education at the highest levels, there are implications for education more generally. In particular, the role of those qualified in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects in the R&D, innovation, knowledge triangle is regarded by many as key. This has particular implications for education at school level, where there are serious concerns that the UK may be falling behind its main competitors. Of course science and technology are not the only disciplines that are important for innovation and economic success.

3.2.4   A critique of some less conventional perspectives

While there is general agreement on the main drivers of change, there is much less of a consensus about the direction and scale of changes that may take place and how this may affect the worlds of work and employment. There are of course many possibilities. These include much more pessimistic scenarios associated with global economic meltdown or other catastrophes (some of which are highlighted in BCH (2007)).

The greatest pessimists see a spectre of mass unemployment, growing insecurity and widening social divisions.  On the other hand, there are some who point to much more optimistic possibilities, with technology and changing attitudes having the potential for liberating many employees from dreary, dull, repetitive and degrading work.

Such alternative visions are rarely based on any systematic theory and usually lack any kind of historical perspective or sound empirical foundation. Undoubtedly very significant changes are possible which could have profound implications for many individuals and groups in society. But final outcomes will be moderated by inertia and stickiness in many institutions and behaviours. The final outcomes will almost certainly be less dramatic than either of these two more extreme views suggested here.

The most pessimistic pundits paint a vey gloomy picture, involving a complete breakdown of market based systems, breakdown of basic institutions, loss of trust/faith, anarchy, much greater central control, and dictatorship. Such apocalyptic visions of mass unemployment worldwide, while not completely beyond the realms of possibility are not very likely (although perhaps a little more so in the light of recent events in financial and related markets than would have been thought the case by most people a few months ago).

The populist argument is that capitalism has failed. Undoubtedly capitalism is at bay, and there have been immediate pressures for greater government intervention and regulation. However, as noted below, for all its flaws, the market based economy remains the only serious game in town, with the capability of allocating resources and distributing incomes on a world wide scale.

Some have seen the recent events in financial and other markets as heralding the end of capitalism, but to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of its death seem somewhat premature! The problem is in finding robust and generally accepted mechanisms for linking paid work to incomes. Although capitalism and free markets are currently getting a bad press, they probably remain the best (most efficient) way yet invented for allocating resources amongst competing needs. For it to work effectively, capitalism, and indeed any alternative voluntarist system, requires a set of legislative and socio-economic structures that the vast majority of the population are prepared to sign up to. The alternative, state control and intervention, has severe limitations and in extremis can lead to very undesirable political as well as economic outcomes (as illustrated by the performance of Stalinist states).

It is clear that the present economic situation remains very uncertain and many economists think that the recession will be much deeper and longer lasting than most governments would hope. The possibility of a long lasting slump cannot be ruled out. This would have significant implications for the labour market, the economy and public finances.

As Round (2008) notes, some have argued that there is a growing resistance to “commodification” of everything and ask if there is an alternative to the conventional market based system. They argue that governments and communities, by de-coupling production and consumption from the commodified realm, could in principle open up alternative development paths, with possibly significant implications for education. Round (2008) argues that work in the informal economy is of great (possible increasing) importance for many people.  For those that earn their main income in the formal economy, informal work can nevertheless be very significant, while for others the informal can be their only way of obtaining income and status. Work in the informal economy can take many forms, including increasingly opportunities opened up by ICT.

One example of this is the suggestion by thinkers such as Castronova (2005) that it is possible to develop such systems in “virtual worlds” rather than what most people regard as the “real world”. The use of virtual worlds for such purposes is only just being explored but there are already indications that there are significant possibilities for achieving real world outcomes (as measured in real dollars) from activities carried out in virtual worlds. While there are significant examples of such activity in some parts of the world, these remain very tiny compared with activities in the real economy and are likely to remain so for immediate future, although they do appear to offer considerable potential for some work and employment, especially in areas such as training and education in situations and circumstances that are difficult or expensive to replicate in the real world.

Another potentially important area of divergence from conventional economic trends and trajectories relates to the Green agenda. Growing awareness and acceptance of the role of mankind in climate change is causing many to question key assumptions underlying the capitalist model (consumerism, materialism) and advocating significant changes in values attitudes and behaviours. If these continue to gain ground this could have implications for both the economy and labour market, as well as education.

The more pessimistic views about employment are centred on three main concerns:

• Technological change will displace jobs;
• Global trade will undermine UK businesses;
• The patterns of jobs created will not match the skills available.

The first concern has been around since the Luddites. While it is undoubtedly the case that technology displaces some jobs, there is no inevitability that employment as a whole is reduced. Such a notion is based on the “lump of work” fallacy. There is not just a fixed lump of work to be done that automation can take over. In the long run, free markets will adjust to find useful things for people to do, whatever their skills. The initial predictions undertaken in the 1970s about the possible impact of the ICT revolution were for mass unemployment in the 1980s, (e.g. Jenkins and Sherman, 1979). This turned out to be misguided. More considered analysis, which recognised the importance of market adjustments, came to much less pessimistic conclusions, although recognising the negative aspects for those directly effected (Whitley and Wilson,1987).

Similar remarks apply to the issue of where economic activities are undertaken. There is not a fixed amount of output that is to be divided up between countries. World trade is not a zero-sum game. Improvements in standards of living for the Chinese do not necessarily imply a reduction for those in other countries. Not all jobs can be outsourced to India or China (or done by a machine). Many services which involve personal contact fall into this category. Health care and teaching/ mentoring involve a high level of emotional intelligence. Other jobs involve the application of creativity and imagination. While such jobs are not exclusive to the developed world there are factors which favour their location in particular places. As Florida (2005) emphasises, these preferred locations score highly on the three Ts – Technology, Talent, and Tolerance. Education has an important role to pay in developing such characteristics.

Some pessimists have also argued that those lacking the capabilities to acquire the skills needed in the knowledge economy will struggle to find employment because of the falling number of unskilled jobs in the UK. This ignores the fact that current evidence suggests the number of low skilled jobs is actually rising in some areas.

Others have argued strongly that the “knowledge economy” is a mirage in terms of generating many new jobs in the UK. Brown et al. (2008) suggest that, as a result, there could be a significant excess supply of UK graduates.  They suggest that the knowledge economy (with the vast majority of jobs falling into this category) is a mirage, and that therefore graduate targets set by the government are misguided.  The rest of the world is catching up fast and also wants the high-end jobs. In this type of scenario, they argue that the UK economy would struggle to achieve full employment and maintain sufficient levels of high quality jobs. To some extent this view contains some elements of the notion of a fixed lump of work, and assumes little scope for market adjustment. However, it does suggest that the optimistic picture set out in the Leitch targets and the Lisbon Agenda may be much harder to achieve than many politicians would like to suggest.  Recent events in the world economy are likely to exacerbate these difficulties.

3.3      Key dimensions of uncertainty

Technology: The uncertainties here are not so much about technology itself, but more about its possible impact on the labour market and economy, as well as education. Many technological trends are not particularly uncertain, but their impact on the economy, labour market and education may be.

The possible impacts are likely to be moderated by economic and social factors. The role and significance of virtual worlds may be one particular area of uncertainty.

The Economy: Many trends are quite robust and almost inevitable, but there are significant uncertainties about the overall success of the UK economy in the face of increasing globalisation and the current recession.

Possible key dimensions and uncertainties here relate to:

• how quickly the world and UK economies recover from the current economic crisis (is this a temporary blip, similar to previous recessions, or a more fundamental shift that results in a much longer term depression in economic and labour market prospects, more like the 1930s than the 1980s);
• how successfully the UK economy will compete with other countries the global economy (in particular, whether or not the aim of securing employment in high level jobs linked to the government’s vision of the knowledge economy is realistic).

Market versus Regulation: Linked to uncertainties about the economy are political uncertainties about the way society is managed and controlled. Some have suggested that the recent financial crisis and subsequent impact in the real economy signals the demise of the free market economy. Others argue that markets remain essential to both efficiency and economic prosperity (as well as political freedom).

The key dimension here is:

• the operation of free markets; versus
• a command economy (centrally administered by the nation state or possibly major multinational corporations).

Social/political values: The market versus regulation dimension also has a parallel with other more general socio-political values. These include:

• Individualism versus collectivism;
• Materialism versus humanism;
• Work to live versus Live to work;

3.4      Potential implications for education

3.4.1.  The Meaning of work

Liddle and Lerais (2007) note that, “there is an issue of ‘respect’ in our societies for those in poor quality jobs”. Given that education is increasingly regarded as the main route into a decent job, this message can come across as very threatening to those groups in society who have traditionally failed in the education system.

It has been argued that we need to find ways in society of valuing ordinary jobs more.  Some countries (e.g. Nordic countries) have managed to achieve this.

At present, as Brown (2008) argues, there is an unhelpful hierarchy of formal qualifications, with many people being excluded and unvalued.

This is also linked also to pay, and concerns about equality and social exclusion, but it is not obvious what alternative there is to the market mechanism. The Nordic countries offer some hope in this direction but they have also had severe problems in recent years, so there are no easy solutions.

Overell (2008) raises the question of how to encourage people to do things well and to take pride in their work at all levels. Licences to practice may be part of a solution. Better job design to try to instil meaning (at societal, state and organisational levels), is also important. This requires a greater awareness of the significant trends that technological change and globalisation are imposing on the labour market. It also involves the need to equip management (including policy makers at a macro level) with the knowledge and information they need to help structure society and design jobs for all people emerging from the educational system. Moves beyond the traditional idea of the educational system passively producing people with skills suitable for use in the economy and society. It will also involve preparing all individuals to make the most of the opportunities they face and talents they possess.

Most people agree that there is a need for more and better (more fulfilling) jobs. The EU New skills for New jobs articulates such a vision, but it is not clear that it is attainable (at least in its more naïve version, with Europeans cornering the market in high level, knowledge economy jobs). The polarisation of jobs in terms of skill requirements seems a more likely outcome.

This raises the question of what can be done to equip people best for this brave new world. To some degree societies can also make choices about the mix of jobs available by setting and raising standards. Some countries such as Finland (for example) have been able to raise the proportion of higher quality jobs and raise basic standards of literacy throughout their population.

It is clear that not all jobs will be knowledge based. Polarisation implies a need for many lower skilled workers as well as highly skilled and qualified “knowledge” workers. Education needs to prepare people for this reality, as well as developing high level STEM graduates. But focussing on the elite and the rest, risks real  problems of division, exclusion and alienation. There could also be major problems of mismatch and disappointed expectations.

Education terminating at 16, 18 or even 21 is unlikely to equip people for what they will need in the whole of their lives in the 2^nd quarter of the 21^st century (if it ever did). There will be need for frequent updates and new learning. Education needs to equip individuals in such a way that they are empowered to deal with whatever they may face. It is important to recognise the need to avoid the idea that it is possible to plan in precise detail. But this does not negate the need for detailed projections of what the world might look like. On the contrary these are an essential component of the labour market information needed to guide and inform individuals so that they can make informed choices and decisions. But the priority is for distributed decision making not mechanistic central plans. Having said that, society, the State and employers do have some scope to structure jobs in general terms to meet the expectations of learning empowered citizens, as indicated by the experience of the Nordic States. There are broad social and political choices to be made, as well as organisational and individual ones.

3.4.2.  Work and happiness

One way to happiness is to do more fulfilling things at work. Cognitive action also keeps people more active generally, which has other benefits.

There is a need to make the population more generally aware of these findings, and to educate children and others better about what determines well being. This includes factors such as:

• Emotional intelligence;
• Networks and family;
• Health;
• Moderation of expectations and aspirations regarding income, etc. (or at least more realistic and reliable information on the possibilities facing most people.

The aim should be to enable young people in particular to make well informed decisions.

We also need better thought out policies on adult education, reflecting the changing nature of work and employment (recognising the increasing rarity of “a job for life”) as well as the demographic and other trends that are increasing the need for a Life-long Learning perspective.

3.4.3.  Work and values

The balance between freedom (unfettered markets) and regulation (command economies / central control) may be changing as a consequence of recent events linked to the “credit crunch”. However, recognition of the importance of market mechanism means that we are unlikely to see a reversal of the general trends towards decentralised decision making. Technological developments generally also point in the same direction, with knowledge and information being more widely distributed. However, there are some countervailing tendencies, with concerns that some multi-national corporations (and maybe some Nation States) will maintain an undesirable level of central control.

Recent trends have resulted in a much greater focus on individualism, self and materialism / consumerism (Thatcherism). There has been an apparently inexorable move away from collectivist / social values. But this may contain within it the seeds of its own destruction. Unrealistic aspirations and expectations, generated by the media and others, may lead to a backlash.

There are some signs that these trends may be reversible. Growing concerns about the environment and world poverty are one indicator. The political dimension may also be showing signs of a demand for a change in values, with the election of Obama in the recent US presidential election.

There is a case for education to play a key role in this process, by helping to inform citizens about these issues, so they can make well informed judgements.

One aspect of the increasing focus on the individual and self that is particularly pertinent relates to possible tensions between women’s rights and priorities (including the right to follow a career in the formal economy) and children’s needs for parental care (Children’s Society (2009)).

Another aspect relates to citizenship, and ties in to more general social values; valuing what all others do (ensuring greater mutual respect). Much more could be done to change perceptions of the value of different types of work (especially in certain vocational areas and low level skills).

General social values are not fixed. As exemplified by Scandinavian countries, they can be changed in a direction that promotes greater equality in terms of both pay and status, emphasising the need to provide a living wage for important but low skill/low status jobs. There are often cultural aspects to this (e.g. the value in France, placed on high quality food, which has implications for status of occupations such as waiters and chefs). It is conceivable that the recent financial meltdown could help towards a reassessment of fundamental values.

3.4.4   Work-life balance

Education also has a role to play in the area of Work-life balance. Traditional individual work/leisure choices (where work is assumed to be bad, something to be avoided) are morphing into more general family choices and lifetime decisions.

Various trends are significant here. Reduced average weekly hours worked, parental rights, carers rights, etc, are all becoming increasingly regarded as important and appropriate.

There are a number of specific educational implications:

• The first relates to education as a sector of employment (in principle, work-life balance issues should be both recognised, and policies put in place to ensure  a reasonable balance – in practice, these seem to be more common in the breach than the observance in the educational sector!);
• Education might be expected to help individuals to understand and achieve a good work-life balance, including facilitating occupational and social mobility;
• Lastly, a good work-life balance opens up the possibilities for additional demands on the educational system, as individuals take up possibilities for undertaking additional education, either as an investment or a consumption activity.

3.4.5   The demand for skills and formal qualifications

The general consensus is that there will be a growing need for more highly educated people to meet the needs of the knowledge economy.  But, Brown et al. (2008) warn that it is unlikely that this will be the case for all jobs and suggest that there is also likely to be significant growth in jobs that require no or low formal qualifications.  There is a real danger that the targets set by politicians for those acquiring higher level qualifications will lead to excess supply and dashed expectations. China, India, etc are catching up at top end of the job spectrum, and are also looking to expand high level, knowledge intensive employment, competing directly with the UK for such work.

However, there is no limit to human ingenuity and the possibilities for developing new products and services that require such inputs. There is no fixed lump of such work to be done. Nevertheless there is a need to reconsider the proposed expansion of graduate qualifications when the economy may not keep pace with the need for such qualifications, with the risks of discontent this will create in the workforce, as well as potential moves further away from gender equality. Brown et al. (2008) argue that there has been a failure of policy makers (both in the UK and in Europe more generally) to recognise reality. Aspirations to become a high value added, purely knowledge based economy may be unrealistic and unachievable.

It is also important not to see education as having a purely passive and reactive role.  While much of the discussion is about people getting the right skills for jobs that are likely to emerge, there will also be opportunities for people to develop their own jobs their own work. Encouraging people to take a more proactive role, and encouraging entrepreneurialism can help to fill any gaps that might emerge in terms of job opportunities generated by the existing population of employers. In many respects the climate for people wanting to start businesses is likely to be made easier by technological developments.

All of these possibilities could have very important implications for the curriculum.  At present State schools run a common curriculum up to 14, yet the scenario sketched out by Brown et al. (2008) and others suggests  very different demands for skills (with polarisation, across both occupations and geographical space).

Keep (2008) also stresses the importance of incentives. A polarised earnings distribution makes for weak incentives for participation in education for all but a lucky few. This poses some significant challenges for educational policy. Simple changes to the curriculum are unlikely to resolve this. Major changes in priority may be needed which recognise the need to cope with very heterogeneous demands for skills. These may well be strongly polarised, with very different impacts at upper and lower ends of the educational spectrum.

On the one hand, there will be increasing demands for highly creative, technically skilled, knowledge workers. On the other hand, there will also be many jobs requiring limited skills and low expectations and ambitions. For many individuals who are less successful than average in terms of educational achievement, these are the only jobs they may be able to find. The old 11+, which marked 80% of the population as failures at aged 11, has now been replaced by a more general divisions at 14+ and 16+ between those able to go on to become graduates, and the rest. And even for many of those that do achieve graduate status, the kinds of job opportunities on offer may fail to match their high expectations.

In this case supporting such people to develop own businesses (and therefore their own jobs) may become of increasing importance. This would place increased significance on measures to support and encourage entrepreneurial activity both within education and more generally. The experience of previous recessions suggest that many graduates unable to find jobs in traditional areas of graduate employment take on new identities and develop new niches (Purcell et al. (2005)).

3.4.6   Demands for specific skills

The trends broadly summarised in Section 3.4.5 are identified in much greater detail elsewhere in this document and in the large body of research aimed at anticipating changing skill demands. While there are some concerns about the quality of such information (as a result of inadequate investment in pertinent data and methods (both at a UK and a broader European level)), a number of key trends have been identified. The Leitch (2005 and 2006) reports identify gaps in skill requirements for 2020 and beyond:

• at the level of basic skills (including literacy and numeracy);
• for intermediate skills (including the lack of a sound vocational base); and
• at higher level relating to management and leadership.

Basic skills

At the level of basic skills, too many young people are still not acquiring the most basic skills, including literacy and numeracy. Many fail to acquire the fundamental skills at primary school, and are turned off and disengaged almost from the start. This requires intervention at primary level to break the vicious circles of disadvantage and deprivation that underlie these patterns. In many respects this is no different from what is already happening with Sure Start/ Early Years qualifications/ Numeracy & Literacy strategies. What is distinctive about the projections is that these needs are likely to intensify, both in terms of the numbers and proportions of jobs that will require at least these minimum requirements, as well as the scope of those basic skills (which are likely to include a broader definition of literacy than simple oral a written communication skills).

Intermediate skills (especially vocational skills)

Not for the first time in reviews about the UK’s skill needs, Leitch has identified a gap at intermediate level in the skills profile of the UK. Intermediate skills refer here to a broad group of skills below graduate level but about basic levels, especially various vocationally orientated skills (both technical knowledge and practical experience). Tomlinson (2004) highlighted the need for greater emphasis on vocational courses at this level, arguing for parity of esteem with more academic courses. The Government’s response was to introduce a range of initiatives, including Train to Gain, Modern Apprenticeships and the new Diplomas. However, as noted in the following sub-section, for a variety of reasons, these initiatives seem unlikely to provide the long-term solution.

Management and leadership

Management and leadership are crucial to economic performance. Many UK managers remain poorly qualified.  Although it is not clear that formal qualifications such as MBAs, etc, necessarily improve matters, it is clear that the economy will demand more of this particular cadre of workers in the future.  There is a need to encourage more talented people into management and leadership courses.  The importance of using methods of education that emphasise teamwork is also stressed.  There is also a need to explore failure and the lessons to be learned from it, as well as successes. However, there are also some key questions to be addressed about whether or note effective leadership can taught.

STEM qualifications

There are some particular concerns about adequate supplies of STEM graduates. This involves getting policy in schools as well as higher education right. It is as much about getting the right quality of students undertaking such courses as simply boosting or maintaining numbers.  According to (XXX) not enough of the most able students are choosing to undertake STEM subjects.  There is a need to prevent young people closing out the options of undertaking STEM subjects too early. There are also concerns about perception of what work in these areas might look like. The definition of the term engineer in many young people’s minds is often muddled and few have clear picture of what work of a professional scientist or engineer is like. There is a need for better informed and impartial careers guidance.

Other issues relating to the demand for skills

Green (2008) also highlights the need for greater emphasis on communication skills (including interaction with others) as well as formal qualifications. This suggests the need to incorporate learning on emotional literacy, interpersonal skills, and negotiating skills into learning curricula, especially at further and higher education levels. IT skills are also likely to remain in high demand, so the educational system will need to continue to supply learning on IT skills and internet use.

The Leitch reports emphasised the need to focus on the demand for skills. This begs the question of demand from whom? The term is often ill defined and can be used to refer to the demand for places on courses of education and training by individuals as well as the demand for skills by employers to undertake their day to day operations. The UKCES (as reported in HCIUSSC (2009)) has emphasised that it is the needs of employers that is the key issue (rather than demand from individuals, which is in many respects more of an indicator of the eventual supply of skills (as they acquire qualifications and accreditation)). But others have questioned whether employers always know what they need. Hogarth et al. (2009) suggest that some employers may fail to recognise that they need to upgrade the skills of their workforce in order to meet competitive challenges. The quality of jobs and learning is often not given a high profile by many (unqualified) managers, who like people to be in the same mould as themselves.

There are number of other key issues that could also be raised here. Not just about whether employers know what they want, but also the question of who should be responsible for delivery of sector specific skills. However, this goes beyond the remit of this particular paper. For further discussion see the ingoing review by UKCES (2009).

Finally, there are also some significant issues related to the demand for skills linked to the Educational workforce, including concerns about recruitment and retention of requisite numbers, and quality of teachers and lecturers at all levels of the system. In some cases there are problems of vicious circles (for example, poor or inadequate teaching in science and technology or maths) discouraging students from taking up these subjects, leading to shortages of well qualified people in these disciplines and difficulties for the public sector to recruit and retain high quality staff in these areas.

3.4.7   A misplaced focus on formal (academic) qualifications?

The debate at both national and European levels about changing skill needs over the next few decades tends to focus upon formal qualifications, especially in a UK context on academic qualifications. This is understandable as these are relatively easy to measure and monitor. But these raise some important questions about whether this is the correct focus. Not all education and training is formal. Much learning takes place informally and has significant value. This raises questions about whether or not the focus on academic qualifications is desirable and whether a more diverse set of skills/competencies should be encouraged? It also leads to questions about whether less traditional teaching and learning approaches, less focused upon the acquisition formal credentials might promote greater engagement amongst some individuals who find traditional, formal education and schooling more difficult.

Until relatively recently, early school leavers could find employment, even if they had few or no formal qualifications. It is clear that those who leave early without good qualifications are increasingly finding themselves marginalised. These problems are more serious for boys as they are more likely to leave school early and without formal qualifications. Although the current generation of school leavers is much better qualified than its predecessors, a significant proportion have still not reached upper secondary (NQF level 3) standard.

Current plans will effectively lead to the raising of school leaving age to 18 in the UK. This is likely to lead to growing problems of dealing with those less academically inclined children who are already disengaged. There is an urgent need to re-engage those for whom a traditional academic approach has little relevance. Traditional class-room based instruction simply does not work for many such children.

In the UK there has also been a general move away from emphasis on vocational education and training (exemplified by the government’s rejection of many of the recommendations of the Tomlinson (2004) report). The new diplomas currently being introduced still place a huge emphasis on theoretical rather than practical work, despite claims to the contrary. There is still a real problem in getting most employers to engage with this agenda, and finding work placements remains a key stumbling block. There are also still real issues of lack of parity of esteem for the vocational route. For many it is still perceived as a two tier system, with FE still being widely regarded as inferior to schools (sending  the wrong messages about the value of vocational courses compared to more academic ones, see (Coffield, 2002).

There is a need for much greater employer engagement. In many cases employers are being discouraged from getting involved by increasing levels of red-tape and  demands for certification. Many skilled people are not allowed to train or pass on their experience and knowledge because they do not have the formal qualifications/ credentials demanded in the FE sector. There are also difficult questions about how to provide practical work experience and knowledge for young people. More and better incentives are needed to encourage employers to release people. Current ways of connecting education and work are often not working well.

There is an increasing awareness of special needs of many youngsters (with growing numbers with dyslexia, ADHD, speech and language problems). Such children need special support. Many will never achieve NQF level 3. Increasing mental health issues amongst the young also have significant implications for happiness, stress and eventually for burdens on the NHS.

Brown (2008) questions whether initiatives such as the Lisbon Agenda, and the current government’s emphasis on achieving a 50% HE participation rate, are moving things in the right direction. He concludes that a radical rethink is needed and that schools and other providers of education should seriously consider whether the focus on acquiring formal qualifications is misplaced. He suggests that more emphasis needs to be placed on progression measured in other ways, and on encouraging collaborative working and support for the learning of others, which some might view as “cheating” and working “off task”. Of course this type of initiative raises problems about how to measure success (and failure), and in particular the difficulties of avoiding the free ride problem in measuring contributions to team work. Brown suggests that social expectations around what constitutes success and what constitutes a contribution to an activity are likely to change, facilitated by a range of technologies that can support new forms of assessment and data capture. This will change the context in which educators are operating.

Too much focus on formal qualifications for all can increase perceptions of lack of self worth for those that are non-academic. If they have not achieved a C+ in GCSE in English and maths at 16, they are branded as failures, leaving them wondering what is the point of education? There is a case to be made that school leaving should not be so tightly linked to age, nor to the achievement of particular types of qualification.

Employers also need to be encouraged to look at young people “in the round”, not just at their formal qualifications. Partnership with employers is needed, but many are not interested in opening up their workplaces for work experience, apprenticeships and work-place based learning generally (sometimes for good reasons, health and safety, economic factors, etc).

There will be a continuing need for innovation in the classroom and in educational establishments. The priority is to find ways of making education relevant to young people and the changing face of work and society. See, for example, the innovative practices of the Walker College (2008) and other schools such as Barrs Hill in Coventry. Universities have long recognised the value of learning by teaching. Young academics learn and consolidate their knowledge by taking classes. Older staff find that teaching helps them to extend and develop their research. But this is much less practised in other parts of the educational systems, yet it can work equally effectively at all levels. In Barrs Hill school in Coventry, for example schemes such as “language ambassadors” take the opportunities presented by a multicultural school population to allow children to take pride in their culture and language by teaching younger children in nearby primary schools about these things. This promotes self esteem and self confidence, as well as multicultural understanding and valuing others. Encouraging such youngsters to take GSCEs in Persian or Hindi also helps to encourage recognition of the value of such knowledge and skills, yet such schemes and practices remain exceptional rather than the rule.

Other examples of innovative practice include Motorvate which is aimed at those of a non-academic bent. It involves teaching young people about road safety, how cars work and are maintained, as well as giving them an opportunity to learn to drive. It is aimed at reducing accidents and joy-riding amongst young males, helping them to learn about the law, highway code and the impact of car crime. Such schemes can help to encourage pride in work, as well supporting the learning of others.

Assessment in the workplace is generally less focused on formal qualifications. Workplace based assessment reconnects teaching, learning and assessment. It helps to focus on Life-long Learning and active knowledge transformation for a practical purpose. The work of Brown (2008) and others suggest that the current focus on formal qualifications and credentials is misplaced and seriously question whether low level qualifications (especially post 16) add any real value for those that acquire them. Brown (2008) argues that the focus in the Lisbon agenda, etc, on moving people upwards through well defined skill levels (defined by formal qualifications attained) is misguided.  Progression in the labour market should be the main policy goal, but this is less easily measured and achieved by policy focused on the control manipulation of the supply side (numbers on courses and numbers acquiring formal qualifications).

Qualifications are frequently seen as an end, whereas they are often more of a means to an end. They provide an indicator of moves towards a more knowledge based society and knowledgeable population. Because they are relatively easily measured and monitored they tend to be the main focus of attention rather than what happens to the individuals in the process of acquiring them such as changes in individual competencies. There is a need to reconsider what 11 or 16 years of initial formal education is for, and to draw out the implications. For example, this might involve placing more emphasis on:

• Supporting the learning of others (collaborative working less focus on personal achievement);
• More open ended solutions, rather than  following a strict and narrow curriculum;
• A curriculum more focused on work skills;

There is often an implicit assumption that if we get education for young people right then all will be well.  But a sole focus on initial education is inappropriate. As emphasised by many authors, learning does not stop at 16 or even 21, and people need to be equipped to continue life time learning.

There are some important technological aspects to this. Knowledge and information are in many respects becoming more widely distributed, although there are also some countervailing pressures, with some aspects of this being concentrated in just a few organisations. The more general trend of increasing distribution of knowledge is making it much easier for individuals to tap into what they need, as and when they need it (just in time). This has significant implications for learning and knowledge acquisition.

Some people question whether the industrial (factory) model of schooling is becoming dysfunctional and out of date. There are some indications that personal learning and working environments may be converging. This may affect the traditional dichotomy between academic (brain) and vocational (manual) work and learning.

Learning is increasingly becoming integrated within the workplace. Learning does not suddenly stop after 11, or 16 years of initial education. But the implications of this for formal education could go in various directions, depending on how policy and schools, etc, react and adjust to these possibilities. For example, State schools may adjust to the new environment by proactively embracing new technologies and taking on new roles, or they could find themselves becomingly increasingly replaced by learning opportunities offered in the workplace, or privatised educational establishments, including virtual organisations.

3.4.8   Life-long Learning

Workplace learning, Vocational Education and Training (VET) and Life-long Learning  are likely to become more closely connected. VET is especially crucial for the middle group of jobs and people left out by the polarisation of skill structures identified in Section 2. Vocational education and training should not be seen as remedial.

The trends identified in Section 2, including the continuing rapid change in the structure of employment and jobs and the ever escalating and changing skills required in most jobs, means that there will be a general need to prepare the workforce for jobs that require continual learning, and to prepare the appropriate training courses to meet these learning needs.

There are other related educational implications:

• The need to recognise the greater number of significant work life transitions that most people will have to make;
• The need for up-skilling throughout lifetime;
• The need to focus on individual skill sets rather than occupational skill sets;
• The importance of mastery of a knowledge base;
• The importance of working in teams;
• The importance of supporting the learning of others;
• The need to allow for transfer between contexts;
• The potential for exploitation of virtual world, technologies, etc.

3.4.9   Location of work and learning

Work is increasingly being detached from fixed and traditional locations, but the process is slow and the pace has frequently been exaggerated. Collective office space is becoming increasingly commonplace (hot-desking, etc). Home-working may be expected to grow, but probably only modestly (see Felstead (2008)). Maybe around 20% of workers by 2025 will be working from home or hot-desking.

But this kind of working requires particular skills and discipline. There may be some significant educational and learning implications, in particular helping young people and adults to learn to cope and prosper in such a world.

Working at or from home relies heavily on time management skills, but also on being able to draw boundaries between work and non-work time to have work-life balance. People who need to do this kind of work may need to be psychologically profiled and trained to check they can cope with the isolation and boundary issues and recognise emerging health problems. This includes educating people to occupy space rather than possess it.

It is also worth emphasising that learning occurs as a result of participation: “bumping” into people results in informal learning opportunities. Working at home can lead to isolation and problems associated with this, although hot-desking can sometimes lead to more such interactions than is the case for those working full time in isolated offices.

3.4.10             The importance of place

Place is an important dimension in the links between work, employment and education. Education can play a key role in helping to break local vicious circles of deprivation and disengagement. Obviously this is not the sole or necessarily even the key factor. Infrastructure, including transport, plays a key role (Green (2008a)).

For many multi-national companies the centre of gravity is moving away from the UK to elsewhere. Such companies, especially if they are foreign owned may recognise no strong links to local economies and populations. Their commitment to the UK may be modest, although foreign ownership can have some benefits such companies often having greater emphasis on High Performance Work Practices (HPWPs), etc.

Educational providers can play a more active role in local economic development.  Examples of US and Australian experience suggest that this can be an important part of strategies to set up and nurture local skills as set out in Section 2 (see also Eberts, 2008, EMSI, 2006, and Green 2008a)).

Many citizens and employers do demonstrate a strong loyalty to “place” and take civic responsibility very seriously. Such attachment to place can have strong influences on local economic development issues, and needs to be tapped. There are lessons to be learned from other countries about the ways in which educational establishments such as FE colleges can better serve their local areas by getting actively involved in economic development issues, rather than seeing themselves as simple passive suppliers of education and training. In the East Coast of the US, for example, colleges are actively involved in trying to ensue that conditions are right for inward investment into their localities by providing the right kinds of education and training both for initial labour market entrants and for older people. This includes those that may have been displaced from employment as some jobs are made redundant by technological change or other aspects of globalisation (EMSI (2008)).

Ethnicity and diversity brings new challenges at a local level (with links to past patterns of inward immigration. Concentration of ethnic groups in particular localities is increasing, with Leicester soon to be the UK’s first major city with the white indigenous population forming a minority.  There are a growing number of businesses run by members of the ethnic minorities, but this does always not guarantee a rosy picture for employment conditions for ethnic minority groups. Such employers are not always paternalistic (e.g. the recent Primark example of clothing suppliers exploiting their workforces).

Eberts (2008) argues that place specific policies are needed, focused on the demand for skills by employers (e.g. encouragement of HPWPs, Richard Florida type amenities; regional partnerships; and involvement of local FE colleges in economic development). He highlights a number of key features:

• Business as the main customer should be the main focus of this aspect of education;
• Outcomes and objectives should be agreed, quantified and tracked (SMART);
• Local organisations (including educational institutions) need to become more entrepreneurial, problem solvers, and stakeholders;
• The need for good labour market information, including projections to allow markets to adjust, as individuals make more informed decisions in a rapidly changing global economy (but note that this is not about trying to mechanistically and centrally plan to match skills supplies to developing needs).

Eberts (2008) also advocates education and training for disadvantaged groups to assist social inclusion and enhance social mobility. Particular initiatives may be needed in local labour markets with high unemployment among ethnic minorities and other disadvantaged groups. There may be particular need for effective training in manual skills, vocational training and courses starting and managing one’s own business (which includes coping with uncertainty and managing fluctuating income) for those displaced by the technological and other changes. It may also be necessary to give greater consideration to the welfare system’s response to handling uncertain income flows.

3.4.11             Educational demands from the informal economy

For the great majority, involvement in the informal economy is in many ways growing in significance, although the formal economy is still the main source of income and self esteem for most households. In the short term, economic circumstances (the recession) may force more people down the informal route (including the grey economy (and in extremis, criminal activity)). Informal work could be a more preferable alternative for many than employment in the formal economy in low skill, low wage jobs.  This involvement can be based around community/networking/ caring for others, as well as for the environment. This includes various types of voluntary work.  ICT also offers some new possibilities, including the exploitation of virtual worlds, although as noted in Wilson and Gambin (2008) the use of ICT also brings with it some risks of negative consequences.

All this needs changes in public policy (e.g. attitudes towards and support for entrepreneurship and innovation at a micro-level, as opposed to that carried out by large corporations), and the need to operate a more socially orientated economic/ humanist model.

It is a moot point to what extent entrepreneurship can be taught. However there is certainly a role for education in explaining to young people the importance of entrepreneurial activity in generating new goods and services and jobs. According to the review carried out by Wilson and Gambin (2008), there is evidence that the UK has a generally good record in providing a good environment for “doing business”, and for generally encouraging entrepreneurial activity. One key area of concern is that there appears to be a considerable fear of failure. This may be another area where education can help, by emphasising that risk of failure is an inevitable consequence of such activity, and encouraging a realistic appreciation of the potentially great rewards as well as risks of such activity. There is considerable evidence that people can learn from failure and education can be refocused to encourage this.

Other implications for education include:

• Making young people more aware of possibilities of the informal economy;
• Encouraging awareness within schools of young people currently engaged in caring for other family members (which affects their own education);
• Rethinking how the educational system might make contact with such carers to ensure their educational needs are met (ICT might help);
• Ensuring Life-long Learning, provision and access to those involved in the informal economy as well as for those in the formal economy;
• Identifying those in ethnic minority communities, working in family businesses and others disengaged from the formal economy who are missing out; again ICT may offer new and better ways of doing this.

There are also possible implications linked to trends in unpaid (e.g. voluntary) work. These include:

• Educating the younger generation about the costs of care for older adults, what care is, and how society should solve this growing problem of care in an ageing society;
• Educating for more equal gender balance in the amounts of informal care hours for older adults provided by households;
• Formal flexible working arrangements for employees to cope with care needs of older adults;
• Greater attention to child care provision to make sure quality grows and becomes more uniform and accessible in all areas, through systems of quality control, or licensing or inspections;
• Attention to the uniformity across local areas in quality and quantity of after-school and holiday care for school aged children;
• Training up a care workforce for older adults, which might be heavily dominated by immigrant labour, for quality care provision.

There are also implications for those living off benefits (which is likely to become of increasing significance in the short-term at least). Educational policy needs to be aimed at breaking the cycle of disadvantage that is often at the root of this. Family breakdown is of course an issue across all socio-economic groups, but as Dex (2008) it is especially severe in terms of its impact on children for those at the bottom of the income distribution. Dex (2008) suggests a number of specific policy implications:

• Parenting classes could be important in tackling low achievement and the effects of disadvantage (possibly involving the development of “all age” schools, thereby fostering a culture of Life-long learning).
• Parenting classes could be made mandatory for prospective parents when pregnant, as part of the antenatal ‘clinic’.
• Early intervention into the cycle of disadvantage at pre-school ages 3 -4 is likely to remain a top priority, and it may be necessary to spend more on this if the percentage of such children from disadvantaged families goes up as seems likely.
• The majority of children coming into compulsory school (5+) in future are likely to have had some child care, but only a minority will have had full-time care. This may require remedial action.
• Given evidence that suggests that children are disadvantaged by marital breakdown and lack of male role models, high divorce rates and high lone parent rates will lead to many children suffering emotional problems during school life, which will require remedial action.

3.4.12             Values, attitudes and motivation

A number of the reviews have highlighted changing social and economic values and how this relates to both work and employment and education.

The loss of deference in society generally is also reflected in schools. Such trends seem likely to continue. This has implications for how schools are organised, how they are run, as well as the aims and manner of conducting school inspections. There may be some lessons here from industry, where evidence from the workplace suggests that participatory models produce better results.

Other aspects include:

• Education to tackle bullying cultures;
• Balancing control and autonomy in the classroom to help better equip children for the world of work;
• Educating for identifying and handling stress;
• Recognising that the premium on learning and self direction will be high in the workplace;
• Education to promote personal development and Life-long Learning.

As noted in the recent report by the Children’s Society (2009), young people in particular are now bombarded continuously by the media to take part in consumerism, driven by fashion and other factors. It is argued there, and by others (e.g. Bauman, 2008), that there has been a steady shift towards self-interest and individualism, and away from altruism and societal values. Such discussions highlight the dichotomies between:

• Individualism versus collectivism;
• Materialism versus humanism;
• Those who work to live versus those who live to work.

The market economy and liberal values have come in for considerable criticism recently, especially following the excesses associated with the credit crunch.  The problem is finding some other generally acceptable mechanism, other than free market forces, to allocate and distribute incomes and jobs.  Consumerism is what keeps the economic world going round, and keeps most people in the UK country employed.

3.4.13             Careers guidance and advice

The dramatic structural changes taking place in the economy and the labour market will have significant implications for the types of jobs that will be available in the next 10-20 years, as set out above. This will result in the need for much better labour market information to inform citizens about these possibilities. This is recognised in the New Skills for New Jobs Initiative that has recently been launched by the CEC (2008).

Education at the beginning of the 21^st Century now faces the challenge of much more demanding requirements from employers; heterogeneous populations (with ethnic and language diversities and very high expectations); and a much less well established social order. All this has to be dealt with in the face of rapid technological, demographic and economic change (including in the short-term the imminent prospect of what could still turn out to be a major recession). The demands of the new knowledge economy, in the context of what Friedman (2007) describes as a “flatter world”, open to much sharper and immediate competition from many directions, may require a very different set of attributes in the second quarter of the 21^st Century.

To keep pace with these developments, there will be a need for greater emphasis on retraining and lifelong-learning to keep workers up to date (given the pace of change).

Technology mediated learning may help to achieve this, both in public and private sectors.

The need for effective and impartial Careers Information and Guidance is also growing, and this is likely to become even more important. But existing practices are too often constrained by outdated and outmoded systems and approaches.

Careers Guidance needs to be more focused on empowering individual choices, based on robust and unbiased information about the realities of prospects in the labour market.

The incentives built into the system at present may not be working as intended. Too many children are being given advice to stay on at school to follow academic course of study for which they are unsuited. The incentives are often wrong, focused on putting “bums on seats” not on the child’s best interest.

Finally, increasingly there is a need for a Life-long Learning perspective.  People will need more assistance at later stages in their lives, not just during initial education.

3.5    Concluding Remarks

The role of education in the world of work and employment

The overall aims of education are to impart knowledge and understanding. A key rationale for this is to help people to participate in the economy and society, and to make the most of the opportunities they face, maximising their potential.

Key trends in the world of work and employment

Much change is in prospect in the world of work, employment and education.  But equally there is often enormous inertia to be overcome. The world will look very different beyond 2025, but many elements will be familiar and similar to today. Continuity is just as important as change, although it is the latter that tends to be the prime focus of attention in the media and popular accounts.

Many of the more extreme changes in ways of working and employment patterns that have been identified in Section 2 may well take place, but they will remain of relatively minor significance in quantitative terms. For example, the significance of teleworking and use of virtual reality, will probably remain modest compared with the more conventional “9-5″ workplace environment. This is likely to remain the norm for many. The media tends to home in on the more dramatic and extreme possibilities rather than a more sober and measured assessment of what may actually happen and its real impact.

Previous extrapolations based on technological determinism have often been way off the mark. Projections made in the late 1970s on the expected impact of ICT were for the paperless office and mass unemployment, neither of which has come to pass.  Many of the more extreme technological extrapolations currently being mooted will undoubtedly suffer the same fate.

There will also be a considerable diversity of experience, and many differences between individuals and across employment types. Social exclusion and concerns about limited social mobility remain areas of key concern.  As William Gibson has famously put it: “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed”. One of the key roles of education is to help address these concerns.

Technological change is also resulting in the potential for dramatic changes in the possible locations – for both work and learning.

The influence of the media and communications will increase, (focusing on star/ celebrity effects, etc), causing problems in managing expectations for many young people, whose personal experiences are unlikely to match the aspirations encouraged by such role models. Trends towards emphasis on self and individualism are likely to continue.

Implications for education

Education will have a key role to play in placing more emphasis on helping people to understand society and the economy (and their role in it). This may include placing greater emphasis on social values, and helping people to gain a broader understanding of what makes for happiness.

The importance of reliable and robust labour market information and intelligence, and sound and impartial careers guidance and advice is likely to rise.

Many of the employment trends outlined in Section 2 have strong implications for education, for education providers and for educational policy makers.

• The changing patterns of jobs will require different types of skills and knowledge;
• a need for general management and other professional skills;
• there will be a requirement for some very high level technical skills, notably in STEM subjects;
• vocational education for more young people at entry level.

But there will also be a continued need for many lower skilled jobs. Education will be needed to help individuals understand their position in the world of work. This is in part about recognising the importance of lower skilled jobs, as wells as high skilled ones.  It is also about empowering individuals, helping them to learn to take advantage of opportunities and assist social mobility.

The general demand for formal qualifications will continue to rise, driven by both supply and demand side pressures. The importance of STEM subjects will also increase, although the cadre of people needed who are qualified at the highest level will probably remain small. However these will need to be of the highest quality to compete internationally. The importance of a range of generic skills, including communications, team-working, leadership, management, business, entrepreneurial skills, is also likely to grow.

However, for many individuals the benefits of formal qualifications will be questionable, and the value of a conventional academically focused curriculum dubious.

Education will be needed not just for work, but for life:

• this includes work in the informal economy;
• it will need to be available at all ages: Life-long Learning;
• it will need to be flexible (to help ensure work life balance).

A case can be made that education is currently too “front loaded”, with too much emphasis being placed on initial education (age 5-21). There is a need to develop new mechanisms for spreading the emphasis more evenly over a life time, with rights to sabbaticals, etc, as people have longer and less predictable working lives. This raises important questions about how the present institutional framework and systems could best adapt. There are, of course, often significant problems in designing new systems, especially incentives (which often have unintended consequences). There are also many important considerations from the point of view of the individual, if a life time of learning is to be achieved, not least the question of finance.

There are a number of crucial switch and transitions points in individual’s lives (from school to work, from one job to another, job and employment shifts linked to family formation, and the move from work to retirement, etc. These are often traumatic. More thought needs to be given by policy makers to what the State can do to ease these transitions; (including financial oiling of wheels, and financial entitlements to allow investment by the individual at later points in the life-cycle (but noting the previous problems with voucher type schemes).

All this raises doubts about whether the current “factory based” models (schools /colleges), providing education and training to large numbers at the same time, are the right ones.

It also raises practical questions about what the State can do to help individuals “follow their dream”. The business advisors model is not very practical; but NIACE have suggested the need for a regular “learning” heath check. There is some evidence that, when done well, personal advisors can help (as in Connexions).

New technology will also have significant implications for the educational process and delivery (ways of learning; plagiarism (a growing problem for assessment), where learning takes place, etc). There will be a continuing need for innovation and to find ways of making education relevant to young people and the changing face of work and society.

Needs of the economy

This will have various aspects, including a distinction between the needs of those parts of the economy most linked to the global economy and those more focused on meeting the needs of more domestic and local customers.

The evidence assembled in Section 2 emphasises (inter alia) the importance of:

• the basics (literacy and numeracy), which are the keys to learning to learn;
• skills in the use of the internet and ICT are also key elements;
• lifetime learning, which will be a key feature, although much of this may be informal or conducted in the workplace rather than in formal educational establishments;
• “DIY” or self-directed learning will increase in importance and in principle has enormous potential (but it also has limits);
• “just in time learning” (e.g. searching for information and knowledge on the internet as and when required), which be increasingly be the norm;
• managerial, leadership and entrepreneurial skills;
• the need also for managers to have soft-skills including recognition of the value of their work-force.
• diversity (including the effects of changing demographics, which will have some significant implications, with particular groups (older people, ethnic minorities)  imposing special demands on the system);
• the need for an understanding of other cultures and knowledge of languages in the context of the global economy (recognising that just as there are many students (and migrant workers) coming to the UK, there is an equal potential for more few UK students and temporary migrants going to other countries).
• some analysis emphasises the likely increased demand for high level skills and formal qualifications, but others question whether this increase in the  quality of work, will benefit more than a few;
• if these more pessimistic scenarios prevail, then for many work may mean less autonomy, less time to think, inequity, stress and related mental health issues;
• there are also issues about vulnerability, with those least able to adapt being most at risk.

This will all raise many questions for those involved in providing and delivering education and training:

• How best to ensure educational opportunity for everyone throughout their lives;
• How to help those who fail to benefit from the present system (especially the socially disadvantaged);
• How to ensure that everyone has the skills they need to find and retain a decent job;
• How to identify and remove any other barriers to success for disadvantaged groups;
• How to identify the skills people will need;
• How should people be advised and guided to make the right choices;
• How can education be used to empower individuals;
• What needs to be done to ensure that education and related activities will help to shape the future in a way that benefits society as a whole?

There are also a number of educational workforce issues.  These include:

• the stresses and burdens placed on teachers and lecturers by administrative overload, and emphasis on measurement and monitoring;
• status and pay.

Overcoming inertia:

There are many sources of inertia in the current systems and procedures for delivering education and training. This reflects vested interests, and other factors leading to resistance to change. These affect:

• Government (including DCSF/DIUS), which some see as part of the problem as well as the solution);
• Employers; and
• Individuals.

At the institutional level, it is imperative that there is a broader recognition of the role of education as preparation for work for all those in the population, not just the top of the academic ability range.

For employers, a clearer view is needed of what the role of work should be in a life-time of learning and how this is likely to change. They also need to articulate more clearly how their demands for skills are likely to change.

Finally for individuals, more help needs to be given to children (in particular) so that more of them have a better understanding of the role that education plays in their future life paths, and especially their prospects of securing and maintaining gainful employment. Too many still do not see the relevance and meaning of education, and there are some parts of the country where whole localities effectively “drop out” and disengage, leading to vicious circles of deprivation.

ANNEX A

The report forms part of a much larger programme of research entitled Beyond Current Horizons (BCH), which is focused on the Future of Education.

A series of initial papers were prepared for the BCH programme as part of a ground clearing exercise designed to identify any relevant research evidence. This lead to the BCH Expert Advisory Group defining a number of key Challenge areas, each covering issues and topics thought to be crucial to the future of education.

This report focuses on one of these Challenge areas. It is concerned with Working & Employment. It builds on an earlier paper by the author (Wilson, 2008) which was one of the initial series referred to above.

The Working and Employment Challenge

There is no shortage of research and commentary on the “Future of Work”. This has received a further boost in recent months, as the uncertainties associated with the worldwide financial crisis, and the subsequent economic recession, have increased. Academics and other commentators have produced enormous numbers of books, reports and journal articles focused entirely or in substantial part on the topics of future employment and work patterns. Technology and other changes are resulting in dramatic changes in how work is done and where it is undertaken. Globalisation has become the buzz word when discussing most economic and social issues. As a result of these developments, work can now easily be broken into smaller tasks and redistributed around the world. Dramatic improvements in real time communications, including the development of “virtual worlds”, are transforming the concept of what it means to be “at work”.

Sifting through all this material has presented a very real challenge. There is often a tendency to exaggerate and sensationalise in order to sell books and newspapers. In-depth and evidence based research by the academic community often suggests rather more inertia, and places more emphasis on trends which are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. This suggests that there is often a large gap between the rhetoric and myths perpetrated by some commentators and the reality of life in the workplace. This report attempts to provide an assessment of what is really likely to happen over the next 15 years or so, and to identify what are the main uncertainties in the area of Work and Employment.

The BCH programme allocated resources to each Challenge leader to help in the task of reviewing and synthesising the evidence, including asking other researchers to produce short Review Papers on topics of key interest. In the case of the present Challenge, these resources were deployed in the following ways:

• First, a Challenge Steering Group (CSG) was set up to help:
  • to prioritise the research areas to be considered;
  • to decide what specific reviews to commission and who might be asked to undertake them; and finally,
  • to provide a general sounding board in developing the present report.
• Second, the potential authors identified were asked to prepare short review papers on the selected topics;
• Third, a series of events (small seminars/workshops) were held: to discuss the matters raised; to identify common themes and gaps; and to help prioritise the key issues with regard to the objectives of the BCH programme finally;
• A series of Quick Reviews was also commissioned to fill in some of the main gaps identified;

Challenge Steering Group (CSG)

This comprised 4 acknowledged experts in the field of work and employment:

• Professor Lorna Unwin, (Dept. of Lifelong and Comparative Education, Institute of Education);
• Professor Ewart Keep, (Deputy Director, SKOPE, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff);
• Penny Tamkin, (Programme Director, the Work Foundation);
• Professor Alan Brown, (IER Warwick and TLRP Associate Director).

The Review Papers

A total of 19 Review Papers were commissioned, involving 21 authors, many of whom are recognised experts in their chosen areas of specialism. These papers are listed in the Reference section. They cover a range of topics intended to cover the most significant issues likely to affect the world of Work and Employment over the coming decades. This list was initially suggested by the author, and subsequently refined following comments and suggestions from the BCH EAG and the CSG.  Without these Reviews this report could not have been written.

In addition to the main Review Papers, a series of Quick Reviews was undertaken by Wilson and Gambin (2008). These were intended to fill in gaps identified by the author (in combination with the BCH EAG and CSG) after the first round of Review Papers had been completed.

All these papers will be made available on the BCH website.

The general brief for the Review Paper authors was to produce for their chosen topic a short paper which covered:

• The main trends and issues in the area concerned;
• Any possible discontinuities looking forward to 2025 and beyond;
• Uncertainties and any big tensions;
• Conclusions on what the key issues will be in the future, and initial reflections on any general implications for education.

It was emphasised that the reviews were not just about assembling Evidence, based on previous research, but also highlighting key Ideas and Values. In thinking about the future authors were asked to explore: Probable futures; Possible Futures; and Preferable futures. All Review authors were asked to bear in mind issues to do with the implications for the health, Well-being and happiness for children, families and workers.

The Events

The overall project Brief called for at least two events to be organised for each Challenge. These were intended as consultation and idea generation events (workshops or symposia), with attendees from a range of relevant disciplines, in order to explore connections between items of evidence from the reviews and generate new perspectives on the impact they may have on education.

The first event for the Working and Employment Challenge was held on 9th of October in London at TLRP offices. This event involved a number of the Review Paper authors, plus members of the CSG and others. This was a ground clearing and brainstorming event, facilitated by the author. It focused upon:

• Topics to be covered in the initial set of Review Papers;
• Possible gaps in the choice of Review Paper topics;
• Possible authors of Reviews not so far commissioned;
• Other areas of importance, for which there may be only limited research evidence.

As a result some new Review Papers were commissioned and others refocused.

Two subsequent events were held in December and January. These were smaller and focused on reviewing and synthesising the evidence assembled in the Review Papers and developing this Synoptic Report.

The purpose of this Synoptic Report

The main purpose of the Synoptic Report is to provide the Expert Advisory Group with a way of rapidly accessing the knowledge, evidence and ideas identified from the reviews carried out as part of the Working and Employment Challenge. This is intended to support the scenario development process that is a main component of the BCH programme.

It will also be used as the public facing summary of the findings of the Challenge in the final report from the programme.

References

Review papers prepared for the Working and Employment Challenge

Attwell, G and C. Costa (2008) Integrating personal learning and working environments. A Review Paper prepared for the Working &, Employment Challenge: Pontydysgu

Baldry, C . (2008) How will technological change affect opportunities for creating new economic activities, new sectors and new industries to the year 2025? Stirling Management School, University of Stirling

Bimrose, J. (2008) Careers guidance, identity and development. A Review Paper prepared for the Working &, Employment Challenge Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick. Coventry

Bosworth, D.L. (2008) The R&D, knowledge, innovation triangle: education and economic performance. A Review Paper prepared for the Working &, Employment Challenge Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick. Coventry

Brown, A. (2008) Developing expertise – moving beyond a focus on workplace competence, assessment and qualifications A Review Paper prepared for the Working &, Employment Challenge Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick. Coventry

Casey, B. (2008) The changing trajectory of working lives -what will be the impact of an ageing workforce and a longer working life? A Review Paper prepared for the Working &, Employment Challenge Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick,Coventry

Dex, S. (2008) Review of future of paid and unpaid work, informal work, homeworking, the place of work in the family (women single parents, workless households), benefits, work attitudes motivation and obligation. A Review Paper prepared for the Working & , Employment Challenge

Dixon, M. (2008) Information and communication technology, work and employment. A Review Paper prepared for the Working &, Employment Challenge.

Felstead, A. (2008) Detaching Work From Place: Charting The Progress Of Change And Its Implications For Learning. A Review Paper prepared for the Working &, Employment Challenge:  Cardiff.

Gambin, L. and R. Wilson (2008) The Future of Work: What Does Work Mean? 2025 and Beyond. A contribution to the Beyond Current Horizons programme on the Future of Education: Review Paper prepared for the Working &, Employment Challenge Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick Coventry

Green, A. (2008a). The Importance of Place. A contribution to the Beyond Current Horizons programme on the Future of Education, Working &, Employment Challenge: Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick, Coventry

Green, F. (2008) The Growing Importance of Generic Skills. Department of Economics, Keynes College, University of Kent, Canterbury.

Hogarth, T and D.L. Bosworth, (2008) Future Horizons for Work-life Balance. A contribution to the Beyond Current Horizons programme on the Future of Education: A Review Paper prepared for the Working &, Employment Challenge Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick Coventry

Keep, E. (2008) Labour Market Structures and Trends, the Future of Work and The Implications for Initial E&T. A contribution to the Beyond Current Horizons programme on the Future of Education: A Review Paper prepared for the Working &, Employment Challenge

Overell, S. (2008) The Meaning of Work paper prepared for the Beyond Current Horizons Project

Powdthavee, N. (2008) Happiness and Well-being. A Review for Beyond Current Horizon Programme University of York.

Round, J. (2008) The boundaries between informal and formal work. School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham

Tamkin, P. (2008) In Search of Leadership A paper prepared for BCH. Work Foundation

Unwin, L. (2008) Connecting Workplace Learning and VET to Lifelong Learning. Institute of Education: London.

Wilson, R.A. (2008) The Future of Work: What Does Work Mean 2025 and Beyond? Challenge Outline Paper prepared for DCSF “Beyond Current Horizons” Programme.

Wilson, R. and L. Gambin, (2008) Quick Reviews for the Beyond Current Horizons Work and Employment Challenge, (covering: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM); Children’s work; Entrepreneurial activity and practices; Innovation and intellectual property rights; Emerging economies and virtual/synthetic worlds; Possible negative effects of technological development) Paper prepared for the Working &, Employment Challenge Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick, Coventry

Other References

Barro R.J. and X. Sala-i-Martin (1995), Economic Growth, McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York).

Bauman, Z. (2008) The absence of society. Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The Social Evils Series.

BCH (2007) Previous Global Futures, Technology Futures and Questions for Education: A provocation paper. Beyond Current Horizons programme for DCSF.

Birchall, D., S. Borrett, J. Gill, N. Silburn and P. Thomson (2005) Managing Tomorrow’s Worker: Final Report. Henley Management College.

Bonvin, J-M. and Farvaque, N.  (2006)  ‘Promoting Capability for Work: The Role of Local Actors’  in  Deneulin S., Nebel M. and Sagovsky N. (eds.)  The Capability Approach: Transforming unjust structures Dordrecht: Springer.

Bosworth, D and R. Wilson (2007) Trends in Employment Flexibility: Impact of Proposed Legislation on Managed Service Companies. Version 1.:paper prepared for Blairgowrie.

Bosworth, D.L. (2008).  “An Ageing Population: the Challenges Facing the UK”, Contribution to Skills in England, Learning and Skills Council.

Brown, P. D. Ashton, H. Lauder and G. Tholen, (2008). Towards a High-Skilled, Low-Waged Workforce? A Review of Global Trends in Education, Employment and the Labour Market. Monograph No. 10 October 2008, ESRC funded Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance. Cardiff and Oxford Universities, ISSN 1466-1535

CEC (2008) New skills for New Jobs: Anticipating and matching labour market and skills needs. Commission of the European Community. {SEC(2008) 3058}

CEDEFOP (2007a), Towards European skill needs forecasting. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

CEDEFOP (2008a), Future skill needs in Europe. Focus on 2020.

CEDEFOP (2008b), Future skill needs in Europe. Medium-term forecast. Synthesis report.

Children’s Society (2009). A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age (authors: Richard Layard and Judy Dunn). Children’s Society

Christensen, Clayton M. (2003), The innovator’s dilemma: the revolutionary book that will change the way you do business, New York: HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-052199-6

Cliff, D., C. O’Malley, and J. Taylor (2008) Future Issues in Socio-Technical Change for UK Education. technology review conducted for the BCH Programme

Coffield (F. (2002). Britain’s continuing failure to train: the birth pangs of a new policy.  Journal of Education Policy.  Vol 17; Part 4, pages 483-497.

Dean, H, Bonvin, J.-M., Vielle, P. and Farvaque, N.  (2005)  ‘Developing Capabilities and Rights in Welfare-to-Work Policies’  European Societies 7(1): 3-26.

DCSF (2007) (Department for Children, Schools and Families) The Children’s Plan. Building brighter futures. Cm 7280 HMSO: London, December 2007.

Eberts, Randall W.  (2007)  Trends in Worker Requirements and the Need for Better Information to make more Informed Decisions in a Global Economy. W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research Kalamazoo, MI, USA, Paper presented at the Session Entitled “Adult Skills and Working Opportunities” At the OECD’s 2nd World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge, and Policy, on “Measuring and Fostering the Progress of Societies”, Istanbul on 27-30 June, 2007.

EMSI (2006) Documenting and Assessing the Role of Community Colleges in Developing Human Capital (authors: Laanan, Frankie; Hardy, David; Katsinas, Stephen). Community College Journal of Research and Practice, Volume 30, Number 10, December 2006, pp. 855-869(15). Routledge

EMSI (2008) A Look at “Green” Occupations, Part 1. http://www.economicmodeling.com/resources/wp-content/uploads/green-jobs_final.pdf

ESRC Future of work Programme (2004) http://www.leeds.ac.uk/esrcfutureofwork/output/publications.html

Families and Work Institute (2005) study by the Families and Work Institute in New York

Florida, R (2005) The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent. HarperBusiness, Harper Collins Publishers

Friedman, T. (2007). The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century.

Future of Work Program (2007) see the Future of Work website http://www.thefutureofwork.net/community_levels.html

Giullari, G and J. Lewis (2005) ‘The Adult Worker Model, Gender Equality and Care’. Social Policy and Development Programme Paper Number 19, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (April 2005).

Harper, S. (2008) Demography Challenge Paper. Commissioned by the BCH programme: Oxford Institute of Ageing.

HCIUSSC (2009) (House of Commons Innovation, Universities Science and Skills Committee) Re-skilling for recovery: After Leitch, implementing skills and training policies. First report of Session 2008-09, Volume 1 (HC 48-1incorporating 505-i-v, Session 2007-08)

Heeks, R. (2008) Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on “Gold Farming”: Real-World Production in Developing Countries for the Virtual Economies of Online Games. Development Informatics Group, Paper No. 32, Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, Arthur Lewis Building, Manchester, http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/publications/wp/di/documents/di_wp32.pdf

Henley Management Research Centres Future Work Forum: http://www.henleymc.ac.uk/henleyres03.nsf/pages/fwf

Jenkins, C. and B. Sherman (1979) The Collapse of Work. Eyre Methuen

Karoly, L. A. and C. W. A. Panis (2004). “The 21^st Century at Work: Forces Shaping the Future Workforce and Workplace in the United States. Study for the US Department of Labor. RAND Corporation, MG- 164-DOL, ISBN: 08330-3492-8.

Krugman, P. (2003) “Lumps of Labor.” The New York Times, 10.7.03

Leitch (2005) Skills in the UK: The long-term challenge, Interim Report, HMSO: ISBN: 1-84532-121-9

Leitch (2006) Prosperity for all in the global economy – world class skills. December 2006. HMSO: ISBN-10: 0-11-840486-5

Liddle, R.. and F. Lerais (2007) A Consultation Paper from the Bureau of European Policy, Advisers,  Europe’s Social Reality.

Migration Advisory Committee (MAC 2008b) The labour market impact of relaxing restrictions on employment in the UK of nationals of Bulgarian and Romanian EU member states,  December 2008,

Migration Advisory Committee (MAC, 2008a) Skilled Shortage Sensible: The recommended shortage occupation lists for the UK and Scotland. Produced by COI on behalf of the Migration Advisory Committee. ISBN: 978-1-84726-823-5  (www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/mac)

Moynagh, M and R. Worsley (2008) Going Global: Key Questions for the Twenty-First Century, A & C Black with Guardian Books.

Pink, D (2005). A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age.

Purcell, K., Elias, P., Davies, R., & Wilton, N. (2005) The Class of ‘99: A study of the early labour market experience of recent graduates, DfES Research Report, Sheffield.

Sen, A.  (1999)  Development as Freedom  New York: Knopf.

Sennett, R, (1976) The Fall of Public Man, Penguin Books

Sennett, R, (2008) The Craftsman, Allen Lane.

Taylor, R. (2004a) Britain’s World of Work – Myths and Realities. An ESRC Future of Work Programme Seminar Series.  Future of Work Commentary Series: Publication Three.

Taylor, R. (2004b). The Future of Work-Life Balance. An ESRC Future of Work Programme Seminar Series. Future of Work Commentary Series: Publication Two.

Thomson, P. (2007) Tomorrow’s Leaders: Final Report. Henley Management College, Future Work Forum.

Tomlinson, M. (2004). 14-19 Curriculum and Qualifications Reform: Final Report of the Working Group on 14-19 Reform October 2004). DfES Publications, Nottinghamshire. DfE-0976-2004

Tomorrow project (2007) see website: http://www.tomorrowproject.net/pub/2__Website/The_Tomorrow_Project/-24.html (see also Moynagh, M and R. Worsley (2008))

UKCES (2009) Reviews of Investment in Education and Training by Individuals and Employers (Collective Measures and related projects, three reports covering: Employer Training: A Conceptual Review From A Public Policy Perspective. by D. L. Bosworth, Warwick Institute for Employment Research; Empirical Review, by T. Hogarth, L. Gambin, D. Bosworth & R.A. Wilson, prepared for UK CES by Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick, Coventry; and Policy Review for UK CES Collective Measures Project. by A. Cox, F. Sumption and J. Hillage, Institute for Employment Studies; and Collective Measures Study):

Unwin, L. (2008a) Learning at Work: Opportunities and Barriers. State-of-Science Review: SR-A2 contribution to the UK Government’s Foresight Project, Mental Capital and Well-being: making the most of ourselves in the 21^st Century. Government Office for Science Foresight (website www.foresight.gov.uk).

Walker College (2008) What roles should schools play to assist maximum quality of transition from school to work? How should schools best work both with employers and pupils, including the most disadvantaged? presentation by Steve Gater, Headteacher, Walker Technology College, at Skills In England Seminar on Transition from School to Work, January 2008. See also the website http://www.walker.newcastle.sch.uk/

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Wilson, R.A. (2007b) ‘Trends in Employment Creation in Europe’ in Perspectives on Employment and Social Policy Coordination in the European Union. Ministério do Trabalho e da Solidariedade Social, Lisbon. paper prepared for the Portuguese Presidency Conference on Employment In Europe – Prospects and Priorities, Lisbon, 8-9 October 2007.

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Wilson, R.A., K. Homenidou and L. Gambin (2009), Working Futures 2007-2017: UKCES: Wath on Dearne

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Yeats, Ronald, (2008) Article in the Sunday Express, 13/01/08, p55.

Zimmermann, B.  (2006)  ‘Pragmatism and the Capability Approach: Challenges in Social Theory and Empirical Research’  European Journal of Social Theory 9 (4): 467 – 484.

This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation

See for example, neo-classical growth such as those outlined in Barro and Sala-i-Martin (1995), where the accumulation of human and physical capital is subject to diminishing returns (Barro, R.J. and X. Sala-i-Martin (1995), Economic Growth, McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York).

Article by Ronald Yeats, Sunday Express, 13/01/08, p55.

See Wilson et al (2009), Cedefop (2007a, b and c) and Wilson et al. (2007) for details.

Skill is typically measured by occupation or qualification.

The UK’s Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) distinguishes a hierarchy of occupational titles and categories, dependent in art on the skill levels required to undertake them.

Formal qualifications are of course only a partial measure of the skills people have acquired, many of which are not formally accredited ad are acquired and developed after the process of initial education. Nevertheless formal qualifications have the huge advantage of ease of measurement.

There have been numerous attempts to define and measure these other aspects of skill, some of which are as much personal characteristics as competences that can be taught and acquired. In the UK the work of Francis Green and colleagues has been seminal (see Green (2008) for an overview).

Although note the caveats on this matter set out in Brown et al. (2008), who argue that the idea that the UK can become a predominately knowledge based economy is wishful thinking by politicians rather than a likely future outcome. Moreover, even those knowledge jobs that are created may offer much less scope for discretion (and hence job satisfaction and fulfilment) than their incumbents might hope.

Francis Green (2008) also discusses some aspects of this in his review.

So called “gold farming”, which involves playing or taking part in computer games on behalf of others to gain some economic reward in the “real” world.

There are some echoes here with problems of ensuring that there are sufficient teachers of good quality to nurture an adequate supply of high quality STEM graduates.

Barrs Hill is an example of a Full Service, Extended School, which aim to provide a more holistic approach to educating. Other agencies based in such schools can help with early interventions (linked to childcare, and working with parents). This was intended to become mainstream policy but seems to have been sidetracked.

I. The Rise of the Schooled Society

A quiet revolution has been afoot over the past 150 years that is under-appreciated and often completely overlooked, yet it profoundly influences our lives, shapes who we are, how we think and work, and what we value most.  Formal education – schooling from kindergarten well into adulthood at colleges and universities and other higher education institutions – transforms modern society in ways that were unimaginable at the beginning of the 20^th century.  The idea of a schooled society is precisely this: a society in which not only all children and youth attend long periods of formal schooling and adult status is mostly determined by academic outcomes, but also one where all institutions are increasingly influenced by the ideas, values, and norms originating out of education as a social institution.

In a very short time, human society all over the world went from providing only limited schooling for the masses while saving advanced education opportunities for small numbers of elite students, to schooling all children and youth.  The standard of how much schooling it takes for one to be considered an educated person has steadily risen with every new generation.  This is obvious from our own families’ educational history where completing secondary education for our grandparents was a major personal accomplishment, while most of our generation assumed that college was a very desirable, if not totally necessary, goal, much like many of our children see post-graduate training as a normal and not a particularly unique education aspiration.

At the most basic level it is very apparent that schooling has steadily pushed its way into lives all over the globe. Just fifty years ago one half of all Americans either had no schooling or had attended only primary school, while in just three short generations we have progressed to the point where almost every American adult has at least graduated from high school and over one half of American adults have gone on to colleges and universities. During the same period whole populations in poorer nations went from having no access to any schooling to widespread primary and secondary education.  Currently 80% of all humans aged 15 or over are able to both read and write a short statement about their life (UNESCO, 2003). This fact would have been hard to imagine just fifty years ago, and most likely it would have been plainly unthinkable one hundred years ago.

The triumph of the ideas behind the educational revolution transformed the world in just 100 years from a place where the vast majority of humans received little or no formal education, to one where it is deemed a worldwide crisis if full education for all is not achieved soon (UNESCO, 2003). And in just the last 20 years the public rhetoric shifted from one of education for all as a positive, if distant, potential to one of education for all as an absolutely essential world goal.

Yet, the education revolution is not only about bringing just basic education to all; many nations, wealthy and less so, are in the midst of an unparalleled growth of higher education for all. Following these trends out over the next fifty years, one can easily imagine a world where most people live and work in what can truly be called a schooled society.

The demographical dimensions of the schooled society are well known and have been documented in great detail. In most high-income nations, such as the UK, US, Japan, France, Germany and so forth, mass education has steadily expanded up the life course over the past 100 years. By the turn of the 21^st century the dimensions of education in the world are immense in terms of its recent growth, its claim to people’s time and effort, and its impact on their lives.  What is most salient about the education revolution is both its relative newness to the human society and the speed by which it grown.  As shown in Figure 1, which plots the total worldwide number of students enrolled in primary, secondary, and tertiary (ie higher education) schooling over the past 200 years worldwide, a short time anthropologically-speaking.  And, once started the rate of growth for each level of schooling rapidly becomes significant and sustained. Note also that over the first few decades of the 20^th century growth in primary enrollment takes off and by 1940 bursts into a logarithmic climb, and as primary schooling reaches large numbers of children 20 years later, enrollment in secondary schooling turns sharply up in the 1960s. New advanced sectors of education are spurred on by the growth of the subsequent sector. Demographically, going to school and attending for a considerable number of years is a new and massive change in behavior of children and youth, and supporting this endeavour is a new role for their families and communities.

Figure 1: Number of Students in Elementary, Secondary, and Higher Education        Worldwide  (Source: Schofer and Meyer 2005)

Since the early 1970s the third wave of the education revolution has unfolded as enrollment in higher education has grown substantially. For example, only about 500,000 students were enrolled in higher education institutions worldwide at the beginning of the 20^th century, representing a tiny fraction of 1% of college-age people, but by 2000, the number of tertiary students had grown to approximately one hundred million people, a number that represents about 20% of the relevant age cohort worldwide, and most of this growth occurred after 1960 (UNESCO 2004). In higher-income nations, it is now common for more than half of all youth to receive some post-secondary schooling, with numbers surpassing 80% in a few countries (UNESCO, 2004).  But, the expansion is not limited to the wealthy, industrialized societies; countries like Algeria, Kazakhstan, and Myanmar each now possess about as many post-secondary students as could be found in the entire world at the start of the century (Schofer and Meyer, 2005).

Providing widespread educational opportunity for nations’ populations is not only widely thought to be desirable, it is now approaching the status of a basic human right like nutrition, health care, and civil rights.  Following the post-WWII trend of greater involvement of multilateral agency involvement in assisting nations’ economic development, representatives from major agencies such as the United Nations, UNICEF, the World Bank, UNESCO in alliance with governments of most nations, and international non-governmental organizations  (INGOs) such as Oxfam and Action Aid gathered together at an international conference in Jomtien Thailand in 1990.  Not only did they once again declare that education is a basic human right, but they set forth a plan of action to make education universal worldwide – the Jomtien Declaration.  This process was updated and intensified in 2000 at a similar international conference on Education for All in Dakar, Senegal.  In each case the attendees of the conferences affirmed the need to have all children have access to quality education within a relatively short time frame for not only the good of nations, but also for the good of the worldwide society. And ambitious and clear steps to meet these goals are widely dispersed throughout the developing world. But the schooled society is far more than just the mechanical expansion of formal education up the life course for ever greater proportions of humans.  As an institution, formal education has come to be one of only a few dominating modern society, and this social development in the course of human society worldwide holds a number of central implications for the future.

How to Think about the Education Revolution?

In light of this sweeping educational revolution, there is an interesting paradox about schooling in modern society.  On the one hand, we attribute many powers to schools: teaching children to read, to understand mathematics and science, to practice and enjoying the arts, to memorize the historical development of a nation, and now even to know about the development of human society across time and place: these are all routinely thought of as what schools do to transform children into functioning adults.  But on the other hand, schooling is frequently portrayed as failing modern society in fundamental ways, leaving the educational revolution under-appreciated, and the wide dimensions of the schooled society have gone mostly unnoticed.  There is much discussion and hand-wringing over the problems with schools; great things are expected from them, but they seem never fully to deliver.  Here is one example of the dire concerns many have about the quality of modern schools; this one was made by the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, at the National Education Summit on American Secondary Schools held on February 26, 2005:

America’s high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, I don’t just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded – though a case could be made for every one of those points.   By obsolete, I mean that our high schools – even when they’re working exactly as designed – cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.  Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today’s computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. It’s the wrong tool for the times.  Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting – even ruining – the lives of millions of Americans every year.

Why this paradox of such high expectations for schooling yet such concerns about its supposed perpetual failure?  First, most people do not recognize the power by which mass schooling transforms society.  Second, many people, even professional educators and scholars of education, become overly fixated on specific parts of what schooling is supposed to do for society at the exclusion of perceiving its formable total impact.  Third, formal education is so ubiquitous in modern life that people rarely appreciate the dynamic way schooling has intensified over recent history and in so doing incorporated itself even deeper into our lives.  Fourth, most people limit their view of schools, colleges, and universities as “helping” institutions that only socialize (some say even oppress) and train our children to join society.

But contrary to these perceptions, in point of fact, schooling from kindergarten through higher education continues to be one of the major success stories of our times; far from a failure, it has transformed who we are, how we think about ourselves, and what we can do.  Interestingly, this fact often goes unappreciated by most in modern society, including professional educators and many social scientists.

But over the past few decades, a group of social scientists-mostly sociologists-have developed a new way to think about the effects of education on modern society that opens up a much wider appreciation of how education transforms everyday lives.  Armed with a new perspective known as neo-institutionalism, these researchers are undertaking exciting new studies outlining the contours of the transforming activity of sending all children to increasingly longer periods of schooling (eg Baker and LeTendra, 2005; Meyer, 1977) The overarching conclusion from these studies presents a vivid picture of how profound the effects of educating all people has been on modern society, and points to the path that the schooled society will likely take in the future.

To appreciate this new perspective, first consider the traditional notion of formal education’s role in society.  On an institutional level formal education is considered to be only a supportive and secondary institution that follows in form and content wherever society takes it.  Probably the most popular image is that of education following (too slowly as Mr. Gates and others would have it) the changing demands of work in particular, and changing societal complexity in general.  Seen this way, schooling is an institution primarily limited to the training of individuals for jobs and the socializing of individuals for a particular society.  The traditional notion is that formal education reproduces society, changing only as society changes at the hands of various external forces.  This image is depicted in the top panel of Figure 2, where schooling only socializes students through teaching curricula and credentials them for adult positions, while the institutional unidirectional influence flows from society to schooling.

Figure 2: Two Models of Education’s Relationship with Society

A neo-institutional analysis turns this traditional notion on its head by arguing that an accounting of the full impact of the education revolution finds that there is much evidence to show that society has come to be more of a reflection of the institution of education rather the other way around. This new image of education and society is one in which formal education is a successful primary institution, so successful in fact, that over the past 50 years it has come to dominate many other institutions such as the family and child rearing, the workplace and ideas of human capabilities, politics and citizenry, and even highly personalized domains like the definitions of success and failure in life (Baker, forthcoming, a).

The lower panel in Figure 2 depicts this perspective with education as a primary institution in the construction of society.  While education continues to educate and credential individuals for roles in society, the institutional influence flows from schooling to society.  Over the course of Western society, in large part because of the rise of the Western university, as education came to play a larger role in creating central ideas and beliefs of modern society, it won significant legitimacy to educate individuals.  In turn, educational achievement became central to individuals’ social status.  This dynamic legitimacy has expanded and intensified over the course of the education revolution to the point where, along with effects on individuals, formal education generates new ideas about people, new privileged human capacities, new ideologies about knowledge and its generation, new social, including occupational, positions, and so forth (Meyer, 1977; Young, 2008).  The educational revolution produces what might be called a “schooled consciousness” promoting a culture of universalistic values, human empowerment, scientific knowledge, and rationality, not only at the individual level, or even at the level of aggregated individuals, but at an institutional level.

This perspective makes the strong case that schooling, as it has been practiced over the past 150 years, is far more than a preparatory exercise for youth, merely following where the technological and social demands of society take it.  Rather, the educational revolution has constructed, for better or worse, most of the dominant ideas, beliefs, and human capabilities that underpin human society as we know it at the beginning of the 21^st century.  This is how best to think about formal education and its possible future impact on society.

It should be cautioned however, that because of the widely Pollyannaish expectations about schooling noted above, discussion about a schooled society is frequently misinterpreted to mean that all things good result from more schooling and its greater role in the definitions of contemporary culture.  On the contrary, there are a number of arguments that start with the assumption that schooling is mostly oppressive (see Young, 2008) for a review and important critique of this line of thinking about schooling). And of course, from schooling used in fascist to apartheid societies over the 20^th century, there are a number of well-known extreme examples of educational oppression.

Interestingly though, most schooling-as-oppressive-always arguments presume a traditional perspective of schooling as described above: to the degree that a society is oppressive so is its schooling as it “prepares” people for the oppressive social order.  In other words, schooling reproduces and even validates existing social inequalities. But the social reproduction argument misses the point that schooling as a social institution constructs society.  Seen this way, schooling, if it were truly as oppressive as some argue, would have to be the root of oppression.  Some have tried to make this case of course (see Bowles and Ginits, 1976, for the US and Willis, 1981 for the UK), but by in large these have failed to account for the actual historical record of schooling and social class in most industrial nations (Baker, 1999).  And as many studies of worldwide, mass schooling and the western style university show, formal education curricula, even in oppressive societies, constructs and spreads an explicit version of human social justice, democratic values, and human universalism that runs counter to most of the extreme forms of social oppression (eg Fiala, 2006).  Hence there are many well-known incidents of suppression of intellectuals and draconian control over schooling to limit its liberating influence in many politically oppressive nations (see for one example from Germany Baker, Kolher and Stock, 2007).

Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that the schooled society powerfully creates social pressure to conform to its logic and punishments for those who do not or cannot conform.  Like all social orders that increasingly come to be dominated by a few key institutions, the schooled society shapes normative restrictions. Anyone who is close to an educationally failed child, or was one himself, knows the pain and frustration of not doing well in school.  In the schooled society, a youth’s image of their future becomes dim when performance in school, for whatever reason, is not successful. And this is far more than just in the technical issue of grades and test-scores: failure in school reflects upon the whole of the individual and remarkably even spills over negatively onto his or her supporting family.  So too as the schooled society intensifies, non-academic types of skills and ideas about human capacities become less privileged and less developed.

The Future of the Schooled Society

There are two scenarios about how the schooled society will proceed that predict diametrically opposed futures.  Mostly along the lines of the traditional image of education and society, the first scenario is by far the most popular one among pundits, casual observers, and often educators alike, but it is far less likely to occur than the second scenario.  Therefore, after a brief description of each, the educational implications of only the more likely second scenario are discussed.

Scenario 1 The Over-education Scenario:

This future scenario predicts that:

The education revolution has now reached its highest point and will wind down over the next three decades into a stasis of relatively little upward expansion of education and a reduction of education’s supremacy over social positioning. Spending upwards of 12-16 plus years in school reaches natural limits of the life course and foregone wages.  Most of the educational expansion of the last forty years is a process of educational inflation, where new degrees are required for the same jobs.  This has resulted in over-educated populations that are economically and socially inefficient and perhaps even dangerous to social cohesion, as individuals who are over-educated will develop unrealistic expectations for jobs and status in adult life that will not materialize.

Also, inflated schooling “dumbs-down” education in order to accommodate the influx of large segments of the population flooding into higher reaches of formal education that are not qualified, not motivated, nor very academically talented.  Other than relatively basic skills of numeracy and literacy, schooling does not add much that is usable, or not otherwise trainable on the job.  Runaway credentialism emerges when an educationally hollow status competition takes over the expansion of formal education.

With just subtle variations, the over-education scenario has been predicted as our imminent educational future virtually ever since the schooled society took off in the 1960s.  Under book titles such as The Diploma Disease, The Great Training Robbery and The Credential Society many predicted that over-education would be a major social problem and educational expansion would evidentially grind to a halt (Dore, 1976, Berg, 1971, 2003; Collins, 1976; also see Bowles and Ginits, 1976.  This was a particularly common forecast in the UK and in nations where a colonial past left a British type of education system (Dore was an influential British observer of education and national development) and in the more aggressively expanding American system (Bowles, Ginits, Berg, and Collins are American scholars) as higher education enrollment rates started to climb – surely the education revolution was going to die at the university’s gate.

The usual policy implications of the over-education scenario is to somehow save education from itself by imposing tighter linkages between formal schooling and jobs, revive vocational education, maintain greater control over testing and admission standards to university, and belief in what was once called “manpower planning” of a centrally guided education and jobs system.

Scenario 2 Continued Educational Expansion and Intensification of the Schooled Society:

This future scenario predicts that:

Early, and persistent, predictions of an approaching over-education future were wrong – in fact, they were spectacularly wrong.  So much so, that growth of the schooled society into the future and its continued construction of much of our culture is very likely.

The evidence that Scenario 2 is more likely to occur in the future than Scenario 1, in that for each predicted part of the over-education scenario much the opposite has occurred.  Briefly, there are five sub-predictions that never materialized, and what did happen in each case is more in line with an expanded and intensified schooled society.  The evidence below is mostly from the US, but it should be noted too that for a number of historical reasons, the political economy of American schooling has tended to herald each new wave of the education revolution and its ensuing spread worldwide, often even changing long standing educational traditions in the UK and other nations of Western Europe (Baker and LeTendre, 2005).

Failed Prediction 1: Natural limitations on the amount of the life course people will spend in formal education will eventually retard educational expansion as the main engine of the schooled society.

People continue to seem quite willing to gain ever-greater amounts of education, even foregoing wages.  Life course limits are pushed aside by the spread of the logic of “life-long education.”  What were once advanced degrees for a very small population are increasingly expanding to meet demand by larger segments of populations propelled by mass education at lower levels. For example, as shown in Figure 3, both enrollment in all graduate programmes and completion of master degrees (ie post the usual 4-year baccalaureate) have increased by substantial amounts since the 1970 in the US.  Furthermore, from just 1970 to 2004 the growth rates among Americans completing a masters and Ph.D. degree is 140% and 50% respectively. And similarly, professional degrees, such as law, medicine, dentistry, have increased by over 100% over the same period. And while this trend is occurring in the U.S., it will most likely rapidly spread through many national systems of higher education.

Figure 3. Growth Trends in University-Graduate Study in the U.S. 1970-2004

Failed Prediction 2: Educational expansion will have to be limited in the future as more people reach advanced degrees and the end of the structure of formal schooling as we know it.

There are recent new patterns of educational expansion occurring in the US as more people seek multiple university degrees. For example, the US Department of Education followed a nationally representative sample of 1992-93 B.A. completers over the following ten years.  Four out of ten enrolled in some graduate study during the decade, and one fourth of those enrolled in multiple graduate degrees of which half were for two or more masters in different disciplines (US Department of Education, 2005). Among B.A. degree-holders from private research universities, where most of the spectacular success of American research universities has been (see below), over one half of B.A. completers enrolled in graduate programmes and over a fourth of these enrolled in more than one degree programme at some time during the ten year span.  Similarly, large numbers of B.A. holders envision themselves as completing a graduate degree or even two sometime in their future; and, the US study reports that at the time of the B.A. completion a full 85% expected to undertake graduate training over the ensuing decade.  Of course this did not happen (yet) for about one-half of these individuals, but the implications are clear-graduate training at university is becoming more normative with each decade, and the growth of graduate degrees and multiple graduate degrees is an outgrowth of this.  And of course there has been a worldwide expansion of adult access to additional formal education and this will likely continue into the future.

Failed Prediction 3: There will not be much job up-grading as more of the labor force enters with more education, thus leading to an educationally hollow and unsustainable credentialism.

There is an emerging research literature indicating that the schooled society has had a profound impact on many dimensions of the workplace and job content technology, including how it is incorporated into work. Largely on the pages of the Quarterly Journal of Economics over the past decade and one half, economists of labor and national development have developed an insightful set of empirical findings about the relationship among education of workers, technology, and the organization of the work inside firms.  Over and over these studies report that education influences the world of work more than the other way around.  What once was the standard assumption that as each generation attains more formal education there is little true job upgrading has been buried by these recent studies.

Failed Prediction 4: Over-education leads to future social unrest and great dissatisfaction with schooling in general.

There is no evidence that this most dramatic of predictions of the over-education scenario ever happened in any part of the world as mass schooling and higher education rolls on.  And there is some systematic analysis that verifies this. A representative example is the comprehensive study by Val Burris who finds in a 1983 analysis of a large nationally-representative sample of working Americans no substantial differences between people who are over-educated for their jobs and those who are not across their stated job satisfaction, political radicalism, political alienation, unionism, and allegiance to an achievement ideology.

Failed Prediction 5: Educational Expansion “dumbs-down” education, making it less relevant to changing human capacities in the future.

This is a common prediction that is hard to test, but there is emerging evidence to suggest if anything, mass education has made schooling far more demanding on a cognitive level than was the case at the beginning of the last century. For details see Consequence II below.

II. Two Consequences of the Schooled Society for the Future of Knowledge, Creativity and Communication

If scenario 2 is the more likely to occur in the future, what are some of the main educational consequences and policy implications?  Two are described here, one for higher education, and the other for all levels of education starting from the very beginning of schooling.

A.  The Future of Knowledge Production: The Super Research University’s Knowledge Conglomerate

The advent of the super research university (hereafter, super RU) and its knowledge production conglomerate, primarily in the US, over the past several decades is a stunning development of the schooled society with major implication for the future of society (Mohrman, Ma and Baker, 2007).  An intensification of a number of unique qualities of the Western university has resulted in a small, but growing, number of institutions with the capacity to produce unprecedented levels of science, technology, and knowledge about human society.  Sometimes identified as “world-class research universities,” these institutions are, for better or worse, leading the establishment of an emerging model of the university that is rapidly becoming the accepted standard by which institutions will undertake graduate training and research. For better or worse, the ideas driving the super RU are rapidly forming into a pervasive normative model for the university throughout higher education worldwide with major implications for knowledge, science and technology production into the future.

So too, the rising super RU model, emulated by so many universities supported by the schooled society, has set the foundation for the much discussed knowledge society, and its variations such as Richard Florida’s creative class and Robert Reich’s symbolic analysts.  In a dynamic interplay between knowledge production and the expansion of knowledge domains, the university has played a key role.  It is the main arbitrator of knowledge, not just in the form of science and technology, but also in terms of business, social science, and traditional humanities (Frank and Gabler, 2006).  The knowledge conglomerate has also worked to expand the range of occupations assumed to require a university degree. This is counter to the much touted claim in the early1990s that universities’ knowledge production system, Mode 1 science as it was known (eg Gibbons et al, 1994), would become outdated and give way to a mostly a non-university based new system, called Mode 2 knowledge production.  But the original prediction about the decline of knowledge production at universities did not happen; while non-universities organizations got into the knowledge production process, the super RU has actually increased the university’s share of an expanding knowledge production conglomerate (Geiger, 2004).

For example, here is how some leading neo-institutional analysts of the university and its role in the schooled society describe this institution power of the university:

The university – while inefficient at preparing people for specialized roles, in comparison to direct role-training arrangements – is extremely well positioned to support precisely such generalized notions.  Students learn – and society itself learns – that all the specialized and professionalized roles of contemporary society are fundamentally based on universal scientific knowledge and rationality, and that with schooling, ordinary persons can be transformed to possess the relevant competencies (Meyer et al, 2007, p203)

Briefly listed, the growing literature on these super RUs identifies a set of defining characteristics that most observers agree upon (eg Geiger, 1993; Mohrman, Ma and Baker, 2007; Baker, forthcoming, b) including: Research Intensive; Transcending global mission; New Knowledge for the Good Society; Decline of the Traditional and the Rise of the new Professoriate; Recruitment of Academic Core in National and International Markets; Greater Internal Complexity; Denser Networks of Universities and Steeper Competition Worldwide; Extreme Costs and Mixture of Funding.

By and large, the rise of the super RU stems from the American higher education experience with mass education and a norm of universal access. The muscular approach to knowledge generation stems from a broad consensus in the US (and everywhere else too) around the idea that university research is crucial to economic global competitiveness (Geiger and Sa, 2008).  Over the past several decades, three major transforming trends in higher education are unfolding that are widely discussed, yet only rarely in relationship to one another.  In fact, for many higher education observers, these three trends represent opposites within formal education, that on the surface seem to create more conflict than harmony within the university. One trend, often divisively debated, is the rapid growth of the private sector of higher education across most nations.  The second trend, often considered pedestrian, is the unprecedented expansion and massification of higher education in not only wealthy nations such as the United States and those in Western Europe, but in almost all nations as well.  The final trend, often celebrated, is the rise and flourishing of super RUs; mostly in the US, but increasingly now as a model aspired to by many research universities throughout the world.  What is not often appreciated about these three trends is that at their root they are related, even symbiotic, to the point that each likely would not be happening if it were not for the other.

An appreciation of the underlying relationship among these three seemingly separate major transforming forces in higher education develops a fuller picture of the institutional dynamism behind the growing legitimation of the university and its role in shaping the schooled society now and into the future.  Frequently these three trends are assumed to be in some kind of zero-sum competition with each other, but this underestimates the institutional power of the educational revolution and the role of the university in its development.  Also such an underestimate can lead to a policy environment in which universities and ministries of education around the world actually inhibit the development of mass higher education, private institutions, and efforts to reach for the full capacity of research universities to generate new knowledge and train the next generation of scientists and scholars.

These three trends are bound together in the case of American experience with higher education.  This has always been so, but recently the dynamism among these trends has intensified to an unprecedented level with clear implications for the future.  Often this intensification of private funds within American RUs is seen as a decline in the strength of universities as an institution, but in fact the very opposite case – that private funds reflect the growing overall strength of the university – can be made.

Focusing on the American case to predict the future of knowledge production in universities worldwide is not meant to imply that all nations must follow this pattern, nor is it intended to be a statement about political or cultural hegemony.   Rather, it is justified by the fact that, for better or worse, the US has been the world leader in the institutional changes represented by mass education and the coming of the schooled society.  This is also not to say that how the American school system is operationalized in practice is necessarily the world leader (on a number of criteria, it is not), rather what comparative research on education change clearly shows is that over the past few decades there is increasing worldwide isomorphism among national school and higher education systems, and many of the ideas, goals, values and beliefs behind this process originally stem from the American experience with formal education, particularly since the 1960s (eg Baker and LeTendre, 2005).

How then to think about these three phenomena together?

Geiger traces the dimensions of science and technology development in US universities over the past half century and his cogent analysis of basic research production shows precisely the enhancing of the societal mission of the university (Geiger, 1993, 2004).  Historically the rise of the “knowledge production conglomerate” in American research universities consists of a robust funding situation plus existing trends in the organization of university research and scholarship aimed at interdisciplinarity, the proliferation of research institutes, and ‘raising the bar’ in faculty hiring that are at the heart of the super RU model.  This aggressive approach to knowledge generation that ensues from this feeds into the idea that university-based, or university-influenced, research is crucial to economic global competitiveness.  It is a short jump from this image of the role of the university to society-wide consensus that the university is a leading institution for the good of society.  This very image of the American university, as it transforms itself into a super RU, is widely evident in the American culture.

This is often missed as many observers of RUs assume that privatization and public funds are in a zero-sum relationship.  And indeed a superficial reading of trends can lead one to this conclusion.  It is true that the American federal government’s share in funding research (once the source of most university-based research) declined dramatically over the last twenty years from almost one half to just over a fourth of the nation’s total expenditures on R&D.  And what gained proportionally during the same time were privatized sources, which now fund 70% of all American R&D.  Furthermore, the funding for basic research, which is predominately carried out in universities, grew only from about 14 to 18%.

What goes unappreciated though is that both public and private funds have flowed into American universities as a consequence of this broad societal consensus around mass higher education, and therefore university-based research has increased proportionally (Geiger, 2004). Overall growth of all American R&D from 1980 to 2000 kept pace with the rapid growth of science and technology that the world has seen since the 17^th century.  Combined university-based and non-university-based R&D (basic research and expensive technology development) spending from 1980 to 2000 more than doubled in constant dollars from about $115 to $248 billion.  And importantly, within this rapidly expanding R&D climate, the university has held its share at about one-half of all basic research.  While federal (ie public) support to American universities has declined, it has been replaced from private economic sources, so that overall academic funding as a share of GDP grew by 50% in just twenty years, to an amazing $28.2 billion in 2000.

Also, the rise of the model of the super RU (private and public) and expanding access to higher education are both large-scale trends that reflect underlying models of education and its role in society that in turn are transforming higher education.  To see this argument, it is useful to consider the context from which the super RU model originated.  As pointed out, the US has the highest number of universities with the characteristics described above.  These are universities that produce considerable amounts of new knowledge across many fields (eg out of the top 10 universities worldwide with the highest citation rates per faculty size rates, 8 are US institutions, and of those 5 are private).  And many other American universities are above the world average in citations.  Similarly, out of those universities worldwide that can generate the enormous level of research funding, by far most are American, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1:  Top Ten Universities in Citations/Faculty Size

Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement, October 6, 2006

But the usual take on the American case – private money, low central control, and high tolerance for between-institution inequality (in part a function of inequalities produced by mixing private and public funding sources) – is not the root cause of why so much of the super RU model stems from the American experience.  In other words, the super RU is not just the product of the historically unique private section of American higher education.  It is not just that the super RU model is an expensive one to pursue, requiring a wealthy society.  Nor that private money is now a substantial source of funding in the U.S.  Nor even that many super RUs are privately controlled.  While these factors certainly have enhanced the development of the super RU model, they are not at its root cause.  Instead, the cause is found in the way in which American society has generated widespread societal support for higher education, institutionally led by the research university, which includes private universities and private support for significant parts of public universities. In other words, formal education in the US has been an early leader in the movement towards universal access to higher education and all that such an idea includes (Trow, 2005).  Instead of assuming that mass access to higher education, the super RU model, and the role of private funds are mutually exclusive, zero-sum forces, what the American case illustrates is that in reality these three trends have significantly supported one another in the past and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future.

It is true that this fundamental symbiotic relationship is not the product of some central plan, instead it grew out of a unique set of historical conditions.  The effects of which have become more obvious as the model for the American super RU becomes attractive to many other nations leading higher education there to mimic certain aspects – including faculty working conditions, competitive-based governmental support for research, a large private sector basis – as well as the idea of substantial private funds within the system.  But what is frequently overlooked in these efforts is the exceptional societal support the US has been able to generate for education in general and higher education in specific-both public and private.

American society has achieved this for essentially two reasons: first, through a widely comprehensive system of public (and to a lesser degree private) secondary education graduating youth with the aspirations and expectations for more education, and second through a relatively open and comprehensive higher education system made up of both public and private universities and many small private colleges.  This has lead to the belief in American society that the university, and particularly the super research university, is not an elitist or esoteric enterprise; instead, it is perceived to a remarkable degree as a democratic and useful institution.  The fact that so many Americans attend some institution of higher education and have deep connections to these institutions in all of their many types, translates into wide societal support (ie public and private monies) for the costs of super research universities, even if only a small proportion of Americans will attend, or has attended, one of these highly selective institutions.  As with the expansion of mass and comprehensive (ie non-stratified) elementary and secondary education, the US has over the last century led the way in mass higher education with the idea that more and more types of people can develop as individuals (and not just as workers) through extended formal education (about 60 to 70% of American youth with a secondary school degree enroll in some type of higher education).  At the same time, what the research university is thought to do for American society further legitimates the expansion of education for all. Also, private universities and private aspects of public universities have played a direct role in mass education.

The tremendous level of private support for higher education in the US is not only a reflection of rising tuition, it is also a reflection of the way that higher education in general, and universities in particular, are thought about in the US. The lack of a state controlled exclusive set of universities and other institutions of higher education in the US has led to robust and broad private support of individual institutions, and also of the entire sector to a degree.  Certainly rising tuitions and private shares of funding is a trend to be concerned about and in some ways is a product of falling public funds for higher education.  But the idea of societal support is broader than just the shifting split between public and private funds.  In the US overall, the pie continues to grow for higher education.

The 19^th century American land-grant model of the research university laid the groundwork for the future of American higher education, and in many ways perhaps also the future of higher education globally. Here are all of the forerunners to the new ideas that now drive the super research university in terms of the symbiotic relationship between university and society, and joining together several strands of ideas into one institution for the first time.  Scientific knowledge, rational social progress, human empowerment, and universalistic values become embedded within the authority of the university, and this authority, based on an intensification of these ideas in the postmodern world, drives the current support of the super RU model in the U.S. (see also Meyer et al, 2007).  Also, every land-grant university, even though they are public, incorporates significant private funds, from tuition to research collaborations with private ventures, to huge alumni giving of private gifts (money), to lucrative deals trading universities’ logo for revenue from private sports apparel firms.  This is not to pass moral judgment on the American super RU and its privatization; there are clearly positive and negative implications of the model, and thoughtful critics on both sides.  Rather, the point of the American case is that one way to think about the growing private higher education sector worldwide is that it is partially driven by the rise of societal support for the super RU from mass education and now mass higher education.  And that in turn, once private support for higher education begins to flow and becomes normative, it feeds into the overall growing institutional power of higher education.

The main policy implication for the future of the UK system is not necessarily to copy the details of the American system – in fact, attempts to do so in other nations have not worked very well.  Instead the message to take away from here is to focus on factors that increase overall societal support for the knowledge production function of universities.  And given the logic of the schooled society, the best way to do so is educationally, not through public relations campaigns and other trivial methods.  In other words, opening up access to higher education and lowering early barriers to secondary education leading to higher education generates societal support.  If universities remain mostly elitist, this will limit their ability to generate the considerable financial resources needed to compete as super RUs, or world-class knowledge producers in the future.  The old model that elite institutions will train the elite knowledge producers and this can be sustained by special public funding is rapidly breaking down.

B. The Future of Knowledge Acquisition: The Rise of Academic Intelligence and the Cognitive Revolution

Formal education is the only institution in modern society that on a consistent basis has the legitimate power to organize all accepted types of knowledge into acceptable format and determine valid truth claims, and specify who and when people have access to learn these new fields (Young 2008). And if this power were not enough, for the first time in human history formal education defines and almost single-handedly focuses society on one particular capability that all normally developing humans must have.

Mass schooling has produced and widely distributed a uniquely new definition of intelligence, and in a relatively short time made it universally accepted as not only useful, but essential to being a fully developed individual ready to participate in modern society.  As never before, schooling through its everyday activities has created a new model completely based on cognitive skills about what is important for effective human development and performance. What might be best described as “academic intelligence” is perhaps, among all of the significant impact of the schooled society, the cardinal institutional product of mass education. Academic intelligence can be defined as: those cognitive skills needed to do abstract reasoning, problem-solving, higher order thinking, multiple perspective taking, and effortful thinking.

All forms of formal education increasingly narrow human capabilities towards cognitive performance.  With the development and flourishing of academic intelligence, such skills as mental problem-solving, effortful reasoning, abstraction and higher-order thinking, and the active use of intelligence take center stage while pushing off more traditional academic skills such as recitation, disputation, memorization, formalistic debate, formulae application, accuracy, and authoritative text reading and exegesis.  Cognitivism has become the overarching epistemological theme of modern education, and as the schooled society deepens there is evidence that cognitivism continues to intensify in its importance.

Exactly when academic intelligence emerged as the main objective of mass schooling is hard to pinpoint, but there is good evidence that it has intensified over the last half century, and in so doing it pushed aside other older objectives of formal education.  Academic intelligence retains some vestiges of both old classical education and the spirit of vocational training, but it emerges out of a type of dialectic process between these former goals of education, and as such is a synthesis that is quite different from a simple compromise or watering-down of the two.  Academic intelligence is what children throughout the world must learn to be a “fully-developed human.” Note the change in terminology of the objective of schooling from the older phrase “well-educated” with its implications of mastery of content versus the ontological implications of the contemporary phrase “fully-developed.”  In so doing on a mass basis, the educational revolution has made much of the traditional epistemological foundation of schooling – classical intellectualism and vocationalism – obsolete.

A good example of the trend towards academic intelligence in not only what is presented in schooling, but also what becomes defined as the way to generate new knowledge in society is the one hundred year evolution of mathematics curricula.  A recent study (Baker et al, forthcoming, c), undertook a cognitive assessment of primary school mathematics textbooks (as a proxy of the curricula in the localized US system) over the 20^th century.  Two of the major trends found illustrate the point here.  First, contrary to the notion that mass education “dumbs down” curricula, the mathematics in textbooks has, particularly since the 1960s, included more advanced material at earlier grades.  And two, most germane to the argument here, the textbook material from the 1960s onward increased all types of problems that require the kinds of skills that make up academic intelligence.  As the cognitive demand of the curricula increases, all students are required to try to think mathematically and reason about the subject in ways that students early in the century were never asked to.  The model of young student learning mathematics in the 1940s and 1950s was that of the careful, accurate and tireless calculator, and by the late 1960s on the model was as a “little” mathematician.

A second illustration of the consequence of increased focus on academic intelligence in the schooled society is the case of increasing IQ across generations of adults. Populations of humans living in what are now the wealthier of nations have gotten considerably “smarter” over the course of the 20^th century and continue to do so (Flynn, 1987).  This once little-known phenomenon, called the Flynn Effect, is appreciated by aficionados of the study of intelligence, although pop-sociology has recently spread this fact to a wider audience.  When psychometricians compare performance on tests of IQ (intelligence quotient) over the last century they find that the average person in a generation scores higher than the average person in the preceding generation.  In fact, the whole distribution of scores has shifted upwards over the past 80 years with each succeeding generation.

As shown on the Figure 4, when raw scores are compared over history a growing average IQ trend is evident to an amazing degree; compared to the average person in 1900, the average person now scores two full standard deviations above this at 130.  Successive generations have been gaining about 15 IQ points over the preceding generation; while 15 IQ points may not seem like a lot, it represents going from mere average intelligence to superior intelligence, and of course people with superior intelligence (120 plus) in the preceding generation are matched by people in the succeeding generation with exceptional scores (135 plus).

Figure 4. Rise in IQ, Wechsler Tests and Stanford-Binet,  1932-1992

There are two other qualities of the trend of growing IQ, both of which may be a function of the educational revolution.  First, all the evidence uncovered so far indicates that the Flynn Effect has occurred only in nations that have been economically developed and had early and sustained mass education for some time, such as Japan, Western European countries, and the US and Canada (Flynn, 1987).  And second, the part of IQ that has had the most dramatic historical increases is what is informally called “fluid IQ.”

When psychometricians think about intelligence, they often clump IQ abilities into two large sets of capabilities.  One set, known as fluid IQ, is made up of our ability to solve novel problems through planning approaches to complex tasks (executive functioning), keep important facts in mind as we solve problems (working memory), process information in an effective way (inhibitory control), shift our mind’s attention to parts of problems in an effective manner (attention shifting), and understand spatial relationships.  For example, if you were shown a set of complex abstract figures that you had never seen before and told that they are part of a pattern varying in shadings, geometric shapes, and size, like Figure 5, and you were asked to describe what the next abstract figure in the pattern would be, solving this problem would engage your fluid intelligence skills.  In fact, these kinds of pattern recognition problems are used to measure people’s performance on tests of fluid IQ, the most commonly used being the Ravens Progressive Matrices Test.  A real life application of fluid IQ would be the cognitive skills you would use if you planned an approach to solving a new and complex set of problems at the workplace.  Many of the skills of academic intelligence regularly use fluid IQ capabilities.

Figure 5. Problems illustrating the Raven’s Progressive Matrices Test

The other set of cognitive functions, known as crystallized IQ, is made up of our abilities to remember and understand facts and routine solutions to problems that we have accrued over our lives. If you were asked, for example, to name the first four Prime Ministers of the 20^th century, or how to calculate a sphere’s circumference, solving these problems would use your crystallized skills (including realizing that you once knew the answers to these but now can’t recall, although you do know where you can refresh your memory). While Flynn and others find some evidence of persistent, moderate rise in crystallized IQ across generations, it has been people’s fluid IQ skills that have climbed through the roof over the past 100 years.

But what should we make of this?  Is it really true that there are now many geniuses among us, or that in our grandparents’ day most people didn’t have the intelligence required to understand the rules of American baseball or British cricket?  Obviously not. And at the same time, 80 some years is a short time in the whole of human phylogenetic development (ie as a species) over roughly 200,000 years, much too short for any kind of massive genetic selection resulting in superior human intelligence throughout the population.  Instead all indications point to some impact of the immediate environment over the past century that has motivated and trained people’s capacity for fluid, and to a lesser extent, crystallized cognitive skills.

Results of a recent set of studies indicate that mass schooling is a major cause of this growing IQ among successive generations.  These studies were based on methods and ideas from an unusual combination of social and neuro-sciences that brought the neo-institutional analysis of schooling with exciting new findings and ideas about how the human brain develops and is transformed through everyday experiences in school (eg Eslinger et al, 2008).

The idea that formal education, spreading to ever wider proportions of the populations for increasingly longer times and with ever greater demands on people’s attention, is a likely cause of rising IQ is a dramatic demonstration of the constructivist nature of schooling.  Academic intelligence has become the central highly valued human skill of the schooled society, a skill that just century ago would have been considered overly narrow and of dubious benefit to the functioning person. Over time, formal education has made this type of cognitive performance a much valued and necessary skill that all students are expected to master. Not the learning of facts, nor the rote application of methods to problems, modern mass schooling from Kindergarten to increasingly at the highest reaches of college and university has promoted the cognitive skills of academic intelligence as the primary learning goal of an education.

C. Implications for the Future: BCH Questions

The assumption behind the thoughts on each of these issues is that the second scenario above, the continued intensification of the schooled society, is the one likely to happen, and so it is the only one considered here.

1. Educational goals: In these different scenarios how will the ‘goals’ of education change? What demands for qualification, socialisation and subjectification will there be as a result of these trends and in these different futures? What implications would there be for assessment practices?

The far more likely scenario of the continued intensification of the schooled society will not significantly shift educational goals from what they are now, but predicted here is an intensification and continued narrowing of goals.  The goals of academic education for all students, the rise of education as human capital through human development will continue to grow and replace older notions of vocationalism and classicism, as well as the imagery of man-power planning (Baker and Lenahrdt, 2008).  Because of the early development of British education over the 19^th century, ideas of elite and vocational education are embedded and could prove resistant to change.  So, too, academic intelligence will continue to shape both the curricular objective as well as institutions such as the workplace and the labor market.

Also it is unlikely that the model of knowledge production through the super RU will decline in the foreseeable future; Mode 1 continues to be quite healthy.  The super RU, and its components, appears not to be a fad.  The model of the super RU has spread across many nations as at least an aspiration, if not a full-blown plan.  If British educators and higher education officials incorporate this model in future plans for higher education, this will greatly enhance the nation’s educational and knowledge production competitiveness into the future.

2. Educational ‘personnel’: Who will be teaching/learning/mentoring/caring in the light of these trends and in these different futures?  How will risk to each of these different groups be exacerbated or reduced in different futures?

Teachers will be asked to be ever more academic in their approach, yet to a much wider variety of students from all kinds of backgrounds and with all kinds of strengths and weaknesses.  This paradox creates much of the stress in teaching.  If it is made explicit to all involved some of the stress can be overcome.  Obviously as the demands of academic intelligence and schooling in general rise and more of the populations of children and youth are asked to succeed at these for longer periods of their lives, more are at risk of needing more intensive remedial education.  The increase and penetration in to all facets of schooling of the American special education for academic at-risk students is a consequence of this.

The universities too will experience the same.  As described in section II A above, the support for the massive resources needed for state-of-the-art knowledge production will increasingly depend on wider societal support of higher education in general.  This means that teaching in the university will need to change in the direction of student-centered, with abundant remedial opportunities.

3. Educational institutions: Given these trends and potential scenarios, how might education be organised and governed? What accountability measures could be considered? What organisational and institutional structures become possible?

In many ways this is obvious from the description of the schooled society above.  One clear institutional implication of the knowledge production conglomerate and the super RU is that widespread Mode 2 knowledge production has not happened, or at least it has not reduced the role of the university as was originally predicted.  The need for wide societal support of knowledge production melds together more access to the university and science and scholarship.   The logic of the old organizational arrangement of breaking off research into non-university organizations that was so popular in Western Europe is not likely to be the best way to do this; in fact these arrangements as supported by elite scientists and scholars of these institutions, are likely to retard societal support in that they detract from the symbiotic process of mass education as the platform upon which a knowledge society is sustained.

So, too, accountability, at both the schooling level and in higher education (within the next few years there will be a PISA-type comparison of higher education students cross-nationally), will need to focus more on the ability of schools and universities to provide academic type training to all children and youth.  In other words, the standard of successful education narrow and intensify around academics too.  Different objectives for different people will continue to die out as a value, and will be replaced with the notion of the use of academically-based education as the only way to assist in the general human development of all the nation’s children and youth.

4. Educational methods: Given these trends, how might learning best be supported? How might teaching best be enabled? How might we best assess the outcomes of these methods?  What evidence do we have now that could be mobilised to respond to these trends?

Most germane here is the implication of rising and intensifying academic intelligence as the main object of schooling from the earliest years on. This trend will in the future put even greater pressure on educators to devise methods to assist all learners to master these cognitive skills.  The intensive narrowing focus on these skills will make a major social problem out of those who cannot master these skills.  This will be a formable challenge for formal education into the future.

5. Educational tools: In these different scenarios, what artefacts (material, conceptual, knowledge-based, technical) will we be able to employ in support of education and assessment? What interventions and practices that we see in education now could give us insight into how we might use these artefacts in future?

It is a reasonable prediction to make that the continued cognitive-ization of educational materials will occur well into the future.  The same is true of new knowledge in general.  Educators, teachers and professors alike, will need to be trained in these ideas.  Right now in the US, for example, most teachers and professor (other than psychology professors) have a rather crude introduction to the ideas and findings of the cognitive revolution in the study of the human brain and mind and its capabilities.  This is a limitation that needs to be addressed.

6. Educational outcomes: In these different scenarios who will benefit? Who will be at risk? What interventions could be designed to enable equity of outcome?

Thoughts on this are covered in sections 2 and 4 above.

7. Beliefs about education: In these different scenarios, what views might the wider public have about the goals and aspirations of education? What different approaches to education might they more readily accept or reject? This area has been added after discussion with the EAG, and will be considered not only through the Challenges but also through the Public and Stakeholder engagement programme.

Thoughts on this have been covered in I and II A above.

References

Baker, D. (forthcoming a) The Schooled Society: How The Quiet Educational Revolution Transforms Society.

Baker, D. (forthcoming b) Privatization, Mass Higher Education, and the Super Research University: Symbiotic or Zero-sum Trends? Die Hochschule (German Journal on Higher Education).

Baker, D., Knipe, H., Cummings, E., Collins, J., Gamson, D., Blair, C., and Leon, J. (forthcoming c) One Hundred Years of American Primary School Mathematics: A Content Analysis and Cognitive Assessment of Textbooks from 1900 to 2000.

Baker, D. (1999) Schooling All the Masses: Reconsidering the Origins of American Schooling in the Postbellum Era. Sociology of Education, 72 (4), pp.197-215.

Baker, D. and LeTendre, G., (2005) National Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture and the Future of Schooling. Stanford, CA., Stanford University Press.

Baker, D., Stock, M. and Koehler, H. (2007) Socialist ideology and the contraction of higher education: Institutional consequences of state manpower and education planning in the former East Germany, 1949 to 1989. Comparative Education Review, 51 (3), pp.353-377.

Bowles, S. and Gintis, H. (1976) Schooling in Capitalist America. New York, Basic Books.

Berg, I. (1971, 2003) Education and Jobs: The Great Training Robbery. New York, Praeger Press.

Burris, V. (1983) The Social and Political Consequences of Overeducation. American Sociological Review, 48 (4), pp.454-467.

Collins, R. (1979) The Credential Society. New York, Academic Press.

Dore, R. (1976) The Diploma Disease: Education, Qualification, and Development. London, Institute of Education.

Eslinger, P., Blair, C., Wang, J., Lipovsky, B., Realmuto, J., Baker, D., Thorne, S., Gamson, D., Zimmerman, E., Rohrer, L. and Yang, Q. (2008) Developmental Shifts in fMRI Activations During Visuospatial Relational Reasoning. Brain and Cognition.

Fiala, R. (2006) Educational Ideology and the School Curriculum. In: Benavot, A. and Braslavsky, C. (eds). School Knowledge in Comparative and Historical Perspective, pp.15-35. Comparative Education Research Center, University of Hong Kong. Hong Kong, Springer Books.

Flynn, J.R. (1987) Massive IQ gains in 14 nations: What IQ tests really measure. Psychological Bulletin, 101, pp.171-191.

Frank, D. and Gabler, J. (2006) Reconstructing the University: Worldwide Shifts in Academia in the 20th Century. Stanford CA., Stanford University Press.

Geiger, R. (1993) Research and Relevant Knowledge: American Research University since World War II. New York, Oxford University Press.

Geiger, R. (2004a) Knowledge and money: Research universities and the paradox of the marketplace. Stanford, Stanford University Press.

Geiger, R. and Sa, C. (2008) Tapping the Riches of Science: Universities and the Promise of Economic Growth. Cambridge, Harvard University Press

Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P. and Trow, M. (1994) The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. London, Sage Publication.

Meyer, J. (1977) The effects of education as an institution. American Journal of Sociology, 83 (1), pp.55-77.

Meyer, J., Ramirez, F., Frank, D. and Schofer, E. (2007) Higher Education as an Institution. In: Gumport, P. (ed) Sociology of Higher Education: Contributions and their Contexts. Baltimore, MD., Johns Hopkins University Press.

Mohrman, K., Ma, W. and Baker, D. (2007) The Emerging Global Model of the Research University. In: Altbach, P. and Peterson, P. (eds.) Higher Education in the New Century: Global Challenges and Innovative Ideas. Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishers, and co-published by UNESCO Paris France.

Schofer, E. and Meyer, J. (2006) The World-Wide Expansion of Higher Education in the Twentieth Century. American Sociological Review, 70 (6), pp.898-920.

Trow, M. (2005) Reflections on the Transition from Elite to Mass to Universal Access: Forms and Phases of Higher Education in Modern Societies since WWII. International Handbook of Higher Education. Edited by Philip Altbach, Kluwer, 2005

UNESCO (2003-2004) UNESCO – EFA Global Monitoring Report. Available from http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=23023&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (2005) Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study 1993/2003. Washington DC, U.S. Government Printing Office.

Young, M. (2008) Bringing Knowledge Back in: From Social Constructivism to social realism in the Sociology of Education. London, Routledge.

Willis, P. (1981) Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. Contributors, New York, Columbia University Press.

This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation.

Most people who are still illiterate are living in very poor nations and seven out of ten are women (UNESCO, 2003).

In many parts of the Humanities and the Social Sciences the term ‘design’ has, quite recently, come into widespread use. Certainly that is the case, among others, in communication and in education. As with any term that suddenly acquires fashionability, one needs to ask: ‘what are the reasons?’ and ‘is this more than mere fashion?’ Might the use of the term be an indicator of corresponding changes in the larger social environment? From a historical perspective of these areas, say over the last 70 to 80 years, it is possible to trace a path which starts with convention and adherence to convention – a period from the 1930sinto the late 1950s, solidly founded on power and the working of power in communities. From the 1960s on and into the mid 1980s we saw a move to critique. In education, critique – as in ‘being a critical reader’- has settled into a near commonsense mainstream position. Now, at the beginning of the 21^st century, design is seemingly challenging to become a prominent, maybe the central, term in this respect.

To take two key concepts – text and knowledge - as examples. Texts, whether as essay, report, or ’story’, used to be composed, in line with relatively well understood and settled generic conventions as a guide. Then it seemed to become essential to begin questioning the processes of composition, to subject the status of the generic conventions to critique, to challenge the power that seemed manifested in the processes and conventions, as they seemed to work to the benefit of some and to the detriment of others. Critique works in relation to stable environments, and its task is to bring these into crisis. Environments marked by instability, provisionality, and fluidity do not lend themselves to critique; such environments demand the shaping force of design.

In contemporary conditions knowledge is made: in wikis, in blogs, but also – without fuss or notice – in everyday conversation, in instances of entirely commonplace, unremarkable, banal interaction. Canonical knowledge is challenged everywhere and under attack: whether in the natural sciences – witness the rows around theories of evolution vs ‘intelligent design’ or in any domain of social life. Canonical representations of knowledge have become unstable, whether as mode (writing vs image) or as genre (the essay vs the narrative or the cartoon, etc): writing as the canonical mode par excellence previously is giving way to representation as image. The school is given the task of upholding canonical forms of knowledge (and canonical forms of representation, eg through the National Literacy Strategy); though without the support of a clear direction from society, never mind that of a state which faces the plurality of voices of a profoundly diverse society. Universities are not immune to these conditions: Wikipedia appears as source of reference in student work – even at PhD level – with other internet sites and alongside the canonical media of the book and the journal.

Knowledge and meaning, as much as the texts and objects which are their material realizations, are beginning to be seen as the outcomes of processes of design. Education, founded on knowledge, rests on design, its requirements and principles, whether overtly acknowledged or implicitly practiced. That is the case in relation to the design of environments of education, environments of learning and teaching, of materials and of the media involved. Design is at issue in the shaping of the social relations of pedagogy as in the social relations embedded in curricula. Design is the arrangement of an ensemble: of an object to be worked on or with, of a tool for an action with or on the object, integrated in specific ways into the capacities and affordances of the human body, a body with a history of experience of other, prior social processes, and subject more or less, and in different ways, to social regulation of the process. The design of a learning environment configures relations of body and tool, of tool and object; it also configures relations of affect. The design of, say, a textbook, is more than graphic design: it is the design of a complex ensemble, of an environment of social processes and configurations of social relations, of social purposes, goals, aims, tasks; and of affect.

There is a multiplicity of social reasons for the emergence of design as a metaphor for contemporary knowledge production, creativity and communication: instability of social environments (ie the fragmentation, disappearance of stable, reliable, ‘accepted’ conventions), the strong insistence and ‘assumption’ of agency by individuals – including children at ever younger ages (a result of the dominance of the market rather than the state as the major social/political force, with a change from notions of social responsibility to individual choice), the multiplicity of resources available in shaping realizations of meaning, including the meanings of identity. The instability of social environments has removed clear models for action, behaviour, etc and requires that individuals take responsibility for their actions. The assumption of individual agency - fostered and even forced by the state and fostered and urged by the market – means that the shaping of individual identity becomes a matter of individual design. The multiplicity of resources offered by the market provides the means for the individual’s shaping of identity – though with means provided by the market – and makes it a requirement that individuals assume responsibility for their shaping of meaning in their social environments.

Looking back

Educational media, such as textbooks, have undergone major changes over the last century (Bezemer and Kress, 2008; Bezemer and Kress, in press). Society has changed, curriculum and pedagogy have changed in line with social changes, consequently textbooks have changed, both in ‘look’ and in ‘content’. If we compare a textbook published in 1930 with one published more recently, we can see – from the point of view of content – that the subject now includes material on ‘popular’ culture and media; pedagogically, there are now requirements to engage with these materials in groups, much more than before. But we can also see the semiotic work of design that has been done. There are full colour images on almost every page, both photographs and drawings, the layout of a text consisting of writing and image on the page now configured as a site of display, a site of appearance, could not have been imagined in 1930.

What has changed, in other words, is not just subject-content, not just the tasks which are set up for learners so as to engage with subject knowledge; what has changed is how these pedagogic interests are graphically realized on paper. Or rather, the ‘look’, the layout, the arrangement of the site of appearance is a graphic/visual realization of new social relations between the social participants in educational environments. The ordering, the arrangement of materials using the space of a page or screen is done from the perspective of an educator/rhetor, who has an eye equally on ‘own interest’, on ‘audience’, ‘phenomenon to be communicated’, ‘broader social environment’, ‘effect of the arrangement’; in other words it instantiates the educational purposes in the design of the materials.

Designers use the resources for making meaning which are available and apt to serve their educational interests. The category of textbook designer includes authors as well as illustrators, editors, typesetters, and other professionals. Each of these professionals has available and uses specific resources with different potentials and constraints. Different resources – modes, genres, discourses – are apt for doing specific kinds of ontological, epistemological or pedagogic work. Professionals in this field potentially operate as teams, as an ‘ensemble’ and so bring their contribution to the overall design. Increasingly now teachers themselves act as rhetors/designers of digitally mediated materials, thus bringing their interests and agency into this semiotic work (Jewitt, 2008).

Figures 1 and 2 show two examples from Science textbooks which illustrate the range of changes in design that have taken place over the last 70 years or so. One example is from a Science textbook from 1935, the other one is from 2002. In both textbooks images are used to depict parts of the human body with writing directly attached to ‘anchor’ the images. But the placement of these ‘chunks’ on the page is different. In the 1935 textbook, placement seems to have followed the ‘traditional’ principle of ‘insert-Figure X-about-here’. This principle suggests that writing is the central means of conveying meaning and is the major component of the text; image is subordinate to that. In the contemporary textbook, writing and image are placed in parallel columns. This principle suggests that writing and image are on an equal footing. In other words, the status relation between image and writing has shifted from an unequal to an equal position. Ontologically, this implies a shift in the valuation of modes and knowledge: from an ontology in which knowledge constructed in writing dominates over knowledge constructed in image, to an ontology in which these bases for knowledge have equal standing.

Figure 1: Excerpt from Fairbrother, Nightingale and Wyeth, 1935, pp161-162.

Figure 2: Drawing after Science Education Group, 2002, pp90-91.

These different layouts have different effects. Most immediately, this has directional implications: in the 1935 example, the writing makes reference to the image at the beginning and at the end of the opening paragraph of a section on ‘the alimentary canal’. In between, the reader will have had to turn the page. Less immediately it has effects on engagement for learning, encouraging different modes of reading, different modes of engagement. It says ‘attend to this first and that after’. In other words, this layout does not facilitate a ‘parallel reading’ in the way layout does in the 2002 example. In the 2002 example, the layout steers the reader into a mode of a ‘back-and-forth’ movement. It is a mode of engagement of ‘attend to these as equally significant; read them in mutual interaction’. In the example from the 1935, the layout steers the reader into a ‘first-then’ mode of reading. In the 2002 example, the page on which chunks are laid out is itself part of a larger structure, that of the two-page-spread. Again, this stands in contrast to the 1935 textbooks, where text-as-writing was ‘pushed’ onto pages without much attention to how this played out spatially. What mattered was not where on the page a sign appeared, but where it was positioned in a sequence. The two-page spread is organized as a spatial unit, which is linked to a unit of time not present on the page, a ‘lesson’; the chapter in the old textbook is organized as a unit of ‘content’.

Looking sideways: a Japanese design

Figure 3 shows an example taken from a Japanese Science textbook published in 2006. The excerpt also deals with human digestion. It uses a range of modal resources to represent the absorption of food, involving the breaking down of food molecules as a result of the action of enzymes coming from organs located somewhere in the body. In the English textbook shown in Figure 2, the curricular material dealt with had led to two different accounts: image focused on spatial arrangement and an ordering of entities such as ‘organs’. It was a ‘physical’ account, the physiology of digestion, showing material features such as ’size’, ’shape’, and ‘links’ between organs. The writing focused on processes, ‘flowing’ ‘chewing’, ‘breaking down’, ‘absorbing’; and entities such as ‘food chains’, ‘food webs’. It was a ‘bio-chemical’ account, detailing entities such as ‘energy’, ‘complex organic chemicals’ , ‘large complex molecules’, fats’, ‘proteins’, ‘carbohydrates’.

Figure 3: Drawing after Miura et al, 2006, pp106-107.

In the Japanese excerpt by contrast, image and writing are not separated out in that way. Image is literally ‘all over’ the page, visually dominating it. Image is used to convey both the physiological account and the bio-chemical one. Writing offers one route, a key to reading the visual parts of the text, but the visual text may also offer a key to reading the written part of the overall text. These texts may lead learners to attend and to engage differently and in this play a different role for different readers at different stages of the learning process. The overall text, in other words, offers inroads into an understanding of human digestion both via writing and via images. Students can choose for themselves which path to follow at which point in their encounter with this text and at different stages in the process of learning. When they first encounter the topic they might rely more heavily on the visual text; when they revise the topic for their exam they might then rely more heavily on the written account.

Two points need to be noted which do not appear readily by looking at the design of the contemporary English material alone. The first point is that it seemed that in designing the English textbook, writing was chosen for process-oriented content and that image was chosen for static, nominal entities and spatial relations or connections. It might seem that this follows an inherent potential, an affordance, in the two modes. The Japanese example clearly demonstrates that that is not the case. The second point is that these materials were designed in an entirely different society to that of the English book. We need to take our own principle seriously that design is the materialization of social givens. One thing we do know is that the semiotic and cultural resources, the semiotic histories, of Japanese society are different to those of English. For one thing – and this is a major factor – the script system(s) of Japanese are entirely different to the English, and much more visually oriented. This is bound to lead to a profoundly different attitude to the potentials of visual modes in Japanese design than in English.

While we have not encountered such a functional distribution of modes in English textbooks as in the Japanese example, we have seen distinctively different uses of image and writing in English information books. Here we have in mind, for instance, the books produced by Dorling & Kindersley. Unlike textbooks, information books do not construct a formal curriculum. Usually they are bought by parents, not teachers, though they are found in school libraries. Very similar multimodal designs are common in magazines for teenagers. Indeed the distinction of ‘types of design’ is becoming very blurry as we mentioned earlier: the boundaries between ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ social spaces are increasingly becoming blurred. The boundaries between the design of the English Science textbook and that of the English information book are a good case in point: the increasing approximation of design marks a rapidly increasing disintegration of the social domains of work and entertainment. It is interesting to speculate where the end point of this process will be.

Looking forward: a multimedia design

Design in education increasingly relies on the facilities of digital media. On the screen, moving image and speech can be used alongside or instead of writing. These modes afford a whole set of varied resources for the representation of school subjects. In other words, ‘translations’ and ‘transductions’ from one mode to another can now be made with relative ease; at relatively low ‘cost’ (Kress, 2003). The textbook may ‘transduct’ artefacts and actions into writing and image; on the web, artefacts and actions may be transducted into moving image and speech, as the screenshot below, Figure 4, shows. It is a still from an animation on rotational transformations. The ’scene’ uses several modes – it shows through the use of image; it tells through speech; and it describes through writing – how to rotate an angle. Below the image of the protractor there is a written textual element; it is read out aloud – performed – so it is also present in the mode of speech. The text reads as follows.

Figure 4: Screenshot from lgfl.skoool.co.uk, retrieved 1 August 2007.

“Put pointer of compass on point ‘a’. Open out compass to length of ‘ac’. Draw a curve which passes through ‘c’. This ensures that the length of the lines in the image will be the same as in the original triangle. This makes sure that the length of ‘ac’ (the image) is the same as ‘ac’ (the original) because the size of an object doesn’t change during rotation”.

Here there is transduction from artefact (the compass, the mode of 3D material entities) to writing, with effects similar to those discussed before. These affect the specificity and generality of the content, as well as having effects on ordering. The voice-over reading of the written ’script’ uses speech for the transduction of the modes of artefact and action. The mode of moving image is used for the transduction of action. In this example, ‘pitch as tone’ is used to foreground particular lexical items; in the written text-element foregrounding is done by syntax.

Below is our transcript of the voice-over version; we have marked the boundaries between intonation units using a double slash, and we have underlined the items where the major pitch movement occurs (a ‘fall’ in each case). The element with the major pitch movement marks it as providing ‘new information’. This creates a contrast of ‘given’ and ‘new’ information within each ‘information unit’ (cf. Halliday, 1967).

Put pointer of compass // on point a //. Open out // compass to length of a c //.

Draw a curve // which passes through c //. This ensures // that the length of the lines in the image // will be the same as in the original triangle //. This makes sure // that the length of a c // the image // is the same as a c // the original //. Because the size // of an object // doesn’t change during rotation //.

If we compare the written and the spoken text-elements, we see that the two modes provide distinctive readings and, with that, different potentials for learning, in each case. In the written segment, the first three sentences draw the reader’s attention to the first-mentioned element – the action to be performed: put, open out, draw – and to the (imperative) mood, foregrounding action as command. In the spoken version, the listener’s attention is drawn to the object involved – ‘compass’; location – ‘point a’; extent of action – ‘out’; etc. What ensues is a contrapuntal organization, with the mode of writing highlighting action-as-commands – put, open out, draw - and the mode of speech highlighting objects and attendant circumstances – location, shape.

In this example there is also use of the mode of moving image, which combines the affordances of still image and its spatial organization with temporal organization: it unfolds in time. That brings distinct increases in semiotic resources and therefore in potentials for design. Elements can now appear and disappear, and through that, movement can be suggested. Above all, the viewer or reader’s attention can be shaped. In the scene that we are looking at here, the first element to appear is the triangle. Then the compass appears, placed with its pointer at ‘A’. Then two movements take place: the ‘opening out’ of the compass and the inscription of a curve. Then the compass disappears again. In this, the moving image represents the demonstration of how to use a compass rather differently from the written and spoken text-elements. For instance, it is specific about what ‘opening out’ and ‘drawing a curve’ entails. ‘Drawing a curve’ is displayed as a movement of the compass whereby one of its legs retains its position and the other leg, which leaves a trace, makes a gentle, clockwise turn.

The example shows that as a multiplicity of modes – image, writing, speech and moving image – become available, the potential for design alters radically. Resources with particular affordances become available for specific use; here, for instance, lexis or depiction bring implications for generality or specificity; syntactic resources have implications for variable arrangements of entities, as well as means for the expression of the social relations of the maker of a message and its ‘reader’ – the relation of ‘command’ for instance. For the designer of the learning materials the question becomes one of ‘aptness‘ of the resources for the specific occasion. There are implications for pedagogy: commands are given in the modes of writing and speech; in the mode of (moving) image, actors can be backgrounded; in the mode of (still) image, reading paths are established by the viewer or learner, while in moving image, reading paths are established by the designer. These design decisions concerning the use of modes are in effect materializations and ‘ratifications’ of pedagogic designs and they in turn are realizations of social organizations and arrangements. The design strongly sets the ‘ground’ for engagement and learning.

Young people’s participation in design

Design is no longer exclusively the realm of professional textbook makers, as in the examples discussed so far, or of teachers alone. Participation in design now best describes the characteristics of communication, and not only in schools. That has profound effects on knowledge production. Social change has led to an emphasis on the agentive action of all participants in communication, even if differentially. Communication needs to be seen as a two stage process, with an initiator/rhetor producing a message as the ‘ground’ and an interpreter, on the basis of the ‘ground’, constructing a ‘prompt’ for interpretation, leading to the meaning which the interpreter takes from that message. It means that design takes place twice: at the point of the making of the message as the ‘ground’ and at the point of interpreting the ‘prompt’. Young people act out of such understandings of their power in communication in design and knowledge production (Pahl, 1999; Stein, 2003). In other words, the social changes mentioned, have begun to manifest themselves in an assumption on the part of the young of their significant agency in the domain of their own cultural production. The production of knowledge is inseparable from the production of signs-as-text. Semiotic production is, at one and the same time, epistemological and ontological production. The question in each case is: whose agency is at work?

These social and representational changes are evident in contemporary media as well: the participatory affordances of current media technologies act to blur former distinctions of production and consumption, of writing and reading. The simultaneously global and local ‘reach’ of media challenges the boundaries of communities global and local, with severe effects on genres; it mixes contents both global and local; ubiquity of access to information, convergence of media and connectivity in the sphere of individual lives entails that occasions of and resources for knowledge production and creativity are not tied to particular sites and times. Multimodality, representations in many modes, allows and demands the choice of apt communicational resources in all situations.

The newer individual dispositions toward agency have deep effects on design processes. All aspects of the domain of meaning are drawn into the new social givens, with far-reaching effects. In relation to the making of texts, for instance, questions of ‘authenticity’ and authorship have changed profoundly. In downloading, ‘mixing’, cutting and pasting, ’sampling’, re-contextualization, questions such as “where did this come from?” “Who is the original/originating author” seem not the issue. Much like the use, in former times, of a ruined church or monastic building as a quarry, as a source of building materials – a large stone here as a lintel, another there as part of a wall – texts are taken as ‘resources’ to be ‘mined’ for the making of new texts. There is an absolute need to understand the practices, epistemologies, aesthetics and ethics of contemporary forms of text design. At the moment these are discussed in terms of 19^th century models, with terms such as ‘plagiarism’ or ‘mere copying’ often too readily to hand: that is, the invocation of models from an era where conceptions of authorship were clear and legally buttressed. The notion of design and an elaboration of principles of design can give, instead, a relevant means of describing and analysing current principles of text-making underlying these practices by certain, generationally defined, groups.

At the moment the school is caught between traditional and contemporary conceptions of authority and agency in relation to production of knowledge, to the authoring of texts, the authority/canonicity of knowledge, and of semiotic forms much more generally. Political authority is contradictory: a demand for the new, for innovation and creativity, countered by anxieties around loss of control. But learning has long since left the confines of institutions such as school, university, and college, and forms of pedagogy have to accommodate to ‘life-long’, life-wide’ learning, that is, learning at all times, by those who demand that their interests be taken with utmost seriousness, in all sites, in all phases of professional and personal life. In school, many young people see themselves as authors of the knowledge they want and need, authors of the kinds of texts that meet their social, personal and affective needs – even though authored by processes which bring them into conflict with authority which is focused traditionally. In that they come into conflict with the sharply differing and contradictory conceptions and practices of the school. Conceptions of pedagogy held by ‘the school’ as institution are at loggerheads with those held – however implicitly – by those in school. In that stand-off, conceptions of pedagogy will need to be developed which accommodate the conflicting interests of generation, of power, of politics, and of a market-dominated economy. Clearly, the agency of learners has to be taken seriously and placed at the centre of pedagogic attention. Equally clearly, the insights, understandings, values, knowledges which are the results of centuries, even millennia, of social and cultural work cannot and should not suddenly be ditched.

Shaping the future of education

Three factors need to be held in mind in speculating about trends in design: agency and distributions of and claims to agency, the multiplicity of resources for making meaning available as resources for design, and the deep social and cultural diversity of contemporary societies. All three have social and semiotic aspects, that is, they bring social political and semiotic consequences.

Pedagogically, the agency and the centrality of learners as designers of texts and as designers and makers of their meanings, has to be the starting point of all considerations in education. It is unlikely that the claim by learners to agency in the processes of learning will abate over the next decade or so. This has consequences for institutional responses to such claims, and to a new conceptualization of the role of institutions in that process. We have made one suggestion, namely that an institution’s task can be the design of environments for learning and the shaping of the curricular ‘ground’ for the learners’ engagement.

Semiotically, text making will increasingly be, at all times, multimodally designed, arising from the specific interests of rhetor and interpreter. In such designs the affordances of all modes are judged and used in relation to that interest. The multiplicity of modal resources for imagining and implementing design link both with the agency of designers, both in the role of initiators and designers of messages and in the role of designers as interpreters of these messages. In political agendas focused on innovation and creativity, design as a prospective and therefore always necessarily innovative and transformative process will need to come more and more into the foreground of pedagogic attention.

The tasks of understanding the new givens of representation, communication, innovation and creativity lie with researchers and policy makers and the designers of pedagogies and curricula. That is, several institutions will need to be involved and aware of their respective competences and responsibilities. The claim and assumption of agency in design by learners of all kinds poses a profound challenge in terms of developing theories and practical means for understanding multimodal design. This is both in terms of means for valuing learners’ interests and meanings and in terms of criteria for evaluating meanings realized as multimodal ’semiotic objects’. In other words, theories of learning will need to refocus their metrics of value, evaluation, and assessment from criteria derived from authority and power to criteria oriented to understanding the principles applied in the learners’ design.

Captions

Figure 1: Excerpt from Fairbrother, Nightingale and Wyeth, 1935, pp161-162.

Figure 2: Drawing after Science Education Group, 2002, pp90-91.

Figure 3: Drawing after Miura et al, 2006, pp106-107.

Figure 4: Screenshot from lgfl.skoool.co.uk, retrieved 1 August 2007.

Bibliography

Bezemer, J. and Kress, G. (2008) Writing in multimodal texts: a social semiotic account of designs for learning. Written Communication, 25 (2), pp166-195 (Special Issue on Writing and New Media).

Bezemer, J. and Kress, G. (in press) Visualizing English: A Social Semiotic History of a School Subject. Visual Communication. Special Issue on Information Environments.

Brindle, K., Machin, R. and Thomas, P. (2002) Folens GCSE English for AQA/A. Dunstable, Folens.

Fairbrother, F., Nightingale, E. and Wyeth, F.J. (1935) General Science. Part III. London, G. Bell and Sons.

Jewitt, C. (2008) Technology, Literacy, Learning: A Multimodal Approach. London, Routlege.

Kress, G. (2003) Literacy in the new media age. London, Routlege.

Miura, N. et al (2006) New Science: Field 2, Volume 1 [Atarashii Kagaku 2 Bunya Jou]. Tokyo, Shoseki.

Pahl, K. (1999) Transformations: Children’s Meaning Making in Nursery Education. Stoke on Trent, Trentham Books.

Science Education Group (2002) Salters GCSE Science Y11. Oxford, Heinemann.

Stein, P. (2003) The Olifantsvlei fresh stories project. In: Jewitt, C. and Kress, G. (eds.) Multimodal Literacy. New York, Peter Lang, pp123-138.

Acknowledgements

This article draws on an ongoing research project, ‘Gains and Losses:

Changes in Representation, Knowledge and Pedagogy in Learning Resources’ (2007-2009), funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (RES-062-23-0224).

About the authors

Professor Gunther Kress

Institute of Education

Centre for Multimodal Research

20 Bedford Way

London WC1H 0AL

United Kingdom

phone:+44 20 7612 6502

fax     +44 20 7612 6177

email   g.kress@ioe.ac.uk

Dr Jeff Bezemer

Institute of Education

Centre for Multimodal Research

20 Bedford Way

London WC1H 0AL

United Kingdom

phone:+44 20 7612 6705

fax     +44 20 7612 6177

email   j.bezemer@ioe.ac.uk

Gunther Kress is Professor of Semiotics and Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. He is interested in questions of meaning and its semiotic realizations in interrelation with social and cultural organization. In his professional location, his focus is on learning and on the material shape of curricula and forms of pedagogy in a globalizing world. Among his recent books are Multimodal Discourse, Before Writing: Rethinking Paths to Literacy, Literacy in the New Media Age, and Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design.

Jeff Bezemer received his Master’s degree in Studies in Language and Culture and his PhD in Education from Tilburg University, Netherlands. He is Research Officer at the Institute of Education, Centre for Multimodal Research. His research is focused on representation and communication in educational settings. Recent publications, including articles in Written Communication and Linguistics and Education, also deal with multilingualism in immigrant settings.

This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation.

This Report addresses three overlapping and interlocking domains; identity, community and citizenship. The Challenge will also explore the intersection of identity and community, and identity and citizenship, and the ways in which changing technologies are likely to impact all.

Common to all three domains is communication, between persons, persons and institutions, and persons and information sources. It is here that new technologies are central; as well as changing forms of communication, they make highly visible how pervasive communication is in our lives. Core elements of all three domains are collaboration, participation and engagement with, and within, both the real and virtual worlds, in which we are active as agents intersecting with other agents. Information is not just something we access via a conduit; it is negotiated, actively communicated – and modified through our engagement with it.

The implications for future education are that educational policies, practices and institutions need to equip young people with the critical and technical skills to interact with technology effectively, to facilitate the development of positive and empowered identities and relationships and to be responsive to barriers or resistances that may conflict with or impede such agendas.

The Challenge’s key terms have multiple, nuanced and ambiguous meanings:  as such, working definitions are necessary:

By identity I shall mean, broadly, the ways that feel authentic for describing one’s self, which include multiple ’selves’ appropriate in different contexts. Such identity may include a sense of efficacy and agency – or its absence.  Identity politics, for example, is the pursuit of empowerment among people who are disadvantaged or marginalised but nevertheless are firmly committed to their personal identities.

Within this definition, this Report will explore:

• the ways in which identity develops through individual self-exploration and experimentation in relation to ideas, others and the external world
• identities associated with group memberships, including gender, disability, generation, value-based, ethnic, regional and national
• sense of efficacy and agency associated with such identities and the implications for facilitating empowerment, for managing disempowerment, and for identity politics – social support and action, including resistance, designed to give voice to the identity group
• how each of these intersects with technology.

By community I shall mean groups whose association has coherence, function and meaning to its members.  The term ‘community’ is contested and it is changing as a consequence of social, political and technological developments.  Exploring these changes is part of the agenda that this Challenge has addressed.

Community will be explored in relation to:

• theories of what community means, its functions and practices and the ways in which a community builds and sustains those functions
• the core features that subjectively comprise membership of a community and an identity related to that community; these may include shared values, sense of place, lifestyle, locality
• the criteria, and means, by which a community includes and excludes members
• how communities communicate and respond to members and how technology is changing this
• how a community is defined externally and the implications of this for members
• how intergroup relations are connected to the development and maintenance of group membership
• the relationship between communities, identity politics and social change
• the role of technology in these.

Citizenship is also a contested domain. The Challenge explores some issues around citizenship status but primarily in this Report I will address questions around the changing boundaries of ‘civic participation’, and the factors which contribute to both the extent and forms of young people’s engagement, specifically:

• how the definition of civic participation is changing, from conventional activities to a wider range of action
• how changing technologies alter the means of participating and therefore the definition of ‘active citizenship’
• what factors, including identity and community factors, contribute to a sense of agency and motivation for young people’s participation
• what factors create or perpetuate inefficacy in relation to civic participation
• the changing boundaries of the domain within which persons are ‘citizens’ including participation as part of a self-identified community, whether local or global, and the relationship of this to the traditional citizenship of a nation state.

Any exercise in prediction must recognise its core limitations and therefore what its purpose can usefully be.  What WILL change? There are things that will not change at all. There are things that will not change fundamentally, yet the way they are practised, or the form they take, may change. There are things which, as a consequence of technological, social, political or economic developments, will change quite considerably.

Some changes we can predict. We know that the relative proportions of generations will tilt upward. As ‘youth’ diminish as a proportion of the population it is probable that ‘youth culture’ may become even more distanced from the adult world and more marginalised. As work patterns and the life cycle of work increasingly fragment, identities associated with work and its communities will adjust. Education will need to facilitate developing the competence for managing such identities.

In the three domains addressed in this Challenge, values play an important role. Our current values guide our thinking about preferable, as well as possible and plausible, futures. The dominant social values of Britain today are essentially ‘liberal’. They include diversity, equality of opportunity, religious tolerance, non-violence and participatory citizenship. However we should not take contemporary values for granted, nor assume that their public support will continue in its present form. In looking forward twenty-five years, we should be aware of the uncertainties of history. Twenty-five years ago Thatcherite neo-conservatism changed the face of British values and had a large impact on education. The current economic recession could have major consequences for how the public view our objectives.

While it is likely that educators will continue to have the objectives of overcoming inequality, exclusion and injustice, potential obstacles to their implementation might easily include emergent religious fundamentalism, neo-conservative values that re-emphasise competition, increased social disruption due to economic privation, nationalism and fears about immigration. ‘Threats’ from marginal groups – such as religious fundamentalists – tend to be seen currently as issues of ‘diversity’ and the management of minority interests. If major political and economic forces – national or international – tip the balance of public opinion towards a more defensive position for liberals, a different agenda may emerge.

Currently, we see both highly optimistic and highly pessimistic predictions, rooted in contemporary value concerns but which risk missing out whole areas of relevance. For example, some have argued that individually-controlled information retrieval and communication will make schools redundant, as students can access knowledge at their own pace, from their own homes, with minimal guidance and monitoring by teachers. This prediction makes huge assumptions about the function of the school as a social and moral community, and the mechanisms by which young people learn – and deal with obstacles to understanding. This Report reviews material that does suggest the need to transform the current school system but the ‘death of the school’ narrative fails to take account of the identity, community and citizenship functions served by a school-like institution.

The core questions of the Challenge concern how technological developments precipitate, facilitate or impede development and performance within each of the three domains, identity, community and citizenship. Some new technologies do not alter relationships or social practices, only the ways that these are conducted.  In other cases, the new technology transforms social practices and social institutions. For example, despite the different skills involved, the social function of emailing friends may be little different from writing them a letter. However, using the same skills to organise a mass demonstration may represent a transformation of practices. Phoning from a mobile is still a form of telephone conversation, but a landline is in a static place and a mobile is an individual body prosthesis so friends and family can be in perpetual connection, with very different boundaries of access and privacy.

I will focus on four developments, specifically relating to communication, that are central to the three domains of this Challenge.

One is the media, by which I mean professionally produced information, fact or fiction. The conduits of traditional media have proliferated enormously. They play a vital role in reflecting, reproducing and indeed modifying cultural narratives, values and norms, and will continue to do so, and so contribute to the formation of identity.

A second development is the capacity of everyone who has the equipment and minimal skills, to access information. Barring censorship, in principle all areas of human knowledge are universally accessible.

A third development is that access is interactive.  The individual can add, create and modify information, and can set up communication networks.  She can do this anonymously, or within her own identity or that of one or many avatars. This creates opportunities for exploring and experimenting with identities and communities.

Gaming is one manifestation of this development, providing huge scope for playful-but-serious explorations of identity and community, but also providing an interactive mode of cultural transmission via the narratives in the games and the way that they are played; Ian Bogost for example argues that games are rhetorical persuasive tools. Numerous ‘educational’ games are being produced to purvey desired cultural messages.  Because interactive technology facilitates influencing others in ways that were beyond the scope of most people until today, it has a major impact on citizenship. This may be democratising as it removes control of the flow of information (in either direction) from the traditional gatekeepers; however open channels can also give more power to technocratic filtering.

A fourth technological development concerns prostheses. Developments which can counter disability (for example deafness) have implications not only for diversity and inequality, but also for identity. We cannot assume that all persons with disabilities will wish to be ‘cured’, particularly if the ‘cure’ is only partial. Conceivable prostheses in the near future include pharmaceutical enhancements of mental function, which – whether legally available or not – would require a radical rethink of the time-pressured unseen examination. More exotic projections include implanted prostheses – for example tagging children’s and vulnerable adults’ bodies to keep track of them.

How does new technology enter life space, and how do people in different roles respond to it? Where are new technologies located in young people’s life spaces? How have they been transformative? What might or might not be durable? By ‘life space’ I mean how the individual interfaces with the external world through social and technological intersections, language and social practices.

A new technology initially performs existing social practices; it is an enhancing adjunct to current tools. In due course the additional potential of the new technology becomes apparent, and new social practices develop. However, what seems like potential to an ‘expert’ is not necessarily taken up by users in the way predicted. Unpredicted uses of new technology happen, and the way that social practices are transformed does not necessarily accord with the scenario of the designer .

Mobile phone penetration for adolescents in most industrialised countries approaches 100%. As the first widely used hand-held prosthesis it is the first experience we have of wholly individual agency in managing communication and sending digital information amongst one’s community – pictures, music, and other software. Even before possessing machines that could access the Internet, young people have become used to actively, instantly and autonomously mastering information digitally. As Justin Reich’s review shows, Web 2.0 has substantially increased informal communication in the hands of young people.  Adoption is rapid; two years ago over 50% of US teenagers had created pages on Facebook and MySpace; the number is undoubtedly higher today. Reduced costs and improved technology have transformed communication. Sharing information, whether personal or not, is possible for everyone, conversations can be global and blogs enable one to keep a ‘public’ diary and to monitor those of others.

This places young people as active agents in what they add to as well as take from the virtual world. It removes geographical boundaries of communication, and it blurs the traditional boundaries of public and private. As hand-held devices become less expensive, this will expand. Reich points out that in February of 2008 over 112 million blogs were tracked worldwide, with probably over 70 million more in China. As we shall explore more in the context of citizenship, Obama’s campaign depended on the blogging activities of millions of supporters – with very low cost and extremely rapid transmission of information.

The ‘life space’ opened up by new technology transcends previous boundaries, even before the individual enters the alternative virtual world of avatars, games and fantasy. Gaming is a major life space activity. Half of UK children between five and fifteen play computer or video games daily. Millions of people aged over fifteen are engaged in large-scale interactive games, often internationally. Gaming offers entry into an alternative culture in which values are played out in the game, and the intellect is challenged to multi-layered information processing.  This has stimulated creative thoughts on how gaming could be used for new ways of learning or to foster moral, social or civic awareness.

Eva Vass’s review documents how gaming requires “attention, motivation and perseverance for long stretches of time, quite often coupled with extensively delayed rewards.” Gaming also requires multitasking, cognitively complex and rapid problem-solving and information-processing, all of which take place within a collaborative and interactive context. Play has always been seen as essential for children’s development, and in the contemporary urban world free play is constrained by various physical and social risks. The world of gaming offers aspects of free play, including bridging thought and action, and engaging emotion as well as cognition. Vass concludes, “due to its fundamentally interactive and participatory nature, new technology provides a platform for the free exploration of a virtual landscape and participation in shared activities in virtual space.”  Gaming is relevant to all three domains of the Challenge.

The potentially transformative nature of new technology is also explored by both Reich and Vass. Vass reviews the question of whether our minds (and possibly brains) are being altered by interaction with new technology; James Flynn for example argues that the accelerated IQ scores in industrialised nations over the past century are due to changing ‘habits of mind’ consequent on ‘cognitive habituation’ to a more scientific way of thinking. Vass summarises the ‘new mindset’ in terms of habituation to complexity, propensity for experimentation, multimodal content, information foraging, democratic forms of social practice and growing capacity to collaborate with others.

First, thinking is embedded in the cultural context. Thinking involves negotiating meaning and understanding in continual interaction with others. It is not just a private act going on inside one individual’s head. Second, new technology requires different skills from those rooted in traditional formal education and the individual’s deep reading of hard copy texts. We now must work with a more complex interplay of written text, images, and graphics and sounds. Media material, including drama, is presented in faster, more swiftly changing units (such as the length of film takes) and the plots of soaps are multi-threaded. Information gathering and processing are participatory. As Reich discusses, the ability to modify wikis requires new skills of editing, and also opens up engagement with the text that is not present in traditional media.

These ways of thinking are practised in the world of leisure, and some are becoming increasingly routine in the business world.  However, adoption of new technology is both surprising and uneven. Some assumptions about who might be slow adopters, and why, have proved ill-founded; costs are dropping all the time and although there are still large sectors of the population who cannot afford the equipment, this may moderate considerably in the near future. In the history of most technology that becomes routinely part of our lives, we have seen barriers of age, gender, or lack of technical proficiency dissolve once the user interface becomes simpler, and the technology’s uses become more salient to one’s life space.  As we shall see when exploring how technology intersects with identity, community and citizenship, ‘need to know’ and changing social practices promote surprisingly rapid acquisition of both tools and techniques.

It is frequently asserted that gender is a ‘problem’ for new technology even though two variables that have long been known to contribute to gender effects are in fact highly malleable; the first is the nature of the material or task, the second is level of confidence in one’s skills. Both matter in women’s and girls’ performance with new technology. Louise Madden’s review of gender and the Internet explores some of the factors and myths, about women’s ‘resistance’ to technology.  Both location and the context of technology and its use are salient.

Any new expertise is best acquired through engagement in everyday activities, therefore those who have legitimate use of a machine are more likely to become experts. The person who purchases a tool is frequently its ‘owner’ in the sense of determining is primary use and location. The more routine the technology, the less formal the space in which it is located. Home television sets initially were centrally located within the family’s main social space, they then migrated to other leisure areas of the household as they became routine possessions. Computers, because of their mixed functions as ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ follow a slightly different path.

Computer technology tends to be purchased by men, although a prime reason for the purchase is children’s use (ostensibly educational but in practice also leisure use). ‘Ownership’ is also invested in expertise, which is likely to be shared by fathers and children, rather than mothers. Women’s use of a computer depends also on its location. A computer in the paternal ‘den’ locates the machine as the province of the father, with limited access to both spouse and children. A computer in the children’s bedroom limits parental access after their bedtime.

These territorial tropes have been used to explain women’s later adoption of technology and their identity as ‘non-expert’. However many activities involving technology rapidly become widespread as their cost drops – online banking has spread fast. Some areas of shopping are becoming routinely online, for both sexes.  Women’s use of computers is expanding rapidly, particularly email which is replacing letter writing and telephoning – traditional community-maintaining activities of women. A clear implication is that the spread of technology beyond the ‘young male geek’ stereotype is happening faster than some predicted. ‘Obstacles’ disappear once people find a ‘need to know’ reason to acquire the skills, especially to perform routine tasks.

Ellen Helsper’s review of young people’s responses to risks and challenges on the Internet also unpacks some assumptions – and pitfalls – about the take-up of technology. One narrative locates technical expertise as a generational phenomenon, comparing ‘digital natives’, those born after 1980 who grew up with technology and have – it is presumed – no problems with it, and ‘digital immigrants’, those born before 1980, who had to acquire new skill profiles. Helsper argues that this is both misleading and short-sighted.

Many inequalities in access to technology still remain and there is a wide range of actual skill, and also of confidence in one’s skills. One consequence is that young people who lack skills may adopt an ‘ostrich’ tactic both in relation to their limitations, and also in relation to the wide variety of risks that the Internet poses.  Helsper argues that a ‘digital native’ model militates against both skill acquisition, and the development of the competence to deal with managing risk and negative experiences. Such assumptions may create further obstacles to technological advances in education. Also today’s ‘digital natives’, insofar as they truly exist, will rapidly become ‘immigrants’ in the face of new developments.

For the future of education, identity is salient in the following ways:

• how young people locate themselves vis a vis social groups, which is likely to have a role in their motivation to learn, their identification with the dominant values purveyed within education, their sense of agency with regard to participating in society and their preparation for this via school
• the extent to which the marginalisation of groups on the basis of various forms of diversity is managed effectively within education, whether this means challenging discrimination and/or positively affirming difference
• how is identity development facilitated within the educational context?
• how can alternative and multiple identities be explored?
• what messages do the educational agenda and curriculum convey about culturally normative, or desirable, forms and expressions of identity? what are the dominant values, narratives and explanations inherent both in the curriculum and in how it is purveyed by teachers and by the structure of educational institutions?

What does new technology do for identity? First, it opens up new avenues for developing and expressing one’s identity, through new ways to connect with others, and new ways to communicate. It expands the people and groups with whom one can communicate. These experiences may facilitate:

• agency and choice; that one can be an active agent in developing, maintaining – and ending – one’s networks, and that one ‘belongs’ to a social group by choice not entirely by default.  One value message is that one has choice and should exercise it. The consumer’s right to choose, and to expect that choice to have outcomes, is a strong thread of some forms of youth culture, as Sarah Riley’s review explores.
• the boundaries of identity and how these may be expanded or altered, physically or in other technological ways.
• the expanded limits of identity including the management of multiple selves, in real as well as virtual life, and effective movement between these. This applies to multi-layered local and national identity as well as to movement between different social groups with whom one’s affiliation rests on shared values or interests.

Three things operate in the formation of identity. The first is the script.  Who we become as persons requires imagining possible future selves; throughout our development we make choices that steer us between the implicit scripts offered to us and modified by us, or those choices are made for us by circumstances. Cultural resources for scripts have expanded with the range of media available. As Sarah Riley’s and Thalia Magioglou’s reviews point out, the prolongation of financially dependent adolescence into a phase of ‘youth’ which may last well into the twenties allows young people a longer time to make such choices, and also, more time to try out alternatives. The addition of virtual role-taking and identity-playing activities, whether in fantasy games or in how one presents oneself on Facebook and in blog interactions, increases the potential for hands-on experiences of scripts and imagined selves.

A second dimension of identity development is social group membership, whether chosen or contingent. How strong is one’s identification with the social group, what are the reasons for it, and what are the consequences? A third dimension is location, and key experiences of that location are significant components of identity. Places have familiar memories and associations as well as symbolic reference. There are potential tensions around the relationship between this place and others. An oft-cited rhetorical example regarding immigrants and national identity was the ‘cricket test’; which team would an immigrant support if their ‘home’ team was playing a British one? This is a trivial example of a non-trivial point; to what extent does one’s attachment to one place, or national territory, create tensions with other attachments?

Identity is also about competence. For what demands of contemporary identity should education equip the growing person? One competence relates to mobility and to flexibility. Career patterns increasingly require relatively short-term commitment to a post, and often, career path changes through life. Many careers require relocation. Among other implications, this impacts on professional identity and such identity expressions as ‘I am a lawyer’ may come to mean more a domain of applicable knowledge than a job description. Planning one’s education for a lifelong career has become less salient than preparing the foundations for a range of options.

Mobile identity takes several forms. An increasing number of people will be working in several different regions and nations during their career, either physically moving or working via virtual means in several cultures. This will increasingly be the norm especially for the professional and managerial sector.   Such people retain their national identity but must be flexible and sensitive to the identities and perspectives of others. In addition, there is a pressure towards developing a wider or multiple, identity, being both British and European, engaging both with local and global issues . The practice of participation in international conversation, via blogging and wikis, as Reich describes, can lay the early foundations of these skills.

Another kind of mobile identity, that is likely to grow considerably over the next 25 years, is the phenomenon of young people whose parents may be of different nationalities, and who themselves have grown up in a series of locations as their parents move with the requirements of multinational employment. Currently, these young people tend to be educated in international schools but this may change as their numbers increase with multinational capitalism.  Such young people learn early to be flexible, adaptable and multi-lingual and to have a broad imaginary of their career options. However there is the question of their national identity and to whom do they feel civic commitment? They may be effective global citizens – but for whom do they vote?

A third category is immigrants. We are seeing the largest human migrations in history. In addition to questions of citizenship status, or discrimination from the host community, immigration has identity issues. National identity rests, for the ‘native’ population, on characteristics which are deemed inherent to the nation. This may include specifically defining as ‘other’, groups whose inclusion in the nation’s citizenship is resisted – for example the rhetoric around the ‘cultural threat’ of Islamic minorities. For those who enter the nation, whether as voluntary immigrants or as the colonised or invaded, acquiring a sense of, and commitment to, national identity means negotiating the adoption of ‘national characteristics’ in tension with retaining core features of the immigrant culture.  For nations (such as Britain) for whom as Denis Sindic’s review argues, multiculturalism is a central ethic of national identity, both these operate in tandem. In some other models, for example France, diversity is managed by attempting to subsume all identities to the dominant culture.

New technology does not invent imaginary space or media but it does make active participation with the imaginary possible. A question central to our imaginative lives is, ‘what if I did such and such?’ This becomes testable and its consequences managed, even if restricted by the parameters of a game.  First, this allows us to ‘produce’ an identity and explore it, and engage with others in playing it out. This is an active performance which also requires active management of the responses of others. While this can be seen as positive agency, as Sarah Riley points out it could also mean that “communication technologies are creating a situation where people understand aspects of themselves as only truly meaningful when offered up for the consumption of others”.

Broadly, there are three ways in which new technologies facilitate playing with alternative identities. There is reality self-presentation, interacting with others ‘as oneself’ even if there are several edited versions of this. This is the world of Facebook, and MySpace. This is ‘public’ to a degree not available before such technology. A second type of identity exploration comes from sharing narratives.  Kyoko Murakami’s review describes ‘digital storytelling’. Whether as an orchestrated or a spontaneous activity, technology-mediated interaction shares the description of an experience, creating collective memory and history. Meaning and a shared identity are co-constructed through the recollection and creation of the narrative. Murakami argues that this is a potential medium for giving disaffected and alienated youth empowerment and ownership of their identities.

Other initiatives using new technology have similar goals. One example is the World Film Collective, a group of young film makers working with disadvantaged young people in various parts of the world (Brazil, South Africa, Palestine) to make films using mobile phones as cameras. The young people make a DVD which presents their own experience authentically, as in digital storytelling. This has a citizenship component, making their voices heard, but they also acquire basic film-making and editing skills.

A third dimension of role-playing and identity experimentation is in gaming, where acting out an avatar role, usually within a complex scenario, involves many other people, requiring collaboration, teamwork, planning and considerable perseverance and attention. The key identity element is the interaction of the avatar with others, shaping and maintaining one’s alternative identity so that it works in the context, and the management of interaction with others in the sometimes threatening virtual world. Aubry Threlkeld’s review for example describes both bullying and unpleasant imaginary encounters in a queer virtual identity. On a more positive note, activities such as Second Life can be a sophisticated playing out of a complex alternative identity with positive products and outcomes.

Because ‘place’ is concrete it is a seductive explanation of identity. In one metaphor of place, virtual communities of the future are contrasted with the ‘real’ places of the past. Heike Doering’s and Nick Nash’s reviews show that this is a false distinction, and that it is highly likely that people will continue to define themselves in terms of a place-located identity and community. Place identity is as likely to be strengthened as weakened by the development of technologies. In diaspora societies, attachment to the ‘home’ town or region is largely sustained by a virtual network.

Nash argues that it is only when people engage in something that acts upon a place that it gains meaning – whether this is the physical or the social domain. For some, this ‘action’ is the conscious choice to locate to somewhere in particular. The meaning of that choice is located within, and contributes to, identity. Heike Doering’s review explores the concept of ‘elective belonging’ which is one manifestation of the ethic of choice.

The core question is, how do we make sense of a ‘place’? Making meaning of ‘place’ may arise from threat, whether natural or human. The work on risk perception provides a rich example of how people construct their local environment. They have clear ideas of what and where risk lies, how they will respond to it and what is tolerable within a local perspective. Air pollution for example may be acceptable where it comes from the factory that is the main source of income for the community.

National identity is problematic. A nation is a ‘place’, geographically but we largely experience our nation through metaphor, narrative and symbol – even if we claim that its familiar physical aspects are the source of our attachment. Denis Sindic’s review reminds us that national awareness arose in the 18^th century when print media became widespread, both purveying ‘national’ news and invoking the experience of sharing that knowledge with others who read the same media. National identity can be fostered by threat, creating solidarity based on the boundary between ‘us’ and the (alien) other. National identity also depends on heroes, as Sindic shows with regard to Scottish and Welsh devolution, who are invoked as icons that reflect national qualities of the nation, in narratives and stories through which members of the nation find an identity.

Will national identity survive in the changing world? There are several different discourses around this. First, globalisation may be either a goal for those who want to transcend nationalism, or a more gloomy prediction for those who see it as a manifestation of capitalism. Second there is the EU; is it a desirable transnational state, or the maw into which ‘our’ identity is lost?  Third, there is the virtual world, where because there are no boundaries, will people generate new communities defined by elective belonging based on common interests and values – or will they become de-individualised because they have no longer any roots?

While globalisation expands the scope of identity, it seems paradoxically, that this is dependent on a secure base of national or regional identity. Globalisation can be a perspective that allows for exploring a larger universe of discourse, within which it becomes easier to see, and care about, one’s own space.  Sindic’s review shows us that people feel both European and attached to their own nation. In the virtual world, it appears that people identify themselves as representatives of their nation, while entering into open dialogue across national boundaries. However, local national identity trumps EU identity even though increasingly our routine actions upon our environment confront us with our larger connection to Europe.

If the idealised goal is to create supra-national young people, it would seem doomed. If the goal is to use the opportunities of new technology to obviate the more negative aspects of nationalism there is more hope. The enthusiasm with which many young people are already routinely interacting with other nationals via new technology suggests that this may be fostering open and multiple identities. The more positive conclusion is that people are managing multiple identities comfortably and on the whole are not trapped either by place or nationalism.

We should be somewhat wary however; political, economic and social change can rapidly create nationalistic and xenophobic retrenchment. The perceived threats from immigration continue to fuel the BNP (5% of a sample of young people in a recent study supported the BNP) and the fear of terrorism can so easily be translated in anti-Islamic sentiment. While this is currently at bay, over twenty five years we may expect to see considerable fluctuations. We have also seen transnational ‘localisation’ based on values, including religion. The World Wide Web plays an increasing role in transnational evangelism and fundamentalism.

Sarah Riley’s review of youth cultures explores one aspect of ‘chosen’ social groups and identities. She argues that communication technology, a consumer society and an extended period of financially dependent (or financially uncommitted) youth all facilitate a ‘playful pick and mix approach’ to ‘a kaleidoscope of temporary, fluid and multiple subjectivities’. Within this there is scope for practising multiple identities and for managing easy movement between them.  Furthermore, these are desirable skills for twenty first century life.  However, young people are exposed to considerable commercial pressures and to identities which are heavily loaded with commercial interests – whether in terms of clothing, music, or body style. The ‘choice’ therefore is a choice between identities of consumption.

These choices are made also within the wider cultural value of neo-liberalism, which Riley argues emphasises individual freedom and an ethic of choice even though these are largely illusory. Within this value system, to be able to make a choice is a right, and by making a choice one is understood as being an agent and taking responsibility for one’s self. It also has the moral connotation that one’s appearance and one’s lifestyle are within one’s control, so a well-toned body reflects responsible choices, flab does not.  Even if the choice is potentially damaging, the act of choosing is a freely made rational act. This includes entitlement to excess, to the voluntary pursuit of hedonism and intoxication and even the right to choose a dangerous ‘lifestyle’ of anorexia.

The contemporary cultural value of neo-liberalism, manifested in political as well as youth consumer circles, is likely to remain a dominant value unless quite a substantial cultural shift occurs. Even if the recession cuts back consumerism and the display of goods becomes less acceptable, the personal value of freedom of choice may still remain, an ethic with which fluid identities and youth cultures is consistent. An alternative (though not necessarily conflicting) explanation of multiple and fluid identities is neo-tribalism, a concept developed by Maffesoli. This argument is that young people form, and move through, small groups joined by values or interests. These groups communicate virtually but may also congregate physically. They provide a sense of belonging but also a sense of being an island of sovereignty, in which only the group’s rules prevail in the here and now.  Once the person moves to another group – and there may be numerous such transitions within a single 24 hour period – the new group’s rules apply. Again the dominant value here is freedom to choose and to define one’s identity.

By ‘unchosen’ identities I mean those that arise from contingencies of one’s body or environment that present potential challenges for identity. How is an identity constructed amongst a marginalised social group? To what extent is this a consequence of the dominant social groups’ positioning? In what ways do marginal groups affirm a positive identity? And what are the likely effects on the culture of ‘identity politics’?

One example of the cultural construction of an unchosen identity also demonstrates the role of traditional mainstream media, which are often overlooked in discussions of the implications of new telecommunications tools. The media’s role as a cultural resource and framer of our narratives, metaphors and explanations has been extensively researched and theorised at least since Marshall McLuhan’s classic work forty years ago. This is likely to continue even if in a form increasingly moderated by more interactive media. Mainstream media reproduce culture and by implication have the potential to modify culture.  This will probably continue even as media diversify. Mainstream media are already increasingly in competition with other channels of entertainment which offer other cultural messages.

David Weltman’s review paper presents a case study of the media representation of the British white working class, especially males. Whoever holds power over communication sets the terms of reference for the cultural story. Current media control is held by the middle class, and Weltman argues that the white working class are seen through a middle class perspective, frequently pathologised as moral failures and lacking self-management. They are seen primarily in leisure and family contexts, in work or in political activity only in extreme circumstances, such as industrial disasters, when individual ‘working class heroes’ emerge, while the conditions that caused the disaster remain unaddressed. In contrast, the non-white working class are often presented as economically deprived and oppressed – fitting into the contemporary agenda of recognising diversity.

Two other kinds of marginalised social groups having several commonalities are covered in the reviews.  Ruth Gwernan-Jones considers three types of disability, and Aubry Threlkeld explores non-heteronormative sexuality. Both domains are characterised by marginalisation, stigma and the management of identities in reaction to those societal positionings. They have both also been subject to a ‘medical model’ of explanation and de-legitimation as well as, or in tension with, a social construction model.

The groups are marginalised because the dominant society positions them as ‘different’ or ‘deficient’. This marginalisation is not only through language but also manifests itself materially and structurally. For example, for disabled people, a world of tools and mobility that has been built for the abled, excludes or limits their engagement. For other marginalised groups, routes to personal growth and adult fulfilment are thwarted by the absence of publicly recognised and valued models of, for example, their sexuality, and/or the absence of legal recognition of their relationships. It is not only a matter of ‘I am not able, or allowed, to be what I authentically am’ it is also a matter of ‘How as a growing person, can I find out what it means to be what I authentically am?’

Within such a framework, when the dominant group tries to overcome marginalisation it tends to be by addressing discrimination and ‘diversity’ issues.  However, the minority group’s response may affirm an identity which denies the ‘disabled’ label altogether. Such identity politics aim to overcome not only discrimination but also the labelling as ‘other’. In response, the structures that support the normative may adjust to include the hitherto marginal and so normalise it – an example would be if in all new buildings the transit between levels is never by steps but only by ramps, escalators or lifts, as is indeed the case in many airports.

Gwernan-Jones addresses several kinds of ‘disability’ in these terms. As she writes, the ‘disability model’ challenges the medical model, “encouraging a trend toward active, vocal disabled people, many of whom perceive their disability as a part of a positive personal and social identity and…would prefer to keep their disability rather than have it ‘cured”. The case of deafness is a strong example. The Deaf community positively assert that theirs is an alternative linguistic culture with a rich language, and not a ‘deficit’ situation. Cochlear implants for example make them less than completely effective members of the hearing culture; technology does not necessarily ‘help’. Dyslexia is slightly different; there has been a cultural shift.  Partly because of the technologies that compensate for aspects of dyslexia, it has become a much less marginalising condition.  However, these technologies are not targeted at dyslexics, or not only; they are part of cultural changes which have, almost incidentally, reduced the exclusion, marginalisation and stigma of dyslexia.

Threlkeld explores the way that heteronormativity still prevails in education, despite the significant changes that have taken place within the dominant culture in the legitimation of queer experience. He argues that anxieties on the part of the education establishment regarding teaching about sex, prevent appropriate teaching about sexualities. By prohibiting discussion of, or exposure to, alternative sexualities, a culture of heteronormativity, with homophobia and bullying, is perpetuated and young gay people have no legitimate framework within education for developing their identity except as marginals, defined by the dominant group. Censorship about gay identity also operates within the world of video games geared to children. In contrast, even the mainstream media have greatly expanded and normalised the representation of queer life and identity, although with a rather restricted and glamorised stereotype of ‘gay lifestyle’. New technology and the virtual world provide extensive resources for defining and developing a variety of queer identities. Queer identity politics have successfully normalised gayness such that homophobia is – at least in some circles – the new ‘pathology’. Nevertheless, this is still in definite tension with the message that young people get about the marginality of gayness and it is a far from universal message.

In the foregoing discussion of identity, much of what has been covered applies to ‘community’ because so much of identity derives from community participation and membership.  For example one’s social group is a primary source of identity, and the management of identity through technologies such as Facebook and MySpace is in fact a community activity. Youth subcultures, as described in Sarah Riley’s review, are communities. The discussion of ‘place’ and identity, as discussed by Nick Nash and Heike Doering, are also manifestations of community.

The reviews by Doering, Nash, Magioglou, Riley, Gwernan-Jones and Threlkeld all present examples of how elective belonging to a community may be empowering. Identification with a group with common experiences of marginalisation can affirm an identity that resists and redefines the construction by the dominant group – as we saw in Gwernan-Jones’ and Threlkeld’s reviews.  Nash and Sindic describe how perceived threat or risk – whether natural, of human origin or political – lead to community solidarity both in constructing a shared meaning, and in promoting collective action. In intergroup relations research, the importance of external threat in shaping both ingroup identity and ingroup solidarity is widely documented, as Sindic discusses. The creation of new states, and the reconstruction of states that have been suppressed through invasion or annexation, are marked by a combination of collective memorialisation of a former community, and explicit rejection of the oppressor/enemy.

This narrows somewhat the discussion of community as a distinct entity. I will focus on broad issues of technology in the context of definitions of community.

‘Community’ is a diffuse concept, made more messy by its values baggage. Idealised versions of community as a place of safety, support and empowerment exist alongside perceptions of communities as pernicious agents of conformity.  Each rests on a somewhat different analysis of what community members do to and for each other. The centrality of community is also problematic; behind liberal (and neo-liberal) enthusiasm for individualism and autonomy lies the assumption that the individual can transcend or resist his or her community, a position critiqued by communitarians and also by cultural psychologists who argue that we are inherently ’social’ in all aspects of our lives.

But what constitutes a community? David Studdert’s review, for example, asserts that community is more than contiguity – whether local or based on common interests; a community involves shared ‘beingness together’, an interaction that carries commitment and mutuality, not just sociality.

What are the processes of ‘community’ and how may they promote public or individual ‘good’? The basis of Robert Putnam’s communitarian stance is that communities are bound together by groups engaging in leisure activities, they create bonds and bridges that both empower members within a common identity, and lay the foundations, through local engagement, for the larger stage of national civic participation. The community is therefore the source of social capital which is in Putnam’s view the infrastructure of the democratic process.

It has been a recurrent, almost moral panic that new technology destroys community.  The flight, supposedly, to individualised communion with machines or to technological communication stripped of face to face interaction and warmth reflects some of the value baggage described above, and to some extent, Studdert’s critique also. However, technology in the form of telecommunications has been sustaining community for over a century. The key questions commonly asked are whether digital technologies enhance community or lead to atomisation, and whether online communities replace or reinforce offline communities?

Manuel Castells for example takes a structural – and radical – view, that the ‘network’ is the basis of all societies, and what new technology does is to speed up, facilitate and make more explicit what has been around throughout history (and prehistory). We connect to others through sharing information. This is a two way process between persons and a multi-way process amongst social groups.  We can expand or contract our network by adding people with whom we share information. We can exercise power over our information and over persons by inclusion and exclusion, and selective information-sharing. This is the basic structure of any community. In early history when communities were small and face to face, the reciprocity was obvious. With greater distance and larger groups, the apparent vertical, and controlled, passage of information arose from the long time-lag between sending and receiving, but Castells argues that the basic structure was the same. Modern technology restores the swift reciprocity of the network. This can be democratising or it can lead to control.

To create online communities requires effort and skill, and individual agency to join them. The extent to which these confer the sort of ‘belongingness’ that Studdert’s definition requires is open to debate, but there appears to be consensus that  one basis for community – on or offline – is shared values or interests. People join groups because they like being with people like themselves. This is something easily facilitated in virtual space. Doering argues that a ‘cosmopolitan’ identity derives from a community – whether face to face or virtual – that is really the concatenation of people from different nations who have common lifestyles and experience and who are probably not entering into the ‘local’ community in the geographical space they inhabit.

Two further examples challenge the anxieties about the ‘death’ of the face to face community. Keith Hampton describes the difference between dystopians who consider that new technology is destroying face to face life, and utopians who see the virtual world as the new location of thriving communities; he points out that the ‘loss’ of the community as it is described by dystopians long preceded new technology, and that in fact relatively small numbers of internet users describe themselves as members of a virtual community (though this may be changing). Online communities often overlap with off-line communities. Hampton’s ethnographic study of a small, newly built community in which 64% of residents were ‘wired’ from the start of their occupancy found that those who were wired were more likely to interact with their neighbours on and off-line and were more connected to their community.

In a review of studies of young people’s use of the Internet over two decades, Valkenburg and Peter found that, in contrast to fears that it would be socially isolated young people who spent more time on the Internet, it was the more socially competent who became active in using the internet as part of their social networking. They integrated Internet interaction into their social lives.  However, more socially anxious young people do prefer the more distanced, less face to face aspects of computer interaction. The authors conclude that in general Internet connection makes it easier for young people to self-disclose – and self-disclosure is an important part of establishing connection. This benefits boys more than girls, and social isolates more than the socially skilled. But the overall conclusion is that Internet connecting strengthens and expands social networks and communities.

Like ‘community’, ‘citizenship’ is a contested term. This is for two distinct reasons. First, the changing landscapes of nationality, immigration and globalisation have raised questions about what constitutes entitlement to citizenship status, alongside the moves made by governments to both include ‘new’ citizens through various hurdles of ‘integration’ and to exclude potential new citizens. Second, civic participation, as the mark of ‘citizenship’, has become contested.  Much research and policy writing around participation concentrated until recently on conventional forms of participation, especially voting and party support activities. Both the realities of young people’s civic engagement and changing theoretical perspectives about ‘participation’ have extended ‘participation’ to include community action and making one’s voice heard through collective action.

Globalisation does not offer citizenship and is unlikely ever to do so, but arguably, secure national citizenship enables the pursuit of global goals. The concept of the ‘global citizen’ is not therefore a status but a way of managing multiple layers of identity and having responsibility to multiple communities. Globally mobile and migratory people require the legal stability of clear national citizenship to protect and support their interests, their entitlement to participate in the democratic process, and also their identity. The EU creates another layer of citizenship status bringing with it additional rights and responsibilities. Whether or not there is tension or synergy between national and EU identity, EU citizenship status extends certain freedoms to members (e.g. the freedom to work, the range of institutions to which the individual can appeal for support).  However this also has the potential for increasing social and legal controls.

There has been much hand-wringing in many countries at the drop in young people’s voting in national elections. Gloomy prediction of ‘threats to democracy’ abound. How far the USA election in November 2008, in which 53% of young people voted compared to 37% in 1996, reflects a trend or a blip is uncertain . At the same time, young people’s increasing participation in other forms of civic engagement besides voting is being taken seriously. These data give a considerably more positive picture of young people’s civic engagement.

The shift in perspective began forty years ago as social movements such as civil rights and other forms of social protest emerged, and their role in political life was recognised.  Increasingly we are seeing research on the role that making one’s voice heard through collective action plays in the development of young people’s political identity.  Additionally, community action has come to be included in ‘participation’ both as a consequence of communitarian theory and also in the light of data that youth community action participation predicts adult engagement.

What promotes or fosters participation is also a contested field. Many writers have argued that knowledge is the key. However the evidence suggests that knowledge by itself does not promote motivation to engagement. Participation in hands-on civic experience especially if it can be seen to make a difference and is accompanied by reflection on the experience, appears to promote civic engagement as does experiencing a democratic classroom. As Reich notes, data relating specifically to new technology suggest that using blogs and wikis to make one’s voice heard, and gaming opportunities for proxy experiences of participation, facilitate civic engagement. There are caveats; making one’s voice heard via blogging may be as much about media self-expression as about really trying to have an influence on public opinion; more research on this is needed.

We need also to consider what creates political alienation and a sense of civic inefficacy.  As one example, in a 2005 British study, 25% of over 1000 11-21 year olds had not participated in any of the diverse civic activities listed (the list did not include online activities). Thalia Magioglou’s and Kyoko Murakami’s reviews explores the sense of civic inefficacy – powerlessness and disengagement – amongst many young people. One source may be that education in many countries still is based on authority and hierarchy which is sympathetic neither to the cultures of disadvantaged youth, nor to those youth who experience a different way of interacting with the world through new technologies. In addition, as Sarah Riley also points out, the extended period of ‘youth’, the ephemeral nature of much work, its associated insecurity and also mobility, are destabilising, and may contribute to uncertainty as to which community constituency one belongs. The research data strongly suggest that individuals for whom group identity is more relevant are more likely to participate in civic activities.  A consequence of this, Magioglou argues, is that many young people expect to participate in the future, rather than now; they feel like ‘citizens in waiting’.

The most comprehensive picture of youth involvement internationally comes from the 28 nation IEA study which involved over 90,000 young people aged 14-17. The data were collected in 1999. The countries included England, the USA and Australia, and several European countries, both ‘east’ and ‘west’, also two Latin American countries:

• 80% expected to vote in national elections in the future
• 59% expected to collect money for social causes
• 45% expected to collect signatures for a petition
• 44% expected to participate in a non-violent protest march; the figure for England was 28%
• about 15% expected to participate in various forms of illegal protest; the figure for England was about 11%.

In current civic action:

• 28% had been active in a school council; 19% in England
• 28% had  collected money for a social cause; 55% in England
• 15% had participated in an environmental organisation
• 6% had participated in a human rights organisation.

Three-quarters of students claimed that the strongest messages they received from school about civic participation concerned cooperation with others, understanding people who have different ideas and how to protect the environment.  In comparison, 64% had learned to be patriotic (54% in England) and 55% had learned the importance of voting (41% in England).

Four distinct patterns of current civic action emerged among the 2005 British study; conventional participation (such as voting), making one’s voice heard, helping in the community and ‘active monitoring’. The latter involves paying attention to the news and discussing current affairs with friends and family, but did not involve current civic action. It was however associated with expectations of future engagement .

Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer identify three kinds of civic engagement which both incorporate types of action and the political intent of the action.  These are ‘ideal types’ but they overlap with emergent data. The personally responsible citizen obeys laws, acts responsibly, volunteers in times of crisis, and believes that to solve social problems, citizens must have good character. The participatory citizen is active in organising community efforts and knows strategies for accomplishing collective tasks. They believe that to solve social problems, citizens must actively take leadership positions within established structures. The justice-oriented citizen critically assesses social, political and economic structures, seeks out areas of injustice, and knows how social movements can effect systemic change. They believe that to solve social problems, citizens must question and change established systems and structures.

This model reflects a strongly liberal version of democratic action and goals. As a contrast, Olga Ververi’s review critically describes the OECD’s parameters of ‘civic competence’ currently being drawn up for the direction of civic education in the EU. These include desired ‘intended behaviours’, knowledge and values, mostly deriving from work on civic engagement including the IEA study. She argues however that the emphasis in the EU proposals is on the local community as the place for addressing social problems, which avoids collective action or seeing issues in the larger political and economic context.

This derives from an explicitly communitarian perspective in which, according to Ververi, ’social capital’ is located in the face to face community. The proposal specifically removes from the list of goals anything relating to protest (which includes lawful demonstration, boycotting products or signing petitions), and ‘positive attitudes towards immigrants’ – on the grounds that this is ’sensitive’, being linked to right or left politics. In conclusion, she says “it seems that the EU perception of citizenship is about a citizenship modality which does not aim at radical social changes but it intends to perpetuate the current order of things.”  As we shall see, this is even more evident in how the EU perceive e-citizenship.

Participation in some form of service activity, or other contact with ‘real world’ issues, appears to facilitate engagement as long as students have an active role in planning the project, and in directly reflecting on the experience.  As an example, Westheimer and Kahne compare two projects. In one the task was to gather data on local opinion about community services; in the other, the task was to find out about deprivation, inequality of access and violence in their community. Both programmes ‘worked’ but in different ways. Both groups increased their sense of civic efficacy and their belief that the government had responsibility for those in need. The first group, however, showed increased knowledge and social capital. In contrast, the second group developed much increased interest in politics, leadership efficacy and personal responsibility, and structural explanations for poverty.

New technologies have greatly expanded the scope of participation. As Reich and Vass describe, wikis and blogs have become major means for making one’s voice heard. The Obama campaign capitalised on new technology, in distributing its message, in recruiting and mobilising an online community of support, and in disseminating news. Many argue that this has transformed campaigning forever, the entire process reflecting a grassroots model, being bottom-up not top-down, even though the ‘bottom-up’ engagement was orchestrated in part by the Obama campaign machine.

The beginning of web-based activism is often ascribed to the WTO protest in Seattle in 1999, where 50,000 people were recruited electronically to participate in a demonstration. Later followed anti-Iraq war actions worldwide. Website-based campaigns and blogs proliferate, even when unaccompanied by physical protest. As Lance Bennett, from the MacArthur Foundation initiative, points out, a positive interpretation is that young people are becoming more empowered via peer networks and online communication to express themselves and make their own creative choices. A more pessimistic interpretation is that, despite their increased sense of efficacy, youth are becoming disengaged from conventional political activity, but more involved in consumer politics, on MySpace for example.

Bennett sees a product of new technology being a shift from what he terms the ‘Dutiful’ to the ‘Actualising’ citizen. The Dutiful citizen is the ‘traditional civic education [textbook] ideal’ who feels an obligation to participate in government-centred activities, to use mass media to become informed about government issues, to regard voting as the core democratic act, and to join civil society organisations or express interests through parties that typically employ one-way communication. In contrast, the Actualising Citizen has a diminished sense of government obligation and a higher sense of individual purpose, voting is less meaningful than more personally-defined acts such as consumerism, community volunteering or transnational activism. The AC mistrusts the mass media and politicians and favours loose networks of community action, often sustained through friendships, peer relations and social ties maintained through ICT.

Jeffrey Juris describes the ‘cultural logic of networking’ – changing the underlying metaphors of social action: “The self-produced, self-developed and self-managed network becomes a widespread cultural ideal, providing not just an effective model of political organising but also a model for re-organising society as a whole” (p. 353). This reflects the same pattern of horizontal connection, open information and decentralised collaboration that Reich in his review attributes to new technology’s civic potential. But there are downsides of such developments; what happens, for instance, if no-one responds to one’s blogs, or only the already converted? How can we control offensive blogs – and the communities whom they serve? And how best can we develop civic curricula that enable young people to achieve the full political as well as personally-empowering potential of ICT?

Already a ‘bottom-up’ model of democratisation and e-citizenship may be being constrained. Olga Ververi unpacks how the OECD appears to see the potential of e-democracy for technological infrastructures to “mould citizenship into a narrow, quiescent and consumerist model of civic action”. Three OECD objectives suggest e-democracy exclusively operated by government as a means of disseminating information and controlling decision-making, dialogue and networking and the political agenda. These three objectives are:

• Information: a one-way relation in which the government produces and delivers information for use by citizens
• Consultation: a two-way relation in which citizens provide feedback to the government on issues that re-defined by the government, and where information is provided by the government
• Active participation: a relation based on partnership with government in which citizens have a role in proposing policy option and shaping the dialogue, but the final responsibility for policy-making falls to the government

These are clearly extensions of current consultation practices, which have indeed recently opened up dialogue considerably, but nevertheless they reveal the assumption that new technologies will make more facile and controllable what is already happening. Management of e-democracy is explored also by Stephen Coleman within the MacArthur programme. He points out that differing views reflect different conceptions of young citizens. On the one hand, in ‘managed citizenship’ young people are regarded as apprentice citizens in the process of transition; “they are human becomings rather than human beings.” (Coleman, 2008, p.191).  Their ‘apprenticeship’ entails learning how to exercise responsible judgement in a risky and complex world, including the Internet as an anarchic realm which is unsafe for young people “not only because their social innocence might be exploited by predators but also because they are politically vulnerable to misinformation and misdirection,” (p.191).

In contrast in ‘autonomous e-citizenship’, proponents refuse to see themselves as ‘apprentice’ citizens, they argue for themselves on agendas of their own making and youth is “a reflexive project in which narratives of emergence, socialisation and engagement can be renegotiated by each new generation,” (p.191). The very anarchy of the Internet appeals, a “relatively free space in which untrammelled creativity and acephalous [headless] networks can flourish,” (p.192).

Coleman sees the limitations of managed e-citizenship at least in part as over-protecting young people, avoiding ’sensitive’ issues, distorting the political world with its emphasis on friendliness, deliberation and consensus: “a virtual community of well-trained democrats who would be lost in any real political party, trade union or local council”. (p.192) On the other hand, autonomous e-citizenship can be dislocated from the structures and processes of effective power, preaching to the converted and paying little attention to opposing views or entering into deliberative debate, and focusing mainly on single issues.

I will finish with civic gaming. Henry Jenkins argues that the new participatory media offer “many opportunities for kids to engage in civic debates, to participate in community life, to become political leaders even if sometimes only through the ’second lives’ offered by massively multiplayer games or online fan communities”. Kahne, Middaugh and Evans explore the effects of “civically-oriented video game experiences that parallel the classroom-based experiences that previous research has found to promote civic outcomes”. Therefore they looked specifically at games in which players helped others, organised groups or guilds, explored social or ethical issues, learned about a problem in society, or had to make decisions about how a community, city or nation should be run. The study looked at the relationships between game-playing, civic participation and interest in politics.

The quantity of game play does not correlate with civic participation, but the characteristics of the game, and with whom it is played, do correlate. Those who play more civic-related games are on average 15% to 20% more likely to participate in civic activity than those who play fewer civic games. Playing the online game with others present is more likely to show an effect than playing online at a distance. The effect is considerably increased for those players who additionally participate in websites and discussion groups related to the game.  These data are supportive of the enthusiasm expressed by several people for gaming as an educational tool.

However sceptics remain, and more data is needed. For example, it is unclear yet as to whether a pre-existing interest in civic participation leads young people to play more civic-related games, or whether participation in such games expands ones interest in real life civic participation. Nevertheless, there is a clear relationship and the potential for future educational development is there.

I will focus on three issues, within technological development and each of the three domains:

• what will not change
• what are likely to be continuing trends and their implications
• what is uncertain, and the implications of this

At the beginning of the Report, the question was posed; ‘what will not change?’  It is my view that the following will not change:

• The need for a strong personal identity and sense of self, affirmed by one’s social circle. This encompasses also an identity which may incorporate as part of itself the capacity to move between versions of self and to be skilled in managing these in different social contexts
• The need to be part of a community. We are social beings and we function in connection with others. This connection includes affirmation of self, and the sharing of information. It also includes identifying with particular groups of perceived shared characteristics – be it place, work, values or shared interests. Technology has for a long time enabled these functions to be non-local, as well as enabling a strengthening of local face to face contact; new technologies extend these functions
• For many people, civic participation is primarily about maintaining one’s community. For some, it is about improving (and so changing) the condition of members of one’s own or another community; it is therefore about exercising influence on those with power.  The targets and methods may change in future but the function, I think, will not.

Technological developments:

• Technological developments will become less expensive, with more streamlined and more usable personal devices routinely owned by young people; many existing barriers to access will go, as costs drop and skills become normalised
• Both young people and adults will quite rapidly adapt to new technologies on a ‘need to know’ basis, and social practices will be modified by the potential of the new devices
• The opportunities for network communication will expand as will expectations that people will be available on networks
• Gaming will become more sophisticated and also more diversified in content
• Storing information on one’s personal device will replace other forms of storage

Identity:

• People are likely to become increasingly skilled at managing ‘multiple’ selves, and moving between them, in part because of increasing demands for flexibility in adult life/work, in part because this is an enjoyable activity both in the virtual world and in youth social life. This could be healthy, competent management of ambiguity and complexity, but for some it may be destabilising and fragmenting
• Minority identities are likely to become increasingly less marginalised through a combination of effective identity politics, modifying mainstream cultural discourses and technological developments overcoming some of the obstacles to full participation
• National identity is likely to remain a significant part of personal identity, but this may be less about a self bounded by criteria of ‘we’ versus ‘they’ and more a permeable self definition offered in interaction with other nationals
• With more permeable boundaries between different aspects of self, and between work, leisure and also location, how people choose to describe themselves may become more open; the increasing ‘public’ and informal opportunities for self-presentation (such as Facebook) permit this.

Community:

• Community is a fundamental human structure and likely to remain in a variety of forms.
• Communities may increasingly combine off and on-line interaction and virtual communities may occupy more people’s time with the development of Facebook and MySpace ‘communities’ where people ‘friend’ both known and not known people
• Face to face communities are likely to remain important where location is a significant part of identity, but communities based on common interests are likely to become increasingly significant, both on and offline

Citizenship:

• The current ambiguities around citizenship status are likely to become more complicated with increased immigration and there will be moves to regularise and control.
• Given international concerns, civic education is likely to gain a higher profile in the future. The enlargement of the curriculum to include innovative methods such as forms of gaming is likely, in view of the data supporting this. The ‘official’ civic agenda however may conflict with the already-developing goals and activities of young people who are engaged in participation
• The use of blogs and wikis for making one’s voice heard, and creating transnational pressure groups, is very likely to increase, particularly if major political issues become fore-fronted in the news and the subject of widespread blogging – such as the environment or human rights
• At the same time, there will be more consumer-related online activism and also more partisan/interest group activism of less liberal tone, which would proliferate under perceived threats (such as immigration or terrorist action)

Technological developments:

• The extent to which the gatekeepers of information will attempt to control access and use and how far will such constraints affect, if at all, young people’s access to information sources
• The extent to which information overload will cause people to self-censor or limit the network universe to which they ‘belong’
• How necessarily increased security both for hardware and software will be managed, to create a safe environment for communication

Identity:

• What would a ‘global identity’ mean, aside from the value of not being nationalistic; how will people manage the more permeable boundaries between nation, the EU, and the ‘global’, particularly under conditions of threat (such as increased immigration)
• How far will people wish to assert a dominant, or core, identity, and if so, in which life domain will it be?  How far will traditional classifications, often coded primarily for bureaucratic purposes such as ethnicity, nationality, disability, remain useful?
• Given the agency that young people have through technology to define their identities and experiment with identities, how can we equip them to do this safely?
• While multiple identities will be managed, there are many ways this can evolve

Community:

• The extent to which any community is strengthened by threat or adversity, as suggested by both communitarian and intergroup relations theories, or whether adversity prompts retreat into individual survival strategies, and under what circumstances each occurs
• How far online communities develop ’sociality’ and ‘belongingness’, leading to mutual affective support

Citizenship:

• A major uncertainty is about values: to what extent will economic pressures in conjunction with immigration and perceived cultural threats, precipitate a shift to more a conservative, exclusionary, public mood
• To what extent will the Islamic world become more unified within a moderate worldview, or become fragmented into factions which will affect both identity and civic issues for Muslims and other faith and secular communities
• How far might further environmental threat lead to greater resistance from young people, and how far to disillusionment
• To what extent will young people feel empowered to take risks in expressing their views, and to what extent will systems be put in place to limit their online power, or to delegitimise their use of it
• To what extent will the increased empowerment deriving from technological access be used for civic participation, and to what extent will it be diverted into consumerist action or self-promotion
• Civic status, and the criteria for inclusion and exclusion, may become more regularised but it is not clear on exactly what basis and how much freedom people will have to define their civic status
• The motivation for civic participation rests on a combination of personal efficacy, moral and social concern and belief that an effect is possible within the system. The political and economic situation can vary to the extent that apathy and alienation (include a retreat into individualism) may be a response, or a drive to collective action
• The dominant cultural values may change radically. Currently these are primarily ‘liberal’ in the broad sense with concerns about under-privilege, diversity, rights, freedom of choice and the environment. A more hostile economic environment, perceived cultural or military threats, or a moral reaction against a consumer-hedonic culture may each precipitate a considerable value shift in the next two decades
• What ‘globalisation’ means is diffuse; in all its versions it is ‘uncertain’, except possibly global multi-national expansion. While people may become more ‘globally aware’ – about other peoples and cultures, about identifying with a world religion that transcends national boundaries, about the environment, about the possibility of adopting a transnational identity – the form(s) these will take are highly uncertain

6.4    How might schools adapt?

Interactive media provide many opportunities for opening up new ways of knowing and working, and developing new competences (such as collaborative working) which are much more appropriate to contemporary life. In education however both adoption, and the transformation of practices, has been slow. Too often in the classroom technology is used as an adjunct to traditional methods, another source of information, not as a way of transforming how information is used. Pupils often report that the school use of technology is both boring and irrelevant. Vass and Reich both argue in their reviews that the disconnection between current educational culture and new technology is huge.

Access to technology is indeed one block. Developments may be constrained by unequal access to both equipment and skills. However this may be a temporary obstacle. It is very likely that within five years hand-held devices that can access the Internet will be affordable, or available to, everyone who now has a mobile phone. But is this the whole story behind slow adoption? In part there is a perceived cultural divide between leisure/pleasure versus learning. Currently many schools ban mobile phones. This distances even more the routine ‘leisure’ aspects of new technology from their potential for formal learning.

The trends are also subversive. One powerful message from this Challenge is that interactive technologies subvert the fundamental metaphors and rhetoric via which we have hitherto managed our relationship with information, especially in education. To a large extent, the basic metaphor of school-based learning has been that the teacher facilitates and channels information to students, in ways designed to maximise the students’ ability to process and absorb it. Within that there are a variety of means. These methods include direct knowledge conduits which are top-down. They may create opportunities for students to learn information through praxis or through discussion and collaboration. But these are usually choreographed to the extent that the opportunities have a known successful outcome. Another version sets up a framework in which the goal is to train students in a way of thinking itself, whether in the scientific method, in critical thinking or some other mode. In all of these, first, the teacher has a central role and is the orchestrater, even if off the scene. Second, the primary target is the individual learner’s performance, as an individual.

Shared participation in an action, and the action itself changing that with which it acts (for example editing and modifying wikis) both sidestep the role of the teacher as manager and authority and blur the boundaries between expert and novice. Interactive technologies are inherently ‘bottom-up’, driven by the agent who is acting on the information and its source, horizontal rather than vertical, and, potentially if not exclusively, collaborative. Many quoted in the discussion of citizenship claim that the very system ‘democratises’; it is a metaphor of democracy and interacting with it is an act of democracy.  This applies to identity and community functions as well as citizenship.  But it can also be a metaphor of anarchy. The apparently anarchic lack of boundaries, including boundaries between individual and collaborative thought and action, contrasts with conventional education and particularly with a model in which achievement depends on the individual working alone. There is a profound tension between investment in individual achievement and performance and the kind of open collaboration we see in new technology.

The tacit or explicit assumption that current institutions can graft on new technologies to existing practices is in my view misguided. In order to take advantage of new technologies, and to bring into formal education what are increasingly the routine and taken for granted practices and skills of the rest of the student’s world, schools will need to rethink the top-down model of education, and find ways to facilitate, and orchestrate, these bottom-up, often collaborative, practices productively.

One adaptation must be to enable students to work collaboratively and interactively, with distributed knowledge management as the objective, so changing the teachers’ role from a hierarchical conduit to a facilitator of collaboration, critical thinking and synthesising. Individual devices, whether notebook-style computers or future-generation iPhones, will need to be incorporated into the classroom as routinely as notepads and books are today.

The Report has focused on the implications for school education primarily because most of the available data referred to has been around school, or school-age adolescents.  It is also in the conventional school context that most of the gaps between practices are evident.  The evidence cited in the Report from a variety of out of school activities suggests that in more informal settings, the adaptation to new technology and new social practices is more flexible.  In tertiary education, though the Report has not addressed this, there has always been more scope both for individually-directed learning and for novel forms of pedagogy, even if the majority of teachers in such institutions do not adjust their own teaching practices. Lifelong learning, adult education, already has capitalised on new technology in a variety of innovative ways.

Four areas are explored in this Challenge.

• The relationship with technology, particularly how it is used
• The nature of identities, their development, location and processes
• How communities are created and  sustained, how they change
• What is citizenship and how is civic engagement fostered?

Reviewers were asked to consider the state of trends in the field within their chosen topic area, implications for educational practice and policy, and likely (probably, plausible and preferable) future directions.

Fifteen review papers were completed, the majority of which addressed the intersection of at least two of the four areas (in some cases touched on all four) with a focus on particular topics. The papers were commissioned mainly from younger researchers with recent direct research experience relevant to the Challenge. An Advisory Group of twelve senior experts in the field acted as advisors, commentators and reviewers. Two workshops with these participants, in September and November 2008, served to refine and develop the agenda and the dominant themes and ideas, under the chairship of the Challenge Lead.

Appendix 2: Participants

Professor Anna Craft

Professor of Education, University of Exeter and The Open University

Government Advisor, Creative and Cultural Education

She leads research projects in creativity and educational futures, and she has written or edited seventeen books in these areas.  She co-initiated and co-convened BERA SIG Creativity in Education.  She is currently Lead Editor of Journal of Thinking Skills and Creativity. She leads the Educational Futures Research Group at Exeter University, and she is writing a new book: Creativity and Educational Futures (publication 2010).

Professor Ian Davies

Professor in Education at the University of York, UK

He has extensive international experience in the field of citizenship education. Recent publications include co-editing The Sage International Handbook of Education for Citizenship and Democracy (Sage 2008) and co-editing the 4 volume reader Citizenship Education (Sage, 2008).

Dr Ruth Deakin Crick

Senior Research Fellow, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol

Conjoint Professor of Education, University of Newcastle, Australia

Her research interests include the assessment of learning dispositions, learner centred pedagogies, citizenship and values in schooling; learning and leadership for social sustainability. Publications include Learning Power in Practice: a guide for teachers, London, Sage and Distributing Leadership for Personalising Learning, London, Continuum.

Dr David Eddy Spicer

Lecturer in Education, University of Bath

David’s research interests are in the organisation of schooling and educational innovation. His current studies focus on the dynamics of authority in settings of technology-enabled collective enquiry among school leadership teams. He is co-author with Martha Stone Wiske of a chapter in the forthcoming third edition of the International Encyclopaedia of Education (Elsevier), Teaching for Understanding and Teacher Education, which explores new approaches to professional learning through networked technologies.

Dr Jeff Gavin

Lecturer in Psychology, University of Bath

Jeff Gavin leads a programme of research into intimacy and trust in online dating and health support groups. This research explores how internet communications impact on identity in relation to relationship development and coping strategies online. He has recently published and presented work theorising ‘cyber-technologies of the self’, with a particular focus on the role of online profiles in identity construction and maintenance.

Dr Richard Joiner

Senior Lecturer in Developmental Psychology, University of Bath

Richard’s main area of research is the use of new communications technology for supporting learning. He has a particular interest in computer supported collaborative learning and the use of video games for supporting learning.

Wolff A, Mulholland P., Zdrahal Z . & Joiner R (2007). Re-using digital narrative content in interactive games. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 65, 3, 244-272.

Facer, K., Joiner. R., Stanton, D., Reid, J., Hull, R. & Kirk, D. (2004) Savannah: mobile gaming and learning? Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. 20, 6,399-409

Professor David Kerr

Principal Research Officer, National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) and Visiting Professor in Citizenship at Birkbeck College, University of London

His main research interests are in citizenship education policy and practice, the political socialisation of young people and the comparative dimension of these areas at national, European and international levels. Publications include Making Sense of Citizenship (2006).

Professor Brahm Norwich

Professor of Educational Psychology and Special Educational Needs

School of Education and Lifelong learning, University of Exeter

He has interests in the area of special educational needs and inclusive education, policy and practice, including futures work. He has organised a futures scenario planning workshop and produced a Policy Paper Future schooling that includes children with SEN /disability and written about the future of inclusion.

Professor Steven Reicher

Professor and Head of the School of Psychology. St. Andrews University

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, past Editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology and a Scientific Advisor to Scientific American Mind. His work centres on the relationship between social identity and collective action. He has studied such phenomena as crowd behaviour, leadership and political rhetoric, processes of national identity, and, latterly, the psychology of tyranny and intergroup hatred. This work (along with links to key publications) – which was televised by the BBC and has already entered the core psychology curriculum – can be accessed at www.bbcprisonstudy.org

Professor Valerie Walkerdine

Research Professor, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University

She researches community, identity, subjectivity, class and gender, as well as popular culture and new media. She has obtained considerable research funding in these fields from the ESRC. Her latest book is Children, gender, video games: towards a relational approach to multimedia, Palgrave Macmillan 2007.

Dr Leon Watts

Lecturer in Computer Science, University of Bath

His main research interests relating to the Challenge are on the effect of computer-mediated communication on group activity, especially in terms of identity, degree of participation and dispute.

Billings, M  & Watts, L. (2007). A safe space to vent: Conciliation and conflict in distributed teams.  In Bannon et al. (eds.) ECSCW 2007 Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Limerick, Ireland, 24-28 September 2007. Springer Verlag. pp. 139-138.

Ducheneaut, N  & Watts, L (2005) In search of coherence: a review of E-Mail research.  Human-Computer Interaction, 20 (1&2),11-48.

Watts, L., Nugroho, Y.  & Lea, M (2003) Engaging in email discussion: conversational context and social identity in computer-mediated communication. In Rauterberg, G.W.M., Menozzi, M. and Wesson, J.  (Eds.) Proceedings of INTERACT’03 Amsterdam: IOS Press, 559-566.

Professor Rupert Wegerif

Director of Research, School of Education and Lifelong Learning University of Exeter

Rupert has researched and published widely in the field of teaching and learning with ICT, teaching thinking and the philosophy of education with technology. His recent book: Dialogic, Education and Technology: Expanding the Space of Learning (Springer, 2007) develops a dialogic account of identity and the connection between educational technology and teaching thinking.

Heike Doering

School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University

Communities and Citizenship: paths for engagement?

This paper deals with current issues in the constitution and maintenance of communities and the effect on notions of citizenship and public engagement. This review looks at a number of studies concerned with the building of communities and the effects of structural changes on the maintenance of communities. It uses the decline of the nation as dominant scale for collective identification as starting point for two parallel trends: the increased importance of the local and everyday practices in the formation of communities and the development of cosmopolitan/global identities and citizenships. Examples are drawn from research into regeneration in former industrial regions as well as studies on youth engagement in rural and urban settings. Notions of politics and engagement need to be reconsidered to include small-scale, everyday political engagement which is based on residence rather than a status of citizenship conferred by the state. Technology can enhance and facilitate this process of becoming a local citizen. Digital inclusion can foster social inclusion. Accessibility to technology is therefore a major concern, not only in terms of affordability but also in terms of skills, confidence and trust. The ability to negotiate the offline world of changing boundaries and places for engagement translates into the ability to do so online: social and cultural capital becomes digital capital.

Keywords: community, citizenship, participation, place, accessibility

Heike Doering’s doctoral research interests lie in the field of state restructuring, community participation and socio-economic transformation. Since 2004 she has conducted research on regeneration and factors determining political and cultural responses to socio-economic change in two localities. Special emphasis is placed on the impact of local civil society and notions of community and citizenship in collaborative governance practices.

Ruth Gwernan-Jones

University of Exeter School of Education and Lifelong Learning

Identity and Disability:

A review of the current state and developing trends

Currently, disability is primarily viewed from a medical model that sees it as a tragedy resulting from impairment within the disabled person. The social model of disability views disability as the barriers that society creates for people with impairment. The social model has been the ‘battle cry’ of the Disability Movement, challenging the medical model, and encouraging a trend toward active, vocal disabled people, many of whom perceive their disability as a part of a positive personal and social identity, and as many as half of whom, given the choice, would prefer to keep their disability rather than have it ‘cured’. This paper looks at the wide range of identity issues that occur as result of a wide range of possible impairments, social and political changes relating to identity and disability, and issues around identity and disability that arise from medical and technological advancement, while whenever possible seeking to represent the perspective of disabled people rather than a stereotypical, non-disabled perspective, or the dominant professional perspective of disability.

The review of identity and disability draws attention to certain possibilities for the future of education, including the need for change in the structure of education, toward one that addresses disability inclusively, the need to direct focus onto the ways that education disables children and young people, the importance of listening to the voice of disabled pupils/students, and the need for developing conceptual models in education that encompass complexity, diversity and fluidity in identity and disability.

Keywords: Disability, identity, disability movement, social model of disability, universalism

Ruth Gwernan-Jones BA, MSc, Dip SpLD, AMBDA is pursing doctoral research on the socio-cultural aspects of dyslexia; her thesis involves life history research interviewing dyslexic adults to illuminate their experiences of being dyslexic, and how this relates to their cultural context.

Ellen J. Helsper

Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

Digital Natives and Ostrich Tactics?

The possible implications of labelling young people as digital experts

The notion of a generation uniquely at home in a digital environment – the Digital Natives – is increasingly being challenged. Expertise and experience are just as important as generation in explaining activities that are considered indicative of digital nativeness. This means that people advocating the death of schools due to an irreconcilable gap between educators and students are wrong. Nevertheless, cross-generational understanding is hampered by an insistence on identifying all young people as digital natives, ignoring evidence to the contrary.

The findings presented in this paper suggest the erroneous identification of a whole generation as digital natives, might lead to an overestimation of young people’s skills in dealing with the risks and negative experiences associated with the Internet. Younger generations are less likely to seek help than older generations and more likely to ignore the risks they do encounter without taking action to prevent these from happening again – here labelled the ‘ostrich tactic’. ‘If young people can shed the ‘Digital Native’ identity they might be more likely to seek help when they need it.’

Another possible problem is an offline/online separation as regards risks and coping strategies in older generations, young people see online risks as part of everyday life just like offline risks. A continuation of this separation in the minds of adults could lead to Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants who speak different languages. This paper argues that future scenarios might be different, a disconnect between educators and students is not inevitable.

Keywords: Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Internet, Risks, Coping strategies

Ellen Helsper PhD is Survey Research Fellow in Social Impacts of the Internet, Her current interest is in the use of new media in every day life specifically by socially excluded or isolated groups. An important aspect of her work is the development of quantitative and qualitative methodology in relation to media and policy research. In her current position the focus is on cross-national survey research in relation to technology and everyday life with a special interest in media literacy, digital exclusion and mediated social interactions.

Louise Madden

Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences

Integrating the internet into women’s lives

This paper explores how the internet is taken up and used by women in the everyday; how it enters their lives, and how it is integrated into other projects and areas of life. Internet use is treated as an activity that needs to be viewed in context, considering the rich social world that goes on around it, to understand how the internet emerges and is made meaningful through a set of embodied everyday practices. Women have historically been somewhat excluded from the internet, and the form of this exclusion has proved difficult to understand using traditional methods. This paper reviews a set of research and literature that attempts to contextualise use of these technologies to tease out some of what is particular to women’s experience of the internet.

This paper is located primarily within strand 2. (i) ‘How much is change and how much is more of the same?’ It has some elements of relevance to (ii) ‘The technological ‘gap”, in that it illuminates some gender differences on access to the internet, and a little relevance to (iii)’How do young people use personal technology? What purposes does it serve?’ in that it addresses these issues with regard to women, and there will likely be some commonalities.

Keywords: Women, internet, objects, bodies, email

Louise Madden is a PhD student in critical psychology. Her doctoral research investigates how women use the internet, and particularly how feminine subjectivities are constituted through relations with the internet. In-depth case-studies explore internet use through a range of methods both on and offline, to capture a detailed story of what the internet becomes in everyday usage.

Thalia Magioglou

Maison des Sciences de l’Homme de Paris, and CURAPP, University of Picardie

Young people’s reaction to a feeling of marginalisation and the role of technology; towards a new kind of citizenship

This review paper concerns the issue of citizenship, as it applies to young people, especially those who have a sense of inefficacy in the political system. Starting from a normative point of view in political philosophy, concerning the meaning of democracy, citizenship is defined as a way people relate to and create communities, especially as active participants, in the formation of common rules that are open to revision (Castoriadis, 1987). Citizenship is also defined as a cultural and social dimension of the self. Many studies in the last ten years underline the absence of younger generations from the traditional channels of participation of representative democracy (i.e. Haste and Hogan, 2006). Based on field work with Greek young adults, (Magioglou, 2008) but also on evidence from other European (British, French) and North-American populations, my starting point is that there is a feeling of inefficacy in the public sphere, but that new technologies already channel in democratic or less democratic directions (Bennett, 2008). In that sense, the role of education, state, community or groups, could be to empower young people so that they may assume responsibility for their actions in the local and global community.

Key words: citizenship, young people, self-efficacy, technology, public sphere, dialogical self, autonomy, community, democracy.

Thalia Magioglou ’s doctorate in social and political psychology is from the University of Picardie, France. She is currently affiliated to the laboratory CURAPP and the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, as coordinator of a political psychology network (EPOPS). Her interests are societal creativity, democracy and globalisation, lay thinking, and social representations theory.

[In preparation] T. Magioglou  (ed) The Creative Dimension of Lay Thinking

Kyoko Murakami

Department of Education, University of Bath

Re-imagining the future: Young people’s construction of identities through digital storytelling

This review paper explores a relationship between young people’s identity construction and digital storytelling in the learning environment, especially those who are disaffected and at risk of being socially excluded. In particular, I will focus on the young people’s engagement in learning despite various efforts to tackle youth disaffection, disengagement in education and training and lack of aspiration for the future. As a theoretical framework, I draw on in particular a socio-cultural and cultural anthropological view of culture and mind (Holland and Cole 1995) and “history in person” (Holland and Lave 2000). The review links the current context of youth disengagement and disaffection to the increasingly popular practice of digital storytelling (technology mediated production of stories). Lastly, it would consider implications for the future of education, in particular with the role of the teacher in the 21^st century and the future of education as a technology-mediated learning environment.

Kyoko Murakami PhD is Lecturer in Education and a member of the Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory. She specialises in sociocultural and activity theory research drawing on discourse analysis and discursive psychology. She worked on intercultural projects on Anglo-Japanese reconciliation and UK-South African school partnerships. The current project includes a digital storytelling project titled ?ID-dentity? based in a secondary school in Wiltshire.

Nick Nash

Department of Psychology, University of Bath

Future Issues in Socio-Technical Change for UK Citizenship:

The importance of ‘place’

This paper emphasises the importance of place in relation to identity, community and citizenship. In considering future technological advances it is argued that these concepts will continue to be understood in relation to place.

Identification with place is an integral dimension of selfhood and evidence for a positive relationship civic engagement is discussed. People will continue to define themselves and their communities in relation to place in the future, although identities will be increasingly grounded in virtual spaces created by online community networks. Therefore, citizenship initiatives should be geared towards understanding the complexity of relationships to place and people’s place-based meanings. In addition, the growth of online social networks will enrich and extend offline social networks rather than replace them. However, communities will be increasingly based on shared interests rather than shared locations and communication devices will become more geared towards personal, rather than spatial networks. This will create problems for policymakers and it will be necessary to adopt more flexible initiatives. Finally, it is proposed that citizenship will eventually become more fragmented and dislocated from the nation-state. Policymakers should gear interventions towards multiple forms of citizenship spaces, identities and practices both online and offline.

Keywords: Place, physical space, virtual space, place-identity, local community, citizenship, internet, computer-mediated-communication, networked individualism

Nick Nash PhD completed his Doctorate at the University of Bath in 2006. His research looked at the social construction of physical space in the context of people’s perspectives on a local development conflict in England. Taking a discursive social psychological approach, he examined how particular accounts and descriptions of socio-political space constructed the conflict in different ways in accordance with speakers’ positions towards development.

‘Not in our Front Garden’: development conflict and the politics of naming place.

Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology (under review).

Justin Reich

Harvard Graduate School of Education

Reworking the Web, Reworking the World: How Web 2.0 is changing our society

Web 2.0 refers to a suite of technologies that have dramatically lowered the interaction costs of two-way communication over the World Wide Web, which has democratised the production of information and applications across the Internet. To sum up the Web 2.0 phenomena in a sentence: lower communication costs have led to opportunities for more inclusive, collaborative, democratic online participation. As the costs of communicating online decreased, more people, millions more, decided that it was worth their while to participate in these communication networks. These people did not just communicate more, they started communicating in qualitatively different ways than before. As these millions found new media for expression and collaboration, they opened possibilities for a more inclusive, open, democratic society, possibilities which may or may not be realised.

There is no doubt that this democratisation, these contributions from many millions of Web participants, has produced a series of profound social, political and economic changes that this paper will seek to document. The changes inspired by the democratisation of the Web, however, will not of necessity lead to a more equitable distribution of power and resources in our society. The future of the Web will depend upon the degree to which this blossoming of online participation will allow ordinary citizens and consumers to have greater voice and influence in shaping society and the degree to which powerful political and commercial interests can co-opt and constrain the surge of online enthusiasm in the support of the established hierarchy.

Keywords: Web, Web 2.0, change, future, society, identity, politics, economics, education.

Justin Reich is a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the co-Director of EdTechTeacher.org, a professional development firm offering education technology training. He recently published Best Ideas for Teaching with Technology, A Practical Guide for Teachers, by Teachers with M.E. Sharpe Press. He is currently conducting research on the Web 2.0 digital divide and on the affordances of Web 2.0 tools for fostering 21st century competencies.

Sarah Riley

Department of Psychology, University of Bath

Identity, community and selfhood:  Understanding the self in relation to contemporary youth cultures

This paper discusses some of the key factors that shape young people’s identity in relation to contemporary youth cultures. It describes a tightening of relationships between identity, leisure and consumption that have interacted with developments in communication technologies and an understanding of the self as being dynamically (re)produced in interaction, constructed from the range of subject positions that may be contradictory or only partially formed. These identities may be personal or social, with the later being associated with neo-tribal theory. This context has opened up the possibility for young people to engage in a playful pick and mix approach to identity as they move through a kaleidoscope of temporary, fluid and multiple subjectivities that often celebrate hedonism, sociality and sovereignty over one’s own existence. Multiplicity and sovereignty however, involve complex interactions between contradictory values and are associated with a variety of stressors and inequalities that are strengthened through neo-liberal rhetoric of risk, responsibility and individualism. Furthermore, both neo-liberalism and neo-tribalism provide a context in which political and social participation shift to the local, informal and personal. For future education to provide environments where schools are fun, interesting, relevant and safe, a personalised portfolio model of education is recommended, where educators act as facilitators for the successful management of the self as a project; provide alternative discourses to neo-liberalism by working as ‘community enablers’; and act as protective stewards, shielding young people from some of the more aggressive aspects of technology, surveillance and commercialisation.

Keywords: youth cultures, neo-liberalism, neo-tribalism, consumption, leisure, political participation.

Sarah Riley PhD is a Lecturer in Psychology Her research is concerned with social constructionist theories of identity and qualitative research methods. Current projects include a study on leisure, identity and political participation and a co-operative inquiry project on ‘dilemmas of femininity’.

She is an editor of Critical Bodies: Representations, Identities and Practices of Weight and Body Management (Palgrave, 2008).

Denis Sindic

Instituto de Ciências Sociais, University of Lisbon

National Identities: are they declining?

The main question addressed in this review is whether national identities are likely to remain an important feature of our societies in the coming decades. Some have argued that national identities are declining, due to increasing globalisation, the growth of supra-national organisation such as EU, the increasing multicultural nature of our societies, and, in multi-national countries like the UK, the presence of separatist movements with substantial political support. However, the review of current evidence and current practices (as well as their likely evolution) suggests the following points: a) national identities (including British identity) are likely to remain important in the next decades, despite the alleged ‘fragmenting’ effects of globalisation and advances in technologies of communication; b) European integration and the possible development of a European identity are unlikely to lead to the disappearance of existing national identities, especially in the UK; c) The impact of strong sub-state national identities, devolution and separatist movements in the UK remain uncertain, but the scenario of an upcoming break-up of Britain does not seem the most likely; d) national identity is not necessarily incompatible with or threatened by multiculturalism, though it may be increasingly perceived as such in the UK. This review will also address the question of the consequences of national identities in term of relationship with others, arguing that this impact depends on how the boundaries and content of national identities are defined, and that such definitions are open to argument and political contestation. The review will conclude with some reflections on the possible role of national identities in future educational practices.

Keywords: National identity, globalisation, European Union, European identity, British identity, separatism, devolution, multiculturalism, intergroup relations

Denis Sindic’s doctorate from St Andrews University, was on national identity in Scotland and attitudes to the UK and the EU. His research interests are on national identity and political attitudes towards supra-national groups.

Sindic, D. & Reicher, S.D. (2008). Our way of life is worth defending: testing a model of attitudes towards superordinate group membership through a study of Scots’ attitudes towards Britain. European Journal of Social Psychology, DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.503.

David Studdert PhD

Centre d’Etudes sur l’Actuel et Quotidien (CeaQ), Paris

Community and CMC: the virtual absence of online communal being-ness

This paper examines the close relationship between the social sciences and offline interests (government, business, media and all general non-CMC communities) as a key to investigating how the Internet came to be the Internet it is today. It argues that potential online educational benefits as well as more general benefits from projects of social cohesion and community building are being limited by the manner in which the internet is conceived and constructed; that for projects and benefits potentially available to governments to be realised the net needs to be conceived in a different manner.

It seeks to understand why the discursive formation ‘community of interest’ has come to dominate and shape the contemporary internet. It argues that this domination limits the possibilities of CMC by privileging certain relationships, principally uni-polar forms, and thus hinders the potential of the internet for educational and community building processes.

Finally, it suggests ways in which a differently conceived CMC might encourage the Internet’s rebirth as a genuine social and public space.

Keywords: community, computer mediated communication, community of interest, multi- dimensionality, sociality.

David Studdert PhD Is a research academic with an interest in community both theoretically and empirically, particularly relational and phenomenological approaches. He has researched local communities and markets, and Muslim identity and community.  He is currently working on online communities.

D Studdert (2006) Conceptualising community beyond the state and the individual. Palgrave.

Aubry Threlkeld

Harvard Graduate School of Education

Virtual Disruptions:

Traditional and New Media’s Challenges to Heteronormativity in Education

Schools generally reinforce heteronormative discourses to the degree that queer representations surface primarily through traditional mass media, and new cybermedia sources.  In order to inspect possible future trends in the field of education, I review the most current research available on the role of media in shaping the perceptions of sexuality by youth. I focus primarily on representations of queerness that challenge heteronormativity in changing traditional media sources such as television and film, and in emerging media such as avatars in on-line virtual worlds and social networking websites.

These challenges, as virtual disruptions, open up discourse and offer opportunities to engage in critical pedagogy. In conclusion, I outline how teachers can begin to use critical pedagogy to leverage their knowledge of virtual disruptions in media in order to challenge heteronormativity in schools.

Keywords: Heteronormativity, education, queer studies, future , cybermedia, sexuality.

Aubry Threlkeld is a doctoral student in Human Development and Education at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. His interests include adolescent literacy, learning disabilities, improving reading pedagogy and queer studies in education. Having been a teacher and lecturer in special education in New York City for the last four years, he attempts to connect his research and recommendations directly to positive classroom outcomes. His present research centres around professional development for secondary school literacy teachers.  In addition to his scholarly activities, Aubry has participated in queer activism intermittently for the last twelve years at both the local and national levels.

Eva Vass

School of Education, University of Bath

New technology and habits of mind

The centrality of technology in human life has manifested itself throughout history in all cultures and civilisations. This paper examines the role of new technology in restructuring processes of thinking and knowing, and its impact on social practices of knowledge building. It highlights the transformative force of new technology, necessitating changes in our ‘habits of mind’ to manage the increasing complexity of the contemporary information landscape. Also, it shows that convergent new technology remediates processes of shared knowledge building; creating virtual, collaborative, continuously evolving arenas of activity. Thus, new media contexts afford new forms of social collectivity in virtual space, requiring a fresh understanding of collective action and creation, the ability to belong to different social groups that may not meet face-to-face, the skills to artfully reconnect thought and practice in a simulated world and the confidence to establish new relations to authority.

Keywords: New technology and learning; habits of mind; information behaviour; convergence; participatory cultures, collective intelligence, participation and interaction.

Eva Vass B.Ed, M.Phil, PhD is a Lecturer in Education and has research interests in collaborative learning, with a specific focus on exploring processes of collaborative creativity, the emotional aspects of peer collaboration, and the role of new technology in children’s shared knowledge building.

Olga Ververi

Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol

“The Civil Society Project”

In this paper I examine the CRELL-Network research reports on active citizenship and civic competence. I argue that the specific institution promotes a particular view for citizenship aiming at a citizenship identity which cannot enable individuals to see themselves as initiators within democracy but as followers within the so called civil society. In the same vein, lies the idea of the virtual civil society while Civic e-communication resulting from e-citizenship seems to become a key skill in the citizenship agenda of Europe in the future. I claim that both actual and virtual civil society cannot bring about any changes as they promise but they seem to contribute to the preservation of the status quo. My suggestion is that learners should be encouraged to exert criticism using a different discourse aiming at the evolution of democracy. I have named the specific approach as “radical citizenship” in opposition to the active citizenship term which seems to have dominated the citizenship (education) discourse.

Keywords: active citizenship, (virtual) civil society, e-citizenship, civic e-communication, E.U., Lisbon strategy, Neo-liberalism, radical citizenship.

Olga Ververi’s doctoral thesis pertains to the examination of critical thinking in citizenship education. Through an interdisciplinary approach she examines the interactions of ideology, discourse and critical thinking focusing upon the CoE’s programme ‘Education for Democratic Citizenship‘.

Dave Weltman

Department of Organisation Studies, University of the West of England

Popular Representations of the Working Class:

Contested Identities and Social Change

Using examples from different forms of media, this paper argues firstly that there is prevalence of derogatory images which undermine the emergence of valued independent working class identities. However, attention is also given to some – albeit exceptional – more contradictory representations which may indicate more progressive lines of development. One particular common stereotype which is highlighted is that of working class people’s consciousness lacking potential for development except at the price of losing their working-classness. This, it is argued, is encouraged by the more general commonsense division between workers and thinkers, one which in fact goes against rich traditions of working class self-education. After discussing the educational implications of these observations, the review shifts to consider a recently intensified tendency in the media for ‘defending’ specifically the white working class as an oppressed ethnic group. Different examples of this phenomenon are discussed in the light of alternative perspectives based on historical insights into the possibility for transcending divisions within the working class. In this way the emphasis on white working class particularism is seen to be in danger of reintroducing assumptions of working class stasis and of crippling efforts – including in educational settings – to tackle racist viewpoints.

In light of these arguments future prospects for how media technology frames working class identities, including the role of Internet discussion forums, is explored. A historically informed perspective indicates the likelihood of social representations reflecting and refracting factors associated with a changing economic and political balance of forces, especially in a period of deepening global economic recession. It is in this latter sphere too, it is claimed, rather than in the technological setting itself, that one finds the fundamental factors shaping the challenge to stereotypes propagated through Internet forum technologies.

Key words: Working class, representations, media technology, identity, white working class, education, future.

Dave Weltman PhD is Visiting Lecturer in Organisation Studies. He has a long-standing interest in the ideological analysis of media representations, as well as in critical social-psychological approaches to class relations. His recent publications consider how the ‘utopian’ rhetoric of International Financial Institutions operates to obscure the class cleavages which underlie their field of work.

Weltman, D. and Upchurch, M. (In press). The ideal of non-coherence in the World Bank’s Social Capital reforms: A textual analysis of ‘gratuitous complexity’. Journal of Language and Politics.

This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation

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Endnotes

I am reminded of H.G.Wells’story of the sighted man in the kingdom of the blind.  Contrary to the ‘dominant’ platitude, ‘In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king’, the sighted hero’s sense is regarded with bewilderment by the inhabitants and he is pressed strongly to remove this unnecessary attribute.  What he can see is either experienced by them through other senses, and so is routine, or is incomprehensible and irrelevant.

In addition to the reviews by Magioglou, Murakami, Reich, Ververi  and Vass, I will draw upon data from the IEA 28 nation study, my own 2005 data on British young people, and studies from the MacArthur Foundation program on civic participation and new technology[3].

A somewhat curious side effect has been ‘astro-turfing’, the creation of spurious websites that purport to present a ‘grassroots’ viewpoint which in fact undermines the candidate.

In April 2009, young people in the former Soviet satellite of Moldova used text-messaging, Facebook and Twitter to rally 10,000 protesters within a few hours, to an anti-government rally in the capital Chisinau.

In February 2009 the Dutch government struggled with the tricky question of whether, and how, to control a wild card politician who was being offensive about Islam (in blogs and other media), yet is democratically entitled to freedom of speech.

Council of Europe

EDC is a citizenship education programme which aims at the cultivation of active citizenship culture.

Cliff, D., O’Malley, C. & Taylor, J. (2008) Future issues in socio-technical changes for UK education.  Bristol: Futurelab.

Bogost, I. (2007)  Persuasive games; the expressive power of videogames. Cambridge, Mass: M I T Press.

eg Shaffer, D.W. (2006) How computer games help children learn, New York: Palgrave Macmillan;  Salen, K. (ed)  (2008) The ecology of games, Cambridge, Mass: M I T Press; Gee, J.P. (2007) Good video games and good learning, New York: Peter Lang;  Gee, J.P. (2007) What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bennett, L. (Ed)  (2008) Civic life online; learning how digital media can engage youth, Cambridge, Mass:  M I T Press;  Loader, B.D.  (Ed) (2007)  Young citizens in the digital age; political engagement, young people and new media, London: Routledge.

Haste, H.  (2005) Joined-Up Texting, Nestlé Social Research Programme #3, Croydon: Nestlé Trust.

Reich, J. (2008) Reworking the web, reworking the world; how Web 2.0 is changing our society.  Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Bennett (2008) op. cit.: This is also part of the agenda of the MacArthur Foundation initiative on Digital Media and Learning.

Johnson, S. (2005) Everything bad is good for you, London: Penguin; Vass, E. (2008) New technology and habits of mind. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Shaffer, D.W. (2006) op. cit.

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This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation

CMC can be defined in two ways: a broad definition where Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) is defined as any communicative transaction which occurs through use of two or more networked computers (McQuail, 2005) or a narrow technologically determined definition which stresses popular forms of interactive CMC, including email, video, audio or text, chat, conferencing, instant messaging, bulletin boards, list-serves, and weblogs. In this paper CMC is being defined broadly, as per McQuail’s definition.

Two definitions of Community

In ‘Conceptualising Community: beyond the state and the individual (Studdert, 2006)’ it is argued that in the traditional sociological approach (widely shared among social scientists) community is positioned as a passive, apolitical object, defined from an unacknowledged Archimedean point, intrinsically beset with problems or potential, reductively discursive, characterized by a foundational utility, open to instrumental usage by one project or another, powerless, transparent, narrow and essentialist.

Studdert also argues that within this traditional sociological approach ‘community’ could never described inter-relationally or as a unity important unto itself. Thus the claim here is that traditional social scientific conceptualisation situates CMC community within a pre-given, but unacknowledged framework (Bauman, 2001) which constrains the possibilities offered by the internet as a social space. Rather, what typifies traditional investigation is a series of questions centred around what afflicts community (Giddens (1998), Putnam (1993, 2000), or, in the case of CMC communities in particular, what offline interest(s) it can serve and how it will develop. These questions nullify other questions and lines of enquiry, principally relating to what community does as a social formation, and how inter-relationality functions to create communal being-ness.

Suffice to say that within this traditional view of community, an online community is a social formation constituting some or all of the three following requirements

• Simple entry and presence in CMC online (Etzioni and Etzioni, 1997)
• An activity in common (Wenger, 1984)
• Sociality (ie any social interaction at all)

However there is an alternate view of community which states that the static term ‘community’ is substituted by the phrase ‘communal being-ness’ which acknowledges the dynamic, actioned nature of social interaction. Thus communal being-ness is defined as ongoing dynamic sociality between groups of whatever size, whose conduct when with each other is governed tacitly by certain conventions. These conventions are maintained by a dynamic interaction of communal power and co-operation, and which always contains within it, in addition to the particular manifestation of the actioned sociality itself, all elements, subjective and objective, of the wider ‘web of relations’ (Arendt, 1958).

This definition explicitly acknowledges that Community is not an object, but is an inter-relational hybrid activity in which the actions of multiple communality contain, create and hold meanings, power and identity of that community. Thus this version of ‘communal being-ness’ is not a pure mechanistic formulation isolated from other demarcated entities and united only in the workings of the mechanistic ’society’ machine (Latour, 1993; Studdert, 2006). The contrast between these two approaches establishes the foundation for the argument and for the investigation of the various accounts of CMC and online community, as well as providing the basis for extrapolation regarding the possible and probable futures of online community.

Research

Academic research into online communities falls neatly into two categories: works offering some generalised account of ‘online communities’, or the specifically ethnographic works studying one online site in detail.

Category one – overview: General philosophical

This work largely stems from Rheingold’s ‘The Virtual Community’ (1993). Since the publication of this landmark work, discussion regarding CMC has centred on the formulation and practices of online community. Rheingold’s work studied different forms of CMC including The Well, Usernet, internet relay chat rooms and various multi-user sites principally MUD. Its notions of community were largely linked to practices involving a narrow version of CMC, and Rheingold had a preference towards the more ‘exotic’ uses of the internet – chat rooms and so on – which were more predominant in early CMC activity. His work predicts potential benefits from online communities and suggests online community would be the outcome of the accumulation of ’social feeling’ sourced in sustained public discussion, utilizing the opportunities CMC presented.

Rheingold remains the leading name among early theorists who viewed CMC and the internet in a progressive light. Over the intervening period many other commentators have pointed in various discussions to the potential offered by CMC.

Kollack (1999) offered a taxinomy drawn from cognitive psychology which suggested three non-altruistic user motivations for participating in online communities. Others utilize the work of Putnam to claim that virtual communities developed bonds enhancing ties of social capital and civic engagement. According to the early online social capital theorists Blanchard and Horan (1998) these qualities are best achieved when online communities are situated in an “encompassing community” (see also Wellham, B. et al (2001).

Many commentators such as Preece (2000, 2004) provide suggestions which could the feeling of community being-ness online. Preece draws attention to the pitfalls of the new medium and indicates that enhanced technology could be the best means to overcome aspects of CMC sociality not conducive to communal feeling. Like Kollack (1999), Preece constructs a taxinomy for CMC communication within a particular chat room and classifies postings with psychological qualities, some of which are deemed valuable and conducive for communal being-ness.

Castells (2000) views CMC networks as the fundamental unit of emerging modern society where key social structures and activities are organized around electronically processed information networks. He distinguishes this mode of network from previous long standing social networks by asserting that online networks “process and manage information and are using micro-electronic-based technologies” (Castells, 2000). According to Castells “networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies”, a claim which, of course, links him to a wider search by Giddens (1990, 1994) and others (Fukuyama, 1995; Wittle, 2001) for some new social space, as well as with claims that these new social networks represent a qualitatively different form of community and inter-relationality, one replacing old notions of community bound together by location. Of course this attempt to assert and locate a ‘new non-political space’ (Honig, 1993) is characteristic of liberal political theory (Joseph, 1988), as it is the very claim to difference and radicality in which these approaches locate themselves (Descombes, 1993).

Wellman is another who speaks of networks (1996) which, though they have limited social presence, often allow communication that is uninhibited, creative and blunt. He also uses social capital notions of strong, intermediate and weak ties. Etzioni and Etzioni (1997) list the virtues of online and offline communities and the different social roles they can fulfill. Many authors stress issues like the impact of CMCs on local communities (Mele, 1999; Castells, 2002) or the problems associated with a two-tiered information society and questions around inclusion (Wegerif, 1998; Preece, 2002; McConnell, 2000). Others explore how technologies can impact and improve upon democratic practices (Barber, 2002; Biesta and Lawy 2006; Kerr, 2005). The capacity to dissolve boundaries has also been a frequent topic: Lipnack and Stamps (1997) and Mowshowitz (1997) point out how virtual communities can work across space and time, for instance. Others refer to the web’s freedom for the assumption of identity pointing to Second Life and game playing sites as examples (McKenna, 2004).

Other topics include social identity (Campbell, 2004; Wood and Smith, 2005; Thomas, 2007), group process (Garton et al, 1997; Siegal et al, 2002), educational possibilities derived from online community building (Michinov, Michinov and Toczek-Kapellel, 2004); creating emotional resonance conducive to communal behavior offline (Schrock, Holden and Reid, 2004); linguistic signifiers conducive to positive CMC in online settings (Barab, Kling and Gray, 2004; Herring, 2004), codes of conduct for CMC communal spaces (Rheingold, DATE?) encouragement of certain emotions (Preece, 2002).

Recently there have been a series of theoretical papers using concepts derived from other disciplines: Ma and Agarwal (2007), Wilson, and Peterson (Annual Review of Anthropology, 2002) among those utlising the notion of artefacts from archaeology, applying the term to non-material objects such as online reputation and utilising social psychological tools to create a model of interaction.

In recent years commentaries have turned to problems of methodology. Moheddian (2004) suggests that static communication dominates research, and attempts to develop a methodology and uniformly define community. Schimdt (2007) proposes a general model for comparative analysis of the different uses of the blog format. Buchan interrogates limitations of current methodological approaches (2000), while Rutter and Smith (1999) and Gatson and Zweerink (2004) question the limitations and opportunities presented for ethnographers in online CMC research.

Some authors, such as Kim (2007), in fact, have even gone so far as to contest this notion of CMC as inherently democratic, pointing to the potential difference between structured online communities (message boards, chat rooms, etc, of the sort more predominant overall in Rheingold’s time), and more recent individual-centric, bottom-up social tools (blogs, instant messaging). Kim suggests the latter are gaining in popularity, and her comments could be applied just as easily to privatized dedicated social sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Herring, Kouper, Scheidt, and Elijah L. Wright centre their investigation around the difference between online practice and public discourses. In particular they pose interesting questions concerning why female and teen bloggers are under-represented in public discourse about weblogs.

Finally, it should be noted that within these studies there is a characteristic blurring of boundaries principally around the usage of the key terms CMC and community. It is never quite clear whether CMC is limited to a narrow technical definition or whether it includes the entire internet. There is also a conceptual blurring around the term ‘community’, which is a long standing traditional social science practice (Studdert, 2006).

Ethnographic studies

Recent years have seen a plethora of what can be broadly described as ethnographic studies of various online sociality, usually on a specific site. This strand of research presents ethnography as the emerging tool for online research (Thomson, et al (1998); Ward, (1999); Sack-Beck. (2004)). Clearly this work functions as a reaction against the work described in strand 1, much of which is now seen as ungrounded in actual online practices. The papers themselves utilise a wide array of methodologies to investigate online community such as discourse analysis, grounded theory, social psychology.

Recently commentators have studied older Chinese groups (Xie, 2008), female fan sites (Bury, 2005), cancer communities (Tamar, 2008), chat rooms Merchant, 2001; Trochia, Janda, 2002), ESL learning communities (Zhang, 2007), Chinese political bulletin boards (Robert, 2007), skinheads (Campbell, 2006), health groups (Maloney-Krichmar; Preece, 2005), general blog sites (Hookway, 2008; Williams, 2007), same sex attracted sites (Yip, Dowsett, Williams, Ventuneac; Carbello-Diegeuz, 2008), just to name a few.

Overall the findings are rather uniform although several key elements are common to virtually all accounts: various forms of technical CMC’s facilitate various psychologically defined qualities, there is sociality online, the groups created online are largely ‘communities of interest’, and the online space exists overwhelmingly as an adjunct and facilitating tool for pre-existing off line communities.

The commonality of these findings sits side by side with the constant presence of micro-suggestions that tend to concentrate upon adjustments to technology. The accounts of these studies also exhibit a subtle displacement. In these ethnographic studies, there is barely a mention on any specifically online derived communal being-ness. In ‘Creating a Sense of Community: Experiences in a Swedish chat room’ (Sveningsson, 2003), for example, the transcribed conversations show less engagement overall than might be found in a conversation you might have with a stranger in a queue. The transcripts show social interaction certainly, but it is short, hesitant and superficial. Nor is this diminished social interaction uncommon within these ethnographic accounts.

What is revealed in many of these accounts is not ‘communal being-ness’ in the sense describe earlier, but rather commonality, the commonness of being, the commonality of the mass, the customer, the citizen. This widespread investigative slippage between communal being-ness and commonality is exemplified by the influential educational work of Wenger who defines community of practice as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (Wenger, 2002).

This traditional definition positions community as an empty stage where communities appear through a simple conjunction of individual interest, much in the same way that mushrooms appear after rain. Wenger’s approach confirms Dumont’s point that in traditional social sciences we pass from the individual to the communal only in terms of a conscious design (Dumont, 1983). This is a major problem for these accounts and though many allude to it, few interrogate it directly. And the reason it is a major problem brings us back to the central question of this section: if there is a unique social formation termed online community, then it surely must be created within CMC and the online space. In the light of this question, it is telling that these ethnographic studies contain virtually no sociality derived specifically from online settings.

To summarise, these ethnographic accounts show two overwhelming tendencies within CMC practice: offline communal being-ness dominates the construction of online identities and online meanings, and there is virtually no sociality derived specifically from online settings.

The next section argues that these two contradictory findings explain each other; for if existing identities are filling the space of online sociality, where is the space from which something specifically communal and specifically online can emerge?

Argument

So the question is “why?” Why has the social network of the web spectacularly failed to produce any sign of online communal being-ness.
Studdert believes it clearly relates to two issues: the predominance of offline interests, and the mode of investigation.

Offline interests, ie identities created and sustained outside online CMC space, utterly dominates the contemporary internet. These range from government laws or legislation, government agencies’ codes of practice, information sites, health education sites, through business sites, sites specifically relating to bodily identity, same sex attracted sites, third age sites, sites for cancer sufferers, through educational spaces to privatised spaces of sociality like MySpace, Facebook and Second Life. All these sites offer some form of CMC to facilitate social interactions and indeed, CMC permeates the contemporary internet.

These sites of interest construct a narrow one-to-one relationship inherently at odds with the notion of communal being-ness. In fact it is far closer to the privileged and defining social relationship of both the state and the social sciences, that is, the state/individual axis. Interest is an inherently individual pursuit and constructs a relationship which is therefore inherently a rational choice made prior to entry into an online setting. As such it excludes community from any role in the construction of subjectivity or communal power.

Tsure argues that even apparently named social sites like ‘MySpace’ and ‘Second Life’ are sites not for online sociality, but for information, display and individual construction of identities (Tsure, 2008). To identify these sites of interest as community is to erect an inherently impoverished form of community confined to the singularity of the state/individual axis. The predominance of uni-dimensional relationships drives multi dimensional CMC, communal multiplicity and hybridity to the margins of the internet.

This figure of the rational individual is cast online and in the online literature in many lights: client, blogger, stakeholder, life-styler, user, lurker, poster, cancer survivor. These are all individualised roles where the terms of the singular relationship are decided somewhere else. If communing exists within this framework it is nothing more than the commonality of individual interest and role. Unfortunately, for notions of online community, they constitute the predominant form of social interaction on the web.

The degree to which sociality within the online space is controlled by offline identities and interests ranges across a spectrum. Clearly at one end lie the online service locations, exemplified by the ‘pay your road tax on line’ sites. Here, one is being ascribed a pre-exiting identity by passing through a serious of previously defined, codified and understood steps, and this action of sociality – the passing through the steps – allows the individual to be recognised and inscribed as a citizen. Sociality in these cases is almost entirely commonality as a citizen. There is no space for any unique online sociality. In these circumstances the unique sociality from which cooperative communality is formed (Arendt, 1958) is utterly absent. Similarly, in business sites, CMC is exclusively one-to-one and again a series of demarcated steps agreed in advance guide the buyer and inscribe an identity. Once again CMC serves simply to shape the identity created prior to the online sociality and in doing so leaves no space for unique sociality.

This sort of privileging of interest is even present at the other end of the spectrum in blogger sites, where invariably a moderator and a code of practice have the overwhelming influence in shaping what is apparently a social space into an individualistic and known form. The primacy ascribed to the social relationship of interest above all others limits and relegates multi dimensionality. There is no horizontal CMC discussion across online site barriers demarcated by interest, nor is it encouraged, for example, that road tax payers should use the online service to talk to other road tax payers, much less ‘MySpace’ users, in one simultaneous online action of CMC.

The privileging of interest has constructed an internet not of multi-dimensionality or online communal being-ness, but rather one demarcated to the extreme. It has effectively closed the online space to moments of unique sociality necessary for any communal being-ness to develop. For this reason it has become almost impossible to speak of an online community in the wider inter-relational sense, because quite simply very little unique sociality is found online.

In the development of the internet, the state and the social sciences have held a mirror to each other. The current mirroring regarding online communities is illustrated in all the ethnographic accounts. Not only are the studies dominated by the framing concept of interest, there is little multi-dimensionality beyond the interest, little contact outside the demarcated spaces and aside from some minor linguistic tropes, which could simply represent a one time outcome of adjusting to the keyboard, little sign of anything unique to the online space itself. It is clear why a community of interest, so designated by the social sciences and created by offline interests, represents a limiting of the possibilities for both a richer, denser web and something creative of online communal being-ness.

Futures

Is it possible for CMC to be used and configured in a manner which allows the inter-relational hybridity and multiplicity creative of communal being-ness online to emerge? Is it possible for instance, to envisage an online educational CMC space that is productive of communal being-ness? It is accepted that such online classrooms require a multi-dimensional CMC sociality and that having such an online environment appears to improve people’s sense of community (Lysoff, 2003) What would that sort of CMC space look like, if these findings were generalised across the web?

Possible and Probable Futures

The state and various aligned hierarchies of power continue to shape and contain CMC and online sociality in line with their general position as the defining agent of the social (Bauman, 2003). Hand in hand, the social sciences, in line with its role as the ‘ideology of modernism’ (Bauman, 2003), continue to term these static formations ‘communities’ and thus continue to provide the state and aligned entities with the ammunition to do exactly the same. This creates a situation productive of results entirely predictable from both parties and for CMC online interaction.

This result, needless to say, also diminishes the social potential for the internet simply because it produces inherently limiting forms of social relationships. Thus educational projects, projects of social cohesion and community building are also inherently limited, both by how initially the possibilities are conceived, and the manner in which this impacts upon the net in real CMC interaction. Thus, for example, we will see the uptake of CMC facilitating interaction such as the Nesai online classroom as a means of dealing with excluded students and children in care who require an education. However, the technology itself simply duplicates the socially constructed hierarchy of the predominant educational setting, rather than positioning itself as a multi dimensional horizontal mode of communicative interaction.

It is envisaged that more demarcated health sites and sites supposedly dedicated to establishing links between various interest groups, such as the elderly, the medicalised, the ‘disabled’, the expatriate and so on will appear. In this future, online space and CMC will continue in an overwhelmingly uni-directional form, as an outcome of financial imperatives, and guided by the domination of offline interests. In such circumstances the process will contain mutually interdependent elements of surveillance and control (Rose 1999) accompanied by good intentions of the liberal variety in the service of idealised and noble causes.

In such a scenario, CMCs that currently offer an online space for relatively unmediated conversation will become marginalised and heavily moderated. Additionally, the internet itself is becoming openly censored either through filtering or legislation of the sort recently introduced in Australia, and this will continue.

Preferable Future

The fact that there is currently barely a ripple of a specifically derived CMC online communality is not because such communal being-ness is impossible, but rather because of the way in which the contemporary internet has been created.

In relation to academic approaches a number of inter-relational strands are currently emerging, which utilise a variety of work ranging from Latour to Deleuze. An interrelation and longitudinal study (Studdert, 2007), based on the development of the skeletal inter-relational outline of Arendt (1958), discovered online communal being-ness in which a specific communal identity-in-common was created and sustained online. This work centred around a blog site and involved a group of approximately twenty to forty regular posters. More such work of this nature is clearly required. However, such an interrelational approach presents possibilities for enlarging our capacity to actually perceive communal being-ness. Furthermore it touches directly upon our capacity to imagine a different internet.

Is it possible, for instance, to conceive of a CMC space deeper and wider in its communicative reality, with general inter-relationality throughout and truly empowering CMC technology? Is it possible to imagine a situation where the internet functions as an untrammelled space for the action of sociality and does so in circumstances allowing all manner of interaction?

For that to happen online space must be open to the possibility of its own unique sociality. Such an internet fundamentally requires the overturning of the privileging of interest both within the web itself and within social science literature.

Early theorists conceived of CMC as creative of an open, multi-dimensional space where social action and communal being-ness were prioritised over all other elements. Ethnographic research simply confirms that this is the polar opposite of the way in which CMC has developed. The elevation of interest as the defining totem of social interaction has given us a stunted and impoverished version of community in the online space. A new vision of the web centred around the idea of online space as first and foremost a public space is required. This space would be every bit as public as the street, and where whatever government intervention occurs should be governed, just as it is on the streets and in other offline spaces, by laws and procedures, regulating and restricting not the communal but the state itself. Business presence should also be low key, serv