Teacher of the Future vis-à-vis Industrial Revolution 4.0: The Reflective-Predictive-Transformative Paradigms of 21’st Century Education

The Purpose of Education in a Youth’s Life

            Education has a twofold implication in a young person’s life. It must cultivate two ongoing actions—it must enable one to simultaneously reflect and predict/envision oneself amidst a changing world full of diverse ideologies and worldviews during the process of lifelong learning.

            This belief is rooted in the concepts of reflective learning and visioning in education. One must be able to look back in order to look forward, and vice-versa, in order to fully realize one’s purpose and goal, role and function in the society and in life. Reflective learning and thinking refers to the processes of analyzing and making judgments about what has happened (Halpern, 1996). John Dewey also stated that it is an active, persistent, and careful consideration of a supposed form of knowledge. Education must cause the youth to think retrospectively in the sense that one can critically analyze past issues and trace its implications in the present, and future times. It also allows the student to rethink of one’s choices in the past. It evokes a sense of evaluation, appreciation and deeper understanding towards one’s and others’ perspectives. In this act of reflecting, it is but inevitable to predict, or envision. Visioning is a goal-oriented mental construct that guides people’s behavior (Seeley, 1992). Simply put, it is a hunger to see improvement (Pejza, 1985). Education must cause the young individual to hunger and thirst after improvement in one’s life and in the society. Change is then embraced as a pathway towards improvement. Relevant and practical structures and systems are reconceptualized and reconstructed. This evokes a sense of openness, as well as grounded faith and hope towards the future since concrete solutions to future problems have been found. The cycle of reflecting-visioning/predicting then continues, as time progresses and as the future continues to become history.

The Purpose of Education in Society

            If the twofold purpose of education successfully happens in a young person’s life, it must culminate into an outward purpose that will affect the whole society – it will transform. This is rooted from the concept of transformative education, wherein learning is understood as a process of using a prior interpretation (reflective) to construe a new or revised interpretation of the meaning of one’s experience in order to guide future action (predictive) (Mezirow, 2009). 

            It is interesting to note that transformation is the product of the reflection-visioning cycle. It uses the disorienting dilemmas of the past to challenge the possibilities of the future. As transformation occurs, a structural shift of consciousness alters people’s way of being and living in the world.

            In closing, future studies can be done to further link the three major educational concepts, and see how it can identify and bridge the gaps—not just across the academic curricula, but across generations, cultures, and societies, resulting into further resolution of conflicts and disparities in the course of today’s humanity.

References:

Halpern, D.F. (1996). Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking (3’rd Edition). Mahwah: NJ: L. Eribaum Associates

Seeley, D.S. (1992). “Visionary leaders for reforming public schools.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco CA.

Pejza, J.P. (1985). “The Catholic school principal: A different kind of leader.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Catholic Educational Association, St. Louis, MO.

Mezirow, J. (2009). “Transformative learning theory.” In J. Meirow, and E.W. Taylor (Eds), Transformative Learning in Practise: Insights from Community.