Knowledge
We need to change and scale education globally, and we need to do it fast – Saku Tuominen
This report concentrates on what direction education stakeholders need to take in order to help discover and spread innovations.
HundrED, the global nonprofit that selects the top 100 global K12 inspiring education innovations annually, today released findings from The Global Youth: Your Education survey that identifies the viewpoints of young people under the age of 18 from 19 countries around the world about the state of education.
The survey was developed to understand what young people from around the world believe needs to improve in education, what they currently value and to help students feel more connected to education decisions. HundrED conducted this effort to ensure that youth voices are heard in discussions about education changes.
“Student experience and perspective adds important value to better understanding the current needs of global education,” said Jessica Spencer-Keyse, Head of Global Research of HundrED. “Young people are consistently targets of educational reform, and even though education decisions impact them the most, their thoughts and voices are too often overlooked and excluded from decisions.”
The survey found that 83 percent of students want a greater focus on skills that prepare them for their future career. This indicates a clear disconnect between current education and expectation. In the open-ended response fields, students, for example, described wanting more opportunities to understand potential career paths and how their current education should lead to ‘real-world’ success.
Other notable findings include:
- Sixty-one percent of students believe the overall learning environment such as the design of the physical space needs to improve as many feel unmotivated and uninspired in their current setting.
- Fifty-eight percent seek increased focus on life skills, such as empathy, communication, and collaboration, highlighting the necessity for the development of inter-intrapersonal skills or soft skills which are frequently omitted.
- Youth frequently expressed that multiple areas in education needed to improve, in response to open-ended questions. An 18-year-old Spanish student educated in Australia wrote that education should “give a better world view and raise a new generation of smart, empathetic people to change our future for the better.”
“Overall, those completing the survey are exceptionally future-oriented, yet do not feel prepared for the real world at all. Nearly every young person commented on their feeling of a lack of preparedness and connectedness for what comes next,” Spencer-Keyse said.
The culmination of HundrED’s youth-centered research provides new and valuable insight regarding the importance of also engaging in a multi-source, multi-level stakeholder analysis for education discussions as well as for considering all aspects of education when furthering these conversations. HundrED has dubbed this approach “Every Child to Flourish”.
“There is a global learning crisis and we need to change and scale education globally, and we need to do it fast,” said Saku Tuominen, Founder of HundrED. “This report concentrates on what direction education stakeholders need to take in order to help discover and spread innovations.”
HundrED will work with its partners around the world to support and nurture change through open, collaborative discussions amongst stakeholders and engagement of youth voice to refine and deploy a new “Every Child to Flourish” framework for implementation of impactful and scalable education innovations.
HundrED will present these findings at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference in Chicago on Wednesday, June 27th at 11 am – 1 pm. For more information or to download the report, please visit: https://hundred.org/en/research
About HundrED
Finnish based, not for profit, HundrED discover, research and share inspiring innovations in K12 education. Their goal is to help improve education and foster a movement through encouraging valuable, impactful & scalable innovations to spread, mindful of context, across the world. Since 2016, HundrED has been conducting rigorous research to seek and select 100 inspiring innovations of that year, annually. All of the insights and selected innovations are documented, packaged and shared with educators around the world to easily implement, with free 24/7 support. For more information, please visit: http://www.hundred.org or follow on social media: Twitter: @HundrED.org and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HundrEDorg/.
Image used for representational purpose only, courtesy – Pixabay