Tom J. van Weert

Education of the twenty-first century: New professionalism in lifelong learning, knowledge development and knowledge sharing

A knowledge society is emerging in which Information and Communication Technology is omnipresent and ubiquitous. What form will education take to serve this society? And how will educational professionalism change? To begin to answer these questions one needs to understand the demands of this knowledge society on its citizens and knowledge workers. Continuous innovation in all aspects is characteristic of the knowledge society. This puts three demands to citizens and workers: lifelong learning, knowledge development and knowledge sharing. In the knowledge society learning is a continuous process: learning is lifelong learning. In many cases this learning will also involve knowledge development in the context of professional (or daily) life as new knowledge is needed to deal with innovation. Consequences of this are ‘democratization’ of knowledge development (research) and a changing role of knowledge towards more prescriptive knowledge. In the knowledge society knowledge is the only resource that grows when shared. Knowledge sharing may be facilitated by communities of inquiry (practice, interest, etc.) supporting exchange and further development of knowledge. Information and Communication Technology is integrated facilitator in all this. If the picture sketched here is truthful, then there are profound consequences for education and the professionals in education. Education will find itself in a continuous process of change, embedded as it is in the changing knowledge society around it. The educational organisation will have to turn into a learning organisation, an agile organisation that is able to innovate educational processes to answer outside demands. New professionalism will be needed in such an organisation to understand and support new ways of learning and to create new learning environments. In this paper the Knowledge Society is explored in three aspects: lifelong learning, knowledge development and knowledge sharing. Then the implications for education and research in the twenty-first century knowledge society are explored. It is made clear that in this context new educational professionalism of teachers is needed, based on lifelong learning, practical research and knowledge sharing.

Modern Curriculum Development for Informatics (Computing Science)

Modem curriculum development should fulfil specific requirements that reflect developments in society. A proposed set of requirements is compared against two recent curriculum development initiatives in the area of informatics (computing science). The two initiatives are the IEEE-CS/ACM Computing Curriculum 2001 (Joint Taskforce 2001) and the IFIP/UNESCO Informatics Curriculum Framework 2000 (ICF-2000) (Mulder and van Weert 2001). Detailed comparison showed that the principles used in these two initiatives cover the proposed requirements, although not one-to-one and with different emphasis. A difference in approach between the two curriculum initiatives, concerning the linking of societal needs and student competence development, is illustrated by explaining ICF-2000 Professional Categories and Graduate Profiles.

Keynote: New Higher Education for Lifelong Learning

Economical, societal and cultural developments in industrialized countries push for educational innovation with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as an important enabling factor. Moving from industrial to knowledge intensive economies there is a need for modern professionals, knowledge workers with new qualifications. For the modern professional, lifelong working is identical with lifelong learning; the modern professional is a learning professional. Innovation is the driving force in a knowledge intensive economy and for innovation new knowledge is needed. The modern professional therefore is a knowledge creating professional. Also businesses and organisations need new strategic business-knowledge to be able cope with demands from a rapidly changing environment. Modern organisations are therefore learning organisations. Higher Education, as a breeding place of modern professionals, needs to redefine its role. The more so, because a new generation of students is in the making: the media generation. A new educational paradigm of the learning organisation may serve both initial phase, and lifelong learning students. Situation based learning environments may be the materialisation of this new paradigm.

Building Electronic Educational Environments: Why, What and How?

The workplace is becoming a learning organisation empowered by the use of information technology. And education is becoming “the” learning organisation, sharing many characteristics with this new workplace. Added value in new forms of education lies in more interactivity and feedback loops, in reorientation of the “process” of learning and in the use of meta-structures. New computer-based media contribute to this added value by providing dynamic simulation environments or virtual worlds.

Erratum to: Informatics and the Digital Society

Erratum to: T.J. van Weert and R.K. Munro (Eds.) Informatics and the Digital Society DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-35663-1

Network-blended education of tomorrow

The introduction of ICTs is causing considerable tension between systems like those of education, health and democracy and what is happening outside those systems. This tension has to be resolved. Therefore educational goals need to be redefined. In redefining the goals of education changes need to be directly related to competencies and how the acquisition of these competencies can be integrated into the curriculum and the evaluation system. This project aims are: creation of new pedagogical strategies; creation of international communities around these new strategies in higher education and upper secondary education; creation of new principles and methods; creation of knowledge building and exchange processes.

Working Group Reports

These are the nine edited reports prepared by the different Professional Working Groups at the SECIII conference. Each represents many hours of discussion — both during designated conference discussion time and at more informal sessions. All of these reports were delivered at the final session of the conference