Renewing the social contract for education

Interconnectedness and interdependencies should frame pedagogy. The relationships that exist between teachers, students and knowledge are located in a wider world. All learners are connected to the world and all learning takes place in and with the world. Students need to learn how others’ actions affect them and how their actions affect others and, for this reason, classrooms and schools should bring students in contact with others who are different from them.

Cooperation and collaboration must be taught and practiced in appropriate ways at different levels and ages. Education builds the capacities of individuals to work together to transform themselves and the world when cooperation and collaboration are defining characteristics of learning communities. This can be as true for adult education and learning as it is for early childhood education.

Solidarity, compassion, ethics, and empathy should be ingrained in how we learn. We should welcome the full diversity of humanity’s cultural resources into education and extend from valuing diversity and pluralism to supporting and sustaining them. Teaching should focus on unlearning bias, prejudice and divisiveness. Empathy – the ability to attend to others and feel with them – is essential for building pedagogies of solidarity.

Assessment should be aligned to these aims and be meaningful for student growth and learning. Exams, tests, and other assessment instruments should harmonize with educational purposes and intents. A great deal of important learning cannot be easily measured or counted. Teacher-driven formative assessments that promote student learning should be prioritized. We must reduce the importance of competitive, high-stakes standardized assessment.

Curricula should enhance learners abilities to access and contribute to the knowledge commons. The collective knowledge resources of humanity accumulated over generations should form the backbone of educational curricula. The knowledge commons should be widely accessible to draw from and add to. We should teach students (of all ages) to engage with knowledge creatively and critically, questioning its assumptions and interests. Education should empower people to correct omissions and exclusions in the knowledge commons and ensure that it is a lasting, open resource that reflects the diversity of ways of knowing and being in the world.

The ecological crisis requires curricula that fundamentally reorient the place of humans in the world. Effective and relevant climate change education should be prioritized. Across the curriculum we must teach the art of living respectfully and responsibly on a planet that has been damaged by human activity.

The spread of misinformation must be countered through scientific, digital and humanistic literacies. Curricula should emphasize scientific inquiry and the ability to distinguish between rigorous research and falsehoods. We should develop digital skills that empower learners to make meaningful use of technology. Curricula should ensure that students also gain an ability to ‘act on’ science and technology by taking a role in determining how they are used and for what purposes.

Human rights and democratic participation should be key building blocks for learning that transform people and the world. We should prioritize human rights education that supports learners’ agency and offers an entry point into a moral universe committed to the recognition and thriving of all. Gender equality should be addressed across all curricula and oppressive gender stereotypes removed. Students should also learn how to directly confront racism and discrimination of all forms.

Collaboration and teamwork should characterize the work of teachers. We should support teachers to work in common as the master convenors of educational environments, relationships, spaces, and times. Quality teaching is produced by teams and enabling environments which ensure that students’ physical, social, and emotional needs are provided for.

Producing knowledge, reflection and research should become integral to teaching. Teachers should be supported and recognized as intellectually engaged learners themselves who identify new areas of inquiry and innovation, define research questions, and generate new pedagogical practices.

The autonomy and freedom of teachers should be supported. A strong professional identity for teachers should be encouraged. This includes proper induction and ongoing professional development that ensures teachers are able to effectively use their judgment and expertise in designing and leading student learning.

Teachers should participate in public debate and dialogue on the futures of education. We should ensure the presence of teachers in the social dialogues and participatory decision-making mechanisms needed to collectively reimagine education together.

Schools should be protected as spaces where students encounter challenges and possibilities not available to them elsewhere. If schools did not exist we would need to invent them. We should ensure that schools bring diverse groups of people together to learn from and with one another.

Building collective capacity should guide the redesign of schools. School architectures, spaces, times/timetables, and student groupings should be designed to build the capacities of individuals to work together. Cultures of collaboration should pervade the administration and management of schools, as well as relations among schools.

Digital technologies should aim to support – and not replace – schools. We should leverage digital tools to enhance student creativity and communication. When AI and digital algorithms are brought into schools we must ensure they do not simply reproduce existing stereotypes and systems of exclusion.

Schools should model the futures we aspire to by ensuring human rights and becoming exemplars of sustainability and carbon neutrality. Students should be trusted and tasked with leading the way in greening the education sector. We should ensure that all education policies sustain and advance human rights.

At all times of life people should have meaningful quality educational opportunities. Learning should be lifelong, life-wide, with weight and recognition given to adult education. We should employ inclusive design principles and begin any planning with a focus on serving those most marginalized and those settings that are most fragile.

Healthy educational ecosystems connect natural, built and virtual sites of learning. We should better appreciate the biosphere as a learning space. Digital learning spaces are now integral to educational ecosystems and should be developed to support the public, inclusive and common purposes of education. Open access and open-source platforms, with strong protections for student and teacher data, should be prioritized.

Government capacity for the public financing and regulation of education should be strengthened. We should build the capacity of states to set and enforce standards and norms for educational provisions that are responsive, equitable and uphold human rights.

The right to education should be broadened. We are no longer well served by framing the right to education simply around schooling. Everyone everywhere should have a right to lifelong learning. We should support the right to information and the right to culture as necessary enabling components of the right to education. A right to connectivity must be built in.