Educational Trends in 2024
Greek philosopher Heraclitus is often credited with the idea that the only thing in life that is constant is change. Whether it’s how banking works, developments in your city, or a new cricket T20 series - it seems like our world is constantly changing and evolving around us. In comparison, for the longest time, education systems have changed at the proverbial glacial pace. And the longer our schooling systems remain stagnant, the more pressure there is for the industry to transform, to keep up and prove that it is fit-for-purpose in the modern world. In recent years, education in South Africa has undergone significant transformation which is driven by several key trends. This is ushering in an era where South African children are increasingly being educated in different ways, in different kinds of school environments with their teachers serving in different roles. In short, schools look quite different from the ones that we experienced as parents, and are needing to adapt even more to be relevant for our children in today’s world.
Here are six prominent trends that are currently shaping the South African educational landscape, and that are going to become even more evident in 2024. Whether you are a parent, learner, educator or policy maker, I believe that these are worth paying attention to. See them as the levers that we need to be pulling on to drive much-needed change in our schools.
Individualised learning matters
Think about this: the reason that we group learners into ‘grades’ based primarily on their age has more to do with economic and staffing requirements than it has to do with any learning benefits. The same is true for why most schools use class timetables. On the other hand, personalised learning seeks to customise education to the individual learner’s strengths and needs. Personally, I am a champion of this trend because we’ve known for decades that students learn best when they are on individualised learning pathways. Due to constraints, we’ve traditionally modelled education on the assumption that if we teach in a very standardised way then most of the learners in the classroom will be with us, and that we might need to differentiate for just a small portion of that group. But the reality is that when we do this standardised teaching and assessing, we actually miss most of the learners. The research is clear, learning is a highly personal journey, and therefore our schools need to be tailored for individual learning, not just cohorts. So, we are seeing big shifts in the ways that schools are thinking about how content is delivered and how assessments are done to be much more personalised and individualised, while at the same time operating within very real constraints, such as economic, geographic, and meeting legislative requirements.
The growth of online education in South Africa is driving this trend towards personalised learning, because the flexible online space is amazing for personalising the education journey. Many of those constraints fall away and it opens up more opportunities to present content in different formats to suit different learning styles. Individualised dashboards and timetables empower learners to chart their own courses and track their own progress. These tools also enable teachers to track every learner’s progress in real-time and quickly identify where learners need additional support.
Mastery-based learning
The mastery-based approach shifts the focus from advancing because of your age or grade cohort, to advancing because you’ve mastered the concepts. This emphasises not only a deeper understanding of subjects and the ability to apply learning but also ensures that no student is left behind. In practical terms, the real strength of the mastery-based approach is that we don’t plaster over gaps in learning. Historically, this has been a significant problem for kids in South Africa where they are promoted into the next grade, even when they have big learning gaps. This has happened particularly in Languages and Maths. Kids are ‘pushed through’ to the next grade because schools understandably must get them through the system. They end up going to the next grade with a shaky foundation and then we keep building on top of that, and it all comes crumbling down. The idea of mastery-based education is that you can move at your own pace. Once you have shown mastery in a particular area, you can move ahead without having to wait for others. So, if a child is particularly strong in Maths and ahead of their peers, they move on quickly. They have more time to focus on the areas where they are not so strong, perhaps in their language course they may need to slow down or take extra time to get help from a teacher. The mastery-based approach goes hand in hand with personalised learning, and it doesn’t work in large groups with rigid timetables and ‘lecture’ style teaching. For teachers, it redefines the role in helping students progress through mastery, rather than just teaching to a curriculum.
A great example of this is a Maths platform called Reflective Learning. It is a home-grown online tool which diagnoses an individual learner’s skills in Maths, identifies their unique gaps, and then guides them through a personalised learning pathway to fill those specific gaps. When they prove mastery over a concept, it moves them on to the next topic.
Gamification is not just about games
With its propensity to deliver dopamine boosts, gamification is making learning more engaging and interactive. Through game elements such as targets, leaderboards, points, and rewards, schools and learning platforms can create more enjoyable and motivating learning environments. For learners, this trend can encourage problem-solving, collaboration, and creativity as they navigate through challenges and adventures in the pursuit of knowledge. It’s important to note that gamification in education is not just about having fun. It’s about being rewarded for progress and inspiring you to be accountable for your own learning. And it works on adults too! The idea is that I know what my academic goal is, I know what I must do to reach my goal, and when I reach it, I am rewarded. As you are working, the gamified platform is telling you the things you are getting right, and it is showing you where you are tripping up or dropping the ball. This gets my buy-in on my learning process. I can understand my strengths and challenges more clearly and all this makes me want to reach the next level. We’re not just talking about the immediate, short-term hit of dopamine which makes social media so addictive; we’re talking about harnessing the dopamine boost that comes through reward after hard work which cultivates a love for life-long learning.
AI is an educational game-changer
AI has already impacted education, and we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg at the moment. Let’s just talk about one specific impact: one-on-one tutoring. In the early 1980’s, educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom conducted research into teaching and learning techniques that showed that average-performing students who were exposed to one-on-one tutoring could perform better than 98% of their classmates who experienced classroom learning only. He coined the term ‘the 2 sygma problem’ in reference to the fact that our education systems are not built to deliver one-on-one tutoring to every student, and this solution to attain optimal educational efficiency is simply not scalable. One of the potential benefits of AI is that it can help to fill the gap in one-on-one tutoring. We are already seeing the emergence of AI tutor models such as Khan Academy’s Khanmigo. An AI tutor model embedded in an education platform means that the platform can see exactly where each learner is and what they are struggling with. It can then immediately provide the precise guidance the learner needs so that they can master the concept and progress. This use of AI supports both personalised learning and the mastery-based approach. Schools, online or offline, have to address how AI is going to impact their teaching and learning.
Soft skills are in increasing demand
If modern education is to meet the workplace demand for young generations with the skills to succeed in their jobs, then gaining soft skills needs to be prioritised in school and tertiary education. In a 2019 LinkedIn Talent Trends survey, 91% of employers ranked soft skills as their top requirement in the recruitment process. Research conducted by Harvard University, the Carnegie Foundation and Stanford Research and published by the National Soft Skills Association concluded that soft skills make an 85% contribution to career success. We know that understanding people, being able to communicate, create, and collaborate are so important. These attributes are key drivers in our learning process itself, and in achieving outcomes. For so long, our school curricula have been designed around hard skills. Things like factorising an equation and learning the major rivers in South Africa. And those skills are important. But when our curricula only address hard skills, and treat soft skills as a ‘nice to have’ then we are selling our kids short. We need to make sure that we are setting them up for success in the real world. Schools are realising socio-emotional learning can’t be icing on the cake, it must be foundational to what we are doing in the classroom.
The impact of online schooling
In many ways, South Africa has become a significant global leader in online schooling. Online schools are becoming hotbeds of innovation and transformation in education, which has a knock-on effect to how learning happens even in physical schools. At Koa, we are on a mission to use all the benefits of the online space to make these trends that we’ve looked at a reality for our learners.
These trends transforming education are reshaping the roles of teachers and the experiences of learners. As personalised learning and the mastery-based approach develop further, more South African learners will be set on their own pathways to develop as lifelong learners. We can expect that gamification in education and AI will be revolutionising forces in the years ahead. It’s taken a long time for our education system to evolve, in many ways it is still woefully out of step with the world of work, but change is happening; and the pace of change in education is certainly accelerating. Our job is to make sure that we are leveraging every opportunity we can to give our children a schooling experience that sets them up for success in the real world.
