Week 2 reading reflection

It is the truth that in recent decades the world has changed a lot, so as education.

In the CBC radio show, Dr. Harari brought forward a problem that humankind is facing: with the technology developing, a large population of people could find themselves out of jobs since artificial intelligence can finish most of the work. And education could be one way to address this problem. First of all, people can be educated to adapt to the ever-changing world, for example, they can acquire knowledge of cutting-edge technology by receiving education. In addition, as mentioned by Dr. Harari, people can probably be educated to find out meaning and purpose of life in other things other than having jobs.

The above example testified that education is not static; on the contrary, it is changing over time. This advocacy is also mentioned in Aoki’s (2005) article which elaborates what is teaching as in-dwelling between two curriculum worlds. One of the worlds, the curriculum-as-plan, is normally generated by the Ministry of Education or schools, and is also the class teachers are supposed to teach. However, the curriculum-as-plan is changeless, compared with the curriculum-as-lived-experiences world, which always takes into account the uniqueness of students, environments, situations and even teachers themselves. That is also where efficient teaching always takes place.

How did we realize the importance of changes in education? The answer is educational research, and Aoki’s article is one example. As has been mentioned above, education needs changes. Educational research can give us the direction of change, verify previous knowledge, add to and expand our knowledge, as well as suggesting ways of improving practice that has been verified by many experiments.

Not only education but also educational research is changing over time, including its topics, methodologies and so on. How can the two get improved in the modern society is a thought-provoking question that needs to be investigated.