• The self-contained, stand-alone school will be superseded.  He talks about networks and learning brokerage.
• The school will be comprehensively computerised.
• The learning program, curriculum, will be reconceptualised: A new kind of multi-layered learning has taken over, which creatively networks a numbers of disciplines and areas of knowledge.
• The 4 group of learners (classes and students) is managed in new ways. “…the idea of ‘classes’ has really become defunct.”
• Teacher work styles have become radically professional.  Almost the teacher  “…as an independent contractor”.  See Tom Peters (1992), The Tom Peter’s Seminars.
• Unionisation.   Talks about ‘employee mutuals’ that market, train and manage their members.
• The structure of the school (learning organisation) is radically re-configured.  Don’t equate schools with buildings; look at community and other resources, perhaps greater specialisation of schools as smaller, narrowly focused, specialising in being the best in that area.

ELTHAM is committed to schooling for the knowledge era.  The following provides our definition of Knowledge Era schooling and contrasts it with the more typical industrial school.

The new global knowledge economy world will attract young people who are self-directed, life-long learners.

Peter Drucker (2000:8) suggests:

"In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce.  It is an unprecedented change in the human condition.  For the first time - literally - substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices.  For the first time, they will have to manage themselves.  And society is totally unprepared for it."

Today is about recognising that the world for young people has changed and that schooling also must change to develop self-managing and self-directed young people.  This is at the core of the Knowledge Paradigm.

Industrial Paradigm vs. Knowledge Paradigm

The industrial paradigm is premised on authority and control.  It is summed up in the Taylorist “factory model”.  Young people who are controlled in this fashion do not learn to be creative risk takers, to manage themselves or to develop the disposition and skill to be life-long self-directed learners.  It will be difficult for them to become Peter’s (1992) “independent contractors” or Drucker’s self-managers..

The knowledge era is not about computers.  It is about accessing information and creating knowledge.  This is enabled by the Internet, but it is much more than an enabling tool.  It is about the new skills and attitudes and a new culture of schooling.  Young people are growing up within this new paradigm:  The two paradigms cannot simply co-exist if young people are to gain value from their schooling.

The Knowledge Paradigm school is very different.  It has a collaborative and risk taking environment that relates directly to the knowledge world.  The critical knowledge era skills include self-directed learning, adaptability, collaboration, risk taking, communication, self-reflection and ability to change direction, self-management and self-discipline.  It is as much about EQ as IQ.  The world and its work require the emotional-social self as much as the intellectual self.  Without the personal development of self-concept and esteem, interactive ability, care for others and environment and knowledge of self in relationship with others, our young people will not have the capacity to effectively compete in this new world. 

The knowledge era school uses IT as an enabler to the development of these skills.  Its teachers collaborate with students converging their knowledge and skill with that of young people.  We teach them how to use their skills to create and use knowledge, to ask and answer the ethical questions, how to cope with pressure, how to problem solve and how to be decision makers.

In this section of our web site we provide in-house and published papers and articles on aspects of knowledge era schooling.  We welcome comment or the contribution of articles.

Dr David Warner

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