Creative and imaginative scholarship: Lifelong learning for an unpredictable future

Abstract

The continued process of economic globalization challenges education as a means of achieving individual success in a constantly changing society. Education of today might be obsolete tomorrow in a technologically driven social environment. The impact of technological change on society dictates that the future will belong to the knowledge worker who embraces the concepts of lifelong learning and self-directed learning. As a platform for lifelong learning, a proficiency in generic skills becomes an imperative and sustainable approach in education today ensuring adaptability in the future. This approach prepares the learner for creative adaptability to address the challenges an evolving society may present in an imaginative future. Integration of practice-based learning, place-based learning, project-based learning and industry-based learning are four of the more sustainable and holistic approaches in education systems to achieve this lifelong learning. Practice based learning synonymous with work based learning is centred on experiences emerging from the workplace. Placebased learning is an “approach to curriculum that is grounded in students’ own lives, community, and region” (Smith, 2002, p.31). Project-based learning is an approach focused on a final project that emphasizes learning that is long-term, interdisciplinary and student-centered. Industry based learning puts theory into practice giving hands-on, real life, industrial experience. Thus the new paradigm shift in teaching and learning at tertiary level is aimed at producing global citizens armed with transferable skills that are mobile, bridge distances, are ageless, are globally recognised and prepare for a constantly changing society of the future. These transferable skills involve the inculcation of capabilities that nurture people for the on-going, dynamic journey of learning. This paper expounds the relevance of the synthesis of knowledge, skills and competencies in the teaching and learning practices currently adopted at Unitec New Zealand as a creative and imaginative assurance for scholarship in the unpredictable future.