Preparing Students for Jobs that Don’t Exist Yet
We are in a technological age and we know only too well that technology is on the move like a cheetah in full flight. The occupations that are hot today can be irrelevant in the next 10 years. It is a challenge to equip students for a future that is unknown and will indeed consist of unknowns. In other words, how do we prepare the next generation of workers for jobs that have not yet been created? The answer can be summarized into what skills are needed in the modern workplace and the promotion of a culture that is open to change.
The Shift from Hard Skills to Soft Skills
Historically, education has most often been very tightly related to acquiring certain ‘meeting the job requirements’ skills. They received knowledge strange to other fields and directly related to their choice of career; accounting, engineering or medicine. Although these professions are still relevant, owing to the fast rate at which new technologies are being developed and implemented, the knowledge that students acquire today may not help them when they graduate in a few years.
As noted earlier, the relative importance of ‘soft skills’ is growing. These are the skills that make people change their settings, carry out cooperative work, and make decisions in regard to important matters. Here are some of the key soft skills that educators should emphasize:
- Critical thinking: The capacity of the ability to identify information and make right decisions.
- Creativity: The innovation ability which means the motivation to search for different approaches to the problem.
- Emotional intelligence: Ability to recognize and regulate individual and other people’s feelings.
- Collaboration: Communicating with people from the organization and other employees, or with other people altogether in the course of teaming.
- Adaptability: Flexibility of mind is an aspect that is also closely related to willingness to learn new things;
Integrating Technology into Education
Thus, to develop students for the unknown future, technology is both a problem and a solution. On one hand, it’s at the root of the fast pace of transformation within the field of employment. On the other hand, it provides tools that can improve education in ways that were so far unparalleled.
Here are a few ways technology can be integrated into education:
- Online courses and resources: These offer students a wide amount of resources and learning outside the regular lectures and seminars.
- Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR): These technologies enable students to learn new environments and theories in an inverted manner, and get the chance to explore them practically.
- Artificial intelligence (AI): Smart education refers to the use of integrated sequences of data, information and knowledge processes that are tailored towards promoting Learning for every student that has enrolled.
- Coding and digital literacy: By teaching students coding and other technical aspects, one prepares them for future job markets as they are equipped well to handle them.
Fostering an Entrepreneurial Mindset
The employment trends of future jobs indicate that more and more people will be entrepreneurs and freelancing will be common in future jobs. Given the fact that the opportunities to secure a white collared job are now rare, students will be left to fend for themselves. As for the second criterion, it can be seen that schools can prepare students by developing an ‘entrepreneurial culture’.
This includes: Empowering a child and making him or her learn how to take initial steps, possibly implementing a set problem-solving approach and not giving up in the course of the process. The knowledge in entrepreneurship education will also enable students to learn simple aspects of managing a business which in turn gives them confidence to pioneer their own business.
Encouraging Interdisciplinary Learning
The issues to be faced tomorrow cannot adequately be described by the methodologies or concepts of the present-day academic specialties. Open issues, like the issue of climate change, cannot be solved within the framework of a single discipline. For this, education systems should facilitate interdisciplinary learning as a way of making students ready for this.
This implies the attempt to eliminate the hierarchical division of disciplines and to set the trends of correlation of different fields of knowledge among students. For instance, a project on multiple renewable power sources will be a synthesis of science, technology, economy and ethics.
Building a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset is therefore the view that these skills, knowledge and intelligence can be developed and thus is the opposite of the fixed mindset. It poses a suitable attitude for students who are living in a world full of uncertainties. Instead, educators should try to ensure that learners grasp the fact that one loses in the process of learning but only has to persevere.
Conclusion
A major focus for the education system is to equip learners for jobs that are yet to be created – and that is about a paradigm shift. If we encourage the idea of flexibility and of continuing education for a lifetime through self-supported learning, the upcoming generation will be ready to face all challenges as they come.
The future cannot be predicted, nevertheless, if students prepare themselves, they can be ready to meet it. The idea is not to have some idea of the events that are likely to occur, but rather to be ready for any eventuality that occurs.
