Let the Learners Lead: The Worldwide Transition into Post-Digital Age, Post-Pandemic Education

Research into the consequences of and planned responses to COVID-19 across education sectors globally indicates that the considerable disruption that has occurred has significantly exacerbated existing inequalities. Although many believe that substantial investment in educational technology is the essential strategy, very few of the 200 or so documents studied embody 'radical creativity'. There is a general reluctance to seize the opportunity for fundamental change, many preferring the safety of familiar arrangements, embracing a shared desire to 'get back to normal' and to 'catch up on what has been missed'. Drawing upon that investigation, while recognising also that education was already undergoing its elemental transformation prior to the pandemic, the paramount recommendation is that the learner should lead. This involves: (1) primary education concentrating upon the enjoyable acquisition of basic skills and third millennium learning strategies leading to a confident readiness for learning responsibility; (2) emphasis being placed upon schools' and systems' role in strengthening the socialisation process by facilitating a range of artistic and recreational activities, extending to play and informal wandering; (3) self-directed and self-regulated learning, encompassing learner-determined curricula, becoming the prevalent educational mode, from early secondary onwards throughout life; (4) whether in class or online, face-to-face or at a distance, teachers being enabled to come into their own in advising, supporting, coaching and encouraging (but never directing) learners; (5) optimum advantage being derived from universal connectivity, in the context of the duality (tangible and virtual) of contemporary consciousness; and (6) assessment taking the form of helpful personalised feedback, confidentially to the individual learner, embodying informal testing as and when elected by that learner, as opposed to selection based upon the results of formal examinations. Let the Learners Lead should characterise education's forthcoming, fundamental (and COVID-19 hastened) transformation.