Shifting Pedagogies and Digital Technologies: Shaping Futures in Education

This chapter discusses changes in teaching and learning that have emerged with ongoing innovation and revolution in the field of digital technologies. Such a topic has captured the attention and imagination of numerous researchers and commentators for many decades. While key terms like transformation are routinely used to describe ongoing potential for organisational, systemic and individual change, we argue that much of education has already been transformed driven by innovations with digital technology. This shift presents both challenges and opportunities for teachers and students alike and it impacts other stakeholders such as administrative staff and society at large. Transformation can also be characterized in terms of emphasis on skills over mastery of content; it can also be characterized in terms of a growing need for global competencies associated with digital literacy, global citizenship and intercultural communications. In framing this chapter, we draw from a discourse on futures thinking in which the key trajectories of change are discussed within the broad context of the global education sector. To validate such futures positioning, we begin with some historical perspective in which we highlight prominent moments in the digital revolution. Diversity in shifts in pedagogical practice is illustrated by two case studies, one located in Indonesia and one in Australia.