Teaching and Learning in Disruptive Futures: Automation, Universal Basic Income, and Our Jobless Futures

Abstract

Given the likely disappearance in jobs due to automation, how should national educational departments best prepare? Four scenarios are explored. In the first future, educators assume youth - high school and university students - will have one job, one career and live in one nation. No change to policy is made. In the second future, through national broadband networks, the speed of access to information changes, but there is no real change in social infrastructure. Academic hierarchy continues. Classrooms remain ordered in rows. In the third future, the issue will be how to teach and train for the emerging jobs - robotics, care for the aged, for example. Flexibility and adaptability is critical in this future. In the last radical future, teaching and training is for a world after jobs, where capitalism has transformed, if not ended.