What sort of graduate for what sort of future?

In this presentation, Professor Erica McWilliam explores some projections of the future that parents and teachers need to unlearn in order to optimise our endeavours on behalf of our children. Much has changed in terms of learning and employability world-wide, and this means that the scripts we relied on in the last century to prepare young people to live meaningful and self-supported lives may no longer be the most relevant ones. While high levels of literacy, numeracy and schooling performance are still necessary to live, learn and earn well in the future, they are no longer sufficient. Future success will also depend on being able to learn, unlearn and re-learn at an increasingly
rapid rate. This means, among other things, that today’s young people will need to be highly competent in managing their own learning networks rather than simply relying on parents and teachers to tell them what to do and how to do it. This presentation will address the important issue of how we can all work optimally to prepare our young graduates from schooling for the very different futures that this century has in store.