Invention and Intervention: Reimagining Educational Paradigms

Abstract

This chapter considers the manner in which educational processes can respond to the growth of digital culture and the role of technology within such a response. Creating an education system that prepares learners to function in our society as well as to realise the full potential of their own abilities requires nothing short of a complete revaluation of what it means to be knowledgeable, to be literate, to teach and to learn. While previously valued skills such as information retention and reproduction are continually undermined by technological advances and the subsequent ubiquity of information, others including problem-solving, critical thinking and collaboration are becoming increasingly valued. This chapter therefore explores the need for change at a systemic level. In particular it examines a departure from an appreciation of finished products or “learning objects”, towards an acknowledgement of process. Together with this it considers the need for students to move beyond a role as mere consumers of meaning becoming themselves creators of meaning.