PRIN AMABILITATEA DNEI PROF. ELENA ERDELI, INSPECTOR PENTRU EDUCAȚIA SPECIALĂ ÎN CADRUL INSPECTORATULUI ȘCOLAR JUDEȚEAN BIHOR, AM REUȘIT SĂ REALIZĂM UN SCURT INTERVIU CU CRISTINA ALEXANDRA COSTEA , PARTICIPANTĂ LA SIMPOZIONUL EDUCAȚIE PENTRU VIITOR, GĂZDUITDE ISJ BIHOR. DȘOARA COSTEA ESTE STUDENTĂ ÎN ANUL III LA CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY, PSYCHOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCES.
COURTESY OF MRS. ELENA ERDELI, INSPECTOR FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION WITHIN THE BIHOR COUNTY SCHOOL INSPECTORATE, WE HAVE BEEN GRANTED A SHORT INTERVIEW WITH CRISTINA ALEXANDRA COSTEA, PARTICIPANT IN THE EDUCATION FOR THE FUTURE SYMPOSIUM, HOSTED BY THE INSPECTORATE. MRS COSTEA IS A THIRD-YEAR STUDENT AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY, PSYCHOLOGICAL, AND BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCES.
What are your expectations regarding this event?
This symposium was conducted in order to bring together people and knowledge from different countries, working at different levels, to hopefully inspire cross-polination and inspiration for interdisciplinary work. My mission here is to bring us closer to a hybrid mode of learning that can accomodate the incredible recent advances of AI, and to make these advances work for us and our students.
How do you envision the future of education in the next decade? What significant changes do you anticipate?
It is likely that the future of education will reflect the research we currently discuss and conduct, which shows that children learn and develop in different ways. Thus, artificial intelligence and hybrid learning can become a commodity that can be used to help children excel at learning not for the sake of memorisation, but to apply their knowledge to novel scenarios and be creative. The current job market already shows some shifts toward work that requires some level of digital literacy, and I expect that this trend will continue to increase over time. Also, the increase of globalization is likely to continue as well, meaning that international exchange programs will continue to flourish. I would suggest that children are taught and encouraged to use computers and artificial intelligence to access numeracy and language skills that may not be feasible in the classroom. Success in the future job market is unlikely to come from just one skill, as it is both „soft” and „hard” skills that make a person highky employable. Thus, they should be able to cope with the demands of flexible tasks, pointing at cognitive flexibility, and with the challenges of working with other people, pointing to empathy and communication skills.
How can educators effectively integrate emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality, into the classroom to enhance learning experiences?
Schools can train a number of helpful skills in children, from logic, to arithmetic, to language development. The spike in the creation of AI tools to help learning has already given some examples of success stories, and they may prove even more important for children with learning requirements of disabilities that would benefit from multi-media learning. For example, children with ADHD and autism may benefit from lessons that invoke visual and auditory displays to retain their attention. The incorporation of AI may aid with providing an interactive learning experience, where students can experiment by creating their own models and diagrams for subjects ranging from mathematics to the arts.
The company Seneca in the UK offers bite-sized lessons to around 6 million children from Year 9 to A-Levels that adhere to the diverse national curriculum, and uses machine learning to indicate when a lesson should be repeated for maximum retention in the children. This is based on the technique of spaced repetition, limiting the time children spend on lessons they already know, and creates a „memory-palace” across world locations. This company encourages school memberships, where children can earn points based on the lessons they do, and can encourage learning through friendly competition with other local schools. Teachers and parents can track progress and set homeworks, leading to a more standardised approach to education that can be compared.
As far as training students for jobs we cannot foresee or imagine yet, the best we can do is teach them to be flexible, adaptive, curious, and open-minded. All we ought to do is encourage children to retain their natural curiosity and ethusiasm about the world through high-quality teaching.
How can schools and educational systems foster an entrepreneurial mindset and encourage innovation among students?
Entrepreneurial skills can be encouraged when children are shown that mistakes are not the end of the creative process. Students should not be discouraged to make mistakes, as this is a core part of learning and creating something that withstands unpredictable circumstances.
How can educators promote critical thinking and creativity?
Critical thinking is developed first and foremost through ample reading. Reading alternative opinions can expose students to arguments they may not have considered. The second key part of developing critical thinking is through writing – writing gives the student time to hone their argument and to consider the strength of the evidence they are including. For example, the Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) supervision system includes writing essays that challenge the student to go beyond rote memorization of facts, but to construct a narrative out of thse facts and to evaluate it. In practice, this means that students are exposed to many theories and their supporting evidence, and in their own time, students are expected to read beyond the lecture materials (encouraging independent thinking) and to consider the strength of the arguments they are reading. The last stage of feedback is just as important, as critical thinking is a skill that is developed across many pieces of writing.
It is advised to break this skill down into steps to make it more manageable, and to focus on improsing steps individually to notice a difference. For example, this may look like learning how to extract the core argument from an article, and identify which parts are the author’s original contribution. This is importantly compounded by learning how to evaluate the relaibility and credibility of the source (e.g. Are the findings peer-reviewed? Are they refuted anywhere? What samples do they study? How generalizable are the findings?).
Lastly, the important thing to note about critical thinking is that sometimes there is no right answer, but considering all sides of a debate will lead to a more objective view of reality than simply taking one side as the truth.
Copyright portrait: Cristina Costea personal archive
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