Future teaching practice will look radically different from how it is today.

In the current learning model, the teacher combines knowledge curation with emotional care. I discuss the care-giving aspects in a previous post that explores 3 teaching archetypes.

The Internet increasingly centers learning around individual student interests. The premature success of online courses in the last decade anticipated dramatic shifts in learning. Millions of learners world over have access to a vast menu of prerecorded course content. Learning at scale has never been more varied, flexible and affordable.

But prerecorded online courses have been plagued with low completion rates, and enrollment decline. The discussion of online courses is beyond the scope of this article but from them we can glean useful insight to guide conduct in tomorrow’s classrooms.

As learning shifts towards curiosity-driven models, the teaching role will be split into two functions: 1The Expert Generalist, a facilitation role, and a socialization role — The Emotional Caregiver.

Orit Gadiesh describes The Expert Generalist as “someone who has the ability and curiosity to master and collect expertise in many different disciplines, industries, skills, capabilities, countries and topics…” The ability to synthesize new information from multiple disciplines will be an on-demand-skill for those who occupy future teaching roles.

The teacher of the future will be less of an encyclopedia and more of a facilitator. What this means is that generalist teachers will use their vast knowledge of different and seemingly unrelated subjects to spot patterns, connect dots and improvise solutions for difficult learning situations.

Teachers will cater to unique student needs. No two classrooms on the same level will look the same. Even individuals in the same classroom will pursue distinct learning paths based on their learning styles and study interests.

Knowledge and Change

Knowledge is the engine that drives change.

As rapid and dramatic events in the political, geographic, and social spheres collide, a knowledge explosion is witnessed. New branches of study emerge as older, distinct, fields coalesce. Like tributaries flowing into rivers the resulting seas of information will demand real-time sorting.

Teachers will augment computing power to classify new knowledge in ways that are accessible to the modern learner. Educators will surf endless waves of content creation to curate course material for their classrooms with a bias toward’s the quirks of every student. In this way, foundations will be laid for the kind of learning that not only embraces but also celebrates individual voices.

To evolve The Expert Generalist role, teachers will work with the insightful direction of The Emotional Caregiver to identify learning traits unique to every student. As the Generalist focuses on learning design, the Caregiver will help students develop emotional intelligence and social awareness: the main ingredients for nurturing a learning voice. The learning voice is the quirky combination of how individual learners synthesize new information, design their interior world, filter learning experiences and translate the results of their learnings.

Like a cement mixer, the mind of the future student will be trained to absorb disparate sources of information; experimenting with different proportions to produce concrete solutions.

How these teaching functions will mature remains to be seen. In the face of an increasingly complex and expanding knowledge landscape a lot is open to experimentation and reinterpretation.

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I borrow the idea of splitting the teaching role from David Perrel’s thoughts on Education and the future of Online Learning.

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Teachers of the Future: The Expert Generalist…