Digitisation, Learning and Teaching for Sustainable Development: Curriculum, Cognition and Context in the Digital Age

This is the Digital Age: the world, countries within it, institutions, and thus people’s lives are being – and will, exponentially and largely unpredictably, continue to be – dramatically transformed by Digitisation.... [ view full abstract ]

This is the Digital Age: the world, countries within it, institutions, and thus people’s lives are being – and will, exponentially and largely unpredictably, continue to be – dramatically transformed by Digitisation. This has clear implications for learning and teaching for sustainable development. Indeed, the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals may be achieved only if we go beyond how best ICT should assist contemporary approaches to understanding and optimising how education should, through Digitisation, serve and help shape our ever-evolving world. The challenge is not to improve education in and for these times in developing countries – the necessity is to help them transform it, in their contexts, for all of our times.

This paper covers such themes as:

• The concept and implications of all educational institutions worldwide being fully networked and inter-connected;
• All learners in educational institutions worldwide achieving full internet and cloud participation by 2020;
• Digitisation offering a unique opportunity to redress historical imbalances and destroy the current digital divide with developing countries leapfrogging developed ones;
• Digitisation providing especial support for full educational participation for those in LDCs, fragile societies and countries in transition, and for women’s and girls, those with disabilities and members of disadvantaged groups;
• Emphasising Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) for mobile learning as opposed to the increasingly dysfunctional, ‘expensive hardware in computer rooms’ approach;
• Teachers becoming competent, cheerful concierges of learning with crucial, high-status roles in facilitating ‘education founded upon Digitisation’;
• – allowing  imaginations to soar cloud-wise and beyond while keeping both feet firmly  grounded; and Terms such as ‘education and ICT’ being recognised as redundant 20^th century relics: ‘education’ now means ‘education in the context of Digitisation’.