Abstract
Purpose
In response to contemporary global challenges in politics, economics, and technology, coupled with escalating uncertainties, there arises an imperative to reconstruct an innovative and dynamic education system centered around the advancement of human well-being and sustainable development.
Design/Approach/Methods
Drawing upon empirical data from reputable international organizations, such as the United Nations, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Bank, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), this study analyzes the uncertainties confronting world development. Furthermore, it elucidates the challenges and opportunities embedded in educational reform, delving into the complexities of contemporary uncertainties.
Findings
First, the enduring repercussions of the pandemic, including the persistent effects of “long COVID,” heightened geopolitical insecurities, repercussions of sluggish global economic growth, and challenges and opportunities posed by smart technology to economic and social development collectively contribute to an increasingly uncertain global landscape. Second, the inherent conservatism of the prevailing educational systems poses challenges in adapting to the evolving needs of social development. The uncertainty in economic and social development weakens societal support for educational reform, and a deteriorating labor market compels the re-evaluation of the education system rooted in industrialism, facing transformative challenges from generative artificial intelligence. Finally, recognizing the urgent need for revolutionary changes in human education, this study advocates for the expeditious reshaping of a new humanistic education paradigm.
Originality/Value
This study envisions a novel educational model capable of addressing the challenges posed by intelligent technology and emphasizes the creation of an open and dynamic education system by proposing a reconstruction of the education system oriented toward promoting human health and sustainable development. This study systematically examines the diverse uncertainties confronting human development, critically reflects on the inadequacies of the modern education system rooted in industrialism, and issues a cautionary call for the transition toward an intelligent education system.
In 2009, Ronald Heifetz and his colleagues posited that the world had entered an era of constant volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, commonly referred to as VUCA (Heifetz et al., 2009). Since then, the concept has been widely adopted in business, political, and social studies to depict the intricate and unpredictable nature of the current social landscape and the challenges faced by organizations. In 2020, during the collaborative authorship of the introduction to the Handbook of Education Policy Studies, entitled “Introduction: Education Policy and Reform in the Changing World,” with Professor Thomas S. Popkewitz of the University of Wisconsin–Madison (Fan & Popkewitz, 2020a, 2020b, pp. v–xx), we acknowledged that the flux in the contemporary world influences human survival and progress as well as the reform and development of education. However, a series of unforeseen major events unfolded, including the outbreak of the pandemic, the Russia–Ukraine conflict, and the exponential advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which heightened our awareness of the unprecedented influence they exerted on global politics, economy, culture, education, and people's livelihood and lifestyles. Certainly, the speed, scale, and depth of such influence are beyond imagination—be that my own or that of my fellow editor, contributing authors, and the community of researchers who have dedicated their attention to the VUCA phenomenon in contemporary society. In terms of human learning and education, growth and development, and work and everyday lives, such influence shakes the foundations of modern social organizations, human survival, and human lifestyles. It also upends the underpinnings of the modern education system established during the Industrial Revolution, fueling revolutionary changes in human education.
A world of increasing uncertainty
As the contemporary world progresses into an age of accelerated development, it encounters a confluence of rapid societal changes, heightened environmental dynamics encompassing global economic growth and volatility, political instability, and natural disasters, as well as escalating societal and structural instabilities. The complexity and volatility of societal factors, combined with an onslaught of unprecedented emergencies in areas such as politics, economics, and technology, have intensified the unpredictability of governmental, corporate, societal, and individual development, the difficulty of decision-making, and the elusiveness of future directions. For stakeholders, their interconnected relationships with one another and the environment are becoming increasingly complicated, while information and data that could shed light on these complex stakeholder interactions are becoming increasingly distorted and opaque. As a result, the information crucial for decision-making is muddled, inconsistent, and uncertain, exacerbating the already ambiguous and intricate connections between societal factors (Bennett & Lemoine, 2014; Doheny et al., 2012; Kok & van den Heuvel, 2019; Nandram & Bindlish, 2017, p. 4). In retrospect, recent years have witnessed significant transformations in socioeconomic development and daily life, including the impact of the pandemic, international political conflicts marked by the Russia–Ukraine conflict, global economic recession, and the subsequent labor market deterioration in general. All of these transformations have created an interactive and additive effect with the development of intelligence technology centered on generative AI, 1 shaping the overall survival and development of humanity by means of both organized control and modalities beyond control.
A rising trend of global insecurity
Bounded by a multitude of intricate factors, the trends of globalization and de-globalization have alternated since the advent of the first Industrial Revolution. Contemporary political relations are characterized by intricate complexities, as both trust among nations and regions and the international political order since the Second World War face an unprecedented crisis. Geopolitical transformations have accompanied the rise of localized conflicts and confrontations, primarily concentrated in regional hotspots. Shifts in the geopolitical landscape have been accompanied by escalating local conflicts and confrontations concentrated around regional hotspots, with the Russia–Ukraine conflict turning into a prolonged confrontation, the Middle East embroiled in multiple dilemmas, and increasingly complicated issues surrounding Asia-Pacific security. Amid mounting security risks, international relations in contemporary politics face their gravest challenge since the conclusion of the Second World War.
This prolonged conflict has sown internal divisions among European nations, contributed to the rise of right-wing powers, and has impacted energy costs and consumption. Indeed, the conflict-induced surge in energy prices has directly compelled energy-intensive firms in Europe to curtail or even halt their production, thereby unsettling the foundations of industries in France and Germany. This has deepened concerns regarding the risk of a “de-industrialized” Europe, engendering divergence, and heightened uncertainties in U.S.–European relations. In the Asia-Pacific region, the security situation on the Korean Peninsula is at substantial risk of further deterioration, while the multifaceted strategic maneuvering in the South China Sea continues to intensify. The ramifications of the protracted Russia–Ukraine conflict, particularly in terms of the energy crisis, may prompt Europe to prioritize economic globalization and multilateralism, commit itself to building a more stable and reliable multilateral supply chain system, and reaffirm its strategic autonomy in the pursuit of self-development and international standing.
In sum, the contemporary world is undergoing a transformation that entails intense and profound shifts in the international alignment and system. The collective interests, values, and aspirations that have been painstakingly forged over decades by numerous individuals are facing immense challenges—from the resurgence of a Cold War mentality and bloc politics, rising threats of unilateralism, trade protectionism, hegemony, and power politics, to prominent security and development concerns. Countries are sharply polarized on strategic ideologies, including their perceptions of the international order, geopolitical interests, and values. This is eroding the foundations of mutual strategic trust and ascribing an increasingly adversarial undertone to issues such as human rights and cybersecurity. As relations among major powers increasingly diverge, human society finds itself at a critical juncture. Under the sway of such dynamics, trade protectionism and the imposition of restrictions on science and technology exports have impeded the flow of scientific and technological knowledge between countries and regions, as well as collaboration and exchanges among students and researchers. The adverse repercussions on educational exchanges between countries and regions, study-abroad programs and international education, collaborative research, and the development of science and technology education are immeasurable. As such, there exists an urgent imperative to reconfigure the values of globalization, transcend the limitations and boundaries of existing paradigms, and restore a world order that respects differences while fostering mutual development.
Prolonged slowdown of global economic growth
Low economic growth, tighter financing conditions, and high debt ratios have further led to a decline in investment, triggering corporate debt defaults.
The global economy is under financial strain owing to several factors, including the recurrent devastation wrought by the pandemic and its enduring impacts, the Russia–Ukraine conflict and the resultant geopolitical tensions, ongoing disruptions in investment, trade, and other economic activities, the release of pent-up demand nearing its point of dissipation, and the gradual withdrawal of fiscal and monetary easing policies around the world. Affected by a chain of politico-economic factors, the global economy is entering a prolonged period fraught with heightened stagflation risks, characterized by simultaneous high inflation and low growth. Amid weakening growth in major economies, persistently sluggish global economic growth, high inflation, and supply chain disruptions (Cebr, 2023), the combination of sluggish growth, tightening financing conditions, and mounting debt ratios is poised to engender a further decline in investment and an uptick in corporate defaults. Emerging markets and developing economies and regions also face multiple headwinds as contractionary monetary policies and ever-tightening financing conditions weigh on economic growth. Consequently, trade spillovers stemming from a growth slowdown in developed economies will exert a particularly pronounced impact on the regions of East Asia, Pacific, Europe, and Central Asia, thereby detrimentally affecting middle- and low-income economies.
In January 2023, the World Bank forecast that global economic growth would decline drastically to 1.7%, its third weakest pace of growth observed in nearly three decades (The World Bank Group, 2023a). Growth in developed economies is projected to drop from 2.5% in 2022 to 0.5% in 2023. A decline of such magnitude is often a harbinger of global recession. Notably, the United States is predicted to witness a slowdown in economic growth, reaching a meager 0.5% in 2023, marking its worst-performing year in terms of economic growth outside officially declared recessions since 1970. In the euro area, growth is expected to remain stagnant at zero in 2023, reflecting a downward revision of 1.9 percentage points since the last forecast. In China, the economy is set to grow by 4.3% in 2023, 0.9 percentage points below previous forecasts. Furthermore, China is projected to achieve a growth rate of 4.3% in 2023, which is 0.9 percentage points below previous forecasts. As for emerging markets and developing economies, growth is projected to decelerate from 3.8% in 2022 to 2.7% in 2023 (The World Bank Group, 2023a). David Malpass, the President of the World Bank, has issued a warning regarding this subdued growth: “Subdued growth will likely persist throughout the decade because of weak investment in most parts of the world. With inflation now running at multi-decade highs in many countries and supply expected to grow slowly, there is a risk that inflation will remain higher for longer” (The World Bank Group, 2022). Persistently low economic growth will exacerbate a host of social issues, including poverty and inequality. As noted in the latest World Bank report, Emerging and developing countries are facing a multi-year period of slow growth driven by heavy debt burdens and weak investment as global capital is absorbed by advanced economies faced with extremely high government debt levels and rising interest rates. Weakness in growth and business investment will compound the already-devastating reversals in education, health, poverty, and infrastructure and the increasing demands from climate change. (The World Bank Group, 2023b)
Challenges and opportunities presented by artificial intelligence
In his seminal paper published in 1950, Alan Turing centered on the question, “Can machines think?” By proposing the Turing test, he posited the potential for creating a machine that possesses genuine intelligence (Turing, 1950). Building upon Turing's ideas, John McCarthy, Marvin Lee Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Elwood Shannon initiated a summer seminar at Dartmouth in 1956 to discuss topics surrounding how to imitate human intelligence with machines (McCarthy et al., 1955). The seminar became a seminal event in shaping the conceptualization of AI, the advent of AI-related disciplines, and the emergence of the AI revolution. Over the last seven decades, AI development has been on an uneven journey full of ebbs and flows. Since 2011, advancements in the Internet, big data, and deep learning technology have propelled AI shift from “weak AI,” also known as “narrow AI,” to “strong AI,” commonly referred to as “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) or “advanced human intelligence.” While the former focuses on imitating the human performance of basic tasks such as memorization, perception, and simple problem-solving, the latter endeavors to accomplish any intellectual task that human beings or other animals can undertake, employing similar problem-solving approaches. In 2016, a watershed in AI technology development ushered in the widespread application of discriminant/analytical AI, 2 including recommender systems, computer vision, and natural language processing, creating an enormous market for AI technology. As exemplified by ChatGPT, new and emerging generative AI solutions are poised to exert a profound influence on various facets.
In late November 2022, OpenAI, an AI research laboratory based in the United States, launched Chat Generative Pretrained Transformer or ChatGPT, a large language model leveraging the GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 frameworks to enhance its learning and training. By processing textual inputs, ChatGPT can automatically generate texts of a similar nature (e.g., scripts, songs, and proposals), produce automatic responses to user questions, and even generate and debug computer programs based on user prompts. Amassing a million users in the first 5 days and reaching 100 million users in the span of just 2 months, ChatGPT set off a global AI boom. OpenAI has since released regular updates to ChatGPT, incorporating new features such as visual input capabilities and ChatGPT Plugins, introducing a quantum leap in ChatGPT's text processing and advanced reasoning capabilities as well as support for the use of tools and web browsing. Furthermore, OpenAI has substantially expanded ChatGPT's knowledge base in specific domains such as science, medicine, and law, reducing the likelihood of generating inaccurate or irrelevant responses by 60%. With its remarkable capabilities spanning various fields, including customer service support, chatbot functionality, voice interaction, language translation, smart search, personalized recommendations, intelligent diagnostics, predictive analytics, decision support, and automatic text generation, ChatGPT has become an invaluable tool widely adopted by users seeking to enhance efficiency and productivity.
The revolutionary improvement in AI technology's productivity is because of the enormous scale of data accumulation and computations. However, issues such as data security and privacy protection, which have plagued the Internet since its creation, are inevitable and concomitant risks embedded in the foundation models of AI. Intellectual property (IP) protection provides an illustrative example of these concerns. ChatGPT, in its training process, relies on extensive open data and human feedback. Consequently, employing it for creative purposes raises the potential for disputes regarding IP ownership and copyright, particularly when content is used without the original creator's consent. In terms of plagiarism concerns, many educators worry about the likelihood of students leveraging ChatGPT to produce papers and complete assignments by replicating the academic output of others. As for privacy protection, the privacy of content submitted by individuals when interacting with ChatGPT may be inadequately protected. In late March 2023, news surfaced of ChatGPT suffering several major breaches, including losing users’ conversation data and payment details and leaking certain users’ chat histories owing to a bug in its open-source library. Reports even surfaced regarding the misuse and abuse of ChatGPT by the Korean company Samsung, which may have led to the storage of content such as semiconductor equipment measurement data and product yield within ChatGPT's learning database. On March 29, 2023, a notable collective, including Elon Reeve Musk, the CEO of Tesla, signed an open letter calling for the temporary suspension of the training of AI systems that are more powerful than GPT-4 for at least 6 months. The letter garnered over 18,000 signatories by April 9, promptly igniting fervent debates on the ethics and risks associated with AI across all walks of life (Bengio et al., 2023). Hailed as the “Godfather of AI” who nurtured the core technology underpinning chatbots like ChatGPT, Geoffrey Hinton resigned from Google to openly express his concerns over the potential perils and destructive implications of AI (Metz, 2023). In response to the breaches involving the loss of certain users’ data, the Italian Data Protection Authority (DPA) ruled that ChatGPT had infringed upon the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as well as local laws and regulations pertaining to user notification and the data collection approval process by conducting its operations in Italy and collecting and analyzing user data. Consequently, the DPA also banned the use of ChatGPT, imposed restrictions on its processing of Italian users’ data, and launched an investigation into the case. However, it is noteworthy that not all countries share the same stance on the issue. France's Digital Minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, remarked that although ChatGPT did not respect privacy laws, France would not ban it on the grounds of GDPR infringement. Instead, the country opted for a more moderate approach of “regulating innovation to ensure that it conforms to the principles we hold dear.” Barrot also asserted that France would review its November 2021 opinion on AI-based “dialogue agents” in light of ChatGPT, with particular emphasis on encouraging users to recognize the machine nature of these applications rather than trying to humanize them (Kayali, 2023).
The significant strides in AI technology and the development of ChatGPT elicit a host of profound inquiries: Is generative AI an angel or a devil to humankind? Is its influence a boon or a bane to the younger generation? How should the education sector respond to the revolutionary challenges it presents? All of these questions demand our utmost scrutiny and thoughtful consideration.
An education system beset by internal and external woes
The education system is an integral part of the social system, with the two being interdependent and yet mutually influential. Initially, in both the West and East, education was primarily a private matter, predominantly confined to individual families responsible for imparting practical knowledge, life experiences, and societal norms. Meanwhile, political and moral education was offered to a select few offspring of dignitaries with the goal of nurturing the state functionaries of the future. With the development of modern society, the institutionalized modern school system was established and refined, accompanied by the universalization of compulsory education. As a result, education and social life became progressively intertwined, interacting in increasingly frequent and complex ways (Enarson, 1967). Now, in an age of increasing uncertainty, the development of the education system is beset by both endogenous factors, including a deceleration in its rate of progress and significant exogenous challenges originating from the social environment. Consequently, the modern schooling system is increasingly becoming ill-equipped to effectively address the needs of social development.
Inherent conservatism in the schooling system hinders its ability to adapt to the changing needs of social development
As a subsystem within society, the education system, and the schooling system in particular, has inherently exhibited a conservative nature since its inception. Such conservatism is naturally and tightly interwoven with the knowledge transmission function of education. The education system holds the responsibility of imparting traditional values, with one of its core functions being the repetition and preservation of knowledge across generations inherited from their predecessors. The education system holds the responsibility of imparting traditional values, with one of its essential functions being that of repetition—“to repeat to each generation the knowledge that the previous generations inherited from their forebears” (Faure et al., 1972, p. 57). Therefore, the system serves a self-perpetuating function and is by nature conservative, inward, backward, and imbued with considerable built-in inertia (Faure et al., 1972, p. 57). As they develop, school systems become increasingly organized, institutionalized, and complex structures on a systemic level. Consequently, the entire system has become enclosed and mechanical in nature. In terms of its relationship with the external world, institutionalized education has constructed firm boundaries through its standards and norms, rigorously separating itself from other subsystems—such as socioeconomic and industrial ones—or other forms of education, leaving it isolated and removed from any external force that could drive educational improvements. As a result, the system itself has become increasingly narrow and rigid over time. Internally, to maintain its stability and balance, the institutionalized education system has strictly regulated the transitions between different levels of schooling. However, this close-packed transitional relationship has hamstrung the interaction, improvement, and innovation of internal factors within schooling systems, spanning primary, secondary, tertiary, general, and vocational education. On the one hand, this self-organizing ability is an endogenous characteristic of the education system, enabling improvements in teaching efficiency and organizational management. Furthermore, this increasingly organized and institutionalized mechanism of evolution and its outcomes are constantly consuming and withering the internal organizational vitality of the education system, undermining its capacity for innovation and adaptation to external environmental changes. Indeed, the schooling system struggles to effectively meet the evolving developmental needs amid gradual changes in social development. Once social development accelerates—or, in the present case, when radical social transformation is ushered in by the development of AI technology that has shaken the technological foundations of the entire industrial system—the maladaptation of the schooling system to social developmental needs will grow increasingly prominent.
Uncertain socioeconomic development diminishes social support for education reforms and development
The global economic recession triggered by the pandemic, coupled with iterative upgrades of the technological foundations of industrial development, has precipitated a sharp cut in tax revenue and an increase in budget deficits, presenting a major challenge to investment in education. While developed countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France have experienced notable impacts, the consequences have been even more devastating for educational development in low-income countries. Amid the pandemic, leading countries took active steps to counter the impact of lockdowns and restrictions on the education system and address the sudden increase in demand for digital learning tools and online education, often involving the allocation of emergency funding to scale up investments in education. However, these investments proved insufficient in offsetting the budgetary cuts necessitated by the economic downturn and reduced tax revenue. Moreover, they fell short of effectively addressing the long-term effects of the pandemic on the education sector. For the 2020–2021 academic year, at least 25 states in the United States drastically cut their education budgets, with some states instituting cuts of up to 10%. According to the Education Finance Watch 2022, a joint report published by the World Bank and UNESCO (2022), two-thirds of low- and lower-middle-income countries have cut their public education budgets since the outbreak of the pandemic. Disturbingly, a quarter of surveyed countries lacked plans to help children compensate for the knowledge lost owing to the pandemic, while another quarter lacked any adequate strategies for educational catch-up (Economist, 2022).
Overall deterioration of the labor market forces education reforms
The confluence of geopolitical tensions, uneven recovery from the pandemic, and the global economic recession have deteriorated the overall condition of the labor market. In 2020, the global employment rate dropped by 4.7 percentage points compared with that of 2019. Although employment improved with the gradual waning of the pandemic, global employment growth is projected to be just 1% in 2023, less than half the level recorded in 2022. According to an International Labor Organization (ILO) forecast (2023), amid the decline in global employment growth, the number of unemployed individuals is expected to increase slightly to 205 million in 2023, corresponding to a global unemployment rate of 5.8%. Meanwhile, the quality of employment is also trending downward. The global economic slowdown is compelling more workers to accept lower-quality and lower-paying jobs lacking job security or social protection, underscoring the inequalities inflamed by the pandemic—a dire situation for all, but especially for women and young people in the labor market. The prospects of the labor market in 2023 are marked by stark disparities: While employment growth in Africa and the Arab States is expected to be around 3% or more, it is estimated to be around just 1% in the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Meanwhile, Northern America is poised to witness minimal to no employment growth and a simultaneous rise in the unemployment rate in 2023 (ILO, 2023, p. 4).
A healthy labor market will absorb workers with varying levels of expertise and experience to different degrees while effectively aligning skills with job requirements. Economic expansion will subsequently narrow the longstanding socioeconomic disparities between the privileged and the marginalized. Meanwhile, in an increasingly knowledge-based global economy, the demand for highly skilled talents is expected to intensify. However, as low-skilled individuals are more susceptible to the risk of unemployment during prolonged periods of economic downturn, the ongoing economic recession combined with the ramifications of the pandemic will likely exacerbate existing employment disparities between the advantaged and disadvantaged. Moreover, with the increasingly sophisticated commercialization of generative AI, the demand for knowledge-based talents may experience a decline, compounding labor market woes.
Indeed, according to a recent survey by Sortlist Data Hub, the extensive use of generative AI is expected to catalyze a wave of layoffs, with employment decisions varying across occupations and age cohorts. Among the respondents, 39% expressed concerns that replacing human customer service with ChatGPT would lead to a loss of human touch in interpersonal communication, resulting in robotic and apathetic conversations incapable of establishing true emotional connections with customers (Gaëlle, 2023). Further insights presented in a research report by Goldman Sachs, Hatzius et al. (2023) revealed that if generative AI truly fulfills its performance promises, it will completely disrupt the labor market and replace the equivalent workload of 300 million full-time employees across all major economies in the world, with lawyers and administrative staff at the highest risk of being displaced. In the United States alone, approximately 63% of all jobs and 30% of outdoor and manual work would be affected, and are likely to witness some form of automation of their job content. As developing countries possess a higher proportion of manual labor in their workforce, around one-fifth of jobs worldwide are at risk of being replaced by AI. In the United States and Europe, two-thirds of jobs would be affected by AI automation, with most having nearly half of their workload replaced by automation. According to Hatzius et al. (2023), “roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation,” with generative AI potentially substituting as much as one-quarter of current work. These changes are prompting education administrative bodies, school administrators, and the wider community of teachers to ponder the question: What kind of education does future society need? In other words, we need to reassess and determine where the future of education reforms and development lies.
Generative AI presents revolutionary challenges to the industrialism-based education system centered on teaching definite knowledge
Initiated in the 1760s, the Industrial Revolution was driven by the advancement and application of natural sciences, promoting the development of modern science and technology in turn. Scientific and technological development has given rise to updated productive technology that boosts productivity. Moreover, it has also imposed higher demands on the cultural literacy of workers in large-scale industrial production, thereby stimulating the evolution and widespread availability of education. For more than two centuries, the development of natural sciences has facilitated improvements in the productivity and scientific capabilities of society while driving schools to constantly renew their curricula and teaching contents and enhance both teaching and learning efficiency. As a result, schools have become the primary platform for imparting knowledge, skills, and values crucial for human survival, development, and success, making them a pivotal instrument in advancing the development of social production and progress. By supplanting the family as the primary locus of education, schools began offering a near-exhaustive array of programs related to practical knowledge, with scientific and technological knowledge converted into standardized and definite school curricula with inherent logical connections. Such knowledge is transmitted to students through centralized class-based instruction, eventually generating “mass-producing” graduates with a good grasp of modern scientific and technological knowledge who can adapt to and promote industrial production.
However, the global development of education has been characterized by significant regional disparities, leading to unsatisfactory educational progress in certain areas. Indeed, the glittering facade of a universal education boom has masked the fact that the quality of education is frequently subpar. Peripherally, significant strides have been made in education. Globally, at least 85% of contemporary adults have been educated, compared to approximately 50% in 1950. Between 2000 and 2018, the proportion of school-age children not yet enrolled in school fell from 26% to 17%. However, recent reports have revealed an unsettling truth: Despite attending school for several years, a significant number of students have made minimal educational progress. According to a 2019 statistical report by the World Bank, in developing countries—home to 90% of children worldwide—only 50% of 10-year-old children were able to read and comprehend a simple story upon completion of primary school (Economist, 2022).
With the advance of society, the prevailing educational practices, which primarily revolve around the transmission of definite knowledge, have caused school curricula to become notably detached from the needs of social development. Consequently, students trained via the schooling system are ill-equipped and lack the essential skills and knowledge necessary to thrive in and adapt to contemporary workplace environments. The prevailing schooling system is struggling to keep up with the pace of contemporary social, political, economic, technological, and cultural development. Simultaneously, generative AI has far surpassed humans in terms of its capacity to memorize, filter, comparatively analyze, integrate, and structurally express definite knowledge, upon which the modern education system was established. Focused on imparting definite knowledge, AI is undermining the foundations on which the modern education system was built and upon which its survival depends. As the widespread application of generative AI becomes an unstoppable trend permeating all aspects of social production and everyday life, the type of talents required by society are no longer those whose strengths lie in the acquisition and retention of definite knowledge but those who can creatively convert and apply such knowledge to solve a diverse range of practical problems.
Most schools still impart knowledge via the highly traditional means of lecture-based instruction and rote learning. In pursuit of the “effectiveness” of learning, teachers are also constantly subjecting students to reinforcement learning, which serves to improve their performance in “reproductive” examinations through ongoing and repeated training. Unfortunately, these practices have considerably dampened students’ interest, creativity, and enthusiasm to learn. Meanwhile, although some teachers are passionate about integrating new technologies into education, the schooling system itself remains a weak link in terms of leveraging digital and intelligence technology to achieve substantive improvements in its key practical activities. Besides possessing disparities in access to digital and intelligence technology facilities, equipment, and devices, schools also lag in areas such as technology integration in classrooms and enhancing learning and teaching experiences through the utilization of innovative technologies (Gray & Lewis, 2021; Minchekar, 2019). As a result, rigid and monotonous learning and educational approaches are on the verge of obsolescence.
Reconfiguring the education system to promote health and sustainable human development
“We must learn to live with uncertain times and unsettled lives …” a recent UN report concluded, “Unlocking our human potential will require us to let flexibility, creativity, solidarity and inclusion guide us to imagine and create futures in which we thrive” (Conceição, 2022, p. 191). In the VUCA era, both individuals and organizations are compelled to harness the potential of more versatile and innovation-capable technologies, methods, strategies, and development models to adapt to and survive in a constantly changing environment. In his discourse on the value of culture, anthropologist Murphy (1989, p. 2) asserted that embracing and practicing culture would reduce the uncertainty in interpersonal communication to the lowest level possible. Education serves a similar function in fostering individual literacy, ensuring that they possess the attitude, will, and abilities necessary to navigate diverse social uncertainties. Despite its disruptive impact on humanity's patterns of survival and development, the uncertainty associated with a fast-changing environment presents opportunities in terms of innovation, growth, and competitive advantages (Bennett & Lemoine, 2014; Kok & van den Heuvel, 2019; Nandram & Bindlish, 2017, p. 6). Noting that education is “engaged in preparing men for a type of society which does not yet exist,” Faure et al. (1972, p. 13) asserted, “At a time when the mission of education should be to train ‘unknown children for an unknown world,’ the force of circumstances demands that educationists do some hard thinking and that in so doing they shape the future.” Therefore, we must reform and innovate the education model while striving to build a world in which “education precedes”—advocating for the prioritization of education development over economic development (Faure et al., 1972, p. 12). A new education system, order, and ecology centered on promoting healthy and sustainable human development must be constructed so that we can be morally and intellectually prepared to address a variety of uncertainties.
Reshaping neo-humanistic education
In such a complex and rapidly changing social environment, it is imperative for education to undergo transformation to achieve the desired future (UNESCO, 2021, p. 7). As both a basic human right and fundamental tool for fostering social equality, quality education, including early childhood education, is “a prerequisite for young people to be equipped to exercise their voice and contribute to the social contract, and a foundation for tolerance, peace, human rights, and sustainability” (The United Nations, 2021, p. 40). Consequently, educational reform focusing on quality education essentially involves reconfiguring the values of new humanistic education. Such reform must transcend the narrow confines of economic considerations and reinstate a return to the human-centric values of education while constructing a novel social contract in education that is founded on the principles of understanding, trust, and cooperation.
Reconfiguring the values of education to go beyond economism and return to human-centered education
From Schultz's (1963) macro-level estimation that human capital formed by education contributed to around 33% of the U.S. national income growth between 1929 and 1957 to Becker's (1993) micro-level argument regarding the relationship between human capital and personal income distribution, the discourse surrounding human capital theory has always highlighted the economic value of education. Despite stimulating growth in education investments in some countries and regions, the “economic man” assumption underpinning human capital theory focuses on the human “rationality” of chasing economic benefits and prioritizes the instrumental value of education. Regrettably, this emphasis often overlooks the ethical, sentimental, and aesthetic sensitivities inherent in human nature.
In 1997, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international assessment that measures the knowledge and skills essential for participating in society among 15-year-old students. By analyzing students’ test results, personal characteristics, and the relationships between key factors shaping their learning within and beyond school walls, PISA aims to identify the variations in student performance across diverse backgrounds, schools, and education systems of various types. In doing so, it identifies the characteristics of schools and education systems capable of achieving high-performance levels and providing an equitable distribution of learning opportunities, thus guiding national education reforms around the world. PISA has had an extensive and profound influence on leading countries, forming a model of digital governance based on governing through data or indicators (Bogdandy & Goldmann, 2012). The OECD has thus been hailed as the “arbiter of global education governance” (Meyer & Benavot, 2013, p. 9), which has indisputably reinforced the instrumentality of education.
However, there are staunch critics of the attitude and approach espoused by PISA. As Nussbaum (2010) asserts, Thirsty for national profit, nations, and their systems of education, are heedlessly discarding skills that are needed to keep democracies alive. If this trend continues, nations all over the world will soon be producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticize tradition, and understand the significance of another person's sufferings and achievements. (p. 2)
Reconfiguring a new contract in education based on collective interests and centered on understanding, trust, inclusion, and cooperation
In an age inundated with ideas of de-globalization, the international order is at a particularly challenging historical juncture. As UNESCO (2021, p. 136) noted, “International educational cooperation operates within an increasingly precarious world order with the notion of a world society anchored in common universal values profoundly eroded.” In the words of Achim Steiner, Administrator of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP): “In a world defined by uncertainty, we need a renewed sense of global solidarity to tackle our interconnected, common challenges” (UNDP, 2022). International society has actively worked to promote a multipolar world and the democratization of international relations. It aims to transcend differences and limitations, advocating for a stable, reciprocal, open, and progressive trajectory. This pursuit necessitates the practice of genuine multilateralism, fostering global peace, stability, and prosperity. There is an urgent need to promote sustainable human development by creating a new social contract centered on inclusion, cohesion, and accountability and fostering the free global movement of commodities, finance, people, and ideas based on an entirely new notion of globalization: namely, inclusive globalization (Gacitúa-Marió et al., 2009, p. 46).
Various approaches and interpretations of inclusive globalization exist among different organizations. While the RAND Corporation approaches inclusive globalization as shared prosperity (Kumar, 2021), Carnegie Europe has narrowed the discussion to “globalization for an inclusive world” (Carnegie Europe, 2022). The Shanghai Forum 2023 had featured in-depth interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral discussions on the theme “Inclusive Globalization: Asia's New Responsibilities” from a diverse range of perspectives, including changes in international alignment and geopolitics, advancements in high-technology development, global economic recovery, digital transformation, climate change, public health, fusion and mutual learning between Eastern and Western civilizations and cultures, and drivers of national development (Fudan Development Institute, 2023). Fundamentally, inclusive globalization can be understood as a cultural perspective grounded in respecting and valuing differences. It is inclusive in maintaining cultural diversity, the premise on which it promotes understanding and mutual trust and seeks shared development, prosperity, and peace. It also advocates respect for individual development models—promoting the exploration of diverse development pathways in line with specific contexts, local traditions, and developmental realities and encouraging different pathways to converge freely. It involves inclusion in such a way as to support mutual development—upholding the ideologies of “openness and inclusion” and “equality and reciprocity” as well as the principles of “extensive consultation,” “joint contribution,” and “shared benefits”; embracing equal participation in construction and development; and addressing global survival and developmental problems through consultation. It also involves eliminating poverty and improving livelihoods. In this regard, inclusive globalization takes low-income and disadvantaged groups into consideration, helps underdeveloped regions improve their living conditions, achieves interconnectivity, and creates diverse opportunities for development. Finally, inclusive globalization pertains to sustainable development. Moreover, it harbors a shared concern for environmental issues, advances ecological civilization, and espouses harmonious coexistence and balanced development between man and nature (Fudan Development Institute, 2023).
Education reforms rooted in inclusive globalization necessitate a deep and advanced approach to education for an improved international understanding—a notion championed and promoted globally by UNESCO since 1946—while constantly initiating educational exchanges and collaboration targeted at adolescents. Education for international understanding aims to facilitate understanding between individuals across diverse cultural backgrounds, races, religious beliefs, countries, and regions, as well as promote the appreciation and respect for the differences and diversity of cultures and societies. By enabling a better understanding of the world, such education is intended to help individuals understand themselves and others, foster their mutual trust, recognition, tolerance, and inclusion, and encourage the seeking of common ground while respecting individual differences. For children and adolescents, such education should elucidate our common interests and values, increase global awareness, foster a sentimental concern for the shared development of humanity, and heighten feelings of solidarity and shared responsibility for our common future (UNESCO, 2015, p. 38). Education premised on inclusive globalization will also equip individuals with an open mindset and an international outlook, educating them on the fundamental value of interdependency in the collective effort to resolve major common problems in global society as well as of human survival and development itself.
The future of our world rests in the hands of children and adolescents. Therefore, it is imperative that their growth and development be guided by education and knowledge, both matters of common global interest. As such, it is necessary to abolish ideas, thoughts, policies, and actions that restrict or block educational exchanges and collaboration owing to economic competition and ideological differences. Instead, efforts should focus on initiating bilateral and multilateral exchanges, expanding the scope of study-abroad programs, and facilitating the active participation of children and adolescents in cross-cultural exchanges. A diverse range of cultural and educational exchange activities should be organized to help the younger generation improve their abilities to communicate across cultures and fulfill the duties and responsibilities of a global citizen, understand the progress of human civilization and global development trends, and concern themselves with the global challenges they face. As a result, future generations will be able to confront, contemplate, and resolve survival and developmental challenges collectively through mutual aid and cooperation, protecting the world while fostering sustainable human development.
Constructing a new education model in response to challenges from intelligence technology
Intelligence technology is challenging the industrialism-based education system focused on teaching definite knowledge. Indeed, from the “3Rs” of education (i.e., reading, writing, and arithmetic), a model refined to equip workers with the basic know-how in modern science and technology required by industrial development to post-Sputnik education—the U.S. effort to enhance mathematics, natural sciences, and foreign language education in response to the launch of satellites by the Soviet Union in the late 1950s—the tenets of traditional education are being undermined. At the turn of the millennium, countries and international organizations that are predicting and depicting the future of education (e.g., Rychen & Salganik, 2001, 2003; Rychen et al., 2003; Salganik et al., 1999) sought to answer tricky questions surrounding the classic “what” and “how” of learning/teaching in relation to education reforms and development—such as “What knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values will today's students need to thrive and shape their world in 2030? “ and “How can instructional systems develop these knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values effectively?” (OECD, 2018).
In 2021, UNESCO released a comprehensive report titled “AI and Education: Guidance for Policy-Makers” (Miao et al., 2021) with the aim of equipping decision- and policy makers with the necessary knowledge to formulate effective AI-based education policies. This report sheds light on the potential opportunities and challenges that may arise from the integration of AI technology in education, as well as the essential competencies that society needs to cultivate in the AI era. Evidently, for numerous international organizations and countries, the development and the use of digital education content have become an important option for the digital transformation and reform of education in response to the challenges posed by AI. During the 2022 Transforming Education Summit, UNESCO kickstarted a program called “Gateways to Public Digital Learning” (GPDL) in conjunction with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) (UNESCO & UNICEF, 2022), calling on countries to establish and iteratively improve digital learning platforms, provide high-quality and curriculum-aligned education resources, and ensure the accessibility, free access, openness, and sharing of digital education resources. Countries were also urged to respect the diversity of languages and learning methods and satisfy the diverse educational needs of different communities while ensuring users’ privacy and data security. While the construction of environmental and physical infrastructure, such as digital education content, digital technology, and intelligent and virtual spaces, is crucial, we now face even greater challenges owing to the widespread application of generative AI. Here, one of the most direct challenges is the need to rethink the education system and construct new education methods, mechanisms, and models to “reskill people whose jobs are taken by computer algorithms” (Lynch, 2017).
Shifting from knowledge-based to competency-based education
We face unprecedented challenges. While the future is uncertain and unpredictable, challenges elicit new opportunities for development. We should be open to and ready for such opportunities and prepare ourselves for future technologies and problems we cannot anticipate (OECD, 2018). As a result of its iterative upgrading and growing sophistication, generative AI outpaces human intelligence in its capacity to store, filter, comparatively analyze, and logically express knowledge. Therefore, schools must reform themselves conceptually to overcome the boundaries of knowledge-based education and shift from imparting definite knowledge to promoting critical thinking and creativity. They also have to train students’ awareness of “transformative competencies,” including the ability to adapt to changes, reconcile multiple conflicting values, discipline themselves, and reflect upon their own actions (OECD, 2019). All creative human activities stem from questioning and negating existing experiences, conclusions, and cognitive patterns. Schools should review their knowledge systems in tune with the needs of social development, relinquish curriculum-building models based on systematic knowledge, and reconstruct a curriculum system that promotes individuals’ thinking, creativity, and the transformative application of knowledge in different social scenarios. They should also develop hands-on and problem-based teaching activities that encourage student participation and stimulate their thinking while building a new education model centered on teaching that promotes thinking and creativity. The latter should focus on fostering students’ abilities to make choices, process digital information, transform and apply knowledge, and learn, as well as their creative, inventive, and innovative awareness, spirit, and capabilities.
It is vital that school education solidify students’ cognitive bases in reading, computing, and digital and data literacy. That said, problem- and scenario-based educational activities must also respect students’ curiosity and bolster and nurture their critical thinking. Doing so will enable them to actively, continuously, dialectically, and granularly compare and analyze, contemplate, reflect on, and discern concepts, experience, knowledge, and inferred conclusions, as well as the reasoning and logical arguments substantiating or supporting such conceptions, experience, and knowledge. As a result, students can acquire advanced skills that transcend the needs of routine work, placing them in a position where they cannot be replaced by AI. Such education will also enhance their abilities to solve problems, create new values, and develop thinking paradigms, habits, and actions that lead to new knowledge, insights, ideas, technologies, strategies, and solutions. This will help students balance diversified values, interests, and needs using systematic and comprehensive thinking and actions and better reconcile tensions and dilemmas. Moreover, through the constant reinforcement of self-regulation and self-control, students will develop the desire, ability, and resolve to take risks and learn from failures, thus enhancing their sense of responsibility and self-efficacy, risk-assessment and problem-solving abilities, and ethical responsibility to face the consequences.
Empowering learning and teaching with intelligence technology
Technological advancement is a key driver of education reforms. With the development of emerging technologies like the Internet, mobile communications, big data, cloud computing Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, metaverse, and AI, the application of information technology in education has long moved beyond the developmental stages of computer-aided instruction (CAI), computer-assisted learning (CAL), teaching process evaluation enabled by computer software and hardware, and the construction of digital teaching resources. With the iterative upgrades and cluster breakthroughs of digital, network, intelligence, and diverse and collaborative technologies, AI technologies—such as voice recognition, image identification, machine reading comprehension, and knowledge graph—are gaining increasingly extensive applications in education. Although this has exposed school education to a series of challenges, it has also opened up new possibilities for the transition from education to learning and the development of personalized learning. Despite the fact that the technology behind artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC) is flawed—with a list of shortcomings and risks that include biased Internet data, lack of human emotions, and adverse impacts on students’ independent learning and thinking—the widespread application of generative AI is undeniable, as exemplified by the popularity of ChatGPT. Our only option is to continuously optimize AI through technological innovation and iterative upgrades while enhancing its ethical, legal, institutional, and policy configuration and regulating its ethical applications in different settings. Meanwhile, using AI to empower learning and education and to advance education reforms and development is a key direction for current and future education reforms and development.
AIGC utilizes algorithmic technologies such as natural language processing, machine learning, and deep learning in AI to analyze, learn, and simulate a large amount of language data for natural language understanding and generation. In education settings, its further integration with digital humans to develop more intelligent and human-like virtual and digital teaching assistants will become increasingly extensive. With the development and application of virtual experimental learning scenarios based on virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and metaverse, education and learning will become increasingly situational, interactive, and experiential, allowing students to experience and explore complex experimental processes and their underlying rationale. As the AIGC technology continues to advance, more personalized content generation may be realized to satisfy the personalized learning needs of teachers and students. Continuous technological improvements in multimodal content generation involving texts, images, videos, and other media will also significantly expand the applications of AIGC in educational settings and stimulate engagement in learning. As technologies generating human–machine dialogues grow increasingly intelligent, AIGC-powered dialogue with users based on the analysis and learning of users’ language data will become more natural and seamless. As a result, the efficiency and quality of human–machine interactions will drastically improve. Owing to ChatGPT's high popularity among users, several teachers and researchers are now regularly using its large language model to edit manuscripts and help them check codes, write speeches, and design examination papers. As Stokel-Walker and Van Noorde (2023) note, “Many people are using [ChatGPT] as a digital secretary or assistant.” A future in which students learn, work, and play alongside AI systems is likely to become a living reality. Schools and educators need to open their minds to this likelihood and stay abreast of the times by tracking and studying the frontiers of intelligence technology development, stepping up to the challenges it poses, and conducting comprehensive research on the advantages and disadvantages of ChatGPT with respect to information integration, computing, and expression. Schools must turn this crisis into an opportunity to deepen and improve teaching and use ChatGPT as a teaching aid to offer personalized services (Roose, 2023).
It is likely that AIGC will gain widespread applications in seven educational settings: personalized teaching and learning, online Q&A and counseling, student assessment, teacher support, emotional support, language learning, and resource sharing. First, in terms of personalized teaching and learning, natural language processing will be adopted to understand questions raised by teachers and students and rapidly generate and provide relevant learning resources and personalized learning advice and guidelines based on their areas of interest, teaching and learning styles, as well as students’ cognitive levels, learning abilities, and personalized needs. It will also be used to create personalized learning experiences, enhance the efficiency and quality of learning and teaching, and offer examples and solutions for problem-solving. Second, with respect to online Q&A and counseling, AIGC technology will enable students to ask questions and receive immediate responses anytime, as well as provide access to a variety of counseling services and support, including help with questions on subject knowledge, guidelines on learning methods, and formulation of learning plans. Third, in student assessment, AIGC will be used to assess student performance in various ways, such as tests and questionnaire surveys, to provide teachers with a better understanding of their learning progress and needs. Fourth, in terms of teacher support, AIGC can help teachers enhance their teaching efficiency and quality by providing them with a range of support services facilitating their group-based lesson preparations, teaching research activities, and personalized teaching, including the sharing of teaching resources, guidelines on teaching methods, support in marking homework, suggestions for curriculum planning, and analysis of student feedback. Fifth, AIGC can be utilized effectively to provide emotional support, including psychological consultations, emotional support, and other services that can help students overcome obstacles in learning and everyday life. Sixth, for language learning, AIGC can build a language environment in which natural language processing is used to understand and offer real-time feedback to students, effectively addressing students’ needs and questions related to different aspects of learning a new language, such as language exercises, situational dialogues, grammar tips, and vocabulary tests. Finally, with respect to resource sharing, AIGC can offer teachers and students a platform for sharing a variety of learning resources—including instructional videos, courseware, and test questions—to facilitate their teaching and learning.
Building an open and dynamic education system
Given its increasingly closed-off and stable nature, the schooling system is facing challenges from both external forces, such as the Internet and intelligence technology and the need for the institutionalized system to overcome its closed and mechanical nature through internal governance reforms. We must liberate the institutionalized system from the shackles of its own closedness and create a system of ubiquitous learning to build an open and dynamic education system. Also known as “u-learning,” ubiquitous learning involves the integration of school, home, and social education and blended online/offline learning. It is also imperative that we overcome the detrimental internal compartmentalization and division within the institutionalized schooling system and establish an integrated and coherent system of lifelong learning. Most importantly, we need to modernize the governance of education to inject vitality into school development and promote the healthy and sustainable development of education.
Liberating the institutionalized system from its own closedness and creating a system of u-learning involving the integration of school, home, and social education and blended online/offline learning
Schooling systems must be open and socially forward to ensure that they can equip individuals with the ability to adapt to social development and promote the healthy and sustainable development of the system itself. However, institutionalization has compounded the inherent closedness of the schooling system. The abundance of data and resources available online, the diversity of specialized online education resources like virtual schools and MOOCs, and different types of intelligence technologies have made off-campus learning an objective possibility and provided opportunities for opening up the schooling system. This opening-up is unfolding in the social and technological dimensions.
First, in the social dimension, promoting the integration of school, home, and society (or community) education in a synergistic way has become a pragmatic need to achieve healthy, holistic, and sustainable human development. A dynamic schooling system requires support from the social system and ultimately serves society through the individuals it has nurtured. In a fast-changing society, shifts in the economic and industrial structure result in rapidly changing demands on human literacy. However, regardless of the desire for reform or the number of reform strategies, in an increasingly stable and overly conservative schooling system, it is nearly impossible to realize the visions of social adaptability and sustainable human development. Propelled by advancements in scientific and technological innovation and the upgrading of economic and industrial technologies and structures, the schooling system is in dire need of reform. In this regard, the schooling system must establish a sound mechanism to reform and innovate itself; a solid prediction-reaction mechanism for scientific and technological innovation, economic development, industrial restructuring, and social progress; a sharing mechanism of experience; as well as a mechanism for attracting talents to engage social forces in education.
Second, in the technological dimension, u-learning has been popularized by everyday learning environments supported by digital learning technologies and devices, such as mobile communications, the IoT, intelligent teaching/learning software, and intelligent learning terminals (Ogata et al., 2009). Such environments provide learners with real-time learning resources and promote interactions (Hwang et al., 2008). Blended online/offline learning allows learners to choose their own specialized online learning platforms and educational resources, such as virtual schools and MOOCs. It also enables brick-and-mortar schools to make students’ learning and development more convenient by purchasing online education resources. Such developments are eroding the institutionalized schooling system, in which the “who,” “when,” “where,” and “what” of learning are fixed. There is a burgeoning trend of u-learning, which is premised on the notion that anyone can use any device to learn any content anytime, anywhere. The immediacy and individuality of learning are redefining education, and learning is taking place everywhere and at every moment.
Overcoming the detrimental effects of internal compartmentalization and division within the institutionalized schooling system and establishing an integrated and coherent system of lifelong learning
Traditional institutionalized education divides an individual's life into three stages: education, work, and retirement. In the first stage, various levels and types of education (schools) are disconnected from one another owing to their increasingly organized and institutionalized nature. This compartmentalized and divided education system leads to the artificial fragmentation of the education process. Lifelong learning is defined as “all learning activity undertaken throughout life, with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competencies within a personal, civic, social and/or employment-related perspective” (Commission of the European Communities, 2001). Building an integrated and coherent system of lifelong learning requires redesigning and constructing a complete education system and its various components based on the philosophy of lifelong education to ensure its continuity and interconnectivity. This means that learning can no longer be dichotomized into the place and time to acquire knowledge (i.e., school, workplace) (Fischer, 2000). It also infers the coherent continuity between primary, secondary, and tertiary education in terms of format and content, the bridging of general and vocational education, and the interaction and integration between formal, non-formal, and informal learning. 3 Moreover, learning permeates the entirety of humanity's ongoing exploration of the unpredictable world. How humans acquire knowledge, shape their thinking, and build capacities in each stage (setting) set the foundation for their future learning and development and play a guiding role in their lifespan development.
Modernizing education governance to inject life and vitality into school development and promote the healthy and sustainable development of education
While the rigid and mechanical property of the institutionalized education system is directly tied to its inherently organized, closed, and involuted nature, it is also closely interlinked with the control and intervention of powerful external forces such as governmental departments and education administration systems. In addition to being responsible for the appointment of school administrators and teachers and the selection of teaching materials, education administration systems with centralized power have the authority to intervene in the school curriculum, teaching processes, and other matters related to schooling. When implementing standards-based education reforms, uniform national standards threaten the local vitality of schools (Gittell, 1996). Therefore, to inject life and vitality into school development, governments, and education administrative bodies must first shift their functions in education management from that of control and regulation to leadership, service provision, and support on a macro level. To promote schools’ independent development, government and administration bodies should streamline administration and delegate more power to lower-level governments, cement schools’ operational autonomy at the legal, conceptual, and policy levels, and empower schools by expanding their autonomy through the delegation of power and authority. While on the receiving end of such delegation, schools should exercise their operational autonomy effectively through diverse participation and shared governance.
Injecting life and vitality into the internal development of schools is an important way of guaranteeing that the new generation is equipped with a capacity for innovation and addressing the challenges posed by uncertain times. With visionary and strategic leadership, education should embody a philosophy that advocates self-assurance, facilitates healing, fosters hope, upholds fairness, promotes collective efficacy, and ignites the vitality of every individual and school, thus spearheading the path to development (Mason et al., 2023). Bland et al. (2002) defined the vitality development of faculty and (educational) institutions (i.e., schools/colleges) as “efforts designed to facilitate faculty members’ commitment to and ability to achieve both their own goals and their institution's goals.” In this regard, teacher management and development are integral to school governance. In a sense, all creative behaviors and the effective conversion and application of their outcomes in various domains and scenarios rely on the freedom of exploration. Schools must cement teachers’ status as the pillars of the institution, optimize the school governance structure, progressively refine their consociational decision-making mechanism, encourage and support teachers, students, and employees to actively participate in their public affairs, and transform themselves into democratic schools. Active steps should also be taken to foster a relaxed, democratic, and free culture in schools. Teachers should be motivated to organize and engage in education and teaching actively and creatively. Meanwhile, schools should encourage innovation and embrace failure to create a world in which the talents and wisdom of teachers and students are cultivated, enabling the school to thrive with vitality and enthusiasm.
Concluding remarks: The responsibilities of education policy researchers
In a complex world full of uncertainty, being able to uphold the ideal of quality education that promotes human development and a shared life of happiness is admirable. However, the responsibilities and objectives of education policy researchers exceed such practices. Advocating for a form of education policy studies based on critical social theory, Prunty (1985) highlighted several shortcomings of educational policy analysis, including conceptual vagueness, the disregard for values and ethical issues, the implications of technical rationality for policymaking, and the failure of policy analysis to alleviate actual socio-educational problems effectively. Meanwhile, Leonardo (2004) contended that criticism serves a unique role in the search for and development of quality education, arguing that it cultivates students’ critical spirit, equips them with the ability to overcome various dilemmas, and promotes the interaction between individuals and society and the emancipation of both. Education policy researchers should examine the current realities of education reforms and social transformations through a critical lens based on the educational ideal they hold dear, pinpoint and confront the “real issues” of education reforms and development with shrewd academic acumen, and engage in critical analysis based on these “real issues.” Similarly, Weaver-Hightower (2008) called for educational policy analysis from a complexity perspective. Specifically, evidence-based research should be conducted based on various dimensions—such as human development, education reforms, and the impact of social systems on education systems and human survival and development—to systematically analyze why a certain “real issue” occurs in education and identify possible solutions and gaps in current education policies and education practices. By doing so, researchers can move beyond the critical standpoint to embrace a constructivist approach and seek educational policy strategies and practical pathways that can tackle the “real issue.” Education policy researchers should free themselves from the confines of the local perspective and seek international cooperation based on global interests in a concerted effort to provide intellectual support for catalyzing a new social contract for education (UNESCO, 2021, p. 136).
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (grant number VGA200001).
