Making Connections

In the latest essay from our series on how to equip young people for a rapidly changing world, entrepreneur Ben Way argues that making connections is key. He notes “the challenge is to learn from the theory and make it work in reality. One way to do this is by ensuring children have more exposure to the real world at a younger age. They should spend time in businesses and the workplace to see what the world is really like.”

This view echoes current policy thinking and Government initiatives, such as the 14-19 reforms (including the introduction of the Diplomas, the review of the Framework for Career and Work-Related Learning 11-19, and Enterprise Education).

Ben’s essay raises a number of questions. In particular, what types of ‘real-life’ experiences encourage young people to develop the skills and attitudes necessary to succeed in the future? How do we ensure that the experiences provided are relevant, and encourage learning and reflection? In what ways can the system facilitate effective connections between young people and employers?

We are developing a strand of work that is exploring these questions. We believe that for young people to appreciate the challenges and opportunities that the future world of work will present, they need to become familiar with the ever-increasing variety of careers, ways of working and emerging sectors of the economy.

Working closely with the DCSF, we are developing projects that will test how to deliver work-related learning in a way that will provide this. To inform these pilots, we have commissioned some studies to examine how businesses in the creative industries, the third sector and rural economy can become more engaged in education in a way that will be mutually beneficial.

Another approach to making connections is through interdisciplinarity. The world of work is not compartmentalised into subjects, so why does the education system encourage young people to learn in this way? There are a number of projects attempting to address this. For instance, the Young Foundation’s Studio School programme aims to teach the National Curriculum through interdisciplinary, enterprise-themed projects with a strong focus on practical work and enterprise. NESTA’s Crucible programme offers early-stage researchers an opportunity to develop new collaborations across disciplines. Can such a programme be adapted for young people?

As always, I welcome your views on this and, in particular, on what is the most effective way of linking theory and practice to ensure that young people succeed in the future.

Comments

[Rachel Brazil]

hi Katherine,

interdisicplianrity in education is a difficult issue. Most academics feel that students need a good grasp on one disicpline before they atempt to work in an interdisciplianry way.

But there are issues about the over-specialisation of the UK education system. I was just yesterday speaking to someone at the Royal Society who is working on the new area of synthetic biology. This is a new field that is really taking off in the USA and combines the skills of engineering and biology to essential build biological systems from scratch.

The problem is that in the Uk our education is so narrow that there are very few researchers with enough basic knowledge of both fields and it looks like the Uk is going to be left behind in an important emerging research area.

[Tim Davies]

One of the key elements in Ben's story is that he was actively running his own projects at 14. He was able to use his lived experience to critique the theory he was being offered.

I've a similar experience (very similar when it comes to business studies classes... although I only made it was far as a 1/2 course at GCSE) of finding that it was being involved as an activist, in youth participation projects, in democratic engagement projects and running a small business that could being learning to life - and could allow me to own my own learning - rather than to learn simply in order to pass an exam.

Both the learning-whilst-working (note: not work-related-learning - just happening to be doing both at once), and the ownership of the work/project outcome are important here. Simply being in someone else's workplace - working on projects that 'belong' to someone else and in which I had no (emotional) investment or interest would have had a very different effect.

It would be worth exploring how funding like the Youth Opportunity Fund which encourages young people to run their own community projects has an impact on young people's learning - and whether the 'learning return' from giving cash direct to groups of young people to run projects beats the return from funding work-based learning placements in industry etc.

Look forward to hearing more on the blog about how this strand of your work progresses...

[Paul Sloane]

We need broader not deeper education in order to encourage innovation. Early specialisation is an impediment to seeing and exploiting ideas that cross disciplines. Many of the best innovations involve combinations from different areas. Unfortunately more youngsters are dropping sciences for 'easier' subjects. The challenge is to enable people to see possibilities beyond their core competence. Our education and business systems do not encourage this.