As mentioned in a previous article, the world’s education systems face the challenge of transforming to meet the needs of the knowledge economy. For global economic growth, its graduates must be able to get jobs or start their own businesses. There may be validity to the idea that education must remain somewhat separate from the needs of business, otherwise schools will become little more than factories churning out the people needed by industry. At the same time, the products from which education graduates are people, and people want to have work and employment, as well as enjoy not only survival, but also the luxuries they see others enjoying.

This is the second in a series of articles on the challenges and potential changes facing education in the 21st century. The obvious direct approach to preparing people of all ages for a new job is to teach them that job. This has led educators to see education in two directions: one, the academic one that teaches students to think, process ideas, solve problems and be scientific. The other alternative track was driven by calling. This often implied a somewhat “less than” status for vocational work. The students were assigned to go one way or another. The modern world is less compartmentalized than that, and seeing a vocation or academics as two separate ways of being will no longer work. The modern employee or entrepreneur is required to maintain many of the same skills as the academic. Everyone needs to research information, organize it to meet the needs of their particular context, publish it in digital and non-digital formats, and be prepared to engage in active discussion about the ideas they are working with. This is as true for a group of merchants as it is for teachers, managers, business owners. The disconnect is that while some of these skills may be developed during group work or project-based learning, most of the world still learns in classrooms with rows of desks, a teacher in front, and students taking notes like crazy. and prepare to regurgitate the contents. be handed over to them when it comes time to take a test. What would a school look like if we started over? The answer to that question is being addressed in the Kingdom of Bahrain by its new Polytechnic University.

This article briefly discusses those ideas in the hope that they will be of interest to others and start a discussion about new possibilities that can be used to transform education.

Bahrain Polytechnic University

All good action research starts with delving into the current circumstances and understanding what is needed, perhaps that is why I like Bahrain Polytechnic so much. They began designing a program by conducting a series of interviews with the human relations department to find out what they expected of the graduates they hired. Their findings showed that the current perception of employers was that 49% of college graduates did not have the soft skills they needed (i.e., teamwork, communication, and problem solving), 44% did not have the vocational skills, language arts or math required. necessary, and 42% did not have an understanding of professional conduct or were not properly motivated to do a good job. This places a heavy burden on employers because their hiring and training process is expensive and if nearly 50% of the people they hire do not have the basics, they are inclined to leave the country for their hire. Using the interview process, the Bahrain Polytechnic design team decided that they needed a curriculum that incorporated these skills into the curriculum, not just as an add-on or by-product of the educational process. They concluded that the traditional context and knowledge-based education must change rapidly. This is not easy, it has many things against it. For example, when you’re starting something new, people don’t trust you to know what you’re doing, especially if what you’re doing implies that what they’re doing isn’t good enough. There is also the difficulty of finding staff to carry out your vision because, after all, your vision is new and likely to be misunderstood. Finally, the facilities you inherit from other models are by definition outdated and get in the way of what you were trying to achieve.

Despite these challenges, Bahrain Polytechnic has created three skill sets, or growth types, that will overlap and work on simultaneously throughout a student’s time at the University. Of course, there will be academic study, but alongside direct instruction there will be employability skills and a continually developing profile of self-awareness. In other words, these students will be continually evaluated on their attitude, their delivery, and the consistency with each other and how they see themselves. Wonderful! Educators will say things like “That all sounds great, but how can you measure it?” Although this is still a work in progress, Bahrain Polytechnic has made great strides in answering that question. Still two years away from their first graduating class, they see that their graduates have three transcripts to take to future employers. The first provides an overview of the range of achievement levels in academic content, the same as that provided by universities around the world.

The second is what they call an employability profile in which the student has had to demonstrate and has been continuously evaluated by the staff in what are considered soft skills of communication, teamwork, problem solving, initiative and entrepreneurship, planning and organization, self-management. management, learning and technology. These same abilities are evaluated by the students themselves in their self-knowledge profile. All three are then graphically overlaid to give the employer a visual representation of the entire person applying for the job. How do you do this? Through a curriculum that builds on the core program of strong English skills, research ability, use of information technology, and mathematics. The degrees offered are bachelor’s degrees or diplomas in: visual design, international logistics management, information and communications technology, business, office management, web media and engineering technology. They are beginning the process of designing the new campus, where the architecture of the buildings they inhabit will help rather than hinder their mission through wide open spaces, easy places to gather, an atmosphere that promotes 24-hour project work , 7 days a week, etc. It was a pleasure to be able to participate in your discussion with the architect, and that alone should dramatically increase the ability to think creatively, as students will no longer be locked in rows of boxes. Its campus fits in with the lifestyle spawned by digital natives, who easily jump between social, organizational, and project design work.

This article sought an innovative solution to the problems addressed in previous writing about the apparent disconnect between education graduates and the needs of the employers who will hire them. Even as a new company, this university is well managed and strongly supported by the Kingdom of Bahrain. At these points, it seems like there’s a good chance he’ll accomplish his mission. I said elsewhere that it is easier to start over in some cases, such as when drastic changes are being made, and then retrofit existing structures. Future articles in this series will look at the ways and means in which action research can help when education and policy are faced with a ‘reset’ instead of starting over is a good process.