Sustainability and the OECD 'Trends Shaping Education 2025'

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) every-three-years review of the future direction of all education has informed colleges and universities that they need to prepare for change in a world that is being revolutionized by generative AI, as they discuss how to advance the global aspiration of sustainability.

The Trends Shaping Education 2025 report highlights how improvements in artificial intelligence, virtual reality and other technology may revolutionize teaching and learning.

Such concerns are affecting the way education – and even higher education – is looking to build sustainability objectives, the OECD stated, emphasizing that its report is "aimed at provoking reflection and guiding strategic thinking on how global trends may reshape education and how education can make a better future possible".

At a launch event on Thursday 23 January, the OECD's director of education and skills, Andreas Schleicher, discussed in depth the technological and environmental trends that are shaping education today.

He stated the report must be considered as a resource for teachers and countries' education systems to facilitate a sense of 'human flourishing' in the midst of increasing uncertainty about the major disruptors of education – climate change, the pandemic, and the emergence of AI, to name a few.

"Climate change is going to turn our lives upside down much more than the [COVID-19] pandemic and AI is questioning nearly everything that we take for granted about education," he added.

The more rapidly the world is changing, the further ahead we must look, and this is becoming increasingly difficult for individuals to do, Schleicher went on. "All we ask from this publication is to get individuals to think about what are the factors that might form the future in different combinations?"

That encompasses how the world can be rocked to its social foundation by technological transformation, and how youth are responding. The report inquired: "How dramatically will technological advances and sustainability demands affect the demand for human labour and how humans interact with one another?"

Shifting priorities

Changing attitudes signal that, for more and more young people, work is no longer a central part of their self-definition. AI is opening up the ability of robots to collaborate with humans across various industries, so more of us will be working alongside smart machines in the years ahead.".

And while human relationships are still at the heart of caring for others, new technologies have the ability to revolutionize social interaction. With more time spent away from direct human contact, can education assist in preserving a sense of community and in developing socio-emotional learning and well-being?"

AI will certainly change the world, but "humans will stay at the centre", Schleicher argued.

So, the education systems of the future need to enable a transition in skills and lifelong learning, endowing the people with the capacity to learn, unlearn and relearn – capacities that are essential to survive in an uncertain world, he elaborated.

The balance of work and life is obviously changing, and with the growth of technology and AI, we will see it change even further. People will, at some point, be required to spend more of their time on other things than simply creating things for other people," he said.

This change requires us to prepare individuals not merely with information but with the capability to use it in novel ways and, as such, highlights the necessity for education systems to assist learners to develop critical thinking capabilities beyond mere processing of information.

"Our world no longer compensates us for delivering answers; it compensates us for asking the right questions," Schleicher stated.

This will need to involve vision and integrated higher education policies. And learning will need to look ahead to the consequences of future technological change on the way that human beings navigate a sustainable future, added the report.

"The demand for green jobs is increasing, yet a skills gap has the potential to hinder the transition and destabilize local labour markets. Likewise, the diffusion of recent innovations such as artificial intelligence is likely to automate many tasks and produce new ones, with new skill sets demanded."

Higher education and sustainability

In this context, the OECD report conceded that sustainability offers both challenges and opportunities for education systems.

Telling University World News about these matters following the report release, Dr Debra Rowe, president of the US Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development and global champion for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, stated one of the concerns was preparing students to utilize technology like AI as a tool for changing societies to become sustainable.

That involves relocating goals and prestige from exclusively material and career personal objectives, to community, voluntary and emotional satisfaction in the activities of consumer, investor and civic participant for political regimes, policies and programmes. Technology will take on more technical and administrative functions that were once performed by trained humans.

"If there isn't as much work as in the good old days, human beings shouldn't be penalized for working hard to find jobs with economic uncertainty tied up in food or shelter or other necessities.".

A fundamental lesson in sustainability must be how the pie of well-being is divided and how it can be remade with the science-based knowledge that there is plenty on this world to enhance the quality of life of all significantly while securing the planet and its life-supporting systems for current and future generations," Rowe said.

"Students and non-students can be taught the possibilities of civic participation and policy influence in achieving human improvements. Tales of success stories of transitioning into sustainability can be presented in learning materials in every academic field."

Solving the biggest problems of our time

Considering that climate change "poses a threat to the stability of societies and economies around the globe, underlining the need for international co-operation", the OECD report wanted to know how education can promote learning about the global, regional and local aspects of these issues.

Actually, research collaborations are increasing and more individuals will be collaborating to address the world's most significant challenges, such as solving the climate emergency, Schleicher stated.

Acquiring skills to work an efficient economy and society is essential, asserted the OECD, posing the question: "How can education systems best help equip individuals with the right skills and support people in switching out of polluting industries so that no one is left behind?"

It went on to state that education may build capabilities and innovations that underpin a greener and more diverse energy sector, "while providing employees in the fossil fuel sector with opportunities to upskill or reskill.".

And the work is there. A sub-group of green 'new and emerging' jobs that make up 14% of sustainability-driven often high-skilled occupations like managers, professionals and technicians have "seen the most growth over the last ten years", the report stated.

In fact, when considering the wider climate agenda, the world needs to appreciate that real progress has already been achieved in this sector, Schleicher added.

He went on to say: "The world is changing. We can see very clearly that jobs in the clean energy industry have now overtaken jobs in the brown energy industry – people are in transition; they have switched careers and have used their skills in various manners. That is the reality and the good sort of forces that we see."

Education's contribution to sustainability

In addition, education can get consumers to improve sustainable behavior through purchasing decisions by promoting environmental literacy and sustainable behavior.

Stated the report: "Education plays a crucial role in promoting sustainability and supporting healthier, environmentally friendly lifestyles. Can it also help reshape attitudes toward consumption, materialism and the value of sharing?"

Education can also indirectly promote behavioral change by making new kinds of political participation and cultural expression possible, increasing innovative climate activism and advocacy, the OECD said. One of the major issues at play here is fighting disinformation and political polarization – routinely pushed by social media – that are "undermining constructive debate".

The report concluded: "How can education foster trust in democratic institutions and responsible citizenship to help societies address complex, systemic challenges?"

Debra Rowe has stated: "Students are frequently requesting and must be given assignments that give the knowledge and skills to empower students to deal with the complication of our societal issues with resilience and effective self and community care."

She added they also require guidance on functioning as change agents "who can facilitate scaling up for systems change at societal scales, including how to form coalitions and identify leverage points for change in society".

That involves abilities of working collaboratively to focus goals and bring about change, which demand effective emotional interpersonal and intrapersonal abilities, strategic thinking, thinking about the future, systems thinking and implementation capabilities.

AI and sustainability education

Presenters at the launch emphasized the promise of generative AI for such work, highlighting the need to approach AI in education empirically and evidence-based to avoid risks such as possible bias, the disproportionate effect it could have on some groups and the effect on students' cognitive and social development.

Anita Lehikoinen, a permanent secretary at the Finnish ministry of education and culture, stated: "Something that we ought to discuss about the deployment of AI is whether it liberates people from various socio-economic backgrounds on an equal level or does it just liberate those individuals who are further empowered due to their background?"

Singapore's deputy director general of the ministry of education, Chern Wei Sng, stated that his ministry had already started testing with AI technology and its potential uses in schools.

There are already AI tools that create teachers' lesson plans and assist in individualized learning, so it's a quite strong technology which can potentially enhance teaching and learning," said Sng. Nevertheless, teachers should evaluate the threat brought about by AI so that it will not become a type of cognitive outsourcing for students, which damages their adaptive learning capability and resilience. 

Sustainability investment, ethics, politics

And regarding sustainability investment, the OECD reported that since "the era of cheap energy is over," schools and other centers of learning will have to struggle with mounting demands on their budgets, and energy bills sucking up resources that would otherwise be spent on staff or learning resources.

Therefore, energy efficiency and conservation not only makes good environmental sense, but it's good business: "Enhancing the energy efficiency of school buildings will save money in the long term and enhance sustainability."

Ethical leadership and political policy in building trading can also assist in enhancing sustainability – driven by empathetic and integrated education, the OECD observed: "While scientific collaboration has expanded, geopolitical tensions and trade dependencies on key raw materials threaten innovation and sustainability."

Observing that although COVID-19 had illustrated the worth of worldwide science collaborations, with diplomatic rivalry increasingly fierce between rival country-based states, "concerns around research security are on the rise.".

Education could assist in making the views run deeper that a globalized approach to resource development and innovation can be fruitful in enhancing sustainability, according to the report: "In constructing ethical frameworks, common purposes, and competencies to guarantee scientific and technological advancement profits humanity and the earth while protecting cooperation and security."

Lastly, the OECD moved to advise that education must lean towards making the elderly acquire sustainability awareness and capacity, as well as youngsters.

"How can this be met in formal, non-formal and informal education and training? How can education and training deliver good environmental literacy for all, and develop specialist skills for some?" the report asked.

'Human flourishing'

In a speech at the launch, Susan Acland-Hood, permanent secretary at the Department for Education in the United Kingdom, observed that it is vital to examine existing and evolving demographic trends when considering the future of education.

[There in the UK] we did take a lot of time last year right across the entire government to look in fact at demographic trends and the focus on learning for life," she added.

Acland-Hood asserted that sustainability will be hand in hand with education in the future, when human development's next phase – economical, ecological, social and cultural – ought to be based on the idea of human flourishing.

I think the most important addition to high-performing education systems, or human flourishing systems, is that humans must thrive and the planet must thrive for humans to truly thrive. It's two easy things: humankind and the planet," she said.

Rowe said to University World News: "With the acceleration in the rate of change with AI and maybe with the declining necessity for human labor, lifelong learning could be and ought to be cherished. That would be new provision for all ages. Students could learn how access to quality education can be expanded.".

"Mis- and dis-information skills should be a fundamental skill. Being able to understand the ways in which we have organized economies up until now and how we can reorganize them in the future gives us a space that is both creative and necessary for all students and community partners to learn about sustainability."