The NXTEducator Summit brought together nearly 200 education enthusiasts to celebrate the HundrED Employability Spotlight innovators. The Spotlight event was organised in collaboration with the Sayling Wen Cultural & Education Foundation in Taipei on December 11th, 2019.
The rapid advancement of technology has changed the employability skills needed for the future in significant and unforeseeable ways. Many agree that education will need to be aligned and adapted to these shifting demands with innovative solutions. Therefore, it is critical that education implements sustainable innovations to effectively support the future employability of young people.
At the NXTEducator Summit, Lauren Ziegler, Leapfrogging Project Director from the Brookings Institute, reiterated the importance of developing a range of skills for future employability, “There is a great amount of political discussion surrounding how to promote a breadth of skills, but there is still a gap in how we actually get there.”
Over the last few months, HundrED and Sayling Wen Cultural & Education Foundation have researched nearly 100 innovation submissions out of which 7 were selected to be featured in the HundrED Spotlight on Employability - an innovation collection and education research project to explore ideas that enhance employability skills with Chinese-speaking educators.
HundrED's Head of Research Chris Petrie explains,
For the innovation selection process, we have combined HundrED’s selection criteria with Sayling Wen’s FIT+HUG framework to help ensure we consider the theme of employability for each individual student.
In the Asian cultural context, employability skills have been viewed traditionally and seen as a way to earn a living. However, as the world is changing rapidly, there has been a demand to adjust and acquire new skills throughout our life to make learning experiences contextual and useful.
Chris Petrie, Head of Research and Lasse Leponiemi, Executive Director from HundrED were attending and were able to share some key insights from the NXTEducator Summit 2019.
Making learning meaningful is especially important to the innovators from Co-Publishing Project, one of the innovations selected for this Spotlight, who shared
We need to liberate our education, especially in rural areas to increase student motivation, engagement and to connect them with the community. By making learning more flexible, we are able to make learning more meaningful for our students and for the local public.
The passion behind the innovation resonated throughout the conference as many innovators shared why they started these innovations in the first place. For example, Albert Liang Tsu Ying, Founder and Executive Director of BEEP Lab said, “When I was in school, I was not very good at reading and writing, but I loved drawing. When our family moved to Singapore, I got excited about design, but I was thinking why can’t you learn about design earlier. For me BEEP Lab is not a company, it’s a dream come true”.
Focus on providing students with opportunities to experiment with a diversity of choices, rather than focusing on one area in school was highlighted by Anny Chang, Co-Founder and CEO of International City Wanderer Education Association, “We didn’t provide the students with any solutions, they have to find and experiment their ideas themselves.”
You can find more insights and a detailed overview of the selected inspiring innovations through this short video series and our Spotlight report on Employability.
Gregg Behr, the Executive Director of Grable Foundation emphasised the value of building connections as essential to preparing young people for an unforeseen future and in his keynote, shared
When looking at the honorees of today, I see you in my colleagues in Pittsburgh. We are far more alike than different. Our why are those young people in our lives.”
This sentiment really sums up why we do Spotlights and are fortunate enough to find like-minded partners from diverse cultural backgrounds. We resonate with Teresa Lin, Chief Executive Officer at Sayling Wen Cultural & Educational Foundation when she expressed her gratitude,
"With nearly 100 wonderful ideas from 21 countries being shared, we have been able to see the potential of these educational innovations! We are grateful to be able to work with HundrED on hosting the NXTEducator: Spotlight on Employability."
We look forward to continuing this positive momentum and celebrating education innovations that are helping children flourish worldwide!
Explore the Employability Spotlight report and innovations here.
