Horizon scanning with Dr. Fawaz Abu Sitta

“Think of something that’s impossible today which, if it happened, would change everything in the education system”

This was a key question presented by Dr Fawaz Abu Sitta during his lecture at the Faculty of Education last week, his first since being introduced as a visiting fellow to DEFI and Hughes Hall Cambridge earlier this month. Dr Abu Sitta has joined DEFI through the end of 2023 to conduct horizon scanning that will help DEFI to anticipate, understand and influence the emerging possibilities in education. In other words, to help us spot signals of change which may soon shift from the impossible to the possible.

Dr. Abu Sitta is a UNESCO Chair for anticipatory systems and Foresight Research Director at the Centre of Futures Studies. He holds many other posts in the UAE and around the world. He co-authored the first edition of the Dubai e-Government Model, which laid the foundation for the Dubai Government Digital Transformation.

As shown in this photo, Dr Abu Sitta worked closely with Dr Imogen Casebourne, research lead at the DEFI Innovation Lab, during his visit to Cambridge. They continue to collaborate between Dr. Abu Sitta’s visits to take forward the aims of his visiting fellowship.

Futures of Education: Plausible Scenarios

The first of these educational sessions was held at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, on Thursday, 10 November. Dr Abu Sitta spoke to a broad audience of education PhD students, post-docs, professors, and others, to help them consider aspects related to the education sector, such as:  

• Principles, methods and tools of futures thinking
• The power of imagination and creativity over knowledge and data when building images of the future
• The key changes that might shape the futures of the sector
• Plausible scenarios and preferred futures

Dr Abu Sitta led students through a discussion of 10 potential key drivers that might shape the futures of education, while training them to use the Axis of Uncertainty to map the plausibility of each scenario.  

Future signals that could impact education

For the Horizon Scanning project, Dr. Abu Sitta has identified several signals for investigation as to their potential impact on education: 

When Dr Abu Sitta discussed one of these signals, Collapse of Language Learning, in the Futures of Education workshop, he used a compelling video from Google in order to illustrate the possibility that technology could one day help reduce language barriers: 

The workshop participants may not have been fully convinced by Google’s ambition however, while they agreed that this type of translation would be high impact, they were less sure that it was predictable when measured on the Axis of Uncertainty:

It is perhaps interesting that the workshop participants felt the two most predictable influences on the education systems would be MOOCs and Pen and Paper. While the former is certainly an affordance of digital technology, the latter shows that traditional technology may continue to influence learning and education well into the future.  

Further workshops will be announced as Dr. Abu Sitta confirms his schedule in Cambridge for 2023. To keep up with Dr. Abu Sitta’s work at DEFI, sign-up to our mailing list and put Horizon Scanning in the message box.

Exploring “Practical and theoretical insights” with a global audience

Our latest DEFI webinar explored The Future of Gaming in Education, with an international panel from Denmark, the US, the UK, and Italy:

• Prof Thorkild Hanghøj, Professor of Games and Learning at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, one of Europe’s best-known researchers on the topic of gaming in education
• Lisa Petro and Lorenzo Raffio, colleagues at Generation Global, part of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, who joined us to share the Ultimate Dialogue Adventure
• Marianne Pickles, Head of Assessment Development at Cambridge University Press & Assessment (CUPA), where she focuses on digital innovation to assist English language learners.

The session was moderated by DEFI’s own Dr Imogen Casebourne, Research Lead at the DEFI Innovation Lab, who developed learning games earlier in her career.

More than 200 individuals registered from around the world. “We had registrants from more than 50 countries and I loved how they were able to engage in a lively conversation that blended practical and theoretical insights into our topic of Gaming in Education,” said Jude Hannam, communities manager at DEFI.

Prof Thorkild Hanghøj – Games as spaces for dialogue and expertise

The session began with Prof. Hanghøj discussing a common perception that the benefits of gaming in education are often oversold. Indeed, one participant shared their recollection that World of Warcraft was once hyped as a language-learning tool, with little practical application for teachers.

Thorkild also suggested a few websites as a follow-up to his presentation:

• https://www.gamesforchange.org/
• https://pit.asu.edu/center-games-and-impact
• https://siu.aau.dk/

Watch the presentation from Prof Thorkild Hanghøj

Watch the presentation from Lisa Petro

Marianne Pickles – Learning English in Minecraft

The online chat really picked up when Marianne Pickles began her presentation, which combined two topics that are well-known to many educators: English language learning and Minecraft, the massively popular online game with more than 140 million monthly users. Pickles is part of the team at CUPA which built an English learning game in Minecraft, allowing learners to practise language skills while playing a game with which many of them are already familiar.

DEFI centre manager Kevin Martin commented that he has “already circulated Adventures in English to colleagues who are helping to re-settle refugee children in the area,” continuing, “(the game) is a brilliant resource which builds off of interactive social experiences – it offers social currency (seems nearly every child plays Minecraft) while also supporting ESL.”

Watch the presentation from Marianne Pickles

Participants were eager to share resources both Minecraft-related and for teaching English as an additional or foreign language. Here is a short summary of suggestions made by our attendees:

Discussion and resources for English language learning

• Another teaching strategy for EFL could be to build on children’s existing vocabulary learned through games. Here is a study from a colleague, which documents this positive correlation: Study of Dutch young English Language Learners
• Interesting to hear about the evidence base for English language learning and teaching with games – it’s a very underdeveloped area I think, with more focus on research than actual practical applications in the classroom.
• Anyone interested in language learning and games: https://llpjournal.org, a journal and community of researchers and teachers

Discussion and resources for teaching with Minecraft

• This event may be interesting for some of you: Online event featuring Minetest/Minecraft and Game-based learning, taking place 4-7 July, 2022 …website in German, Google Translate will help. There is one day on Minetest/Minecraft and another on Game-based learning.
• If you can’t use Minecraft due to lack of funds, you might want to look at the Minetest dashboard BLOCKALOT. The website is in German but Google Translate will help. The basic functionality of BLOCKALOT will be deployed, too.
• Is it possible for Minecraft educational to be used privately? Yes, it’s available on the commercial version of Minecraft (Bedrock). I believe there’s also a way for individuals to register for Minecraft Education Edition

Research and real-world insights on gaming in education

“It was fantastic to hear from speakers with a strong
theoretical grounding combined with insights
from real world educational games”

In just over one hour, our participants gained insight into the current landscape of Gaming in Education, learned about two specific games-enhanced educational tools, and shared a remarkable amount of research, online resources, and ideas with one another. As session moderator Dr Casebourne said, “It was fantastic to hear from speakers who combined a very strong theoretical grounding in the research with the ability to share insights gained from developing practical real world educational games some of which many people across the world are playing as we speak.”
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New collaboration with Dr Ingunn Ness and Dr Rupert Wegerif

Dr Ness is also a co-editor and contributor to the new book, Dialogic Pedagogy, Creativity, and Learning –along with DEFI founder Rupert Wegerif.

The main editor of the book is Olga Dysthe, pictured below receiving the King’s Medal of Merit for her work on dialogue.

Preparing for an uncertain future

Dr Ness started her presentation by stating that “one of the main purposes of an education system is to prepare students for an (uncertain) future. This was music to the ears of a DEFI audience, as it matches a key idea from our recently-published DEFI Future Skills report – the perception that the uncertainty will affect life in the future more so than in the past.

According to Dr Ness, the curricula in Norway has been updated to address this challenge, with creativity, collaboration and communication skills emphasised. However, she then pointed out a key question and the driver behind her research: In order to teach for creativity, we first need to know: what is creativity?

What is creativity?

Put simply, creativity is “to create something new,” says Ness, and, “we need disciplinary knowledge to have new ideas which we can be creative about.” She would return to this concept of disciplinary knowledge later in her presentation.

She went on to break down creativity into “Little c” – personal, “what if” breakthroughs – and “Big C,” which includes major, society-level breakthroughs. Dr Ness would like to see young learners encouraged to explore their little C creativity, so that they can generate Big C ideas later on.

As she continued reflecting on creativity, Dr Ness highlighted a tendency to distinguish between artistic creativity and scientific creativity, despite the underlying similarity. While acknowledging that creativity can differ across groups and domains, Dr Ness contends that Einstein and Picasso would have had nearly identical psychological processes!

Case study – Stimulating creativity through polyphony

As Dr Ness took us into the work behind “The Room of Opportunity,” her passion for the topic shone through. In fact, she admitted that she collected more data than was necessary, as she was so excited to observe and capture the work being done by the study groups.

Her study looked at 6 phases of group work, which can allow the group to move from a challenge or need through to a solution. As seen in the graphic below, the first three phases combine to build the knowledge platform, fulfilling the need for disciplinary knowledge which Ness referred to in her thoughts on creativity.

The second half of her model is where the ideas are developed. And yet, Ness identified that it is the three central phases – Polyphony, imagination, idea formulation – which form the “Room of Opportunity.” This metaphorical room is where groups can spend time, moving through the two or three of the phases repeatedly, while the creative process generates ideas that may lead to a solution.

Quite simply, groups wanting work together and build knowledge will need to have openness, curiosity, respect, trust and psychological safety. Ness used Kahn’s (1990) definition of psychological safety as “to feel safe in the team and not afraid to contribute,” then simplified this further to “not afraid of asking silly questions.”

Facilitating creative processes

In her third study, Ness stepped away from the six-phase model to look at how creative knowledge processes are facilitated. Her first observation was that imagination and creativity are stimulated by tension, both between disciplines and group members.

Therefore, she outlined four complementary roles in group dynamics that, when balanced across the activity, can create useful tension and facilitate creative thinking.

A model for student dialogue

The result of her work with students is the STEPRE model. As with the adult groups, there are six phases, but the names have largely changed. Polyphony remains, of course, and Ness explained that the polyphonic tasks allowed students to “practice creative knowledge processes” through dialogue. Polyphonic tasks also allow the teacher to practice letting go of control, which Ness pointed out is losing control of the student group.

Conclusion

In under an hour, Dr Ness managed to take her audience through nearly 70 slides, introducing herself and Bergen, Norway, exploring the basics of creativity and future skills, then looking at her research work with both career and student groups. That she was able to explain both the foundations of her work and results of her research in such a short time is a credit to her own dialogic skills as well as her expertise of the subject matter!

Dr Ness closed by reminding the audience that her phase models are meant as inspiration and a way to structure dialogic teaching – not as a rigid model – something that she demonstrated by presenting both the six-phase model for professional groups and the STEPRE model for use in schools.

She also pointed out that education needs to provide training not just in how to engage in creative dialogue, but in how educators and group leaders can create a framework for dialogue. And finally, she mentioned another book of interest to the DEFI audience – Creative Learning in Digital and Virtual Environments.

We greatly appreciate Dr Ness’ time with our group and, as Genevieve says below, look forward to her next seminar!