Podcast Special: In Conversation with Geoff Masters and Neil Selwyn

ACER’s Research Conference took place this month with the theme – ‘Preparing students for life in the 21st century: Identifying, developing and assessing what matters’. In this episode, we’ll take you to the closing session of the conference – the ‘In Conversation’ between ACER CEO Professor Geoff Masters AO and Neil Selwyn, a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. We’ll share highlights from their discussion about what schooling might look like in 10 years’ time. Now, this session began directly after Neil delivered the conference’s Karmel Oration, so, as you’re going to hear a few references to that talk, it’s important I give you an understanding of what he discussed. Neil’s Oration was titled ‘On with the 21st century! Preparing Australian education for the 2020s and beyond.’ So, it’s clear from that title that he took the conference theme to heart. In particular, Neil focused on what education might look like in 2029. He spoke about how there are often three different kinds of predictions when we speak about predicting certain things for the future – the probable, possible and preferable – and how it’s important we try to stick to speaking about probable futures, rather than a future that is possible or preferable. This led him to speak about the role of an educator during the times of climate change, the rise of online education and how we can best prepare students for careers of the future.