April 03, 2025

Six Shifts We Can Make to Help Our Students Be Future Ready

We want our students to be ready for their future. Every day, we prepare lessons, design activities, and plan experiences to help our students absorb new content, learn the next concept, or master a new skill. We have a roadmap in the curriculum for what we are to present and what students are to learn. However, we may think less about how well their everyday classroom experiences are preparing our students for the future they will face.

The growth of artificial intelligence, changing workplace expectations, the emergence of new careers, and growing numbers of independent workers will make the workplace our students will experience different from that of their parents and grandparents. The shifts are not just in the work; equally dramatic will be the nature of the engagement and relationships our students will experience and need to master in the workplace to be successful.

The days of waiting for a supervisor to tell workers what to do are waning. Self-starting and taking responsibility will be key elements of success. Technology can do most anything that is routine or can be standardized, so managing variability and practicing flexibility will be essential. Answers are plentiful—the ability to ask the right questions and discern the best answers will be a differentiator. The list could go on. However, the key question is: How can we give learners the experiences in today’s classroom that will prepare them for what their future holds?

The answer lies less in the content are students are learning and more in their ability to learn and the attitudes and habits they bring to learning. While there is a need to make major changes to the typical curriculum and the way in which schools are organized, there are shifts we can make now that will increase the readiness of our students for the future workplace they will experience. Here are six shifts to consider making.

Shift #1: Emphasize commitment over compliance. Commitment implies taking ownership for outcomes and persisting until success is achieved. Compliance, on the other hand, involves doing what is asked or required and giving effort only to the point where demands or expectations are satisfied. Most school incentives and sanctions are keyed to whether students do as they are told, behave as expected, and comply with established processes and procedures, yet the future for which we are preparing our students will place a much higher value on commitment. Increasingly, actions and activities that are dependent on compliance can be automated and easily performed by artificial intelligence. Helping students to see meaning and purpose in what they are learning, take ownership for what they are doing, and persist until they succeed is central to this shift.

Shift #2: Value initiative over waiting for direction. Most schools are organized around ideas related to telling students what they need to know, demonstrating how to do it, and monitoring to ensure that students do as they are directed. Students are typically evaluated on whether they follow directions and produce what is expected. Consequently, students are programmed to wait until they are directed rather than take initiative, figure out what they need to learn and do, and find ways to reach a desired outcome. A future that features rapid change and unpredictable challenges will reward those who take initiative, mobilize resources, and discover answers and solutions over those who wait to be told and shown what must be done.

Shift #3: Prioritize questions over answers. Schools typically assess learning by the ability of students to answer questions. Students are presented with questions based on what they have been taught. They are expected to provide the answers that reflect what they have learned, and they are judged on the adequacy and completeness of their responses. Yet, more learning occurs when students ask and pursue good questions that reflect and suggest important learning-related issues. While the process of answering questions is not without worth, the future will place greater value on the ability to ask the right questions and focus attention on the right things. Artificial intelligence, increasingly, can provide answers to challenging and complex inquiries; however, deciding what questions to ask and how to frame an inquiry will be a key human task, at least in the foreseeable future.

Shift #4: Teach connecting over collecting. Most of the time students spend in school and on school-related tasks is allocated to accumulating information and building task-specific skills. While this type of learning is important, it falls short of what will likely differentiate learners and workers in the future. While knowing names, dates, facts, and figures is important, knowing what to do with them—such as seeing relationships, discerning patterns, and identifying themes—provides greater insight and more useful information than isolated information and disconnected skills.

Shift #5: Prioritize agility over predictability. Schools present students with an established, centralized curriculum that is calibrated to offer generalized information and teach general skills. This approach held more merit when the pace of change was slower and the world was more predictable. The utility of standard practices and established procedures diminishes as the pace of change accelerates and the nature of life and work challenges become more complex. Students increasingly need the capacity to be flexible, be able to anticipate what lies ahead, and utilize their intuition to decide the best course of action.

Shift #6: Value wisdom over knowledge. Schools are largely designed to reward the knowledge students develop and their ability to demonstrate what they know on standardized assessment instruments. Traditionally, the knowledge students possess has been the focus of assessments and the measure of student and school success. Without question, knowledge is important. However, knowledge has an increasingly short shelf life. Over time, knowledge can become dated and less useful. Wisdom—knowing what to do—is evergreen. Helping students learn how to reflect, intuit, inquire, and anticipate will serve them better over time than their having accumulated only knowledge.

Admittedly, changing longstanding, traditional practices can be challenging. However, our students and our shared future need and deserve nothing less.