An article on the Learning Counsel authored by Charles Sosnik predicts that 2021 will be a year of momentous change in education, including:
- A new teacher shortage is creating a newfound appreciation for gig-economy teachers.
- EdTech spending in 2021 will eclipse that of 2020 and will set a new standard for technology funding.
- A new understanding of cognitive skills will completely reshape education methodology.
- Students’ emotional wellbeing becomes the number one challenge in public education.
- Teachers and administrators welcome an end to the era of high-stakes summative testing.
- Homeschooling and the straight-to-consumer EdTech market will continue to grow at twice the pace of in-school technology purchases.
- Distance and hybrid learning will continue unabated until the Fall 2021 term.
- Large education conferences will continue to be virtual until 2022.
- Even with virtual and hybrid classes, whole group learning will continue to be the dominant model but will shrink from the current 62 percent to under 50 percent next Fall.
- By the end of 2021, fewer than 67 percent of American, school-aged children will attend traditional public schooling.
The new understanding of cognitive skills credits BrainWare Learning Company executives Betsy Hill and Roger Stark for helping educators understand how individual students’ cognitive strengths and weaknesses define their ability to learn and how to construct learning environments and experiences that give the brains of all their students an equitable opportunity to learn and to demonstrate what they can do with that learning.
