Postgraduate Course: Educating for a Challenging Future (EFIE11457)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | *Programme Core Course: Education Futures (MSc)*
Please Note:
This course is only available to students enrolled on the Education Futures (MSc) degree programme.
This course addresses why and how we need to rethink education in response to society's most challenging problems, such as climate change and digital disinformation.
It aims to equip students with the methodologies to design a curriculum to address these challenges. |
| Course description |
We begin the course by identifying all the factors that are destabilising and threatening our collective future. We have known about some of these challenges for a while, others are emerging of over time, while some have burst into the public consciousness between iterations of this course.
These challenges include: global warming, climate breakdown, climate denial, the backlash against climate activism and obstruction of climate action. Democratic backsliding, the rise of authoritarianism, misogyny and the normalisation of racism. The impact of AI on society, politics, and education. Growing levels of inequality. Chaotic media and information systems that incentivise and reward hatred, lies, and ignorance.
While many of the challenges are more pronounced in certain countries and regions, we will also explore how these and many other problems manifest in every area that our student cohort comes from. For example, gender politics in East Asia and the outsourcing of AI harms to sub-Saharan Africa.
In post-neoliberal societies that lack any public institutions, education is seen as the only solution to the challenges above. This is why we see so many calls for AI/media/critical literacy. Yet the concept of public education is itself under threat from AI companies that claim schools, colleges, universities, and teachers are no longer necessary to transmit knowledge. This course posits that this claim is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what education is and what it is for.
This then is an opportunity to rethink and reassert what education is for as we enter an uncertain future.
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - Hybrid Course Delivery Information:
The Edinburgh Futures Institute delivers many of its courses in hybrid mode. This means that you may have some online students joining sessions for this course. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities.
Students should be aware that:
Classrooms used in this course will have additional technology in place: in some cases, students might not be able to sit in areas away from microphones or outside the field of view of all cameras.
All presentations, and whole class discussions will be recorded (see the Lecture Recording and Virtual Classroom policies for more details).
You will need access to a personal computing device for this course. Most activities will take place in a web browser, unless otherwise stated. We recommend using a device with a screen, physical keyboard, and internet access.
|
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Academic year 2026/27, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
|
Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 6,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 6,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 6,
Summative Assessment Hours 2,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
|
| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
The course will be assessed by means of the following components:
1) Group Presentation (50%)
In groups of 3 or 4, students will need to map the complexity and interdependencies of the challenges to our future from an educator's perspective. Students need to produce a visual representation of this map - the choice of method is up to them - and narrate the visual with a presentation. Each group member will take a turn to describe and fully deconstruct all the features of the challenge.
Each member of the team could address an aspect of the problem(s) - and/or an understanding of the problem(s) from a particular disciplinary or cultural position.
2) 2,000 Word Individual Essay (50%)
This essay should focus on the question - what is your vision for the future of education? |
| Feedback |
Feedback on any formative assessment may be provided in various formats, for example, to include written, oral, video, face-to-face, whole class, or individual. The Course Organiser will decide which format is most appropriate in relation to the nature of the assessment.
Feedback on both formative and summative in-course assessed work will be provided in time to be of use in subsequent assessments within the course.
Feedback on the summative assessment(s) will be provided in written form via Learn, the University of Edinburgh's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
Formative Feedback Opportunity:
Formative feedback is ongoing feedback which monitors learning and is intended to improve performance in the same course, in future courses, and also beyond study.
Teachers will offer formative feedback during the development phase.
Formative feedback on the student group assessment will be the expert panel plus peers and the wider EFI community. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Understand the history and different, often competing, normative purposes of education.
- Understand and map the complexity and interdisciplinarity of the challenges facing societies and its systems of education.
- Critically reflect on what education can and cannot achieve in isolation in response to these challenges.
- Identify and critique educational interventions that fail to address complexity and interdisciplinarity.
|
Reading List
Engeström, Y. and A. Sannino. 2010. 'Studies of Expansive Learning: Foundations, Findings and Future Challenges.' Educational Research Review 5: 1-24.
Head, B. 2019. 'Forty Years of Wicked Problems Literature: Forging Closer Links to Policy Studies', Policy and Society,38(2): 180-197. doi: 10.1080/14494035.2018.1488797
Lotz-Sisitka, H., A. Wals, D. Kronlid and D. McGarry. 2015. 'Transformative, Transgressive Social Learning: Rethinking Higher Education Pedagogy in Times of Systemic Global Dysfunction'. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 16: 73-80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2015.07.018
Mason, J. (2011) 'Facet Methodology: The Case for an Inventive Research Orientation', Methodological Innovations Online, 6(3), pp. 75-92. doi: 10.4256/mio.2011.008.
Schulman, L. 2005b. 'Pedagogies of Uncertainty.' Liberal Education 91(2): 18-25.
Tassone, V. C. O'Mahony, E. McKenna, H. Eppink and A. Wals. 2018. '(Re-)designing Higher Education Curricula in Times of Systemic Dysfunction: A Responsible Research and Innovation Perspective.' Higher Education 76: 337-352. doi: 10.1007/s10734-017-0211-4
Veltman, M., J. Van Keulen and J. Voogt. 2019. 'Design Principles for Addressing Wicked Problems Through Boundary Crossing in Higher Professional Education', Journal of Education and Work 32(2): 135-155. doi: 10.1080/13639080.2019.1610165 |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Education,Futures,Learning,Assessment,Teaching,Technology |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Huw Davies
Tel:
Email: hdavies2@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Zoe Hogg
Tel:
Email: Zoe.Hogg@ed.ac.uk |
|
|
University Homepage