Innovative Pedagogies of the Future: An Evidence-Based Selection

• Published in: Frontiers in education (Lausanne) Vol. 4
• Main Authors: Herodotou, Christothea, Sharples, Mike, Gaved, Mark, Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes, Rienties, Bart, Scanlon, Eileen, Whitelock, Denise
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A 11.10.2019
• Subjects: educational effectiveness; educational innovation; educational theories; evidence-based practice; pedagogy; teaching and learning
• ISSN: 2504-284X; 2504-284X
• DOI: 10.3389/feduc.2019.00113

There is a widespread notion that educational systems should empower learners with skills and competences to cope with a constantly changing landscape. Reference is often made to skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaborative skills, innovation, digital literacy, and adaptability. What is negotiable is how best to achieve the development of those skills, in particular which teaching and learning approaches are suitable for facilitating or enabling complex skills development. In this paper, we build on our previous work of exploring new forms of pedagogy for an interactive world, as documented in our Innovating Pedagogy report series. We present a set of innovative pedagogical approaches that have the potential to guide teaching and transform learning. An integrated framework has been developed to select pedagogies for inclusion in this paper, consisting of the following five dimensions: (a) relevance to effective educational theories, (b) research evidence about the effectiveness of the proposed pedagogies, (c) relation to the development of twenty-first century skills, (d) innovative aspects of pedagogy, and (e) level of adoption in educational practice. The selected pedagogies, namely formative analytics, teachback, place-based learning, learning with drones, learning with robots, and citizen inquiry are either attached to specific technological developments, or they have emerged due to an advanced understanding of the science of learning. Each one is presented in terms of the five dimensions of the framework.