Education serves a variety of purposes. For instance, education should teach skills and transfer knowledge so that students get the best opportunities in the labour market. At the same time, education should form engaged, enterprising and critical citizens with a moral and intellectual compass. And finally, there must be room for individual development. Human capital is nowadays considered one of the most important production factors. Not without reason, the Scientific Council for Government Policy recently put education at the centre of a report on the future of the Dutch earnings model. It argued that education should be adapted to the demands of the 21st century. However, how best to do this is by no means obvious. The society of the future requires all kinds of new skills, not the least of which is the ability to adapt and develop permanently. Globalisation requires citizens to be able to cope with major linguistic, cultural and religious differences. How can education contribute to the development of 21st-century skills, in particular citizenship skills? What new methods can be used to improve existing skills such as language and cultural skills? What are the effects of already implemented innovations? How can education respond to increasing diversity in cultural backgrounds of pupils and students and in their need for individual guidance, e.g. in the context of appropriate education)?
Connecting character
Education should be designed in terms of innovative learning environments, teachers' didactic skills, organisation of teaching, and dissemination of scientific insights in such a way that pupils/students are maximally challenged, and their motivation to learn only increases. This challenge links fundamental and normative questions about what a society should offer in terms of education, with design questions about what works and what does not. ICT and communication skills are central concepts, but the question also touches on inclusion and exclusion. Educational, pedagogical, sociological and linguistic research contribute as much as social and neurobiological research on brain and cognition.
