Networked cosmopolitanism? Shaping learners by remaking the curriculum of the future

Citation

Williamson B (2013) Networked cosmopolitanism? Shaping learners by remaking the curriculum of the future. In: Selwyn N & Facer K (eds.) The Politics of Education and Technology: Conflicts, Controversies, and Connections. Digital Education and Learning. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 39-62. http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=581969

Abstract
What is the future of the school curriculum in the digital age? This chapter explores prototype designs for the “curriculum of the future” and it interrogates the ideas about the future of society they embody and the ideas about learning and learners they promote. The two examples on which I mainly focus are Quest to Learn, a self-promoted “high school for digital kids” opened in New York City in 2009 “where students learn to see the world as composed of many different kinds of systems,” and Learning Futures, a UK school transformation programme which repositions school as a “learning commons” in a web of “extended learning relationships.” Rather than centrally mandated reforms, these are the outcomes of a variety of nonprofit organizations, philanthropic organizations, quasi-governmental agencies, and other nonpolitical authorities, as well as non-educational specialists and experts working together through cross-sectoral alliances in public education. These programmes have made the curriculum into a problem for resolution in an increasingly globalized, multipolar, digitally networked and cosmopolitan world. The first half of the chapter develops some analytical tools for studying these reformatory innovations and develops the conceptual assemblage of “networked cosmopolitanism.” The second half of the chapter provides some grounded examples of networked cosmopolitan thinking in curriculum reform and discusses their implications in terms of conceiving of students' learning identities in the digital age.

Keywords
curriculum; digital media; identities; cross-sectoral education