“It is not enough to know, it is necessary to be able to do it”
As in the advent of horseless carriages? Horseless carriage? In fact, the term reminded me of the term “wireless phone”, where terms like horseless carriage and cordless phone are situations where a new technology is compared to an old one by saying things that the new technology doesn’t have. After all, insisting on old technology in order to explain/accept new technology is a very old human habit. Against the cars that started mass production with Henry Ford’s production line idea, there were always those who made prescient comments such as “The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty — a fad” and resisted innovation. It is not difficult to find similar predictions in every period of history and every innovation comes, for example; The paradox that “machines are coming to take our jobs” is an issue that has been around for hundreds of years, at least since the industrialization of weaving in the early 18th century, which increased productivity and feared that thousands of workers would be thrown out on the streets. The resulting displacement of workers is still a concern, as it was in the past.
In 1589, when Queen Elizabeth I of England applied for a royal patent for a knitting machine by the clergyman William Lee, she panicked and said: “Imagine what this invention will do to my poor subjects, if it were to happen it would surely ruin their lives by depriving them of employment.”
In the 1880s, the Qing dynasty strongly opposed the construction of railways in China, arguing that losing their baggage-carrying jobs could lead to social upheaval.
In the early 19th century, the Luddites sabotaged machinery to protect their business in England, despite the general economic growth fueled by steam power.
Fears of robot-induced unemployment have always dominated the debate about future jobs. However, for some reason, these have not gone beyond wasting people’s time. Those who adapted quickly always took a step forward, while those who resisted had to continue to live with what was presented to them as slaves of their time by lamenting behind the fleeing trains. If we go back in time from today, it is possible to define periods in which more than one revolutionary change took place. Although there are many different definitions for these changes, the most widely accepted idea today is that we are in the “4th Industrial Revolution”. Unlike the previous three industrial revolutions, this period symbolizes a period in which human-robot relations developed a lot. The human-robot relationship is actually a form of the human-machine relationship, and there are many different human-machine relationship modes. While these are changes specific to this era, many innovations are excluded by people due to the typical human characteristic of “resistance to innovation”. The rapid change in technology makes it difficult to predict which job-specific skills will evolve and which will become obsolete in the near future. In the past, it took centuries for the shifts in skill requirements brought about by technological progress to manifest themselves. But in the digital age, advances in technology require new skills seemingly overnight. To give an example of the change in new skills, when we look at the advertisements for the same position in about 30 years;
Table: Socio-behavioral skills are becoming more important Job requirements of a Hilton Hotel manager candidate in Shanghai, China
| 1986 | 2018 |
| Excellent character, willing to learn Between the ages of 20 and 25 Fluent English proficiency in good health Living close to the hotel location | Positive attitude and good communication skills Ability to work independently and as part of a team Proficient IT skills Have at least two years of experience, four-year university degree |
Sources:
1986: Wenhui News, 17 August 1986, http://www.sohu.com/a/194532378_99909679; 2018: https://www.hosco .com/en/job/waldorf-astoria-shanghai-on-the-bund/management-trainee-front-office. Note: IT = Information Technology
We can see that three types of skills are becoming more and more important in place of the skills that were important in the last century. These are, respectively,
- advanced cognitive skills, such as complex problem-solving,
- socio-behavioural skills such as teamwork, and
- combinations of skills that predict adaptability, such as reasoning and self-efficacy.
Since 2001, the share of employment in occupations with intensive non-routine cognitive and socio-behavioral skills has increased from 19 percent to 23 percent in developing economies and from 33 percent to 41 percent in advanced economies.
For a society formed by individuals with such skills, well-trained human resources and lifelong learning are required. That’s because individuals with more advanced skills are better able to take advantage of new technologies to adapt to the changing nature of work. Up to this point, I have tried to give examples of the effects of the carpet slipping from under our feet during the technology-human interaction on society. At the end of the day, lifelong education, education, has brought the result of well-educated people and their ability to adapt to the very rapid changes that occur in parallel with technological changes. In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic, which started all over the world in March 2020 and affected all societies, caused radical changes in education. The mass production paradigm of the industrial revolution, which was based on information transfer/loading, suddenly faced a major paradigmatic problem with the disappearance of the school base of this production system. Individuals who were prepared for life with the information overload that took place as 50 minutes of class and 10 minutes of break on production benches that were structured as classes that took shape parallel to the industrial revolution were actually not able to fully meet the requirements of this age. Otherwise, why would Koç, Sabancı and other industrial manufacturers have to establish their own schools and undertake the task of training suitable personnel for their own factories? If graduates of educational institutions today receive additional training to learn the job when they start working, the reason for this lies in the fact that today’s schools cannot train the individuals needed by the age. Today’s education system assumes that readiness for life is still in the formula “KNOWING is enough”. However, in this age, “Knowing is not enough, it is necessary to be able to do”. However, when we look at the undergraduate education programs (the latest Teacher Training Programs updated by the Council of Higher Education) in which teacher candidates who will play a very important role in raising the “Can Do Individuals” needed today are trained;
We see that the average theoretical course hours are 84.85% and the practice hours are 15.15%. In short, we aim to train teachers with whom we load knowledge. In fact, the numbers in this table give us enough clues as to why we cannot raise the individuals of the age. I will repeat a sentence I wrote above with a little modification “It is not enough to know, it is necessary to be able to do it, sorry for those who know, we hired Google and now there is Artificial Intelligence”. Yes, the developments in WEB have now made access to information (book information) unlimited by freeing it from a single format (text, sound, image, animation, simulation, etc.). Instead of wise people who impart knowledge as in schools before and after the industrial revolution, there is now a need for Learning Assistants (Guides) who will train individuals who have the knowledge, skills and attitudes to use this knowledge. In fact, most of the theoretical information given in the above table in all fields is far from meeting today’s needs.
When we look at current technological trends, we come across topics such as Artificial Intelligence and robots, Blockchain, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, Smart Applications (I – Applications), RPA (Robotic Process Automation), Big Data, Bioengineering, Clean energy, Mobility, WEB 3.0, Space technologies, Cloud and edge computing, New generation materials. Is there any need to say much about how much knowledge and practice the students received and practiced for these topics during the 12 years of Basic Education? The majority of the current trends listed above require technological knowledge, skills and attitudes. In short, can our teachers be given the technological training required by the age before they start their service? Again, if we look at the Teacher Training Undergraduate Programs on the pages of the Council of Higher Education;
Source: https://myozden.blogspot.com/2018/06/yeni-ogretmen-yetistirme-lisans.html
Except for two programs, our teacher candidates take one technology-related course, and although the majority of these courses are given practically, they are not enough for them to acquire the Technological Formation, which is a requirement of the age. Again, we have come to the problem in the introductory parts of the article, in order to find teachers trained in accordance with the requirements of the age, it becomes necessary to give in-service trainings to teachers (to complete their deficiencies in undergraduate education).
When we delved into teacher training programs, we forgot about the big change; “COVID-19″, yes, this pandemic has caused huge changes in education/training systems. When the industrial revolution disabled schools, it became almost impossible to find solutions for education/training activities without using TECHNOLOGY. During the absolute closure periods, Parents and Teachers, who did not perceive the use of technology as keeping up with the times, were helpless in front of the students. There were other reasons for this, for example, although having the necessary technological devices appeared as a problem, the main problem was that teachers were not ready to use such virtual environments for education and training. As the first solution, the situation was tried to be passed by using presentation programs, which are indispensable for today’s classrooms and the biggest problem of the education system in my opinion. The method that confines the student-teacher relationship to the transmitter-listener mode in face-to-face education was transferred to virtual classroom environments without any changes during the COVID-19 period. This caused students to be more disconnected from the course. The multiple-choice exams created using the slides prepared for the presentation were very popular with the students because they completed many courses that they had not been successful in until this term by getting very high grades in these exams. In addition, schools with Technological Formation were able to close this term without suffering any loss of education/training in environments with classes and students and had the chance to prepare for and implement this new education/training paradigm. Now that schools have opened, a group of Ludist is again making statements such as the virtual environment is very harmful for our children. In fact, these COVID-19 absolute shutdowns herald the end of industrial revolution schools. As in the examples of horseless carriages and wireless phones, concepts such as virtual learning and distance learning will be hollow in the future and education will turn into a different form than today’s format. For example, the curriculum prepared with a 50-minute lecture and ten-minute break format to convey information will be replaced by curriculums, teaching methods, teaching materials in which more technology is used for education. In fact, the current slogan ” The future is coming” seems to be right for this change.
As a result, even if we are late for the question of what we should do next, we will have to say that wherever the damage is returned, it is profit, and we will have to make plans and put them into practice not only for teacher training but also for all professional fields. We should not forget that we need to train people who will perform all professions by having solid knowledge of the field (CK), professional knowledge (PK) that will enable them to use this field knowledge, and Technological Formation (TF) that will enable them to do this information using technology.
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