Education of the Future: thinking of students

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. We cannot conceive sitting down to work without turning on our computer and connecting to internet. That is why we intend to test our ideas about the education of the future. Our goal is to establish the beliefs of students about the education of the future by examining their opinions on technological context, teachers, teaching methodology and students. We also explore what relationships between these dimensions underlie their beliefs. METHOD. We conducted a survey on a sample of 431 students from the University of Huelva (Spain) using an ad hoc scale, called 'The education of the future', which aims to assess the beliefs of students about the education of the future and composed of four dimensions: Technological Context , Professors of the Future, Future Teaching Methodology and Students of the Future. We validate the scale by expert judgment, analysis of internal consistency and exploratory factor analysis, which redefine the initial scale. RESULTS. The students value, above all, the methodology of Collaborative Projects, followed by the orienting-socio-critical teachers and the constructive-social students, above the technological context. We also see that the model that underlies student beliefs places the project-based methodology as the center of future education, determining teacher and student models, and determined to a lesser degree by the technological context. DISCUSSION. These results indicate that new contexts transform teaching and that methodological changes demand a new type of student  and teachers more focused on learning.