We’re regularly reminded that, in today’s world, the only constant is change. So, how can we best prepare ourselves and our organisations for this change? And, more importantly, how should we be shaping and providing the education experiences for our tamariki to ensure they grow up, confident in facing the changing work that they will inherit from us? Most of the time we find ourselves responding to change.

Why is it that this change often comes as a surprise? And what can we do to ‘stay ahead of the game’?
Modern educators know the value of staying relevant and connected to the world around us. We might be leading change in schools and centres, developing vision and strategic direction, or helping our communities understand new thinking in education — whenever we need to innovate and problem solve, it is vital that we ground our thinking in research and effective practices by connecting to sources beyond our immediate context.

A ‘future-focused’ approach is to engage in a process of horizon scanning, to identify and understand some of the trends that are emerging, and to reflect on these in ways that help us imagine what some of the future scenarios may be. For nine years, CORE Education has sought to support the New Zealand education sectors and beyond to look at developments on the horizon as a provocation for thinking afresh about what we are currently doing to support our learners.

Each year, CORE Education’s researchers, educators, and digital technology experts pool their expertise and combine their understanding and evidence of the ways that digital technologies are influencing all aspects of education. The result is our list of the ten trends that are expected to make a growing impact upon education in New Zealand in the coming year.

We’ve categorized our trends in five key areas that are used in much of the future-focused research: structural, cultural, technological, economic and process. The purpose in presenting these trends each year is to provide a glimpse of the ‘big picture’ within which we operate in the education system. It is important to recognise that these are trends, not specific predictions. They indicate broad developments across multiple fields that are likely to influence all our work in coming months and years. As such, they are offered to provoke further research, investigation, and discussion to help leaders and educators determine what might affect strategic planning.

We invite you to take these trends and use them as a focus for discussions among your staff, students, and community. We have found that organisations get best use out of this resource in the following ways:

• Shared reading and stimulus for professional learning sessions and events
• Reference points for teacher inquiries
• Provocation for conversation in lead teams as a prelude to visioning and strategic planning
• Accessible, dip-in reading for staff and communities
• Reference points for research

CORE's Ten Trends 2016:

Ten Trends 2016 overview

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Derek Wenmoth

Derek Wenmoth is a Principal Consultant at CORE Education. He has been involved with CORE since its inception in 2003. With a background as a teacher, principal, teacher educator and education policy advisor, Derek’s role at CORE, perfectly combines his passion for teaching and learning together with his long-held fascination with the use of technologies in education. He coordinates the development of CORE’s annual Ten Trends that are widely referenced by educators and educational leaders.

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