Locally Driven Prototypes of Future Learning Spaces in the Philippines: Applying Education Technologies to Address Local Priorities

• In Event: Shiny, New, and Sustainable EdTech? Diverse ICT Initiatives Invest in Codesign, Local Capacity and Leadership to Ensure Long-Term Impact

Proposal

As part of the Philippines Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 Agenda, the Department of Education (DepEd) formed the Education Futures Program to provide leadership in education foresight and planning to ensure that Filipino youth have equitable opportunity to “become self-directed, work ready, proactive and flourish” as life-long learners and citizens. In considering the future of education under this initiative, DepEd recognized that technology can increase access to learning content and engagement, yet at the same time impede access, especially among students living in low-resourced and remote communities. The COVID 10 pandemic underscored the truth of this dichotomy (Author, et al 2022), reinforcing the belief that ideation, design, and implementation of future learning spaces must be locally driven by local priorities, and only through the integral involvement of local entities and individuals will education technologies effectively address the different priorities associated with different education contexts.

With USAID funding under the All Children Learning (ACR) – Philippines program, RTI International and the Department of Education worked together to develop the “Co-creating Learning Spaces for the Future for Early Literacy and Numeracy in the Philippines” activity. The activity provided a series of professional development opportunities for government officials, school managers, and teachers to build an understanding of education futures thinking and foresight planning. This culminated in a prototype workshop and scale-up guide for officials, managers, and school staff to develop prototypes of future learning spaces that were both aligned with national education goals and responsive to local priorities (USAID, 2022). We worked with six school-district partnerships from three regions in the Philippines, during a week-long workshop to build an understanding of and apply human-centered design principles to develop locally designed prototypes of a “re-imagined learning space for the future.” The six prototypes that were developed in this workshop highlight two key drivers of the prototype designs. These were addressing the inequities in access and learning outcomes in their school-communities and the diversity of education technological applications that emerged.

This presentation focuses on the last component of the “Co-creating Learning Spaces for the Future” activity – the workshop on prototyping of future learning spaces. We will briefly introduce the audience to the Philippines Conceptual Framework on Future Learning Spaces and the core elements of professional development that were covered under the ACR-Philippines activity. We will then present the process by which school teams developed prototypes and present the six products – six prototypes of future learning spaces and how these prototypes have been operationalized through private entities, local government, and DepEd contributions and support since the workshop ended.
Our objective of this presentation is to stimulate thought and discussion about the following questions.
Why does “re-imagining the future of learning spaces” only benefit learners equitably when the ideation, design, and implementation is locally driven?
How does the relevance and sustainability of educational technologies depend on human-centered design?
How have school teams in the Philippines addressed equity, well-being, and inclusion through diverse technological applications in content delivery and learning and/or re-imagined learning spaces for the future?

Author

• Elizabeth Randolph, RTI International