School's Over: Learning Spaces in Europe in 2020: An Imagining Exercise on the Future of Learning

Abstract

This report uses a rigorous imagining approach to develop an alternative way of organizing learning in Europe whereby the traditional school system no longer plays a significant role. This study shows that on the basis of phenomena already present in Europe today it is possible to invent a discontinuous model of how people learn and how what they learn is used in everyday life. At the core of this model is a carefully elaborated idea of learning spaces that encompass new ways of ensuring that people have the capacity to control, direct, share and deepen their knowledge throughout their lives. These multi-dimensional learning spaces are imagined as operating in a systemically different economic and social context. One where non-technocratic, non-hierarchical learning is central to the production of local well-being and community based identity. ¿School¿s Over¿ is meant to challenge both the functional and organizational assumptions that currently dominate, often implicitly, the choices being made today.