use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
This chapter explores essential questions of the role of education in society and how it must change as humanity assumes control and responsibility for many of the Earth’s systems. The chapter begins with an analysis of foundational concepts of education’s purpose and how and when its purpose as a societal construct was clear. Looking forward, humanity’s fate in the twenty-first century is tied together or commonly held. Sustainable well-being, complexity and systems change in education, and how teaching and learning should be reconfigured for an era of uncertainty are all examined as areas for redesign of teaching, learning and education systems themselves. The chapter concludes with the assertion that for a post-Enlightenment, deeply interconnected age marked by uncertainty and transformational technology, education’s purpose is to enable societies to succeed at a new frontier where the taxonomies of today are limiting progress.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.