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

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Preface

This report provides a visionary scenario of a 21st Century Learning-intensive Society where Learning Spaces are the next school. It is an imaginary snapshot of learning in Europe in 2020 which has been developed on the basis of a rigorous foresight approach. It presents a discontinuous model of how people learn and how what they learn is used in everyday life. The vision provokes and challenges the assumptions that currently dominate, often implicitly, the choices being made today. It includes hypothetical policy options for the imagined Learning-intensive Society Learning Spaces. The visionary scenario and the policy options that are part of it are intended to provide food for thought on the possible future of learning in Europe in 2020.

“Learning Spaces” (LS) is the term used in a report published in 2006 by the European Commission’s Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, “as a way to embrace a different view of future learning”. The current report moves the discussion of Learning Spaces forward. It is written by Riel Miller (www.rielmiller.com), Hanne Shapiro and Knud Erik Hilding-Hamann (www.danishtechnology.dk ) and is the result of a study commissioned by IPTS.

Intellectual property rights of this report belong to the Joint Research Centre – Institute for Prospective and Technological Studies (IPTS) of the European Commission.