Teachers have traditionally worked alone. Co-operation with external parties is a
necessary challenge for the entire educational sector. Openness to various learning environments outside school is one of the required changes. The deregulation that
has occurred in the managing system and the transfer of decision-making powers to the
local level will increase the significance of co-operation in teaching. Successful work performance requires competition to be transformed into a strength that arises from
co-operation. This presents a major challenge to principals in particular, but also to individual teachers, and in addition to the ability to co-operate, a strong inclination towards it is needed. It is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the basic skills that an active citizen of the future will need. It is even more difficult to define the substance of these skills in detail. It has been estimated that information related work will account for more than 60% of all occupations in working life by 2030. The proportion of manual work will remain below 5%. People will primarily produce information instead of material goods. People in information professions will need to solve complex problems, which requires a high level of expertise and information processing skills.
The ability to participate in creative cultural activities is important in the development of expertise. An expert creates new information and introduces it for common development. Knowledge, skills and competence will be very different from what they are today. In the future, people will work more and more with the aid of abstractions and graphical symbols. In the development of expertise, everyone is also required to have network competence, since one cannot exactly know the specific skills needed, co-operation between the labor market and schools is essential.
The expanding provision of educational technology creates opportunities for real-time co-operation. The importance of information and communications technology (ICT) in building learning environments has been emphasized in this project. Future learners will largely build their own learning environments while teachers will assist students with this. Distance-independent communication and study will increase dramatically. This is particularly prominent in supplementary education as well as in vocational continuous training. In particular, the principle of lifelong learning requires all teachers to be sufficiently familiar with and capable of guiding the learner in the use of various new tools.
Mastering the ICTs will bring new dimensions to the concept of exclusion. On the
other hand, the globalization of information and increasingly rapid transfer of information will decrease the certainty brought about by science and technology. There has been a shift from the age of permanent information to one of changing belief systems.
In learning ICT skills, it is advisable to bear in mind that learning which aims at repetition or mechanical memorization will not easily yield to new innovations. It is therefore important to sufficiently understand the main operating principles of both hardware and software, which will allow us to learn and to take new systems into use. The society of the future will be increasingly based on cultural pluralism and on ideological diversity. In a world where borders are opening up, tolerance of cultural diversity will be a challenge. Tolerance is based on high self-esteem and information. On the other hand, the ability to embrace contacts with less familiar cultures presents a necessary challenge both for individuals and their communities. This is particularly prominent in supplementary education as well as in vocational continuous training. In particular, the principle of lifelong learning requires all teachers to be sufficiently familiar with and capable of guiding the learner in the use of various new tools.