教育如何适应未来──以美国教育为背景的探讨

The Importance of Educational Adaptability

教育如何为21世纪中叶的经济发展培养劳动力? 本文从人力资本理论出发,探讨了教育如何提高以前未具体讨论过的工人能力 扩展的人力资本理论认为, 受教育水平较高的工人之所以生产能力较高是因为其有能力在资源分配。适应新技术新组织形式方面做出复杂的决定, 有能力对常规工作之外的不可预见的情况作出恰当的反应 而这些特征是不能被传统的学校考试所测童出来的 本文还回顾了有关内生增长理论和教育生产的外部性的研究进展 实证研究一致表明, 更长的受教育年限具有独立于考试成绩之外的经济回报, 即便教育年限是因义务教育年限的延长而延长的 最近的证据显示,在影响教育成就和劳动生产率的因素中, 人际的、内省的技能是非常重要的;然而不同于认知能力, 这些因素却被以往的研究所忽略 因此, 本文建议大力提高劳动者的教育成就, 尤其是那些边缘群体, 重点培养劳动者的适应性, 并提出了均衡发展适应性的几个具体维度。

What is the role of education for preparing the labor force of the middle of the twentyfirst century? The most conventional response is that we need to specify the twentyfirst century skills that will be required. These can then be translated into changes in core curriculum and instructional practices that incorporate increasing use of educational technologies to produce a capable and competitive labor force as well as measures for assessment. The alternative view is that we cannot predict with any accuracy the specific occupational needs, work roles and demands a half century hence or the particular educational practices that will get us there. But we can prepare workers with adaptable skills that will be able to accommodate the likely range of changes that will take place, and this can be accomplished by raising educational attainments of the young and providing a more balanced approach to generic skill development. This will entail expansion of testing to a wider range of educational attributes. This paper presents both theoretical insights and some empirical results from the economics of education. More specifically it asserts that the theory of human capital was grounded initially in how education improves worker skills that were largely unspecified. It was also acknowledge that more educated workers have advantages in gaining new skills from experience and training. Economists assumed that educational skills were reflected in achievement scores conventionally measured by schools. But, ultimately the theory was expanded to incorporate the view that more educated workers contribute to productivity by having the abilities to make complex and sophisticated decisions in resource allocation and adaptation to new technologies and new forms of organization and respond to unforeseen contingencies beyond the routine activities of work organizations. These attributes are not measured by conventional school testing. The paper describes recent advances that connect worker characteristics to educational attainment and worker productivity, namely endogenous growth theory and educational externalities in production. Empirical studies consistently show that additional years of education in themselves have a strong economic payoff, independent of test scores, even if propelled by an expansion of compulsory schooling. Recent evidence suggests that interpersonal and intrapersonal skill development are a major missing ingredient that are linked to educational attainments and affect worker productivity in conjunction with and beyond cognitive knowledge and that a balance among these contributes to worker productivity.
This framework leads to a recommendation for expanding substantially the educational attainment of the workforce, and especially that of marginal populations, with a strong focus on adaptability of workers through their acquisition of both cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Examples of specific dimensions of balanced worker development for adaptability are proposed.