Article Preview
TopIntroduction
The need to change education and to make learning spaces evolve is a topic widely debated for years (Punie, 2007; Beichner, 2014). Active research in neuroscience, psychology and cognition is bringing to light new ways to anchor learning (Sah et al., 2016). Technological achievements have also had a significant impact on the education sector during the last 40 years. Taken together, these educational changes lead to new pedagogical paradigms supported by innovation in methodologies, tools and systems.
In the 21st century, the presence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in schools has grown (Hassan & Geys, 2016) and schools have offered technology-enriched learning spaces (Inan & Lowther, 2010; Ertmer et al., 2012). However, this has not been done in a holistic way. On many occasions, schools selected technologies without a deep understanding of their potential, even though it is well known that integration must go beyond simply providing technological components (Ifenthaler & Schweinbenz, 2016). In addition, these supposed innovations do not always take students’ well-being (physical, emotional, social, intellectual) into account, which is vital as students’ welfare improves their academic performance (Jisc, 2019; Darling-Hammond et al., 2019).
At the same time that we are still facing some issues dating from the beginning of the information era, we have already entered the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). This revolution is largely brought on by the interconnection of cyber-physical systems. Industry 4.0, a part of 4IR, also brings Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things and other possibilities (Zhong et al., 2017) to education. These advances are already at an initial stage of development and may bring either unpredictable improvements in education or greater problems to schools that are not well prepared for such evolution. It is necessary to define how schools can adapt to this near future.
One of the largest trending topics on the impact of Industry 4.0 in education is the appearance of Smart Classrooms. The “smart” concept in classrooms ideally requires a deep and comprehensive understanding of how to include new technologies to improve teaching and learning processes. Smart classrooms integrate mobile and wearable devices, tracking technologies, data collection systems, big data processing capabilities, objects interconnected with human agents, automated machine decision-making to regulate environmental conditions such as lighting and air quality, etc. (Palau &Mogas, 2019), as well as the newest advances in Industry 4.0 such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, etc. (Shahroom & Hussin, 2018).
In this study, the authors explore the schools’ point of view on how Industry 4.0 will contribute to the development of smart classrooms. A focus group with school principals served to gather tacit knowledge on current needs and perspectives of schools regarding the innovations to come. Consistent with their expert profile as leaders in education, they considered pedagogy as central for any decision to adopt Industry 4.0 solutions. Technological advances are well seen, but they also identify important limitations to overcome.