Conclusion – Moving Forward: WIL in the 21st Century

Learning for an unknown future, full of expectations to succeed in a climate of chaos, disruption, and precarious employment can be daunting for many students. Anxieties are likely to build as “unknown-ness derives from the complexity of multiplying descriptions of the world such that we cannot even describe the challenges that face us with any assuredness” (Barnett, 2012, p. 76). Barnett (2012), Fullan and Scott (2014), Scott (2015) and many others, however, suggest that this is the landscape of the 21st century (see also Holmes, 2013; Tomlinson, 2010; Zacher, 2014). Teaching students to navigate an unknown future can be just as daunting, and requires a reappraisal of how we, as educators, prepare them for their lives beyond the academic institution. We argue that this means being world-ready.