CURRICULUM OF THE FUTURE

Introduction

The International Labour Organisation (International Labour Organization, 2014) estimated that globally, as many as 202 million people were unemployed in 2013, with the bulk of the increase in East Asia and South Asia regions. It is estimated that some 74.5 million young people aged 15-24 were unemployed in 2013. The global youth unemployment rate has reached 13.1 per cent. In Malaysia, the unemployment rate is 3.20%

for February 2015 (Trading Economics, 2015). There is a need to reduce the rate of unemployment. Part of the response to this challenge is in making job creation and people more employable as the key-priority of a country.

Futuristic Curriculum

Society needs business professionals who would be able to produce and supply the requirements of jobs in a society. In order to compete and face the challenges of global business phenomena and the situation caused by globalisation and internationalisation in the business world, future business leaders need to be competent to face the future. Thus, the rationales for this futuristic curriculum are as follows:

 To restructure the present curriculum of the higher learning to meet the country's needs based on the global changes on digital and post-digital age;

 To restructure the present curriculum to be more future-oriented with an aim to produce graduates to meet the future demands;

 To meet the current digital challenge in line with the development of technology. As technology is moving too fast, we are not even able to maintain the old curriculum in line with the technology development;

 To create a new curriculum to meet the demands of the future curriculum as the futureoriented curriculum is flexible in nature and has a short-life span as compared to other curriculum which possess own present orientation or problem solving characteristics.

 To fine-tune, at the same time maintain the curriculum, as it is now time of the present role of the teaching and learning of institutions of higher learning in this digital age to do so, in order the role of universities as " scholar industry" being upheld.

 To adopt ideas from resolutions taken from a number of conferences, seminars and meetings which had proposed curriculum changes in higher learning to serve the new world.

The new design of Future-Oriented Curriculum has made it necessary to make changes as depicted in Figure 1. The first step that needs to be developed before any creation of a new curriculum design, a future research needs to be carried out, for example, a research on impact of technology on curriculum development as a whole and its implications to the future policies and system has to be developed.

Various methods have been developed that permit policy makers and decision makers utilizing the findings rather than simply projecting the current trends and issues into the future. Future research known as a systematic study of possible future conditions which includes analysis of how those conditions might change as a result of the implementation of policies and actions. In order to design the proposed Future-oriented Curriculum within a digital campus environment, the institution should emphasize on future research including the futures trends, forecasting and analyzing the possibilities and consequences involved in the plans for better tomorrow especially in planning the better education. The method in measuring the future will be discussed including scenarios, visioning, cross-impact analyzing, causal-layered analyzing, etc. Several future trends were also discussed to see the possibilities of education for tomorrow.

Business Education Background

Business communities and corporations often lamented that there seemed to be a gap between the planned curriculum of business education of universities and the expected outcome of graduates produced. Studies, such as by Wong and Fong (2008) and Dhesi and Lee (2011) of Malaysia do show gap exists and is one of the cause of unemployment. The gap is due to the planned curriculum producing future graduates based on past needs and wants. Past plans that did not account for possible future happenings will only end up training students with less knowledge, skills and values that could not answer the demands of the future.

Malaysia recognises the urgency to reduce unemployment and thus provides greater emphasis on retraining and skills upgrading of the workforce to reduce the gap between what is demanded by the business community and what competencies workers have. Programmes such as recognition prior learning scheme, industrial training scheme, apprenticeship, and SME training partners scheme (Department of Skills Development, 2014) by the Ministry of Human Resources were carried out. This is necessary not only to increase the knowledge and intensity of the workforce, but also to equip them with specialised and up-to-date skills as production techniques become increasingly automated, businesses becoming more competitive. Nevertheless, such retraining can be circumvented and expenses reduced if the business education curriculum is of futuristic in nature, answering the needs of the future by providing the education on content, skills and values of the future to the present students.

When the students graduate, they would then be already equipped with the future knowledge, skills and values. To know what is needed in the future is therefore essential.

The success of a business requires staying on top of current trends, spotting new ones over the horizon (Richarme, 2009) and being able to overcome the increasing complexities and changes in business (Cornuel, 2009). To be ahead of business, business practitioners, academics and government need to be aware of these changes and address the challenges and opportunities if they do not want to be left behind. There is a need for business forecasting in the planning of future business operations and activities.

Future-oriented thinking is a rational and existential human activity and man looked to the future in order to plan their steps. Even though preparedness for the future has always been the objective of curriculum planning, it is increasingly difficult to plan and align the curriculum to the demand of the future as everything is changing so fast. What works well for yesterday"s students might not work well for today"s students, as today"s students are exposed to information technology (Deutsch, 2004).

Designing a holistic and practical curriculum should be an on-going work-in-progress with many stakeholders from within and outside the school setting. Curriculum developers, administrators, businessmen, community representative, parents, students and teachers are stakeholders who should be heard in the development and design of the business curriculum.

Opinions from these stakeholders regarding the present curriculum and the future needs are crucial and would advance the issue of relevancy of the present curriculum for the future.

Development of Futuristic Business Studies Curriculum: An Example

Simos (2009) reported emerging economies in Asia. Countries such as China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia will be leading the global cycle of output twice that of industrialised countries. Since the global financial crisis, Anand, Cheng, Rehman, and Zhang (2014) study shows China and India exhibiting a slowdown in potential growth, with a decline of total factor productivity (TFP) growth; while the trend growth for the five ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) has been rather stable and might even have increased marginally. For a country to continue to grow economically well, business organisations" success are crucial.

The Asian business environment and business models are different from those in Western countries. For example, Malaysia has family business models, which entail special financing methods and management styles, a large percentage of businesses are still small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and thirdly, there is a lack of linkage between business schools and industry. An innovative curriculum is needed to address these challenges and give much attention to the needs of the local businesses (Association of Asia-Pacific Business Schools, 2012).

Secondary business education programmes enable students to move into the workforce or post-secondary education. Yet, in reality, present students who were unable to further their studies to higher institutions due to poor academic results were left in limbo, with only knowledge of business but hardly any skill in business. Joining the market force proved difficult due to these deficiencies. The study by the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (Bernama, 2010) stated graduates lack industrial training, have poor command of the English language, low problem solving skills, like to job-hop and lack self-confidence.

The ever increasing demand for a skilled workforce and able entrepreneurs reflects the need to study the ability of schools to produce skilful small scale entrepreneurs. Dewey"s ideal of "education through occupations" (Dow, 2002) reflected the need for a pragmatic curriculum. This is further emphasised by Leach (2009) that government is responsible in ensuring that education and training is available to those who need it, making them more employable and injecting investment into the small business sector to encourage entrepreneurs to start new businesses and create jobs.

This study looks into the design of the Business Studies curriculum for upper secondary schools (Business Studies is taught to Form 6 students in Malaysia, and is equivalent to A level). The viability of designing this curriculum lies in the possibility of it producing business students who are able to meet the future well prepared. This study proposes a futuristic business studies curriculum model to fit future business needs.

Business Study is an applied study. It is necessary to ensure this subject learned by the students would enable them to apply their knowledge to the business environment. Secondly, the students who have studied this subject are the input to tertiary institutions and the business community. What is learnt in Business Studies must be relevant to the demands of both of these environments. This study built a prototype of a futuristic Business Studies curriculum which is relevant to future business needs, and hence a useful tool in the molding of the next generation of students. The present study builds on previous work (Hodges & Burchell, 2003;Wong & Fong, 2008) undertaken on stakeholders" views of business graduate skills. This study adds to previous work by getting a bigger voice and provides empowerment to stakeholders in the planning of the Business Studies curriculum, so as to produce a better accepted curriculum for all parties involved.

In designing conventional curriculum, Tyler"s Rational-Linear Approach advocates a linear logic rational plan of what should happen, i.e., selecting objectives, learning experiences, organising learning experiences, and evaluating. However, Marsh and Willis (2007) found that studies on teacher thinking and teacher planning revealed few teachers actually used objectives as their starting point in planning. Furthermore, if curriculum development is seen as an on-going process, it could not then be linear, posed Flowers (2007).

This study proposes the critical approach summed up by Eisner"s Artistic Approach / Connoisseurship Model be used to design the Business Studies curriculum. Eisner"s Connoisseurship Model portrays social reality as negotiated, subjective, constructed, and multiple. Eisner believed curricula should be formed by a collaborative team consisting of individuals, society and subject matter, sharing data and information pertinent their particular areas and to deliberate so as to arrive at consensus. This model emphasises content or learning opportunities being more important in satisfying the needs of individual students and teachers more meaningfully. Eisner"s Artistic Approach managed to incorporate Gardner"s (1983) multiple intelligence theory in curriculum development and reinforces it to ensure students" abilities are taken into account. It also provides flexibility in making choices and is applicable to the intended, the enacted and the experienced curriculum (Brown, 2007).

Business involves business forecasting by the business leaders in planning and

managing their organisations. Lapide (2009) asserted business forecasting is now moving towards demand-driven forecasting, where the impact of demand shaping activities, such as sales and marketing promotions affects future demand. According to the US Department of Labour (Anderberg, 2010), changes in the workplace are driven by product, technology and business process innovations. Innovations adopted by businesses are adapted by managers to establishment-specific contexts and modified as necessary to adjust to changes in competitive advantage among rivals.

Theoretical framework consists of the actual ideas and beliefs that a research holds about the phenomena studied. It can also be called "idea context" of the study. This study Figure 1 showed what was planned and intended by curriculum developers would be implemented by teachers in class and students will learn as suggested by Thornton (1985) and Brown (2007) (as shown in strong lined boxes). This model, with reference to "The Countenance Model" (Stake, 1967), was first conceived by Stake (1967). Stake (1967) wrote about the connections in education between antecedents, transactions and contingencies (outcomes). He also noted connections between intentions and observations, which he called congruence. Stake, Thornton and Brown"s frameworks suggested implicitly that the types of experiences received by students would mould the type of graduates of the future (see dotted boxes in Figure 1).

Yet this model is lacking as futurism is vital in building the future we want. Predicting what would happen in the future would indicate to us how to be ready for it. The future would need to be fast, focussed, flexible, flat, and friendly (Bono & Heller, 2011). A futuristic Business Studies curriculum model is a model that takes in account future needs in the planning of a curriculum. See Figure 2.

This study proposed that projection of future business be first acknowledged, as proposed by Talwar and Hancock (2010). With this acknowledgement, it is hoped that a better and more appropriate curriculum could then be planned. If there is any gap between what is desired and what is produced, this framework could help narrow or close the gap.

Next, experiential learning which is heavily emphasised by Kolb (1985, as well as earlier writers such as Dewey, Lewin and Piaget) should be part of the intended curriculum. The output of the curriculum is future entrepreneurs that are competent, and they in turn could continue on the legacy of predicting and planning better, newer future curricula. This study will only consider the factors in the grey box; which is the future businesses, the practical experiences needed and the intended curriculum, as the objective of research is to study the relevance of the present Business Studies curriculum and to design a new curriculum.

The Design of the Study

The theoretical framework provided the ontology for the study. The conceptual framework would provide the epistemology for the study. To design a futuristic curriculum, an exploratory sequential design mixed methods procedures using DDR could be applied. In the needs analysis phase, only the qualitative technique, using the interview tool, is to be conducted. In this phase, the objective is to know whether there is any need to change the status quo of the present Business Studies curriculum. This phase provides the ontology of this study, i.e. the information on the context and environment. It shows the status quo of the nature. Literature reviews provided concrete facts as a guide for this study to produce a semi-structure interview protocol to be used in this phase. A pilot test of the semi-structured interview protocol must then be carried out. This method can be used in preliminary or exploratory stage (Yin, 2003;Seethamraju et al., 2006) The teachers" perception of the usability of this prototype was then analysed, reported and the prototype refined.

The outcome from the last phase of this study is a refined Prototype II, i.e. The Future

Business Studies Curriculum for Upper Secondary Schools.

The implication

This study"s framework is found suitable to design an acceptable futuristic curriculum and the developmental research approach can be used for such purpose. Nevertheless, more studies designing other futuristic curriculum should be conducted.