Introduction
With the rapid changes in our global community and the environment, the Taiwan Administrative Authority has chosen to enrich and enhance the students’ intellectual capacity and creative thinking through education that promotes the importance of a “futures imagination” to improve technologies and the society in general. The mid-term plan to promote “futures imagination and creativity in education” (2011 ~ 2014) is implemented by the Ministry of Education Advisory Office. It covers seven issues with six action plans for all educational stages. It trains a core group of teachers and offers various courses and teaching experiments to help build an innovative educational environment that would cultivate creative and imaginative individuals who would make changes for the future by supporting the government’s policy on “sustainable development” and helping future generations cope with the world.
Seven Issues
Since the scope of the “Future Imagination” is extensive, this plan has established seven issues that combine suggestions from experts and scholars of various advisory committees. Each action plan is responsible for one or two key issues, allowing the content and curriculum at all education levels as well as current local issues and global development trends to be addressed.
The seven issues include visions for the future of homes, industries, culture, technology, society, environment and education. These are integrated into the primary and secondary school curriculums, in line with major issues tackled by the United Nations and the European Union.
Six Action Plans
This project hopes to cooperate with competent organizations in order to establish six action plans that would cover four stages of education; namely, compulsory education, high school, university and adult education as well as two systems; namely, assessment and educational administration. Educational administration helps promotes course experiments, teaching innovation, community activities, cultivation of teachers, teachers community management and a learning environment conducive to creativity and imagination. The six action plans and their relationship are indicated below.
