ACS Director of Education and Integrated Technology Dr. Robert Harrison
Doha, Qatar: Higher education is undergoing a push for increased efficiency and adaptation to an ever-changing world while maintaining the core values of education -- inculcation, moral development, analysis, values clarification, and action learning.
Besides, as education has progressed, it has allowed for a more interactive, individualized, and comprehensive style of teaching children today. Solving existing problems and guaranteeing students can take advantage of new possibilities have undoubtedly become critical. Consequently, to succeed in today’s world, children need the tools provided by an education that can keep up with the times.
ACS International School Doha is one academic institution that has integrated all these into its curricula. With four schools – three in the UK and one in Doha, the school is committed to delivering quality education that keeps pace with a rapidly changing world.
ACS International School Doha offers an array of educational pathways, not only ensure that students’ academic needs are met, but that they can choose the academic pathway that best suits their strengths. The US high school diploma provides a strong foundation, while the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP), the school’s core programme, offers a globally recognised qualification emphasising critical thinking and inquiry-based learning. The Advanced Placement (AP) courses provide rigorous, college-level studies -- students can earn college credits from this. The Career Programme (CP) combines academic and practical skills, ensuring students are ready for higher education and the workforce. This pathway is for more career-oriented students, and at the moment, ACS offers pathways to becoming an entrepreneur with an external qualification for entry.
“Education changes a lot, and yet some of the fundamentals don’t change because human beings have been the same,” ACS Director of Education and Integrated Technology Dr. Robert Harrison said.
“There are predictable developmental stages for how children learn to grow and relate with each other and the path toward understanding the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to succeed. What makes it difficult is the pace of change in the outside world with which they interact, so we try to look at it from both sides,” he added.
Harrison said while some educational tenets remain classical, the school’s values ensure it can work across cultures, which is crucial for an international school. He added that technology changes fast, with ACS integrating some cutting-edge technology in its operations, but it prioritises “knowing which technology is right for the right student.”
“All of our students have to learn to live not just to push the buttons and make the machine work but to be effective members of a hyper-connected global community. We want children to interact with each other and the world safely and diligently and build their skills as responsible digital citizens. It’s nice for me in my role to put those two things together because education will always be informed by technology,” Dr. Harrison added.
According to Dr. Harrison, children need to develop specific skills to easily interact, show empathy, connect, communicate, and understand each other across cultures, languages and perspectives.
“People need the skill to solve problems they haven’t met yet. At ACS, we want to equip children with the skills they need to be confident, caring and effective.”
Dr. Harrison underlined that the school aims to equip the kids with skills and independence to succeed in careers that haven’t been invented yet. To drive this point home, the school hosts ‘ACS Future Skills 2040 Event’, which helps parents understand how to assist their children and guide them with the needed skill set to be readyfor whatever comes next.
“The ACS Future Skills 2040 Event’ is so important. We can make predictions based on the trends. We’re trying to help create students with the skills they need to be successful even if we don’t know the challenges they’re going to face,” Dr. Harrison said.
This year’s upcoming ACS Future Skills 2040 Event which will be held on April 24th at ACS International Schools campus, will be the second annual 2040 Future Skills Event where parents can learn about the future of the job market and the skills that will be essential for success from industry experts. It will feature a lineup of renowned Industry speakers such as Pam Mundy, ACS Trustee and Consultant Director of Schools and Education for NEOM, Professor Dr. Ger Graus OBE, Global Education Adviser, first Global Director of Education at KidZania and founding CEO of the Children’s University, Dr. Robert Harrison: Director of Education & Integrated Technology as well as Ben Mason: Founder + CEO of GlobalBridge.
Commenting on ACS plans for future growth, Harrison said the school is in the fourth year of a five-year plan. The core tenets of the plan revolve around helping students manage their well-being, building confidence in diverse communities, and ensuring kids excel both personally and academically.
“We’ve had those thematic developments across the four years. Next year, we will focus on global competence because one of our primary identities and convictions is that people live in a global world. The things that are most complicated to solve don’t have national borders. So, we want globally competent people,” he said.
He added that ACS is currently researching with the Harvard Graduate School of Education to look at things that can be done in school to increase students’ global competence and ability to manage differences, think about global issues and be responsible citizens. More importantly, the research aims to determine what teachers do to help students embody all these traits.
“The research is oriented toward helping teachers and not just teaching about world events because that’s hard enough but easy to do. We want to pay attention to that and are heading there strategically,” Dr. Harrison noted.
