Catering to the educational needs of Generation Alpha is disrupting pedagogy

Here’s a question: Have you heard of Generation Alpha? If you have, well done: you have your finger on the pulse. If you haven’t, you would likely have been as puzzled as I was if you came across this headline: “Forget Millennials, Gen Alpha Is Here (Mostly).” After the initial shock—What? Move over millennials? Just as we were starting to understand them?—I immediately wondered, “Who is Generation Alpha?” and “How can they already be here?”

Confused, I decided to look at how we’d classify generationally all or most of the people who are alive today. There’s some variation depending on where you look, but here’s a rough guide from oldest to youngest:

▸ Silent generation: Born 1928–45 (74–91 years old)

▸ Baby boomers: Born 1946–64 (55–73 years old)

▸ Generation X: Born 1965–80 (39–54 years old)

▸ Generation Y: Born 1981–95 (24–38 years old)

▸ Generation Z: Born 1996–2010 (9–23 years old)

▸ Generation Alpha: Born 2011–25 (0–8 years old)

So Gen Alpha is already here but not having much impact at the moment—even when there are an estimated 2.5 million alphas born globally every week—as they have not even reached their teenage years yet. Interestingly, they are the first generation born entirely within the 21st century and are expected to be the longest living and also the wealthiest. And just as the two generations before them, Gen Alpha will grow up in an electronics-filled and increasingly online and socially networked world. They are also expected to continue to follow “the same pull toward multiculturalism and even further disintegration of gender norms,” according to an October 2018 article from Digiday.

So I said that they are not having much impact yet, but that is not totally accurate. Businesses and brands all over the world are already researching the young alphas before they grow into their target audience and trying to predict what their habits and attention spans will be like. From an education perspective, a recent article on natureindex.com suggests that “young universities aiming for high rankings are preparing for ‘Generation Alpha’  ” and are planning to “disrupt pedagogy” and “ban the lecture.” Leading the charge is a new UK institution called PLuS Engineering, which is a spin-off of PLuS Alliance, a collaboration between King’s College London, Arizona State University, and the University of New South Wales.

The alliance hopes to distinguish education at member institutions from other, more established ones by focusing on problem-based learning, banning lectures in favor of tutorials, and exposing students to “facilitated learning”—a shift that has been happening over the past few years in educational establishments around the world. In addition, the alliance is planning to create highly personalized learning experiences and offer the opportunity to receive mentoring from industry professionals as well as academic staff. On top of that, the alliance hopes to foster a culture that champions diversity, pushes interdisciplinary research that focuses on solving real-world problems, and cultivates an entrepreneurial spirit. The goal is, ultimately, “to solve global challenges around health, social justice, sustainability, technology and innovation,” the article says.

This approach strikes me as very well suited for the teaching of chemistry as the applied, collaborative, and multidisciplinary science that it is. Supported by the many technological developments that are already in place (such as augmented reality) and others that will happen between now and when Generation Alpha makes it to university, this disruption of pedagogy may make earning a chemistry degree a more fulfilling and immersive experience than ever before. Lucky Generation Alpha!

Views expressed on this page are those of the author and not necessarily those of ACS.