5.1 Summary & conclusions

Below a summary of 'Teach you own' system is presented. First of all, let us review the three pillars of Borras & Elder applied to our socio-technical system.

• What drives change? 

In Chapter 1 we decribed 'Teach your own' as a socio-technical system and realized that is is a transversal or horizontal subsystem affecting and needed by the rest of them. All the subsystems of 'Texel self-sustained by 2065' need people in the Island who are willing and 'know-how' to achieve this transition.

'Teach your own' will contribute to a 100% Texel self-sustained in 2065 by visioning that in the 2065 there will be people in Texel who will work for the local projects. In other words, by assuring that Texel will not be full of projects but empty of people to work on them: this drives change. In order to assess if this goal is accomplished, we fixed some sustainability criteria or indicators. Below we justify some of them:

• Why do we imagine university students in the mainland? Why did we not impose 100% univerity students in Texel? We believe that 18 year old students need to explore the world outside Texel and that it is not sustainable to force youngsters to stay in Texel for university studies. Online learning cannot do the whole job and can lead to isolation and extreme closure, especially when living in an island with less connection with city life. Therefore we believe that it is sustainable and aligned with Texel 2065 self-sustained goal that some students experience university in the mainland. In this way, knowledge from the inside and from the outside of the island can add to each other. What is important is that these students come back to work for local projects once they graduate. For this to happen, criteria 1) is crucial: all the youngsters need to get involved with local and sustainable projects at an early age so they feel engaged with job opportunities in Texel after university.

These ideas are confirmed by the YUTPA analysis done in Chapter 2: as a highschool student, the personality and interests are still being shaped by interaction with fellow students, teachers and family, as well as by interaction with the island and local activities. Interacting with a local project at a young age (e.g. by a sustainable hands-on experience) can lead to an intense engagement with it and change of the child's visions. Thus the time and relation dimensions are the main challenges posed by the future subsystem whereas the action and place dimensions can be used as an instrument or tool to reinforce communion, engagement and the role of the student in the future subsystem.

• Why 80% return rate? Ideally 100% return rate is optimum. However, we believe this is too optimistic since appealing job opportunities can appear in the mainland for university students. All in all, we believe that 1) supports 2) by engaging students at an early age with future local opportunities.

• Why higher levels of education (HAVO, VWO, HBO, university) are reinforced? Higher levels of education are linked to better future employment opportunities in the island and to leaders who are prepared to initiate a transition. Currently, lower levels of education are dominant in Texel and the shift towards higher levels of education needs to happen already at primary school and secondary school to increase the number of students at HBO and university levels. Teach your own needs to boost this higher levels of education and the job opportunities

This 2065 goal for teach your own will bring along some impacts or effects on Texel society in which it is embedded and also in the rest of subsystems, such as accomodating, feeding and transporting a higher number of inhabitants, as well as societal structural changes specially in families which will have youngsters at home and leisure activities for young people.

• Who drives change? Actors and stakeholders

Due to the fact that 'Teach your own' is only a part of a big whole, different actors will place different expectations, desires and actions which will both promote and block the initiatives to reach this goal, since they might not agree on the benefits of increasing Texel's population by keeping youngsters in the island.

We have identified the following actors as main stakeholders of our subsystem:

• Students. They directly receive the positive and negative impacts of 2065 goal. Their interests and motivations will shape the future subsystem. However, at highschool level these interests are highly determined and influenced by their surroundings and their situated agency to change these surroundings is low. At university level their proactivity can have a bigger impact in shaping the goal and the educational system, but their motivations will depend on their experiences as high school students... All in all, their needs are to be closely addressed and taken into account for a self-sustained future.

• Teachers. Their role exceeds merely diffusing knowledge. Their role is essential to shape the students' motivations: teachers are on charge of creating a sustainable mindset in students. Teachers can influence in cognitive processes, perception and motivation of students as well as values and inspiration. For a self-sustained Texel, values related to sustainability as well as a practical and hands-on midset need to be embraced.

• Parents. Together with teachers, parents are the other essential educative pillar for highschool students. Their role as diffusers of knowledge is only supportive, but they play a major role in shaping the children lives at the early stages. They will take decisions for students until they are 18 years old and they need to feel safe and sure that the educational system in the island is a high-quality one, better than the one in the mainland. All in all, they need to be involved since their role is crucial in highschool education.

• Local authorities. This group involves all the actors with legislative and hierarchical power that define the educational system and future job opportunities by means of rules and laws regarding educational programs and accreditation, funding and investment for ICT and infrastructure, subsidies for small enterprises... In order for Teach your own to succeed, governmental support can be a facilitator. On the contrary, if the vision of local authorities is against our goal they will constitute a barrier which will slow down the process or even lead to failure.

• How to achieve the goal? Instruments

With 2065 as the target time frame, we can already foresee a more flexible educational system than nowadays, where digitalisation and networks are a constant in daily life. In previous chapters we have discussed some technical aspects of a possible online learning environment. However, ICT is only one of the possible instruments. It is specially relevant as an enabling tool for those students who want to pursue an online university degree in Texel while for example working part-time in a local project. Moreover: embracing too much online learning also has pernicious effects already discussed in previous chapters (e.g. lack of integrated rythm, loneliness, virtual perception of reality, addiction to gamification).