Breakout Session 5 - 14th May at 11:30 - 12:15

Working Toward 2050: Rural American Insights and Aotearoa Considerations — A Conversational Leadership Workshop

Abstract

Across Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming, in the USA, superintendents were asked a deceptively simple question: Are today’s kindergarteners being prepared for life and work in the mid-21st century? Drawing on 133 open-ended responses and three rounds of coding, this workshop explores how superintendents describe future readiness, barriers, and the shifts required if schooling is to meet the world students will inherit in the 2040s–2070s.

Using in vivo, process, and thematic analyses, we surface six powerful themes: foundational literacy as a bottleneck, rapid technological disruption—especially artificial intelligence, the rise of CTE and workforce pathways, persistent staffing and funding shortages, widening rural inequities, and the urgent need for long-horizon system planning. Although leaders express optimism, most describe their systems as “partially prepared” and “not moving fast enough for the world our children are entering.”

Anchored in the spirit of ka mua, ka muri, participants will examine these U.S. findings as a starting point for discussion of their own contexts. The workshop invites NZ leaders to map readiness gaps, identify leverage points, and consider what a coherent, 2050-aligned learning system might look like for Aotearoa New Zealand and what needs to happen now to get there.

Biography