Coming to "Terms" with 21st Century Education

July 23, 2013

Coming to "Terms" with 21^st Century Education

The academic world is abuzz with the term “21^st Century Education”. It is difficult to attend a conference, read an academic journal, or have a causual conversation in the school cafeteria without this term creeping in and eventually dominating the conversation.

Of course the idea of 21^st Century education can be both exciting and daunting, and, more often than not, polemic. Personally, I’ve had more detailed conversations on this topic over the past year than I have had about my own family. Why all the buzz now? In my opinion, this is such a high frequency topic now because it has become an immediate one. The demands of the 21^st Century are here, right now. They are not hypothetical, but rather reality-based.

Yet, the conversations about 21^st Century education, even among those educators who are supportive of the baisc principles behind the “movement” are often confusing and lacking in commonly shared understanding. Most educators have heard talk of the 21^st Century skills and lectures on the shift from knowing to doing. Many have heard about, and maybe even implemented, a flipped classroom or STEM, tuned into TED Talks or the Kahn Academy, tinkered with Project Based Learning, or downloaded some cool educational tech apps. Despite so many resources and tools at our disposal, there still seems to be a great amount of confusion and worry about what 21^st Century education is and what it demands.

During a series of discussions today with colleagues who I consider to be extraordinarilly open to the changes that the 21^st Century requires of education, I found our group floundering while trying to develop some concrete, actionable plans for moving some aspect of our school program into the 21^st Century. Let me point out that I am talking about a highly intelligent, articulate group of people who have been collaborating on 21^st Century assessment ideas for the past year. We have taken part in numerous and well-developed workshops on this topic. However, as I was leaving the school today, I was struggling to understand our difficulty in putting together some concrete ideas.

Part of the problem, I have come to understand, is in the venacular. I have found this to be true over and over with educational movements. It simply takes a long time for people to come to agreement about what specialized terms like “assessment” vs. “evaluation”, or “learning outcomes” vs. “standards” mean. Without a commonly and mutually understood vocabulary it is difficult to sustain a coherent and balanced discussion of any issue.

We, as educators, are familiar with the 21^st Century buzz words, but do we all agree about what those terms mean and what they look like in practice? My personal observations say that the answer is no.  

If we are to begin to implement 21^st Century strategies in the classroom, we first need to understand important terms. It seems to me that, starting the process with the utilization of new technologies or creating assessments that seem to have 21^st Century characteristics is putting the cart in front of the horse. We will simply be occassionally peppering our 19^th Century curriculums with 21^st Century tools /toys, but probably not reaching, or clearly understanding, 21^st Century outcomes.

This leads to my seoncd observation tonight. Many of the educators I have spoken to over the past year are only vaguely familiar with what the 21^st skills are that we are supposed to be fostering in our students. Many can list a few, which have become, what I consider, the more common buzz words of the movement, such as critcal thinking, collaboration, and connection. However, when pressed to discuss what these skills would look like in practice or how they might be assessed and reported on (think grading here), discourse-breakdown occurs.

I have looked at many sources for lists of 21^st Century skills, but the one I found one tonight that I find concisely informative, accessible, and easy to conceptualize in practice. It comes from Dr. Tony Wagner, co-director of Harvard's Change Leadership Group.

1) Critical thinking and problem-solving

2) Collaboration across networks and leading by influence

3) Agility and adaptability

4) Initiative and entrepreneurialism

5) Effective oral and written communication

6) Accessing and analyzing information

7) Curiosity and imagination

The Asia Society has posted a Power Point of Dr. Wagner's that brief explains these skills. 

To hear Dr. Wagner talk about these 7 skills, click on the You Tube link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS2PqTTxFFc&feature=fvwp

I would also encourage educators with the same concerns or topical interest to read the following breif article from the Asia Society. There is an interesting discussion question at the end of the article that refelcts many of the concerns I hve heard from fellow educators, and have indeed wondered about myself.

http://asiasociety.org/education/resources-schools/professional-learning/seven-skills-students-need-their-future

Discussion question

At one point in his remarks, Dr. Wagner states that "we have no idea how to teach or assess these skills." It is difficult to do systemically, but good teachers exercise these skills in the classroom all the time. What are your approaches for student skill development? And how can we bring it to scale so all students can succeed in a global knowledge economy?

This is another resource I found helpful in understand what each of these skills mean in real terms as they apply to what the job market demands:

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/about/strategicplan/advisorscorner.pdf

http://www.teachthought.com/learning/how-to-prepare-student-for-21st-century-survival/

These are just a few resources to get started with. Please feel free to send some good resources you have found on this topic.