Just last year, if you were on the latest bandwagon of progressive education, you’d be all on top of so-called 21st century skills. Now, it seems, they are no longer in vogue.
To wit, this blog post from Assorted Stuff that echoes this sentiment in its commentary and in the link to the piece by Alfie Kohn.
I’m not here to pick on Tim, I don’t think I really disagree with him. But some of the more progressive edubloggers I follow now are putting down the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and all it stands for. And thinking about it all, I’d like to articulate my thinking. Let’s see if you agree or not.
- 21st century skills are labels for modes of learning.
- The label “21st century” relates to the idea that these skills, identified by “experts” and businesses, are what’s required today and tomorrow in the workplace.
- If we really want to prepare students for success upon leaving school, we need to develop their abilities with these skills.
I agree with some critics when I say the title of these skills is weak. I’m less inclined to support them just to fulfill the need to provide businesses with well-prepared workers. I’d be more inclined to support them if they proffered students a better quality of life.
- Many of the skills focus on qualities we typically find missing in schools today, but these are skills that have been on the minds of educators for years: creativity, cooperation, media literacy, collaboration, problem-solving, etc.
- These skills focus on outcomes and pedagogical approaches, to be implemented.
- Traditional views of technology integration have focused on the tools, despite well-meaning practitioners who have had loftier goals.
I like the concept of twenty-first century skills, despite a weak name, because it places focus on student outcomes and the requisite changes in pedagogy rather than the tools. I think if we do “21″ right, not just by placing labels on what we do, but by changing the methods by which we teach, by changing some of the tools we use to educate, and by thinking outside the traditional confines of the school, then there is real potential to be realized.
If I’m a teacher, and I’m wondering if I’m doing a good job, I can assess my own thinking and planning by looking at a chart of these skills: am I asking students to collaborate? am I requiring them to work in small groups to achieve a goal? am I encouraging them to produce something that will make waves outside the classroom, and impact folks in the “real world?”
The best thinking I’ve heard comes from a 1983 book entitled The Third Wave. To paraphrase, it says something about the best preparation for the future is teaching yourself to learn yourself. I do believe that’s the best way to be prepared for success in the future: learn to problem-solve, develop meta-cognition skills, and practice working towards common goals with others.
How many mission statements by schools and school districts talk about developing life long learners?
There are about 2000 hits on Google for the phrase. Yet, I’ll agree with critics, too many schools fail in that mission with stale ways of teaching.
February 5th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I think the disagreement is on whether it’s better to:
I think that it’s obvious that we need to do -something-, and I personally kind of scoff at “21st century skills” because it seems like too much of a band-aid solution. There are other problems that are causing the 21st century skills problem (teachers need more training, curriculum needs to be updated, more technology resources and tools are needed in schools), and I’d rather we aim at those core problems than play whack-a-mole with the mini-problems that those core problems keep creating.
February 6th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
We’ve basically come to the same conclusion at our school. We are not fully comfortable with the phrase “21st Century Skills”, but in the absence of the perfect phrase, we’ve chosen to aggressively define what these skills are and mean in our setting. I’m VERY comfortable with this phrase in the context of our school.
In essence, this skill set is designed to prepare students with the aptitudes to adapt to any future circumstance or new tools which develops. That is where the focus of 21st Century Skills Skills should lie.