"What 60 Schools Can Tell Us About
Teaching 21st Century Skills" video
I liked what Grant
Lichtman said about change..that everybody tells him ‘change is hard’ but change is not hard. Raising children in
poverty is hard, patrolling the Khandahar desert is hard, and going to the moon
is hard. Change is uncomfortable, messy and unfamiliar.
Grant summarizes 21st Century
teaching skills:
- · Adaptive, permeable (like Blooms taxonomy), cross subject boundaries
- · Relevant, authentic, engaging
- · Self-correcting, reflecting
- · Involves creative spaces for thinking, designing
- · Dynamic and cross global networks (cognitosphere)
The industrial model of
teaching was contained, predictable, scalable and controlled.
Some obstacles to 21st century teaching/learning:
- · Anchors (ego, control, My time, My space, My subject)
- · Dams ( tertiary requirements, content rather than context)
- · Silos (class/dept/schools that keep us from collaborating)
Reflection on how 20th century and 21st century skills differ? Do we need both?
20th
Century skills were more about learning skills to work in an industry (factual
or procedural knowledge) or to acquire knowledge to help others or pass on to
others. Professions like doctors and lawyers held knowledge that was not
accessible to most people. Teachers were expected to pass on knowledge to their
students and students were tested to see how well they had memorised material.
In the 20th
century people stayed in one job or profession for many years, perhaps all
their working life. Some professions were even handed down from father to son.
My great grandfather came to NZ from England to start an optometrist company.
His three sons continued in the business and opened companies in Auckland,
Palmerston North and Christchurch where they worked all their lives.
In the 21st
century people need to be more adaptable. Job situations change very quickly.
Just this week NZ Post announced they will be cutting another 500 jobs.
For the
first half of the 20th century school education was mostly about the
three R’s and learning to show respect to your teachers. I would like to think
that from the 1970’s on we were thinking more about Treaty
implications, causes, creativity, collaboration and higher order thinking.
Blooms taxonomy
was created in 1956 so hopefully we have had at least 20 or 30 years of promoting higher forms of thinking in
education in the 20th century.
I think most workplace
jobs have always involved communication such as communication between the
architect and draughtsman and builders and clients. There is more collaboration
required today though. Offices have less divisions, and projects are more often
managed by a team. The value of collaboration is recognised so that when people
build on each other’s ideas the final product is better that what any one
person could contribute.
Values such as respect
and honesty were part of education in the 20th century and are still
an important part of education today. Children were expected to work hard in
school or receive a punishment but today students are encouraged to work on
self-management skills.
Real world problems
were part of the curriculum in the 20th century. I can remember
going out to study mangroves and learning about the way they aerate the
mudflats. Obviously many of the population of Mangawhai didn’t learn that
because this year large sections of mangroves have been cleared in the estuary.
I’m not sure if that is the fault of the older or younger generation of
educators?
Today there is more
emphasis on authentic learning and real world problems which makes the learning
more engaging and ‘sticky’. We also have the means today to communicate far and
wide, take virtual tours of the Antarctic or find real world statistics more easily.
There are some skills
that remain the same for both the 20th and 21st century.
These are often referred to as soft skills that employers look for such as a
solid work ethic, a person who is positive, self-motivated, organised, a
communicator, and a person who can work under pressure.
