21st Century Skills:Preparing Tomorrow’s Leaders Today
According to the popular Shift Happens video,
- For students starting a technical degree, half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.
- The top ten in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004.
- The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38.
Ken Kay, president of Partnership for the 21st Century, believes that we need to focus on fusing the three Rs of education with the four Cs: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. Anyone would be hard pressed to dispute the importance of the four Cs. The real challenge is in moving from theory to practical application.
How do classroom teachers prepare 21st Century students to enter the global marketplace? What can we do today to prime our students to be tomorrow’s leaders?
Did you know?
Schools have been charged with preparing all students for post-secondary study or employability in a competitive global economy (Balfanz, 2009).
It is insufficient for learners to merely attain concepts in isolation, yielding knowledge that frequently remains static. Rather, students must form and continually adapt their understanding of the world as they collaborate with other students to solve authentic problems presented in meaningful tasks (Bentley, Ebert, & Ebert, 2007).
A report issued by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills strongly emphasizes that a new set of skills is required of the workforce as the U.S. moves from a production-based economy to a service-oriented economy (2008).
“We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist—using technologies that haven’t been invented—in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” —Shift Happens 2010 video
The information below is based on ideas and strategies in the PLS courses Achieving Student Outcomes Through Cooperative Learning®, Blended and Synchronous Learning Design™ Online, Building Communication and Teamwork in the Classroom®, Collaborative Inquiry for Students: Preparing Minds for the Future™, Educating the Net-Generation™ Online, and Meaningful Activities to Generate Interesting Classrooms®.
Read on to learn more about preparing tomorrow’s leaders
Communication
Give students opportunities to connect with you, one another, and themselves. When students share feelings, thoughts, and stories (and listen as others share), they will feel a better connection with you, the materials, themselves, and one another.
Communication can take the form of journal writing (shared with you and/or classmates or kept private), online chats, blogs, wikis, informal interviews, pair-and-shares, etc. Perhaps you are already implementing one or several of these strategies. Be sure to take the extra step of asking students how they feel about the material and how it is personally relevant to them. Opportunities for students to connect will also solidify the learning. For a full, well-rounded learning experience, have students apply their learning to the standards or concepts so they can create meaningful learning — both personally and academically.
Is this also a good time to remind students what standards/concepts they are focusing on as they utilize these various types of communication, etc.?
Establishing a sense of community and belonging in the classroom will open avenues for collaboration. Collaboration in the classroom is best used when you want to create learning situations that are more open-ended. They should include some research or exploration and allow the students to apply knowledge in new and different ways.
Many types of activities lend themselves well to collaboration, and working together is one tried-and-true strategy for teachers. The important part, which is often overlooked, is the need to first assess and then let students capitalize on their individual strengths. Next, it is important to ensure that they have a firm understanding of purpose and expected outcome(s) before they start working together. Communication that includes active listening is the key to this goal.
Critical Thinking and Creativity
Taken together, critical thinking and creativity activate the brain. When we ask one-right-answer questions, a student either does or doesn’t have the right answer in his or her mind. Critical thinking and creativity allow students to engage in possibility thinking and come up with one or more answers they think could be right.
For example, if you show students one-half of a photograph and ask them to interpret what is going on, they have to come up with ideas, options, predictions, hypotheses, or possibilities for what might be shown in the other half of the picture. Doing so leads to an understanding of the whole picture. Personal experience will influence each student’s conclusion. Creating situations or activities in which students must use critical thinking and creativity adds a sense of mystery to activities. In the example of showing students one-half of a picture, a mystery is created, and it becomes fun to guess the right answer. The mystery grabs students’ attention. Problems with a variety of answers, rather than one right answer, also add to the development of the creative thinking process. In fact, exploring possible answers is an important life skill.
Critical thinking and creativity provide ways for students to share why they believe the other half of the picture is a certain activity or thing. Groups of students can even collaborate on what they see and what stories they want to share.
A few simple tweaks to your existing practices can lead to a clearer focus on the four Cs: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity.
Taking It Further
Watch the Shift Happens Educational 2010 video here.
References
Balfanz, R. (2009). Can the American high school become an avenue of advancement for all? Future of Children, 19(1), 17–36.
Bentley, M. L., Ebert II, E. S., Ebert, C. (2007). Teaching constructivist science, K-8: Nurturing natural investigators in the standards-based classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Fisch, K. (Producer). Did you know? Shift happens. (2009). Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBwT_09boxE&feature=player_detailpage
Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2008). 21st century skills, education & competitiveness. Tucson, AZ: Partnership for 21st Century Skills.