Teaching 21^st Century Skills

The 21^st century is here. Is our education system preparing our students with the skills that they will need to thrive in this century? In this week’s Learning Resources, you continued your exploration of the 21^st century work environment as the experts shared what they believe to be the skills and dispositions essential for the future success of our students, our economy, and our society. But with the increased focus on high-stakes testing and school accountability, whose job will it be to teach these critical skills that may not be specifically defined through the core content standards? How can teachers go beyond the content standards and incorporate the teaching of these skills and dispositions into their classrooms? How well do you currently address these skills, and what changes can you make to your teaching practices to further foster these skills in your students?

By Wednesday

Post a plan to address the challenges associated with teaching 21^st century skills in today’s schools and in your classroom.

Synthesize your thoughts as follows:

Describe the challenges that you face in teaching these skills to your students and provide examples of how you might address these challenges.

Explain how technology can play a role in your classroom to aid you in the teaching and fostering of these skills.

Adapt an instructional practice that you currently use so that it promotes advanced communication and expert thinking. Explain how this change or modification will help you to immediately incorporate the teaching of these skills in your classroom.

Towards the end of the week, spend time looking over a few of your classmates' ideas for addressing the challenge of teaching vital 21^st century skills which are not addressed in core content standards. Post a response to two to three of your classmates with an evaluation of their idea. Do you have any suggestions to improve upon their idea? Did you like their idea enough to consider using it as well?



Answer

The biggest challenge I face in developing my own personal 21st century learning skills, and I believe the students face the same challenge, is the growing mountain of information there is out there to master. Because of the growing mountain of knowledge we need to be able to, according to Miners and Pascopella (2007) “...require the ability not just to “read” but also to navigate the World Wide Web, locate information, evaluate it critically, synthesize it and communicate it...”

The second greatest challenge is what and how we are teaching must and will continue to evolve to meet the ever changing requirements created by technology. A great example of this is the seemingly solid list of the learning skills required by a 21st century learner found at http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ has and will continue to change. Most recently the aspect of “Health Literacy” has been added to accommodate the needs of the increasingly sedentary and poor eating habits of the Western world. This was not in the document 4 months ago when I looked at it. In the past, it would have taken years to have made changes to a curriculum like this, now people are more open to the fluid nature learning is undertaking. To meet this challenge of the evolving curriculum, I need to be flexible in my teaching style. I can not keep presenting the same lesson year after year. To keep up with the knowledge required I will have to continue my professional development. According to “Learning For the 21st Century” document, http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/images/stories/otherdocs/p21up_Report.pdf, I will need to foster my professional development by using my peers more. Becoming a team player and not isolating myself in the classroom should be the first step for all teachers.

A specific example of what I can try out in the classroom would be to have the students work on the Theme of Global Awareness by sharing their science definitions in more than one language. We are currently working on an instruction manual for a Burglar Alarm project. I would like to have the students translate part of it into another language they know by using some of the web based translation services. By working in more than one language, the students will experience a more advanced understanding of the content.