21st Century Essay

As the world shifts from an industrial economy to a service economy driven by information, knowledge, and innovation, cultivating 21st century skills is vital to economic success (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Learning Environments). This is a dramatic departure from the factory model education of the past. It is the abandonment of text book driven, teacher centered, paper and pencil schooling. It is a different understanding of the concept of knowledge and a new definition of the educated person.

While the global economy has been changing, the U.S. has focused primarily on closing the domestic achievement gap and largely has ignored the growing necessity of graduating the kinds of students capable of filling emerging job sectors (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Report Identifies Inherent Links). There are those who make the case that NCLB legislation has focused federal attention and educational resources on students with remedial needs while ignoring the needs of the nation’s brightest young minds; that achieving equity while at the same time maintaining excellence is a complex subject that has not been addressed (Colangelo, 2005). We need to pay attention to the big public conversation the nation is NOT having about education, the one that will ultimately determine not merely whether some fraction of our children get “left behind”, but whether an entire generation of kids will be left behind in the global economy (Wallis, 2006).

Our challenge is to reinvent schools for the sake of our children and the world. When we think of school, we think of the way we always knew it, but we have to make a paradigm shift. Creating a 21st century education system that prepares students, workers and citizens to be successful in the global skills race is a challenge facing U.S. educators. For the United States to be globally competitive, there must be a fresh approach to education that recognizes the importance that 21st century skills play in the workplace (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Report Identifies Inherent Link ). Right now, kids have a more stimulating and enriched environment outside of school than they do inside. School has become just one of the many places that students learn (Willingham, 2009).

Schools in the 21st century must include a project based curriculum aimed at engaging students in addressing real world problems, issues important to humanity and questions that matter. Students will learn how to collaborate, think critically, communicate orally and in writing, use technology, take on global issues, learn about careers and conduct research. Students will learn to navigate the world of digital text which is different than traditional text, in that digital text is about linking people in a way they have never been connected before. Teachers will learn that technology is no longer a tool to be used in teaching certain subjects, but rather has emerged as it own new environment (Willingham, 2009). As individuals develop the power to author, shape, and disseminate information, they will begin to globalize themselves (Friedman, 2006). The U.S. will continue to look at European and Asian nations that have steeply improved student learning by focusing explicitly on creating curriculum guidance and assessments that focus on the ability to find and organize information, to solve problems, frame and conduct investigations, analyze and synthesize data , apply learning to new situations, self-monitor and improve one’s own learning and performance, communicate well in multiple forms, work in teams, and learn independently (Darling-Hammond & McCloskey, 2008).

Part of the debate over 21st century skills has been whether the Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21) is separating knowledge and skills, and how much core content knowledge needs to be taught. Ken Kay believes that 21st century skills and knowledge are not mutually exclusive. However, Daniel Willingham (2009) feels the 21st century movement in general is too focused on skills and ignores the fact that knowledge is critical to thought. E.D.Hirsch noted that critical thinking in one domain does not apply to another and says this is true because 1) knowledge is sometimes required to identify the root nature of the problems you’re dealing with and 2) you might understand the problem and know what you’re supposed to do, but still need background knowledge to use the critical skill you want to apply. Dan Willingham (2009) states that P21 should recognize they are “moving forward on the basis of a theory, not on a proven method, and that students are thus guinea pigs in an experiment”. In the article Rethinking Schools, Walter Feinberg (1999) disagrees with Hirsch’s message that content knowledge is more important than tools of inquiry. This writer needs more time and information to choose a side, but the debate will continue as to how much content knowledge must exist alongside 21st century skills.

The most persistent norm that stands in the way of 21st century learning is isolated teaching in stand- alone classrooms (Fulton, Yoon & Lee, 2005 from DuFour, pg. 169). It is time to end the practice of solo teaching. “Today’s teachers must transform their personal knowledge in a collectively built, widely shared and cohesive professional knowledge base (DuFour, 2008, p.172). Professional Learning Communities and Professional Partnerships will play a huge role in reshaping what the teacher looks like as we move forward into the 21st century. The paper, 21st Century Learning Environments (2009), reports that the term “learning environment” has traditionally suggested a concrete place, but in today’s interconnected and technology-driven world, a learning environment can be virtual, online and remote. It must also be designed to suit the requirements that enable collaboration, interaction and information sharing. It is also important to consider aesthetics in public school design. A study at Georgetown University found that even if the students, teachers, and educational approach remained the same, improving a school’s physical environment could increase test scores by as much as 11% (Pink, 2006).
The 21st Century Learning Environment report also suggests that time allocated for learning needs to be flexible, and that the antiquated notion of “seat time” needs to be reconsidered. Although we need to experiment with extended day and year calendar schedules, it has been pointed out that U.S. students attend school about 1100 hours per year while students in other developed nations, most of whom outperform the U.S. on standardized tests, only go to school on an average 701 hours a year (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Learning Environment). What appears definite and needed is a seamless approach to integrating all that takes place in a student’s life during the day.

As we move into the 21st century, the challenges facing students, educators and the nation are enormous. Can our public schools, originally designed to educate workers for agrarian life and industrial age factories make the necessary shifts? According to The New Commission on the Skills of The American Workforce, only if we add new depth and rigor to our curriculum and standardized exams, redeploy the dollars we spend on education, reshape the teaching force, and reorganize who runs the schools.












Citations
Colangelo, N., (2005). Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest Young Minds. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 162:410-411. Retrieved April 7, 2009, from http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org.ezproxy.montclair.edu:2048/cgi/content
Darling-Hammond, L., & McCloskey, L., (2008). What Would It Mean to be Internationally Competitive?
DuFour, R., Dufour, R., Eaker, R., (2008). Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work: New Insights for Improving Schools. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.
Feinberg, W., (1999). The Influential E.D. Hirsch. Rethinking Schools Online, Vol.13(3). Retrieved February 5, 2009, from http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/13_03/hirsch.shtml
Friedman, T.L., (2006). The World Is Flat. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
McLeod, S. (2009). Iowa-21 st Century Curricula. Dangerously Irrelevant. Message posted to heep://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2009/03/21stcentury-curricula
Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Report Identifies Inherent Link Between 21st Century Educational System and Economic Success (Sept. 10, 2008). Retrieved from http://adjix.com/h2fw
Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Learning Environments Must Break Through the Silos that Separate Learning from the Real World (Jan. 23, 2009). Retrieved from http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/index.php?option=com_content
Pink, D.H., (2006). A Whole New Mind. New York, NY: Penguin Group.
Wallis, C. (2006). How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century. Time, Dec. 10, 2006. Retrieved April, 6, 2009, from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171, 1568480,00.html
Willingham, D. (2009, March 2). Flawed Assumptions Undergird the Program at the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Message posted to http://britannica.com/blogs/2009/03/flawed-assumptions