21st Century Skills

Posted on | January 8, 2009 | 19 Comments

I have been asked to join an online conversation tomorrow on the subject of 21st century skills. Inevitably, I have been thinking through my own take on the topic and I have come up with a few bon mots that give me, at least, some food for thought.

None of these is intended as a finished, polished conclusion – each is more question than statement. I want to write them down so that I can think them through. I have added a few links here and there to other posts in which I (and many others) discuss aspects of the issues mentioned.

I wonder what others think of them?

There probably are a number of skills that can be identified particularly with the age in which we are living, but most ’21st century skills’ were actually useful skills even in the 20th and 19th centuries, and perhaps since human civilization emerged – so what are the factors, if any, that might cause us to view certain teachable/learnable skills as somehow different from what went before; [link]
21st century skills do not, in the main, supplant any of the other skills that schools have been teaching until now; they are additional to what has been taught before (although it might be argued that one or two ‘basic’ skills are no longer as necessary as they once were – cursive handwriting, for instance);
21st century skills must be built on the fundamentals of literacy, numeracy and science;
The fundamental object of schooling, therefore, must still be to build literacy – basic literacy is still the prime building block for everything else we learn, including skills (21st century or otherwise) – literacy enables us to go on and build numeracy, scientific thinking/practice, and all (most of?) the other skills;
Literacy might be better contemplated in the plural – literacies – but there seems to be a lot of confusion in people’s minds about how we separate literacies from skills (perhaps they cannot be separated, but we do need to be able to differentiate one from the other at least in theoretical terms); [link] [link]
How do we categorize those ‘literacies’ that do not depend, and are not built in any simplistic way, on basic literacy, on language – musical, dance, artistic, design skills, for instance;
The ‘network’, in both its broad (social) and narrow (technical) senses, now underpins a large swathe of what might be seen as 21st century skills, especially those that relate in any way to collaboration, to team/group work, to social networking – network learning must be better defined, understood, put into practice; [link] [link]
A requisite skill today (although one that has always been important) is the ability to differentiate between data, information and knowledge – in an age in which the volume of data and the volume of information confronting us on a daily basis is growing exponentially, the further ability to filter and check what is useful, what is questionable, what is illogical, what is opinion, what is ‘fact’, and then to use that filtered data/information to build knowledge, is critical;
Have we thought enough – do we do enough? – about 21st century teaching skills? Are we too ready to seek change in what schools are for, in what the school should be today, in our definition of ‘the school’, without doing the hard work of bringing those who matter most in making an education system work – the teachers! – with us? [link]
Whatever else we do, how do we ensure that schools are places where the sheer joy of learning is paramount? [link] [link]

I know that I could go on building this list of unstructured, unrefined thoughts for a very long time. But I will stop there for the moment and give myself time to think about these, and other questions that contemplation of these raise, before the discussion starts tomorrow evening.

Anyone who feels like chipping in via comments or their own blog posts will be most welcome.

Technorati Tags: 21st century skills, literacy, knowledge, conversation

Category: change, community, education, epistemology, knowledge, learning, literacy, logic, network learning, networks, pedagogy, personal, schooling, science, social networking, teaching, technology, transformation

Comments

19 Responses to “21st Century Skills”

Alan Coady
January 8th, 2009 @ 10:11 pm

I can only imagine that this question will be, at best, unhelpful but that is certainly not the intention.

Is there an assumption that the discussion is on 21st Century skills in the developed world, in peacetime? Could such a discussion get anywhere taking in every possible contingency in human affairs?
Nancy Stuewe
January 8th, 2009 @ 10:53 pm

I think I am struggling with the word skill. It makes me think of school when I was young (the 60’s) when I was either right or wrong. I had to practice skills to get better. What is really different for me today as a teacher is that there is more than one way for my students to be right and more than one path to it. I want to provide them with a collection of strategies find more than one connection to their interesting questions. The art of planning.
JordyW
January 8th, 2009 @ 11:27 pm

Not completely new, but …

Continuous partial attention followed by hyperfocus – Multitasking
Knowing what information needs to be stored in memory, what needs to be stored in your own devices and what can be found on the web.
Reading and writing in an intertextual world
Protecting identity & privacy & Balancing with (free) access
What are the new ethics?
Sorting the wheat from the chaff, the signal from the noise
Finding guides – people you can trust
Being friends with someone you have never “met”
Knowing when to unplug
Kerrie
January 8th, 2009 @ 11:28 pm

This post is very topical for me John.
I really agree too that many of the skills given the 21st century label are not new.
A posting of mine on the topic is at http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/ksmith/2008/12/05/measuring-21st-century-skills/

My posting today about embedding the technology rather than trying to sprinkle it on the top might be of interest too
http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/ksmith/2009/01/09/just-sprinkling-technology-on-the-top/
We have been looking at how you apply an ICT skills continuum to subject based content teaching.
It does seem that for some teachers, if the curriculum doesn’t specifically require it, or describe exactly what to do, they won’t make the effort.
Anna
January 9th, 2009 @ 2:51 am

This is something we’ve been discussing at Coggno.com. Jay Matthews of the Washington Post brings up some good points about 21st century skills, or what he calls “the latest doomed pedagogical fad.”

He points out that he sees little guidance for classroom teachers in 21st century skills materials. And I agree with him when he poses, “How are millions of students still struggling to acquire 19th century skills in reading, writing and math supposed to learn this stuff?”

I suppose it’s possible, but many school districts–especially poor, underfunded areas–lack technological resources and incentives for teachers to make the sweeping efforts necessary to implement these new learning systems. Many lack even basic technology like computers.
John Connell
January 9th, 2009 @ 2:13 pm

Alan/Nancy/Jordy/Kerrie/Anna,

Thank you all for the great comments – you’ve given me what I wanted, some provocation to get my own thinking going.

John
Joe Wilson
January 9th, 2009 @ 7:30 pm

We have had a go at describing gaps in the skillset around next generation user skills.
I think this is a genuine attempt to look at new areas – think we still need literacy , numeracy skill sets and all you have here John.

http://www.joecar.demon.co.uk/2008/12/digital-literacy-next-generation-user.html

and hopefully catch you at BETT in London next week
John Connell
January 9th, 2009 @ 8:14 pm

I’l be there, Joe – Tue to Fri. Staying at the Kensington Hilton.
Steve Howard
January 10th, 2009 @ 3:43 pm

Critical thinking.
Search and Sift.

Without these two skills, anyone trying to live an learn in the Internet age is going to be seriously disadvantaged. I spoke about it a couple of times on my blog, and was inspired by the New York Times

http://stevehoward.blogspot.com/2008/07/online-reading-is-it-literacy.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?_r=2&oref=slogin

These skills are separate from the traditional measures of literacy, numeracy and science, or perhaps more accurately, additional to.
Theo Kuechel
January 11th, 2009 @ 7:17 pm

John…the first thing that strikes me is that the 21st century is a very long time, certainly in a technological context, if not an evolutionary one. I suspect we may be becoming too obsessed with the, (sexy?), notion of the “21st century” and that this might be reason why it so difficult to come to grips with this topic.

It may be impossible to completely disentangle the shifting elements that make up the skills and literacies we currently need, some are cognitive whilst others are purely functional, often temporary. Having said that, I believe it is a fallacy to assume nothing has changed and we can operate effectively by tinkering around the edges of a traditional paradigm. Technology does change human behaviour, including learning, sometimes in a big way.

Perhaps we need a new term, by far the best I have come across recently is ‘transliteracy’ by Prof. Sue Thomas of DeMontford University. Defined in Wikipedia as:

“the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.”

Think that covers most of it, but I will expand in a blog post, now nearing completion.
John Connell
January 11th, 2009 @ 7:21 pm

I like the term, Theo, and look forward to the post!
Don Ledingham
January 11th, 2009 @ 8:35 pm

Hi John – Happy New Year.

I could do with a pint with you to have a chat about this. I’m particularly interested in two points:

Literacy – is it really just part of a collection of literacies – or is there a hierarchy? In my visits to schools I see too many kids who don’t have a basic literacy – in its traditional sense – whose lives will be severely limited as a consequence.

Knowledge – do children need to “know” things or is it enough for them to have the skills to find out for themselves?

I remember as a child the pleasure of learning “stuff” – I worry that we seem to be accepting that there is no place for knowledge this in future schooling.

I had a chat with a primary Headteacher last week who told me that she feels that she should not be teaching facts anymore as that’s “old fashioned” and that the curriculum should focus upon skills – and skills alone.
John Connell
January 11th, 2009 @ 9:18 pm

I just don’t understand the mindset, Don, that assumes that, the moment you start to promote one idea, all other ideas are to be demoted or discarded. I see it so often today. We must be free to isolate an aspect of education so that we can discuss it in detail without everyone falling into the trap of believing we are advocating that aspect to the exclusion of all others.

I think it must be obvious to anyone in education who can still string two logical thoughts together that knowledge – stuff – is important, and will always remain important (although of course the question of what ’stuff’ to teach will change to suit the changing times). It must also be obvious that a curriculum based on the teaching of skills alone would be a curriculum reduced to an absurdity.

I’ll give you a call tomorrow!
Alan Coady
January 13th, 2009 @ 10:52 pm

No matter how easy it becomes to locate facts and no matter assured we are of their reliability, I believe there will always remain a place for knowledge. I wouldn’t be too happy to be under the knife of a surgeon whose nimble fingers were used, mid-operation, to type “where is the pancreas?” into Google.

On a less frivolous note, I have the feeling that “knowledge” seems to be dividing into two categories:

1. things I know
2. things I can very quickly verify (relocate)thanks to the Internet and judicious bookmarking/searching

I am now unsure which of the following is true:

1. that there is so much more information around that it is simply unrealistic to hope to digest everything one comes across
2. that constant outsourcing of my “memory” to blogs, emails, hard drives, flash pens etc., has undermined retention.

p.s. I don’t know if it’s just my monitor, but the anti-spam word is invisible and I have to use the audio version
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Kevin Riley
March 11th, 2009 @ 2:13 am

When it coms to 21st century skills and the seamless integration of technology, my school is a step ahead of the Prez in asking the tough questions… a step behind too many model schools that have already blazed a trail… and a mile behind where we ought to be by now! Why? I addressed it in my weekend post:

http://kriley19.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/this-is-the-sound-of-a-rose/
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