what is the importance of education in 21st century

Integrating 21st century skills into education systems: From rhetoric to reality

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, ramya vivekanandan rv ramya vivekanandan senior education specialist, learning assessment systems - gpe secretariat.

February 14, 2019

This is the third post in a series about  education systems alignment in teaching, learning, and assessing 21st century skills .

What does it mean to be a successful learner or graduate in today’s world? While in years past, a solid acquisition of the “three Rs” (reading, writing, and arithmetic) and mastery in the core academic subjects may have been the measure of attainment, the world of the 21 st century requires a radically different orientation. To participate effectively in the increasingly complex societies and globalized economy that characterize today’s world, students need to think critically, communicate effectively, collaborate with diverse peers, solve complex problems, adopt a global mindset, and engage with information and communications technologies, to name but just a few requirements. The new report from Brookings, “ Education system alignment for 21st century skills: Focus on assessment ,” illuminates this imperative in depth.

Recognizing that traditional education systems have generally not been preparing learners to face such challenges, the global education community has increasingly talked about and mobilized in favor of the changes required. This has resulted in a suite of initiatives and research around the broad area of “21st century skills,” which culminated most notably with the adoption of Sustainable Development Goal 4 and the Education 2030 agenda, including Target 4.7, which commits countries to ensure that learners acquire knowledge and skills in areas such as sustainable development, human rights, gender equality, global citizenship, and others.

In this landscape, Global Partnership for Education (GPE) has a core mandate of improving equity and learning by strengthening education systems. GPE supports developing countries, many of which are affected by fragility and conflict, to develop and implement robust education sector plans. Depending on the country, GPE implementation grants support a broad range of activities including teacher training, textbook provision, interventions to promote girls’ education, incentives for marginalized groups, the strengthening of data and learning assessment systems, early childhood education, and many other areas.

This work is buttressed by thematic work at the global level, including in the area of learning assessment. The strengthening of learning assessment systems is a strategic priority for GPE because of its relevance to both improving learning outcomes and ensuring effective and efficient education systems, which are two of the three key goals of the GPE strategic plan for the 2016-2020 period . The work on learning assessment includes the Assessment for Learning (A4L) initiative, which aims to strengthen learning assessment systems and to promote a holistic measurement of learning.

Under A4L, we are undertaking a landscape review on the measurement of 21st century skills, using a definition derived from Binkley et. al . and Scoular and Care :

“21st century skills are tools that can be universally applied to enhance ways of thinking, learning, working and living in the world. The skills include critical thinking/reasoning, creativity/creative thinking, problem solving, metacognition, collaboration, communication and global citizenship. 21st century skills also include literacies such as reading literacy, writing literacy, numeracy, information literacy, ICT [information and communications technologies] digital literacy, communication and can be described broadly as learning domains.”

Using this lens, the landscape review examines the research literature, the efforts of GPE partners that have been active in this space, and data collected from a sample of countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia in regard to the assessment of these skills. These research efforts were led by Brookings and coordinated by the UNESCO offices in Dakar and Bangkok. As another important piece of this work, we are also taking stock of the latest education sector plans and implementation grants of these same countries (nine in sub-Saharan Africa and six in Asia), to explore the extent to which the integration of 21st century skills is reflected in sector plans and, vitally, in their implementation.

Though the work is in progress, the initial findings provide food for thought. Reflecting the conclusions of the new report by Brookings, as well as its earlier breadth of work on skills mapping, a large majority of these 15 countries note ambitious objectives related to 21st century skills in their education sector plans, particularly in their vision or mission statements and/or statements of policy priorities. “Skills” such as creativity and innovation, critical thinking, problem-solving, decisionmaking, life and career skills, citizenship, personal and social responsibility, and information and communications technology literacy were strongly featured, as opposed to areas such as collaboration, communication, information literacy, and metacognition.

However, when we look at the planned interventions noted in these sector plans, there is not a strong indication that countries plan to operationalize their intentions to promote 21st century skills. Not surprisingly then, when we look at their implementation grants, which are one of the financing instruments through which education sector plans are implemented, only two of the 15 grants examined include activities aimed at promoting 21st century skills among their program components. Because the GPE model mandates that national governments determine the program components and allocation of resources for these within their grant, the bottom line seems to echo the findings of the Brookings report: vision and aspiration are rife, but action is scarce.

While the sample of countries studied in this exercise is small (and other countries’ education sector plans and grants may well include integration of 21st century skills), it’s the disconnect between the 15 countries’ policy orientation around these skills and their implementation that is telling. Why this gap? Why, if countries espouse the importance of 21st century skills in their sector plans, do they not concretely move to addressing them in their implementation? The reasons for this may be manifold, but the challenges highlighted by the Brookings report in terms of incorporating a 21 st century learning agenda in education systems are indeed telling. As a field, we still have much work to do to understand the nature of these skills, to develop learning progressions for them, and to design appropriate and authentic assessment of them. In other words, it may be that countries have difficulty in imagining how to move from rhetoric to reality.

However, in another perspective, there may be a challenge associated with how countries (and the broader education community) perceive 21st century skills in general. In contexts of limited resources, crowded curricula, inadequately trained teachers, fragility, weak governance, and other challenges that are characteristic of GPE partner countries, there is sometimes an unfortunate tendency to view 21st century skills and the “basics” as a tradeoff. In such settings, there can be a perception that 21st century skills are the concern of more advanced or higher-income countries. It is thus no wonder that, in the words of the Brookings report, “a global mobilization of efforts to respond to the 21CS [21st century skills] shift is non-existent, and individual countries struggle alone to plan the shift.”

This suggests that those who are committed to a holistic view of education have much work to do in terms of research, sharing of experience, capacity building, and advocacy around the potential and need for all countries, regardless of context, to move in this direction. The Brookings report makes a very valuable contribution in this regard. GPE’s landscape review, which will be published this spring, will inform how the partnership thinks about and approaches 21st century skills in its work and will thereby provide a complementary perspective.

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21st Century Education

At GEII we look at education for the 21 st century in the following ways:

See 21st Century Education in Action

Competencies in the Intrapersonal Domain

1) Intellectual Openness, including:

Flexibility, adaptability, artistic and cultural appreciation, personal and social responsibility, cultural awareness and competence, appreciation for diversity, adaptability, continuous learning, intellectual interest and curiosity

2) Work Ethic & Conscientiousness, including:

a. Initiative, self-direction, responsibility, perseverance, grit; productivity, type 1 self-regulation (metacognitive skills, including forethought, performance, and self-reflection), professionalism/ ethics; integrity; citizenship, career orientation

b. Positive Core Self-Evaluation, including: i. Type 2 self-regulation (self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-reinforcement), physical and psychological health

For more about this domain, please see National Research Council. Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2012. doi:10.17226/13398 .

Competencies in the Interpersonal Domain

1) Teamwork & Collaboration, including:

Communication, collaboration, teamwork, cooperation, coordination, interpersonal skills, empathy/perspective taking, trust, service orientation, conflict resolution, negotiation

2) Leadership, including:

Leadership, responsibility, assertive communication, self-presentation, social influence with others

Competencies in the Cognitive Domain

1) Cognitive Processes & Strategies, including:

Critical thinking, problem solving, analysis, reasoning and argumentation, interpretation, decision making, adaptive learning, and executive function

2) Knowledge, including:

Information literacy, including research using evidence and recognizing bias in sources; information and communication technology literacy, oral and written communication, active listening

3) Creativity, including:

Creativity and innovation

Values and Attitudes

The values and attitudes cultivated in participants by each program will vary by country, region, philosophies, and other social and cultural factors. However, as values and attitudes are central to developing a person’s character and shaping the beliefs, attitudes, decisions and actions of a person, we felt it was important to ask each organization included on our website to explicitly name the particular values and attitudes they seek to nurture in their program participants.

There are many sources about what kind of values, and we note that they vary according to different contexts. One document might be a helpful resource among many is the following by Margaret Sinclair titled, “ Learning to Live Together: Building Skills, Values, and Attitudes for the 21st Century ” published in 2005 by the International Bureau of Education: 

Active, Engaging, and Empowering Pedagogy

21st Century pedagogy includes a focus on active, engaging, and empowering learning. Personalization, participation, and learning through authentic real-world contexts, solving problems creatively, developing projects from the beginning to the end, working collaboratively with peers and mentors, with a focus on developing metacognitive abilities, adapting and applying new knowledge while integrating it into existing conceptual frameworks are all examples of powerful pedagogy.

For more on this topic, please see this working paper from UNESCO (December, 2015) by Cynthia Luna Scott, titled, “ What Kind of Pedagogies for the 21st Century? ” among many others: 

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How to Thrive in the 21st Century

• Posted November 22, 2016
• By Heather Beasley Doyle

When Fernando Reimers , a professor of international education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), talks and writes about what he wants children around the world to learn, the conversation runs deep and reaches far. Individual success, he says, increasingly depends upon students’ interpersonal dexterity, creativity, and ability to innovate. And our collective success — our ability to navigate complexities and to build and sustain a peaceful world — also hinges on these kinds of skills. Together, these skills form the basis of an emerging set of core competencies that will influence education policy and practice around the world.

In Teaching and Learning for the Twenty-First Century , Reimers and his co-editor, HGSE lecturer Connie K. Chung , explore how school systems in six countries are defining and supporting these global competencies. Their aim is to develop a shared framework for promoting the skills students will need in order to thrive as global citizens in a sustainable world in the decades ahead.

“Young people are in a context where they’re saturated and inundated with issues from around the world,” says Chung. Between new technologies, multiplying media, and layers of intercontinental connection, “global citizenship education is a ‘must have’ and not a ‘nice to have’ — for everyone,” says Chung.

Reimers and Chung used the National Research Council’s 2012 report, Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century , as a jumping off point for their investigation of policies and curricula that are best positioned to nurture global citizens. That report (read the research brief here) identifies three broad domains of competence: cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal. “This is not just talking about knowledge,” says Chung. Rather, it includes such strengths as intercultural literacy, self-discipline, and flexibility in social and work domains.

The Cognitive Competencies

As Chung suggests, the 21st-century global citizen’s cognitive skill set includes traditional, testable basics such as math and literacy, but extends beyond that to encompass a particularly strong emphasis on the world in which we live. “Current events highlight some of the fears around otherness,” she says. The key to informed citizenship is getting to know other cultures — and valuing them.

In addition to rounding out kids’ knowledge base to include a nuanced understanding of world geography and cultures , schools must teach them the skills to use this knowledge as active and engaged citizens.

That means being able to:

• Communicate effectively and listen actively
• Use evidence and assess information
• Speak at least one language beyond one’s native tongue
• Think critically and analyze local and global issues, challenges, and opportunities
• Reason logically and interpret clearly
• Become and remain digitally literate, including the ability to “weigh and judge the validity of the content that’s in front of you,” Chung says.

In some ways, digital literacy is a linchpin of the other competencies. “Technology gives us humans the possibility to collaborate in ways that are unprecedented, to think and produce things no one could produce individually,” Reimers says.

The Interpersonal Competencies

Empathy is a cornerstone 21st-century global competency. We’re all familiar with empathy between individuals: someone’s hurt, and another person deeply understands the pain. But Reimers and Chung envision the concept on a global scale. Empathy resides in the ability to consider the complexity of issues , Chung says — in an interconnected worldview that recognizes that “what we do impacts someone else.”

Anchored in tolerance and respect for other people, interpersonal intelligence breaks down into several overlapping skills, including:

• Collaboration
• Teamwork and cooperation
• Leadership and responsibility
• Assertive communication
• Social influence

As Reimers says, “We need to make sure that we can get along, and that we can see our differences as an opportunity, as a source of strength.” Both regionally and nationally, students need the skills to transcend the limits of fragmentation, “where people can only relate to those who they perceive to be like them.”

The Intrapersonal Competencies

A particular blend of honed personal characteristics underpins the cognitive and intrapersonal competencies. Reimers points to an ethical orientation and strong work and mind habits, including self-regulation and intellectual openness , as traits that 21st-century educators must nurture in their students.

The world is less predictable than it used to be: “People know that half of the jobs that are going to be around 10 years from now have not been invented,” Reimers says. That means teaching young people in such a way that makes them flexible and adaptable . It means enabling them to think of themselves as creators and inventors who feel comfortable taking the initiative and persevering — the skills necessary for starting one’s own business, for example.

Instilling in students the value of thinking beyond the short term will give them the best chance to tackle some of the world’s most daunting challenges, including climate change. For example, educators in Singapore were challenged to imagine their country not five, 10, or 15 years down the road, but 30 years in the future, Chung says. Encouraging students to think on that kind of a time scale helps them to grasp the reverberations of their actions and decisions.

Values, Attitudes, and Moving to Pedagogy

In Teaching and Learning for the Twenty-First Century  (which has been published in Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish editions as well), Reimers, Chung, and global colleagues interviewed education researchers and stakeholders in Chile (in a chapter by Cristián Bellei and Liliana Morawietz), China (by Yan Wang), India (by Aditya Natraj, Monal Jayaram, Jahnavi Contractor, and Payal Agrawal), Mexico (by Sergio Cárdenas), Singapore (by Oon-Seng Tan and Ee-Ling Low), and the United States (by Chung and Reimers). They explored curriculum frameworks, seeking to understand how values and attitudes unique to each country and region were informing policy goals and ultimately shaping students’ learning opportunities.

Drawing on that survey of 21st-century competencies and the frameworks for their support, Reimers, Chung, and their digitally connected global network of educators are now teasing out a pedagogy for educators everywhere. Reimers and Chung co-authored (with Vidur Chopra, Julia Higdon, and E.B. O’Donnell) another new book, Empowering Global Citizens, which lays out a K–12 curriculum for global citizenship education called The World Course. Its aim is to position students and communities to thrive amid globalization — to lead, to steward, and to safeguard this complex world in the current century and beyond.

Additional Resources

• The Think Tank on Global Education , a professional education program with Fernando Reimers that invites teachers to experiment with a new curriulum on empowering global citizens
• The Global Education Innovation Initiative , a multi-country exploration of education for the 21st century, led by Reimers
• The introduction [PDF] of Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century , which describes the rationale for the book’s comparative study
• Fifteen Letters on Education in Singapore , in which U.S. educators visit Singapore to learn how that country’s education innovations have fueled a prosperous knowledge economy — and what lessons may apply. (Available as a f ree Kindle book .)
• Reflections on turning students into global citizens
• Creating a Course for the World  (a Harvard EdCast exploring the new global curriculum)

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Defining Deeper Learning and 21st Century Skills

Life in the 21st century requires people to be prepared to fill a variety of roles—as workers, parents, citizens, and consumers—in which they will need to apply their knowledge and skills effectively to rapidly changing situations. Recognizing this need, business, political, and educational leaders are increasingly asking schools to teach students the competencies they will need to navigate a changing world—skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, and collaboration. Such skills are often referred to as “21st century skills,” “soft skills,” or “deeper learning.”

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Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century

Americans have long recognized that investments in public education contribute to the common good, enhancing national prosperity and supporting stable families, neighborhoods, and communities. Education is even more critical today, in the face of economic, environmental, and social challenges. Today's children can meet future challenges if their schooling and informal learning activities prepare them for adult roles as citizens, employees, managers, parents, volunteers, and entrepreneurs. To achieve their full potential as adults, young people need to develop a range of skills and knowledge that facilitate mastery and application of English, mathematics, and other school subjects. At the same time, business and political leaders are increasingly asking schools to develop skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and self-management - often referred to as "21st century skills."

Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century describes this important set of key skills that increase deeper learning, college and career readiness, student-centered learning, and higher order thinking. These labels include both cognitive and non-cognitive skills- such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, effective communication, motivation, persistence, and learning to learn. 21st century skills also include creativity, innovation, and ethics that are important to later success and may be developed in formal or informal learning environments.

This report also describes how these skills relate to each other and to more traditional academic skills and content in the key disciplines of reading, mathematics, and science. Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century summarizes the findings of the research that investigates the importance of such skills to success in education, work, and other areas of adult responsibility and that demonstrates the importance of developing these skills in K-16 education. In this report, features related to learning these skills are identified, which include teacher professional development, curriculum, assessment, after-school and out-of-school programs, and informal learning centers such as exhibits and museums.

Read Full Description

• Press Release
• Education for Life and Work: Guide for Practitioners
• Policy Highlights
• Report Brief

Description

An ad hoc committee will review and synthesize current research on the nature of deeper learning and 21st century skills and will address the following:

• Define the set of key skills that are referenced by the labels “deeper learning,” “21st century skills,” “college and career readiness,” “student centered learning,” “next generation learning,” “new basic skills,” and “higher order thinking.”  These labels are typically used to include both cognitive and non cognitive skills - such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, effective communication, motivation, persistence, and learning to learn that can be demonstrated within core academic content areas and that are important to success in education, work, and other areas of adult responsibility.  The labels are also sometimes used to include other important capacities - such as creativity, innovation, and ethics - that are important to later success and may also be developed in formal or informal learning environments.
• Describe how these skills relate to each other and to more traditional academic skills and content in the key disciplines of reading, mathematics, and science.   In particular, consider these skills in the context of the work of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers in specifying Common Core State Standards for English language arts and mathematics, and the work of the NRC in specifying a Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards.
• Summarize the findings of the research that investigates the importance of such skills to success in education, work, and other areas of adult responsibility and that demonstrates the importance of developing these skills in K-16 education.
• Summarize what is known - and what research is needed - about how these skills can be learned, taught, and assessed.  This summary should include both the cognitive foundations of these skills in learning theory and research about effective approaches to teaching and learning these skills, including approaches using digital media.
• Identify features of educational interventions that research suggests could be used as indicators that an intervention is likely to develop the key skills in a substantial and meaningful way.  In particular, for learning in formal school-based environments, identify features related to learning these skills in educational interventions in a) teacher professional development, b) curriculum, and c) assessment   For learning in informal environments, identify features related to learning these skills in educational interventions in d) after-school and out-of-school programs and e) exhibits, museums, and other informal learning centers.   For learning in both formal and informal environments, identify features related to learning these skills in education interventions in f) digital media.

The conclusions and recommendations of the report will provide a common foundation for further research and policy work that seeks to improve the way these skills are developed in K-16 education.  The primary messages from the report will be distilled into a short report brief that could be broadly disseminated.

• Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education
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Consensus Study

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Multiday Event | September 13-14, 2011

[Closed] Defining Deeper Learning and 21st Century Skills Third Committee Meeting

Multiday Event | June 16-17, 2011

[Closed] Second Committee Meeting

Multiday Event | March 26-27, 2011

[Closed] Defining Deeper Learning and 21st Century Skills

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Preparing for the 21st Century: The Education Imperative (1997)

Chapter: preparing for the 21st century: the education imperative, the education imperative.

To be prepared for today’s workforce, informed about important issues, and able to understand the complex world in which we live, all Americans must have a solid education in science, mathematics, and technology.

Introduction

The education that many students receive in science, mathematics, and technology is not adequate for a world that is being transformed by scientific and technological advances. People have to be familiar with the basic concepts of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology to think critically about the world and to make informed decisions about personal and societal issues. Literacy in these fields is essential also for an appreciation of the rapid expansion of human knowledge—surely one of the great adventures of the 20th century.

Another motivation increases the sense of urgency: today, an understanding of science, mathematics, and technology is very important in the workplace. As routine mechanical and clerical tasks become computerized, more and more jobs require high-level skills that involve critical thinking, problem-solving, communicating ideas to others, and collaborating effectively. Many of these jobs build on skills developed through high-quality science, mathematics, and technology education. Our nation is unlikely to remain the world leader without a better-educated workforce.

Several key objectives set forth in Academy complex reports can help guide the actions of all those involved in developing and implementing public and institutional policies regarding education. Among these objectives are the following:

Encourage teachers, curriculum-developers, school administrators, government officials, and college faculty to build on the national standards in science and mathematics in seeking higher levels of performance from all students in grades K to 12.

For all undergraduates, provide access to excellent programs in science, mathematics, and technology that provide direct experience with the methods and processes of inquiry.

Evaluate undergraduate departments and programs against explicit educational goals with assessments that are as rigorous as those applied to research.

Balance the rewards accorded teaching, research, service, and professional activities so that teaching is enlivened by investigation and faculty are rewarded for the full range of scholarly activity.

Foster change through leadership that builds a consensus concerning educational improvements and

provides the support needed for improvements to take root and spread.

Require that students seeking admission into universities and colleges take tests that include evaluation of their ability to conduct scientific inquiry, rather than relying on current standardized tests of their knowledge of science and mathematics.

Expand the use of education and training grants to provide financial support to graduate students.

For graduate schools, set institutional standards for time to degree, enforce them, and inform students of time-to-degree and other career-related information before they enter a program.

Emphasize the importance of building a true system of postsecondary training to replace the piecemeal approach characteristic of past efforts.

K-12 Education Should be Based on National Standards

The education in science and mathematics that students receive from kindergarten through 12th grade forms the foundation of this nation’s scientific, mathematical, and technological literacy. Some outstanding things happen in science classrooms today because extraordinary teachers do what needs to be done despite conventional practice. Many generous teachers spend their own money on science supplies, knowing that students learn best by investigation. These teachers ignore vocabulary-dense textbooks and encourage student inquiry. They also make their science courses relevant to students’ lives, instead of trying to prepare the students simply for another school science course. But that situation is not found in many schools. The implementation of the National Science Education Standards will highlight and promote the best practices of extraordinary teachers and give them the recognition and support that they deserve. School principals who find money in their budgets for field trips, parents whose bake-sale proceeds purchase science equipment, and publishers who are pioneering authentic assessments despite the market for multiple-choice tests will also be recognized and encouraged.

Over the last decade, the National Research Council and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, responding to calls for higher levels of science and mathematics achievement, developed national standards for what all students should know and be able to do in these subjects. The standards reflect a broad consensus that has emerged

through the extensive efforts of thousands of teachers, scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and educational experts across the nation. In addition to containing content standards that describe the subject matter that all students should master, the standards outline what teachers of science and mathematics at all grade levels should know and be able to do and the new kinds of assessments that are needed to test what all students should know and understand.

A curriculum is the way content is organized and presented in the classroom. The standards do not mandate a specific curriculum: the content embodied in the standards can be organized and presented with many different emphases in many different curricula. Nor do the standards imply that all teachers should pursue a single approach to teaching;

different teachers can use many different strategies to develop the understandings and abilities described in the standards.

The standards point toward a kind of teaching different from that common in many K-12 classrooms today. The teacher serves as a coach for the development of skills, such as the ability to engage in problem-solving and inquiry. The students engage in collaborative learning that includes the synthesis and integration of different types of data and analysis, and communicating the results. The benefit of learning skills as opposed to only learning knowledge — learning how as opposed to learning that —is best exemplified in sports and music. It is difficult to imagine teaching basketball or piano-playing by lecture alone, and it should be just as difficult in the case of science and mathematics.

How can students best learn these skills? Students can conduct an investigation . For example, a teacher wants students to develop an understanding of variables and how and why to change one variable at a time. This inquiry-process skill might be imparted in the context of physical science subject matter. The teacher asks students to build a pendulum that swings at six swings per second. She does not tell students that the number of swings depends on the length of the pendulum, but creates an activity that awakens their interest and encourages them to ask questions and seek answers. She then encourages them to look for applications of this science knowledge beyond the classroom. Students keep written records of their science activities, and the teacher helps them to develop the skills needed to communicate effectively.

All students, not just high-achieving ones, should be exposed to much more science than the minimum that most students are exposed to today. High-achieving students should be able to pursue science and mathematics as fully and rapidly as their talents permit.

The standards underscore the need for teacher professionalism in science and mathematics education. Better preparation in science and mathematics, recognition and support of effective teaching, continuing education in science and mathematics, and permanent links of teachers to universities, professional organizations, and other science-rich institutions can all help to create the necessary level of professionalism.

Assessments of learning (the tests that students take) have a powerful influence on education policies and practices. Appropriate assessments do more than measure factual knowledge. They assess what is important to learn, not just

what is easy to measure. They enhance learning and good instructional practice. And they support every student’s opportunity to learn. These principles should guide efforts to construct assessments that measure whether the

standards are being achieved. (A-1)

The national standards in science and mathematics are an essential resource for improving the education received by the 40 million students enrolled in America’s elementary and secondary schools. Policymakers should encourage teachers, curriculum-developers, school administrators, government officials, and college faculty to build on the national standards in science and mathematics in seeking higher levels of performance from all students. (A-2, A-3, A-4)

Undergraduate Education Should Include Scientific Inquiry

Weaknesses of science and mathematics education at the K-12 level have counterparts at the undergraduate level. Although undergraduate education continues to produce the highly motivated and capable students who will become the scientists, engineers, and mathematicians on whom our society so heavily depends, many undergraduates take little or no science, mathematics, or engineering courses in college. In many institutions, science and mathematics do not contribute to the core of a liberal education. And unrewarding experiences in first-year undergraduate science or mathematics courses often dissuade students from taking more.

Given the importance of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology in our society, an undergraduate education that does not include exposure to those subjects is incomplete. All undergraduates should achieve high levels of literacy in science, mathematics, and technology by having access to excellent programs that provide direct experience with the methods and processes of inquiry. (B-1)

Achieving that objective requires that departments and institutions be much more explicit in defining their missions. New instructional models—monitored by self-assessment and feedback from alumni and employers who hire college graduates as well as from students—can improve the educational experiences of all undergraduates. Unlike the situation in research, there is no tradition of evaluating undergraduate teaching or learning other than through student course evaluations. Departments and programs should be evaluated against explicit educational goals with assessments that are as rigorous as those applied to research. (B-1)

Most important, departments and institutions must align faculty rewards more closely with their total missions. The rewards accorded teaching, research, service, and

professional activities must be balanced so that teaching is enlivened by investigation and faculty are rewarded for the full range of scholarly activity. (B-1) There is room for a greatly revised and expanded view of teaching— one that brings it closer to scholarship and demonstrates the real (if often neglected) linkages between teaching and research.

Change in undergraduate education will require energetic leadership. The leaders in our colleges and universities should foster change by helping to build a consensus concerning educational improvements and by providing the support needed for improvements to take root and spread. (B-1, B-2, B-3) Government agencies that support research should also develop explicit policies concerning these educational issues.

Our colleges and universities have important roles in supporting the profound changes in K-12 science and mathematics education called for by the national standards. For example, learning science through hands-on inquiry not only is the best way for students to gain an understanding of science throughout their K-12 years, but also should be an important focus for introductory college courses. Colleges and universities should have as part of their admission policies a requirement that students take tests that include evaluation of their ability to conduct scientific inquiry, rather than relying on current standardized tests of their knowledge of science and mathematics. (B-1, B-3) If we do not reward what we value, high-school teachers will continue to be pressured to teach to the present national examinations, which inhibit inquiry and are a very poor match for the national standards. Finally, future teachers of science must experience inquiry in college to be able to use these techniques to maximal advantage in the classroom. These students deserve special attention and encouragement as we work as a nation to increase the talent and diversity of our K-12 teachers.

The guidance from the National Research Council studies mentioned here are just the preliminary activities of a continuing effort by the NRC to evaluate the quality of the country’s undergraduate science and engineering education and recommend the changes needed to improve that education.

Graduate Education Should Focus on Student Needs

Science, engineering, and society are all changing in ways that have important implications for the graduate education of scientists and engineers. For example, graduate education traditionally has focused on preparing students for jobs in academe. But today well over half of all doctoral recipients go to work in nonacademic settings, where they often need to call on a wide array of skills. Graduate students therefore require exposure to the broad range of experiences desired by both academic and nonacademic employers.

Policymakers and institutions can take several steps to improve graduate education. First, there should be a better

balance in the various grants that are used to support graduate students (fellowships, research and teaching assistantships, and training grants). The heavy reliance on research assistantships for graduate-student support has tended to make the needs of research projects, rather than students’ education, paramount. Education and training grants should be used more often to provide financial support to graduate students than is the case today. (C-1) These grants could be awarded competitively to institutions and departments that work to enhance the versatility of students, both through curricular innovation and through more-effective faculty mentoring to acquaint students with the full array of employment options. It is recognized that a heightened emphasis on education and training grants could reduce the funds available for research assistantships.

Second, time to degree should be controlled. The median period between receipt of a bachelor’s degree and a PhD in science and engineering has risen to more than eight years, an increase of two years since 1960. The reasons for this increase are largely unknown, but some of it might be a result of students’ working as highly specialized research assistants in ways that do not directly contribute to their education. Each institution should set its own standards for time to degree and enforce them. It should also inform its students of the average time to degree and other career-related information before they enter graduate school. (C-1)

Third, the lack of accurate, timely, and accessible data on employment trends, careers, and sources of student support is a serious flaw in the graduate-education system. A national database that covers such issues as financial aid, time to degree, and placement rates—including information gathered and disseminated through the Internet—could help students and their advisers to make informed decisions about professional careers. (C-1) Such a database, which should be designed and managed by the research community, could be used both by students and by their advisers to learn more about graduate programs and possible career tracks.

The ultimate measure of success in graduate education is the extent to which all students are well prepared for their careers. Graduate education needs to be designed with a focus on student needs, and it should prepare students for an increasingly interdisciplinary, collaborative, and global job market. Successful programs have a focused, realistic mission and a positive learning environment that supports a wide array of career options. Adapting to new realities will require substantial change on the part of faculty, but it can have many benefits for departments, students, and society.

Continuing Education Requires More Coherence

With a workplace that is rapidly changing, education can no longer be seen as occupying just the first portion of a person’s life. Formal education must prepare people for a lifetime of learning.

The need for postsecondary training is particularly acute among the 75% of American adults who do not hold college degrees. Today, they receive postsecondary training through an uncoordinated assemblage of two-year colleges, trade schools, vocational-technical schools, on-the-job training, and other institutions. The quality of training provided by

these institutions is mixed. Processes for quality assurance are undeveloped. And linkages to employers are often weak (with the exception of on-the-job training). Rather than a postsecondary training system, the United States has a piecemeal collection of training opportunities that sometimes work well for some people. The federal government, with its proliferation of programs and lack of a coherent approach, bears part of the blame for this situation. Some states have begun to restructure their programs to address workforce development systematically and effectively. These efforts are not universal, however, and are hampered by continued fragmentation at the federal level.

In an ideal postsecondary training system, people who want to obtain or advance in specific jobs would know what kind of training is valued by employers and where to find it. They would have the information necessary to select occupations that match their skills and interests. They also would have information about the likely demand for workers in various fields.

For their part, employers would know about and value the skills that workers have acquired through a training program. Employers would have ready access to information about the existing and future supply of trained workers and would be able to let training institutions know what their needs are.

Government at all levels can focus attention on linking the various partners in postsecondary training in ways that provide coherent and high-quality training opportunities for people at various stages in their working lives. Policymakers need to emphasize the importance of building a true system of postsecondary training, rather than continuing the piecemeal approach that has characterized past efforts. (D-1)

Information is another important consideration. There is an absence in this country of readily available and integrated information systems that would help both potential trainees and employers to obtain needed training services. Putting good information in the hands of these consumers so that they can make informed choices can improve the efficiency of the training marketplace and serve as an indirect means of ensuring accountability and oversight.

Conclusions

The American educational system has responded to great challenges in the past. It has navigated the transition from an agricultural to an industrial society, it has greatly increased access at the K-12 and college level, and it has built a system of graduate education in the sciences and engineering that is widely viewed as a world model.

Education in the United States is largely decentralized. Authority and accountability are vested predominantly at the local and state levels. Although not formally approved and recognized as such, this country already has national examinations for college entry and a national curriculum for K-12 science and mathematics education that is determined largely by these tests and by the books produced by major textbook publishers. The science curriculum demands a superficial knowledge of such a wide variety of topics that the understanding and excitement of science are lost. And most of our high-school graduates fail to acquire the analytic, problem-solving skills that they need to succeed in the modern workplace. Coordinated efforts by all those involved in the educational system are needed to help move science and mathematics education toward world-class goals.

For the last decade, experts have been describing and defining the essential elements of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education. The challenge now is to ensure that policymakers and educational leaders across

the nation are aware of the needs and possibilities and are encouraged to begin the next phase of work—implementation—in school districts and universities around the nation.

The challenge facing education today is more varied than past challenges. It encompasses the rapidly increasing diversity of the nation’s population, the growing internationalization of commerce and culture, the explosive development of information technologies, and other great technical and social transformations. There is no simple, universal prescription for success. But a focus on high standards for all, coupled with recognition of the need for versatility in the face of change, can help to prepare all students for the demands of the 21st century.

© 1997 by the National Academy of Sciences . All rights reserved. This document may be reproduced solely for individual, non-commercial, and educational purposes without the written permission of the National Academy of Sciences.

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EDUCATION IN THE 21st CENTURY

07 Sep EDUCATION IN THE 21st CENTURY

The value of a 21st century education.

Success looks different now than it did in the past. High-achieving people are frequently choosing to opt out of the traditional job market and create their own jobs. Successful people increasingly expect to be able to:

• Live and work anywhere in the world
• Travel as often as they like, for as long as they like
• Change what they’re working on to keep up with their interests and abilities
• Enjoy earning potential that is not capped by a salary figure
• Work with peers across the globe
• Outsource things they don’t like doing
• Choose their own hours and office

For people who don’t live like this it can sound far-fetched, but this kind of lifestyle is growing rapidly. What does it take to access and thrive with this kind of freedom? The answer is surprisingly simple, and can be best summed up as ‘a 21st century education’.

20TH CENTURY EDUCATION

In the preface to the 2011 revised edition of his book ‘Out of Our Minds’, Sir Ken Robinson observes that ‘The more complex the world becomes, the more creative we need to be to meet its challenges’, and this is becoming increasingly clear in education and the workplace. People now need to be creative to be successful, but while the idea of success has changed, the education system has not always adjusted its methods or goals to meet it.

A 20th century education emphasised compliance and conformity over creativity, two skills that were necessary to do well in a professional or corporate environment and to hold down a good job for decades. Compliance and conformity are now a relic, but they are still key values in many schools, informing policy even when not being expressly promoted to students.

In his book ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?’, educational thought leader Yong Zhao warns, “National standards and national curriculum, enforced by high-stakes testing, can at best teach students what is prescribed… As a result, students talented in other areas never have the opportunity to discover those talents. Students with broader interests are discouraged, not rewarded. The system results in a population with similar skills in a narrow spectrum of talents. But especially in today’s society, innovation and creativity are needed in many areas, some as yet undiscovered.”

Unfortunately, most students continue to be educated in the same way as they were in the past, being taught a standardised curriculum through rote learning and individualised testing, at a one-size-fits-all pace. Far too many students are struggling to learn because they are disengaged and lack motivation. Why go to school when you could learn the same information faster by watching a Youtube video or playing a computer game? Why memorise facts for a test when you have all the information in the palm of your hand anyway? Past methods make little sense to today’s students who learn and think differently, and they make little sense in relation to the changing workplace, where making use of information is now far more valuable than simply knowing things. Schools are failing to teach students to respond to rapid change and how to handle new information because they are clinging to obsolete methods.

21ST CENTURY STUDENTS

Generation Z – born between 1995 and 2009 – most do not remember life without the internet, and have had technology like smartphones, iPads, smartboards and other devices available throughout most of their schooling. Generation Alpha – born since 2010 – they are younger than smartphones, the iPad, 3D television, Instagram, and music streaming apps like Spotify. This is the first generation likely to see in the 22nd century in large numbers.

Growing up with this level of technology means growing up with a completely unprecedented amount of information at your fingertips. There are kids who have never been more than a few seconds away from the answers to their questions, with everything just a quick search away. They are able to teach themselves about any topic they are interested in without even leaving their bedroom.The current cohort of students come from Generation Z and Generation Alpha. These two generations have grown up with advanced technology as a given in their homes and classrooms. They are digital natives, as comfortable using apps and code as their grandparents were flipping pages.

Generations Z and Alpha are also the most internationally connected in history. They encounter people online from all over the world, and can easily make friends on the other side of the planet before they have even left their home state. Schools and parents are also increasingly offering children and young people the opportunity to travel, creating a truly borderless experience of learning.

The students in our schools today are intelligent, independent and extremely capable. They are skilled with technology and comfortable with global and intercultural communication. We can expect that future generations are going to have even more experience in these areas.

A 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION

A 21st century education is about giving students the skills they need to succeed in this new world, and helping them grow the confidence to practice those skills. With so much information readily available to them, 21st century skills focus more on making sense of that information, sharing and using it in smart ways.

The coalition P21 (Partnership for 21st Century Learning) has identified four ‘Skills for Today’ :

• Critical thinking
• Communication
• Collaboration

These four themes are not to be understood as units or even subjects, but as themes that should be overlaid across all curriculum mapping and strategic planning. They should be part of every lesson in the same way as literacy and numeracy.

Creativity is about thinking through information in new ways, making new connections and coming up with innovative solutions to problems. Critical thinking is about analysing information and critiquing claims. Communication is understanding things well enough to share them clearly with other people. Collaboration is about teamwork and the collective genius of a group that is more than the sum of its parts.

There are other skills that are important, which fall within these four areas. Entrepreneurship can be considered a skill of its own. Inquiry and problem solving are key. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is one of the most important keys to successful work and relationships. The bottom line? Education needs to be all about empowering students with transferable skills that will hold up to a rapidly changing world, not prescribed content that has been chosen for its past relevance.

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY

While digital integration is also fundamental to a thorough 21st century education, it is not enough to simply add technology to existing teaching methods. Technology must be used strategically to benefit students. Students are increasingly advanced users of technology even as they enter school for the first time, so this can often mean being open to the possibilities presented rather than attempting to teach and prescribe the use of certain programs. Many a classroom ‘technology class’ has baffled children by attempting to teach them about programs, websites and hardware that are no longer relevant or that they understand far better than the teacher does.

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

21st century schools are also responding to demand by moving into international education. ISC Research have tracked these changes in their research. In the past, international schools were primarily for the families of military personnel and diplomats. In the year 2000 there were 2,500 international schools globally with fewer than one million students attending, but in December 2016 there were over 8,600 international schools with almost 4.5 million students. The vast majority of these students are now local children hoping to attend university in the West. Schools which aren’t traditional ‘international schools’ are also striving to create an internationally connected education through travel opportunities, exchange programs, school partnerships, international school leadership, and online communication. Learning to be a global citizen is crucial in a world where technology is erasing borders, and you don’t necessarily need an international education masters degree to incorporate this into your teaching.

21st century teachers need to serve as a guide or mentor for their students, not as the all-knowing sage providing them with all their information. With so much access to resources of all kinds, children are invariably going to know more than teachers on different topics, and be a step ahead of the technology in use. Teachers need to be empowered as facilitators and motivators for learning, so that they can empower their students in turn.

This shift is great news for teachers. Instead of struggling to give kids all the information they need to succeed in areas the teacher knows little about, they can support students as they make their own steps into different fields. It’s about preparing kids to go beyond their parents and teachers, making sure they have the skills to do it, and then helping along the way as they build confidence to achieve.

This means teachers need to be forward-thinking, curious and flexible. Teachers must be learners: learning new ways of teaching, and learning alongside their students. Simply asking questions like “what will my students need twenty or fifty years from now? How can I help give them those skills?” can change your mindset, make you a leader, and help you bring about change in your classroom, school and community.

Start today: Practical tips for a 21st century school Invite students to contribute to strategy meetings and decision making Create adaptable learning environments suited to different sorts of collaboration and group work Encourage students to take ownership of community service programs Find ways to connect students to people their age in other parts of the world Review your use of technology in the classroom: how can it be made more effective?

In a time when mental health and wellbeing is one of the biggest challenges facing young people, a 21st century education can give students the skills they need both for now and for the future. Skills like communication, critical thinking and EQ go beyond the workplace: they can help people through the most difficult times of their life. Finding your passion, doing it well, having a sense of purpose and focus, and being able to control your own work and life are all significant steps on the path to wellbeing.

RESULT The ability to think critically and creatively, to collaborate with others, and to communicate clearly sets students up for success in their careers, but also empowers them to lead happier, healthier lives.

Bringing your school into the 21st century requires taking the lead instead of trailing behind, actively seeking out new ways of doing things and staying in touch with the world outside of the education system. Change on a broad scale requires leadership in the classroom and across the school community, but every teacher can take steps immediately to help their students succeed.

For inspiration, empowerment, proven techniques and strategies in 21st century leadership check out my ONLINE COURSE: Leadership for the 21st Century.

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How Do You Define 21st-Century Learning?

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The term “21st-century skills” is generally used to refer to certain core competencies such as collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving that advocates believe schools need to teach to help students thrive in today’s world. In a broader sense, however, the idea of what learning in the 21st century should look like is open to interpretation—and controversy.

To get a sense of how views on the subject align—and differ—we recently asked a range of education experts to define 21st-century learning from their own perspectives.

Richard Allington Professor of Education, University of Tennessee; Early-Reading Expert

I’m an old guy. I’ve never Tweeted, Skyped, Facebooked, or YouTubed. Oddly, I don’t feel the least bit disenfranchised by technology. I am preparing this response on my laptop, I use (though not much) my Blackberry every day, and I will e-mail this response. But I’m still stuck on fostering 18th-century literacy in citizens. As far as I can tell, illiterates rarely use 21st-century literacies if only because they never developed the 18th-century kind of literacy. I think we actually could teach everyone to read (the old way) and for the life of me I cannot understand why schools would spend funds on computers when their libraries are almost empty of things students might want to read. I cannot understand why classrooms have whiteboards but no classroom libraries. The research, to date, has provided no evidence that having either computers or whiteboards in schools has any positive effect on students’ reading and writing proficiencies. But school and classroom libraries are well established as essential if we plan to develop a literate citizenry. However, there is no buzz about books.

Barnett Berry Founder and CEO, Center for Teaching Quality

Twenty-first-century learning means that students master content while producing, synthesizing, and evaluating information from a wide variety of subjects and sources with an understanding of and respect for diverse cultures. Students demonstrate the three Rs, but also the three Cs: creativity, communication, and collaboration. They demonstrate digital literacy as well as civic responsibility. Virtual tools and open-source software create borderless learning territories for students of all ages, anytime and anywhere.

Powerful learning of this nature demands well-prepared teachers who draw on advances in cognitive science and are strategically organized in teams, in and out of cyberspace. Many will emerge as teacherpreneurs who work closely with students in their local communities while also serving as learning concierges, virtual network guides, gaming experts, community organizers, and policy researchers.

Sarah Brown Wessling 2010 National Teacher of the Year

Twenty-first-century learning embodies an approach to teaching that marries content to skill. Without skills, students are left to memorize facts, recall details for worksheets, and relegate their educational experience to passivity. Without content, students may engage in problem-solving or team-working experiences that fall into triviality, into relevance without rigor. Instead, the 21st-century learning paradigm offers an opportunity to synergize the margins of the content vs. skills debate and bring it into a framework that dispels these dichotomies. Twenty-first-century learning means hearkening to cornerstones of the past to help us navigate our future. Embracing a 21st-century learning model requires consideration of those elements that could comprise such a shift: creating learners who take intellectual risks, fostering learning dispositions, and nurturing school communities where everyone is a learner.

Karen Cator Director, Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education

Success in the 21st century requires knowing how to learn. Students today will likely have several careers in their lifetime. They must develop strong critical thinking and interpersonal communication skills in order to be successful in an increasingly fluid, interconnected, and complex world. Technology allows for 24/7 access to information, constant social interaction, and easily created and shared digital content. In this setting, educators can leverage technology to create an engaging and personalized environment to meet the emerging educational needs of this generation. No longer does learning have to be one-size-fits-all or confined to the classroom. The opportunities afforded by technology should be used to re-imagine 21st-century education, focusing on preparing students to be learners for life.

Milton Chen Senior Fellow & Executive Director, Emeritus, The George Lucas Educational Foundation; author of Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in Our Schools

Twenty-first-century learning shouldn’t be controversial. It is simply an effort to define modern learning using modern tools. (The problem is that what’s modern in 2010 has accelerated far beyond 2000, a year which now seems “so last century.”)

Twenty-first-century learning builds upon such past conceptions of learning as “core knowledge in subject areas” and recasts them for today’s world, where a global perspective and collaboration skills are critical. It’s no longer enough to “know things.” It’s even more important to stay curious about finding out things.

The Internet, which has enabled instant global communication and access to information, likewise holds the key to enacting a new educational system, where students use information at their fingertips and work in teams to accomplish more than what one individual can alone, mirroring the 21st-century workplace. If 10 years from now we are still debating 21st-century learning, it would be a clear sign that a permanent myopia has clouded what should be 20/20 vision.

Steven Farr Chief Knowledge Officer, Teach For America; author of Teaching as Leadership: The Highly Effective Teacher’s Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap

Twenty-first-century learning must include the 20th-century ideals of Brown v. Board of Education . Sadly, we have failed to deliver on that promise. Our system perpetuates a racial and socioeconomic achievement gap that undermines our ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity.

As we study what distinguishes highly effective teachers in our nation’s most challenging contexts, we see that education reform requires much more than lists of skills. We need classroom leaders setting an ambitious vision, rallying others to work hard to achieve it, planning and executing to ensure student learning, and defining the very notion of teaching as changing the life paths of students. What will make America a global leader in the 21st century is acting on what we know to educate all children, regardless of socioeconomic background.

Steve Hargadon Founder, Classroom 2.0; Social Learning Consultant, Elluminate

Twenty-first-century learning will ultimately be “learner-driven.” Our old stories of education (factory-model, top-down, compliance-driven) are breaking down or broken, and this is because the Internet is releasing intellectual energy that comes from our latent desires as human beings to have a voice, to create, and to participate. The knowledge-based results look a lot like free-market economies or democratic governments (think: Wikipedia ). Loosely governed and highly self-directed, these teaching and learning activities exist beyond the sanction or control of formal educational institutions. I believe the political and institutional responses will be to continue to promote stories about education that are highly-structured and defined from above, like national standards or (ironically) the teaching of 21st-century skills. These will, however, seem increasingly out-of-sync not just with parents, educators, and administrators watching the Internet Revolution, but with students, who themselves are largely prepared to drive their own educations.

Lynne Munson President and Executive Director, Common Core

I define 21st-century learning as 20th- (or even 19th!-) century learning but with better tools. Today’s students are fortunate to have powerful learning tools at their disposal that allow them to locate, acquire, and even create knowledge much more quickly than their predecessors. But being able to Google is no substitute for true understanding. Students still need to know and deeply understand the history that brought them and our nation to where we are today. They need to be able to enjoy man’s greatest artistic and scientific achievements and to speak a language besides their mother tongue. According to most 21st-century skills’ advocates, students needn’t actually walk around with such knowledge in their heads, they need only to have the skills to find it. I disagree. Twenty-first-century technology should be seen as an opportunity to acquire more knowledge, not an excuse to know less.

Keith Moore Director, Bureau of Indian Education, Department of Interior

Students in the 21st century learn in a global classroom and it’s not necessarily within four walls. They are more inclined to find information by accessing the Internet through cellphones and computers, or chatting with friends on a social networking site. Similarly, many teachers are monitoring and issuing assignments via virtual classrooms.

Many of our Bureau of Indian Education schools are located in disadvantaged rural and remote areas. The BIE is working with various stakeholders to ensure that our schools have a Common Operating Environment so that students and teachers can access information beyond the classroom.

Within the federal BIE school system, we must rely upon the vision and the ability of our tribal leadership, parents, teachers, and students to work with the federal leadership to keep education a top priority.

Diane Ravitch Education Historian; author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System

To be prepared for the 21st century, our children require the following skills and knowledge: an understanding of history, civics, geography, mathematics, and science, so they may comprehend unforeseen events and act wisely; the ability to speak, write, and read English well; mastery of a foreign language; engagement in the arts, to enrich their lives; close encounters with great literature, to gain insight into timeless dilemmas and the human condition; a love of learning, so they continue to develop their minds when their formal schooling ends; self-discipline, to pursue their goals to completion; ethical and moral character; the social skills to collaborate fruitfully with others; the ability to use technology wisely; the ability to make and repair useful objects, for personal independence; and the ability to play a musical instrument, for personal satisfaction.

Susan Rundell Singer Laurence McKinley Gould Professor of Natural Sciences, Carleton College

Adaptability, complex communication skills, non-routine problem solving, self-management, and systems-thinking are essential skills in the 21st-century workforce. From my perspective as a scientist and science educator, the most effective way to prepare students for the workforce and college is to implement and scale what is already known about effective learning and teaching. Content vs. process wars should be ancient history, based on the evidence from the learning sciences. Integrating core concepts with key skills will prepare students for the workplace and college. We need to move past mile-wide and inch-deep coverage of ever-expanding content in the classroom. Developing skills in the context of core concepts is simply good practice. It’s time to let go of polarizing debates, consider the evidence, and get to work.

A version of this article appeared in the October 12, 2010 edition of Teacher PD Sourcebook as How Do You Define 21st-Century Learning?

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21st Century Teaching and Learning

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As a 20th century kid, I was awed by the mere mention of the twenty- first century. The optimist in me envisioned a 21st century that was sleek, modern, and bursting with gadgets that stretched the imagination. Although my dreams of flying cars and room-cleaning robots have not been realized just yet, the gadgets have not disappointed. The impact of abundant and ever-changing technology—particularly information and communication technology—frequently dominates conversations in and about modern society. The same holds true in the field of education, where technology integration and emphasis of the disciplines most closely associated with modern technologies (i.e., science, math, and engineering) are seen as vital. These are important considerations, but 21st century teaching and learning goes beyond technology integration and STEM content; it is also about fostering ways of thinking and promoting dispositions that support success in an age driven by rapidly changing and expanding technologies. Responsive 21st century teaching and caregiving requires educators to create environments and provide experiences that encourage exploration and inquiry, and nurture creativity and curiosity.

The July 2016 issue of Young Children celebrates and explores this 21st century approach to teaching and learning. The cluster articles provide a snapshot of the developmentally appropriate ways the needs of young children growing up today are being addressed.

Some of the most prominent components of 21st century education—problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, authentic learning, appropriate use of technologies, and cross-disciplinary teaching—are the focus in “Integrating the Curriculum to Engage and Challenge Children.” Geared toward practice in kindergarten through third grade, the article by Barbara A. Bradley discusses the ways in which educators of primary school children can incorporate these components in their teaching.

Information and communication technology is changing the way we get information and interact with each other. This is particularly true about social media. In “Are You (P)Interested in 21st Century Teaching and Learning?,” Rachael Huber and C.C. Bates provide an introduction to this popular social media platform and explore one of the new ways teachers are locating and sharing information.

Tracey Hunter-Doniger demonstrates the power of creativity and arts infusion in “ Snapdragons and Math: Using Creativity to Inspire, Motivate, and Engage .” Tracey describes the successful efforts of a kindergarten teacher and art educator who designed a cross-curricular collaboration aimed at promoting children’s engagement and enhancing learning.

One of the benefits of the ever-increasing availability of new technology is a shrinking world. In light of our global society, it is essential that crosscultural understanding be fostered in 21st century early childhood education settings. In “Classroom Contexts That Support Young Children’s Intercultural Understanding,” María V. Acevedo explores the efforts used to bridge gaps between a group of preschool teachers’ existing practices and the needs of the children in their classrooms.

In “ Beyond Bouncing the Ball: Toddlers and Teachers Investigate Physics ,” Eric Bucher and Marcos Hernández show us how topics that were once considered beyond the bounds of early childhood classrooms are now being introduced in developmentally appropriate ways. Bucher and Hernández position teachers as reflective co-investigators, a departure from the more traditional view of teachers as disseminators of information. The authors describe the educators in their article as teacher researchers and present a process that was implemented to promote reflective practice.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children has long embraced teacher research—teachers’ systematic inquiry of their practice—and its potential for advancing the profession and promoting high-quality early childhood education. Since 2004, NAEYC has published Voices of Practitioners , the only teacher research journal dedicated to early childhood education. To bring teacher research to a wider audience, a new Voices of Practitioners article will be published regularly in Young Children, beginning with this issue. We are excited to continue promoting teacher research and to make this valuable resource available in print.

Finally, we are pleased that this particular cluster coincides with the debut of Growing in STEM, a new column focusing on developmentally appropriate practice related to early childhood science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Reflecting a 21st century-minded pedagogy premised on inquiry and integration, the column promises to support early childhood educators at all levels as they seek to enhance STEM teaching and learning in their classrooms.

We hope you find something in this exciting issue that inspires the 21st century educator in you! – M. Deanna Ramey, Editor in Chief

Photograph: © iStock

M. Deanna Ramey was formerly editor-in-chief of Young Children .

Vol. 71, No. 3

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21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times

Superseded by Four-Dimensional Education

Description

Table of contents, other languages, what is 21st century skills about.

This important resource introduces a framework for 21st century learning that maps out the skills needed to survive and thrive in a complex and connected world. 21st Century content includes the basic core subjects of reading, writing, and arithmetic-but also emphasizes global awareness, financial/economic literacy, and health issues. The skills fall into three categories: learning and innovations skills, digital literacy skills, and life and career skills. This book is filled with vignettes, international examples, and classroom samples that help illustrate the framework and provide an exciting view of what twenty-first century teaching and learning can achieve.

• A vital resource that outlines the skills needed for students to excel in the twenty-first century
• Explores the three main categories of 21st Century Skills: learning and innovations skills, digital literacy skills, and life and career skills
• Addresses timely issues such as the rapid advance of technology and increased economic competition
• Based on a framework developed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21)

Praise for 21st Century Skills from Education Thought Leaders

“The authors have done nothing less than provide a bold framework for designing a 21st century approach to education, an approach aimed at preparing all of our children to successfully meet the challenges of this brave, new world.”

– Paul Reville, Secretary of Education, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, former director of the Education Policy and Management Program, Harvard Graduate School of Education

“Trilling and Fadel describe in very readable, practical terms how to infuse 21st Century skills from standards all the way into the classroom. The DVD is full of wonderful ‘a-ha’ moments to illustrate the possibilities. A terrific traveling companion for educators, parents, and business and government decision-makers concerned about the future of our kids.”

— Paige Johnson, 2009 chair, Partnership for 21st Century Skills; Global K-12 Manager,  Intel Corporation

“It’s about time that we have such an accessible and wise book about the 21st century skills that so many companies, policymakers, and educators are talking about. Trilling and Fadel distill insights from diverse communities of reflective inquiry on what redesigns of learning environments are needed to foster these skills, and provide path-finding tools for the exciting expeditions into the future of learning.”

— Roy Pea, professor, Education and the Learning Sciences,  Stanford University

“Trilling and Fadel lay out a comprehensive understanding of what is meant by 21st century skills. Read this book with a note pad—you’ll be jotting down ideas for how to use the information in your school district. A must read for superintendents, curriculum directors, and teachers.”

— Anne L. Bryant, executive director, National School Boards Association

“Trilling and Fadel take the 21st Century skills debate beyond rhetoric, providing a substantive, compelling, and engaging argument for the skills and competencies that our children need to succeed in a knowledge age economy. The skills they describe are the essential life-blood of a productive, engaged, and intelligent citizenry – this book is a must-read for skeptics and enthusiasts alike!”

— Margaret Honey, president and CEO, New York Hall of Science

  “Hooray to Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel for demystifying 21st century skills. This book makes clear why education must change: to help prepare students to meet complex challenges, fulfill their civic responsibilities, and live fulfilling lives. Full of crisp descriptions, 21st Century Skills persuasively shows why policymakers and educators should run—not walk—to implement 21st learning designs. As Trilling and Fadel simply put it, it’s time to give all students the chance to learn how to build a better world.”

— John Wilson, executive director, National Education Association

“With 21st Century Skills , Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel have given us a global ‘search and replace’ for outdated educational thinking. Replace ‘scope and sequence’ with the ‘21st Century Learning Framework,’ the P21 rainbow. Replace ‘models of curriculum and instruction’ with their ‘Project Learning Bicycle.’ And don’t miss their ‘Kingdom of Learning, Learnalot,’ one of the most clever educational parables ever told.”

— Milton Chen, executive director, The George Lucas Educational Foundation

“Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel have written a book that is truly visionary, providing sound insight into education in the 21st century. Their book provides solid, practical advice for educators, policymakers, business leaders and others interested in improving America’s position in the global economy. I recommend it to anyone interested in maximizing classroom effectiveness in this digital age.”

— Dr. Steven L. Paine, superintendent of schools, West Virginia

  “A must read for anyone interested in the United States ability to compete in a global economy. Educators, policy makers, business leaders, parents and students will benefit from the comprehensive information in 21st Century Skills .”

— Mary Ann Wolf, executive director, State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA)

“Working, living and learning in the 21st Century will require an expanded set of skills, competencies and flexibilities. We must prepare for a continuous learning and reskilling process throughout our lives and careers. This is a powerful exploration of what we collectively face as we live the future. A must read!”

— Elliott Masie, CEO and Chair, The Learning Consortium

“Charles & Bernie’s book cuts to the core challenge facing our country—Is our education system preparing our children with the skills to succeed in a ‘flat’ 21st century world? Much more than a treatise on what is wrong with education, they provide a compelling vision for education as it should be and a roadmap for getting where we need to go.”

— Keith R. Krueger, CEO, Consortium for School Networking (CoSN)

  “This book presents an innovative, comprehensive strategy for evolving education to meet the needs of 21st century society.”

— Chris Dede, Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies, Harvard Graduate School of Education

  “ 21st Century Skills is full of interesting examples illustrating both what work will look like in the years ahead and how thoughtful educators are preparing children to thrive in tomorrow’s workplaces. The richness of the examples reflects the authors’ extensive knowledge of how work is changing in the nation’s most innovative firms and their deep involvement in the efforts to improve America’s schools.”

— Richard J. Murnane, Thompson Professor of Education and Society, Harvard Graduate School of Education

  “Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel have been two of the essential intellects behind the growth of the 21st century skills movement. We have been asked for years to provide an in-depth treatment of the 21st century skills framework. Here it is.”

— Ken Kay, executive director, Partnership for 21st Century Skills; CEO, e–Luminate Group

“Trilling and Fadel have captured powerful insight into critical 21st century learning skills. Life goes on and so must learning – this book is a must for anyone interested in the future of education.”

— Allan Weis, former IBM vice president; founder of ThinkQuest and Advanced Network and Services

“This is a very informed, insightful, accessible book that will help policy makers, education leaders, teachers, parents—anyone interested in improving education—understand the profound global forces that are reshaping our society and their implications for education reform. 21st Century Skills provides specific recommendations for how we can—indeed must—change the curriculum, teaching, assessment, use of technology and the organization of our schools to better prepare students to be productive, creative citizens and workers in the global society and economy of the 21st century.”

— Robert B. Kozma, Ph.D., emeritus director, Center for Technology in Learning, SRI International

“Bernie and Charles have presented a well researched and futuristic frame work for changing how we teach and learn for the 21st Century. It will be up to all of us to accept this challenge and move our country and world into and beyond the 21st Century.”

— Kathy Hurley, senior vice president, Pearson K-12 Solutions & Pearson Foundation; incoming chairman, The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

  “This is a well written and referenced roadmap for the complicated and interconnected collection of skills, knowledge and attitudes that are essential for citizens to master in our increasingly complex and rapidly changing technological society.”

— John E. Abele, founding chairman of the board, Boston Scientific

“Inspirational and motivational, this book is a practical guide to implementing and understanding 21st Century Skills. Every teacher and parent should read it so they can prepare their children and their students to solve the problems of tomorrow, today.”

       — Dr. Barbara “Bobbi” Kurshan, executive director, Curriki

  “After all the talk about organizing education, this book leads us back to what education is for. 21st Century Skills is a comprehensive and elegant survey of our changing world, the skills it requires, and how those skills can be taught and learned. Here is a blueprint for 21st century schooling.”

— Michael Stevenson, vice president global education, Cisco

  “This book presents an excellent case and roadmap for K–12 schools, for balancing content knowledge delivery with the development of necessary skills for success. It can serve as a valuable guide for parents, educators, and policy makers.”

— Ioannis Miaoulis, Ph.D., president and director, Museum of Science, Boston

  “For anyone who cares about the future of our children and their success in a global economy, 21st Century Skills is required reading.”

— Gerald Chertavian, chairman, Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s 21st Century Skills Task Force; founder and CEO, YearUp

  “Struggling to understand or explain the imperative for 21st century skills in our schools? Begin here.”

— Julie A. Walker, executive director, American Association of School Librarians (AASL)

“ 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in our Times is a necessary and readable articulation of the reality of 21st Century Skills in educating today’s generation of learners. Kudos to the authors for achieving clarity on this timely topic.”

— Karen Cator, past chair, Partnership for 21st Century Skills

  “Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel have moved beyond the hype and buzz surrounding ‘21st Century Skills’ —to provide an insightful and commonsense guide to rethink learning & teaching in a world that urgently demands innovative, inventive, self–motivated/self–directed, creative problem–solvers to confront increasingly complex global problems. As they demonstrate in their comprehensive work, by proactively developing learner–centric tools that enhance context, communication, creation and collaboration, we stand a chance of retooling our obsolete industrial–era ‘conveyor belt’ educational system—to produce a flexible, future–ready way to learn and teach in and for the new millennium. The liberating result is sure to benefit not only students in the 21st century, but those to come in the 22nd century and beyond.”

— Paul Reynolds, CEO, FableVision

Figures and Tables The Authors Prologue:  The Search for Innovative Learning Introduction:  Learning to Innovate, Innovating Learning

• The Four Question Exercise
• About This Book
• A Map of the Book

Part One:  What Is 21st Century Learning?

1. Learning Past and Future

• Learning a Living: The Future of Work and Careers
• Learning Through Time

2. The Perfect Learning Storm: Four Converging Forces

• Knowledge Work
• Thinking Tools
• Digital Lifestyles
• Learning Research
• The Forces of Resistance
• The Turning of Learning: Toward a New Balance
• The Top 21st Century Challenge

Part Two:  What Are 21st Century Skills?

3. Learning and Innovation Skills: Learning to Create Together

• The Knowledge-and-Skills Rainbow
• Learning to Learn and Innovate
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
• Communication and Collaboration
• Creativity and Innovation

4. Digital Literacy Skills: Info-Savvy, Media-Fluent, Tech-Tuned

• Information Literacy
• Media Literacy
• ICT Literacy

5. Career and Life Skills: Work-Ready, Prepared for Life

• Flexibility and Adaptability
• Initiative and Self-Direction
• Social and Cross-Cultural Interaction
• Productivity and Accountability
• Leadership and Responsibility

Part Three:  21st Century Learning in Practice

6. 21st Century Learning and Teaching

• Learning P’s and Q’s: Problems and Questions
• Roads to Answers and Solutions: Science and Engineering

7. Powerful Learning: Proven Practices, Researched Results

• The 21st Century Project Learning Bicycle
• Creativity Through Projects
• Evidence That Project Learning Works
• Obstacles to Collaborative Inquiry and Design Learning

8. Retooling Schooling: Reshaping Support Systems

• Shifting Systems in Sync
• Support Systems
• From Skills to Expertise: Future Learning Frameworks

9. Conclusion: Learning for Life—Building a Better World

Appendix A  Resources

• 21st Century Skills Example Videos DVD
• Resources from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills
• Selected Online Resources

Appendix B  About the Partnership for 21st Century Skills

• What Is P21?
• What Does P21 Do?
• How the P21 Learning Framework Came into Being

Appendix C  3Rs · 7Cs = 21st Century Learning

Acknowledgments Notes References Credits How to Use the DVD Index

21 st Century Skills : Learning for Life in Our Times was translated into Korean, Mandarin Chinese (sim plified), Mandarin Chinese (traditional – Taiwan), and Russian. Interested in information about the book in these languages? Please Contact Us .

Published February 2012 256 pages Copyright © John Wiley And Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. ISBN-13: 978-1118157060

clock This article was published more than  9 years ago

What’s the purpose of education in the 21st century?

What is the purpose of education? The question came into stark relief when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker recently tried to quietly change the century-old mission of the University of Wisconsin system by proposing to remove words in the state code that command the university to “search for truth” and “improve the human condition” and replacing them with “meet the state’s workforce needs.” Walker backed off when the issue became public and sparked intense criticism from academics and others, but the issue remains a topic of national debate and of the following post. It was written by Arthur H. Camins, director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. The ideas expressed in this article are his alone and do not represent Stevens Institute. His other writing can be found at www.arthurcamins.com .

By Arthur H. Camins

Debate about the purposes of education never seems to end.  Should young people become educated to get prepared to enter the workforce, or should the purpose of education be focused more on social, academic, cultural and intellectual development so that students can grow up to be engaged citizens?

Over the last 50 years, anxiety about competition with the Soviet Union, Japan, and China for global economic, military and political dominance have supported periodic calls for more effective workforce development. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker recently tried to change the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin to focus exclusively on workforce development. With each new workforce development or economic competitiveness demand on our K-12 schools, there has been push-back from those who want greater emphasis on a broader view of education.

But it doesn’t have to be either-or.  Education should prepare young people for life, work and citizenship.

Knowledge of the natural and engineered environments and how people live in the world is critical to all three purposes of education. Critical thinking, creativity, interpersonal skills and a sense of social responsibility all influence success in life, work and citizenship. For example, unhappy personal relationships often spill over into the work environment, while a stressful workplace or unemployment negatively impacts family life. Uninformed disengaged citizens lead to poor policy choices that impact life, work and citizenship. To paraphrase the verse in the old song, “You can’t have one without the others.”

This multiple-purpose perspective has practical implications for both day-to-day instruction as well as education policy.

What classrooms features support education for life, work and citizenship?

The key is to identify the learning behaviors in which students should be engaged. The National Research Council’s Framework for K-12 Science Education provides some good examples. The framework describes the practices that scientists and engineers utilize to build new knowledge and designs, but also the student engagement that leads to learning. To be clear, the framework starts from the premise that science is a means to develop explanations about how the natural world works, and engineering is a means to develop solutions to human problems. Both are intended to improve our lives– a strong motivator for all learning. With a little tweaking, the practices are surprisingly applicable to various school subjects and as vehicles to address our multiple purposes.

(1) Ask questions about phenomenon (causes of cancer, climate change) and define problems that need to be solved (designing cancer treatment drugs, low-impact energy generation). In classrooms, students can ask questions about how living things get energy to live and grow. They can design prototypes of robots to clean up an oil spill. An educational focus on asking productive questions and defining meaningful problems isn’t just an academic skill. It is an important disposition across life, work and citizenship.

(2) Develop and use models. Models represent relevant testable features of scientific explanations or design solutions. In classrooms, teachers engage students to surface, clarify, refine and advance their understanding. Done well, this means that teachers don’t just present already established ideas but engage students in examining and advancing their own ideas. It means that students are challenged to reflect on what they already think they know and when appropriate research what others know in order to develop a preliminary testable model. One key modeling idea, applicable to life, work and citizenship is that most problems worth contemplating are complex and that seeking to understand that complexity is a better approach than a rush to simplicity. Another important idea is that models, or our initial ideas, should be subject to systematic investigation. Knowing whether or not those models comport with reality is critical, lest we make poor uninformed choices with unintended consequences.

(3) Plan and carry out investigations. The goals of investigations are to test, refine or replace existing or hypothetical explanations or design solutions. For example, in high school biology classrooms, students may design investigations to determine what kinds of algae and what conditions are optimal for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In doing so, they need to anticipate what data would support or challenge their initial ideas or design choices. Developing students’ abilities to examine data systematically, is yet another multipurpose education outcome. Taught well, students learn three basic premises: The questions asked frame what data is available for inquiry. The questions not asked may be just as important. In addition, in an active classroom with plenty of time for discussion, students learn that different people look at the same data and reach different interpretations. Not a bad life skill!

(4) Analyze and interpret data and (5) Use mathematics and computational thinking. Data does not speak for itself. Investigations to test explanations or designs yield data that must be interpreted. In classrooms organized around these eight practices, students learn that answers to important questions are not preordained. Instead, answers come from examining whether, when, under what circumstances, and how things work in the world. Students learn to use both traditional and modern interpretative tools. Especially in examining complex systems or designing complex solutions, mathematical representation and computational analysis are critical. Students learn to see mathematics not as procedures to be memorized, but as tools for making sense of the world– yet another multipurpose skill.

(6) Constructing explanations and designing solutions and (7) Engage in argument from evidence. The framework says:

“The goal for students is to construct logically coherent explanations of phenomena that incorporate their current understanding of science, or a model that represents it, and are consistent with the available evidence…. [When considering proposed solutions to engineering design problems], there is usually no single best solution but rather a range of solutions. Which one is the optimal choice depends on the criteria used for making evaluations.”

However, the framework goes one step further to say that in addition to developing logical evidence-based arguments, students should practice defending or revising their explanations or solutions in the light of competing ideas.  Think about the power of depersonalizing arguments and making them about evidence. That sure could improve addressing the inevitable conflicts that are part of the fabric of life, work and citizenship.

(8) Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information. The practices of science and engineering are forward-looking, knowledge- and solution-directed and always seeking improvement. As such, there is a premium on communicating with others. As a result, classrooms that engage in these practices are characterized by collaboration, reflectiveness and openness to alternative ideas. Once again, great skills to nourish for life, work and citizenship.

What policies promote education for life, work and citizenship?

First, across multiple traditional subject areas, teaching to develop students’ expertise to apply these practices implies substantial shifts in instructional emphasis. These shifts will require the development of new curricula and professional development. That should be a high funding priority.

Second, because substantial engagement in these practices is a significant cultural change, time and patience are in order. No quick fixes or short-term measurable results can be expected from current formative or summative assessment instruments or practices.

Third, teaching through these practices demands content that has personal and social relevance for students so that they are intellectually and emotionally engaged in their own learning. This implies that teaching for test success is an insufficient, if not undermining, motivator. As a result, current policies that give priority to consequential assessment need to be severely curtailed.

Fourth, since our social and technological context is constantly evolving, education for life, work and citizenship cannot just focus on what is already known and how we live now. Therefore, teaching and assessment that privilege rote learning should give way to preparation for future learning.

No matter what progress is made to shift the practices and content of daily classroom instruction, inequity will continue to be a substantial limiting factor. Application of the systems thinking that characterizes progress in science and engineering to education policy means that real sustainable improvement depends on addressing inequity in areas such as well-paid employment, health care, food, and housing security. You can’t have one without the others.

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Image credit: Claire Scully

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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Characteristics of The 21st Century Classroom

By Med Kharbach, PhD | Last Update: May 9, 2024

When I embarked on my teaching journey back in 2003, the landscape of the classroom was quite different from what we see today. Reflecting on this evolution, I’m struck by the radical changes that have shaped the educational environment, particularly in this early part of the 21st century.

It’s a transformation that’s been largely driven by the unprecedented pace of technological advancement. As I ponder these changes, I find it both fascinating and essential to articulate the characteristics that now define a modern classroom. These reflections are not just an academic exercise but a practical one, aimed at understanding and adapting to the evolving dynamics of education.

The changes are not just incremental; they are foundational, reshaping the very nature of how we teach and learn. The onset of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education is a testament to this rapid evolution. We are on the cusp of a new era where AI could redefine educational experiences in ways we are only beginning to understand.

To make sense of this shift, I’ve distilled my observations and experiences into six broad characteristics of the 21st-century classroom. Each of these categories encapsulates elements that are shaping modern educational practices.

This is not just a list, but a conversation starter, an invitation to dialogue about these changes. It’s a personal take, rooted in years of firsthand experience, aiming to spark discussions and reflections among educators, parents, and anyone interested in the future of education.

If you have missed other posts in this series on the topic of 21st century education, make sure to check characteristics of 21st century learners , characteristics of 21st century teachers , and characteristics of 21st century learning .

Here are the six main characteristics that, I believe, define the 21st century classrooms.

1. Technological Integration

The 21st-century classroom is unimaginable without the integration of technology, and soon AI (artificial intelligence). This facet of modern education transcends the traditional use of textbooks and blackboards, weaving digital tools seamlessly into the learning process (NETP, 2017)). Smartboards, for instance, have transformed the way lessons are presented, offering interactive and dynamic content that can cater to various learning styles.

Tablets, laptops, and Chromebooks have become as commonplace as notebooks, enabling students to access a vast reservoir of information and educational resources at their fingertips. Educational software, ranging from language learning apps like Duolingo to math problem-solving platforms like Khan Academy, provides personalized learning experiences. These technologies not only make learning more engaging but also prepare students for a digitally driven world.

The concept of a 21st-century classroom has evolved significantly. No longer limited to the traditional four walls of an institutional setting, the modern classroom exists wherever there’s an internet connection. This digital shift enables students to learn flexibly, from any location, facilitated by the widespread use of video conferencing tools. These advancements have given rise to the cloud-based classroom, a dynamic and accessible learning environment that epitomizes educational innovation.

Through my journey in the EdTech world, I have seen first hand the transformative power of educational technology and its vast impact on students learning. And guess what? These learning technologies that are now part of our classroom teaching are not only optimizing students learning but are also fostering a more inclusive learning environment where every student can find a way to engage that suits their learning style .

2. Student-Centered Learning

The 21st century classroom is a student-centered learning hub. In these classrooms, ” students regularly communicate, collaborate, self-reflect, problem solve,and peer-evaluate about their learning” (Hansen & Imse, 2016, p. 20)

As I stated in a previous post on 21st century learning , student-centered learning marks a paradigm shift from the traditional teacher-led approach (AKA the sage on the stage) to a more collaborative and experiential framework. This approach places students at the heart of the learning process, empowering them to take charge of their educational journey. In such settings, the teacher acts more as a facilitator or guide, providing resources and support while allowing students to explore topics that interest them.

This method often involves collaborative and project-based activities that encourage teamwork, communication, and problem-solving skills. For example, in project-based learning, students work on complex questions or problems over extended periods, giving them the chance to delve deeply into subjects and apply what they learn in real-world contexts.

During my teaching career, I’ve observed that when students are given the autonomy to explore subjects that they are passionate about, their engagement and retention rates soar. This approach also emphasizes the development of soft skills such as leadership, teamwork, and communication. Group projects and collaborative assignments foster a sense of community and interdependence among students.

Additionally, student-centered learning is often intertwined with personalized learning paths. This can involve differentiated instruction strategies where tasks are tailored to each student’s learning pace and style.

3. Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving

In the 21st-century classroom, developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills is a cornerstone of the educational experience. Critical thinking, as Finn (2011) defines it, “is applied rationality…a set of skills that people can learn and apply in their everyday or professional lives.” (p. 69). Problem solving, as Martinez (1998) stated, is “the process of moving toward a goal when the path to that goal is uncertain.”

Both critical thinking skills (e,g., analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, etc) and problem solving skills are essential for navigating the complexities of modern life and for fostering innovation. Educational strategies that emphasize these skills involve challenging students to think deeply about issues, analyze information critically, and come up with creative solutions to problems.

For instance, inquiry-based learning, where students formulate their own questions and seek answers through research and experimentation, can be particularly effective. This method not only engages students in the subject matter but also hones their analytical skills.

Problem-solving, particularly in group settings, not only strengthens analytical skills but also teaches students how to collaborate and communicate effectively. Incorporating real-world problems into the curriculum makes learning more relevant and engaging.

For example, tasks that involve designing solutions for environmental issues or community problems can be highly impactful. This approach not only equips students with the necessary critical thinking and problem-solving skills but also instills a sense of social responsibility.

4. Cultural Relevance and Global Awareness

Emphasizing cultural relevance and global awareness in the classroom is essential for preparing students to navigate and contribute to an increasingly interconnected world. This involves integrating diverse perspectives into the curriculum and teaching about global issues.

By incorporating literature, historical events, and current affairs from various cultures, educators can foster a more inclusive and empathetic classroom environment. This approach helps students understand and appreciate different viewpoints and cultural backgrounds, which is crucial in today’s diverse society.

Global awareness extends beyond cultural studies; it encompasses teaching about global challenges such as climate change, poverty, and social justice. Encouraging students to explore these issues, perhaps through project-based learning or classroom discussions, helps them develop a sense of responsibility and empowerment. It’s important for students to realize that they are part of a larger global community and that their actions can have an impact.

5. Personalized Learning

Personalized learning in the 21st-century classroom is about tailoring education to meet the unique needs, skills, and interests of each student. With the help of technology and innovative teaching methods, educators can create a learning environment that accommodates different learning styles and paces. For example, adaptive learning technology can adjust the difficulty of tasks based on individual student performance, providing a customized learning experience.

This approach ensures that all students, regardless of their starting point, can achieve mastery at their own pace. Personalized learning also involves offering various pathways for students to explore their interests and strengths. This could mean providing different project options, elective courses, or extracurricular activities.

6. Digital Literacy

Digital literacy is a fundamental skill in the modern world, encompassing more than just the ability to use technology. It involves understanding how to navigate the digital landscape responsibly and effectively. This includes critical skills like discerning reliable from unreliable sources online, understanding online privacy, and engaging in appropriate and ethical digital practices.

Teaching digital literacy is not just about providing students with technical skills; it’s about guiding them to become smart, ethical digital citizens. In the 21st-century classroom, educators have the responsibility to integrate digital literacy into their teaching. This could be through lessons on internet safety , exercises in evaluating online sources , or discussions about the impact of digital footprints.

Final thoughts

As we have seen, the landscape of education is continuously evolving, particularly with the onset of the AI revolution. The changes we’ve witnessed and adapted to in recent years are just the tip of the iceberg. Looking ahead, the integration of AI in education promises to further transform the classroom in ways we are only beginning to imagine.

The future classroom, I predict, will be an even more personalized and adaptive learning environment. AI could tailor educational content to each student’s learning pace, style, and interests, making education a truly individualized experience.

We might see AI-assisted teachers providing real-time feedback to students, thereby enhancing learning outcomes and freeing up more time for teachers to engage in meaningful, one-on-one interactions. Moreover, AI-driven analytics could provide educators with deeper insights into student learning patterns, enabling more effective interventions and support.

However, with these advancements, comes the responsibility to navigate challenges such as ensuring equitable access to technology and maintaining a human-centric approach in education. The role of the teacher will remain irreplaceable, evolving alongside technological advancements. Teachers will continue to be the guiding force, mentors, and facilitators of empathy, critical thinking, and creativity.

• Finn, P. (2011). Critical thinking: Knowledge and skills for evidence-based practice.  Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools , 42(1), 69–72.  https://doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461
• Hansen, D., & Imse, L. A. (2016). Student-centered classrooms: Past initiatives, future practices. Music Educators Journal , 103 (2), 20–26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44678226
• Martinez, M. E. (1998). What Is Problem Solving?  The Phi Delta Kappan , 79(8), 605–609.
• National Education Technology Plan Update. (2017). Reimagining the Role of Technology in Education.  U.S. Department of Education . Retrieved from:  https://tech.ed.gov/files/2017/01/NETP17.pdf

Further readings

• 21st Century Learning Framework, Battle for Kids, accessed January 3, 2023, https://www.battelleforkids.org/networks/p21/frameworks-resources
• Becker, J. M. (1982). Goals for Global Education. Theory Into Practice , 21 (3), 228–233. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1476772
• Berger et al. (2014). Leaders of their own learning: Transforming schools through student-engaged assessment . Jossey-Brass.
• Cohen, A. (2018). Bringing the 1960s to the 21st-Century Classroom. Pennsylvania Legacies , 18 (2), 32–33. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5215/pennlega.18.2.0032
• Danielson, C. (2007). Enhancing Professional Practice . Alexandria, VA: ASAE
• Davies, I., Evans, M., & Reid, A. (2005). Globalising citizenship education? A critique of “Global Education” and “Citizenship Education.” British Journal of Educational Studies , 53 (1), 66–89. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1556020
• Martell, C. (1974). Age of creative insecurity: Student-centered learning. Journal of Education for Librarianship , 15 (2), 112–120. https://doi.org/10.2307/40322827
• Tye, K. A. (2003). Global education as a worldwide movement. The Phi Delta Kappan , 85 (2), 165–168. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20440529

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Meet Med Kharbach, PhD

Dr. Med Kharbach is an influential voice in the global educational technology landscape, with an extensive background in educational studies and a decade-long experience as a K-12 teacher. Holding a Ph.D. from Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Canada, he brings a unique perspective to the educational world by integrating his profound academic knowledge with his hands-on teaching experience. Dr. Kharbach's academic pursuits encompass curriculum studies, discourse analysis, language learning/teaching, language and identity, emerging literacies, educational technology, and research methodologies. His work has been presented at numerous national and international conferences and published in various esteemed academic journals.

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The merits of 21st-century-learning

Dr sarah aiono defends modern education practices against recent criticisms, outlining the evidence behind 21st century pedagogies..

Navigating the Complex Landscape of Modern Education: Beyond Knowledge and Inquiry

Read the latest print edition of  School News  HERE

The Dichotomy of Knowledge and Inquiry

The discourse around whether foundational knowledge should precede inquiry or whether curiosity should lead the learning path reflects a broader debate on teaching methodologies. Advocates of a knowledge-first approach argue that a solid foundation of facts is crucial for creative and critical thinking. This perspective is often backed by the “science of learning,” which suggests that systematic knowledge acquisition enables students to make meaningful connections across various domains.

Conversely, proponents of inquiry-led learning, like Mitchell Resnick (2017) argue for a curriculum that prioritises exploration from the start. Sir Ken Robinson (2015), a highly regarded advocate for creative educational practices, also criticised the view of teaching as merely a delivery system. He emphasised that teaching is fundamentally a creative profession aimed at engaging and stimulating students, not just transferring information. “Great teaching,” Robinson stated, “is about mentoring, stimulating, provoking, engaging. You can’t do any of that without understanding each student’s learning needs and aspirations.” (2013).

Simplification and Cultural Bias in Knowledge-Based Approaches

The push for a knowledge-first curriculum aligns with the ease of assessing educational outcomes through standardised tests. This method, while straightforward, risks reducing teaching to a series of measurable outputs and neglects the richness of the educational experience. Moreover, this approach often prioritises the dominant culture’s narrative, sidelining minority and indigenous perspectives and thereby perpetuating educational inequities.

Covington and Weingarth (2023) highlight these issues in their critique of the science of learning. They argue that this approach misleadingly simplifies learning to cognitive processes that can be easily quantified, such as memory and retention, while ignoring the complex, interconnected nature of the brain and learning that involves emotional, social, and physical elements.

Addressing the Argument on Missing Basics

Proponents of knowledge-based education often claim that students lack fundamental knowledge, arguing that modern curricula do not adequately cover the ‘basics.’ This viewpoint holds that the shift towards inquiry-based learning models has led to a generation of students who are ill-equipped with essential facts and historical perspectives, thus advocating for a return to more traditional, direct methods of instruction.

This belief underscores a critical misunderstanding of inquiry-based learning, which does not eschew knowledge but integrates it through explorative and contextually meaningful activities. Through formative assessment methods, teachers continually reflect on the knowledge and/or skills needed by students in their inquiries and then utilise the appropriate pedagogical tools to equip students with what they need to develop their learning further.  This can be using child-led strategies, explicit instruction, or a combination of both.  The point being that teachers who use this pedagogy competently do so with an understanding of the intricate nature of all teaching approaches and apply this skill in a timely and responsive manner.

Critics of inquiry-led models fail to recognise that when children pursue their curiosities within a well-structured inquiry-based environment, they acquire foundational knowledge effectively—often more deeply than through rote memorisation. Inquiry-based education is not the absence of knowledge but its contextualisation, making learning relevant and engaging, thus ensuring that knowledge is not only covered but also understood and applied.

Embracing Complexity and Inclusivity in Education

As educators and policymakers, it’s crucial to acknowledge that teaching is not a simple transmission of knowledge, but a complex interaction aimed at fostering lifelong learners capable of critical thought and innovation. Embracing the complexities of both the science of learning and the art of teaching involves creating a balanced curriculum that reflects the diverse cultural, emotional, and intellectual needs of all students.

Ultimately, education should not just prepare students for tests but for life’s diverse challenges, equipping them with the ability to think critically, appreciate diverse cultures, and innovate in an ever-changing world. By moving beyond the false dichotomy of knowledge versus inquiry and acknowledging the broader dimensions of learning, we can foster an educational environment that truly nurtures and inspires the next generation.

Embracing the Future: Why 21st-Century Learning is Essential, not “Dumb”

In a recent critique, Dr. Michael Johnston dismisses 21st-century learning as a “dumb idea,” suggesting a return to more traditional educational methods. However, his choice of words could be seen as not only dismissive but also misleading, considering the substantial body of research supporting 21st-century educational frameworks.

Beyond Mere Ideas: The Foundation of 21st-Century Learning

21st-century learning transcends the notion of being merely a ‘new idea’ in education. It is a pathway of innovation, deeply rooted in extensive research from esteemed organisations such as the OECD, World Economic Forum, and the Lego Foundation. These frameworks advocate for integrating core knowledge with essential skills like creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration—skills necessary for success in a rapidly evolving global landscape.

Rethinking the Role of Knowledge in Education

Dr. Michael Johnston’s insistence on a “heavy focus on knowledge” and his view that 21st-century learning represents an “abandonment of knowledge” strikes a fundamental misunderstanding of what modern educational methodologies aim to achieve. Far from abandoning knowledge, 21st-century learning frameworks place it at the very core of the educational experience, but they do not stop there.

Knowledge as the Foundation, Not the Ceiling

In 21st-century learning paradigms, knowledge is not discarded; rather, it forms the foundation upon which skills and competencies are built. The goal is not merely the acquisition of facts but the ability to apply this knowledge dynamically and innovatively in a variety of contexts—both in the workplace and in broader society. This approach recognises that in an ever-changing world, being able to adapt knowledge to new situations and challenges is as crucial as the knowledge itself.

Translating Knowledge into Action

The crux of 21st-century learning is not just knowing ‘what’ but understanding ‘how’—how to translate knowledge into practical responses to real-life issues. It empowers students with skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity, which are necessary for applying knowledge effectively across different scenarios. This is exemplified in educational systems that integrate project-based learning and inquiry-based learning, where students actively engage with the material, learning to think like scientists, historians, and artists, thereby making knowledge applicable and alive.

This nuanced approach does not negate the value of traditional education but enhances it by adding layers of practicality and adaptability. It prepares students not just to pass tests but to solve complex real-world problems, engage civically, and contribute meaningfully to society.

Is Innovation Too Daunting?

Dr. Johnston’s characterisation of 21st-century learning as a “dumb idea” may hint at a deeper resistance to change. In an era marked by rapid technological advancements and shifting global economies, clinging to outdated educational models might seem simpler but is undoubtedly insufficient. The challenge isn’t just to educate but to prepare adaptable, innovative thinkers who are equipped to handle future challenges that we can’t yet foresee.

A Look Back or a Step Forward?

Suggesting a return to education models reflective of traditional pedagogical approaches, as Dr. Johnston appears to advocate, is to ignore the dynamic nature of the 21st century. Such a regression overlooks the necessity of preparing students not just for the jobs of today but for the creation of tomorrow’s industries. Education systems like those in Finland and Singapore, which embrace holistic and competency-based approaches, consistently lead in global education rankings—demonstrating the effectiveness of innovative educational practices.

The Role of Play and Modern Pedagogical Approaches

The Lego Foundation’s research underscores the importance of play in learning, which supports creativity, problem-solving, and emotional development—areas often overlooked in traditional educational paradigms. Play-based learning, project-based learning, inquiry and other child-led learning approaches is not an abandonment of knowledge but methods to embed it more deeply within engaging, meaningful experiences.

Emphasising Competency Over Rote Memorisation

The OECD’s “Education 2030” project highlights the importance of competencies that allow students to apply knowledge creatively and ethically in new situations. These competencies are vital for personal success and societal advancement. They enable students not just to adapt to change but to drive it, preparing them to tackle global issues such as climate change, technological disruption, and social inequality.

Dr. Johnston’s dismissal of 21st-century learning overlooks a critical evolution in education that is supported by both empirical evidence and practical success stories from around the world. While the allure of a simpler educational past might be tempting, it does not serve our future. As educators, policymakers, and stakeholders, we must advocate for and implement educational frameworks that foster not only knowledge but also the critical, creative, and collaborative skills necessary for our collective future.

In pushing forward with these innovative, research-backed educational strategies, we prepare our students not just to meet the challenges of their times but to lead us into a new era of global understanding and technological advancement.

This article has been republished with permission from the Aotearoa Educators Collective . It has been adapted from two articles; the originals can be read here and here .

Covington, N., & Weingarth, M. (2023, November 7). There is no such thing as ‘the science of learning’. Human Restoration Project. Retrieved from https://www.humanrestorationproject.org/writing/there-is-no-such-thing-as-the-science-of-learning .

Resnick, M. (2017). Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play. MIT Press.

Robinson, K. (2013). How to escape education’s death valley [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_how_to_escape_education_s_death_valley

Robinson, K. (2015). Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education. Viking.

LEGO Foundation. (n.d.). Learning through play. Retrieved from https://www.legofoundation.com/en/

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2018). The future of education and skills: Education 2030. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/

United Nations. (1989). Convention on the Rights of the Child. Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child

World Economic Forum. (2023). The Future of Jobs Report 2023. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/reports

Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. (n.d.). RULER: An evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning. Retrieved from http://ei.yale.edu/ruler/

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The Mind-Expanding Value of Arts Education

As funding for arts education declines worldwide, experts ponder what students — and the world at large — are losing in the process.

By Ginanne Brownell

This article is part of our special report on the Art for Tomorrow conference that was held in Florence, Italy.

Awuor Onguru says that if it were not for her continued exposure to arts education as a child, she never would have gotten into Yale University.

Growing up in a lower-middle-class family in Nairobi, Kenya, Ms. Onguru, now a 20-year-old junior majoring in English and French, started taking music lessons at the age of four. By 12, she was playing violin in the string quartet at her primary school, where every student was required to play an instrument. As a high school student on scholarship at the International School of Kenya, she was not only being taught Bach concertos, she also became part of Nairobi’s music scene, playing first violin in a number of local orchestras.

During her high school summer breaks, Ms. Onguru — who also has a strong interest in creative writing and poetry — went to the United States, attending the Interlochen Center for the Arts ’ creative writing camp, in Michigan, and the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio . Ms. Onguru, who recently returned to campus after helping organize Yale Glee Club’s spring tour in Kenya, hopes to become a journalist after graduation. She has already made progress toward that goal, serving as the opinion editor for the Yale Daily News, and getting her work published in Teen Vogue and the literary journal Menacing Hedge.

“Whether you’re in sports, whether you end up in STEM, whether you end up in government, seeing my peers — who had different interests in arts — not everyone wanted to be an artist,” she said in a video interview. “But they found places to express themselves, found places to be creative, found places to say things that they didn’t know how else to say them.”

Ms. Onguru’s path shows what a pivotal role arts education can play in a young person’s development. Yet, while the arts and culture space accounts for a significant amount of gross domestic product across the globe — in the United Kingdom in 2021, the arts contributed £109 billion to the economy , while in the U.S., it brought in over $1 trillion that year — arts education budgets in schools continue to get slashed. (In 2021, for instance, the spending on arts education in the U.K. came to an average of just £9.40 per pupil for the year .)

While experts have long espoused the idea that exposure to the arts plays a critical role in primary and secondary schooling, education systems globally have continually failed to hold it in high regard. As Eric Booth, a U.S.-based arts educator and a co-author of “Playing for Their Lives: The Global El Sistema Movement for Social Change Through Music,” said: “There are a whole lot of countries in the world that don’t have the arts in the school, it just isn’t a thing, and it never has been.”

That has led to the arts education trajectory heading in a “dark downward spiral,” said Jelena Trkulja, senior adviser for academic and cultural affairs at Qatar Museums , who moderated a panel entitled “When Arts Education is a Luxury: New Ecosystems” at the Art for Tomorrow conference in Florence, Italy, organized by the Democracy & Culture Foundation, with panels moderated by New York Times journalists.

Part of why that is happening, she said, is that societies still don’t have a sufficient and nuanced understanding of the benefits arts education can bring, in terms of young people’s development. “Arts education is still perceived as an add-on, rather than an essential field creating essential 21st-century skills that are defined as the four C’s of collaboration, creativity, communication and critical thinking,” Dr. Trkulja said in a video interview, “and those skills are being developed in arts education.”

Dennie Palmer Wolf, principal researcher at the U.S.-based arts research consultancy WolfBrown , agreed. “We have to learn to make a much broader argument about arts education,” she said. “It isn’t only playing the cello.”

It is largely through the arts that we as humans understand our own history, from a cave painting in Indonesia thought to be 45,000 years old to “The Tale of Genji,” a book that’s often called the world’s first novel , written by an 11th-century Japanese woman, Murasaki Shikibu; from the art of Michelangelo and Picasso to the music of Mozart and Miriam Makeba and Taylor Swift.

“The arts are one of the fundamental ways that we try to make sense of the world,” said Brian Kisida, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri’s Truman School of Public Affairs and a co-director of the National Endowment for the Arts-sponsored Arts, Humanities & Civic Engagement Lab . “People use the arts to offer a critical perspective of their exploration of the human condition, and that’s what the root of education is in some ways.”

And yet, the arts don’t lend themselves well to hard data, something educators and policymakers need to justify classes in those disciplines in their budgets. “Arts is this visceral thing, this thing inside you, the collective moment of a crescendo,” said Heddy Lahmann , an assistant professor of international education at New York University, who is conducting a global study examining arts education in public schools for the Community Arts Network. “But it’s really hard to qualify what that is.”

Dr. Lahmann’s early research into the decrease in spending by public schools in arts education points to everything from the lack of trained teachers in the arts — partly because those educators are worried about their own job security — to the challenges of teaching arts remotely in the early days of the Covid pandemic. And, of course, standardized tests like the Program for International Student Assessment, which covers reading, math and science, where countries compete on outcomes. “There’s a race to get those indicators,” Dr. Lahmann said, “and arts don’t readily fit into that.” In part, that is because standardized tests don’t cover arts education .

“It’s that unattractive truth that what gets measured gets attended to,” said Mr. Booth, the arts educator who co-authored “Playing for Their Lives.”

While studies over the years have underscored the ways that arts education can lead to better student achievement — in the way that musical skills support literacy, say, and arts activities lead to improved vocabulary, what have traditionally been lacking are large-scale randomized control studies. But a recent research project done in 42 elementary and middle schools in Houston, which was co-directed by Dr. Kisida and Daniel H. Bowen, a professor who teaches education policy at Texas A&M, is the first of its kind to do just that. Their research found that students who had increased arts education experiences saw improvements in writing achievement, emotional and cognitive empathy, school engagement and higher education aspirations, while they had a lower incidence of disciplinary infractions.

As young people are now, more than ever, inundated with images on social media and businesses are increasingly using A.I., it has become even more relevant for students these days to learn how to think more critically and creatively. “Because what is required of us in this coming century is an imaginative capacity that goes far beyond what we have deliberately cultivated in the schooling environment over the last 25 years,” said Mariko Silver, the chief executive of the Henry Luce Foundation, “and that requires truly deep arts education for everyone.”

Parents underestimate the importance of guided play in education, finds study

C hild psychologists have long known that play is essential for children's cognitive development because it boosts their social, physical, and emotional skills. But beginning in the 21st century, specialists repeatedly sounded the alarm that ' play is under siege ' for US children. Kids were playing less, and—it was feared—with a lesser quality.

But are today's parents sufficiently aware of the importance of letting their children play? Yes, found a team of researchers who tested this through a survey of the opinions of 1,172 US parents. Their results showed that today's parents understand how important play is for children's well-being. However, they also showed that work needs to be done to educate parents about the value of playful learning (or 'guided play') for learning goals in reading and math.

"Here we show that US parents understand that play can be more powerful for learning than direct instruction," says first author Charlotte Wright, a senior research associate at Temple University College of Liberal Arts, Philadelphia.

"Until recently, people generally considered play to be the opposite of work and learning. What we see in our study is that this separation no longer exists in the eyes of parents: a positive development."

Parents rate free play the most

Parents were interviewed aged between 18 and 75, with children aged between two and 12. Parents were White (68.9%), Hispanic (14.4%), Black (10.3%), Asian (3.4%), mixed race (2.6%), or American Indian or Native Alaskan (0.4%). Household income ranged from less than $25,000 to more than $100,000. Their level of education ranged from lacking a high school diploma (4.4%) to having a postgraduate degree (11.9%)

The results showed that parents tended to rate free play as best for learning, followed by guided play, games, and direct instruction, respectively. This held true both when these types of education were explicitly named or when they were only implied in given scenarios.

The higher the parent's level of education and the higher their household income, the more they tended to rate free play as the most effective method for learning. Likewise, parents of girls were more likely to rate free play as the most educational than parents of boys. In contrast, Black or Hispanic parents were more likely to rate direct instruction higher than forms of play.

An example of guided play

The current research consensus is that guided play is more effective than free play for children to learn skills such as mathematics, language, literacy, and the spatial awareness necessary for STEM skills.

Guided play, possible in the home and in the classroom, differs from free play in being initiated by the adult while letting the child drive her learning towards a specific goal. For example, learning in Montessori classrooms and children's museums is always initiated by an adult who reflects on learning goals. But children themselves drive the exploration within such guided learning environments—giving them choice and voice.

The authors gave an example scenario of guided play: "Raouf's father, Ola, says to Raouf, 'I wonder if we can build a tall tower with these blocks.' Ola follows Raouf's lead as Raouf tries to build the tower, asking questions to support him, when necessary (eg, 'Hmmm, our tower keeps falling when we put the blue block on the bottom! What is another block we could try?')."

Adults thus become the support team, but not the directors, of guided play.

Wright et al. concluded that "many US parents hold perceptions that do not align completely with evidence-based research, such as attributing more learning value to free play […] compared to guided play."

The results also showed that when parents were better informed about current theory on child cognitive development (as measured by questions from the Knowledge of Infant Development Inventory (KIDI) questionnaire), they tended to value guided play more.

The concept of different kinds of play, such as guided vs. free play, was only recently introduced in research and may not yet be evident to the public. Guided play also requires that parents engage with their children during a play experience, which might lead them to undervalue guided play in favor of free play.

Importance of educating parents

"While free play is crucial for children's well-being, recent research emphasizes that guided play is a more effective approach to support children's learning in reading, STEM, and learning-to-learn skills like attention, memory, and flexible thinking," said Wright.

Senior author Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor at the same institute, said, "We need to help refine parents' knowledge about the importance of play so that they can create guided play opportunities in everyday experiences like doing laundry, taking a walk in the park, or playing with a puzzle. As parents come to see these as 'learning' moments in everyday play, their children will thrive, while they will have more fun being parents."

The research is published in the journal Frontiers in Developmental Psychology .

More information: Charlotte Wright et al, U.S. Parents' Attitudes Towards Playful Learning, Frontiers in Developmental Psychology (2023). DOI: 10.3389/fdpys.2023.1267169

Provided by Frontiers