Defining a "21st Century Education" ...an informative article from the Center for Public Education
The last few years have brought much talk of “21st century
skills” but little certainty about why and how skill demands are
actually changing. Will students really need better or different skills
to succeed in life and work in the 21st century? If so what trends are behind such changes? And what specific kinds of knowledge and skills will be most important?
Broadly
speaking, five major lessons emerge from the expert research and
opinion on what kinds of knowledge and skills will most benefit students
in the future:
- Students
who obtain more education will be at a great advantage; increasingly,
some postsecondary education or technical training is essential for an
opportunity to support a family or secure a middle-class lifestyle.
- The
need for traditional knowledge and skills in school subjects like math,
language arts, and science is not being “displaced” by a new set of
skills; in fact, students who take more advanced math courses and master
higher math skills, for example, will have a distinct advantage over
their peers.
- At the same time, for success both on the job and in their personal lives, students must also better learn how to apply what they learn in those subjects to deal with real world challenges, rather than simply “reproduce” the information on tests.
- Students
who develop an even broader set of in-demand competencies—the ability
to think critically about information, solve novel problems, communicate
and collaborate, create new products and processes, and adapt to
change—will be at an even greater advantage in work and life.
- Applied
skills and competencies can best be taught in the context of the
academic curriculum, not as a replacement for it or “add on” to it; in
fact, cognitive research suggests that some competencies like critical
thinking and problem solving are highly dependent on deep content
knowledge and cannot be taught in isolation.
A number of major forces are reshaping skill demands. Those forces include:
Automation. Because
computers are good at following rules and recognizing simple patterns,
they are increasingly being used to substitute for human labor in
“routine” jobs. Therefore, any job that mostly entails following
directions is vulnerable to automation, including so-called “white
collar” jobs like accounting. As a result, there are fewer jobs that
call for routine thinking work and routine manual work; between 1969 and
1999, the share of Americans in blue collar and administrative support
jobs plummeted from 56 to 39 percent. At the same time, there is
increasing demand for skills that computers cannot mimic, such as the
ability to solve unpredictable problems and the ability to engage in
“complex communications” with other humans, along with foundational
skills in math, reading, and writing.
Globalization. Advances
in digital technology and telecommunications now enable companies to
carve up work and send tasks to be done wherever they can be completed
best and cheapest. At the same time, political and economic changes in
places like Russia, Eastern Europe, China, and India have freed up many
more workers who can potentially perform such jobs. As a result, many
more Americans are competing for jobs with a huge number of foreigners
in an increasingly global labor market and—just as
significantly—collaborating with workers in other countries when they do
land a job. So far the impact of globalization has resembled that of
automation, reducing demand for less-skilled labor. However, some
economists predict that highly skilled workers in other countries will
increasingly compete for more intellectually demanding and higher paying
jobs, which will force Americans to offer not only strong traditional
skills but also high levels of creativity and innovation in order to
stay competitive.
In a global knowledge economy, economic growth
depends on human capital. One team of economists recently predicted that
if the United States improved its students’ performance on
international tests to the level of top performing nations, its gross
domestic product would be an additional five percent in higher 32 years
from now—enough to entirely pay for K-12 education—and an astonishing 36
percent higher in 75 years. Unfortunately, high school students in the United States perform
worse on a number of international assessments than many of our
economic competitors, and our historic advantage in attainment of
secondary and postsecondary degrees is rapidly eroding as other
countries improve and expand educational opportunities.
Corporate change. Because
of technology, globalization, and other competitive forces, companies
have radically restructured how work gets done. Many companies are now
“flatter” organizations with less hierarchy and much lighter
supervision where workers experience greater autonomy and personal
responsibility for the work they do. Work also has become much more
collaborative, with self-managing work teams increasingly responsible
for tackling major projects. Increasingly, such work teams are global in
nature, which much of the interaction taking place electronically. Jobs
have become less predictable and stable. From project to project and
from year to year, employees must adapt to new challenges and demands.
Demographics. The U.S. population
is rapidly becoming both older and more diverse. The 65 and older
population is expected to more than double between 2008 and 2050 (while
the 85 and older population is expected to more than triple), and
so-called “minorities” will constitute the majority of schoolchildren by
2023, of working-age Americans by 2039, and of all Americans by 2042.
That creates a two-fold challenge for schools: First, they will need to
be able to teach a more diverse group of students. Second, they will
need to prepare those students to collaborate in diverse job settings
and function in a diverse society.
Risk and responsibility. Individuals
increasingly shoulder a greater burden of risk and responsibility for
their personal well-being. Three intersecting spheres that illustrate
the trend are job security, health care, and financial planning:
- Job
security. Several decades ago, most companies still valued and rewarded
loyalty, but with increasing reliance on human capital that has
changed. The vast majority of major companies now make continued
employment contingent on performance, while only a small minority reward
seniority or loyalty.
- Companies used to provide pensions that
guaranteed retirees a defined level of income based on longevity and
salary, but those plans have largely been replaced by “defined
contribution” plans where employees are at least partly responsible for
making decisions about how to invest money for retirement. The success
of those investments determines whether and how comfortably they can
retire.
- Individuals are being asked to understand complex
health-related information to make more decisions about their own
medical care; at the same time, they are shouldering a greater share of
medical costs.
Students will need to be able to use what
they learn in school to understand critical information—including
numerical health and financial information—in order to make sound
decisions that ensure their well-being.
As a result of these
forces, three kinds of learning are becoming increasingly important if
not essential for students to succeed in work and life:
1) Traditional academic knowledge and skills.
The belief that students will no longer need to learn the academic
content traditionally taught in the school curriculum is false. Students
will need strong math and English skills to succeed in work and life,
for example. A strong academic foundation also is essential for success
in postsecondary education and training, which itself is increasingly
necessary for anyone who wants to earn a middle class wage.
2) Real world application, or “applied literacies."
Students will need not just knowledge but also “literacy”—the ability
to apply their learning to meet real-world challenges. That applies to
all subjects, including English, math, science, and social studies.
3) Broader competencies.
Students who develop an even broader set of competencies will be at an
increasing advantage in work and life. Based on employer surveys and
other evidence, the most important seem to be:
- The ability solve new problems and think critically;
- Strong interpersonal skills necessary for communication and collaboration;
- Creativity and intellectual flexibility; and
- Self sufficiency, including the ability to learn new things when necessary.
How should school districts prepare students to meet these challenges?
Employers
consistently rank collaboration very high on their list of “must have”
competencies, which is not surprising given changes in the
workplace. This broad competency is best understood as a cluster of
related “interpersonal skills” that give one the power to interact
effectively with others, including the ability to communicate
effectively both orally and in writing, to relate well to others and
cooperate with them, to negotiate and manage conflicts, and to lead
through persuasion. When asked about these separate interpersonal
skills, employers rate graduates worst in oral and written
communications. But classroom teachers should bear the only
responsibility: Research shows that athletics and other student
activities (yearbook, student government, etc.) can help students
develop skills related to leadership and teamwork and have a positive
impact on later earnings.
Experts predict that creativity and
innovation will become more important given economic trends, both for
individual corporations and for the U.S. as
a whole. While there is a large body of research and advice about
encouraging creativity in students, school districts should first
carefully consider how they are defining this competency since it can
mean many different things to different people. For example, a recent
study found significant differences in how district superintendents
define creativity compared with what employers need. While
superintendents ranked the ability to solve problems as the most
important indicator of a creative person, employers said it is most
important to be able to identify problems. Employers also
thought it much more important that students be comfortable facing a
problem with “no right answer,” which suggests that schools must find
more ways to give students more complex and unstructured problems and
fewer multiple choice questions.
What are the implications for planning?
First,
it is clear that districts should aim to prepare all students for
postsecondary education or advanced training. Beyond that, districts
must do a better job attending the application of knowledge and skills,
going beyond simply teaching students to “reproduce” what they are
taught within familiar contexts, as well as encouraging students to
develop broader competencies related to critical thinking,
collaboration, and creativity.
It is important to avoid simplistic
“either or” thinking about 21st century skills. Factual knowledge, the
ability to follow directions, knowing how to find a right answer when
there is one—all of these things will still be important in the 21st
century. The key is to develop a curriculum that teaches students those
things as well as how to apply what they learn to solve real world
problems and helps them to develop the broader competencies increasingly
important for success in an ever more complex and demanding world.
To
that end, applied literacies and broader competencies are best taught
within traditional disciplines instead of as separate subjects. Even so,
some might ask how it will be possible to do so while still covering
all of the content in the official curriculum. For ideas on how to make
room in the curriculum, districts can take a cue from countries that
perform well on international assessments: focus the curriculum by
emphasizing a slimmer set of knowledge and concepts that can then be
taught in much greater depth.
Craig D.
Jerald is President of Break the Curve Consulting, specializing in
education policy, communications, research, and practice. Previously,
Craig was a Principal Partner at the Education Trust where he worked on
issues related to teacher quality, accountability, federal education
policy, and the practices of high-performing schools and
districts. Craig was also a Senior Editor at Education Week where he
founded and managed the organization’s research division and helped
create Ed Week’s special annual reports series, Quality Counts and
Technology Counts.