Twenty First Century Skills

     

     Today the world is dominated by technology in everything we do and the way we think. Information and communication technology is changing the way we work and more importantly the way we conduct social relationships. Skills from the past are no longer needed as machines are capable of doing the manual labour and the repetitive skills that were so crucial in the twentieth century factories. With the development of technology, these skills are no longer needed and our future relies heavily on the development of key skills. Twenty-first century skills are what students need to learn in order to be successful in their future. 

     Curriculum documents in Canada are already following these steps by including the twenty-first century skills as part of their curriculum documents. Curriculum documents follow a three step program known as the KDB. The K represents knowledge, the content the students are going to go over during the year ranging from remembering facts which is lower level thinking, to big ideas which consist of systems with subtopics and characteristics. This knowledge goes hand in hand with D, the "do" which is made up of certain skills, in this case the twenty first century skills. This is very important because these skills prepare a student to be productive and a participatory citizen of the twenty-first century. 

     As seen in the comic above, knowledge is useless if it cannot be applied to the real world. So what are skills our students need to learn in order to be successful in their future? Whether they are going to be a technician or a professional person, these people will need to share and communicate information to solve complex problems, be creative and innovate in order to tackle changing circumstances, and be able to use computer and digital technologies to create new knowledge in expanding human capacity and production (M.Binklet et. al, 2012, p.17). Furthermore critical thinking, communication and collaboration are vital skills needed in order to be successful in the future. These are just some examples of twenty-first century skills. This story about Elmo the blind mule will explain why certain skills, in particular collaboration, is important https://youtu.be/ne51TZGImOs?t=35s. 

    Lastly, the 'B' section of curriculum documents represents "The Be". The Be has to do with values, and character development. Again this can be integrated with twenty-first century skills as cultural and ethical citizenship is another twenty-first century skill that is needed in order to understand other people and foster good social relationship. Thus you can see the curriculum documents understand the need to include twenty-first century skills in the school environment, in order to properly prepare the students for their professional and adult lives in the future. One problem that arises from this, however, is the method in assessing these skills in the student. One highschool, Napa New Technology, has come up with an innovative way for assessing twenty-first century skills in the classroom setting.

     As you can see from this video, Napa New Technology highschool is using assessment for learning, rather than assessment of learning. In assessment of learning, the teacher is using the assessment as an evaluation. The assessment is the end product in order to make judgment about student performance in relation to provincial standards. In the video above, assessment was used for learning which meant that assessment is happening before the final grade, so that the student can learn how to fix their problems before the evaluation. In this model the students are responding to the feedback in order to improve their learning and therefore foster development. 

     In order for the twenty-first century skills to be successful and improve schools, three steps need to be executed by policymakers. First educators must make sure that in pursuit of these skills, content is not overlooked and that the instructional program is still in place. Second there needs to be a stronger emphasis on how teachers should be trained in order to facilitate these twenty-first century skills in their classrooms (Rotherham & Willingham, 2009). Lastly, there needs to be news ways of assessment for richer learning and complex tasks, like the model initiated by Napa New Technology highschool, in order for this to work and benefit all children.

References:

Binkley, M., Erstad, O., Herman, J., Raizen, S., Ripley, M., Miller-Ricci, M., & Rumble, M. (2012). Defining twenty-first century skills. In Assessment and teaching of 21st century skills (pp. 17-66). Springer Netherlands.

Rotherham, A., & Willingham, D. (2009). 21st Century Skills: The Challenges Ahead. Teaching for the 21st Century, 67(1), 16-21. Retrieved September 23, 2015, from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept09/vol67/num01/21st-Century-Skills@-The-Challenges-Ahead.aspx