21st Century Skills, Higher Order Skills and School Reform
The tools and access to resources that technology offers end up being applied to meet the goals of society including that part of society that deals with education. Often, technology offers a way to increase efficiency and lower cost. Technology also serves as a powerful change agent in many areas of society. In this case, how things are done or what comes to be regarded as priority goals can change. The content provided here, an expansion of the overview provided in the Primer, examines some of the perspectives proposing modifications of the priorities of education. Collectively, these perspectives urge some restructuring of schools.
21st Century Skills
Phrases such as “21st century skills” can become a vague mantra lacking the specificity classroom educators need to focus how students spend their time. Here, we examine the model provided by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (Trilling & Fadel, 2009). More detailed information on this organizations model can be found on their web site (Partnership for 21st Century Skills).
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills advocates that education in traditional content areas should be integrated with experiences encouraging the development of three categories of skills - a) information media and technology skills, b) learning and innovation skills and c) life and career skills. The work of the organization goes beyond a listing of educational goals to include the identification of learning tasks likely to develop both content knowledge and 21st Century Skills. For us, there is some reassurance in what we see as the overlap between our approach and the topics we emphasize and many aspects of the model proposed by this organization. Within our resources, you will encounter a focus on content-area projects that incorporate technology and also involve collaboration and management skills (life and career skills), require the location and evaluation of primary source information (information, media and technology skills), and involve problem solving and critical thinking (learning and innovation skills). We will refer back to these skill areas as we proceed to demonstrate these connections.
We see an important role of this first chapter as identifying educational goals which we see reflected in the description of desired skills as we are exploring here and in various efforts to describe standards. The resources of chapter 2 make an effort to further define many of these skills in terms of cognitive behavior and to consider conditions necessary to develop these skills. Most of the remaining chapters focus on what we describe as tools and tactics; that is, technology tools, projects, and instructional strategies that might be applied in the development of knowledge and skills. Finally, we consider issues in the responsible use of technology. This final section emphasizes topics in ethics, equity, and responsibility that can be easily associated with many of the skills the Partnership for 21st Century Skills identifies as life and career skills. Unpacking 21st century skill categories. Here is an expansion of the skill categories identified by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.
Learning and Innovation skills - You might recognize the majority of skills making up this category as what have been traditionally described as higher order thinking skills - problem-solving, critical thinking, and creativity. The additions to this list include communication skills (both comprehension and expression) and collaboration (working productively as a team member). The argument is that these skills are necessary to apply core knowledge to what have become more complex work and life circumstances.
Information, Media and Technology skills - These skills are described as essential for functioning in a rapidly changing world within which individuals must cope with far more information than they can examine and evaluate. To benefit, individuals must develop skills necessary to locate, evaluate, and organize information. They must also be able to generate media to communicate. Technology skills will likely play an increasingly essential role in how information is processed and ideas are communicated.
Life and Career skills - The increasingly complex nature of work and society demand flexibility, initiative, engagement with others from different backgrounds, and leadership/management skills.
What may change?
Of course, the skills of critical thinking and problem solving or knowledge of other cultures and information literacy are not new and have been developed in some students in some institutions for years. We do attempt to define and discuss higher-order thinking skills in greater depth in the next chapter. What is new in the development of these skills is the expectation that such skills should be purposefully developed in all learners. A similar situation applies to some of the tactics proposed for developing such skills. Strategies such as project and problem-based learning are far from novel and have been long suggested strategies in “methods” courses for future teachers. Some practicing teachers may even try a project now and then.
What some experts say has been missing is a more purposeful approach that does more than provide experience. What is needed is guided practice; a more systematic approach in which students receive feedback on how well they are implementing higher order skills. Teachers appear to lack more detailed strategies for implementation and often are scared off by the management challenges necessary when students are allowed to function independently or act collaboratively. The teacher is required to engage in far more sophisticated moment by moment decision making when not totally controlling the learning experience and must also have broader knowledge and information skills to respond to unanticipated questions.
Finally, experts contend that assessment challenges exist both in evaluating individual project and in evaluating the contextualized higher order skills that are to be developed. Existing high stakes, test-based accountability efforts may have produced gains in basic skills, but have done so by narrowing the focus of what is taught. The present focus on basic skills may be counter productive in providing students the intended competitive advantage it is assumed higher order skills provide. (Resnick, 2010; Rotherham & Willingham, 2009) We clearly cannot resolve all of the complex and interconnected issues we have raised. Rather, out intent is demonstrate that the tactics we emphasize in the latter sections of our resources are consistent with establish standards and major planning initiatives. Simply put, our resources emphasize student projects that require higher order thinking skills and a focus on traditional information and knowledge. This combination would seem most practical. Thinking skills are most effectively developed in the context of specific content and part of the traditional role of education is to assure a common knowledge base. Projects offer all students opportunities to engage in and learn from what has been described as “knowledge grounded reasoning” (Resnick, 2010).