21st century skills
Some people talk about 21st century skills, some people talk about digital literacy (or even digital literacies) and some people talk about AtL (Approaches to Learning) or AtLD (Approaches to Learning Digitally). All in all, even if the “labels” are worded slightly differently, we are all talking about the same thing(s): skills that our students/pupils/learners need to make sure they are flexible and can adapt to an unpredictable future.
George Orwell’s 1984 predicted a world in which Big Brother would be watching one’s every move. The world described in Orwell’s novel is on our very doorstep: whether we talk about algorithms or AI (Artificial Intelligence), technological advances have a huge and unpredictable impact on our society, our culture, the way we experience reality and our place in this new world. Sometime in the near future, we’ll reach a point where we’ll neither know where we are coming from (that’s not really new) nor where we are heading to. We’ll be “in-betweeners” tiptoeing in the dark while at the same time contributing to the unfolding of an uncertain and therefore challenging future.
In-betweeners
Now, for those “in-betweeners” (we are most certainly “in-betweeners” ourselves), the main goal will be to acquire a number of skills that will allow them to navigate as safely as possible those scary waters. As we saw above, those skills or tools are given various names and/or labels; however, the most important among those “forever skills” keep coming back whoever or whichever country, institution or company might be listing them.
Essential skills
After I had a look at the 13 Essential 21st Century Skills for Todays Students list put together by Envision (their list is already summarising a number of other essential 21st century skills lists), I tried to simplify the list while at the same time defining each category as clearly as I could. The rearranged list of skills (along with description/definition) appears below:
|
Skill |
Description |
|
|
|
“If you have ideas but don’t act on them, you are imaginative but not creative”
Ability to implement a new or significantly improved product, service or process that creates value for business, government or society |
| Critical thinking is about stepping out of your shoes and the ability to step in someone else’s shoes:
|
| There are four basic steps in solving a problem:
|
|
|
|
|
| Information Literacy: ability to define problems in terms of their information needs and to apply a systematic approach to search, locate, apply and synthesise the information and evaluate the entire process in terms of effectiveness and efficiency Technology Literacy: ability of an individual, working independently and with others, to responsibly, appropriately and effectively use technology tools to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, create and communicate information |
| Leadership: establishing a clear vision, sharing that vision with others so that they will follow willingly, providing the information, knowledge and methods to realise that vision and coordinating and balancing the conflicting interests of all members and stakeholders Initiative: an individual’s action that begins a process, often done without direct managerial influence. |
| Civic literacy:
Citizenship: Ability to understand the duties, obligations and functions of a citizen |
| Ability to communicate accurately both in speaking and in writing. |
|
|
I quickly realised that most of those skills could be grouped under specific headings and/or subheadings. Below is the diagram showing their hierarchy and connections to each other (click here to open the document):
“21st century skills” or “forever skills”?
The skills listed above are essential skills, they could almost be called “unalienable skills” or “forever skills” in the sense that every single student/pupil/learner should have the right and should demand the right to be “equipped” with them. Education is evolving, most schools and teachers are aware of the urgency, but just like the Titanic, our boat might be too large, the communication between our stakeholders might be too slow and the order to change direction might come too late…
Let’s remain optimistic though: we just need a few great school leaders with great ideas and great vision to rewrite the last chapter of our novel and make the next stage of our educational journey a success story!
AVANT-GARDE EDUCATION 
Leave a Reply