Abstract
With the emergence of educational
inquiry on 21st century learning in the past six decades, the term
21st century learning has become generic and lacking focus. This
paper seeks to define the term 21st century learning as it emerged
in the early 1960’s and how it has evolved as practice over time for the
purpose of reassessing 21st century learning in 2014-2015. Beginning
as just a way to describe the time period of learning happening post 2000, the
concept evolved as its purpose, potential, and practicality were reevaluated
through the decades to reflect the vision of what 21st century
learning should and would look like. Four streams of education have emerged in
connection to 21st century learning and are consistently under
assessment for effectiveness and relevance: teacher education, higher
education, technology education, and character education. This paper will then
draw upon the critiques against learning and local board wide examples of 21st
century initiatives to provide relevance for the main focus of this paper,
defining 21st century literacy for a purpose.
21st
Century Learning: Defining for a purpose
Introduction to the problem
In
1969, The California State Board of Education presented one of the first formal
education plans that addressed the upcoming 21st century learning concept.
“This year’s first grader, who will be a
mature decision maker in the 21st Century, must be skilled in
observing, analyzing, communicating. He must be ready to meet new situations
and be able to adapt to change.” (CSCPE, 1969, 18). 21st century
learning first emerged in scholarly literature in the 1960’s but merely used 21st
century learning to describe the learning that will take place in the 21st
century. This excerpt from the 486-page document is the only mention of
characteristics or qualities projected for use in the 21st century.
Since
the 1990’s there has been a surge of education documents and scholarly
literature that focus on and use the term 21st century learning or
21st century education. This correlates in response to the 21st
century change that was impending upon all education systems worldwide. There
is evidence to support that a divide exists between the previous use of the
term (to describe the period of education that falls during the 21st
century) and emerging uses of the term (to describe the qualities,
characteristics, goals, and needs of the learning taking place in the 21st
century). Most recently, post 2000 to be exact, there has been an increase in
the development of understanding 21st century learning and how
schools and school boards can address these needs.
The
education plan proposed by the California State Board of Education brought
relevant discussion and potential conflict for exploring the concept of the 21st
century learner. “More recently economists have been studying education as a
form of investment which the society makes in order (1) to assure the
perpetuation of basic survival values, concepts, and skills and (2) to
facilitate the shaping of the most desirable conditions among the alternatives
we face as we look towards the 21st century” (CSCPE, 1969, 340). The
plan highlights 40 years prior to the 21st century the ability for
education to be used as a tool for economists, politicians, and legal policy
makers. How can we as educators today ensure that our 21st century
learners are actually learning relevant, useful, and meaningful content that
has each student’s unique best interest at heart? Beginning with this research
paper, exploring and defining 21st century learning for a purpose will
lead to a more thorough understanding of a concept being used in a currently
proposed action research plan to propose a new structure to character education
initiatives in the District School Board of Niagara. This paper seeks to
discover how the term 21st century learning has been situated in
literature since it’s emergence in the 1960’s and how the term is currently
being used and reflecting the learning and development needs of today’s very
real 21st century learners.
Background - Literature Review
Literature and
background reviews for the term 21st century learning began with two
periodicals that appeared in Parents Magazine & Family Home Guide. A decade
apart, these periodicals both titled Education
for the 21st Century are the only two mentions of 21st
century learning as a focal point for any piece of literature found in an
online database. The periodical posted in 1959 – a full decade before the
emergence of any form of scholarly literature mentioned only that parents
should be skeptical and thoughtful when thinking about the upcoming 21st
century. The 1959 periodical was alternatively named Seven overseas leaders offer wide counsel to American parents. Ten years later, the second Education for the 21st century
periodical brought Catholic Church into the discussion connecting the two
positively saying that the Catholic Church would bring children successfully
into the unknown world of the 21st century.
The 60’s saw
periodicals and a handful of articles emerge that use the term 21st
century learning to describe the learning that will take place after 2000 but
do not describe, quantify or qualify the term in relation to development or
learning needs. In 1979 a call from the American Association for the
Advancement of Science asks that education stand out, as it is “the best basis
for hope that this country and other will somehow manage to avoid enormous
trauma during the transitions that lie ahead” (Abelson, 1979, 1087). It poses
that the career guidance that high schools have been giving to students will
not serve us well in the future. The entry calls for more scientists,
engineers, and mathematicians to graduate. They suggest that not all students will make the most
ideal engineer but that exposing every child to these skills will help create a
well-rounded society of citizens. The entry ends with a plea for universities
to investigate the counseling policies in American education. As Abelson wrote,
“there must be better ways than entrusting young lives to a hit-or-miss system”
(Abelson, 1979, 1087).
In the Journal of
Teacher Education, Schuttenberg wrote an article in 1980 that focused on
preparing the educated teacher for the 21st century. The article
proposed the need for a third dimension of education that will address the
changing needs of the 21st century learner. This third dimension is
the in depth study of the humanities which Schuttenberg proposes as
“literature, art, languages, philosophy, history, religion and science as human
achievement” (Shuttenberg, 1983, 15). One theme or trend that threads itself in
the literature reviewed is the aim for developing civilized persons.
Schuttenberg’s 1980 article proposes that “the aim and task of developing
civilized persons, or those who have the self-knowledge, the self-control, the
sense of responsibility and the ideals and concerns that makes it possible for
them to live in a civilized society committed to the realization of freedom and
justice” (Shuttenberg, 1983, 16).
Four common themes
emerged when reviewing 21st century learner literature from 1959 to
now; teacher education, higher education, career education and technology
education. These four themes will be discussed further in the upcoming section.
The discussion will be followed by a local example of board wide initiatives to
enhance 21st century learning in the District School Board of
Niagara.
Discussion
There are major
themes in education that arise when looking at the development of 21st
century learning. Multiple streams of education have emerged in response to the
changing needs of our society. These forms of education in succession of their
emergence in literature; teacher education, higher education, technology
education and character education have all been a component in shaping the
definition and reality of 21st century learning. This paper makes
connections between the term 21st century learning and its
progression from describing the period of time when learning would take place
through to it’s current state of reshaping it’s identity.
The literature review showed that teacher
education was the first major critique that occurred in relation to 21st
century learning and learners needs. Journals across the world began to see a
rise in articles and research on the efficacy, relevance, and resilience of
teacher education and it’s ability to educate 21st century learning
leaders. Schuttenberg’s article Preparing
the Educated Teacher for the 21st Century critiqued the teaching
force’s inability to stay relevant for current learners in 1980. Thirty years
later in the same Journal of Teacher Education, Lieberman and Mace commented on
calling to the public to help shape teacher education in their article Making Practice Public: Teaching Learning in
the 21st Century. We can already see a shift to using the term
learning instead of education in this title in contrast to decades before.
The 2010 take on
21st century learning is centered on global interconnectedness
between educators and the public. It proposes the unique opportunity for
professional development to become globally connected online as well.
Communities of practice are emerging in response to learners being connected
globally online. If education is a way to shape citizens of the future, every
day school experience should not only be keeping up with current needs but
predicting, researching, and shaping the future of education. It seems logical
that teacher education would need to shift its instruction on how to teach to a
more 21st century learning cooperative way. If the leaders of
schools believe in the philosophy behind communities of practice, for example,
then schools will become communities of practice. The cautionary component to
this article is that 21st century needs are always changing, so
teacher education and educational philosophy will always be changing as well.
It is about finding a way of assessment and validation to ensure school initiatives
are on the right track and progressing in dynamism and relevance.
Second
to emerge as a theme within 21st century learning was higher
education. Eurich’s 1963 article Higher
education in the 21st century was one of the first to address
what higher education would look like post 2000. Although it mainly used the
term to describe the period of time for higher education that would come after
2000 and did not address what it may or may not look like, it proposed that
educators be ready. The article suggested that if research began then in 1963
that the future for higher education would be successful as it progressed
towards the year 2000. Fast-forwarding fifty years into the future, Irvine,
Code, and Richards writes about higher education in
the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. This journal is an example of
product emerging from researchers and educators preparing for future higher
education needs. The response to online connectedness with multi-access
learning and massive open online courses/communities are avenues for continued
research and evaluation of 21st century learning. The authors show
that “post secondary institutions are moving toward learner-centered designs,
shifting focus to process and not product” (Irvine, Code, & Richards, 2013,
173). The idea of citizens being life long learners and taking with them the
skills necessary to be resilient and dynamic in the 21st century
years ahead of them has become a priority for educational leaders.
The
emergence of scholarly literature on technology and it’s connetion to student
learning began in the late 70’s. Lyon’s article by the very popular title from
the last five decades Education in the 21st century, focused on
technology and its practical applications in the classroom. Even in 1980,
researchers were seeing the potential for technology to open up possibilities
for inquiry, connectedness, research, and instruction. “Technology is making
widespread dissemination of information possible, but the development of
‘learning machines’, for lack of a better word, means that now some major
aspects of a nation’s learning system can be made more open because it does not
depend on the traditional hierarchical system” (Lyons, 1980, 173). In later
years, technology in the classroom was critiqued as to its effectiveness and
classroom management conflicts. The Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
published an article Challenges to
learning and schooling in the digital
networked world of the 21st century in 2013 and cautioned to
educators that there needs to be a balance between technology and authentic
face to face interaction through differentiated instruction and school day
restructuring.
Character
education emerged in response to schools providing a better-rounded educational
experience for students. In 2005, an initiative put together by the Ministry of
Education with the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat developed the document Finding Common Ground: Character Development
in Ontario Schools, K-12. The document congratulates all schools and boards
who had an existing character development program and encourages them to join
Ontario in taking their program to new levels of effectiveness. The document
takes a firm stance on the continued administration of quality education, which
includes “education of the heart as well as the mind. It means preparing
students to be citizens who have empathy and respect for others and who will
think critically, feel deeply and act wisely. Character development enhances employability
skills, encourages civic engagement and prepares students to be contributing
citizens in our increasingly global society. Character development is education
at its best.” (Glaze, Zegarac, & Giroux, 2008, para. 14-15).
The
public has responded to this across multiple social media and networking
platforms. A press release on marketwired.com commented on the CONNECT 2014
Canada’s learning technology conference held in May saying that this initiative
comes at the right time in education in Ontario. “There is a sense of optimism
for the future of education in the province…Character development will make our visions of education truly
balanced and holistic as we revisit the foundations of an equitable and
inclusive public education – namely, intellectual, character, and citizenship development”
(Martellacci, 2014, para. 5).
21st Century Learning Critiques– Connection to discourse
Addressing the idea of the learner
themselves in the context of the 21st century learning environment
proposes a different set of considerations. Developing programs and initiatives
in schools to promote 21st century characteristics, abilities,
skills, attitudes, and literacies address the 21st century
environment and initiatives but not necessarily the learning itself. Two
articles will be used to make connections between the concept of learning and
the term 21st century learning.
Biesta’s article Against learning: Reclaiming a language for education in an age of
learning, provides insight to schools being sites of economic exchange
between a consumer and provider. It poses the question what kinds of
educational relationships currently exist and whose best interest are they
serving. He proposes that there needs to be a new language that emerges from
the current needs of today’s learners that reflects today’s learners. He
outlines how language available to educators has shifted over the past two
decades and that the “language of education” has been replaced by a “language
of learning” (Biesta, 2005, 1). Although this shift to a language of learning
opens up areas of debate, discussion and conflict in the previously used
language of education, it closes off potential connections between education
and learning. 21st century learning as a term has been used since
the 1960’s and has been subjected to falling in and out of educational
discourse without being rooted in any specific philosophy of learning or education.
Biesta defines this new language of learning as “an effect of a range of
events, rather than the intended outcome of a particular programme or agenda” (Biesta,
2005, 3). There are faults with this new language of learning which include
thinking of learners as consumers who have certain needs, the educator who
becomes the provider there to meet the needs of the learner and education
itself which has become a consumable commodity (Biesta, 2005, 4). There is a
need already to find a new language that balances education, learning and
ongoing participatory inclusion of learner’s voices where the purpose of
learning at school is clear and relevant.
Contu,
Grey, and Ortenblad’s article takes a similar cautionary critique against
learning by examining the large scale concept of learning discourse and it’s ‘pervasive
ideological content which determines learning ‘as a good thing for all’ (Contu,
Grey, & Ortenblad, 2003. 931). The paper advances two main points in that
organizational learning and the politics of truth are inexplicably intertwined
in our understanding of the language of learning. It poses the question of how
educational organizations will use this language of learning in school and how
effective it is for cultivating positive learning. There is a call for
organizations to reflect the dynamism of their students into the organization,
management, school day structure, school initiatives and course content. Limitations
to the previously used elements of discourse; language of education and
language of learning outline the narrow scope of the discourse.
21st
century learners live in a “rapidly changing, information and
technology-intensive, globalized world”, as defined in the Ontario Government’s
21st Century Teaching and Learning Winter 2014
Quick Facts memo (see Appendix A) (Winter 2014, 2014, para. 1). As round three of the 21st Century
Innovation Research project undertaken by the Ontario Government, the
beginnings of a new 21st century discourse will hopefully emerge.
Application: Local Perspectives in the DSBN
Taking a local perspective on 21st
century learning and board wide initiatives, the District School Board of
Niagara has taken on a few projects as a response to the 21st
century needs of their learners. 21st century learning as a full
complete term shows up in DSBN documents to describe E-Learning and Technology
Services to facilitate differentiated instruction which the website links to
being important for 21st century learning. The website and documents
allude to 21st century learning being more student and technology
focused but do not directly link ideal characteristics, behaviors, attitudes,
and qualities with the term 21st century learning explicitly.
One
current example of directly linked 21st century learning initiatives
and the DSBN is the CONNECT Conference in May 2014 which was created by the
DSBN Parents Involvement Council. The $18 000 funded project was summarized as follows, “DSBN’s PIC will provide a one-day conference
for parents and educators from the board and the London region, focusing on
parent and community engagement and partnerships. Workshops will offer
information and resources related to French Immersion, the LGBTQ community,
mental and physical health, and 21st Century Learning” (Martellacci,
2014, para. 10). The project seeks to infuse 21st century
collaborative human networks that are full with technology that began with the
DSBN, Brock University and Mindshare Learning. Dr. Camille Rutherford of the
Brock University community attended the conference; "The
CONNECT Conference serves as an exemplar of what is possible when all levels of
education work together to support innovation and improvement. In addition to
being an annual opportunity for educators to connect and collaborate, the
conference represents a key opportunity to initiate new public/private
partnership and ongoing projects that foster innovation and academic
improvement year round," (Martellacci, 2014, para. 5).
In
terms of every day learning in the DSBN, character education seems to be the
only program currently in place that educates and fosters the skills,
attitudes, and characteristics of a 21st century learner. Meaningful
and relevant student engagement is paramount for character education according
to the board website (Glaze, Zegarac, & Giroux, 2008, para. 11). There
seems to be a lack of relevant and meaningful opportunities on a day-to-day
basis in high schools specifically that position students in a 21st
century learning environment in the DSBN. Action research is currently being
proposed to involve current DSBN students in a project to re-identify
meaningful and relevant 21st century characteristics, beliefs,
attitudes, and qualities and directly linking them to practical day-to-day
school initiatives. This research will hopefully provide administrators,
students, teachers, parents, and community members with a more accurate
depiction of the relevant 21st century skills as defined by current
21st century learners. The 21st century prides itself on fast-paced knowledge and resilient
innovations so it should be commonplace to have 21st century
education reflect this as well. Including students into the action research and
action proposal procedures to resituate the term 21st century
learning in an actual, relevant and tangible context allows educators to
provide the most resilient and reflective education to students.
Conclusion
It is difficult to come to any
definitive definition for 21st century learning as research has
shown that the concept is constantly being redefined or in need of redefinition.
The issue that arises from this dynamic discourse and practice of 21st
century learning comes from ensuring our current, not just our future school
systems, will be as prepared as possible. Without knowing where the direction of
education will take the local and global scale education we can only predict
and prepare for what we know to be true about education today. There needs to
be caution exercised when working with the term. It is important to define the
specific time frame, scope, and details of the 21st century learning
discussed so researcher and reader are on the same page. It is essential that
when defining, researching, or educating under the term 21st century
learning that we define for a purpose. Giving the term purpose should mean that
a positive, educationally progressive product or outcome should evolve from
researching the concept.
From finding the emerging origins of
the term peppered throughout scholarly literature and educational resources
world wide to local action being taken by the District School Board of Niagara
with CONNECT 2014, 21st century learning has been explored for a
purpose. The next steps for defining 21st century are bringing
character education initiatives
locally produced by the District School Board of Niagara in 2005 to a more
relevant position situated a decade later in 2015. The action research may show
that the initiatives currently being undertaken by the school board are still
as effective for developing and nourishing 21st century learning
skills. If the research finds there is a
gap between the 2005 initiative document and program, an action plan will be
proposed using insight and data collected by current DSBN students.
There are only eighty-six years
until the 22nd century and if history repeats itself, we should
begin our switch from thinking of 21st century to 22nd
century learning around 2060. With only forty-six years left to prepare and
consider 21st century learning, we need to situate the research and
our initiatives in the now. Why not create 21st century learning
environments in which learners are continually recreating the definition and
practical implication of 21st century learning as they are learning?
These kinds of learning environments are already starting to develop all over
the world. Students are becoming agents of change, innovators of the future and
educators of their peers. We are more connected and more globally aware than
ever before. In fact, we may be more ready for the next evolutionary chapters
in education than we think.
No comments:
Post a Comment