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Deliverable Goals and Strategic Challenges11
Deliverable Goals and Strategic Challenges11
In the new era, social changes affect people and institutions in different ways. Although people
have more knowledge about economy, education and procedures that are not enough for
success. Educated people need creativity to produce new ideas, theories and new knowledge
as well. They require to move another phase who need able to evaluate what they read and
express themselves clearly both verbally and in writing. They need to be able to take
responsibility for their own continuing, life-long learning (OECD, 2008). Our requirements
and needs are changing day by day for sustainability and achievements and some of abilities
do not use any more on the other hand some of become more significant role in our life. It is
completely associated new knowledge age.The 21st Century Skills mean that overreach what
is traditionally being thought in our classrooms. These are considered for future generation of
students and which contain: critical thinking and problem solving; communication,
collaboration; and creativity and innovation (Turiman et al, 2011). The rapid changes in the
world need students to become more flexible and to produce new and useful ideas. Todays
student must be more active critical thinkers in order to make sensible decisions and compare
evidence. This is because, the international problems could be overcome with critical thinking
and problem-solving abilities. Therefore Students must learn and effectively use
communication skills in their lives. The modern medias power astonishingly get stronger and
the ubiquity of technologies with all specialities make life easier, for that reason having
communication skills and able to use technologies are very important for them. While it is
important to emphasize communication skills, it is bear in mind that collaboration skills such
as working effectively with any teams, to complete successfully a common goals and take
responsibility for work, are very vital within 21st Century Skills (NEA, 2011). This essay focus
on the importance of 21st Century Skills and Policy in terms of theoritical aspects and teacher
experiments. As I had experienced before new eras student educational requirements and
interests are different rather then previous generations. The technologic developments and new
world order influenced people world view and ideas.This essay emphasise some skills such as
critical thinking, problem solving and as well as communication skills. Therefore it will be
mentioned Dede (2010) and Barber (2000)s opinions upon this centruy skills and policiy.
There has been an important changes in the area of construction, manufacturing, transportation,
energy production and so on over the last decades (PPRC, 2010). These changes are associated
with information and knowledge. The emergence of new kind of technologies, especially
information and communication technologies (ICTs), which are more commonly known as
digital technologies, require some skills. Therefore, students need certain skills to catch and
interpret to this era. it provides new opportunuties to obtain and improve good skills, because
this matters is forcing to come up with new ideas and useful solutions (Lau 2011). Furthermore,
occupational requirements are changed due to the new century skill requirenments. Higgins
(2014) highlited that these days we hear calls from business and industries for young people
who eager to work together and who think more analitic and more creative in the way that they
can overcome diffuculties. A term 21st Century Skills is widely used however, there is no
specific information on this topic. According to Dede (2010) is that he searched and compared
some framework about what students should learn to become prepared to live in the 21st
century. In addition, he categorised 21st century skills into two groups. First one is prennial
which includes areas such as communication, creativity, and critical thiking. On the other hand,
the second group is contexual which is also vital to interpret and communicate the
information ( cited:Higgins, 2014). Nonetheless Silva (2009) claimed that these skills are not
new, it is just given us that is something like new and more significant.
There are many idea upon 21st century skills. However, the P21 learning framework makes it
easier to understand sufficiently. The figure 1.1 see below shows the structure and
compononents of the 21st century skills (P21, 2008)
There are many priorities, but focusing on critical thinking and inovation are paramout among
the 21st century skills. In addition, it is crucial to be productive and responsible for being
competative. Therefore, The link between critical thinking and education is obvious, one can
not learn well without thinking well (P21, n.d, p:8). Being able to understand the meaning of
crticial thinking have importance. From this perspective, the question of what is critical
thinking and why it is significant need to be answered.
Problem solving is another valuable skill in this century. First, people are prone to encounter
complex problems which affect the whole world such as pollution, global warming and
financial crises. Problem solving and critical reading are clearly neccesary for 21st century
education but it is also obvious that they are not adequate completely (Higgins, 2014). In
connnection with this communication, calloboration, creativity and innovation are also
essential with them (Trilling & Fadel, 2009).
In this part, readers are going to know what Barber`s discourse and opinion are with regards to
21st century skills, requirements and policy in a conference (Schooling for Tomorrow) held
in 2000. (Rotterdam) According to Barber (2000) education should not be similar as it was in
the 20th century as the requirement of education is different than every previous decade let
alone century. Hence, it needs to be rearranged for the new era.
Figuring out social accountability and mobility problems as well as adapting technological
advances to learing environment are important challenges to create better education system for
next generations. For instance, 20th centurys (Industrial Age) school system used to be set up
to deliver know what knowledge to the students. However, 21st century (Knowledge Age)
schools should teach more than know what and know how knowledge. In this century, it
is important to have global perspective and know what the big picure says. Therefore, every
century has different school system and is required different skills from those that is required
in the previous century. Due to these reasons, countries have done some reform in puplic
education system so as not to fall behind each other. He claims that We need to determine
the "deliverable goals" and "strategic challenges" facing 21st century education systems(
p:105). He spesified four deliverable goals and five strategic challenges. These are deliverable
goals which are achieving universally high standards, narrowing the achievement gap,
unlocking individualisation, promoting education with character.
Some students need extra time than the others to be able to learn some topics. Moreover, some
of them need to take extra tuition and that should be provided. Some senior students tend to
learn better when they spend time in the area, where they can interact with other people in
different places like workplaces, gardens, parks and so on than those who spent time in schools.
Various teaching methods should use in order to provide a better learning environment for
different students who come from different backgrounds. In this regard, his statement If
standarts are a constant, then everything must be variable` will became our slogan(p.116) is
quite valuable to undersatand his the deliverable goal correctly.
In other respects, Hu suggests that national and school curriculum play an important role in
nations education system. Students should have individual curriculum which ought to be
designed to give an opportunuties for an enriched learning environment (p.119). From his
perspectives, 20th century approach was not supporting individualism adequately. The new
education system and curriculum should be designed to take into consideration the 21st century
needs.
In this section, it will be discussed and examined Dede`s opinion which is made use of
Comparing Frameworks for 21st Century Skills.
He states that In the legacy curriculum, little time is spent on building capabilities in group
interpretation, negotiation of shared meaning, and co-construction of problem resolutions
(ibid. p.3). In addition to this He claims that the current curriculum is already intensive and this
situation cause to some necessary skills make insignificant. Other problem are high-stakes tests
which prevents to asses core competencies effectively. Besides, he argues that
The stress on what may be underemphasized because those skills are inconsistent with
current classroom culture highlights a substantial challenge to infusing these 21st
century skills frameworks into educational practice and policy. At this point in history,
the primary barriers to altering curricular, pedagogical, and assessment practices are
not conceptual, technical or economic, but instead psychological, political, and cultural.
(ibid, p. 12)
21st century skills bring about some problem in during the assesment and evaluating process
because high order skillss are not able to measure with previous measuring technics. For that
reason educators attempted to use different asements such as rating scale and performance
assesment.
Teacher`s Perspective
While I was a secondary school maths teacher in Turkey, I attended compulsory training
courses, delivered by the National Ministry of Education. These courses intended to prepare
us as teachers to respond to the demands of new era and to develop innovations. Effective
communication course was the one of the useful course. In this course we learned about the
importance of speaking slowly so that the student could understand us better. I have had
experiences of this while teaching. For instance, when I didnt give a lecture fluently, pupils
were having a difficulty in understanding.
In a different course it was stated that teachers also need to have adequate qualifications in
terms of digital literacy. It was argued that this phenomenon provides positive learning
outcomes for learners. Information and communication technologies help teachers while
engaging learners to depict the content (Dede, 2008). In addition to this, he argued that:
Krotz S. (2015). Who Is The Effective Educator In The 21st Century? P21org. Retrieved 5
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Liberty concepts. (2013). The Glossary of Education Reform. Retrieved 5 December, 2017,
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Tutkun, O. F. (2010) The Philosophic Dimensions of Curriculum in the 21st Century Gazi
Educatiom Faculty Magazine, 30 (3), pp. 993-1016.
OECD (2008) 21st Century Learning: Research, Innovation and Policy Directions
from recent OECD analyses. Paris.
Turiman P. et al. (2011) Fostering the 21stCentury Skills through Scientific Literacy
and Science Process Skills Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 59 pp.110-
116.
National Education Association (2011) Preparing 21st Century Students for a Global
Society:An Educators Guide to the Four Cs . Available at:
http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/A-Guide-to-Four-Cs.pdf (Accessed: 08 November
2017).
Trilling, B. & Fadel, C. (2009). 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times,
Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.
P 21. (2011). Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21). Framework for 21st Century
Learning. Retrieved from http://www.P21.org