A Review of Socio-political & Historical Perspectives of Education in

the 21st Century

Kristel Anne Lagunilla
PhD in Education Management
Philippine Normal University

Abstract: This paper highlights the multifaceted aspects of education from past, present and
future. For education to be all-encompassing, it has to take into account the essential
principles of socio-political and historical tenets to ensure that graduates are at par with what
is expected by the contemporary workforce imbued with 21 st skills that is continuously
improving in the fields of their choice. It has to anchor on some philosophies of education to
uniformly produce graduates as expected. In fact, educators who intended to cultivate better
social capabilities with learners (social mastery-approach goals) conveyed higher self-
efficacy, better dealings with students, and greater classroom activities. Hence, it may be
suggested to policy makers and school frontrunners that educators define their performance,
accept feedback and institute a performance appraisal system with enhancements as an
outcome of the performance assessment progression. There has been a palpable necessity for
the revisiting of the current curriculum to align such to the national guidelines on congruency
to the objectives.

Key words: 21st century skills, History, Methodology, Philosophy of Education, Socio-
Political

Introduction
The latest socio-political and economic occurrences worldwide and within states have
have triggered for inevitable modifications as well as innovations in educational
context and greater concerns for social scrutiny (Egharevba & Iyamu, 2020).Learners
are being honed with 21st century competencies such as life and career skills, learning
and innovation ability, information, media, and technology skills to cope with the
situations of the landscapes in education. Through social studies, students adopt civic
ability and understanding of the world they interact in to become productive and
responsible citizens. It likewise fosters the students to be more self-aware and
cognizant of the community issues and problems and engages them to take the
accurate action towards a better and more comprehensive guild (Rogayan et al.,
2021).

Politics and Education

Educational theory is deemed as a system of political assertion where implementation
and practice of pedagogical activities is associated to particular people, occasions, and
things. Educational theory has likewise considered an efficient platform since its
language has prescriptive features. A theory, therefore, offers individuals an
opportunity to reexamine their personal world in light of more abstract thoughts,
generalizations, and ideologies. These intangible types are unbiased; they give
importance to certain institutional associations as good, rational, and authentic.
Dreams of society, comforts to be favored and progressions of action to be followed
lingers in history (Popkewitz, 1978). To add, being the main social institution,
education has metamorphosed together with other social structures throughout the
history of the world. Some of these modifications are along the areas of science,
philosophy, culture, and economy which have profoundly affected the purpose,
content, and systems of education. Molded in harmony with the social and political
structures that had been subjugated by agriculture and trade-centered production until
the nineteenth century, education appears to have instituted a new technique with the
formation of development of modern society from the nineteenth century to the last
quarter of the twentieth epoch. The realistic character of education has become more
conspicuous within industrial society, and education has become more profound to the
demands of industrial economy and nation-state politics. During this period, humanity
embraces the phenomenon of state-endowed mass education (Akgün & Alpaydın,
2022). Moreover, learning theories delineate the circumstances and processes through
which learning transpires, offering teachers with representations to improve teaching
processes which may lead to realistic learning. These theories explicate the
procedures that people engage in as they process and digest the information, and how
they assimilate that information into their intellectual models so that it becomes new
knowledge. Learning theories likewise scrutinize what stimulates people to learn, and
what conditions enable or hamper learning procedure (Saunders & Wong, 2020).
Education has collectively been leading towards cognitive enhancement and guiding
learners to gain skills and knowledge necessary in various sectors. Nonetheless, if we
deem that education is a public good, there is a need to go outside its context from a
utilitarian standpoint of being contributory to society’s economic growth to an
understanding of education as instrumental to grasping individual’s transformative
abilities and afterwards, social transformation. Education designed to achieve social
modification should focus on not just exposing learners to mental aspects but
similarly getting them to be capacitated to become means of social change and
development (Onwuegbuchulam, 2022). Sociocultural theory is closely associated to
developmental theory. It highlights change in manners over time, particularly changes
that transpire as people develop from infancy to childhood, to puberty, and lastly to
maturity. This concept challenges to explain unnoticed procedures of development of
beliefs, of language, and of cognitive skills with suggestions to education in general
and is particularly valued in the area of applied linguistics. The theory’s main tenet is
the development of the child which is the reason for denoting to a child or children
when deliberating theoretical foundations throughout the text. Nevertheless, since
many inferences and practical applications associated to sociocultural theory are
relevant to students of all ages, when implications are argued, the object is
collectively a learner or students (Kimmons & Caskurlu, 2020). In the long run,
education is essential phase to prepare young generation for their active involvement
in the society. Social responsibility has now been the vital notion for researchers and
practitioners who indulge in the foregoing period. It involves both legal privileges and
duties, and how people interact together in societies, countries, and in the global
creation. People may, and frequently do, have diverse thoughts about what makes a
moral inhabitant and what are decent means of living together. They may likewise
have dissimilar notions about how education can play a role citizenship growth
(Veugelers,& de Groot, 2020).

Historical Relevance in Education

Educational workforces in public teaching have not been merely born into a particular
historical background; they exemplify its history in differing techniques both as a
state of consciousness and as a solidified experience, as a felt actuality. To what
extent they analytically reconcile that history and its linked philosophy is another
matter. Therefore, educational specialists can be regarded as not just products of
history however manufacturers of history as well. And it is this forceful process of
socialization that connects them and the schools where they work to the greater world
(Schutz and Luckmann, 1973). Additionally, contemporary educators of high-school
history are facing a tough job. However, in order to do this efficiently, educators of
history must initiate some of this underpinning as experts. They must absorb about
their learners, about the local history (even if it is not theirs), move outside the trusty
binder of tried-and-true means, and their own edge of reference from which they were
students and clasp the uncomfortable test of defying their own biases and gaps in
knowledge. They shall to admit that there is always more to know and, most
significantly, more than one way to know. Once they have identified who is in their
classes, they must apply something which is frequently overlooked and discharged in
high school history classes – local history, local methods, and local customs of
investigating (Cameron & Habkirk, 2021). Essentially, evaluating on the upshot of
introducing History and the Social Sciences permits teachers to guide decision-
making, uphold certain student models, and institute rational connection links
between their philosophy and their own teaching exercise. Educators, as managers of
social change, ought to reflect on what are the end-purposes of the Social Sciences
that they convey in order to stimulate this coherence. Hence, defining them during the
university education of future professors, and examining the upshots of its educational
preparation, creates essential knowledge for didactic transformation (Ortega-Sánchez
& Pagès Blanch, 2020). Considering how pupils define what they perceive as vital in
the past offers understanding into the way that learners construct history. Pupils’
definitions of historical importance show how they comprehend history and how they
think history is defined and built. The manner students describe and appreciate history
marks the way they study history and what they acquire about history. There appears
to be a relationship between what learners learn at home and what they absorb at
school; students integrate their own understandings with the history they come across
into history as a school business (Bergman, 2020). Besides, history education studies
have long been instrumental in the metamorphosis of the teaching and learning
procedures so as to overcome the monotonous and theoretical learning of history,
promoting a methodology based on the progress of historical philosophy.
Gamification is an state-of-the-art informative instrument which may simplify the
learning of historical tenets and concepts in the schoolroom (Martinez-Hita et al.
2021). Thus, so as to see tangible improvements in the teaching of historical concepts,
it has likewise been of great significance that instructors possess conceptual
information of the development of historical philosophy and of the most suitable
teaching approaches and plans for its advancement. In this respect, educators’ training
becomes a central feature for this ultimate objective (Rodríguez-Medina et al. 2020).

21st Century Methodology

As for Verde & Valero (2021), the prevailing condition implies that there has to be
reconsideration of the best approach for teaching in such a way that learner will not be
compelled in whatever means. This is essential insofar as various teaching techniques
are concerned taking into account background, status and learning necessities of
learners. Thus, efficient teaching is viewed as an essential part of educational
transformation in some countries, but, there seems a limited and localized
interpretation of what it really implies, principally from the standpoints of educators
( Carter et al. 2021). In effect, knowing the relevance of fostering meaningful
connections with pupils has long been recognized as critical for encouraging
classroom engagement, educators’ opposing purposes for establishing connections
with students stay under investigated. Educators who intended to cultivate better
social capabilities with learners (social mastery-approach goals) conveyed higher self-
efficacy, better dealings with students, and greater classroom activities (Chang &
Hall, 2022). Soon as it is known that establishing functioning schools is a challenging
initiative, educators are anticipated to be partaking and execute at a high extent so as
to outstrip these trials and attain the school's basic visions at the looked-for level.
Hence, it may be suggested to policy makers and school frontrunners that educators
define their performance, accept feedback and institute a performance appraisal
system with enhancements as an outcome of the performance assessment progression
(Özgenel & Mert, 2019). There has been a palpable necessity for the revisiting of the
current curriculum to align such to the national guidelines on congruency to the
objectives. In fact, findings imply an evaluation presentation for the abstract concepts
presented and uphold the proficiency orientation of education all over the curricula of
medical and dental undergraduate education. Furthermore, the findings contribute to
present European dialogues on proficiency-based methods in higher instruction
(Brauer et al. 2023).

Critical Thinking
According to Merleau-Ponty (1967), critical thinking has been a part of mode of
perception if it embodies the understanding that “I am able,” it then implies that an
individual may use ones capability and shared possibilities “to explore outside the
generated structures so as to form others. By means of determining content and
technical matters, best practices are examined and techniques are revealed to develop
critical thinking, as an upshot, learners are likely to cultivate the skill to think
analytically. In addition, it is probable to instill critical thinking skills, which are
deemed extremely important to cultivate leadership competencies (Mahdi et al. 2020).
Evaluating 21st century learning goals e.g. critical thinking is interesting. Teachers
ought to pay particular attention to how the evaluation scheme prompts, or provokes,
pupil’s critical analysis. Evaluations must be considerately intended and designed to
prompt multifaceted judgments; contain open-ended, ill-structured scopes that spur
for multiple, secure answers; involve learners in genuine, real-world set-ups; and
make student cognitive aspect evident to educators (Evans, 2020). Critical analysis
has been one among key 21st century skills – communication, teamwork, critical
thinking and ingenuity. However, most individuals are cognizant of the significance
of critical thinking, it lacks weight in syllabi. Given a comprehensive idea of critical
thinking, a progressive method starting with children is recommended as means to
help cultivate critical analysis practices of mind. More importance should be engaged
on fostering human aptitude, particularly in young children and with the aid of
artificial intellect (Spector & Ma, 2019). Hence, an efficient approach is necessary to
promote critical thinking (CT) among learners. One instructional technique that
appears favorable is relating precise and inaccurate worked examples (i.e., contrasting
examples). The findings indicate that participants’ cognitive task performance
enhanced from pretest to instantaneous posttest, and even further after a delay (i.e.,
they realized to evade biased thinking) (van Peppen et al. 2021). Critical analysis is
recognized as a 21st century ability that permits humans to make careful and educated
decisions considering the evidence accessible to them. Studies discovering critical
analysis during the early years have been of specific implication because they allow
scientists to improve a general interpretation of critical thinking and put it in the
background of young children (O'Reilly et al. 2022).

Philosophy of Education
One becomes what he desires in the perspective of what others have made upon them
(Sartre, 1977). An ideal education accentuates individualism. The first phase in any
education therefore is to recognize ourselves. Acknowledging existential approaches
in the classroom necessitates stability where both educators and students as human
beings cultivate its individuality( Existentialism, 2020). It seems deeply challenging if
not unbearable to have a worldwide methodology to education that is implemented in
schools. This struggle has been a direct indication of the appreciation of the
dissimilarities and variances of both the student and teacher. The issue is likewise
connected to the nonexistence of a universal foundation to the description and
objective of education itself, for education is demarcated in many means, at diverse
times, by various biographers (Tamrat, 2020). Developments of the creation of a
collective educational space have been due to the advancement of science. The
significant direction of the improvement of teaching in varied nations is the
humanistic movement, partaking to the development of the behavior, the formation of
a value outlook worldwide (Tolstova & Levasheva, 2019). The intention for this is the
incapability of the education sector to answer to the trials of the new educational set-
up, as it progresses in harmony with the contemporary technology, as modern
education advances, as a sensible system of unbiased knowledge, and as it does not
take into consideration the core, value-based denotations of pedagogy itself
(Bogdanova & Rezvushkin,2021).

Conclusion
Taking into consideration the preceding arguments, it safe to conclude that for
education to be all-encompassing, it has to take into account the indispensable
principles of socio-political and historical tenets to ensure that graduates are at par
with what is expected by the contemporary workforce imbued with 21st skills that is
continuously rising in the fields of their choice. It has to anchor on some philosophies
of education to homogenously produce graduates as expected. In effect, educators
who intended to cultivate better social capabilities with learners (social mastery-
approach goals) conveyed higher self-efficacy, better dealings with students, and
greater classroom activities. Hence, it may be suggested to policy makers and school
frontrunners that educators define their performance, accept feedback and institute a
performance appraisal system with enhancements as an outcome of the performance
assessment progression. There has been a perceptible necessity for the revisiting of
the current curriculum to align such to the national guidelines on congruency to the
objectives.

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