focus@Sabermind

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) is a US organization that advocates for 21st century readiness for every student (http://www.p21.org). P21 has identified six key elements children need to succeed in the 21st Century:

1.       Core Subjects

It has been identified the core subjects as English, reading or language arts; mathematics; science; foreign languages; civics; government; economics; arts; history; and geography.

2.       21st Century Content

Several significant, emerging content areas are critical to success in communities and workplaces. These content areas are:

• Global awareness
• Financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy
• Civic literacy
• Health and wellness awareness
• Environmental literacy

3.       Learning and Thinking Skills

As much as students need to learn academic content, they also need to know how to keep learning and make effective and innovative use of what they know, throughout their lives. Learning and Thinking Skills are comprised of:

• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills
• Communication Skills
• Creativity and Innovation Skills
• Collaboration Skills
• Information and Media Literacy Skills
• Contextual Learning Skills

4.       ICT Literacy

Information and communications technology (ICT) literacy is the ability to use technology to develop 21st century content knowledge and skills, in support of 21st century teaching and learning

5.       Life Skills

Good teachers have always incorporated life skills into their pedagogy. The challenge today is to incorporate these essential skills into schools deliberately, strategically and broadly. Life skills include:

• Leadership
• Ethics
• Accountability
• Adaptability
• Personal Productivity
• Personal Responsibility
• People Skills
• Self Direction
• Social Responsibility

6.       21st Century Assessments

Authentic 21st century assessments are the essential foundation of a 21st century education. Assessments must measure all five results that matter; core subjects, 21st century content, learning skills, ICT literacy, and life skills.

A balance of assessments, including high-quality standardized testing along with effective classroom assessments, offers students a powerful way to master the content and skills central to success.

One of my favorite expressions is, “It is never too late to learn.” Ever since I completed my doctorate at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom 14 years ago at the ripe age of 48, I have been a practitioner of lifelong learning. According to Wikipedia, “lifelong learning is the ‘lifelong, lifelike, voluntary, and self motivated’ pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional reasons. As such, it not only enhances social inclusion, active citizenship and personal development, but also competitiveness and employability.” With the changing nature of the Internet, lifelong learning is now available anywhere, anyplace.

Learning from young adults

In addition to the Internet, my teaching at the college level has opened up another world of learning for me. I get to learn about the concerns of the young French-speaking adults that I teach in my academic English class. Recently, for example, I had the opportunity to listen to them talk about some of the issues that concern them the most. What are these issues? “The Free Child Project,” an American website devoted to exploring issues by young people for social change, states that today’s youth is concerned with such issues as creativity, economic matters, education, identity (including sexual identity), democracy, social concerns, human rights and youth involvement. My own Canadian students share many of the same concerns.

An interesting class project

I had my students undertake a Survey Project in which they had to choose a topic of interest to them, do research on it, and come up with a hypothesis involving two groups of people (for example, young adult females use credit cards more wisely than young adult males). Then, using surveymonkey.com, a free online tool, they had to create a short questionnaire. They had to administer it to two different groups of respondents for comparative purposes. Finally, they had to analyze the results and give a short talk to the class about their work. Obviously, the results were not statistically significant; the challenge was in doing research, coming up with interesting questions, and commenting on the results in an oral presentation.

Important issues for young people

Here are some of the topics my students explored: the use and overuse of credit in our society, the role of the Internet in learning, the meaning of happiness, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the sexual habits of young adults, healthy foods versus fast foods, the popularity of pornography, the prevalence of social networking (for example, Facebook and Twitter), dealing with phobias, the lack of self-esteem among today’s youth, Gay/lesbian adoption of children, and knowledge of photography. What surprised me was that many of their concerns as young adults were the same as mine as a Third Ager. lifelong learning is for me one valuable midlife coping strategy for happiness.

Dr. Frank Bonkowski is an infopreneur, educator, and author of bestselling educational textbooks. He co-founded, with Dr. Fred Horowitz, Happiness-After-Midlife, an educational website dealing with midlife coping strategies and happiness.

 

 

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Frank_Bonkowski