21st Century Learning & Development
21st CENTURY TEACHING
In Ken Robinson’s video, Changing Education Paradigms, he states, “every country on earth, at the moment, is reforming public education”. The reason for this is that students of the 21st century are living much different lives than students 50 years ago and therefore traditional teaching strategies that have been used in the past are no longer adequate. Students today are part of a global economy. They are exposed to a
wide range of news, advertising, politics, a variety of cultural and social justice issues and much more that students 50 years ago were not exposed to. The result is that students must learn to think critically and be creative, sort through this abundance of information, problem solve, collaborate and communicate. They must learn all of this while trying to deal with unique pressures and challenges of the 21st century. These pressures have considerable impacts on learning, as shown by the “growing numbers of students with or at risk for learning and/or social-emotional problems” (Merrell & Ervin, 2006)
The questions being asked now are “what does a student need to be a caring, well-educated happy, healthy global citizen?” and “how should we change our teaching to meet these needs?” The answers to these questions come from considering what makes a whole child. The concept of teaching to the whole child is termed “the whole-child approach” by ASCD (2015). It means recognizing that a student is more than what they can and cannot do at school, but that their social, emotional, physical and mental health must also be taken into consideration. To do this, teachers must understand how children and teenagers develop.
Studies have been done to explore why some students are able to thrive in spite of adversity, while others fall victim to it (Merrell & Ervin, 2006). These studies have suggested that such resilient students have grit: they are goal-oriented and driven, courageous, optimistic, confident, and contentious. Therefore, one answer to how we should change teaching to meet the needs of 21st century students is that it is essential to teach grit and resilience alongside curriculum subject matter. Additionally, helping students to make sense of the wide range of information they, as 21st century global citizens, are exposed to on a daily basis requires promoting metacognitive practices (National Academic Press, 2000). It is no longer enough to memorize facts and acquire literacy skills, students must be able to assess their own knowledge and understanding, critically analyze new information and consolidate.
Teaching
Strategies
Here are a few strategies and techniques you can implemnt in your own classroom of 21st century learners.
1. Use student profiles at the beginning of the year to get an idea of students’ home life, commitments outside of school, interests and challenges to get a better picture of the whole child. As a teacher it is important to be aware of what specific pressures your class faces in order to support their learning and overall well-being. Student profiles are a great opportunity to gather this information at the beginning of the year to get a jump start on getting to know your students.
2. Ask questions that require higher-order thinking to move up in Bloom’s Taxonomy. For example, ask them to reflect on their learning and put information into their own words. Ask students to critically look at a work and evaluate it’s effectiveness, defend a point of view or critique it.
3. Teach collaboration and problem solving by having students work in groups to investigate and work through various problems. For example provide lots of opportunities for students to brainstorm in groups. This lets them reflect on the knowledge surrounding a certain topic that they already bring to the group. It also requires students to appreciate new ideas brought up by their peers and connect them.
4. Create a safe, open learning environment by beginning each class with a community circle. Using this strategy gives students an opportunity to address things (personal or school-work related) that may interfere with their learning. This can give the teacher a better understanding of the whole child as they face different things throughout the year. It requires students to practice empathy while supporting one another.
5. Teach mindfulness by having breathing breaks if students seem overwhelmed. After giving instructions for a big assignment or during review for a test or even during a lesson that students are struggling with, many can begin to feel overwhelmed. You can take a couple minutes in these times to get students to breathe deeply and focus on their own breathing. This requires them to become aware of their own stress, slow their breathing and calm their minds in order to then better attack the task at hand.
6. Provide constructive criticism through formative assessment to encourage perseverance to improve their work. By giving students feedback on their work throughout the process of developing it, they may be required to go back and edit their work multiple times. Supporting students through this process by giving them positive feedback where necessary and opportunities to improve, it teaches them to persevere and continue to work towards their end goal.
Technology
Tools
With techology being a regular part of children and teens lives, there are many games and apps you as a teacher can use in your classroom to engage students and promote learning! Here are a few:
1. Stop, Breathe & Think: This is an iOS app that encourages students to do self check ins. It is intended for students in grades 5-12 and allows personalization of check-ins and meditation. Introducing this app to students for their individual use will help students learn to practice mindfulness. Along with group breathing exercises, using this app will aid in students ability to handle their every day stresses.
2. Socrative: This is a website that allows students to develop surveys, quizzes or questionnaires to assess students understanding in real time. This website can be used as a platform for a questionnaire to complete student profiles. It can also be used to show students how they are doing in their own understanding so they can reflect and set goals to improve.
3. Stoodle: This is an online whiteboard-brainstorming tool. It allows work in collaboration with others on one whiteboard space to draw, add text boxes, upload files, images and links. This tool is a great way to get students engaged by using a tech tool to work collaboratively while being creative. This is an alternative to a pen and paper brainstorming activity.