Scott D. Phillipps, Ed.D.
21st
Century Learning?
In current educational literature the term “21st
century learning” is about as ubiquitous as the cell phone. The term is an
impressive prosaism, which can make any professional educator appear to have
his or her finger on the proverbial pulse of educational progress. Beneath this
arcane terminology, however, lies an important underlying question: What does
21st century learning look like, and what does it mean in practical
terms?
I believe, for many schools, 21st century
learning means little more than pouring money into the morass of classroom
technology. Recently, two local independent schools (one of which was the
school where my wife teaches) became “iPad Schools.” In response, I went to
several conferences and talked to a number of different schools who had
implemented iPad programs to help determine if we should become an iPad school.
At each conference and in each school, I asked the teachers and administrators:
“How do iPads improve student learning
outcomes?” Not one person was able to
give me a clear answer. The best people could offer was that “iPads are fun”
and “our parents expect us to do something.” Meanwhile, all of the students and
teachers at my wife’s independent school have been given some nifty and
expensive toys that have not, as far as she can tell, substantially changed
classroom teaching practices in any meaningful way. This rush towards
technology for its own sake is an unacceptable state of affairs. In every
decision we make as educational leaders we must ask the question, “How does
this decision affect student learning outcomes?” If we are unable to determine
that a given decision positively affects our students, then we should seriously
question our motives for that decision.
I do not mean to imply that technology integration is not
important–it is. We need to give our students access to the tools they will
need to be successful in college and in the workplace. We also need to try to pursue
technology to find ways to engage our students. However, we need to make sure
that our movement towards technology is fully integrated into the learning and
skills that will help our students and teachers evolve as life-long
learners. Today, in the information age,
our students are bombarded with so much information from so many sources, that
it is difficult for them to discern truth from invention and validity from
invalidity. To that end, we have moved into an era where our emphasis in school
must be on finding information, synthesizing that information, and creating
something new with our knowledge.
Even 80 years ago, Albert Einstein understood that “Imagination
is more important than knowledge.” Moreover,
in the past 20 years, Bloom’s Taxonomy has been reordered to place, “Creating”
above “Evaluating.” Yet, where and how
often do we test for creativity in our schools? How do we measure a student’s
ability to evaluate? Few would argue that our students should not be operating
on the highest levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, yet inexplicably, the United States’
education system has moved increasing towards emphasis on the very lowest
levels of Bloom’s taxonomy: “Remembering” and “Understanding.” The high-stakes testing regime that dominates
public education is but one example of our educational priorities moving away from the types of learning our
children need in the 21st century. Somehow, we have come to believe that by
testing and re-testing and engaging in “drill and kill” teaching techniques, we
can improve our nation’s educational standing. We seem to be ignoring the
simple truth that is so aptly expressed in the old Iowa farm adage: “You can’t
fatten a cow by weighing it.” What we need, in fact, is a different and dynamic
approach to teaching and learning, not an approach that attempts to measure
knowledge at the expense of imagination and that leads to schooling in which
our students must “gear down” to function effectively in class.
The Five C’s + One
With great interest, I have followed the blog of Pat
Bassett, the President of NAIS. Mr.
Bassett has elucidated a very clear and concise picture of what we should be
emphasizing in independent schools of the future. In a series of articles, he expounds on “The
Five C’s + One.” These C’s are:
creativity, character, critical thinking, communication, cosmopolitanism, and
collaboration. Suffice to say that I wholeheartedly endorse his epistle.
Bassett asserts that “quality schooling teaches not subjects so much as a
handful of essential skills and values that, when they stick, result in
graduates who are ethical and successful contributors and leaders in their
families, their communities, the workplace, and the world.” [1]
While explicating all six of these values would take up more
space than this format allows, creativity and character deserve particular
attention, because I believe those values are so very lacking in our
educational system.
Creativity
As Pat Bassett points out, we need to pose questions which
excite our students and then give them the time to answer those questions. That
is when true learning takes place. Teachers need to reflect on what creative
processes can be used to help students learn particular objectives. In fact,
this emphasis on creativity should permeate everything we do as teachers. That
is not to say that there is no place for basic knowledge—after all, if students
don’t have facts, they will be unable to validly and reliably apply
information. However, when possible, students should be allowed to explore,
research, apply, analyze, and evaluate information they have acquired, and then
generate something new from that process. I believe teachers, generally, do a
good job of this in early childhood education, but in the rush to cover the
curriculum, teachers move away from exploration and collaboration the further
along students get in the educational process.
Fortunately, creativity is readily integrated with global
education, technology integration, collaborative learning, arts education, and
communication. Again, there is not room here to fully explicate this idea, but
it is certainly crucial that our students work readily on the highest level of
Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy. Moreover, it
is important that students are allowed to learn deeply, as well as broadly.
Character
We are obliged to provide students with a firm foundation in
moral and ethical character. Given that our children have a wealth of
information at their disposal, the key question should be, “What will they do
with that information?” As a parent,
what I hope most for my children is not that they win a Nobel Prize or a World
Cup, but rather that they be decent, kind, and that they seek to serve
others. However, that notion is probably
not shared with many of our parents who value status, wealth, and admission to
the most selective colleges. Still, we must try to teach our students key
components of character development: persistence, empathy, integrity,
responsibility, fairness, and respect. As it turns out, though, it is not a
zero-sum game. The research supports the notion that students with attributes
that we associate with high moral character are also the most successful people
in life.[2]
The best way we can teach persistence in school is to allow
our children to fail, and to teach them that there is value in learning from
our failures. Now, more than ever, what we must emphasize is that only those
who do nothing make no mistakes. We have
to remind our parents that experience is what you get when you do not get what
you want. Or as Winston Churchill put so well, “Success is the ability to go
from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”
Relative to empathy, I firmly believe that character is
about how one treats others. Part of
successfully educating our children is teaching them how others should be
treated. Abigail Van Buren (“Dear Abby”) said it well – “The best index to a
person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how
he treats people who can't fight back.” I believe that a major component of
character development is teaching students how to treat those people from whom
you have nothing to gain. It is not how
they treat their teacher, it is not how they treat their coach, and it’s not
how they treat the captain of the football team. It’s how they treat the classmate whose
personal grooming habits annoy them. It
is how they treat that kid at the lunch table who doesn’t know how to end a
story and just doesn’t seem to know how to fit in. It is how they treat the people with whom
they have nothing in common, or whose race, religion, or sexual preference they
don’t understand.
Included in this concept is the necessity of participating
in the act of service. I often tell the
students at my current school that they need not feel guilty that they are
children of privilege. What they need to do is recognize that they are
privileged, and act accordingly. They are morally obligated, I believe, to use
their privileged position to help others. Service, therefore, should be a real
and tangible part of any school curriculum.
Summation
In short, there are a great many challenges facing
independent school education in the 21st century. However, in this “Culture of Change”[3] we
must be vigilant in questioning our educational philosophy and underlying
assumptions, and we must be reflective in our practice. Fortunately, there is
no better venue to exercise true flexibility and to embrace change than in the
independent school. Truly, independent schools are poised to take the lead in
helping our nation’s educational system regain its standing in the world. For
any independent school that wishes to truly embrace 21st century
learning, embracing technology is not nearly enough. I believe the values of
creativity, character, critical thinking, communication, cosmopolitanism, and
collaboration must play an absolutely central role.
