Week 3: 4 C's 21st Century Skills Article

4 C's 21st Century Skills, Education & Competitiveness

Article:

Here is the article I choice to read for this blog post:
http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/21st_century_skills_education_and_competitiveness_guide.pdf

To summarize this article, I would say it basically is a guide that explains that our society has changed and that we need to change our policies, education and businesses in order to adapt to these changes before we are left far behind other country's economies and education. In order to change, we need to implement more 21st century skills into our educational system to ensure that we can compete with other nations.

Why We Need to Act Now

• Reason 1: Fundamental Changes in the Economy, Jobs and Businesses
• More service jobs than manufacturing jobs means people need to have more skills to help companies develop, produce and create new ideas that compete with other companies

Bar graph shown in article that depicts the changes in service jobs that require skilled worker

• Reason 2: New, Different Skill Demands
• This means people need more knowledge and different skills than before which is why need to be taught and strengthened through the education system to ensure the people's jobs and the companies continue to succeed due to the people they hire
• These skills can include the "ability to respond flexibly to complex problems, communicate effectively, manage information, work in teams and produce new knowledge" (pg 6). 

Pie chart shows the demand for educated worker has increased drastically 

• Reason 3: Two Achievement Gaps  
• We've spend too much time creating policies that try to close the achievement gaps that try and make sure everyone has basic skills that we have failed the allow the skills to advance and challenge people to compete to better and expand their own skill set.
• The article states that we need to teach student the 21st century skills with the core subjects because, "this is not an either–or agenda: Students can master 21st century skills while they learn reading, mathematics, science, writing and other school subjects" (pg. 8). This is a great point because why not mix them all together to ensure that our students not only gain knowledge but the life skills they need to have to succeed. 
• The article also discusses that we need to fix the gap between us and other nations in which it also suggests one way to do this is the strengthen the 21st century skills of our students. 

What We Need to Do Now

• Work on changing how we teach and measure 21st century skills
• All Americans, not just an elite few, need 21st century skills that will increase their marketability, employability and readiness for citizenship, such as:
• Thinking critically and making judgments
• Solving complex, multidisciplinary, open-ended problems
• Creativity and entrepreneurial thinking
• Communicating and collaborating with teams of people across cultural, geographic and language boundaries
• Making innovative use of knowledge, information and opportunities to create new services, processes and products.
• Taking charge of financial, health and civic responsibilities and making wise choices. (pg. 10)

A Shared Vision of a 21st Century Education System/ Policy Recommendations

This section basically explains that we can use The Partnership for 21st Century Skills Vision to help create an education system that supports teachers to incorporate learning these skills into core lessons and help our student strengthen these skills to more successful in education, their careers and lives which in return will help our country strive economically and educationally.

The article then discusses some policy changes and updates that need to be made at the federal, state and local level to help support the framework in education that will in the end improve out economy and prepare everyone for the changes of our future as needed right now. Please see article to look at policy recommendations as you see necessary.

The P21 Framework

How does this affect me/teachers?

I think it is important to look at the future in order to give ourselves goals of what we need to do now to achieve what we want/need later and that is exactly what The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is doing. They want to make sure that we all know what is coming and what changes we as educators, business people, policy makers and everyone else need to be making to ensure that the generations below us are prepared for the changes that will help our country succeed. The main purpose of education is to prepare children for the "real-world" as they become adult or citizens of society and are able to make their own choices and are responsible for help create the world we have going in the right directions. Thus, if we see that changes need to be made though research and observations then I say we do our best to make those changes to try and prepare our generations for what is to come. I think that it is completely true that businesses are looking more for what skills you bring to the table along with or sometimes even over the educational/knowledge aspects. Most businesses see that they can train or teach someone the knowledge, but it is not as easy to teach skills that people haven't developed. Thus, I thought this article was important to see the employer's/global side of the argument to teach more 21st century skills to help make me wake up as an educator and say that I want to pledge to incorporate the strengthening of these skills as much as I want to teach students math content knowledge. Also that I can do both at the same time as long as I am aware while designing lessons and use the framework to remind me what skills are important for my student's future because after all that is the main reason why we teach!