According to David Thornberg, “We are to prepare students for their future, not for our past” Do schools prepare students for their future? More specifically, do classroom teachers prepare their students for the 21st century?

According to the Partnership for the 21st Century website, the 21st century skills has four major categories: Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes; Learning and Innovation skills; Information, Media and Technology Skills; and Life and Career Skills. The Learning and Innovation skills consists of creativity and innovation skills, critical thinking and problem solving skills, and communication and collaboration skills. Information, Media, and Technology Skills can be broken down into Information Literacy, Media Literacy, and ICT Literacy. The last category, Life and Career Skills has these components: flexibility and adaptability; initiative and self-direction; social and cross-cultural skills; productivity and accountability; and leadership and responsibility.

Each skill area can be broken down into more specifics. These more specific listings provide the classroom teacher with a good assessment tool for measuring the 21st Century skills in the classroom. The teacher can rate these skills on a 4-happens on a weekly basis, 3- happens every five weeks 2- happens every 10 weeks 1- happens once a year 0- does not happen

Learning and Innovation Skills Assessment (Use 4-3-2-1-0 scale as described above)

Creativity and innovation skill

____ Demonstrating originality and inventiveness in work. Example: _________________________

____ Developing, implementing and communicating new ideas to others. Example: _________________________

____ Being open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives. Example: _________________________

____ Acting on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful contribution to the domain in which the innovation occurs. Example: _________________________

Critical thinking and problem solving skills

____ Exercising sound reasoning in understanding. Example: _________________________

____ Making complex choices and decisions. Example: _________________________

____ Understanding the interconnections among systems. Example: _________________________

____ Identifying and asking significant questions that clarify various points of view and lead to better solutions. Example: _________________________

____ Framing, analyzing and synthesizing information in order to solve problems and answer questions. Example: _________________________

Communication and Collaborative Work

____ Articulating thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively through speaking and writing. Example: _________________________

____ Demonstrating ability to work effectively with diverse teams. Example: _________________________

____ Exercising flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal. Example: _________________________

____ Assuming shared responsibility for collaborative work. Example: _________________________

When teachers assess the work that their students do according to this 21st century skills listing, they can determine how prepared their students are for the 21st century. However, the teachers have to be careful not to over score the answers. For example, if students memorize information and repeat it back or if students simply go through the teacher given scaffolded steps, then they are not really “framing, analyzing, and synthesizing in order to problem solve and answer questions”. Students need to develop these 21st century skills so they can use them independently from the teacher.

After teachers do this self-diagnostic, they can decide how they can modify their instruction to include more of these critical life skills into the curriculum. For example, if a social studies teacher realizes that her classes score a zero for “Being open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives”, she decides to spend some time on a local controversial issue. She has her students find the point of view and “evidence” from all the sides through phone inteviews, emails, videoconferences, in-person visits, and news accounts. The students create a digital concept map of all these views and their evidence so they can more easily see the differences and similarities. Students practice mini-debating the various sides of the issues in small groups; each different mini-debate the students switch their “side”. By the end of the class period, each student has defended each side.After the experiences, students usually say that they can see the value of each side.

Teachers can assess and improve the use of 21st century skills in their classroom. They can truly prepare the students for their future.

Dr. Harry Grover Tuttle focuses on assessing and improving student learning through low- and high-tech tools.

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