The Changing Face of Education in the 21st Century

The Changing Face of Education in the 21st Century

Here is a quote from Jay McTighe education author and consultant written in part 4 of a 5 part series on Common Core Big Ideas and published recently in Edutopia:

“To design a 12-K curriculum backward from the goal of autonomous transfer requires a deliberate and transparent plan for helping the student rely less and less on teacher hand-holding and scaffolds. After all, transfer is about independent performance in context. You can only be said to have fully understood and applied your learning if you can do it without someone telling you what to do. In the real world, no teacher is there to direct and remind you about which lesson to plug in here or what strategy fits there; transfer is about intelligently and effectively drawing from your repertoire, independently, to handle new situations on your own. Accordingly, we should see an increase, by design, in problem- and project-based learning, small-group inquiries, Socratic Seminars, and independent studies as learners’ progress through the curriculum across the grades.

Our point here is straightforward: if a curriculum simply marches through lists of content knowledge and skills without attending to the concomitant goal of cultivating independent performance, high-schoolers will remain as dependent on teacher directions and step-by-step guidance as fourth graders currently are. The resulting graduates will be unprepared for the demands of college and the workplace.”

As educators we need to put more effort into reshaping our educational institutions so that they reflect a culture of learning helping to bring forth, in every student, understanding that is necessary to be productive and accountable citizens of our 21^st century democracy.