21st Century Skills and the NZ Curriculum

Last night was the second Mindlab session, exploring the links between 21st century skills and the key competencies of the New Zealand curriculum.

One interesting idea that was raised was that organisations ‘biological’, I guess in that there are levels of organisation and that they are living, evolving systems. This also means that organisations have the ability to ‘learn’. A traditional school structure is hierarchical - within my own school we have the principal and two deputies, as well as three teachers who act as Senior Leader Support, followed by layers of deans, HODs, 2ICs... If we take the biological metaphor further, organisations, including schools, must be self-evolving or else they will stagnate. As the culture of an organisation changes, the nature of leadership within the organisation will also change. In schools, this includes how we might define knowledge and the role of teachers in bringing about changes.

For my school and others to continue to evolve there needs to be a deeper understanding of what it means to teach in the 21st century and what our students will need to be able to do when they leave us. My school is starting to have conversations about what we want our school leavers to 'be' like, but while we debate among ourselves about what our vision is - and even some debating whether we really need to be having this discussion in the first place - our students are missing out.

Our conversation, for one thing, could be more strongly focused on the how we impart our students with 21st century skills - and which of these skills, if not all, we think are most valuable for them. Has knowledge changed - and how do we address this? Do we still need to teach 20th century skills as well - do we think there's a place for content knowledge, cohort-based, standardised, assessment driven curriculum silos? If we do, what are our justifications for continuing to do things the way we always have, and if we don't, then how do we go about reshaping our institution to fit our vision of 21st learners.

21st Century Learning Design is described as 'a global professional development program for teachers and schools to develop more innovative pedagogies that develop students skills for the 21st Century'. The organisations defines the key skills our students will need as:
  • Collaboration
  • Knowledge construction
  • Self regulation
  • Real world problems and innovation
  • ICT for learning
  • Skilled communication

In New Zealand, what we do in the classroom is driven by the New Zealand Curriculum. An important component of this are the key competencies we should be instilling in our students. Those competencies are:
  • Thinking
  • Relating to others
  • Using language, symbols, and text
  • Managing self
  • Participating and contributing

These are considered important skills for creating life-long learners. There are some correlations between the 21CLD skills and NZ's key competencies, although you do need to tease out the competencies a bit to find them:
  • Thinking = real world problems and innovation, knowledge construction.
  • Participating and contributing, relating to others = collaborating
  • Managing self = self-regulation
  • Using language, symbols and text = skilled communication, ICT for learning

I think that the two strands fit quite comfortably with each other and that perhaps people get a bit caught up with vocabulary. We can quite comfortably use the curriculum, which is completely focused on producing life-long learners for the future, and at the same time be utlising the skills which have been identified by others.

 Here is my reflection on a 21st century skill that presents a problem I would like to address in my classroom - self-regulation:


How we apply these key competencies to ourselves as teachers and leaders is also signficant. Obviously there is a direct correlation between what we perceive our strengths to be and how it impacts on our teaching. I'm not big on collaborative activities (I'm waaay out of my comfort zone with the work I'm doing with the Mindlab), and I know that my reluctance to be pushed into doing group activities has made me reluctant to push some of my students into doing it. On the flip side, I tend to manage myself well, and so what I do with my classes is organised and well-resourced.

Ditto with my 21st century skills. I think I'm pretty good with communication and knowledge construction and these are evident in how I approach the classroom (and my peers). Got to work on that collaboration, mind you (not that I'm super bad at it, just know I could do better).

Of course, it's not really enough just to critically evaluate myself, it's what I choose to do next with my own key competencies and skills that is probably more important. What changes will I make to my practice? What changes will I encourage within my school? I guess the next 30 weeks will help me answer these questions.

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