21st Century Recipe
I am frustrated about something.
We talk a lot about the changing world and how education must adjust. We have plenty of workshops and training courses with ’21st century learning’ in the title. And I think we all can appreciate that our challenge is to educate children for their future, not our past.
But this isn’t why I am frustrated.
My frustration stems from that the fact that no one seems to be acknowledging that we yet to create a model for 21st century learning that is applicable across contexts. Why isn’t there more talk about this?
Yes, I know, some may claim to have a model; but I have yet to see any research-based justification of claims. There certainly are some great things happening in education, with pockets of excellence to be found in many locations. But when will the real transformation take place? When the regular people who work in education have a model to work with?
We have lots of ingredients, but we don’t have a recipe.
I was reading somewhere the other day about research that has been done regarding how to best help countries develop. What the research said, in a nutshell, was hardly surprising: countries need to develop across a wide range of areas, not just one or two, if development is to be sustainable. In other words, there is no sense having great roads but poor health care; or good education but lack the institutions that will provide the rule of law. Progress in one area must be aligned with progress in other areas.
There’s a connection here. Too often new educational ideas are thrust into environments where they are well-received and professionally embraced, but other systems and areas within the school are not ready for the change. New ideas are not sustainable because they are not aligned with systems in other areas. From what I can see, other ‘systems and areas’ can include everything from the mindset of staff and leadership to resource allocation to timetables to building design to school calendars to appropriate PD. And this is no where near a complete list.
So I see two major problems for us:
1. We don’t have comprehensive recipe for 21st century learning. There is no blueprint for change.
2. We are trying to renovate the house we are living in. But we can’t make the sort of change going from room to room, because the entire foundation of the house needs to be changed. Every room needs renovation at the same time.
Big challenges lie ahead. But we won’t get there until more of us acknowledge that a collection of ingredients is not the same thing as having a recipe.
