I've been playing in my mind with the differences among -- and the implications of -- creating a profile of a successful 21st-century high school graduate vs. designing the learner of the future vs. defining a set of competencies that well-prepared 21st century students and learners must have. Maybe we need to be asking not only what these future learners should have and might be, but what they will want, and who they will want to be.
At both the Deeper Learning Alliance's Deeper Learning Conference in San Diego last April and the Asia Society's Partnership for Global Learning Annual Meeting in Brooklyn in June, various schools and organizations shared profiles of competent and effective students/graduates and teachers; at last summer's Project Zero Future of Learning Institute, some participants engaged in design processes that yielded prototypes for the learner of the future.
In all of these gatherings, there was talk of specific competencies and the best ways to help students achieve them. I was glad that in all three of these settings, participating educators were asked to envision people and competencies simultaneously. When educators and policy-makers focus exclusively on competencies and the means of assessing them, they too easily lose sight of the fact that (a) people are not defined solely by their competencies, (b) people aren't important solely because of their competencies, and (c) people don't define themselves solely -- or even most meaningfully -- in terms of their competencies. While competencies matter, the whole child must remain whole, must not be redesigned or re-envisioned as only a learning machine.
Designing and envisioning are related but not identical processes. The idea of designing -- as opposed to envisioning -- people ("learners") makes me uncomfortable, even when I recognize that its intent is deeper understanding and better advocacy for educational programs and approaches. There is an important but fine line between cultivating future learners and citizens and engineering them. Too easily those learners/citizens can become the objects of, rather than the collaborators in, efforts intended to benefit them.
In contrast, envisioning the "well-prepared" graduate or student reminds us that people tend to resist being molded (though not always deliberately) and aren't born first-and-foremost to learn in and participate in a market-driven economy. Human satisfaction generally requires more than, or different from, the promise and the realization of successful economic participation (although successful participation can make possible some very satisfying life experiences -- like reading a good book (and not worrying about the economy) while lying in a lake-side hammock).
All of that said, my experiences at the Deeper Learning Conference did the most to challenge my unexamined resistance to entrepreneurism's influence on conceptions of 21st-century education. Various conversations, sessions and speeches increased my understanding of the practical and aspirational rationales for innovation, entrepreneurship, and design, in the classroom and beyond it: to make the world a better place for oneself and for others. Prior to San Diego, my own limited perspective had predisposed me to associate entrepreneurism with for-profit business initiatives.
When my need to understand more led me to explore on the internet, I encountered so many kinds of entrepreneurism: social, cultural, artist, to name a few. What these varieties all acknowledged was the importance of people's employment and employability from and individual and societal perspective: making a living meaningfully, or the potential to do so, is essential not only to the individual worker's wellbeing, but to widespread social stability and desirable change. Thus, good education is -- at least in part -- about creating a range of entrepreneurs who have jobs -- and whose successful new products, businesses, and services better the lives of many.
There was a lot of appealing talk about innovation itself in San Diego. To begin to embrace innovation as more about the socio-economic need of the society than the bloated economic desires of society's individual members is something I can do. If a major challenge is to reduce debt, create employability, and foster employment that aligns with rather than falls short of workers' educational skill levels and aspirations, then innovation is critical. The idea that "new jobs" created through innovation and entrepreneurial efforts can allow people to use their educations in pursuing their own aspirations while meeting the needs of the world and people around them inspires me. I am especially inspired when innovation's proponents speak publicly about the importance of interdisciplinary thinking in all of this: the academic disciplines have important roles to play, though they must become team players that resist their historical tendency to exist as separate gated academic communities.
All of this raises the issue of challenging the status quo. These issues and ideas will probably not be foregrounded when most schools open their doors a few weeks from now for the newest academic year. Time to envision the profile and competencies of successful status quo challengers and institution transformers?
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