Reflections on 21st century skills
December 7th, 2006 | by Tim Wilson |I was doing my GTD weekly review today and ran across the following notes I made in during a meeting a while ago:
What skills do successful, creative adults have?
- They ask really good questions, and they can formulate strategies to find the answers.
- They take intellectual risks.
- They are persistent in the face of challenges
We need less individual assessment of student work.
- We work in teams, students should get assessed in teams more often.
- Is that fair? Sure. Who knows the most isn’t nearly as important as it used to be.
There you have it. A random brain dump posted here mostly so I can go back later and find it easily.
Tags: gtd
5 Responses to “Reflections on 21st century skills”
By Doug Johnson on Dec 7, 2006 | Reply
Tim,
The start of your successful adult skills list sounds like Costas’s Habits of Mind which I have always thought was great. http://www.habits-of-mind.net/ If you don’t know it, it’s worth taking a look at.
All the best,
Doug
By CWorthington on Dec 26, 2006 | Reply
In response to the following:
“We need less individual assessment of student work.
We work in teams; students should get assessed in teams more often.
Is that fair? Sure. Who knows the most isn’t nearly as important as it used to be.”
““““““““““
Dear Teacher of My Child~
As My Child plays and works with the others in a group ~ please DO take moments to assess My Child’s individual strengths, and please DO take moments to notice areas in which My Child has need of catching up.
By individually assessing My Child’s understandings and misunderstandings, I have confidence you will then be able to scaffold the way for My Child to fill in learning gaps and develop the learning know-how to be, both, a leader and a follower.
Group work is of great value; however, individual assessment should NOT be overshadowed by the assessment of composite group effort; there is a must and need for BOTH assessment views in the classroom. As teachers increase the inclusion of group assessment, it is not necessary to decrease individual assessment.
There is another important consideration for educators for our 21-century journey as this topic is discussed:
It is important to shy away from polarized thinking in which we view one teaching approach as excluding another; instead, view how the new may compliment and enrich the past (e.g., taking the best from multiple approaches and then creatively weave and meld to scaffold differentiated instruction).
~ A Middle-Grade Teacher
By Tim Wilson on Dec 26, 2006 | Reply
Individualized assessments are going away any time soon. I would argue for a more balanced approach (as you seem to suggest). You need to assess individual results, but let’s make sure that we encourage students to self-evaluate too. When I was a classroom teacher I often told my students that one of my goals was to teach them to be ruthless self-evaluators. (With a slightly less cruel connotation of ruthless than one would find in the dictionary.) I also used to tell them that successful people are always evaluating themselves while less successful people are always evaluating others.
I’m all for a less polarized thinking.
By Doug Arnold on Dec 27, 2006 | Reply
Downplaying individual achievement is cultural poison. The phrase “designed by committee” will never be a benchmark for greatness or quality.
By Debby Dietrich on Jan 18, 2007 | Reply
I still remember vividly my daughter’s eleventh grade debate project. The debate was the majority of the quarter’s grade as it was a large research project and work on it would take up most of the quarter. The teacher assigned 3 to a team, one high level student, one average student and one lower level student.
Of course eleventh grade is the most important year, grade-wise, for college so my daughter was focused on getting an “A,” since she wanted to go to a top tier school. She actually had a good group. The other two members showed up and tried to do the portions of the debate they were assigned. But, the low level student’s work was garbage. The average ability student’s work was “C” quality so basically my daughter did the work of three. It was hyteria time around our house, but she rose to the challenge and got the “A” for the group single-handedly.
Her experience was far better than her girl friend. That group of three only had two students who chose to participate. The other group member refused to do any work or show up for any meetings. This third person’s contribution was to threaten to beat up the other two girls if they did not include her name on the project.
Then there was my graduate class where one group member refused to participate or show up for any of our meetings. We were cowards, because we didn’t want to appear racist so we put her name on our project anyway. In a later class I refused to have her in my group when she asked to join us.
Then there was my daughter’s roommate after college. She was doing graduate work and also chose not to contribute. My daughter would listen to the phone messages as the various groups this girl was supposed to be working with would call and remind her of the meeting and then call in vain asking why she wasn’t there, each subsequent message a study in mounting despair.
I’ve used group work with my classes, but never when it involved a grade of any consequence. To do otherwise rewards the slackers and punishes the motivated.