Road to 21st Century Competence

Managing an enquiry-based learning style includes the ability to search, produce, evaluate, edit, and publish data and ideas. It is essential students learn how to set personal goals, plan their studies, and assess their progress, independently as well as collaboratively. In managing an enquiry-based learning style it is important that students take responsibility for their own, as well as their group’s learning. Students should develop an understanding of the process for succeeding using an enquiry-based learning method.

Understanding the diversity of information and the ability to think critically and question concepts are fundamental skills in interpreting and understanding data. Information can be formed in a variety of ways: from a diverse range of sources, personal experiences, academic authority or even deductive reasoning, to name a few. Generally, real world phenomena are not black and white, but rather they are related to numerous perspectives and disagreements and thus the school community should support students in interpreting ambiguous and conflicting information. It is essential to attain the ability to assess the credibility of information.

Creative thinking requires time and space for pondering, innovating and discovering. Unprejudiced study of new perspectives and subjects aids in overcoming barriers to higher thought. Gamification and playfulness can also ease the ability to be creative and imaginative. It is important to understand that creativity is not some mystical birth-right which an individual is born with, but instead it can be learned. For full defintion, refer Pg. 18 of Road to 21st Century Competence

The student is not a passive actor, but rather has a significant role in their own learning. The student’s ability to be an effective learner can be reinforced by guiding them towards understanding that they are stakeholders in their own learning. Self-confidence and independent learning management skills improve as the student garners positive experiences from being vested in their own education. Self-image and confidence in one’s own abilities have a stark effect on learning success, for example by how a student reacts to facing new challenges and how ambitious their personal goals are.

Identifying your own strengths, habits, and learning strategies aids in developing one’s ability to think and learn how to learn. When the student visualises their own habits as a learner, they can consciously begin to develop themselves. On top of visualising the content of learning, it is important to map out one’s own learning process. Making the learning process transparent helps students understand all the facets of learning and how learning can be influenced. For further information, refer to Pg, 25 of Road to 21st Century Competence

Reflecting over one’s own learning goals and choices helps in creating a learning path for oneself. Students are supported in researching opportunities and are provided support in making both long-term, and short-term commitments in the fields they are interested in. In contemplating these decisions and opportunities, it is important to be unprejudiced and encourage questioning of preconceived understandings of career paths (e.g. gender stereotypes). The objective is to teach students the ways in which they can independently influence their own futures.

The purpose of the ability to co-operate is for students to learn how to actively listen to each other and debate respectfully so as to ensure everyone feels they are members of the group. The teacher has a vital role in enabling the learning of social interaction skills and setting an example for effective communication. The teacher also should foster a culture of interaction in the classroom, school, as well as in wider learning environments. It is important to direct students to work and develop ideas together in a group, which also serves to improve their thinking skills

Social interaction that aims to deliver diversified learning and create new knowledge can give birth to something greater than the sum of its parts. We can overcome our individual limitations by truly learning to collaborate with one another. Students can learn the value of collaborative work by sharing responsibilities over mutual learning goals, and exerting oneself to reach those goals while supporting your peers.

Building cultural identity includes enlightening oneself with knowledge of a wide range of cultures. As such, school work should introduce students to their own cultural background, family heritage, life philosophies and what it means to be a citizen of the world in general. Encountering other cultures is an essential part of constructing one’s own cultural identity. It is important to consider one’s own and common cultural backgrounds and cultural choices. Students should be encouraged to view their own, as well as others’ multicultural diversity as a constructive force and a source of strength

Students should be introduced to various art forms, traditions and cultures. Encouraging students to find art forms that can offer them ways of expressing themselves better and expose them to meaningful sensations will help grow them into mature, culturally empathetic and emotionally intelligent individuals. Students are also directed to interpret cultures through multiple lenses and contexts. Students should be offered situations in which they can experience and examine various forms of culture and arts through different perspectives

Students are guided to identify and name emotions in order to regulate their responses to different situations, as well as understand why others react as they do. Positive experiences form the basis of healthy self-esteem. Constructive feedback should be given in a way that empowers students to develop the skills they already possess and to offer opportunities to develop new competences. It is important to focus on both positive and negative emotional experiences. Extreme emotions should also be processed together in order to think about how these can be best expressed. Additionally, students should be encouraged to regulate their long-term affective states and activity levels.

It is important to offer students opportunities to practise self-expression and presentation skills in a diverse range of situations. These skills can be practised by holding a speech, a performance arts piece, creative writing, or even a physical, or digital, presentation.

The use of various communication methods acts as a prerequisite for cultural participation. These include, but are not limited to, visual art, literature, fashion and music. It is important to encourage students to participate and combine multiple methods of self-expression. Cultural participation is seen as a way of influencing oneself and others, and as a part of building identity.

The school is an important place to practise time management. Learning to regulate everyday activities and duties independently (e.g. time estimation and scheduling) can be achieved by practising as a group. Also, various tools such as timetables and online calendars should be exploited when improving students’ time management skills and progress is evaluated as a group. The goal is for students to master time management early in their education to foster independence and reduce their need for external support. Time management is not merely the ability to know what time it is: it is a broader skill in anticipating and estimating time-use, as well being adaptive and organised.

The purpose of teaching consumer skills is to aid students in becoming aware of their own consumer habits and the effects they have on the wider community, but also to aid students in developing their personal financial management skills. The school must encourage moderation, sharing and austerity. The ultimate goal of this is for students to learn ethical consumer habits, understand the meaning of a sustainable lifestyle and to view advertisement more critically. This understanding of how advertising is used to influence consumer behaviour is not to be underestimated. Moreover, recognising how digital monitoring systems work (e.g. eCommerce website product recommendations) is also considered a consumer skill. These observations regarding advertising should relate with the students’ personal experiences, which may differ from more traditional advertising (e.g. a public figure as a brand and idealising lifestyles)

Information technology has quickly become an integral part of billions of people’s lives. For this reason, it is important that the school is able to support the development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills, so that its use can become a constructive and positive force in their lives. These devices should be perceived as an additional resource, not something to lean on, and as such, the self-regulation of using technology should be an integral lesson for the students of today. It is important that students find useful, meaningful, and appropriate styles of working with information technology, that would not only support their learning, but also aid in managing their everyday lives.

One of the main goals of the school is to promote and improve the well-being and health of every member of the school community. Students must acknowledge that everyone can influence individual, as well as collective well-being and health with their actions. The purpose of learning this skill is for students to be able to detect factors that might promote or hinder well-being, while learning how to apply those lessons in their everyday lives. Researching relevant information and critically evaluating it are also integral parts of this competence. When discussing well-being and health it is important to emphasise how the physical, social and psychological dimensions are deeply intertwined.

Awareness of the factors that affect overall safety (e.g. traffic rules, fire safety, internet security) provides students with ways of acting that can prevent dangerous situations. Understanding essential safety signage (e.g. traffic signs, warning signs) must be mastered. The feeling of safety, or sense of security, plays a central role in general safety and the factors that influence it are to be discussed. Safety is not just a physical state of being, but also a state of mind. Students should be afforded opportunities to practise functioning appropriately in dangerous situations, so students learn to act in ways that foster security for themselves, as well as their community (e.g. in traffic, at school, at home).

Protecting personal privacy has undoubtedly become an essential part of managing everyday life. In today’s digital world, privacy protection has become a vital skill and students must be instructed to know how to create personal boundaries with which their privacy can be protected. The factors that threaten one’s privacy must be considered in order to prevent violations. The themes of physical boundaries, inviolability, touching, violence and bullying should be discussed as a part of the wider subject of personal privacy protection.

Communication is a cognitive tool, an integral part of thought in general, as well as a powerful way to influence the ways others think. Therefore, it is essential to understand that every piece of content or communication has a reason for having been created, and is authored by a human who is subject to their own context and perspective. Students are required to comprehend, distinguish and construct different modes of communication, such as verbal, written, symbolic and visual messages. Examining the motives behind these messages is an essential part in teaching communication and source criticism.

Students should be encouraged to find their strengths and build their identity through communication. Lesson plans should include opportunities to express one’s personality using messages, videos, images etc.

Students should be encouraged to combine different platforms, formats and techniques when creating content. Additionally, the lesson plans should help students realise how different types of public media function and how they can protect their privacy. The ability to evaluate messaging styles, understand intertextuality and recognise characteristics of different media types should be emphasised in students’ learning.

It is imperative to acknowledge that the messages and communications we create are always bound to our culture and worldview, as well as those messages being interpreted through the audience’s own cultural lens. A certain piece of content can have multiple meanings depending on the culture and the context of the author and viewer, which is why sometimes knowledge of a culture may be required for a correct interpretation. Students should be encouraged to learn from other cultures when interpreting the content and aesthetics of communications. Additionally, lessons plans should include opportunities to express one’s views on aesthetics.

Students are guided in understanding and using academic discipline-specific vocabulary in their schoolwork. The difference between colloquial language and scientific vocabulary is discussed and addressed.

On top of data collection, management, application and evaluation, the ability to produce data and media content is an increasingly essential skill for the future. Applying collected data to solve unresolved questions also requires the production of data.

In the last decade alone, the volume, production and availability of data has grown exponentially. Therefore, it has become ever more critical for students to know how to manage (saving and archiving, sharing, re-opening) the data they have collected. The student should know how to manage, edit and combine data for the purpose of applying the data to solve practical problems and produce new knowledge. When students begin to create a coherent, continuous and portfolio-like record of their own data collection and production activities, they simultaneously are able to examine how their own thinking has developed over time.

The amount and availability of data has grown explosively in the last decade, making the effective searching of reliable data ever more significant. Practising the use of different search engines and databases, understanding their operating logic, and assessing the credibility of sources are skills that the modern student cannot live without. It is essential to acknowledge, that in addition to online search engines there are various other methods for acquiring data and these are to be understood and applied in the way students learn.

It is important for students to have an understanding of how digital hardware works, the purposes of different kinds of software, and the fundamental concepts behind those programs. The ability to identify, choose and use numerous types of hardware and software is an undeniable prerequisite for exploiting ICT in a supporting role in learning and other academic activities.

It is important for students to identify the central principles and practises behind computer programming, and understand how they influence their everyday life. Fore more information, refer to Pg. 103 of Road to 21st Century Competence

It is important for students to understand the laws that govern online communication and know generally what is permitted, and what is not (e.g. privacy policy, copyrights etc.). The reasons and history behind copyright law should be critically evaluated and be viewed from the perspectives of different special interest groups to better understand why such legislation exists today.

There are unique risks to being online: copyrights and privacy protection exist to protect users from these risks, therefore, it is vital for young students to be guided in identifying these risks and secure their online activities accordingly.

Ergonomics plays an all-encompassing role in the lives of human beings. Ergonomics as a concept includes both the physical (fitness, sitting position etc.) and cognitive (rest, work processes) factors. Therefore, it is fundamental for teachers to ensure their students, as well as themselves, enjoy an ergonomic study environment and are aware of the factors that contribute to it.

Online social interaction is undoubtedly an integral element of a youth’s everyday life. Therefore, the school should take an active role in guiding students towards socially appropriate and safe methods of interacting with other people online. What are positive habits and good manners while communicating through messaging applications or digital platforms? How can these online interactions and platforms be utilised to support studying, or the dialogue between home and school? How to be safe on social media platforms? How to present yourself in public profiles? These are the kinds of questions students should consider in their learning as they grow into fully fledged members of the digital community.

Our locality is becoming globalised. We have less influence on shaping our own insular environments, as forces continue to exert their unpredictable influences on the ways we live. Therefore, encouraging students to bravely face unexpected situations, be open-minded and adaptive will equip them with the social tools they require in an incalculable future. Stu- dents should be enabled in learning how to handle uncertainty and how to seize opportunities both locally and globally.

Entrepreneurship is the future. Current trends suggest that people are more likely to earn their livelihoods through entrepreneurship and self-employment in the future, as small business ownership becomes ever more popular and viable through recent innovations, such as micropayments and crowdfunding. However, even if this prediction does not hold true with everyone, the ultimate responsibility of actively developing one’s skills and seeking new opportunities lies in the hands of the individual. It is essential to help students develop an adaptive, creative and broad-minded approach towards professional life, and encourage students to understand the realities of entrepreneurship: the risks, the rewards and responsibilities to society. Lesson plans should include opportunities to come up with new ideas and solutions that can be applied in students’ everyday life.

As the division of labour deepens, jobs and the competences they demand will be more cross-disciplinary in nature than ever before, and thus collaboration between specialised individuals will become fundamental to work success. It is important that schooling adapts to this by providing students with skills and experiences in collaboration with people from diverse backgrounds and disciplines. Simultaneously, students are able to hone their social interaction skills in general, and further understand the importance of social skills in attaining a successful future career.

Professional life is, and will be, project-based, in which groups work together for a common goal in a predefined timefra- me. Students should be guided in understanding their own roles and responsibilities in a larger professional totality, such as a project. This can be practised with sharing responsibilities, setting shared goals, reciprocity and evaluating the outco- mes of collaboration. Students should be encouraged to strive for setting long-term group goals in their learning projects, build on the results the projects create, while managing the emotions and challenges that arise from collaborative work.

Both digital and physical networks are increasingly mediating the flow data, knowledge and career/business opportunities. School work should direct students in recognising the importance of networks and how they can be utilised for attai- ning personal goals. Students should learn to network: meet new people, be inquisitive of others and present their own personality and competences succinctly and clearly. Students are encouraged take initiative in seeking communities and networks that support their activities and learn ways to contribute to a greater whole.

The school’s own local surroundings offer valuable opportunities for collaboration and partnering for schools. Active participation with organisations in the surrounding area offers chances for increasing students’ and local residents’ well- being. As part of getting to know the surrounding area, it is important to understand the features and qualities unique to the industries and businesses near the school and how they contribute to a grander whole.

Private businesses produce most of the products and services that we consume on a daily basis and they employ a significant portion of the population. Thus, it not surprising that companies and entrepreneurs hold a vital role not only in our personal lives as consumers, but as drivers of the global economy. Therefore, schoolwork should introduce students to entrepreneurship as a social phenomenon, while providing them with opportunities to gain personal entrepreneurial experiences. Partners, contacts and resources that are external to the school community should be capitalised for the benefit of students, such as through field trips and job shadowing.

Knowledge and skills together form the basis of a competence. Therefore, schoolwork should be organised in a way that gives students the opportunity to garner personal experiences of collaboration with actors that are external to the school community. It is essential that students have a chance to develop an understanding of how their school life will inform their future working lives.

During learning situations students should be involved in the evaluation, designing and refinement of the school’s environment. What we mean by “School Environment” is threefold: the physical, social and digital spaces that constitute a part of the student’s daily living environment. The goal is to strengthen the students’ sense of being vested in their education through the provision of positive experiences in participation.

Students are to be given opportunities to participate and exert influence outside the school in order to learn to adapt and apply all the skills learnt in school before graduating. Also, students are able to gain experience in societal influence and the concrete methods for participating in their own communities (e.g. volunteering, elections, non-governmental organisations).

One of the purposes of education is to support students’ growth into responsible citizens of democratic society. Students should know and understand how their society functions and what kinds of practices and structures it is built on. Societal policy-making should be studied in especial reference to equality, justice and sustainability.

Students should learn how to make decisions independently and take responsibility over their own actions. Lesson plans should support both individual and joint decision-making and provide students with exposure to situations that require these skills. Additionally, students should get to practise conflict resolution, how to get along with different people and how to take others into consideration.

The purpose of rules and agreements when working as a wider community or group must be brought up at school. Following these rules and agreements should be practised seamlessly in normal everyday school work. Additionally, understanding the interplay between rules, agreements, and trust in general should be emphasised in teaching. The students are involved in formulating shared rules, which helps to make them stakeholders in their school community and foster an understanding of why these rules exist. Furthermore, students should have the opportunity to be part of reforming obsolete rules through established processes of redress.

Students are encouraged to understand and assess the ways their choices affect the environment and their society both locally and globally. Students are guided to develop their personal relationships with nature, as this will foster genuine understanding of the reasons behind sustainable life choices. The ultimate goal is to aid students in understanding that the efforts of all members of society are needed in creating a brighter and more sustainable future.

Students should be encouraged to think on the options they have for their future. Understanding the cause-and-effect relationship between the past and the future is essential in giving weight to the decisions students make today for a better tomorrow. Students must be guided to ponder on what the future holds for society, and what active roles they can take as citizens of the future.