Blog #1: Learning in the New Age

Hello everyone, welcome to my first blog reflection post!

    As the world changes, the ideas and thoughts on education and skills are changing with it. Thinking about new skills that are needed in this changing world brings forth many questions about what an education needs to involve in classrooms today. When thinking about '21st century skills', a lot of varying ideas surprised me. To me, 21st century skills include collaboration, technology use and interpersonal skills. In a classroom today, these seem to be difficult to incorporate- why the resistance?

   

     The main points of this discussion were the importance of updating what skills society thinks are important and how these can be seen in a classroom setting. In a technological based society, there needs to be a shift in the main focuses of education. STEM education needs attention and needs to be altered for todays's world (Davis et al., 2019). Most of todays's classroom designs, curriculum, teaching methods and evaluations come from the 1700s and 1800s (Davis et al., 2019). What?!?! This is important to note, as the current classroom needs to move away from what I consider 'old school' teaching methods and incorporate a new way of thinking. But with the rise in technology, is it not important to include STEM into everyday education? What is important here is that the emphasis should be on different not more when enhancing STEM education (Davis et al., 2019). A model of schooling that focuses on what learners know and can do instead of what knowledge they lack and what they cannot do is well overdue (Davis et al., 2019). Well, that was well said! 

    When thinking about the importance of STEM education and the new skills needed in this evolving society, I felt confused. This confusion was not about why this is important but more on why schools of today have not evolved to teaching this way already. It has been long known that learners are agents actively engaged with the world around them and can make contributions to society, they are not fixed vessels who need to be completed (Davis et al., 2019). The education system seems to be stuck in the past, focusing on tests results, how fast learners can resight information and so many other things that contradict what 21st century skills seem to entail. 

    As a future teacher, I hope to create a classroom that inspires a transdisciplinary viewpoint. This view is connected to the notion that complex real-world problems require insights from more than one discipline (Davis et al., 2019). To do this, I need to understand that every learner in my classroom is unique and has differing prior knowledge and lived experiences. To teach 21st century skills to learners, it is important to note that the historical definition of education is inadequate in today's classrooms and society. I am not quite sure what this 21st century way may look like just yet. In my eyes, it is more hands-on inquiry-based learning, focused on understanding why things are being done and curriculum that is focused on students' needs and interests to prepare them for jobs in the future. We to develop a future work force of critical thinkers! 

As always, I invite you back to my blog in the following weeks, feel free to leave any comments or questions! 

References 

Davis, B., Francis, K., & Friesen, S. (2019). STEM Education by Design Opening Horizons of                         Possibility. Routledge.