21st Century Competencies, Environments, and Assessments Marlene Scardamalia University of Toronto, OISE Canada
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has started referring to contemporary societies as “innovation-driven.�
Governments Everywhere Calling for Innovation …new ideas are essential to the development of human capital and are key engines of economic growth, drivers of market productivity, and sources of cohesion for all nations… … (G8summit, 2006)
The Centre for Educational Innovation: ‌ generate innovation, make the school system easier to understand and organize evidence which contributes to policymaking on education in Chile.
Innovation is not just about new ways to make money Innovation is needed for economic progress, but‌ --The need for new knowledge, new solutions, extends well beyond the economic sphere. --New knowledge is needed to deal with urgent and increasingly complex problems of health, environment, resources, crime, corruption, and oppression (Homer-Dixon (2000, 2006). --One of the most pressing needs is for knowledge of how to deal with complexity itself.
How Can Schools Increase People’s Ability to Create Knowledge? A mid-20th century answer: Develop skills, personal characteristics, habits of mind, and attitudes conducive to knowledge creation. There are no tested or even very plausible ways of achieving these objectives. The Knowledge Building alternative: Learn to create knowledge by actually doing it. This requires finding ways to support novices in carrying out knowledge creation.
A Humanistic Perspective on Education for Innovation Education in its largest sense means initiating students into the world-wide knowledge-creating culture. This is neither cultural transmission nor importing of a foreign culture. It is more like cultural nurturance. Culturally Sensitive Innovation
Knowledge Building Knowledge building represents an attempt to refashion education in a fundamental way, so that it becomes a coherent effort to initiate students into a knowledge creating culture. Accordingly, it involves students not only developing knowledge building competencies but also students coming to see themselves and their work as part of the civilization-wide effort to advance knowledge frontiers.
Education for Innovation Challenges • Sustained creative work with ideas • Beyond the basic literacies • Beyond common curriculum standards and tests
• Transliteracy (coherent integration of •
information drawn from diverse sources) “Innovation must be part and parcel of the ordinary” (Drucker, 1985)
Success will Depend on Challenging a set of Widely-Held Principles
• basics must be addressed before •
students can be engaged in higher-order skills; and higher-order skills must be tackled by working backward from pre-determined goals
Beyond Learning to Knowledge Building • Innovate from the beginning, learn • •
basics in the process Beyond an effort to keep abreast of advancing knowledge to contributing to its advancement Beyond cultural replication and lifelong learning to lifelong innovation
First-Order Challenge: Shift from Environments that Undermine Creative Work with Ideas to Environments that Foster Knowledge Creation
Ideas at the Center/Knowledge Building seen Through the Transliteracy Lens
• Idea diversity -> ideas in complex configurations; need to deal with complexity • Idea improvement -> information beyond given resources and grade level; search/read to solve problems; design research • Multiple information sources -> need to analyze authoritative source information • Complex discourse -> need to deal with metadiscourse and promising ideas
• Multiple explanations -> need support for explanatory coherence/rise above
Second-Order Challenges Require Innovations that Address Unsolved Problems • Technology Innovation: Next-generation knowledge building environments and assessments that advance “the basics” and 21st century competencies in parallel, and on a large scale
• Social Innovation: Policy makers, teachers, and students alike sharing responsibility for educational breathroughs
Unsolved Problems • The rich get richer challenge • Collective responsibility for idea •
improvement Next-generation knowledge building environments and assessments that advance “the basics” and 21st century competencies in parallel, and on a large scale
Unsolved Problems • The rich get richer challenge • Collective responsibility for idea •
improvement Next-generation knowledge building environments and assessments that advance “the basics” and 21st century competencies in parallel, and on a large scale
Unsolved Problems • The rich get richer challenge • Collective responsibility for idea •
improvement Next-generation knowledge building environments and assessments that advance “the basics” and 21st century competencies in parallel, and on a large scale
The Rich Get Richer Challenge
The more you know the more you can learn. This is as close to a law of nature as learning research has come.
Learning--> Knowledge Building The Rich Get Richer Knowledge Creation
Technology Knowledge knowledge inequities magnified
technology inequities magnified
ingenuity inequities magnified
Divide
Divide
Divide
Unsolved Problems • The rich get richer challenge • Collective responsibility for idea •
improvement Next-generation knowledge building environments and assessments that advance “the basics” and 21st century competencies in parallel, and on a large scale
Collective Responsibility for Idea Improvement Students as part of a civilization-wide effort to advance knowledge frontiers.
Knowledge Building: What is Different? If compelled to put into one sentence what is different: giving students collective responsibility for idea improvement
Knowledge Building: What is Different? --Beyond Inquiry: Education for Innovation With most inquiry approaches, responsibility for idea improvement remains with the teacher or curriculum or educational technology designer
Taking responsibility for idea improvement To take over such responsibility, students have to recognize that their own ideas, like ideas in general, are subject to improvement. Ideas must be treated as having an out-in-theworld existence. They are not equivalent to personal beliefs but are more like the theories and inventions that have a public life in knowledge-based organizations and societies.
Traditional school: An idea--you get it or you don’t get it... It’s right or wrong.
Knowledge Building--You research…the more you know the more you know what you don’t know
Establish Knowledge Building Discourse as a New Norm This requires connected knowledge building communities—policy makers, teachers, students‌all taking responsibility for educational breakthroughs
Shared Responsibility for establishing Hubs of Innovation
The Building Cultural Capacity for Innovation (BCCI) Vision Building cultural capacity for innovation, starting in early childhood and making use of all cultural resources both in and out of school Young people as junior members of a knowledgecreating civilization One civilization, many cultures Symposium—Saturday, 4:15
Building Cultural Capacity for Innovation The potential for collective responsibility for idea improvement--is in the culture, not the technology, and yet technological innovation is essential
Unsolved Problems • The rich get richer challenge • Collective responsibility for idea •
improvement Next-generation knowledge building environments and assessments that advance “the basics” and 21st century competencies in parallel, and on a large scale
Next-Generation Knowledge Building Environments: Two intertwined lines of development 1. Multi-purpose , multimedia online environments that capture discourse across media and space, support meaningful learning, and are optimized for sustained creative work with ideas. 2. Sophisticated assessment tools that provide feedback to advance “the basics� and 21st century competencies in parallel and on a large scale
Embedded, Concurrent, and Transformative Assessment: Current Tools and Findings
Research Results: Span Basics + 21st C --Standardized test scores in reading comprehension, vocabulary, and spelling --Ability to read difficult texts --Quality of questions and comments --Depth of explanation --Graphical literacy --Conceptual change --Math problem solving --Portfolio commentaries --Collaborative processes --Inquiry processes --Results beyond grade-level expectations --Emergence of new competencies
Next Steps: Innovation ~ Idea Improvement ~ “Rise Above” --Producing new ideas is easy (at least for children); improving ideas is hard. We need to make the process more intellectually engaging over longer spans of time and for a broader range of students --“Rise-above” requires creation of a new, higher order knowledge object. We need to make advances—as well as plateaus and dead ends—more evident to all
--Significant innovation requires sustained creative work with ideas. We need greater support for pervasive knowledge building
We are Designing a Dashboard for the Assessment of “the Basics” and 21st Century Competencies
Visual from “The Birth of a Word” by Deb Roy
A Workspace Dedicated to Ideas Moving ideas to increasingly high levels: We are experimenting with new metadiscourse and promising ideas tools
Metadiscourse Tool
Promising Ideas Moved to Increasingly High Levels
When I said that “you have to hold your hand in tight because the ball is pulling it out” maybe that’s the same with the planets and the sun. Their orbit is throwing them outwards but the suns gravity is keeping them in so the stay in the same orbit instead of getting farther away. And maybe that all the planets keep the sun ballanced so that it doesn’t just fallow them outwards. (I read in a space magazine that they think they found some planets on the other side of the Sun. Im not sure if that’s right) so maybe they pull the other way the keep it in the same place.
Send to View Titled “SUN’S GRAVITY” Their orbit is throwing them outwards but the suns gravity is keeping them in
A Workspace Dedicated to Ideas Moving Ideas to increasingly high levels: We are designing a “rise-above� interface to make higher-order achievements evident to all
Notes on an Infinite Canvas
A Workspace Dedicated to Ideas
Rise Above and Going Deep to Identify Big Ideas
A Workspace Dedicated to Ideas
Rise Above and Connectedness Across MultiLevel Knowledge Building Communities
Visual from “The Birth of a Word” by Deb Roy
A Workspace Dedicated to Ideas
Pervasive Knowledge Building
A Workspace Dedicated to Ideas Pervasive Knowledge Building
Building Cultural Capacity for Innovation Symposium, Saturday, 4:15 Chair: Marlene Scardamalia (CANADA) Carl Bereiter (CANADA) David Istance (FRANCE) Paula Jimenez (CHILE) Cesar Nu単ez (BRASIL)