What should we be teaching?

What should we be teaching?

This question received significant attention at the November 2011 Learning and the Brain Conference in Boston. With the changes in our world and in our students, what should we, then, teach?

The question reveals a consequential recognition: some of what we’ve taught and how we’ve been teaching it lacks relevance for today’s world and today’s learners. Specifically, several presenters suggested education’s over-reliance on questions that have one right answer may prevent teachers from emphasizing the content and skills that will benefit today’s students. Tony Wagner¹, Co-Director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, refers to this tendency as “answer-itis” and defines it as education’s attempts to “answer questions that are misdirected.”

Wagner’s “Survival Skills”

What we should emphasize instead, according to Wagner, are seven “survival skills” that today’s students (and many of today’s working adults) need for thriving in an increasingly technological world. Here are his suggested emphases and a few of my thoughts:

1. Critical thinking and problem solving. Wagner suggests one reason critical thinking is not emphasized more in education is because we, as educators, have failed to define it. I agree. For years I’ve heard teachers talk about “critical thinking” in vague, “we must” terms, or limiting critical thinking to the use of a questioning taxonomy. Climbing a ladder of questioning does not teach students how to think critically. We need to not only define critical thinking, but also identify the knowledge and skills that contribute to it. With those elements identified, we can begin to explore the developmental nature of each. That, in turn, may provide a more defined “road map” for intentionally equipping students for critical thinking.
2. Collaboration and leading through influence. Many schools address this idea directly in their mission statements. Many others have mission statements that imply it. We want to graduate individuals who “make a mark” in the world, who can see needs and meet them, accept challenges and attack them, and create opportunities and capitalize on them. In an increasingly connected world, collaboration becomes inevitable. Again, we tend to view this as a vague ability that we may “grade” on the right side or back of a report card (e.g., “Works well with others.”). But is there more we could do? Could we teach students, for example, how to view conflict as a “landscape” with challenges, strategies for overcoming those challenges, and with practice in using those strategies? In her book Failure to Communicate, Holly Weeks² lays out just such approaches to turning conflict into opportunities for collaboration. As for leading through influence, Howard Gardner offers some insight on the “minds of the future”: disciplined, synthesizing, creative, respectful, and ethical. What are we doing, within classrooms and through educational systems, to develop these influential minds?
3. Agility and adaptability. Resilience and the learning mindset have gotten researcher’s attention, and studies have provided teachers with both insights into why effort is more valuable than immediate success (or “fatal failure”) and strategies for fostering a correct mindset in students. We need intentional, daily action to develop these foundational drivers of success in our students.
4. Initiative and entrepreneurialism. Wagner made it clear: “Innovation is fostered by prizing failure.” The role of failure in learning, and how teachers respond to it, has received significant attention, especially since Carol Dweck’s important research on mindsets. In short, students who see failure as part of learning generally outperform students who see failure as “fatal.” By failure, I do not mean receiving a poor grade because no work has been completed. Resilience enables failure—an effort that falls short of the target—to become a gateway for learning better ways of thinking and/or doing. How can teachers foster this critical mindset in students? Dr. Robert Brooks offers one of my favorite examples. When a student’s effort falls short, Brooks suggests the following approach: “This strategy you’re using doesn’t seem to be working. Let’s figure out why and how we can change the strategy so that you are successful.”³ Study this simple statement. Note how Brooks 1) focuses on the strategy (not the student), 2) acknowledges that the strategy is what is not working (again, not the student), 3) accepts responsibility for helping to identify the problem and its solution, 4) emphasizes that the strategy can be changed, and 5) communicates a belief that the student can and will be be successful. Approaches like this foster resilience, which is critical for creating and maintaining an environment that invites initiative and entrepreneurialism.
5. Effective oral and written communication. I’ve advocated an increased emphasis on and improved teaching of writing for several years. In many classrooms, teaching writing is equated with teaching grammar. This is unfortunate. Research indicates that almost no, if any, relationship exists between mechanics instruction and writing achievement. You could train world-champion sentence diagrammers and never produce a student with exemplary writing skills. The relationship just does not exist. Teaching students to write well involves teaching them to revise, to craft the raw material of a first draft into communication that deserves attention. Thankfully, programs like Writer’s Stylus have started to shift the classroom focus to teaching students revision skills. We need such an emphasis in every classroom.
6. Accessing and analyzing information. Dr. Judy Willis⁴ echoes this idea, stating that executive functions, like analysis, are the skill set for 21st century success. The role technology plays in upping the importance of such thinking skills is obvious. We can no longer “prepare children for a digital world in a factory, ‘factoid,’ system. Students need to be prepared to evaluate new information & modify their understandings as new info comes available.” We must be more intentional in equipping students with thinking skills of the highest quality.
7. Curiosity and imagination. According to Wagner, innovation is the new engine of our economy; being curious and creative now drives professional accomplishment. Curiosity empowers self-directed learning, and I appreciate W. Gardner Campbell’s recent discussion of it being a necessary goal of education. Campbell states, “I can only conclude that effective education for the 21^st century must trade compliance for curiosity. The assignments we craft, the curricula we plan, the degrees we grant must share a core commitment to help our students go beyond the limits they imagine for themselves…” No longer will mastering one skill or one static body of knowledge enable a lifetime of employment. We must be equipping students with the ability to direct their own learning and instill in them the curiosity to empower such growth.

In short, we risk maintaining educational systems that grow increasingly irrelevant if we do not attend to and respond to changes in society. While a great education is an asset in every time and place, what constitutes a “great education” may change as cultures advance. When was the last time we really looked around us—outside the walls of our institutions—and asked ourselves, “What should we, then, be?”

It may be time for just such an examination.

References

1. Wagner, T. “Teaching, Leading, and Learning in the 21^st Century,” (presentation at Learning and the Brain: Using Brain Research to Enhance Cognitive Skills for the Future, Boston, MA, November 18-20, 2011).
2. Weeks, H., Failure to Communicate: How Conversations Go Wrong and What You Can Do to Right Them (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2008).
3. Brooks, R., “Mindsets for School Success: Effective Educators and Resilient, Motivated Learners.” (presentation at Learning and the Brain: Using Brain Research to Enhance Cognitive Abilities and Achievement, November 2007).
4. Willis, J. “Brain Research to Help Students Develop Their Highest Cognitive Potential,” (presentation at Learning and the Brain: Using Brain Research to Enhance Cognitive Skills for the Future, Boston, MA, November 18-20, 2011).

Image

‘Pillar of the Times’ (The Hartford Times Building, Hartford CT) by jwcreate.com

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