#2 | 21st Century Learning

Hello everyone!! 

Your poor blogger is here, and she will try to explain 21st-century learning with her student and pre-service teacher identities.

I am pretty sure that you came across the division of abilities, which is “hard and soft skills”. People need to separate these skills to gain a better understanding of them due to their acquisition and implementation in real-life situations. 

At their core, we can say that hard skills are specific abilities to perform specific tasks such as learning a language, database management, and data mining. Whereas soft skills are considered to be more lifelong personal habits, for instance, creativity, critical thinking, and organization. 

So, you must be thinking, why did I bother to tell you all about these things that have no connection with the title? Because when I first looked at this 21st-century learning framework, I immediately thought of soft skills. Don’t you think these are kind of related and serve the same purpose: being a competent person who can adjust themselves to changes without struggling? 

When I try to imagine a perfect person, these skills are the ones that come to my mind to describe this perfect human being. So let’s look at them in the educational context. 

As mentioned in the Framework for 21st Century Learning, these abilities are expected to be internalized by students to “engage in the learning process and graduate better prepared to thrive in today’s digitally and globally interconnected world” (Battelle for Kids, 2019). 

With time, there is a constant change in things, and no one can ignore these, as we need to keep up with them in order to survive in our world, which is gradually becoming more advanced. Therefore, teachers are the ones who hold responsibility for the well-being of each generation. To educate students, teachers have to educate themselves in the first place. Thus, it is literally our job to be aware of the necessities of our time and adjust our teaching accordingly. Nowadays, as you can see, there is no specific age to learn something; we have all become lifelong learners, and that’s one of the most important aims of 21st-century learning.

So, when you look at the second picture, I want you to just stop and think: How many qualities do you believe you have in yourself? Do you think you use them constantly? Is it an achievable goal for someone to have and apply all of them perfectly?

 I think with these self-reflection questions, we can be more aware of where we are and what we need to do to become more qualified students and teachers. 

Thank you for bearing with me till the end of this post, I hope I made you at least question a few things in your mind. See you in the next post!! 

References 

Battelle for Kids. (2024, January 8). P21 Resources | 21st Century Learning Resources | Battelle for Kids. https://www.battelleforkids.org/insights/p21-resources/