The following came out a Twitter chat I had this morning when I checked in on the #21CLBanff twitter stream.

I will update with some of the thread but here is my last contribution to the chat today #sohesays

For me the piece below speaks to what happens in the class room between the teachers and the students.  It’s about equipping students with the habits & tools to make inferences, generate powerful questions, pursue a line of inquiry (versus researching), and basically dealing with a world that is ambiguous and doesn’t always come with “correct answers”.

“… the skills students need in the 21st century are not new…  What’s actually new is the extent to which changes in our economy and the whorl mean that our collective success depends on having such skills…”

“This distinction between skills that are novel and skills that must be taught more intentionally & effectively ought to lead policy makers to different education reforms than they are now considering.”

“If the skills were indeed new, then perhaps we would need a radical overhaul of how we think about content and curriculum.  But if the issue is, instead, that schools need to be more deliberate about teaching critical thinking, collaboration, and problem solving to all students, then the remedies are more obvious, although still intensely challenging.”

— Rotherham & Willingham “21st Century Skills” Not New, But a Worthy Challenge” American Educator, Spring 2010

Via Roland Case, August 2011