Applied Linguistics: Session 1

Dr Kia Karavas

Rethinking and redesigning education: Developing 21st century skills

If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our students oftomorrow (Dewey 1916)

• Multilevel and multifaceted changes in our society• Changes in the way our learners learn• Why are education systems in need of change• How should education systems change? Focus on 21st

century skills• What are 21st century skills?• What are the implications for teaching, learning and

assessment?

Structure of presentation

One key feature of our times is change:.. • Our world has changed….

Living in times of change..

Society has changed from an industrial society…

Mass producti

on

…to a knowledge society

Knowledge creatio

n and

knowledge sharin

g

Globalisation

ICT Development

Changes in labour market; changes

in the way we live, work

communicate, interact, learn

Drivers for change…

Globalization

Globalisation means that the world is more interconnected…

Advances in technology are one of the main reasons that globalisation has increased and intensified in the past decade.

The most visible symbol of globalization has been the spectacular development of information and communications technologies (ICT). The unique characteristics of ICT make it a powerful enabler of social and economic development through the creation of vast networks, shrinking space and time

The advancement of technology dissolves international boundaries and opens cultures to a whole new arena enabling globalisation to occur (Smith & Ward 2000).

IT and globalisation

• Disappearing borders are linking people’s lives more intensively and immediately than ever before. Unprecedented global flows in information, products, people, capital and ideas are redefining our political, economic and social lives.

• Population Movements and Multiculturalism

Effects of globalisation

Complex Interdependence

Global Networked Economy

Globalisation and the job market

•Work can increasingly be done anywhere … and there are more workers who can do it.•Technological advances (internet, interactive software, digital technologies) allow work to be carved up and shipped around globe.•Historic political and economic changes around the globe freed up more than 1 billion people—in places like Russia, Eastern Europe, China, India, etc.—who could potentially compete for that work.

• Companies focusing more on providing information than “things.”

• Companies are “flatter,” with less hierarchy and less direct supervision.

• Employees have more autonomy and responsibility.• Work is much more collaborative.• Jobs are less routine, predictable, and stable.

Changes in the workplace

Increase in demand for people with (formal) high and medium qualifications

Jobs occupied by highly qualified people are expected to rise by 16 million between 2010 and 2020

(European Commission)

By 2020, knowledge and skills intensive jobs

(e.g. managers, professionals ) will represent more than

42% of total employment (Cedefop)

In Europe, skills people have often don’t match skills needed to get

jobs. Over 80 million adults hampered by low levels of basic

skills

Jobs becoming more knowledge- and skills-

intensive: by 2020, 35% of all jobs will require high-level

qualifications

Changes in economy and labor market

• The proliferation of mass media, popular culture, digital technologies has changed the nature of texts and the nature of literacy in our everyday lives.

• Texts and textual practices have been influenced by local, global, social, cultural and technological change.

• With new communication technologies: Meaning is made in ways that are increasingly multimodal in which written modes interface with visual, audio, spatial, gestural patterns of meaning

Changes in the way we communicate..Multimodality

Multiple modes of meaning making

Multimodality

• The composition of our societies has changed…

Demographic change

Diversity in the classroom• Schools will need to be able to

educate a more diverse student population

• Schools will need to prepare students to interact in a more diverse society and collaborate in a more diverse work environment

• “The current generation of students was born into a highly technological world. They inhabit, navigate and communicate within a society which is both technologically-rich and information rich.

”Pedagogy Strategy: Learning in an online world. MCEETYA 2005.

• By the time today’s kindergarteners graduate from high school

• information will have doubled at least seven times• technological power will have doubled itself nearly nine times

Advances in IT and learners

• Information on the Web doubles every 90 days. The Web has 140 new first-time users a minute: almost 75 million a year.

• One hundred and fifty medical research papers are published on the Web each day, and the popular search engine Google processes 1 billion Web searches a day.

• In late 2007, the number of text messages sent in one day was greater than the population of our planet.

• The above pace of change means that:Undergraduates may access more information in one year than both their

grandparents would have accessed in a lifetime.Four out of five children starting school this year are likely to enter careers

that do not yet exist, using technology that has not yet been invented.Employees will change professions, not just jobs, four or five times in their

working life.

Advances in IT and learners

Our learners live in a universe of one trillion plus page internet. They view world events as they occur. They see world events in real time as they were happening halfway round the world

Adults look at going online as entering a foreign place called cyberspace.

21st Century Learners look at it as where they live. Their lives are digital and they communicate in a variety of modes with myriad materials that are made up of bits and bytes

Advances in IT and learners

Do you agree?Learners are the

same as they have always been.

The same methods that worked for me

when I was a student will work for my students now.

Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.

No…

• They are the first generation to grow up with computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones.

• Born around the time the PC was introduced, 20 percent began using computers between the ages of 5 and 8

• Children age six or younger spend an average of two hours each day using screen media (TV, videos, computers, video games), which nearly equals the amount of time they spend playing outside (1:58 hours versus 2:01 hours).

Today’s Learners Are Different

• Children may be developing greater digital literacy than siblings who are just a few years older. For example, over two million American children (ages 6–17) have their own Web site. Girls are more likely to have a Web site than boys (12.2 percent versus 8.6 percent).And, the ability to use nontext expression—audio, video, graphics—appears stronger in each successive cohort.

• Is It Age or IT: First Steps Toward Understanding the Net Generation

• by Diana Oblinger, EDUCAUSE, and James Oblinger, North Carolina State University

Understanding the Net Generation

• This is the first generation that has ever mastered the tools essential to society before the older generations. They are the digital generation.

• Digital is their first language, their native tongue.• They are digital natives.• Teachers are for the most part – digital immigrants• They came to the digital shores later in life, and they had to

learn to cope with digital technology as adults.• The experiences available to kids today are so different from

what the vast majority of adults experienced in their youth that a significant gap in understanding has developed from the time this online digital world has been in existence.

• Marc Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants 2001

The Digital Natives

Digital Natives

• ….. the brain is extremely malleable. As today’s students have never known a day without these advanced technological tools, their brains have been physiologically conditioned to communicate and learn with these devices. They have developed what we call hypertext/hyperlinked minds. Their cognitive structures process information in a parallel or simultaneous manner not sequential like ours.

The digital native

Learners today are fundamentally different in the way they think, they way they access, absorb, interpret, process and use information and in the way they view, interact and communicate in the modern world- these differences are in large part due to their experiences with digital technologies.

The digital generation has adopted a mindset of rapid-fire trial and error learning. They are not afraid of making mistakes because they learn more quickly that way.

Learners today are different…

They… are accustomed to receiving information fastlike to parallel process and multi-taskprefer their graphics before their textfunction best when networkedthrive on instant gratification and frequent rewardsprefer games to “serious” work• Marc Prensky, Digital Natives Digital Immigrants, 2001.

How do our digital learners learn?

• At least 60% of students in any given classroom are not auditory or text based learners because of digital bombardment , because they think graphically they are visual or visual kineasthetic learners or a combination of the two

• Digital learners prefer receiving information quickly from multimedia sources while educators prefer slow and controlled release of information from limited sources. Digital learners have had far more experience at processing information quickly than our generations have, they’re better at dealing with high-speed information

• Digital learners prefer learning that is relevant, active, instantly useful and fun/educators prefer teaching memorization in preparation for standardized tests.

Source: Dryden G. and Vos J. 2001 “The Learning Revolution”. The learning web• Jukes, I, McCain T, Crockett L. 2010 “Understanding the digital generation” .21st century fluency project

How do our digital learners learn?

• Our Schools are built on the Industrial Model- won’t work in the 21st Century

• Standardization of teaching, learning & assessment• Transmission of knowledge • Over-emphasis on control• Building learning from the part to the whole• Lack of attention to diversity, individual differences,

socialization, and collaboration• Narrow view of effectiveness and efficiency

Within this whirlwind of change have our educational systems changed?

• Despite tremendous changes in society, schools remain immune to change and maintain a heritage curriculum that was founded on a different age for a different set of circumstances and purposes

• Governments in the West maintain that they need to lead the world in terms of innovation and design of new products to supply the consumer market, yet they are obsessed with promoting heritage schooling systems that have as their focus the rote learning of skills and memorisation of content for tests of knowledge acquisition as major indicators of success for the system”

Schools are trapped in a time warp

Information ageEducation System Characteristics• Anytime, anywhere access to

information• Emphasis on mastery of learning

tools and techniques• Continuous learning• Increase in multicultural education• Emphasis on critical thinking and

judgment• Self-directed, interactive learning• Collaborative environment• Teacher as “guide on the side”• Multiple literacies of the 21st century

– aligned to living and working in a globalized new millennium.

Industrial AgeEducation System Characteristics• Separation by age group• Specific skills required at each level• Credit-hour units• Rote learning • Vocational emphasis in secondary

education• Learning materials available at

school and library• Teacher as transmitter of knowledge• Literacy is the 3 R’s – reading,

writing and math

Education in the 20th and 21st century

• “Young people need a wider range of competences than ever before to flourish, in a globalised economy and in increasingly diverse societies. Many will work in jobs that do not yet exist. Many will need advanced linguistic, intercultural and entrepreneurial capacities. Technology will continue to change the world in ways we cannot imagine. Challenges such as climate change will require radical adaptation. In this increasingly complex world, creativity and the ability to continue to learn and to innovate will count as much as, if not more than, specific areas of knowledge liable to become obsolete. Lifelong learning should be the norm.”Improving Competences for the 21st Century (2008)

EU policy

• we need to rethink education and training and to envision future learning that is more efficient, equitable, innovative and meaningful than it ever was in the past

The European Commission: Rethinking Education Strategy calls for a fundamental shift in education, to ensure that it is more relevant to the needs of the students and the labour market.

• Focus is on learning outcomes, i.e. the knowledge, skills, competences that students acquire.

• “skills are key to productivity and Europe needs to respond to the worldwide increase in the quality of education and supply of skills. Forecasts show that more than a third of jobs in the EU will require tertiary level qualifications in 2020 and that only 18% of jobs are expected to be low skilled”

• European Commission Press Release Brussels/Strasbourg 20 November 2012

Change is necessary..

1.Strong focus on developing transversal skills and basic skills at all levels

2.New benchmark on foreign language learning: By 2020 at least 50% of 15 year olds should have knowledge of a first foreign language (from 42% today) and at least 75% should study a second foreign language (61% today)

3.Investment in world class vocational education and training systems. More focus on work based learning

4.Technology, in particular the internet, must be fully exploited. Schools, universities and vocational training institutions must increase access to education via open educational resources.

5.These reforms must be supported by well trained, motivated and enterpreneurial teachers

Rethinking Education: Recommendations

Transversal or Transferable skills are defined as a set of skills that can be applied to any job or task, regardless of where they were first acquired.

They are the skills and abilities that transfer from job to job no matter which position(s) you have held in the past.

One of the things that make these skills so valuable is that they can be used in such a wide array of work settings.

What are transversal skills?

• Communication in the mother tongue• Communication in a foreign language• Mathematical competence and basic competence in science

and technology• Digital competence• Learning to learn• Social and civic competence• Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship• Cultural awareness and expression.

EU Framework of Key Competences for Lifelong Learning

Digital competenceThis competence involves the confident and critical use of

Information Society Technology (IST) for work, leisure and communication. It is underpinned by basic skills in ICT: the use of computers to retrieve, assess, store, produce, present and exchange information, and to communicate and participate in collaborative networks via the Internet.

Transversal skills

Digital competence

Learning-to-learn ability to pursue and persist in learning, to organise one’s own

learning, including effective management of time and information, both individually and in groups.

Transversal skills

Social and civic competence

The core skills of this competence include the ability to communicate constructively in different environments, to show tolerance, express and understand different viewpoints, to negotiate with the ability to create confidence, and to feel empathy. Civic competence is based on knowledge of the concepts of democracy, justice, equality, citizenship, and civil rights, and how they are applied by various institutions at the local, regional, national, European and international levels. It includes knowledge of contemporary events, as well as the main events and trends in national, European and world history

Transversal skills

• Initiative taking and entrepreneurshiprefers to an individual’s ability to turn ideas into action. It includes creativity, innovation and risk-taking, as well as the ability to plan and manage projects in order to achieve objectives

• Skills relate to proactive project management (involving, for example the ability to plan, organise, manage, lead and delegate, analyse, communicate, debrief, evaluate and record), effective representation and negotiation, and the ability to work both as an individual and collaboratively in teams

Transversal skills

• Cultural awareness and expressionAppreciation of the importance of the creative expression ofideas, experiences and emotions in a range of media, including music, performing arts, literature, and the visual arts.Skills relate to both appreciation and expression: the appreciation and enjoyment of works of art and performances as well as self-expression through a variety of media using one’s innate capacities

Transversal skills

• “Integrating 21st century skills into teaching and assessment, then, is not only an economic imperative, driven by changes in the workforce, but a vital aspect of improving student learning.”

21st century skills

Relevant to student outside the classroomStudent is highly engagedStudent has a choice and voice in his/her learningStudent takes ownership for own learningIncludes higher order thinking - creativity and innovationLearning tasks elicit evidence of learningProvides contexts for collaborative learningCultivates a capacity for lifelong learningEncourages sharing and communication of ideas using multimodal

methods and new technologies

Instruction for 21st Century Skills

Education is seen as the golden ticket to a brighter future. How well we educate our students- whether or not they learn the skills now needed to participate and thrive in our global economy - will determine the future wealth, health, and welfare of everyone