Are our schools ready to take on 21st century learning?

JOSEPH GERASSI

EXECUTIVE HEAD OF REDHILL SCHOOL

Consequently, the competences and skills required to live functionally and to succeed in the modern competitive workplace, have changed. In his book, Out of our minds: Learning to be creative, Sir Ken Robinson, international adviser on education, wrote: “We not only need a higher percentage of our kids graduating from high school and college – more education – but we need more of them with the right education.”  

He is referring to an educational model that is less standardised and prescriptive. “Right education”, for Robinson, is that which is sufficiently flexible and innovative to prepare learners to meet the needs of a dynamic, innovative and global 21^st century post-industrial environment.

Indeed, and as Robinson asserts: “Mass systems of public education were developed primarily to meet the needs of the Industrial Revolution and, in many ways they mirror the principles of industrial production.

“They emphasise linearity, conformity, and standardisation. One of the reasons they are not working now is that real life is organic, adaptable and diverse.” In short, the thinking underlying classic school pedagogy predicated upon the demands of a labour economy requires urgent revision.

The majority of South African schools reflect standardised models of linear learning within highly structured physical and didactic spaces. They are inherently designed to produce and reinforce the uniformity, conformity, discipline and hierarchical asymmetry that the [capitalist] labour economy of the 19^th and 20^th centuries required.

The needs of this century’s knowledge economy can no longer be met by 19^th and 20^th century pedagogy. Indeed, the competencies enabling success in the workplace increasingly require creative and lateral thinking, critical and problem-solving proficiencies, effective communication and collaborative skills that enable effective team work.

It is within this context that schools and educators need to urgently reconsider, re-evaluate, revise and/or revolutionise their conceptualisation of what successful teaching is all about.

Many of our schools might have 1:1 laptop programmes, but are they merely replacements for traditional textbooks? School libraries might be called media centres but do they simply perform traditional services?

The changes that we see at some schools are often cosmetic and rarely represent a meaningful change in curriculum, pedagogy or assessment. How many of our teachers are, for example, “flipping” their classrooms or implementing project-based learning?  

How many of our schools have simply substituted the word STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) education for traditional maths and science classes. Are we simply using 21^st century terminology to mask essentially 19th and 20^th century programmes and practices?

Success, for our learners, will not necessarily be measured by test scores or even university degrees. Rather they will be measured by how successful they are when they get out into the real world.

Their success will rely on their ability to be creative, innovative and entrepreneurial. They will need to be good problem solvers and be comfortable to collaborate within teams across cultural, ethnic and religious divides. 

Schools need to ensure that all of their learners achieve excellent test scores, but more importantly, they will need to demonstrate the skills and dispositions required to participate and succeed in a highly competitive workplace. What will it take for this change to occur in our schools?

At the very least, educators who have commonly taught in a formal structured lecture-style environment, need to be encouraged to enable far more active learner engagement and learner responsibility in their classrooms. They need also, to be persuaded to embed technology purposefully into their teaching and to work with a pedagogy that enables them to facilitate, mediate and guide learning rather than lecture.

Our learners are ready and willing to take on the 21^st century but are our schools ready to make the necessary changes to enable them to succeed beyond the traditional matric examination?