April 2010 • Volume 13 • Number 4 • Pages 8-11

21st Century Middle Schools:
What Does Success Really Mean?

Bernie Trilling

We've all read the reports and heard the experts: middle school is a crucial time when students grow their hopes and commitments for success in school, in future work, in family and community life—or not.

As middle grades students think more about their future and what it will take to "make it" and be successful in the world, they begin to wonder how their school experience is helping them get there. They compare their world outside school—social, connected, global, information- and media-rich, full of real-world problems and challenges, and so forth—to the world inside school, and wonder what the connection is.

There are no more important questions facing our schools, teachers, parents, elected officials, business leaders, and—most important—our students, than "What does success really mean now?" and "How should school prepare students for success in our times?"

Our world has changed dramatically, and there are wide gaps between our 21st century world and the world inside many of our schools.

• The work world is increasingly made up of diverse teams working together to solve problems and create something new. Why do students mostly work alone and compete with others for approval?
• Technology is more a part of children's lives each day. Why should they have to check their technology at the classroom door and compete for limited school computer time?
• The world is full of compelling, real-world challenges, problems, and questions. Why spend so much time on disconnected questions at the end of a textbook chapter?
• Doing projects on something one cares about comes naturally to all learners. Why are learning projects so scarce inside so many classrooms?
• Innovation and creativity are very important to the future success of our economy. Why do schools spend so little time developing students' creative skills?

The good news is that there is a growing worldwide consensus as to what 21st century learners need for success.

The more challenging news is that it will likely mean that what goes on in your classrooms each day must shift so that students will have more of the learning experiences they need for future success.

Over the Rainbow

Books like Thomas Friedman's The Earth Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century and Linda Darling-Hammond's The Flat Earth and Education, and reports and surveys like "Are They Really Ready to Work?" where 400 business executives were asked if the U.S. education system is graduating work-ready students (their answer: "Not really"), all point to a growing worldwide consensus that

1. The world is in the midst of a change as big as the shift from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age more than 350 years ago. This time the shift is from an Industrial Age to an Information and Knowledge Age where information, knowledge, expertise, and innovation are increasingly the main engines of our economy.
2. Our education system, well-tuned for the Industrial Age, now needs to sync with the demands of our times and focus on building the 21st century knowledge, skills, and expertise we need for success.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), a U.S. coalition of education, business, government, and non-profit organizations, has collectively evolved a compelling model of what learning needs to look like in the 21st century (www.21stcenturyskills.org) (see Figure 1).

Figure 1
21st Century Learning Framework

21st Century Learning Framework

There are two parts to this model: the "rainbow" above and the "pools" below.

The rainbow represents the essential skills and knowledge all students now need, and the pools below represent the key components our education system needs to deliver and support the 21st century learning goals above.

Reading, writing, arithmetic, and the other basic subjects we studied when we were in school are still at the center of the model, although today's demands to apply this knowledge to deal with real world issues and problems create a need for deeper understanding of the core ideas in each subject area.

These core subjects are joined by pressing, cross-curricular themes like global awareness, health and environmental sustainability, basic financial and business literacy, and civic responsibility.

Where this model differs from 20th century Industrial Age learning is in the emphasis on three sets of skills that our "flatter" and interconnected world is especially looking for.

The essential skills needed for success in the 21st century—beyond the basic "3Rs" skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic—can be summed up by this "7Cs" list of 21st century skills:

• Critical thinking and problem solving
• Creativity and innovation
• Collaboration, teamwork, and leadership
• Cross-cultural understanding
• Communications, information, and media literacy
• Computing and ICT (information and communications technology) literacy
• Career and learning self-reliance

Many of these skills are not "new" to our century—they are timeless skills that have been important for successful careers, professions, and civic life through the ages. What is new, though, is how students now acquire these skills: through the use of modern technologies and digital literacy skills that support the learning of all the other skills. This is what gives these age-old skills their 21st century twist.

Among most high school and college graduates, only a few of the essential skills listed above—such as the information, media and technology skills—commonly reach the proficiency bar. The rest of these skills are in very short supply.

So how should educators and parents make sure students are developing essential learning, innovation, life, and career skills?

Minding Your P's and Q's

Question: What are the important tools we need to support a 21st century approach to learning and teaching?

1. The Internet
2. Pen and paper
3. Cell phones
4. Educational games
5. Tests and quizzes
6. Inspiring teachers
7. Caring communities
8. Educational funding
9. Caring and supportive parents
10. All of the above

Answer: All of the above. But two important things are missing.

All these items and more contribute to a 21st century education, but two key tools not on this list may be the most powerful learning tools ever devised:

• Questions and the process to uncover their answers
• Problems and the inventing of their possible solutions

Questions have long been the motivation for discovering new knowledge in science and other fields, and problems have been the inspiration for inventing new ways to live and work.

In our rush to cover the growing tidal wave of information in each subject area, we may have overlooked the power of questions and problems. Two proven learning methods that put powerful questions and problems at the heart of the learning experience are inquiry (question-based) and design (problem-based) learning approaches.

Inquiry- and design-based projects can be the key to unlocking increased student motivation and engagement, deeper understanding and effective use of knowledge, and the mastery of 21st century skills.

Professor Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University's School of Education published a review of the research on the learning power of inquiry, design, and collaborative learning methods called Powerful Learning: What We Know about Teaching for Understanding. Darling-Hammond concluded that

• Students learn more deeply when they apply classroom-gathered knowledge to real-world problems and when they take part in projects that require sustained engagement and collaboration.
• Active and collaborative learning practices have a more significant impact on student performance than any other variable, including student background and prior achievement.
• Students are most successful when they are taught how to learn as well as what to learn.

The SARS Project

So what does 21st century learning look like?

Thousands of wonderful examples of learning activities and projects going on all over the world are cultivating 21st century skills and the applied understanding now needed for success.

For example, each year student teams from all over the world compete in a competition called ThinkQuest (www.thinkquest.org). The challenge is to create an innovative educational website for use by other students (and teachers) on a topic the team really cares about.

Six students from five countries collaborated online to create an award-winning website on a topic of great concern at the time: the deadly outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus. (See a video documentary on this project at the Oracle Education Foundation's website, www.oraclefoundation.org/single_player.html?v=2)

The global team had to do all the work involved in producing an engaging educational website: researching the topic; interviewing experts; writing the text; designing and creating the look and feel of the site; and programming the navigation, interactive games, and quizzes included on the site. Collaborating over five different time zones, the team used online tools to plan, schedule, communicate, and coordinate all their work.

If you take the evergreen "3Rs" and multiply them by the 21st century "7Cs," the result is a learning equation that can guide teaching and learning in our times: 3Rs x 7Cs = 21st century learning.

The Future Is Already Here!

As science fiction author William Gibson remarked, "The future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed."

Thousands of classrooms and entire networks of schools in the United States are already on the move to this new learning formula. Fourteen states have signed a commitment with the Partnership for 21st Century skills to embed the essential knowledge and skills for our time in their states' standards, assessments, curriculum and instruction, professional development, and learning environments.

Countries like Singapore, Australia, Finland, and the United Kingdom are making substantial progress in building a 21st century learning environment for all students.

There is no better time to join the global movement for 21st century learning to ensure that all middle grades students acquire the skills and expertise needed for a successful work life, a happy family life, an active community life, and a lifetime of engaged learning.

To learn more about how your school can be a leader for 21st century learning, visit the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website (www.21stcenturyskills.org).

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