Book Review: 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times

Like most catchphrases, "21^st century skills” has been floating around for some time without anybody quite knowing what it means. These skills are supposed to revolutionize education and prepare today's students for the ever-changing world they will inherit – but educators, parents, and students alike remain confused about what this means for them. How can individuals teach, learn, and foster these skills without understanding what they are? Charles Fadel and Bernie Trilling are offering some answers.

Fadel, global leader for education at Cisco Systems, and Trilling, global director of the Oracle Education Foundation, recently published a book, 21^st Century Skills. In it, they envision the world twenty years into the future: deeply interconnected, strained for resources, competitive, and in the midst of an information and media overload. The "tele-linked citizens” equipped to enter this world, and its workforce, are media-savvy, technologically literate, flexible and quick-thinking, cooperative and social, and are creative problem-solvers.

The "fluid” 21^st century classroom, envisioned by Fadel and Trilling, nurtures these traits through student-guided, project-oriented, cooperative learning and hands-on experience with computers. Students work together in a self-directed fashion and think critically. The overarching goal, whether students are doing history research or environmental science, is "authentic learning” that transfers from the classroom to the real world. This is to be enhanced through internships and apprenticeships, and the authors call upon business and technological leaders to open their doors.

21^st Century Skills sets out to accomplish a very specific task: to "[introduce] a "framework for 21^st century learning.” Although the authors include concrete vignettes and examples, there are no lesson plans in this book; it is a starting-point, not a teaching manual. Instead, Fadel and Trilling call attention to the urgent need for education reform and define specific skills. They flesh out core concepts and subjects that should be emphasized, and they map out new roles for teachers, librarians, and students. The accompanying DVD is a thoughtful complement, featuring mini-documentaries about the teaching practices the authors champion.

This is a book that sparks ideas. 21^st Century Skills clarifies the rhetoric we've all been hearing and creates a space for dialogue that will, hopefully, effect real change in the classroom.

On May 13, at a TeenLife-sponsored Educator Breakfast at Belmont Hill School, Charles Fadel spoke to over 50 educators and counselors from Greater Boston about 21^st Century Skills. The breakfast gave local schools firsthand insight into his ideas.