Learning by Doing: Pathways to High Performance Students

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Learning by Doing: Pathways to High Performance Students

7/5/2005

Another, very different, experience was a tour I took of the Masterfoods, USA factory in Hackettstown, NJ where they make M&M candies. The contrast between the old world of the “automation worker” on the line and the new world of the “knowledge worker” was stark and inescapable. Wherever we walked in the plant, machines from the industrial age outfitted with devices from the information age (computer screens) surrounded us. The image brought to life the findings of the SCANS report published in 1992 (wdr.doleta.gov/SCANS/). For workers in this plant (mostly high school graduates) to think critically, communicate effectively, reason quantitatively, and engage routinely in information based decision-making are now required– and these are the higher order competencies identified in the SCANS report. Masterfoods and other knowledge organizations want the high schools where they have plants to produce graduates with the skills identified in the SCANS report.

So, whether it’s Microsoft, Masterfoods, or any of the thousands of other corporations in the country, the challenge they face is that the nation’s high schools don’t produce enough graduates with 21st Century skills, our nation’s teacher preparation programs don’t produce enough new teachers who know how to ensure that high school graduates have these skills, and our nation’s undergraduate programs don’t produce enough graduates with these skills at high standards of performance. In response to this challenge, many corporations are taking steps of their own, e.g., they are building their own corporate universities and educational programs with essentially the same learning outcomes as the ones you can find at the beginning of any college or university catalogue. The only difference is they need to produce “graduates” of their programs who can perform to high standards in the real world of work, not just pass tests. It’s performance that counts. Or, put another way, it’s not what you know; it’s what you can do with what you know that matters.

What the Partnership has done in “Learning for the 21st Century” is a remarkable job of building bridges among the various constituencies and knowledge bases that need to be brought together to “finally get the job done.” But, at its core, what Learning for the 21st Century d'es best is focus upon the nature of the work of learning in the 21st Century and the “learning by doing” assignments and assessments that lead to high performing students. The readers of Technology Enabled Teaching know about these issues already, but this report’s framework d'es the best job I’ve seen of navigating the political waters of the behaviorist and standardized testing camps to perhaps finally create a context in which the constructivists and authentic assessment camps can get more room in which to do their work.

To further engage this readership and to offer another model for transformation, I’d like to recommend another resource. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), a strategic partner of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, has developed an extremely good set of exemplars of effective practice assignments, assessments, and profiles of pre-service teachers who have demonstrated mastery of the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Teachers. If you are in the constructivist/authentic assessment camps, I would urge you to explore ISTE’s work at cnets.iste.org/teachers/t_book.html.