A Pivotal Idea in 21st Century Skills Dialogue

Journalists and bloggers have been quoting the Education Sector report "Measuring Skills for the 21st Century" by Elena Silva over the past few weeks. Although the report's central purpose is to assert that 21st century skills can be assessed and to highlight the need for better assessment systems that measure a wider range of content knowledge and skills, many commentaries that refer to the report focus more on her analysis of how 21st century skills fit into the education picture. Although her position is that schools must teach and assess both the basics and real world application, Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews, writers at the Core Knowledge blog, and Education Sector co-founder Andrew J. Rotherham underscored her statement that we must abandon "the idea we can teach thinking without a solid foundation of knowledge." The use of the word "fad" by Rotherham and Mathews has been widely quoted by bloggers.

A facet of Silva's analysis that I hope to see discussed more is the idea that advanced thinking and analytical skills can be integrated with the process of teaching basic facts and simple procedures. Among her references, she cites a report on math by the US Department of Education asserting that "the best learning happens" when students learn rules and procedures "at the same time that they learn how to think and solve problems."

She also mentions the findings of a working group that revised Bloom's Taxonomy. Led by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl, the group found that more advanced skills, in many instances, can be learned simultaneously or even in reverse order. (See this post at Bowling Green's Interact at the Center blog for a good visual of the original and revised taxonomy.)