THE 21ST CENTURY LEARNERFour Key Pillars of Education:

Learning to Know

Learning to do

Learning to be

Learning to Live Together

UNESCO’S Commission on Education for the 21st Century

Sigfried Ramler

Global Literacy:

•Alternatives to a textbook centered curriculum: Use of primary sources, such as key documents, speeches, articles of a given period to stimulate analysis and critical thinking.

•Inter-disciplinary and team approach in the teaching of a civilization, integrating literature, language and the arts in the historical context and calling for a collaboration of teachers across the curriculum.

•Understanding global linkages impacting past, present and future.

The rapidity of change and volatility of the 21st century environment.

•Learning and teaching go beyond transmission of knowledge of past historical events and extend to issues and challenges dealing with the present and future.

•Dealing with issues, predicaments and dilemmas from a global perspective, preparing students to cope with a rapidly changing environment.

Anticipatory learning with student participation in past-present-future

scenarios.

•Models of study units, beginning with exploration of the students’ local setting and expanding across cultures and boundaries to manifestations abroad.

•A conceptual framework for curriculum, which places teaching and learning into a global context with alternate scenarios projecting into the future.

Social and Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Setting

•Enriching educational experiences through school- community programs featuring diverse cultures.

•Bringing speakers and presenters from diverse cultural backgrounds into the school setting.

•Inviting civic leaders from diverse backgrounds and faiths for presentations and dialogue leading to multi-ethnic understanding, cooperation and conflict resolution.

Social and Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Setting

•Instilling Social Responsibility

•Mapping community needs.

•Service learning projects.

•Exploration of social policies and issues of legislation and governance which impact social conditions.

•Expand from exploration of local conditions to an understanding of global challenges.

Education for Economic Literacy

•Home-school link towards economic literacy in early childhood education

•Cross-disciplinary approach in integrating economics in the study of societies – local, national and global.

•Potential for “hands-on” classroom experiences in economic understanding

•Career exploration opportunities

Education for Ecological Literacy•“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe” – H.G. Wells•Universal challenges requiring an understanding of the interaction of humans and the earth’s system.

•Education for sustainability requires an interdisciplinary framework of learning and teaching, going beyond the biological and physical sciences.

•Exploration beyond the classroom – school projects.

Study and Service Abroad

•International studying, living and serving as a core component of the school experience.

•Transformative impact of the study abroad experience.

•Second language mastery – a vital aspect of schooling in a global environment.

The 21st Century Learner

•The wired universe – pervasive impact of technology on today’s learner.

•Disconnect between schooling and non-formal ways the learner obtains information.

•Potential of technology and the media to bring the classroom into the world and the world into the classroom.

•Information literacy and media literacy – essential requirements for analysis and critical thinking in the educational environment.