New Research Report on Educators, Technology, and 21st Century Skills

“Educators, Technology and 21st Century Skills: Dispelling Five Myths – A Study on the Connection Between K–12 Technology Use and 21st Century Skills” — a report just released by Walden University — offers up some interesting statistics based on a survey of more than 1,000 U.S. educators. 

First, it provides a summary of the five myths the survey results help to dispell.  Having just come from reading a couple of articles on Edutopia about using technology in the classroom to support differentiated instruction, myth #3 was the first one to catch my eye: ”Only high-achieving students benefit from using technology.”  I didn’t know that was a myth, though I have heard some debate along those lines.  In some cases, I wonder if this reflects how technology is perceived – if a teacher thinks it’s complex and challenging, then maybe they’re less likely to think it can engage students at all levels of achievement.  Low-achieving students may even think that they “can’t” do it and that kind of thinking, as we all know, is a good way to jumpstart failure.  I also wonder if the application of technology is always being properly differentiated based on student need.  

The breakdown between core subjects, 21st century themes and 21st century skills around which the survey was framed prompted me to question whether the use of technology in the classroom is really so inextricably linked to the development of 21st century skills (as they’re defined in this report), aside from the one skill listed that specifically relates to it – information, media, and technology skills.  All of the other skills, like collaboration, communication, critical thinking, can easily be developed through a variety of “non-tech” activities and tasks (off the top of my head, there’s DeBono’s Thinking Hats, just as one example). 

However, if you remove the distinction between core subjects and 21 century skills, and think more in terms of embedding essential skills within a particular subject, then the requirement for technology becomes more apparent.  As Tony Bates discusses in his blog entry “e-Learning and 21st century skills and competences”, technology has become both pervasive and non-generic in every subject area, and so it therefore becomes imperative that students develop digital literacy skills within a subject.  Technology is no longer simply a tool for learning, but is now embedded in any given subject.  Along those lines, I also found Stephen Downes’ blog entry – “An Operating System for the Mind” – to be a thought-provoking perspective on 21st century skills.  The way he sees it, these skills are the ‘operating system of a mind’ that must be ever more capable of navigating around an information landscape that continuously shifts, and grows ever more complex.  Again, developing the skill to navigate within a domain/subject area cannot be distinguished from learning about that domain.

The stats with regard to subject areas caught my eye as well.  According to their survey results, high school English teachers are much less likely to use technology than Math, Science, or Social Studies teachers.  Now, either I’ve tapped into a pool that appears deceptively large, or something is off in the survey.  In fact, there are days when I find so many English teacher websites, Nings, Wikis, blogs, and Twitters that I have to stop and take a breath before I reach my personal threshold for information overload.  Is this only a recent phenomenon?  

Anyway, I’ve barely touched on the data in the report.  I think it’s worth checking out – it certainly got me thinking.  As a final thought, it would be interesting to compare these results with other countries.  Being Canadian, I ran a quick search to see if I could find something equivalent for Canadian teachers.  I didn’t find anything, but since my search was very cursory, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one out there.  And what about Australia, England, Netherlands, Germany, etc…?