Twenty-First Century Skills and Learning: A Case Study of Developments and Practices in the United States

Abstract

The authors of this chapter faced a difficult task of summarizing the experience of one of the largest and most diversified school systems in the world. The US experience, as shown in the chapter, demonstrates that, in such diversified systems, the strongest signal is given through assessment. While most state education systems include information about twenty-first century skills in their curricular materials, none has adopted a formal set of standards on which students are summatively assessed. While most states have not aggressively prioritized twenty-first century skills in their standards, curricular guidance, assessment programs, and professional development programs, there are a few states that have done so. Efforts to introduce 21 century skills to schools can be quite diverse, and paths to success can be rather non-standard—like the North Carolina’s Digital-Age Learning Initiative which is discussed in detail in the chapter. This statewide comprehensive initiative aimed to prepare students for an increasingly competitive workplace by capitalizing on a variety of digital technologies to personalize student learning and develop an expanded array of skills and knowledge. This case demonstrates how digital instruments help translate disciplinary learning onto a new level: isolated content is conceptually intertwined into a coherent picture in project-based and community learning activities.

A note from the editors

This chapter was prepared by leading American expects in educational assessment from the excellent Boston College. They were faced with the difficult task to summarize the experience of modernizing the content of education in one of the largest and most diversified school systems in the world. This diversity has led to the fact that, in the United States, there are now schools that have become world leaders introducing innovations and develo** key competences and new literacies, but there are also super-conservative schools that stick stiffly to the curricula of the early twentieth century.

The US experience, as shown in the chapter, demonstrates that, in such diversified systems, the strongest signal is given through assessment.

It is also very interesting to explore the case of North Carolina discussed here in detail. It reveals that thoughtful technological modernization can have a strong modernizing effect on the content of education.