The 8 Skills Students Must Have For The Future
By Michael Sledd on April 2, 2015
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Editor’s note: This is a revised version of an article written by Katie Lepi that originally appeared on June 7th, 2014. We believe this information is still highly relevant, but we wanted to update it with the latest thinking. To do that, we invited writer Michael Sledd to take the reins.
Education has traditionally focused on the basic “3Rs” of reading, writing and arithmetic. However, as the ever increasing pace of technological innovation drives changes in the world, educators must re-evaluate whether the skills they teach truly provide their students with the best opportunities to succeed in school, the workforce, and in life overall.
This naturally leads to the question of what those skills are or will be, and while there are other excellent suggestions out there, Pearson’s 2014 edition of “The Learning Curve” report lists the 8 skills below as those most necessary to succeed in the 21st century.
Understanding and Teaching These Skills
In order to incorporate these skills into their lessons and to develop student ability in each area, teachers must first understand what these things truly mean.
Leadership
People have discussed leadership for centuries, and generated a wide array of different definitions and theories about what it means. While anyone interested in the field should of course explore further on their own, one good place to start working towards a basic understanding of current ideas about any topic is a contemporary review of the subject by scholars in the field.
Perhaps even more importantly for educators than dogmatically fixating on a specific concept of leadership though, is to effectively teach it to students. Similar to above, there are many proposed methods for teaching leadership, and while sometimes expensive, once again it is often helpful to consult a comprehensive reference on the subject written by experts in the field.
Overall, one common theme runs through most modern theories, which is that leadership is no longer necessarily about powerful individuals directing others. Rather, it is about fostering collaboration, working towards common goals, and acting as a leader in any role assumed, regardless of whether it meets the classical definition of a leader.
Digital Literacy
Digital literacy is the ability to use digital technology to locate, review, utilize and create new information. Unlike teaching leadership skills, which can be abstruse and subjective in nature, improving students’ digital literacy is generally a much more concrete process, with a wide variety of tools readily available, including an online Digital Literacy portal funded by the U.S. Federal government.
In fact, for many educators, the difficulty in teaching some of these skills may stem from a lack of knowledge by the educators themselves relative to their pupils. Because of this, it is not only vital for instructors to ensure they incorporate digital literacy into their lessons in order to connect with their students, but that they keep up to speed and engage in lifelong learning themselves as well.
Going along with this, creatively incorporating digital learning into lesson plans and maintaining student interest is also highly important. Strategies could include things that many educators may have never considered, such as utilizing Skype, texting, Twitter, or possibly even games.
Communication
Fundamentally, regardless of language or medium, truly effective communication is about openly and honestly sharing information in a way that creates mutual understanding between all parties involved about the others’ thoughts, intentions and ideas, whether they agree or not.
There are various barriers to effective communication, and teaching students techniques to overcome them will be more difficult for some of these barriers than others. Oftentimes, it helps to reflect on strategies you yourself can use to improve your own communication skills, and incorporate those into your less plans.
Overcoming a physical impediment, including geographic and technological ones, is fairly simple and typically will require little instruction beyond the use of basic technology, although there may be monetary costs involved. Likewise, organizational barriers are often as easy to solve as asking around to determine who the best person is to approach concerning the issue.
While significantly more complex than the above, helping students overcome language barriers and even communication problems facing students with certain disabilities can sometimes also be fairly straight-forward assuming those are the only issues involved and the necessary tools are available.
The most difficult barriers to overcome though are going to be cultural, and even more so, psychological/attitudinal. In these cases, active listening is probably the most fundamental skill to develop for dealing with these type of communication issues, and will help gr