1. Comparing Frameworks for 21st Century
Skills
Chapter 3
Chris Dede
Focus question:
Many groups have called for students to learn 21st century
skills but what does this actually mean and what has it got to
do with technology
Viv Rowan

2. Overview of Presentation
Focus debate for this reading:
Summary of the Reading:
• Rational of Formulating 21st Century Skills.
• Current Major Frameworks.
• Current Conceptual Frameworks for Digital Literacies
• Comparing Alternative Frameworks for 21st Century Skills.
– Particularly the orientation and role of ICT’s
• Advances in the Assessment of 21st Century Skills
Debate
Conclusion
Participant comments on Slideshare

3. Focus for Debate
In your assigned teams use your understanding of the reading to provide
at least three reasons to support this statement:
We now have the means necessary to move beyond 20 th century
knowledge in order to prepare all students for a future quite different
from the immediate past.”
Affirmative: Why is this statement true?
Negative: Why is this statement false?
Choose one person to report back.

4. The Rational for formulating 21 Century skills.
“Proficiency in the 21st century differs primarily due to the emergence of very
sophisticated information and communication technologies” (ICT) (p 51)
– Work force: Computers are more able to accomplish human task
– Expert thinking: understanding how expert s think has been able to
identify the importance of being able to investigate ill defined,
unpredictable problems
– Collaboration - work in a knowledge society is frequently
accomplished in teams
– Data Rich - The amount of data available means that critical
information consumers.
– Digital Disorder - the variety of way in which data can be retrieved
and categorised according to individual needs.

5. “Overall the distinction between perennial and contextual skill is
important because unlike perennial capabilities, new contextual
types of human performance are typically not part of the legacy
curriculum inherited from 20th century education” p 53
The Legacy:
•“K – 12 instruction emphasizes manipulating predigested information to
build fluency in routine problem solving, rather than filtering data derived
from experiences in complex settings to develop skills in sophisticated
problem finding” p 54.
•Little time is spent on building capabilities in group interpretation,
negotiation of shared meaning, or co construction of problem resolutions”
•The use of technological applications and representations is generally
banned from testing, rather than providing n opportunity to measure
students capabilities to use tools, application and media effectively”

6. “Current approaches to using technology in schooling largely reflect
the 20th century pedagogy of applying information and
communication technologies as a means of increasing the
effectiveness of traditional approaches: enhancing productivity
through tools such as word processors, aiding communication by
channels such as email and threaded a synchronous discussions,
and expanding access to information via Web browsers and
streaming videos”
All have their place in conventional schooling however…..
“non draw on the full potential of ICT’s for individual and collective
expression, experience, and interpretation – human capabilities
emerging as key work and life skills for the first part of the 21st
century”

7. Current Major Frameworks for
21st Century Skills
Partnership for 21 Century Skills (2006)
North Central Regional Education Laboratory (NCREL)
and the
Metiri Group (2003)
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2005)
The above mentioned frameworks include:
National Leadership Council for Liberal Education and America’s Promise
(LEAP, 2007)
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE, 2007)
Educational Testing Services (ETS, 2007)

8. Partnership for 21 Century Skills (2006)
ICT Literacy:
Information and communications technology literacy is the
ability to use technology to develop 21st century content
knowledge and skills, in the context of learning core subjects.
Students must be able to use technology to learn content
skills – so they know how to learn, think critically, solve
problems, use information, communicate, innovate, and
collaborate.

9. Main idea from a comparisons of the
frameworks of 21st century skills:
“Focuses less on the overlap with 20th century curriculum
“….much of what distinguishes 21st century skills from 20th century
competencies is that a person and a tool, application, medium, or
environment work in concert to accomplish an objective that is otherwise
unobtainable” p 63
“Frameworks that discuss new literacies based on the evolution of ICT’s
help to illuminate this aspect of 21st century learning “ P 63

10. Summary of Frameworks for 21st Century Skills
• “These twentyfirst century skills frameworks are generally consistent with
each other”
• The addition of skillsets by other frameworks consist of two major areas
– “technical proficiency: a foundational knowledge of hardware,
software applications, networks, and elements of digital technology “
– Areas in which are underemphasised such as “students acting
autonomously” and “risk taking”

11. Digital Literacies
The “emergence of Web 2.0 media has fuelled a shift in online leading edge
applications that reinforces these learning strengths and preferences”.
Creativity and innovation Cognitive proficiency
Communication and Technological proficiency
collaboration ICT proficiency
Research and information Access
fluency Manage
Critical thinking, problem Integrate
solving, and decision Evaluate
making Create.
Digital citizenship
Technology operations
and concepts
Source: National Educational Technology Source: Educational Testing Service, 2007. pp

12. Digital Literacies
Play Fluency in multiple media
Performance Active learning
Simulation Expression through non linear,
Appropriation associational webs of
Multitasking representations
Distributed cognition Co-design by teachers and
Collective intelligence students.
Judgment
Transmedia navigation
Networking
Negotiation
Source Jenkins, 2009 Source: Dede

13. Digital Literacies
“The emphasis is not on proficiency with the tool, but on the types of
intellectual activity performed by a person working with sophisticated
ICT’s.”
“while some perennial capabilities - like judgment – are listed, other skills
– such as performance – are contextual in their emphasis on new type of
twentyfirst century capacities”.
“These digital literacies not only represent skills students should master for
effective 21st century work and citizenship, but also describe the learning
strengths and preferences people who use technology now bring to
educational settings.

14. Advances in Assessment of 21st Century Skills
The College and Work Readiness Assessment
Aim: measures how students perform on constructed – response tasks that
require an integrated set of critical thinking, analytical reasonng, problem
soling, and written communication
“Critical thinking, analytical reasoning, problem solving, and writing are
collective outcomes that cannot fully be taught in any one class or year;
so all teachers and faculty have a responsibility to teach for such skills”
“Completion of these instruments does not require the recall of particular
facts or formulas; instead, the measures assess the demonstrated ability
to interpret, analyze, and synthesise information”

15. Advances in Assessment of 21st Century Skills
The Programme for International Students Assessment
Aim : “to measure how well fifteen-year-olds. Approaching the end of
compulsory schooling, are prepared to meet the challenges of today’s
knowledge societies – what PISA refers to as literacies”.
The assessment is forward thinking, focusing on young people’s ability to use
their knowledge and skills to meet real life challenges, rather than merely
on the extent to which they have mastered a specific school curriculum”
This orientation reflects a change in the goals and objectives of curricula
themselves, which increasingly address what students can do with what
they learn at school and not merely whether they can reproduce what
they have learnt”

16. Advances in Assessment of 21st Century Skills
Key Stage 3 Literacy Assessment
Aim: “ to gauge students’ ICT capabilities at the end of “Key Stage 3” (ages
twelve to thirteen) in Great Britain’s national curriculum”
“ The test not only assesses students’ ICT skills, but also their ability to use
those skills to use a complex set of problems involving research,
communication, information management, and presentation”

17. Assessment - summary
• All three forms of assessment are able to cover most of the skills within
the Frameworks for twentyfirst century skills.
• “The Key Stage 3 has more potential to cover the full range of twentyfirst
century capabilities, including digital literacies, because it is conducted in
a virtual world and based on activities more sophisticated than making
forced-choice decisions based on a number of alternatives.”
• The increasing availability of valid assessments for twentyfirst century
skills is leading to calls for all states to participate in “international
benchmarking”, or comparing their educational processes and outcomes
to the best models around the world”

18. Debate
In your assigned teams use your understanding of the reading to provide
at least three reasons to support this statement:
We now have the means necessary to move beyond 20 th century
knowledge in order to prepare all students for a future quite different
from the immediate past.”
Affirmative: Why is this statement true?
Negative: Why is this statement false?
Choose one person to report back.

19. Conclusion
• Proficiency in the twentyfirst century differs primarily due to the
emergence of very sophisticated information and communication
technologies”.
• Less emphasis on comparing 21st century skills with 20th century skills.
• This is due in part because of what we now know about ICT’s
• There is an increased complexity of skills as a result.
• Strong emphasis on the acquisition of digital literacies to assist with the
conceptualisation, implementation of effective 21 st century skills.
• Assessment must embrace the rapidly changing status of ICT’s within
teaching and learning.
• Challenge: A major, often unrecognised challenge in profesional
development is helping teachers, policy makers, and local communities
unlearn beliefs, values, assumptions, and cultures underlying schools’
industrial –era operating practices.

20. Comments
Thank you for your participation.
Could you please take a few minutes to write and upload your comments
into Slideshare.
Viv Rowan