July 2007 — Features
Print this article | Email this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
Curriculum-Based Reform :: An Eye on the Future
Ford Motor Company Fund, says, “We don’t know what the jobs of the future will be. We need nimble thinkers and learners in the workplace.” Schmidt believes we must have rigorous academic standards in the core content areas, but that is not enough: “Academic rigor is only the price of entry,” he says.According to Karen Bruett, director of K-12 business development for Dell, many technology companies have core competencies on which they base hiring and promotions, and those relate to such skills as critical thinking and problem solving. The pace of change in industry requires companies even as big as Dell to reinvent themselves, and they can only do that if they have versatile, mentally agile employees.
So how do we change our practices to ensure we are teaching all the right things? Curriculum standards are the place to start, and while none of the businesspeople I spoke with proposes having separate courses in innovation, problem solving, and the like, all believe that these skills could be expressly taught through project-based learning, where students learn subject matter, then apply that learning directly to a real-world problem. Bruett advises, “Don’t focus on the technology; focus on instruction and how the tools can be applied to gather and share information with a team trying to solve the problem.”
Ken Kay, president of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, speaking at the EduStat conference in June, conjured up a sample social studies lesson to illustrate the difference between what is traditionally taught and the application of 21st-century skills. Rather than teach a series of facts, we should approach the subject in a problem-based way, he says. For example: Divide students into teams, give each team a GPS and specifi- cations for a city park, then ask the students to pick the best site to place the park as well as articulate the rationale for their decision. Students can thereby use technology to gather data, analyze and synthesize the data, and make suggestions based on facts—just as you and I do in our jobs every day.
What may be needed is a fundamental shift in how we think about curriculum. The current thinking in the standards movement is that the state should define the what—the standards— and the schools and teachers should define the how—the instruction necessary to teach those standards. The skills that businesspeople are talking about are less content-oriented and more about process, demanding a different approach to teaching. Instruction may need to become a part of curriculum and content standards so that we are teaching the skills students need as they advance on to college and the workforce.
