Professional learning for 21st century education

Excerpt

The emergence of the current technology-driven world has raised many challenges to didactic teaching and learning in traditional classrooms. Couple with volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) characteristics of current society (Bennett and Lemoine 2014), both what is to be learned and how learning or knowledge construction should happen need serious reconceptualization. The notion of 21st century learning can be viewed as an overarching vision of education that many educators are now advocating as a collective response to the challenges. Key dimensions of learning practices promoted by various 21st century learning models include collaborative learning, use of ICT as tools for knowledge construction and co-construction, critical and creative thinking, and authentic problem solving (Chai et al. 2015; Dede 2010; Howland et al. 2012; Voogt and Roblin 2012). Beyond these practices, some models also concern citizenship education. Despite the consensus that has been developed, schools, however, may not have changed as much as desired (Voogt et al. 2013). Other education and training organizations may be more sensitive to respond to the VUCA situations, and they are nonetheless searching for appropriate ways to educate their employees. …