A key element in achieving your mission is the development of a curriculum blueprint. The curriculum we propose emphasizes the development of conceptual understandings and the capabilities to transfer learning, which are key outcomes of modern learning. Our blueprint illustrates how to integrate transdisciplinary 21st century skills with disciplinary content, because both are key outcomes of modern learning.
Chapter 4: An Assessment System for Modern Learning
How can we assess progress toward both disciplinary and transdisciplinary outcomes?
Too often, 21st century skills fall through the cracks of conventional testing of academic content. Indeed, one of the most frequently missing elements of a school’s reform effort is a rich and comprehensive assessment system that captures evidence of modern learning, not simply content acquisition. We show a process for joining one or more transdisciplinary outcomes together (what we call grafting) to ensure that everything we proclaim to value is appropriately assessed.
Chapter 5: Instruction for Modern Learning
How do we align instruction practices, resources, and tools with our goals for modern learning?
Teaching is a means to an end. Clarity influences the nature and practice of the learning experiences necessary to reach the end goals from your mission. In this chapter, we explore the value of an established set of learning principles to guide the selection of teaching strategies and learning resources, and we describe the acquisition, meaning making, transfer (A-M-T) framework.
Chapter 6: A Reporting System for Modern Learning
How do we communicate student achievement and growth within the context of modern learning?
Traditional grading practices and report cards are inadequate for reporting on modern learning. We explore an alternative grading system and a digital LearningBoard® (https://learningboard.co) platform that better communicates student growth and achievement of our mission for modern learning.
Chapter 7: Change Leadership for Modern Learning
How might we lead adaptive change across the complex environment of learning organizations?
As with many things in the modern world, the demands and processes of leadership in schools have changed and will continue to do so. We cannot lead transformational change in the same way as we may have led more linear, technical change in the past. In this chapter, we explore several principles for change leadership, an essential element of acting on the processes and frameworks outlined in this book.
In addition, we include three resource-rich appendices: (1) “Sources for Futures-Oriented Thinking Tools and Processes,” (2) “Sample Sources and Performance Indicators for 21st Century Skills,” and (3) “Sample Map of Cornerstone Performance Tasks and Transfer Goals.”
In this book, we seek to support meaningful reform through practical methods, and we are confident that the strategies and tools we outline are replicable and scalable in varied school settings and contexts. We believe that you and your colleagues can apply these steps in multiple contexts, both large and small. Individually, each is an achievable implementation step for your 21st century vision. Collectively, they will make your vision come to life.
CHAPTER 1
Creating a Futures-Oriented Vision and Mission
How do we develop a powerful and informed view of the future to drive our vision for modern learning?
A clear, compelling, and shared vision of what a district or school would like to achieve for its students in the future should anchor any plan for revitalizing schools. However, the word vision has widely differing interpretations. Educators use it to characterize everything from a simple, isolated idea to an almost mystical inspiration for a whole new reality. Our conception of a vision lies somewhere in between. We are not talking about vision as merely a statement but rather as a guiding process. We develop a vision to sharpen our focus on the future and garner the commitment necessary for broad and meaningful change.
Do not confine your children to your own learning, since they were born in another time.
—Chinese Proverb
But aren’t all visions directed toward the future? In a word, no. As we noted in the introduction, we believe that an impediment to deep and lasting reform of education systems stems from educators’ inability to envision a compelling future of a truly modern learning environment. Too often, school visions and the strategies educators develop to meet them are concerned with fixing the present as opposed to embracing the future. If our aspirations do not spring from the understandings gained through an informed inquiry into the future, our students are likely to be constrained to an education rooted in the past.
A truly futures-oriented vision gets us to the future more directly. If real change is going to happen within our schools, we believe that we need to leapfrog the present and get right to the future. Consider how China leapfrogged from a primitive telecommunications infrastructure straight to mobile phones (The Economist, 2016). If China had plodded along the path of constructing traditional telephone landlines, this transformation would have taken decades. It is time for schools to consider meaningful leaps rather than tentatively tiptoeing forward.
To that end, this chapter focuses on how you or your core leadership group can develop a knowledge base and a future-focused orientation, engage in a community-based inquiry into the future, and consolidate that inquiry into an informed vision. From there, you will learn how communication plays a key role in these processes and begin to understand how you move from vision to mission. We wrap up by examining how you will come to define the operational outcomes you seek.
Developing a Knowledge Base and a Future-Focused Orientation
A knowledge base—one based on shared knowledge, understandings, and insights into the future our students will inhabit—is the necessary starting point for informing your school’s or district’s view of the future. It allows an education community to engage in a positive and knowledgeable dialogue about the future and the concomitant educational preparation for it. We cannot rest on existing perceptions, simple generalizations, preconceptions, or our own past experiences with education. A solid knowledge base, one built on expected trends and drivers of change in the future, will help the community gain the understanding and develop the foresight to drive the change it seeks.
Here, we are in luck. Volumes have been written about the future and, in particular, about the future of teaching and learning. Popular books abound on the subject, both in mainstream publishing and within the field of education. Indeed, education experts have added much to this discourse since the release of the first edition of this book. Several organizations engage in futures-oriented research, and their work adds great value to our understanding of how the future may evolve and emerge. (See appendix A, page 187.) One such organization is KnowledgeWorks, which is best known for developing seminal documents such as the Map of Future Forces Affecting Education (2006), 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning (2008), Forecast 4.0—The Future of Learning: Education in the Era of Partners in Code (2015), and Forecast 5.0—The Future of Learning: Navigating the Future of Learning (2018).
KnowledgeWorks (2018) explores five drivers of change.
1. Automating choices (such as the rise of artificial intelligence and personalized learning opportunities)
2. Civic superpowers (such as redefining civic engagement)
3. Accelerating brains (such