Personal & Institutional Development — WONDERING WHAT THE WAY TO QUALITY EDUCATION IS? THE 21ST CENTURY SKILLS ARE THE ONLY WAY TO QUALITY EDUCATION.

In the cogent perspective provided by the Senior Education Specialist in charge of Learning Assessment Systems at the Global Partnership for Education [GPE] Secretariat whose name is Ramya Vivekanandan, having benefitted from Quality Education can be equated with being “a successful learner or graduate in today’s world” able “to participate effectively in the increasingly complex societies and globalized economy that characterize today’s world” (Vivekanandan: 2019, webpage).

Along with her statement above, Vivekanandan (Idem, ibid.) then further unambiguously asserts in the following passage that, in order to get there, only the 21st Century Skills are the way:

What does it mean to be a successful learner or graduate in today’s world? While in years past, a solid acquisition of the “three Rs” (reading, writing, and arithmetic) and mastery in the core academic subjects may have been the measure of attainment, the world of the 21st century requires a radically different orientation. To participate effectively in the increasingly complex societies and globalized economy that characterize today’s world, students need to think critically, communicate effectively, collaborate with diverse peers, solve complex problems, adopt a global mindset, and engage with information and communications technologies, to name but just a few requirements. The new report from Brookings, “Education system alignment for 21st century skills: Focus on assessment,” illuminates this imperative [emphasis added] in depth”. 

A short YouTube video clip by the same International Senior Education Specialist (Vivekanandan: 2020, video clip of 3:30 minutes) also reiterates the imperativeness of the 21st Century Skills to any person or institution wanting their students to achieve a Quality Education.

As for the 21st Century Skills, they are important skills, special in that they are spearheaded by Critical Thinking (see here, here, here, and here) with its classical key and sine qua non standards that include Clarity/Accuracy/Consistency/Logic on the one hand, and Completeness in terms of both Breadth and Depth on the other hand (see here, or here, and here). And this actually education-induced Critical Thinking is expected to only develop in “the student as a thinker who learns and achieves understanding [emphasis added] or sense making” (Rwanamiza: 2009, p.7).

More on Understanding as resulting from Critical Thinking and as being the only means/way to Education Quality —— especially given that for it to be beneficial to Humanity, every Education ought to be ‘of Quality’, this actually being the reason that underpins the statement by Page (2014, p.5) that, “All education is implicitly peace education, in that there is a moral assumption within all education that we are training students to operate in and contribute to a peaceful world” —— can also be read from my many posts/articles available here including this one I’m particularly proposing to the readers’ Reflection.

References

Page, J. S. (2014) Peace Education. Author’s version that was submitted and accepted for publication in D. Phillips (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy, Volume II. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, pp.596-598. This author’s version is available here, on pp.1-7.

Rwanamiza, E. (2009) Knowledge, Education, Learning and Teaching: Meanings and Relationships. In Journal of the Association for the Advancement of American Curriculum Studies [JAAACS] Vol.5 No.2, available here.

Vivekanandan, R. (2019) Integrating 21st Century Skills into Education Systems: From Rhetoric to Reality. Article published on February 14, 2019 by Brookings and available here.

Vivekanandan, R. (2020) Measuring what Matters. Mini-Talk: Ramya Vivekanandan, Global Partnership for Education (GPE). Short video published February 24, 2020 on YouTube here.