The Global Search For Education: What Skills?

Employers want to hire people with 21st-century skills and they can’t find enough qualified candidates. The problem, says Charles Fadel, Founder of the Center for Curriculum Redesign, is that our education system “is biased for college entrance requirements via tests such as the SAT which are partially obsolete, and never reflected particularly well the needs of employability.” So given the dramatic transformations we are seeing in the workplace, what are the most effective ways to close the increasingly widening education-to-employment gap?
             

Today in Part 4 of The Global Search for Education 5-part series with Charles Fadel, our focus is on skills. The OECD’s Andreas Schleicher calls Fadel’s book, Four-Dimensional Education: The Competencies Learners Need to Succeed, a “first of its kind organizing framework of competencies needed for this century which defines the spaces in which educators, curriculum planners, policy makers and learners can establish WHAT should be learned.”

Let’s talk about skills. What are the essential skills being left out of curriculum or that are not getting enough emphasis in curriculum?

First, let’s be clear in indicating that this is about skills not character qualities - these have been covered elsewhere before. The skills we are talking about are: creativity, critical thinking communication, and collaboration. They are essential for both the world of work and success in life.

Secondly, pedagogy needs to change - for instance, it is hard to imagine how a passive listener would learn how to communicate and collaborate.