Sorsogon State CollegeSCHOOL OF GRADUATES STUDIESSorsogon City

Topic: CURRICULUM INNOVATION THROUGH MASTERY OF TECHNICAL SKILLS

Discussant: Ms. Marian A. Habla MAEd - English

Technical Skills• The knowledge and

abilities needed to accomplish mathematical, engineering, scientific or computer-related duties, as well as other specific tasks. (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/technical-skills.asp)

Technical Skills• Technical Skills are the

basic knowledge required to perform a task.

• Technical skills can include educational qualifications and degrees that an employee hold.(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_definition_of_technical_skills?#slide=1)

The 20th Century Learning from 21st Century Learning:

?

The difference between 21st century and 20th century

1. The capabilities people need for work, citizenship, and self-actualization.

2. The emergence of very sophisticated information and communications technologies

• According to Pink (2005)21st century learning will be dominated by a different way of knowing, being, and doing, and right-brain capacities will come increasingly to the fore.

• “A robust temperament, and a personality that is unafraid of assuming reasonable risks, cognitive and physical” a key dispositions that will mark the future creator and must be developed early in life (Gardner, 2010, pp. 28).

The crucial component of what constitutes 21st century knowledge and skills

• “Expert thinking [involves] effective pattern matching based on detailed knowledge; and metacognition, the set of skills used by the perplexed expert to decide when to give up on one strategy and what to try next” (Levy & Murnane, 2004, p. 75).

• “Complex communication requires the exchange of vast amounts of verbal and nonverbal information. The information flow is constantly adjusted as the communication evolves unpredictably” (Levy & Munane, 2004, p. 94).

For instance,

• A skilled teacher is an expert in complex communication, able to improvise answers and facilitate dialogue in the unpredictable, chaotic flow of classroom discussion.

• Recently, Prensky (2010) asserts in Teaching Digital Natives that what today’s kids do have a short attention span for are “our old ways of learning” (pp. 2).

• Weinberger (2007) describes the power of “digital disorder,” which takes advantage of the fact that virtual information can transcend the limited properties of physical objects (like books or index cards).

• This creates a new set of contextual 21st century skills centered on “disorderly” knowledge co-creation and sharing.

• Conventional, 20th century K-12 instruction emphasizes manipulating pre-digested information to build fluency in routine problem solving, rather than filtering data derived from experiences in complex settings to develop skills in sophisticated problem finding.

Problems encountered...

• Assessments and tests focus on measuring students’ fluency in various abstract, routine skills, but typically do not assess their strategies for expert decision making when no standard approach seems applicable.

• Essays emphasize simple presentation rather than sophisticated forms of rhetorical interaction.

Problems encountered...• Students’ abilities to transfer their

understandings to real world situations are not assessed, nor are capabilities related to various aspects of teamwork.

• The use of technological applications and representations is generally banned from testing, rather than measuring students’ capacities to use tools, applications, and media effectively.

Problems encountered...

• A major, often unrecognized challenge in professional development is helping teachers, policy makers, and local communities unlearn the beliefs, values, assumptions, and cultures underlying schools’ industrial-era operating practices, such as forty-five minute class periods that allow insufficient time for all but superficial forms of active learning by students.

• Educators, business executives, politicians, and the general public have much to unlearn if 21st century understandings are to assume a central place in schooling.

• Reflecting educators’ usage of 20th century pedagogy, current approaches to using technology in schooling largely reflect applying information and communication technologies as a means of increasing the effectiveness of traditional 20th century instructional approaches:

1. enhancing productivity through tools such as word processors

2. aiding communication by channels such as email and threaded asynchronous discussions

3. expanding access to information via Web-browsers and streaming video (Dede, 2009a)

• All these have proven worthy in conventional schooling, as they have in workplace settings; however, none draw on the full power of information and communications technologies for individual and collective expression, experience, and interpretation – human capabilities emerging as key work and life skills for the first part of the 21st century.

• The challenges of 21st century for us as educational professionals is not only to impart knowledge but to train students with skills to become better and competent learners so that they can translate bookish knowledge into real situation [Newby 2000].

So...

• The K-12 curriculum has to be geared to the social needs of the country, varied learning strategies have to be adopted to provide relevant and holistic learning to the students of various academic competence.

And…to meet 21st century expectations…

• Educators therefore need to depart from the ideas and pedagogies of yesterday and become bold advocates to develop the sorts of learning dispositions needed for our learners and their work futures.

• This means spending less time explaining through instruction and investing more time in experimental and error-tolerant modes of engagement.

Changing role of a teacher as a facilitator …• Shakespeare’s dictum that – “some are born

great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them”. (Choube - 2003)

• The teaching profession has a unique feature. It helps the teacher to grow in mind and spirit while engaged in it. According to social activists approach a teacher has to adapt to the role of a facilitator (Bauser Sfeld).

Teacher• Gives a didactic lecture

• Learner plays a passive role

• Tells• Lectures from the front• Gives answers

according to a set curriculum

Facilitator• Helps the learner to get

to his / her own understanding

• Learners plays an active role

• Asks• Supports from the back• Creates the learning

environment

• Francis (2010), pointed out that the activity based instruction can be teacher driven with direction from an instructor or learner driven with the learner having freedom to explore.

• Subong (2010), observed that teaching methods has gone from initiation during the early stage of educational development to non-traditional and modern methods in the present educational set-up.

• Certain strategies and techniques have come into existence with accompanying frameworks to make the best out of every student through innovative, efficient, and effective instruction.

• This approach provides opportunities for students to express their freedom to explore possible ways to solve a certain problem or to manipulate materials with the teacher’s role reduced to that of facilitator.

• Adeleye (2003), as he pointed out that adequate teaching materials and equipment must be provided to the trainers of vocational and technology education.

• Adeleye, further stressed that it no gain saying that vocational and technical education is capital intensive and demands a lot of tools equipment before any meaningful development can be made.

• Anka (2009), in a media interview said for effective teachings in vocational and technical education there should be necessary ingredients such as right teachers with the right attitudes and the right qualification, teaching the right subjects.

In “Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of

Globalization”, Zhao (2009) outlines five core assumptions which can be used to

guide decisions about what schools should teach:

1. Skills and knowledge that are not available at a cheaper price in other countries or that cannot be rendered useless by machines;

2. Creativity, interpreted as both ability and passion to make new things and adapt to new situations;

3. New skills and knowledge that are needed for living in the global world and the virtual world (examples include foreign languages, global awareness, and multicultural literacy, and knowledge to cope with the global world, and digital or technology literacy for the virtual world);

4. High-level cognitive skills such as problem solving and critical thinking;

5. Emotional intelligence - the ability and capacity to understand and manage emotions of self and others, the ability to interact with others, understand others, communicate with others, and manage one's own feelings (pp. 150-151)

• Instruction that uses design thinking as leverage for learning can thus provide rich experiences that encourage meaning making without the imposition of a fixed set of knowledge and skills.

• Through the implementation of curriculum that integrates design thinking and academic content, educators can help students develop a skill set that includes ideas generally not fostered within traditional school settings.

• This process would contribute to different levels of creative knowledge, creative skills and creative mindsets that can be achieved by design thinking education, culminating in a capability that is called “creative confidence” (Rauth, I. et al, 2010; Carroll et al, 2010).

• By applying the techniques of design to education, teachers loosen the narrow, rigid process of traditional learning and tap into students’ deep wells of creativity, encouraging them to see nuanced problems from inside the very core of an issue, and make critical thinking essential to solving any problem (Barseghian, 2009).

• The design thinking process moves beyond problem solving and project-based work by including a human centered approach.

• With a focus on addressing user needs, learning through design thinking therefore becomes an active endeavor of students that takes place in an environment that stresses problem-solving, reasoning, and thoughtful interaction among students.

References:

• Comparing Frameworks for “21st Century Skills”C.Dede Harvard Graduate School of Education ,July, 2009

• Innovation in the Classroom: Design Thinking for 21st Century LearningSwee Hong KWEK

• Revitalizing School Curriculum through Innovative Technologies A Pragmatic ApproachVerlaxmi Indrakanti

• Technology and its impact in the classroomRozalind G. Muir-HerzigFebruary 2003

Thank you for

listening!