Knowledge

Knowledge. Though a  core pillar of any curriculum, content knowledge can no longer be the sole central element of a curriculum’s structure. The misalignment caused by too strong of an emphasis on content knowledge is evidenced in many ways today, including lack of real-world relevance that manifests in low student engagement and motivation. Traditional subjects (Maths, Language, etc.) are of course essential, but must be a part of the means to an end in terms of larger individual competencies. Additionally, traditional disciplines must be augmented by “modern disciplines” such as Robotics, Entrepreneurship, Biotechnology, and many more. Tough choices must be made about what to pare back in order to allow for more appropriate areas of focus; for instance, in Maths, today’s world demands a stronger emphasis on statistics and probabilities, and less on trigonometry (first heavily emphasized due to the large demand for land surveyors). Likewise, choices about content knowledge will also need to be made around the concomitant depth that it is able to cultivate with the other three dimensions of the framework (Skills, Character, and Meta-Learning).

As a result, interdisciplinarity is viewed as a strong binding mechanism for traditional and modern disciplines alike, and the practices these disciplines require for the Skills, Character, and Meta-Learning dimensions. For example, new interdisciplinary fields that are already relevant to tomorrow’s world may be Robotics, Biosystems, Social systems, Wellness, Entrepreneurship, Media, Journalism, etc.

Skills. Key “higher-order skills” such as the “Four C’s” are essential for deeper learning of content knowledge, as well as for being able to demonstrate understanding through performance. ⁹ As discussed earlier, there is a reasonable global consensus on what critical Skills are at the broadest level, ¹⁰ and how different pedagogies can affect skills acquisition. Yet the current amount and structure of content in the curriculum, as well as a lack of support for educators to be able to implement robust pedagogies for these deeper learning experiences, has largely kept these Skills out of everyday learning experiences. A curriculum redesign must look at how to situate these Skills with the Knowledge, Character, and Meta-learning competencies desired.

Character. ¹¹ We use the term Character to refer to how we engage in the world. Character education is about the acquisition and strengthening of virtues, values, and the capacity to make wise choices for a well-rounded life and a thriving society. In order to engage and thrive in an increasingly challenging world, and support the positive growth of civic society, Character is a crucial structure in a redesigned curriculum for the twenty-first Century. This is true for one critical reason: there are ethical and character implications to all of the global chnnallenges we face today (environmental issues, corruption, terrorism, income inequality, and on and on). Likewise, increasingly new and emerging technologies bring with them deep ethical implications (such as cloning, gene-editing, etc.). As such, Character is a dimension prevalent in many global aspects today. As UNESCO has underscored, “There is every reason to place renewed emphasis on the moral and cultural dimensions of education… this process must begin with self-understanding through… knowledge, meditation and the practice of self-criticism”. ¹² Research has shown that students’ capacities, beyond academic learning of knowledge and skills, are important predictors of achievement and can be essential to success in work and civic life. ¹³ This includes much of the emerging research on “non-cognitive skills”. While certain knowledge and skills may or may not be used in future jobs, character qualities will invariably be applicable to a wide range of professions and to everyday family and community life.

How does one “unpack” Character in order to build a curriculum framework? There are many constructs and concepts that relate to Character, organized in various ways. In order to facilitate this work, CCR has conducted a systemic review and synthesis of more than 30 of these constructs to ultimately identify and summarize the 6 essential qualities in the CCR Character framework:

Meta-learning. In order to deepen and enhance the learning in these three dimensions—Knowledge, Skills, and Character qualities—there is an important additional fourth dimension needed for a fully comprehensive twenty-first century education: meta-learning (often called learning to learn or the internal processes by which we reflect on and adapt our learning). It is not enough to implicitly include this fourth dimension in all the other dimensions—its significance must be highlighted explicitly, so that we are constantly reminded to incorporate meta-learning strategies into the knowledge, skills, and character portions of our learning experiences, learning how to strive to improve no matter what goals we set for ourselves.

Perhaps, the most important reason for developing metacognition is that it can improve the application of knowledge, skills, and character qualities in realms beyond the immediate context in which they were learned. ¹⁵ This can result in the transfer of competencies across disciplines—important for students preparing for real-life situations where clear-cut divisions of disciplines fall away and one must select competencies from the entire gamut of their experience to effectively apply them to the challenges at hand. Transfer can also be necessary within a discipline, such as when a particular idea or skill was learned with one example, but students must know how to apply it to another task to complete their homework or exams, or to a different context. Transfer is the ultimate goal of all education, as students are expected to internalize what they learn in school and apply it to life.