Microshift Ideas: Connection Through Context and Relevance
Microshift Ideas: Personalized Learning
Microshift Ideas: A Challenge of Higher-Order-Thinking Skills
Microshift Ideas: Information Fluency for Research Skills
Microshift Ideas: Process-Oriented Learning
Microshift Ideas: Learning Intentions and Success Criteria
Microshift Ideas: Learner-Created Knowledge
Microshift Ideas: Mindful Assessment
Microshift Ideas: Self- and Peer Assessment
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About the Author
Lee Watanabe-Crockett is an optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together through connection and compassion. He works with governments, education systems, international agencies, and corporations to help people and organizations connect to their highest purpose and realize their wishes for the future.
Lee believes in creating balance in the reality of a digital present and future. As such, living in Japan, he studies Aikido, Buddhism, and the Shakuhachi, a traditional Japanese bamboo flute. Joyful curiosity is the foundation of his approach to creating vital learning environments for groups around the world.
His several best-selling books, including Literacy Is NOT Enough, Growing Global Digital Citizens, and Mindful Assessment, have garnered many awards and are used in schools and universities around the world.
To learn more about Lee’s work, visit https://globaldigitalcitizen.org or www.leewatanabecrockett.com, or follow @leecrockett on Twitter.
To book Lee Watanabe-Crockett for professional development, contact [email protected].
Introduction
Many of education’s most popular authors and keynote speakers seem to speak of little else than what is wrong with education. The constant dialogue on why with so little discussion of how fatigues me, and I also believe most educators are weary of hearing what they are doing wrong. In 2011, I decided to no longer discuss the problem without presenting a solution. In the void, I put forward the essential fluencies as a solution, and I have been amazed how quickly they have spread through systems around the world. These fluencies, which represent essential future-focused (21st century) skills, include solution fluency, information fluency, creativity fluency, media fluency, collaboration fluency, and global digital citizenship, and I first published about them with Ian Jukes and Andrew Churches in Literacy Is NOT Enough (Crockett, Jukes, & Churches, 2011). The truth is, we developed these fluencies as a response to a much broader consideration, a question that we have posed to thousands of educators all over the world; that question is, “What are the most crucial skills our students need to live and succeed in the transforming world of both the present and the future?”
I believe if we are to achieve positive transformation, we need to focus on a bright future and work together to create it. I assume that you are reading this book because you want to know precisely what that change looks like and how to get there. As such, I will not take time to discuss the why in this book, but only the how. I do this by pinpointing ten core shifts of practice—practices rooted in future-focused learning and the essential fluencies—that you can implement with your learners regardless of your established teaching pedagogy. I support these shifts with many details and examples.
It is the hard work of teachers working to shift their practice with the essential fluencies that keeps me committed to support them with my work. I hope this book contributes to the positive work you are doing and your relentless desire to improve. So, before we begin, it is important to understand how the shifts of practice I present in this book fit into many popular teaching pedagogies, how these ideas connect to future-focused learning, and how I’ve organized this book so you can make the best use of it.
The Missing Piece in Popular Pedagogical Approaches
For some years, many schools have used the idea of problem- and project-based learning by bringing into classes and subjects real-world, contextual, and relevant projects. For the most part, these are single-subject approaches. For example, the International Baccalaureate Group 4 subjects have students in various disciplines within the sciences work collaboratively to investigate a problem (“IB Group 4 Subjects,” n.d.). These approaches are beneficial since they bring in a series of processes that enable students to address problems and develop projects. Other examples include Apple’s ongoing support for challenge-based learning (Digital Promise, n.d.), the Buck Institute’s support for project-based learning (Buck Institute for Education, n.d.), and so on.
Similarly, the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) initiative is a cross-curricular approach to integrating some of the sciences, namely the traditional sciences, mathematics, technology and applied technology, and science in the form of engineering. STEM originated in the United States as a solution for dwindling numbers of graduates in these disciplines (U.S. Department of Education, n.d.).
An evolution of STEM is the science, technology, engineering, arts and design, and mathematics initiative (STEAM), which adds aesthetic and design considerations in the form of art to bring together function and form. STEAM represents the next evolutionary step of STEM (STEM to STEAM, n.d.).
Although all of these pedagogical approaches are laudable and beneficial, none actually address the bigger focus. The real world, except for academia, does not divide itself up into neat compartments or disciplines. A technology company does not employ only technologists. It brings together a raft of different skill sets that span all the disciplines we have at school and more. For example, to develop a new product you absolutely need the engineers, technologists, and mathematicians but you also need the following.
• The artists and designers who make the product both functional and aesthetically suitable
• The economists who examine the financial viability of the solution
• The historians who understand the framework that the problem is set in and who consider the prior developments and frameworks that may or will impact the solution
• The wordsmiths and linguists who develop and present the proposals, arguments, manuals, media releases, and press kits and packaging that accompany any product
• The media experts who fashion the messages into social media, traditional media, and so on
• The legal experts who investigate and protect the concepts, intellectual property, and copyright
