21st. century learning skills

De partnership voor 21st. century learning skills heeft onderzocht over welke competenties de huidige studenten zouden moeten beschikken om in de 21ste eeuw als professional te kunnen werken. De meest opvallende:

* Thinking critically and making judgments about the barrage of information
* Solving complex, multidisciplinary, open-ended problems that all workers, in every kind of workplace,encounter routinely
* Creativity and entrepreneurial thinking
* Communicating and collaborating with teams of people across cultural, geographic and language boundaries
* Making innovative use of knowledge, information and opportunities to create new services,processes and products.
* Taking charge of financial, health and civic responsibilities and making wise choices.

Met name nummer 3 Creativiteit en Ondernemerschap vallen me direct op. Ook omdat dit essentiele onderdelen zijn van het verhaal rond de excellente student. In het rapport gaat men echter verder door te stellen dat dit competenties zijn waarover ELKE student/professional zou moeten beschikken.
Dit wordt onderbouwd met de volgende uitspraken:

On the Demand for a 21st Century Education and Skills

“The best employers the world over will be looking
for the most competent, most creative, and most
innovative people on the face of the earth and will
be willing to pay them top dollar for their services.
This will be true not just for top professionals and
managers, but up and down the length and breadth of
the workforce. Those countries that produce the most
important new products and services can capture a
premium in world markets that will enable them to pay
high wages to their citizens.”
—Tough Choices or Tough Times, the New Commission on
the Skills of the American Workforce, National Center on
Education and the Economy, 2007

“I call the age we are entering the creative age because
the key factor propelling us forward is the rise of
creativity as the primary mover of our economy.”
—Richard Florida, The Flight of the Creative Class, 2006

“Your ability to act on your imagination is going to
be so decisive in driving your future and the standard
of living of your country. So the school, the state, the
country that empowers, nurtures, enables imagination
among its students and citizens, that’s who’s going to be
the winner.”
—Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times columnist

“Creativity is as important in education as literacy and
we should treat it with the same status.”
—Sir Ken Robinson, international creativity expert, 2006