21st Century Pedagogy

Oct 4, 2017

4 min read

According to Sinek’s Golden Circle, the why, how and what of education seem to rise to trigger so many ideas, thoughts, and analysis to our current ways of implementing teaching and thus learning. The other day, I thought to myself that here I am an educator who is constantly trying to educate herself in order to better educate my learners; as my mission to embitter my abilities in order to meet new standards of teaching! The revolution of wanting to learn, evolve, innovate and design new pedagogies and thus instigate productivity, creativity, and skills beyond what the eyes can meet has to start within us as twenty-first century educators.

As I am exploring 21st century teaching methods and pedagogies, I have to stop and contemplate about all of the possibilities and options that we are left with through being globalized teachers and thus we can reach out to practically any piece of information that we please to. But is it better to hold some access to resources at times to allow teachers to gain attention and respect in classrooms as being the primary source of information?

In the presence of MOOCs, Cloud-Based Software, VLE, personalized eLearning, and blended learning, a lot seems virtually attainable! However, in order to dominate the teaching process we need to control and set rules for how it is best done. Therefore, we as educators need to unite as part of a global professional learning network in order to rethink and reevaluate the teaching-learning philosophy by designing new and up-to-date modernized pedagogies that work for both student and teacher advancement.

As mentioned in the RSA sketch, people’s education has a great impact on both society and economy. By securing proper means of education for both students and teachers, only then prosper will occur. We notice that most developed countries have well-educated population and thus experiencing less social, economic, and health problems as public awareness and financial support are present. These governments take care of educators as they provide them with proper training programs to push them to excel in their own fields and thus deliver the best version of themselves to fit teaching Digital Age students.

So going back to the main question: Why isn’t twenty century teaching acceptable for twenty first century learning? A question that makes me ponder! I stand in the middle of this meaning that I myself was a student who received old-fashioned text-driven education, on the other hand, here I am nowadays learning through google classroom using new platforms the internet offers for integrating and engaging basic skills of knowledge through sharing via blogs and communicating via emails with my teachers/professors. So definitely I feel the difference between both teaching methodologies judging through the point of view of teachers and students. Yet I can't decide which one do I prefer best! That is maybe for later...

Twenty century teaching revolves around the teacher in class and how he/she presents the intended information so that it’s well-known to their students without actually questioning their abilities and taking it a little further. It doesn’t involve any interaction and exchange of thoughts between the instructor and his/her pupils, so this develops low to no critical thinking abilities as students are not encouraged to think on their own or to state their opinions about general topics or even address their concerns, regardless of what they are. It’s similar to copy-paste, parquet type of learning. Basically, they will end up developing poor cognitive, social and emotional skills.

However, twenty-first century teaching offers a lot of possibilities and options where students are the main center. Curricula are designed to better involve students and trigger the best in the matter of increasing their critical thinking abilities, creativity and productivity in real life. They will be sole responsible on their own work because they researched and curated the information themselves. Their teachers’ role is to encourage them to reflect on it and critique it by having a positive approach to listen to others’ thoughts and points of view no matter how different they are from theirs (whether positive or negative feedback). This will boost their confidence levels, improve their use of language, and definitely up bring their critical thinking levels to meet the right and needed expectations in life after college.

With that being said, technology plays a great part in the education field nowadays where it actually dominates the learning and teaching processes. Integrating technology as an aiding tool to practice true teaching should result in deep learning of concepts which are the foundation of reaching the maximum potential of students. As Dr. Blewett previously put it in the video “Education should lead technology and it’s never vice-versa”, not if we want to advance! Educational pedagogies should stand the test of time too in a way they are based on solid grounds to benefit students and encourage them to be more engaged in their society and connected with their obligations to further embitter their future.

Designing an inter-disciplinary twenty-first century pedagogy requires a lot of dedication. It has to function in means to improve and serve in contextually teaching pupils, work collaboratively with other PLNs as teachers and with students by encouraging them to prepare their projects. It should further foster problem solving skills as faced in real life situations. It has to be collaborative and uses enabling and empowering technological tools.

In conclusion, to successfully teach using 21st century pedagogy having the criteria mentioned above, educators must concentrate their efforts on students. The curricula and assessments used by educators should be inclusive, engaging, interdisciplinary and contextual; based on real life events. We as educators should have an open platform for those called digital natives to express themselves collaboratively in an effort to discuss, reflect, provide and receive feedback.

Last but not least, personally I am looking forward to explore new aspects of myself that would push me to different levels of thinking and analysis and thus managing to design my own pedagogy that fits well with the constant change in the education field that consequently affect new generations. Challenge, here I am!!!