Diving In

THE IMPETUS
By Tony Lai

The emergence of a 21st century literacy is probably the most significant trend for educators to take note of. I believe this is not a passing fad but rather a significant assault around how youths would like to acquire knowledge - personalised and collaborative at the same time. The single toughest problem we will have to grapple with lies in  how we educate our teachers, not how we educate our kids because they know how to do that on their own!

The key to 21st century literacy for teachers lies in how they teach more than what they teach. The language of teaching will become increasingly multi-dimensional and highly contextual. Teachers will have to depart from putting the child in the centre and begin to look at education from the eyes and heart of the child. Such anthropological skills will be critical in order to determine the right combination of teaching styles necessary to pair with fast changing content requirements, delivered with experience and with attention given to design creation. These new literacies are not meant to replace existing skills such as classroom management, discipline and leadership development; they are meant to be added to the repertoire of what a teacher does and lead teachers to re-frame existing competencies to form fresh new approaches in the classroom.

The way we teach teachers has not changed fundamentally. The pace of improvements in teacher training has not been in step with the pace of global transformation. We need projects that push our teachers to rethink how teaching can be re-designed and we need to do it with new partners and different processes. Just another training module at a centralised institution will not give us new outcomes. We need global partners (like LEGO), collaborative relationships (between school and MOE HQ), designers and facilitators (like The Idea Factory) and adventurous schools (like Cedar Primary School) who believe that success in the 21st century means removing the “trade-off” mindset and embracing the “yes..and” point of view for sustainable long term change.

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