21st+Century+Skills+-Laura+Mahler+Ch+3

**Laura will read this chapter and write a summary focusing on the main points in the discussion board.Click on the discussion board tab and read the summary.Please respond with additional thoughts and/or questions.**

**Chapter 3 __Learning and Innovation Skills__**
**The "21st Century Knowledge-and-Skills Rainbow", (Figure 3.2, page 48), illustrates the desired student outcomes most needed for our times. Included are traditional school subjects, contemporary content themes such as global awareness, environmental, financial, health, and civil literacy, and 21st century skills. Surrounding the core subjects and interdisciplinary 21st century themes are three sets of skills most in demand in our times:**
 * Learning and innovation skills
 * Information, media, and technology skills
 * Life and career skills

**The first set of 21st century skills, and the focus of Chapter 3, are:**
 * 1) Critical thinking and problem solving (expert thinking)
 * 2) Communication and collaboration (complex communicating)
 * 3) Creativity and innovation (applied imagination and invention)

__**1. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving**__ __**Skills**__
Students should be able to:


 * Reason effectively**
 * Use various types of reasoning (inductive, deductive, etc.) as appropriate to the situation


 * Use systems thinking**
 * Analyze how parts of a whole interact with each other to produce overall outcomes in comlex systems


 * Make judgements and decisions**
 * Effectively analyze and evaluate evidence, arguments, claims and beliefs
 * Analyze and evaluate major alternatives points of view
 * Synthesize and make connections between information and arguments
 * Interpret information and draw conclusions based on teh best analysis
 * Reflect critically on learning experiences and processes


 * Solve problems**
 * Solve different kinds of nonfamiliar problems in both conventional and innovative ways
 * Identify and ask significant quesions that clarify various points of view and lead to better solutions

__**2. Communication and Collaboraton Skills**__
Students should be able to:


 * Communicate clearly**
 * Articulate thoughts and ideas effectively using oral, written and nonverbal communication skills in a variety of forms and contexts
 * Listen effectively to decipher meaning, including knowledge, values, attitudes and intentions
 * Use communication for a range of purposes (e.g. to inform, instruct, motivate and persuade)
 * Utilize multiple media and technologies, and know how to judge their effectiveness a priori as well as assess their impact
 * Communicate effectively in diverse environments (including multi-lingual)
 * Collaborate with others**
 * Demonstrate the ability to work effectively and respectfully with diverse teams
 * Exercize flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal
 * Assume shared responsibility for collaborative work, and value the individual contributions made by each team member

**__3. Creativty and Innovation Skills__**
Students should be able to:


 * Think creatively**
 * Use a wide range of idea creation techniques (such as brainstorming)
 * Create novel, new and worthwhile ideas (both incremental and radical concepts)
 * Elaborate, refine, analyze and evaluate their own ideas in order to improve and maximize creative efforts


 * Work creatively with others**
 * Develop, implement and communicate new ideas to others effectively
 * Be open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives; incorporate group input and feedback into the work
 * Demonstrate originality and inventiveness in work and understand the real world limits to adopting new ideas
 * View failure as an opportunity to learn; understand that creativity and innovation is a long-term, cyclical process os small successes and frequent mistakes


 * Implement innovations**
 * Act on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful contribution to the field in which the innovation will occur

Source: Copyright c. Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

**A useful guide to finding online resources that develop critical thinking and problem solving can be found at the Foundation for Critical Thinking at [|www.criticalthinking.org]** 