21^st Century Learning for 21^st Century Skills: What Does It Mean, and How Do We Do It?

Abstract

I want to argue in this lecture, that life – especially educational life – is never that simple. What exactly are 21^st century skills? How, for example, do they differ from ‘knowledge’? And once we know what they are, does there follow a strategy – or at least a set of principles – for what learning should look like, and the roles we ascribe to technology? Most importantly, if 21^st century knowledge is qualitatively different from the 19^th and 20^th century knowledge that characterises much of our existing curricula, we will need to consider carefully just how to make that knowledge learnable and accessible through the design of digital technologies and their evaluation.