Cator: 6 Deep Leader Learning Skills

Reposted from Getting Smart:

Deeper learning is an umbrella term for the skills, understandings, and mindsets students must possess to succeed in today’s careers and civic life. They must tackle challenging interpersonal issues of cross-cultural understanding and conflict resolution, and the urgent global issues of our time, such as availability of clean water and nutritious and affordable food, poverty, and climate change. Increasingly, schools are taking a lead role in supporting students as they develop the critical deeper learning skills to address these challenges.

Classroom teachers with expertise in deeper learning skills can more successfully orchestrate these experiences for their students. To support teachers in developing their expertise, Digital Promise is building a system of micro-credentials based on deeper learning skills to identify and recognize teacher competencies. Micro-credentials are much more focused and granular than diplomas, degrees or certificates. As such, they are more flexible, and support educators with many options for both formal and informal learning throughout their careers.

While teacher competence in deeper learning is important, it is also essential for education leaders at all levels to understand, articulate and model deeper learning skills. Leaders who operate from a deeper learning mindset can support a coherent culture of inquiry and risk-taking in schools, essential for continuous and transformative improvements. For each of the six areas of deeper learning below, we identify ways education leaders can develop their skills…

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Education Comes Down to Cultural Capital and Skills

Reposted from Forbes:

Building cultural capital among society’s most disadvantaged is a long-term project – and my life calling – that has not been made easier by America’s obsession with low-brow bread and circuses. Instead of talking in the “just folks” vernacular of the everyman, we need political leaders who, in their very mien, signal that higher learning is hip, essential and part of the fabric of one’s being. Moreover, we need courageous educators who vociferously defend rigorous after-school programs – such as speech, debate and robotics – even when their young charges prefer more softball pursuits.

When Stephen Hawking enjoys the same level of public acclaim as Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian, I will know we are making progress on this front. To begin that work, we must adopt a carrot-and-stick approach that ties empirically verified academic success to the perks of living in the most advanced democracy on the planet (including welfare benefits, driver’s licenses, and college loans).

As for skills, the solutions are more short-term and readily attainable. While we work to grow cultural capital among all Americans, we can at least train them – regardless of environment or upbringing – in salient workforce skills that will garner our citizens meaningful paid employment in a highly competitive global economy.

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Abdul-Jabbar: Who Will Lead Black Americans?

Reposted from Time:

This weekend our nation will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march known as “Bloody Sunday.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is on our minds, and for many people so is one burning question: Where is today’s Dr. King? I’d argue it’s the wrong question. In the act of canonizing Dr. King, we’re forgotten that no movement is ever advanced by one voice alone. This country wasn’t founded by a single person, but a group of visionaries who didn’t always share the same vision. Dr. King’s voice was lifted by many others — Malcolm X, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis — who may have marched to a different drummer but marched in the same direction.

Bringing about change requires, as Liam Neeson might say, “a very particular set of skills.” Leaders have to notice subtle shifts in the political landscape that threaten the rights and standing of blacks in society. They have to analyze complex information and question even more complex motivations. They have to be socially responsible in not attributing every societal stumble to racism. They have to have a clear and articulate voice in explaining when injustice occurs, and they must have the courage to tell the world — even when the world doesn’t want to hear it. Finally, they must be able to offer practical solutions to specific problems and have the drive and charisma to inspire people to participate in those solutions.

Who are the leaders in the African-American community willing to bring all aspects of injustice to the public’s attention, especially when the public doesn’t want to hear it? The black community has many brave and dedicated leaders, so no simple list will do them all justice. Some leaders operate on a very local level. Even though they help many in need, they will not be recognized as a national leader. The best I can do is mention those who have become a public face and voice for many African-Americans. At the same time, it’s important to understand that the 43 million members of the black community are not a single voice. Like every other ethnic group, they have a broad spectrum of political, religious, and social beliefs. However, they do have a nearly unanimous voice when it comes to believing that there are institutional injustices aimed at them as a group.

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Gerstein: 21st Century Educator Self-Assessment [TABLE]

User Generated Education blogger Dr. Jackie Gerstein presents this table of twelve skills and related attributes today’s educators can develop to effectively assist them in evaluating if and how effectively they are working with learners. Read more and find additional resources on her original post.

View the original post here.

The Intrapersonal Intelligence in the Knowledge Economy Workplace [INFOGRAPHIC]

In the knowledge economy workplace, the Intrapersonal Intelligence is critically important. Through evaluation, affective learning, growth mindset and professional capital, workers participate in their own self-efficacy and contribute new knowledge and new value to the profession and the global community. Today, the intelligence of feelings, values and attitudes is fueling the redefinition of what it means to be effective and successful. Caring drives and personalizes ethics, excellence, engagement and resilience.

Multiple Intelligences In The Knowledge Economy Workplace [INFOGRAPHIC]

Using this model mindfully, educators can apply the principles of Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory in planning and implementing learning experiences that:

• Address the emerging demands of the knowledge economy workplace.

• Support learners in developing the skills, values and attitudes that will make them college, career and citizenship ready.

• Provide the conditions for the necessary instructional shift that will transform public education to meet the needs of society today and in the future.

While Howard Gardner created his intelligence theory at the dusk of the industrial age, his greatest impact may well be its application in the dawn of the information age.

Read more here.

The College-Workplace Disconnect

Reposted from CNBC:

“A Gallup-Purdue University study describes a huge disconnect between what college presidents think students need to launch successful postgraduate careers and what the schools are actually delivering. The survey, which involved more than 30,000 students, tackled topics such as internship experience, availability of mentors, enthusiastic teachers, special projects and extracurricular activities.

The biggest sticking point: Internships. On average, less than a third of undergraduates say they had an internship that reflected their course of study, and there’s concern the numbers will go lower.

“I consider that a monumental failure,” said Gallup Education Executive Director Brandon Busteed, who says business leaders have been expressing serious dissatisfaction over how qualified new graduates are for entry-level jobs. “Part of what we are seeing is that there is still a lot of hubris in higher education,” he said. “Most of these college presidents have a lot of confidence that their own institution is just fine. But then we talk about the future of higher education and they are pretty negative.”

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The Global Gap for Marketable Job Skills

Reposted from the WISE ed.review:

“Globally, study after study is coming up with one message: graduates lack essential skills to get by in the workplace. They lack skills like communication, teamwork, critical thinking, the ability to work under pressure, and even punctuality! In a global survey of business leaders by Hult International Business School (2013), one of the key insights was that leaders held mostly negative views on both the process and products of business education, noting that students lack ‘real world’ experience; both in terms of experience and learning from faculty with real world experience. The survey noted that same missing skills [namely self-awareness, comfort with uncertainty, creativity, and critical thinking] while noting that education systems overemphasize functional knowledge.

This has become a ‘global gap’, and the search for ways to close the gap are afoot; in early 2014, the Economist teamed up with Lumina Foundation to launch a global challenge [with a reward to 10,000 USD] to find solutions to bridge the gap between the workforce and higher education. The central question in this competition is: How can companies work with higher education to ensure that the higher education system better prepares workers to be successful on the job and teaches skills that will remain valuable in the future.

Are schools and higher education institutions doing enough to prepare students for the world of work? Isn’t it their role to equip students with the skills that employers demand? Why are employers not doing much about it, and should they do more to smooth the student’s transition into the work life? I argue the answer to these questions is ‘simple’. The world of work has changed so fast in the past 2 decades, and the higher education system simply did not catch up. We have 20th century higher education systems, institutions, and faculty, trying to prepare students for a 21st century world of work.”

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10 Most Important Work Skills by the Year 2020 [INFOGRAPHIC]

Rather than focusing on future jobs, this infographic looks at future work skills: proficiencies and abilities required across different jobs and work settings that will reshape the landscape of work. You can read the full report from which this infographic acquired its data here.

Employers Challenge Educators: Make School Relevant to Students’ Lives

Reposted from MindShift:

“Business leaders and economic thinkers are worried that today’s students aren’t leaving school with the skills they’ll need to succeed in the workplace. Representatives from tech companies and hiring experts are looking for applicants who show individuality, confidence in their abilities, ability to identify and communicate their strengths, and who are capable of thinking on their feet.

At the recent Next New World conference hosted by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, panelists addressed the question of how the American education system can better prepare students to meet the evolving challenges of the 21st century economy. Every panelist agreed that right now, the U.S. does not have a system that produces students that meet those needs.

“The problem is not to get incrementally better with our current education system,” said Tony Wagner, expert in residence at Harvard’s Innovation Lab. “The problem is to reimagine it.” Wagner is not the first to call for a make-over of the education system, and he certainly isn’t the first to advocate for content that connects with students in authentic ways or that teaches real world skills. His voice joins with the countless educators clamoring for the freedom to pursue those same goals.”

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