Educating for 21st-Century Global Capacities: Using a Common Lens to Translate Intention Into Practice

• In Event: Professional Learning Communities: Advances in Teacher Learning

Abstract

This study examines how K12 teachers within a school district redefine and refine pedagogy to inform more globally-oriented and performance-based educational experiences, specifically around 21C global capacities. It uncovers an emerging, 21C discourse that teachers develop and use together, enabled by their participation in formal and informal professional learning communities, and the use of a 21st C framework, accompanied by perceptions of enhanced practice and improved student outcomes. Findings help bridge the research gap between intention and practice around 21C teaching and learning and provide examples of meaningful and systemic ways that teachers make sense of and refine their work when they participate in a district-wide effort to prepare themselves and students for the 21C.

Author

• Deb Sawch, Teachers College, Columbia University