Fostering Students' 21st Century Skills for the World of Work Through Middle Upper Education in the Digital Age: Mexican Efforts, Obstacles, and Limitations in a Heterogeneous and Unequal Society

• In Event: Fostering Students' 21st Century Skills Through Education: Perspectives on National and Cross-National Obstacles and Advances From the International Academy of Education

Abstract

21st-century skills are a leading educational concept since the late years of the XX century (Bin-kley et al., 2012; Burrus et al., 2013, 2017). A brief description of the main skills considered will introduce this paper.
Mexico’s educational policies have not been estranged from this international trend. Based on a National Research sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education on The challenges faced by middle education for the formation of young people for the 21st world of work (de Ibarrola, coor-dinator: 2018), this paper will analyze what is the actual content of the concept for Mexican edu-cational policies concerning middle upper education. Along with the general academic preparation for university studies, some middle upper education institutions have had the historical imprinted orientation of teaching students to work as “middle technicians”, and the pedagogical principle of teaching to work by working, either within the school facilities or in curricular interaction with nearby enterprises, all the way up to the recent establishment (2012) of a Mexican Model of Dual Education.

Author

• Maria De Ibarrola, Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas