Is the 21st Century Learner Still Relevant in 2014?
Author Name: Jill Colton
IS THE 21ST CENTURY LEARNER STILL RELEVANT IN 2014?
Abstract
The term 21st century learner may be seen as outdated by some, but it seems to persist in
texts used by teachers to inform their perspectives on teaching and learning. In this paper I
consider how the figure of the 21st century learner, travels into a school. I do this by
reporting on the discussion of 8 teachers at a South Australian secondary school who were
asked ‘how do you understand the 21st century learner?’ While their answers to this
question commenced with claims about the way that students (and teachers) use digital
technology, it developed into a discussion about knowledge – how it is accessed, filtered,
organized and created by contemporary students. In this research I asked the teachers to
identify some of the texts that informed this understanding of the 21st century learner and
this paper will present an analysis of one of these texts in order to trace the way that
knowledge about learners and learning is transported into and around a school. I argue
that it is important to analyze the way that this figure of the 21st century learner is taken up
in the school because of the way that it informs teachers' knowledge about (innovative)
pedagogy.
Introduction
The 21st century learner is a term that has emerged to represent students as different from the
past, mostly due to their use of digital and media technologies. Inherent in the notion of 21st
century learner is a projection of the future and the 21st century learner can be seen as a way of
imagining what students and learning practices will be like in a future time. But now that we are
in the 21st century some people have said to me comments along the line of, ‘why are we still
using this term? We are over a decade into the 21st century so why are we still talking about 21st
century learners?’ These comments might be used to illustrate how the figure of the 21st
century learner works within a futurist discourse and may also invite us to consider the work
that the 21st century learner does in a contemporary context. How do teachers understand this
term and how is it taken up in their thinking about contemporary students?
When I began thinking about my topic for research in 2009 I felt that the term 21st century
learner was difficult to define and in my own attempts to understand this term I found a video
on Youtube titled ‘A Vision of K-12 Learners’ (Nesbitt 2007)
Figure 1. Still from ‘A Vision of K-12 learners’
This video got me thinking about what this term 21st century learner meant. It also got me
thinking about how teachers were responding to the ideas behind the words 21st century
learner and also about who was constructing these ‘truths’ about students.
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Is the 21st Century Learner Still Relevant in 2014?
Author Name: Jill Colton
While I found that the idea of 21st century learners was vague and difficult to define, I also
noticed that these terms were being used widely in my workplace and in my professional circles
of communication. I saw it as a concept that would allow me to investigate a phenomenon that is
happening ‘out there’ and to think about what that means for what is happening in a school, on a
local level. In their policy genealogy, Williams, Gannon and Sawyer (2013) trace the figure of the
21st century learner through policy networks including the Melbourne Declaration on
Educational Goals for Young Australians Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young
Australians (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs
[MCEETYA] 2008) and the Australian Curriculum (ACARA 2012). They also present a discourse
analysis of a recent book on 21st century learning that is available commercially to teachers. I
share their interest in “the extent to which policy mobility has implications for how the most
fundamental aspects of education, such as curriculum, are inflected in local contexts” (page 2).
This is why I have positioned the 21st century learner as a travelling construct in my research –
as I consider how it interacts with both traditional and innovative pedagogies and the use of
digital technologies in a local school.
In the Youtube clip mentioned above “A Vision of K-12 Learners”, 21st century learners are
represented as young people who use digital texts and digital literacy practices in ways that are
liberating, empowering, engaging and also different from traditional school practices. How does
this view of learners fit in with research in the field in the last 20 years? A review of the
literature shows that there have been many studies of young people and their use of digital
technologies and digital text (Green and Bigum 1993; Selwyn 2003; Buckingham 2007; Knobel
and Lankshear 2008; Rosen 2010; Kupiainen 2013). In addition there have been various
typologies used to describe young people as users of digital technologies – digital natives
(Prensky, 2001), the wired generation (Hanman 2005), the i-generation (Rosen 2010) and the
digital generation (Schwartz 2013). Green and Bigum (1993) used the phrase “aliens in the
classroom” (page 119) to highlight the significant way that they saw digital technologies
changing culture and knowledge while Kress (2008) used the term “transitional generation”
(page 253) to focus on a move from predominantly print and written word based text to screen
and visual and media based text. In all of this literature, there is a focus on the use of digital
technologies and digital literacies and there is also a focus on educational change.
The Data Collection
The focus group data collected here forms part of a larger single school ethnography in which I
aim to trace the discursive construct of the 21st century learner into the school. The
methodology can be described as a critical ethnography in the way that qualitative data is
collected from a local site through focus groups, interviews, classroom observation and
collection of artefacts, and analysed using a discourse analysis approach which questions claims
of truth in terms of power and identity (Carspecken, 2001). In this first project, I invited
teachers at the school in which I work, to be involved in focus groups where I asked the question
what do you understand by the 21st century learner? Eight teachers replied to my invitation and
I organised mutually convenient times for them to meet with me in groups during Term 3 and 4
2013. Upon request, participants also forwarded links and details about texts they had read or
viewed that had informed their views.
From these focus groups I have identified three themes:
1. Defining the term 21st century learner
2. Digital technology and the 21st century learner
3. Knowledge and the 21st century learner
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Is the 21st Century Learner Still Relevant in 2014?
Author Name: Jill Colton
In the last section of this paper I briefly discuss a TED talk given by Sugata Mitra that was
referred to by three of the teachers in this project.
1. Defining the term 21st century learner
In the focus groups I asked the question, ‘what do you understand by the term 21st century
learner?. In the first focus group, this was a problematic phrase and the term ‘contemporary
learner’ was favoured by one person who said that, “I’m probably the worst person to have in the
room because I hate the term with a passion”. His argument was that he preferred the term
contemporary learner because ‘contemporary’ is about our day and age – so it is about learning
about and for our day and age whereas the term 21st century learner was part of a futurist
discourse from 10 or so years ago and so was not relevant anymore because we are now in that
future. He also noted that the term seemed to be used by the (commercial) vendors at a recent
education and technology (EduTECH) conference.
And that’s why I’m worried about it (the term 21 st century learners) because we’re actually
almost at the next year’s EduTECH , its’ pretty much banned. And the only people who use
it are the vendors who were trying to impress the educators,. And we were going, ‘Yeah,
move on.’(Tim, English Teacher)
A concern with the commercialisation and mediatisation of the term is also alluded to in this
comment by one of the other teachers involved. She said that:
I have suspected for a long time, that it’s a term that’s been bandied about in the press, in
schools, and that it’s possibly been overused by people who really are not absolutely sure
about what it actually means. And I suspect that there isn’t just one meaning and that, you
know, 21st century learning can be described in numbers of ways by numbers of different
people. (Anna, English Teacher)
The 21st century learner can be seen as “in some ways a catch-all phrase that tends to stand in for
a collection of ideas that may vary from site to site” and this may be where confusion about its
meaning comes from (Williams, Gannon and Sawyer, 2013, page 3). Williams, Gannon and
Sawyer also mention that “the ‘21st century learner’ is also associated quite literally with a
particular ‘brand’ in many of its recent articulations.” This supports what some of the teachers
said in regards to their concern with the corporatisation and commercialisation of the term and
with the difficulty in defining it.
2. 21st century learners and digital technology
In this project, teachers at a particular site were asked what they understood by the term 21st
century learners and in their responses some themes emerged which reflect how students were
being constructed. In this section of the paper I will focus on one of these themes - the
connections made between contemporary students and digital technologies. All of the eight
participants in the focus groups talked about technology as integral to ideas about 21st century
learners. Students were clearly positioned as users of digital technology and in some cases the
teachers also identified themselves as users of technology. Technology was referred to by all of
the teachers as a tool which allowed for a range of teaching and learning behaviours such as
engagement, access to information, authenticity, immersion, high order thinking and
differentiation. The use of digital technology to access information was a key point in the focus
group discussion.
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Is the 21st Century Learner Still Relevant in 2014?
Author Name: Jill Colton
The way that digital technology allows for access to information was referred to by 7 of the 8
teachers in this project. Year 7 teacher, Jack, said that students have easy access to information
at home. He said: “..for 21st century learners I think we need to recognise that we are dealing with
families, with students, who outside of school have access to information at their fingertips.”
Anna compared old ways of accessing information with new ways. She said that instead of
“tracking to the library, working through call cards, going to the, you know, pulling out, finding the
right page number” which would be a “20 minute process” - students and teachers can use
technology as a tool to get information, which she qualified by saying: “That is a one-minute
process.”
Another teacher said that:
“ …what we’re doing now with kids is we’re actually saying, “You know what, I know
some things, so point me in some good directions, and guess what, you are lucky enough
through technology to have access to a whole range of information I’d beg to know
about. But we’re going to go in here and my job is to help you make sense of that where I
can, and your job is to help me make sense of some of that as well because I don’t know it
either.” (Tim, English Teacher)
In these three examples, students are described in relation to the way that they can access
information through digital technology. But, the teachers’ comments also work to construct the
teacher – Jack said that the teacher needs to recognise these (21st century) students in a way that
is perhaps different from the past; Anna’s comments compare the way that we (as teachers)
accessed information with the changing practices of today. In Tim’s comment, we (the teacher)
are constructed as a guide but also as a co-learner.
Jenny, the Year 11/12 Geography Teacher stated that she loved using technology in her teaching
work because of its tool-like qualities.
I mean, obviously I love technology. I love using it. But I love it because it makes these
things easier for us to, you know, get the information, easier for us to organise things and so,
yes, very much technology is the tool. (Jenny, Geography teacher)
For her, technology was something that allows students, and herself, to access information – and
in the comment below she refers to the way that access to information (such as Google Earth)
enables her to bring the real world in to her classroom.
If we’re talking about contemporary: as a geography teacher, so cool, I get magnitude of
earthquake updates, you know, on the minute that you would never have got before, so you
can constantly be bringing in, for me, the real world that we live in on a daily or hourly basis
if you really want to.(Jenny)
Twenty first century learners were clearly being positioned as users of digital technology to do
‘school things’ – but there was further discussion on the impact of the students’ preferences on
what is valued as learning or, in other words, the acknowledgement or power of what young
people see as being worthwhile learning. Anna said that “for me it’s more about what 21stcentury learners value” and what students value “is the knowledge and understanding of things or
elements that are critical to them”. Anna’s point is that there is some knowledge that is more
critical to today’s learners – this is about the way that learners can access a broad range of
knowledge so what students see as valuable or worthwhile to them is what they will learn.
In each of these comments can be seen the positioning of the student in relation to technology,
information and knowledge. In the construction of students as 21st century learners who are
closely aligned to digital technology, can also be seen the construction of teachers who, as shown
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Is the 21st Century Learner Still Relevant in 2014?
Author Name: Jill Colton
in the comments above, are responding to these ‘new’ students, ‘new’ technologies and
changing roles.
3. Knowledge and the 21st century learner
I now move onto my third theme and in this section I highlight some of the ways that the
teachers in this project talked about knowledge in relation to contemporary students. My
purpose here is to shed some light on the way that students are being constructed as 21st
century learners. I will start with Julie’s comment about the implications of being able to access
a large amount of information easily and quickly. Julie said:
It’s what you do with that, that information, and how you value it and how you order it; so,
you know, recognising or being discerning, I suppose, with data and information. (Julie,
Science Teacher)
There was a lot of discussion about what students do with information – how they select, order
and evaluate it, such as this comment by Jenny.
Now that contemporary learning in a contemporary world for me means not knowing, the
need to have to know this amount of information and that amount of information; so
content is present but not the emphasis for me. So I think it’s the skills in thinking, in
evaluation, in problem-solving. That’s far more central, I think, to that learning, to 21 stcentury learning. (Jenny, Geography Teacher)
In this comment there are a couple of things going on. First she uses the concept of ‘not knowing’
which links to the way that information can be easily accessed through the internet on a needs
basis. Then she moves into a list of skills - “thinking, in evaluation, in problem solving” which is
about how information is interpreted and used.
Jack described how he had used a problem solving approach with his year7 Maths class. He had
shown his students an advertisement from a local petrol station for discount petrol – the deal
involved spending money in the shop in order to gain a discount on the petrol price. He invited
the students to find out ‘who wins’ in the discount petrol deal. Jack explained how one student
worked through the problem. Initially, she asked the teacher, ‘what car is it?’ and he said ‘I don’t
know’:
“…that was my response to every question she asked I said ‘no idea’, ‘I don’t know’…” (Yr
7 Maths teacher)
The student then decided to use her family car as the example, because that was relevant to her.
From there she used web based resources to look up the fuel capacity of her car and to find out
how to convert gallons to litres.
She worked out how much she could fill her car up with the fuel and worked out that there
was no way that she could save more money than what he was spending by driving that
vehicle and in fact she then went on and calculated how many litres you would need to spend
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Is the 21st Century Learner Still Relevant in 2014?
Author Name: Jill Colton
in order to make a saving based on current fuel prices as an average and then she realised
that the clause in the voucher explains that it can’t be over a certain amount.
…So straight away she said ‘well the company wins’… but then she stopped herself and said
‘well wait a second, if I needed to buy bread and milk anyway and I was going to buy it from
another shop and it was a similar price to the service station then buying it from the service
station and then getting a discount means I do actually win because I wouldn’t’ve got this
discount otherwise’. (Jack, Yr 7 Maths Teacher)
In this example, the teacher has created a learning activity where information is accessed as
needed by the student in order to solve a problem, involving critical thinking and in this way the
student is seen to be constructing her knowledge. This teacher described this scenario as a
response to the 21st century learner – he made the point that this approach differed in many
ways to his usual approach – the key points of difference begin that he did not provide the
information and his response to her questions was ‘I don’t know”.
One way that we can
analyse this approach to using information to construct knowledge is with Kress.
Kress (2009) says that the distinction between knowledge and information is not as clear as it
once was. But the nature of the problems, he says, is different now in some ways – problems are
less predictable and less structured than they used to be and so new knowledge must be
produced to use as a tool to solve these types of ‘new’ problems. As for information, Kress says
that “Information is the material from which individuals fashion the knowledge they need” (2009,
page 25). This means that rather than an established body of knowledge there is information
available that can be shaped by individuals to solve these unpredictable problems. This is why
the accessibility of information is significant – as discussed in the focus groups – information is
easily accessible through digital technology, but applying this as knowledge becomes a process
of thinking and also about solving problems.
The example given by the year 7 teacher of the use of a problem solving approach in his Maths
class illustrates this way of gaining knowledge through accessing information as needed to solve
a problem. The information was sought by the student as she needed it to produce the
knowledge about the situation through a problem solving approach. We could say that
knowledge is seen as a tool which is shaped in specific contexts and related to the process of
transforming information (Kress, 2009). What does it take to do this? The student would need to
be able to understand the relevant information and also have the capacity to apply it to the
situation. Thus there is a need for a learner to be able to be a curator - find and organise
relevant information – and be a problem solver - apply appropriate knowledge. Jack concluded
that, “She (the student)was suddenly thinking much more openly about it and to achieve… and I
don’t know if I could have achieved that learning through some of the traditional methods that we
use in the classroom…”
Textual representations of 21st century learners – Sugata Mitra TED talk
When I asked teachers at my school about 21st century learners they spoke at length about
accessing information and constructing knowledge. What was significant in the context of 21st
century learning was the use of web based resources to access the information and how the
information was used to solve problems or connect with things that the students valued and
were interested in. I also asked the teachers to identify websites, videos, books, documents or
presentations that had informed their views. Not surprisingly the resulting list was large but
one text that was cited by three of the 8 teachers which I will refer to here was the 2013 TED
talk by Sugata Mitra ‘School in the Cloud’. In the brief analysis of this text I have focussed on
beliefs about 21st century learners as users of digital technology to access information and
construct knowledge through applying information to problems.
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Is the 21st Century Learner Still Relevant in 2014?
Author Name: Jill Colton
Figure 2. Still from Sugata Mitra – School in the Cloud
Mitra spends some time in this presentation making a case for change in education. He begins
his talk with a brief history of education as a mechanism of British rule. He describes school as a
machine which produces people who are able to work in the Empire’s bureaucracy, where
people had to have identical skills – to be able to do arithmetic in their head, use a standard form
of handwriting and read. He accompanies this description of traditional education with an image
from the past of students sitting in identical poses in order to emphasise the notion of
uniformity. He then contrasts this image of education with a question about what schools should
be like now that the empire has gone and now that computers can do much of the work of the
bureaucratic ‘machine’ – what is to be the future of learning?
Figure 3. Still from Sugata Mitra – School in the Cloud
Most of the presentation concerns Mitra’s model of collaborative learning called SOLE (Self
Organised Learning Environment). This system rests on the interest of the learner and Mitra
says that curiosity and interest is essential. From that, the learner asks questions and seeks
answers through the vast information source accessed through computer or device. Learners do
this together so that they can talk about it and solve problems together. When they need to know
more then they go and find out more. In this presentation, children are represented as curious,
eager to learn and be collaborative and also highly engaged by digital technology. They are
presented as able to teach themselves and able to teach each other, with a natural ability to work
together and a natural sense of wonder. When we place these representations against other
ideas about 21st century learners we can see the idea of 21st century learners working in this text
to create a certain view of students. The SOLE system cannot work without learners acting in
these ways – it rests on a certain vision of children or young people – I would argue a vision that
rests on the ideas of 21st century learners.
Mitra can be seen as somewhat of a policy entrepreneur (Ball 2012). He has identified an
educational need and offers an innovative way to satisfy it. He has invested financially in the
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Is the 21st Century Learner Still Relevant in 2014?
Author Name: Jill Colton
innovation and, through mechanisms such as this TED talk, has developed networks in order to
move the idea around on a national or global scale. What is interesting is that several of the
teachers in my school have picked up on Mitra’s ideas and applied them to their own context and
in the context of my question about 21st century learners have mentioned his talk as an
influential text. The way that students and teachers are positioned in this text can be traced into
the way that these particular teachers talked about students as 21st century learners and about
themselves as teachers. And in the example given by Jack, the Year 7 teacher we can see how
Mitra’s ideas about teaching and learning, are being adopted in the site under study. We can see
how representations of students as independent learners, users of technology, curious problem
solvers are informing the pedagogical choices made by this teacher.
Conclusion
The teachers in my school seem to understand the 21st century learner as a user of digital
technology to access information and create knowledge by applying information to contexts that
they value and are interested in. There was some resistance to use the term, 21st century
learners because it was seen as outdated by some - something used in the past to describe a
future subject. Perhaps what we are seeing here is part of a wider trend where “educators are
increasingly being asked to take the future into account” (Facer, 2013, p142). Certainly in
Mitra’s TED talk we can see a focus on the future of learning. However, in the teachers
description of 21st century learners can be found their versions of the present – consider for
example the way that some teachers preferred the term contemporary learners and the way that
they referred to contemporary uses of digital technology. In these versions of the present, we
can see how stories about the future are being applied to the present in powerful ways. It was
interesting to see how the ideas about the future of learning in the TED talk, ‘School In The
Cloud’, can be traced into what the teachers said about contemporary students and education.
The next step in this project is to find out how these ways of representing students as 21st
century learners affect pedagogies adopted by these teachers in their classes – how do these
ideas travel into their practice?
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