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Standards for the 21st Century Learner
Today, the world is changing rapidly. Accordingly, learning and teaching environments and
methods should evolve as well. Offering an effective education is a very basic step for new
generations in order to keep up with updated information. In the past, manufacturing skills
were emphasized, whereas today, information and knowledge services are focused. Lombardi
(2007) asserts that due to the high Internet usage and a various emerging communication,
visualization, and simulation technologies make it possible to offer students more authentic
learning experiences ranging from experimentation to real-world problem solving. Hence, to
live well in the 21st century, it is vital to encourage learners with appropriate skill sets while
having proper standards for helping students. Among the various skills that are required to
survive in the 21st century, our group suggests the following skills to be basic standards: Civic
literacy, global awareness, financial literacy,
health literacy, and environmental literacy.
Civic Literacy
Being engaged citizens
 What are you?
 Where are you from?
 What are you rights?
Civic literacy is about understanding how to
participate in and change your community,
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government, and society. That being said, students should know the ways to efficiently make
civic decisions.
Civic literacy is not solely talking about the right to vote. It involves in any kind of thoughts,
actions, opinions, knowledge, deliberation, and participation in his or her surroundings.
Since we live in a globalized world it is essential to learn about our own country as well as
others. To do this, we need to know about world religions, governments, and economies.
Understanding the aforementioned elements will make learners to become better national
citizens as well as good global citizens. In other words, having civic literacy is not only
important for students’ future, but also important for country’s future.
Global Awareness
Being international citizens
 Cross-Cultural Awareness
 Recognition of Human Choices
 A Global Perspective
Global Awareness involves knowing diverse
cultures, religions, ideologies, and lifestyles
with an openness and mutual respect.
According to the Partnership for 21st Century
Skills, Americans are deeply concerned that the United States is not preparing enough for
young people with the skills they need to compete in the global economy
(www.21stcenturyskill.com).
As more globalized organizations are created every day, our schools and companies are
required to have global perspectives. Indeed, it is vital to focus on developing strategies,
building global competencies, creating structured global talents, and global team buildings in
today’s work force (Kim & McLean, 2012). Likewise, companies spend a lot of time and
money to retain global talent due to a rapid expansion of organizations in various types:
namely joint venture, outsourcing, diverse work force, etc. Students are the future of our
society, and they are the ones who will be involved directly in our future economies. Hence,
educators need to support leaners’ individual talent while developing global awareness. These
will help students to become more respected global citizens.
Financial Literacy
Being wise spenders
 What’s money?
 What’s investment?
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 What’s the effective spending?
Financial literacy helps individuals to make effective economic decisions. Research indicates
that there is a deficiency in financial literacy among Americans. In particular, Lusardi and
Mitchell (2011) assert that financial illiteracy is widespread among older Americans,
particularly women, minorities, and the least educated.
Financial literacy is important for people to make wise decisions within their economic
situations. It influences one’s present and future. Moreover, poor job attendance and
performance were closely related to financial distress than demographics (e.g., age, gender,
income, etc) (Braunstein & Welch, 2002). As schools can assist students in developing
financial knowledge and economic skills, educators need to teach how to wisely manage his
or her fund with the following approaches: Learning to earn, learning to save, learning to
invest, and giving back. Regardless of economic status, it is important to teach how to
manage their funds, and it is better to start early. The following video clip shows the
importance of an early start on financial literacy lessons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjufCz0j0PE.
Health Literacy
Being healthy
 How to make healthy choices?
 How to prevent disease?
 How to use health care?
All people are affected by health literacy in
their life time. Health literacy is not solely
confined to physical status, but further linked
to people’s knowledge, motivation, and
satisfaction in their lives. To live a long and
healthy life, health literacy matters.
Health literacy helps individuals to be able to access and use high quality information to
make health-related decisions. This includes self-knowledge about his or her health,
accessibility to health information and services, and awareness of preventative health
measures.
The European Health Literacy studied about the effectiveness of health literacy in people’s
life from 2009-2012 with a financial support from the European Commission (Sorensen, Van
Den Broucke, Brand, Fullam, Doyle, Pelikan, & Slonszka, 2012). The study found that
people with either inadequate or problematic health literacy are likely face considerable
barriers making decisions concerning health care, disease prevention, and health promotion.
Also, health literacy influences on age, education, and socio-economic status (Sorensen et al.,
2012).
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Environmental Literacy
Being aware of surroundings
 What can happen?
 What are the odds?
 How do you know?
Schneider (1997) defines environmental
literacy as the capability for a contextual and
detailed understanding of an environmental
problem in order to enable analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and ultimately sound and informed
decision-making at a citizen’s level.
Without the environment, there would be no life. Hence, educators need to teach the
importance of keeping good environments, and students need to learn how to sustain them.
Even small changes can lead to big impacts on our environments. For example, saving energy
by turning off the lights and using less water would be helpful for environment. Especially in
the 21st century, knowing energy efficiency and its conservation is essential. Hence, teaching
renewable sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, etc. should be conducted. These sources
are available, affordable, and less harmful.
Recently, for the first time, environmental literacy has been included in the U.S. Department
of Education budget. In light of saving energy, having sufficient awareness, knowledge, skills,
and attitudes regarding the environment should be reinforced to students.
Visual Literacy
Being visually conscious
 What do you see?
 What symbols are they?
 Learn to see, See to Learn!
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To be visually literate, people need to know how vision works and how to interpret images
and put it into context that they could manipulate.
People are surrounded by images every day. Also, schools’ teaching methods have been
steered to more visual devices by using PowerPoint slides, video clips, and pictures. Burmark
(2002) notes that the printed materials and sources from the Internet sites, and image-rich
curriculum can reach more students quickly and meaningfully than traditional written reports,
text-based, and verbal instruction.
Likewise, the benefits of visual literacy are numerous. Visual literacy encourages students to
brainstorm. Based on brainstorming process, students can discuss and debate. Hence, this
process allows creativity among students. Also, it can lead to an effective group activity.
Today, visual images are all around us including television, the internet, magazines, etc. We
communicate with simple images that represent words. If visual literacy is regarded as a
language, it is necessary to learn about what these images meant for.
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References
Braunstein, S., & Welch, C. (2002). Financial literacy: An overview of practice, research, and
policy. Fed. Res. Bull., 88, 445.
Burmark, L. (2002). Visual literacy. Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development.
Edutopia (2012, March 26). An Early Start on Financial Literacy Pays Off. Retrieved from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjufCz0j0PE
Kim, S., & McLean G., N. (2012). Global talent management: Necessity, challenges, and the
roles of HRD. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 14(4), 566-585. doi:
10.1177/1523422312455610
Lombardi, M. M. (2007). Authentic learning for the 21st century: An overview. Educause
learning initiative, 1(2007), 1-12.
Lusardi, A., & Mitchell, O. S. (2011). Financial literacy and planning: Implications for
retirement wellbeing (No. w17078). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Schneider, Stephen (1997). “Defining Environmental Literacy.” TREE, 12(11).
Sorensen, K., Van Den Broucke, S., Brand, H., Fullam, J., Doyle, G., Pelikan, J., & Slonszka,
Z. (2012). Health literacy and public health: a systematic review and integration of
definitions and models. BMC Public Health, (1), 80.