21^st Century Learners - and their approaches to learning

Author: Mike Lambert

pdf version

School of Education, University of Wolverhampton, UK.

Keywords: Lifelong learning, lifelong learners, teaching and learning, models of learning, models of the learner.

Article style and source: Peer reviewed, Original ultiBASE publication. Paper originally presented at the Eighth International Literacy and Education Research Network Conference on Learning, Spetses, Greece, 4-8 July 2001.

Contents

• Abstract
• Introduction
• The Learning Environment of the New Century
• Four Models of the 21^st Century Learner
  • The Collaborator
  • The Free Agent
  • The Wise Analyse
  • The Creative Synthesiser
• All Models
• An Example from Children’s Education
• Higher Education
• Development
• Conclusion
• References

Abstract

Over time the learner has been the explorer of knowledge, its accumulator and skilled ‘access-or’. In the 21^st century challenges and demands are expanding and changing again. Our new society’s environment is one of rapid communication, action and change, of intricate social activity and a huge potential for new knowledge.

What are the models of the learner for this brave new world? How can higher education create these models and support the learners who aspire to them? This paper postulates four models of the learner of the future:

• the collaborator: for whom networks of knowledge, skills and ideas are the source of learning
• the free agent: utilising flexible, continuous, open-ended and life-long styles and systems of learning to the full
• the wise analyser: able to gather, scrutinise and use evidence of effective activity and apply conclusions to new problems
• the creative synthesiser: able to connect across themes and disciplines, cross-fertilise ideas, integrate disparate concepts and create new vision and practice.

The paper describes an example of these kinds of learning and considers what they might imply for the development of learning in higher education in the coming century. back

Introduction

I am thankful to the Dean of Education at my University, Sir Geoff Hampton, for this introductory quotation of the 15^th century painter and writer, Alberti:

Very often … ignorance of the way to learn, more than the effort of learning itself, breaks the spirit of those who are anxious to do so.

Alberti’s words imply that ignorance belongs to the learner. We realise now that ignorance can belong also to teachers and to institutions of higher education. These can, as much as the learner, fail to recognise the need for new approaches to learning in a rapidly changing society.

This is a conceptual paper which examines how our society is changing and how these changes are creating a new learning environment for a new century. It postulates four models of the 21^st century learner and analyses their approaches to learning. It provides a practical example of new styles of learning with young learners. It considers what such emerging models of the learner might imply for development in higher education. back

The Learning Environment of the New Century

Over time there have been several models of learning and of the learner. In the centuries which followed Alberti the successful learner was the explorer of knowledge - in astronomy, medicine, geography. With the growth of entitlement to learning, the ordinary person became a knowledge-accumulator. As our last century was drawing to its close, we saw the skilled ‘access-or’ of knowledge, with new technologies opening up information on an unprecedented scale.

It should be of no surprise to think that in our newest century the nature of learning and the learner may be altering and expanding again. Our 21^st century environment is one of rapid communication, action, mobility and change, of intricate social activity and a huge potential for new knowledge. 

The literature of recent social change highlights a number of significant developments:

• There has been a long-term shift from manufacturing to services, with the labour-market becoming more diversified and more complex, ‘more and more individuals are being confronted with the stark reality that their education … no longer gives them the competence they need … in many cases, the very occupation for which that education prepared them is on the verge of extinction’ (Gibbs, 1996, p.8)
• Graduate employment is increasingly in small, rather than large, businesses (Connor et al., 1996)
• We have regionality and subsidiarity - the devolvement of decision-making and of funding mechanisms to regional and local bodies (Connor et al., 1996)
• There is reduction in layered operational structures. Organisations are ‘down-sizing’, ‘delayering’, ‘out-sourcing’, re-engineering’, ‘globalising’ (The Association of Graduate Recruiters, 1995, p.10).
• Organisations are collaborating, clustering, forming alliances and teams, creating a need for interdisciplinary learning, the ability to cooperate with experts from other disciplines (Brennan et al., 1998, p.8).

A further, crucial development is that the notions of a person’s ‘career’ are being replaced with concepts of a self-determined ‘portfolio’ of expertise and work:

Gone is the job for life, the clear functional identity and the progressive rise in income and security … Careers are no longer like a Chinese banquet: 15 courses brought to your table one after the other. They’re more like a progressive supper: bite-sized portions eaten in different places (The Association of Graduate Recruiters, 1995, pp.4 & 16).

For all professions the shifts in the nature of the relationships between the professionals and the clients mean that a narrowly based professional education that focuses on skills in particular practices will not serve the individual well for very long (Bowden and Marton, 1998, p.26).

There are too the continuing advances (it seems too mild a word) of communication technology. It has brought about a host of new paths and new professions ... even long-standing jobs, like receptionist or secretary, are hugely different from three decades ago. Schools are teaching young people without knowing what professions will be ‘invented’ by the time they reach an age to work.

Overall we appear to see the increasing individualisation of processes, for example in medicine, the possibility of making individual prescription of medicines according to a person’s biological make-up. Could the same be in store for education ... to what extent and in what ways are learning processes to be individualised in our new 21^st century learning world? back

Four Models of the 21^st Century Learner

This era of radical and rapid change places demands on learners to increase their capacity for learning. This capacity is not necessarily about learning more, but, as Alberti has reminded us, about expanding and enhancing the ways in which learning takes place. There is the growing expectation that students will become more flexible, more self-reliant and autonomous, learners who can ‘select personal pathways … and who will develop the skills of life-long learning’ (Dunne, 1999, p.6).

What are the models of the learner for this brave new world? What are the approaches and processes by which our new-century learners will learn? The four models which follow are my own postulations, my own imaginations, of how these 21^st Century learners may look.

The Collaborator

The first model is that of ‘The Collaborator’. For this learner networks of people, knowledge, skills and ideas are the sources of learning. For this learner new brain research which stresses the importance of social interaction (Maxted, 1996) is a significant rationale.

The Collaborator-learner:

• seeks out and maintains links and networks
• negotiates and exchanges ideas
• uses new technology to support collaborative work (e.g. Hazemi et al., 1998)
• contributes and adds value to cooperative learning processes
• also exploits and derives value from them
• is a team player, able to reach ‘win-win’ agreements.

What sort of learning environment does the Collaborator require? This learner needs access to knowledge and ideas, especially those of practitioners. This learner needs partnerships and networks from which to profit. This learner needs support for development of people skills and a sense of personal value within collaborative ventures with others.

The Free Agent

The second model is the ‘Free Agent’. This learner makes full use of continuous, open-ended and life-long styles and systems of learning. This is a learner who is:

• flexible, able to keep pace with change, to take advantage of it
• able too to cope with changing requirements of an unstable job market and of employers who ‘are by no means certain and often ambiguous about the necessary qualifications of graduates’ (de Weert, 1998, p.27)
• more concerned with personal transferable skills than with those relating to particular occupations - this learner is not bound to an occupation
• conversant with new technology and therefore not constrained by place and the accessibility of instructors
• independent, self-reliant, using new combined courses of study, rather than those which are profession-related
• able to take advantage of modularity, credit transfer, and arrangements for accumulated learning.

This Free-Agent learner requires opportunity to engage in practical work, to integrate performance and learning. This learner needs opportunity to plan flexibly, to seek out a wide range of sources and use these creatively and effectively.

The Wise Analyser

Model number three is the ‘Wise Analyser’. This learner gathers evidence of effective activity, scrutinises it and applies its conclusions to new problems and new contexts.

The Wise Analyser is:

• reflective and critical
• skilled at the processes of research, testing of validity and the application of findings
• close to the world of work and opportunities for action research
• able to argue judgements securely
• able to apply and adapt arguments to new contexts and to use them in the management of change.

This learner requires opportunity to analyse and manage processes and to apply analysis to new situations. This learner seeks to pursue initiatives through circular processes of identification, analysis, result, impact and evaluation.

The Creative Synthesiser

My final model is the ‘Creative Synthesiser’. This learner connects across themes and disciplines, cross-fertilises ideas, integrates separate concepts and creates new vision and new practice.

For this learner knowledge does not rest on particular ways of seeing the world. This learner:

• has ‘new ways of seeing’ (Bowden & Marton, 1998, p.278)
• puts aside ideas that learning is linear and confirms to us that everything is inter-related and complex
• is able to create, investigate and to seize opportunities for development and change.

The Creative Synthesiser requires complex and stimulating learning environments, with access to disparate disciplines. This learner needs opportunities to negotiate across boundaries, together with the framework for creating radical visions and seeing them become real. back

All Models

We can be sure that these four models are not separate. We are unlikely to see one learner uniquely adopting a single model. There will be considerable overlap, mixing, with elements present and elements missing, some well-developed, others less so. Our learners of the future are more likely to embody aspects of several, perhaps even all, models, in their approaches to learning.

Nevertheless the needs of these learners may have some common elements. In their higher education all of them need:

• keen perception of new social trends and change
• skills of self-reliance, the ability to take, survive and profit from risks
• ability to develop and maintain value of their ‘portfolio’, to adapt goals in the face of changing circumstances, and to seek out and manage ... and not to fear - career transitions
• underlying confidence and sense of self-worth
• support towards responsibility in learning, because as Ball (1996) points out: ‘The key principle governing provision for and pursuit of learning in the future must be the primacy of personal responsibility for learning, encouraged and enabled by the support of the whole community (p.3).’ back

Development

These models cannot claim either to be fully new or a complete surprise. They are an enhancement of many current ideas, such as those of Sinclair (1999): ‘A sharper focus on being able to use ...knowledge, and to use communication skills, collaboration and teamwork skills, and thinking and decision-making skills in both creating and using that knowledge is needed in preparing graduates for professional lives in the decades ahead’ (p.38).

These imaginations for the 21^st Century learner suggest however rather more than lists of personal skills, core skills, transferable skills which have been advocated and analysed in many reports (see Dunne, 1999). They are wider too than the personal qualities and attributes of learners which have also been considered (e.g. Crozier, 1997). They seem to be as much about choosing and using learning strategies as about taking on skills or developing qualities. They are about what actions learners can take when faced with the challenges of investigation and acquiring understanding.

In this outlook education becomes closely linked to what strategies learners bring to the learning process themselves, derived from social experience, from pressures and opportunities they see and feel, from challenges they already experience in everyday life. As time progresses we may, I suggest, focus less on the skills which a learner can be taught, and more on the strategies a person needs to nurture and possess in their learning armoury. The key skill will be learners’ ability to develop and expand their own learning strategies, to be more imaginative in working them out and using them, to make them more useful and effective. back

An Example from Children’s Education

Here is an example. It comes not from higher education ... although it perhaps could ... but from education in the UK, for children between 9 and 13 years old.

The Dudley Challenge is an interactive website: www.edu.dudley.gov.uk/c2000

The site sets its learners learning and discovery challenges ... solving mathematical, geographical, linguistic puzzles, any kinds of puzzles. The reward for solving the challenges is to make a virtual journey in a virtual hot-air balloon. This address takes you straight to one of these many challenges: www.edu.dudley.gov.uk/c2000/europa/cEuropa/task1.html

The key learning outcome of doing the challenges is not the skills of using the technology, and it is not the knowledge which the learners gain from answering the questions. The true outcome is the range of learning strategies which its learners discover, invent, experience, experiment with, share and expand, in trying to solve the challenges. The key activity is acting in bold, creative, imaginative ways ... discuss, argue, collaborate, experiment, use the ‘net, use a hunch, dig out the expertise, phone a friend - often the more innovative and lateral, the more effective and successful.

It relates well to the kind of approach called for by All Our Futures (DfEE, 1999). This seminal UK document (nevertheless resolutely ignored in most Government pronouncements, e.g. Blunkett, 2000) argues for a national strategy for creative and cultural education:

By creative education we mean forms of education that develop young people’s capacities for original ideas and action: by cultural education we mean forms of education that enable them to engage positively with the growing complexity and diversity of social values and ways of life (p.6).

Is this the approach to learning of the future? It certainly matches those four models of the 21^st century learner. On this Dudley Challenge our Collaborators, Free Agents, Wise Analysers, and Creative Synthesisers would surely all be heading purposefully towards completion of their virtual journey in their virtual hot-air balloon.

We can postulate that in this new century successful learners will need to develop a frame of mind which naturally, energetically, cannily, seeks to widen a range of strategies, applying them in ever more effective ways to a range of learning and performance tasks. Only this degree of flexibility and open-endedness might match the fluidity of work, life experience and social mobility which could lie ahead in the new century. back

Higher Education

In the changing world many things are different for higher education itself. In the UK there is Government-engineered expansion, broadening of the student population, with responsibility for funding increasingly passed to learners themselves. There are more mature students, more women, more part-time students, modularisation, greater flexibility of choice. There is renewed focus on higher education’s contribution to society’s skill-base (e.g. Dunne et al., 2000). Institutions themselves are subject to greater accountability, competition for funding and a consumerist view of learning. They need to respond to larger, more diverse learner groups, to learners who have new and different expectations, to a changing world and changing expectations.

How might higher education need to reflect the learning models of the future and support the learners who aspire to them? In a survey by The Association of Graduate Recruiters (1995) 160 unemployed graduates described how higher education had not provided them a range of experiences, skills, qualities and areas of knowledge which they needed for their work. It had not given them:

• self-confidence
• ability to uncover hidden opportunities
• decision-making abilities
• networking skills
• relevant experience
• knowledge of changes in the labour market.

The list relates well to some characteristics of our imagined 21^st century learners. Currently learners may gain such skills and experiences more from their informal social activity ... travel, internet and mobile-phone communication ... than from their formal learning within higher education institutions.

Higher education may have to respond to the opportunistic, flexible, pro-active approaches to learning which modern social activity and life-styles represent. It may need to do much more to:

• identify the individual styles and experiences which learners bring to the learning process and the learning strategies which are at their disposal
• design and develop responses to these styles and strategies - new materials, new delivery, new environments
• develop and respond to new concepts of competency and job-relatedness
• combine imagination and specificity in refinement of formative and summative assessment
• handle the huge tensions between such complex flexibility and the safeguarding of standards. back

Conclusion

As we move from teaching to learning-centred provision, the learner is more central to the higher education process, indeed to education as a whole (Winkley, 2000). The emphasis is shifting ‘from the activities of the teacher or trainer towards development of the student’ (Ball, 1996, p.2). This paper has looked at four models of that learner for the new century. There may of course be more.

Higher education must both respond to and lead learning trends and aspirations. The future is difficult to foresee, especially as development becomes ever more rapid. Our predictions of models of the learner, and our ability to adapt systems to meet needs for support, will determine how successful higher education can be in meeting 21^st century challenges for learning. back

References

Ball, C. (1996). A learning society: a vision and a plan to change the learning culture of the United Kingdom. In RSA For Life: A Vision for Learning in the 21^st Century. The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing & Commerce, London, 1996.

Blunkett, D. (2000). Raising Aspirations in the 21^st Century. Speech to the North of England Education Conference, Wigan, England, 6 January 2000. London: Department for Education and Employment.

Bowden, J. and Marton, F. (1998). The University of Learning. London: Kogan Paul.

Brennan, J., Kogan, M. and Teichler, U. (1998). Higher education and work: a conceptual framework. In Brennan, J., Kogan, M. & Teichler, U. Higher Education and Work. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London.

Connor, H., Pearson, R., Court, G. and Jagger, N. (1996). University Challenge: Student Choices in the 21^st Century. Brighton: The Institute for Employment Studies.

Crozier, W.R. (1997). Individual Learners: Personality Differences in Education. London: Routledge.

de Weert, E. (1998). Responsiveness of higher education to labour market demands: curriculum change in the humanities and social sciences. In Brennan, J., Kogan, M. & Teichler, U. Higher Education and Work. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London.

DfEE (1999). All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture & Education. Report of National Committee on Creative and Cultural Education. London: Department for Education and Employment.

Dunne, E. (1999). Change in higher education: a learning society and the role of core skills. In Dunne, E. (Ed.) The Learning Society: International Perspectives on Core Skills in Higher Education. London: Kogan Paul.

Dunne, E., Bennett, N. and Carré, C. (2000). Skill development in higher education and employment. In Coffield, F. (Ed.) Differing Visions of a Learning Society.Vol 1. Bristol: Policy Press.

Gibbs, B. (1996). Going it alone. In RSA For Life: A Vision for Learning in the 21^st Century. The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing & Commerce, London.

Hazemi, R., Hailes, S. and Wilbur, C. (Eds.) (1998). The Digital University: Reinventing the Academy. London: Springer-Verlag.

Maxted, P. (1996). Brain power: how developments in science and in understanding the brain have implications for the learning process. In RSA For Life: A Vision for Learning in the 21^st Century. The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing & Commerce, London.

Sinclair, K. E. (1999). The transition of graduates from universities to the workplace. In Dunne, E. The Learning Society: International Perspectives on Core Skills in Higher Education. London: Kogan Paul. 

The Association of Graduate Recruiters (1995). Skills for Graduates in the 21^st Century. Cambridge: The Association of Graduate Recruiters.

Winkley, D. (2000). A Vision: the 21^st Century School. Birmingham: National Primary Trust.

About the authors

Mike Lambert
Regional Primary Centre
School of Education
University of Wolverhampton
Gorway Road
Walsall WS1 3BD
England UK
Email: m.lambert@wlv.ac.uk