Creating innovative and powerful learners: a multidisciplinary framework

Ongoing efforts to explicate the 21st-century skill set in terms of relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes have not yet resulted into the development of (a) a conceptual framework that provides clear, operationalized descriptions of the qualities of mind that – based on a multidisciplinary synthesis of the scientific literature on this topic – are considered relevant to the skill set of the 21st-century learner; (b) a coherent approach to pedagogy and to school development that is directly targeted at developing these qualities in students; and (c) practical measuring instruments that teachers can use to reliably assess to what extent these qualities are effectively being developed in students over time as a result of ‘21st-century focused’ teaching. The absence of such a multidisciplinary toolkit has likely slowed down educational reform. In our theoretical paper, we propose a multidisciplinary framework that synthesizes a range of multidimensional abilities that are considered relevant to students’ cognitive development. At the EARLI conference, we will provide a summary of our literature review and a reflection of the manner in which our framework was constructed. We also argue that our framework serves as a valuable conceptualization of the skill set of the 21st-century teacher and the potential curriculum of ‘21st-century focused’ teacher training programs. We believe that our proposed multidisciplinary framework adds both theoretically and practically to current discussions on the further operationalization of the 21st-century learner and teacher.