Will teaching the 21st Skills meet the needs of a future work force????
The latest educational practice breaks down the 21st Century Skills into a simplistic 4C's, whereas other frameworks offer more detailed specifics.
Do these 21st century skills match the requirements of the skill-set that employers are looking for and will they future proof our students for employment in the future?
During the Mindlab course there has been a constant backdrop to the course content which can be summarised by these Global Issues:
65% of jobs in the future haven't been invented yet.
Low skilled jobs will be replaced by automation and robots
How can we best prepare our students for this unknown and how accurate are these claims?
These are statements that are out in the public domain and to some extent are driving the change in education to ensure that our students can meet the requirements of working in the 21st century.
Jobs that don't exist yet :
10 years ago you wouldn't have considered being a web designer, social media manager, 3d animator and there is no doubt that the landscape of work has changed during the past 10 years. Globalisation, demographic shifts and technological advances are some factors that have created a highly competitive, rapidly changing work environment.However there is an often used sound bite that is used to advocate for the rapid change in education which is "65% of jobs in the future don't exist yet" and/ or "60% of children will be employed in jobs that currently don't exist.". This appears to be an incredibly high percentage and on first inspection would appear to reflect the exponential growth in digital technologies. Andrew Old in his blog A Myth for Teachers: Jobs That Don’t Exist Yet attempts to identify the source of this statement and find no clear attributable reference despite it appearing in the New York Post article indexing it to a 1999 report from the US Department of Labour. Importantly he closes his article with the following from a book written in 1966:
The idea that our schools should remain content with equipping children with a body of knowledge is absurd and frightening. Tomorrow’s adults will be faced with problems about the nature of which we can today have no conception. They will have to cope with the jobs not yet invented.
This demonstrates that the notion of future proofing our students for future employment is nothing new so what skills are required to thrive in a 21 Century Work Place of the future.
Skills for Future Employment.
Alex Grey in his article for The World Economic Forum suggests that "Five years from now, over one-third of skills (35%) that are considered important in today’s workforce will have changed." He identifies the loss of negotiation and flexibility skills as a consequence of machines, using masses of data, starting to make our decisions for us.
So how accurate is the claim that robots and automation will cause high unemployment.?
It is widely excepted that automation does remove hard manual labour and even back in the 1800's when the wool mills underwent an industrial revolution through to automation of car assembly plants there has been radical change in workforce requirements. This Guardian article suggests that since 1790 new technologies have created more jobs than it has destroyed. Their conclusion was positive and upbeat and showed that rather than destroying jobs, technology has been a “great job-creating machine”.
Skills requirement in a New Zealand context.
Careers NZ provide an excellent website which identifies the top 10 skills required by employers.
- communication skills
- customer service skills – in person, on the phone, and online
- ability to work well in a team
- literacy and numeracy skills
- confidence learning about and using computers and technology
- planning and organisational skills
- initiative and a can-do attitude
- problem-solving skills
- good work habits and independence
- health and safety skills.
These skills are all transferable, which means that they are useful in most jobs. So even if you don't have a lot of job-specific skills, you may already have transferable skills that are appealing to employers.
Informing my practice.
Teaching at a Christchurch High School in the current climate of the rebuild has ensured a steady stream of opportunities for students to easily access employment in the manufacturing and construction sectors. The attributes that I previously focussed on was to ultimately prepare them for employment, have a skill set that employers saw as desirable and ensure they were competent in using specific machinery and processes. However the single most challenge that I need to focus on is the ability of my students to constructively work as a team and to engage them in real world problem solving. This will ensure that they need to be creative in their ability to generate ideas before coming up with a solution.
References:
A Myth for Teachers: Jobs That Don’t Exist Yet, Old A., May 27, 2015 retrevied from
https://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/a-myth-for-teachers-jobs-that-dont-exist-yet/
http://www.careers.govt.nz/plan-your-career/not-sure-what-to-do/skills-employers-are-looking-for/
STEM Education Helps Teach Skills Necessary for 21st Century Success retrieved from http://www.enterrasolutions.com/2015/09/stem-education-helps-teach-skills-necessary-for-21st-century-success.html
The 10 skills you need to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Grey A., Jan 2016 retrieved from World Economic Forum: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-10-skills-you-need-to-thrive-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/
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