21st Century teaching, leadership, technology, and research. ABSTRACT The near-term future of the 21st Century can be accurately predicted if you carefully observe current events and avoid using old methods of thinking. Six common and out-of-date methods of thinking will be explored: linear cause and effect, global homogeneity, stimulus- response models of psychology, reliance on single experts, stable knowledge and skills, and the idea that teaching is the same as learning. In short, 21st Century thinking must reflect the current complexity of the networked global world. Each serious scholar must learn how to keep up to date in their chosen field as well as keep up to date in an ever changing global community. Opportunity has an expiration date. If a scholar does not keep up, others will take their place.
century is already 15% over, and people still want to know what it will be like. Look around. We are already well into the 21st century. When we pay attention to the last 15 years, we learn that the world is complicated and is getting more complicated. We learn that a lot of our knowledge base and skill set is out of date. We learn that our ways of thinking are out of date. We learn that there are no easy answers. We learn that old thinking and simple answers are no longer enough. We already have new teaching, new leadership, new technology, and new research. The 21st century is out there if you pay attention. The 21st century is amazing. People think that I am a futurist, in reality I am a todayist. I pay attention to teaching. I pay attention to leadership, I pay attention to technology, and I pay attention to research. I pay attention to a lot more too. It is not hard to see where things are going in the next few years based on what happened in the last few years. It is obvious that English will be critical to the future economy of every person in every ASEAN nation. It is amazing that only a few people are acting on this knowledge. Teaching English more effectively to more people is critical. So, where is this happening? It is amazing that only a few people are acting on this knowledge. It is obvious that technology is driving change, and change is driving technology. Using technology more effectively is critical. So where is this happening? We need to pay attention to the world around us, and once you see the present you can see the near future. Once we see what is going on, we need to act on our new knowledge. We can also find out who is doing amazing things so that we can do them too. Effective English language teaching based on current science is out there. Effective uses of technology for teaching and learning are out there. I use 21st century technology to pay attention. On Twitter I follow many magazines, like the Economist, Nature, National Geographic, and more. I follow many organizations, like the
Ubuntu and Linux Mint on Twitter to learn the latest on this Open Source operating system. Tweets from magazines and organizations link me to current information, news, and useful web sites. I follow interesting people on Twitter like Eric Stoller, who writes on technology and higher education. I follow many doctoral students because they have wonderful insights. Many of my social media friends remind me about using technology more effectively. I use Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn as a news source as well as a way to keep in touch because I have several friends who pay attention to interesting things and post about them. On Google News I seek out news that interests me. I have personalized Google News to select the news categories that I like; for example, I read about Thailand, about ASEAN, about ASEAN Education, as well as technology and business and other topics that I find interesting, like Space. Reading the daily headlines keeps me up to date, and if I am interested, I can read the whole news item. I also look at Google Finance for a few minutes to learn about the world we live in. Using email I read the daily summary from two US specialty newspapers: Inside Higher Education and the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the weekly summary of University World News that have an abstract of the articles, and I can read the headline or follow the link to read about what I need. I used to get summaries from other news outlets and organizations, but I cut back. I get a weekly email from Faculty Focus to learn about research-based teaching methods. I am always interested in being a better teacher. I am a teacher, and my information must be current. I visit HASTAC weekly. The web site is about changing the way we teach and learn. All of this takes about 30 minutes each day
consuming. If you try this for 2 weeks, you will be pleased at how much you have learned. When I have time, I watch YouTube to learn knowledge and skills. I don’t subscribe to any channels because I don’t have the time to watch it all now. Perhaps when I get old, I will watch more. I watch TED Talks and TAM Talks to get inspired and learn new knowledge and skills. I also watch Ted Talks to learn how to do great presentations. These are all free to the user as long as you have Internet access. I try to spend an hour each day learning because I am in the information business. I try to spend 30 minutes on line and 30 minutes reading each day. That is how I know about the 21st century. There are many social media platforms that I don’t use. I don’t use Instagram at all, though I have an account. I use Line a little at work. I have an ello account, and I don’t use it much. I use what works for me. I will follow a new source on Twitter, and if it is not interesting I will unfollow. I will try new web sites; I will try new technology; I will try new media outlets. What works for me I keep; what doesn’t work for me, I don’t keep. And I am always trying new things I learned about online. This is how I pay attention to the 21st century. I have a list of things I pay attention to, these are my learning goals. At the moment I pay attention to teaching, Open Source technology, leadership, and learning the Thai Language. 21st Century thinking needs to drive 21st century practice. The 21st century is complex and getting more complex by the second. Simple thinking is dangerous during complicated times. How we think about problems directs our attention to solving the problem. Our focus determines our reality. A lot of very serious scholars have written about that idea. If our focus is wrong, then our reality is wrong. Here are some mental models that are wrong. Mental models
focus. These mental models get in our way of being effective. These mental models keep us in the 20th century. Linear cause and effect. This is the idea that A causes B or that my talk causes you to learn is wrong. Simple thinking is the basis of reductionism, that the whole can be seen as the sum of parts. This is absurd. Yes, there are causes and there are effects. In research we try to eliminate outside causes and outside effects in our experimental designs in order to isolate a single cause and a single effect. It doesn’t work. It never has. Outside influences are always present, and we have learned to be comfortable with correlations explaining small amounts of the effect and finding significant differences below the threshold of meaningful differences. The complex way to think is in networks of causality, networks of events, networks of effects, and networks of interconnections. Simple mental models are inadequate for 21st century solutions. Single cause thinking leads to looking for single solutions. This is dangerous. What is simple is rarely true, and what is true is rarely simple. The implications for teaching are that simple models of lecture and learning are not sufficient. We need to look at learning from within a framework of complexity, of networked knowledge and skills. We need to look beyond the idea of “do this because I said so” when we provide leadership. Smart phones are a great example of moving from simple thinking, phones make phone calls, to complex thinking, phones are the primary entry point into the Internet for people. The implication for research is that we need to put away simple models of research, put away simple two group designs, put away simple descriptions of teachers’ attitudes toward leadership. We need to embrace multivariate research designs and multivariate thinking. The world is becoming the same everywhere. Another example of mistaken thinking is thatthe world is becoming more homogeneous. I first heard this over 40 years ago, that the
flat world means that what you find in Bangkok you also find in Columbus, Oh, in Turin, Italy, and all over the world. I love that I can find Thai food all over the world, but I hate that I can find KFC and Pizza Hut in Thailand. The mental model of the flat homogeneous world is dangerous because it denies the real differences in culture and history that are part of human lives. To think the world is flat is to assume that the answers to problems in New York are the same as the answers to problems in Roi Et. This is just silly. To think that the world is flat, to think that the world is homogeneous, is to deny the network of complexity that makes us great. Simple answers are shaping bad policies and practices. Cultural context is critical. While we should think globally, we should act locally. The 21st century implication here is that we need to respect local custom and culture in any teaching, any leadership, any technology, and any research. We need to understand that Line is popular in much of Eastern Asia and that Facebook is popular in the US. We need to understand that ello is popular in a certain counter culture. Leadership practices that work in New York may not work in Roi Et. On the other hand, leadership practices at Disney may work wonderfully in Roi Et. We won’t know until we try. We won’t know until we have data on effectiveness that is sensitive to local custom and culture. Stimulus – Response. Here is another simple belief that is wrong. Stimulus-Response is a model that we all learned with the story that Pavlov rings the bell and the dog salivates. Behaviorism was founded on SR theory in order to ignore what the theorists referred to as the black box that was the brain because when it was developed we couldn’t know anything about the brain.
many complex organisms, like people, make choices and don’t react blindly to stimuli. Choice, it turns out, is really important to people. Choice is complex. Monitoring brain waves tell us that our unconscious mind makes decisions before our conscious mind is aware of that decision. Some part of our brain decides before another part of our brain is aware we decided. The need for SR theory has been removed by neuroscience. And yet simple rewards are the mental models for leadership and teaching. Mental models focused on choice are superior to simple stimulus response mental models. Experts know best. Here is another problem. Most of us think that experts know best. As an expert I sometimes believe this. This model has been shown by research to be inadequate. Groups almost always make better decisions than individuals. Crowdsourcing, getting a group of people to create a collective answer, is common in everything from setting US monetary policy by the Federal Reserve Bank, to interpreting results from Mars by NASA scientists. Crowdsourcing is responsible for writing the greatest encyclopedia ever. This means that we need to use multiple experts who disagree with each other when we want to use experts. The implications here are that we need to find ways to use groups of experts in new ways to solve current problems. We need to have experts who disagree with each other and then create a new answer based on their collective expertise. Open Space Technology, a 20th Century idea from Harrison Owen, was before its time. Owen’s idea of a self-organizing group of experts has great merit today. Delphi technique is a 20th Century idea, and before its time. Some thinkers were ahead of their time. Extending Delphi questions to multiple rounds, I always use 8 or 10 rounds, is made easy using collaborative technology. In 1995 I conducted a 10 round Delphi research project using email. Imagine how much more I could do now.
experts, needs to pay attention to emerging knowledge and skills. Knowledge and skills have an expiration date. Much of what we teach students is already out of date. That is why I spend 30 minutes a day on the Internet. That is why I download and try new software. Knowledge and skills are stable. Related to this misconception about experts is the idea that knowledge is stable. Our colleagues in information sciences, those people who used to be librarians, keep telling us that knowledge and skill get out of date. Experts need to continually update their knowledge base and skill set. A single expert will find it difficult to keep up even in the most focused specialization. I know something about QA on campus and try to keep up to global trends. I also know that I am always out of date. A group of interested and informed people will have a combined knowledge base and skill set that is more current than any individual. This means that each of us needs to keep our current knowledge base and skill set up to date. This is one reason I try to learn for an hour each day. I have found that very few people take technology skills seriously. We all know that technology drives change and that change drives technology. The implication is that we each need to spend some time learning the technology we use every day, like Word, like Excel, like Line. I am a new user in Line and am trying to use Line Memos in the same way I use Google Keep. If you want to be more employable and more valuable, then learn more. Most of us are in the knowledge and skill business. We basically sell knowledge to students. We need to keep current. We need to have personal learning networks of all types. We need a personal learning network of people with similar knowledge and skills. We need a personal learning network of
need a personal learning network of people who use technology more effectively than we do. Sometimes we teach; sometimes we learn. Teaching and Learning. Finally, we have this idea that teaching is the same as learning. We focus on teachers and not on learners. A moment’s reflection and 100 years of research reveals that a lecture does not lead to very much student learning in the long term. I define learning as the acquisition of knowledge and skill as the result of experience. As a teacher we need to understand two things: first that we are in the learner business. What do we teach? We teach learners. Second, we need to realize that we are in the experience business. We are not in the content delivery business. Media present content. We are more than a talking book. Experiences are complex. An experience in a classroom will be different for everyone because of individual perception. This means that we need to pay attention to learning research. The good news is that I know of several different websites and books that keep me up to date on learning and classroom experiences. Thinking complexly about teaching is the beginning of good teaching. Using websites like FacultyFocus will help anyone become a better teacher because the site’s authors promote research-based tools. Thinking complexly. The key to the 21st century is to think complexly. Thinking complexly about leadership will reveal the truth of John Kenneth Galbraith’s idea that leadership in the modern world is about learning, or what he called Conditioned Power. According to Galbraith, in a feudal economy we could use punishment to get people to do things. In a capitalist world we needed to pay people to do things. In an information society we need to teach people that doing something is a good choice. We see this teaching in advertising every day. Marketers try to teach us that their product is best. We can all learn lessons from
be more effective. This means that we all need to pay attention to choice. Thinking complexly about technology will help us all to use that amazing computer in your pocket. Using even simple technology like a phone will make you more effective in the world. That computer in your pocket already gives you access to most of the world’s knowledge and contemporary thinking. Imagine using technology to teach collaboration, teach language, teach math. Well, this is exactly what game developer Jane McGonigal has done with her games Evoke and Superbetter. When I learn new technology I always ask “How can I use this to teach better?” When I learn new ideas, I ask the same question. Thinking complexly about the network of research results helps us to ask better questions. Simple research designs, such as what I was taught in the 1970s as a doctoral student at The University of Iowa, need to give way to multivariate designs, causal modeling, and path analysis. Descriptive studies of teachers’ attitudes should stopnow. The only useful research is complex research that explores causality and effects in multiple ways. Pay Attention. Being in the 21st century is not difficult. We need to pay attention. Things happen fast these days. For example the 100 billion Baht market battle for word processing changed this month. Last year OpenOffice and LibreOffice were challenging Microsoft Office. Give OpenOffice or LibreOffice a try; they are free and work well. Microsoft Office 360 has not been well received. Google Docs entered the competition two years ago with collaborative tools. Now Dropbox Paper was launched in October 2015 and is challenging Microsoft as a collaborative work tool. “How can I use this for teaching?” Well, try each product and see for yourself. In the past I have had students write collaboratively in Google Docs. I can see who wrote what;
on a tablet, phone, laptop, or desktop, and it also works offline in case the Internet goes out. For the next 2 weeks use 30 minutes each day to learn things from the Internet. Use whatever works for you.
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