Hawaii Catholic Schools: 21st Century Skills series - Collaboration

Hawaii Catholic Schools has identified a series of skills, gleaned from the work of Tony Wagner and the p21.org.

One of these 21st Century skills is COLLABORATION.   The Webster-Merriam online dictionary identifies collaboration as a verb that means "to participate or assist in a joint effort to accomplish an end."  At Hawaii Catholic Schools we take a more academic approach and define collaboration as "working with others to complete a task and/or realize a shared goal."  Either way, it is quickly becoming evident that in order to create your own life path, collaboarting with others, in some capacity, is becoming more and more a necessity.  

Humans have worked together for the greater good since our earliest time.  By nature, we are social creatures.  Anyone who spends any time in a pre-school or Kindergarten classroom will tell you this.  Yet for some reason, we have spent decades trying to educate this innate human skill out of our students so that they can demonstrate individual responsibility.  Now certainly, even when collaborating with others, being able to monitor your time and air time are important.  Being a contributing member of a team is rewarding and challenging at the same time.  And as much as we have the internal drive to communicate with others, we also have other internal "skills" that involve us wanting to have our way or be right!  These are naturally occurring challenges that come into play as humans collaborate to solve a challenging problem.

In the current push for developing a set of 21st Century competencies that help our students develop into contributing members of society in a manner of their choosing, we need to construct learning opportunities that help students learn how to collaborate.  We need to balance the organic evolution of working together with constructed coaching on how to listen and respectfully agree or disagree with a position or an idea of another group member.  Educators have been aware for years that children learn best by talking and problem solving together, yet we consistently assess our students in an individual manner that measures only what knowledge they have regarding a particular content area.   Now, we are beginning to see the benefits of having students take a more collaborative and application based approach to learning.

In this short article,  The Changing Role of the Teacher, the author highlights key points made by two keynote speakers at a recent education confewrence, both of whom spoke to a changing education landscape and the role of collaboration in this education shift.  One speaker, Robert Prensky talked about "futurecation," which he says involves preparing students to do things "we could never do before."  Will Richardson, the other keynote speaker, wondered "Why is school the only place my kids can't take out the electronics they have in their pockets to answer the questions?" Both of these speakers appeal to the need for our classroom teachers to adjust with the times, listen to and understand the research about how kids learn best, and change the pedagogical  practice in our classrooms to effectively meet the needs of our students and the changing demands and demographics of the workforce.  This is a gigantic challenge to our field.  Moving from textbook-driven regurgitation style teaching to student-driven, problem-based learning affords students opportunities to learn how to develop effective questions, to bounce ideas off of others and to formulate solutions, try them, and assess the merits of their thinking.  Collaboration is key to this type of instruction and assessment.

Collaboration in the classroom - practical information is a blog that points to some clear direction on how to move in the direction of creating a collaborative environment for our students.  Gone are the days of rows and and individual learning.  For our Catholic schools to thrive and survive, we must change our instruction to not only meet the times, but get ahead of the times.  This is not solely related to money or technology, but rests more in the mindset of how we engage our students.  That being said, technology can make our ability to collaborate that much easier, if we embrace it with an open mind!

Hawaii Catholic Schools have the luxury of having as the core of our mission the figure of Jesus Christ.  Quite possibly the greatest teacher of all time, Jesus modeled 21st Century teaching for us well before it was fashionable!  He created opportunities for his disciples and those who followed him to learn through questions, parables and other problem-based learning opportunities.  He rarely gave an answer but led people to discovery through dialogue and conversation.  As Catholic institutions, we need to take this same approach in engaging our students in the academic content areas.  We want our students to be strong in faith and equally strong in skills such as collaboration in order to step out into this rapidly moving world and be confident, Catholic contributors to our society.