21st Century Engagement

From reading the thesis project by Brandon Zoras, it brought to light that 21st Century Skills do not always mean technology.  In his project he looks at why urban boys in inner city schools are not progressing with science beyond the mandatory level.  Through interviews he came up with 5 themes that prevented these males from becoming engaged and continuing with science in high school.  The 5 themes were; trust, success and support, relationships, view of science, and barriers.

The themes suggest that the main barrier to student engagement is the idea that they do not feel a part of the classroom.  This can be related to the idea that in most cases the teacher feels that they are the expert and that they are the knowledge holders.  As a result they may not value what students have to say or accept their input.  This is the old way of teaching or as Drake (2010) suggests, an old story in education.  In order to transition to the new story we have to look back on what we have done and use that information to guide our present and future story.  It also suggests a lack of involvement of student feedback in shaping a teacher's pedagogy.  While Hattie and Timperely (2007)  demonstrate feedback as being beneficial for students and their learning, it is also beneficial for teachers to receive feedback about their teaching styles.  If they do not receive feedback or acknowledge the feedback than they will be doing more harm to the student than good.  It is essential for teachers to listen to what students have to say so that they may engage them more in the subject.

Whether teachers wish to acknowledge it or not, it is inevitable that they will lose the title as "expert" as  the amount of information that is available to students is increasing exponentially.  At their fingertips, students are able to go onto the internet and search anything regardless of where they are.  This ties back into the interview responses the Brandon Zoras found in his project.  Some of the responses involved the fact that there were to manny handouts and notes and the students simply wanted to experiment.  When teachers are no longer the experts, they have to adapt their teaching styles and strategies.

Similar to Neil Postman's argument (1990) in my last blog post, teachers should focus more on teaching students valuable skills to navigate through technology rather then teaching them how to use it.  He also argues that we are creating information upon information, which starts to make the teacher less of an expert.  While Neil's speech may be dated, the arguments are not especially when paired with the interview responses from Brandon.

One of the strategies that is becoming increasingly popular in science in terms of increasing engagement and 21st century skills would be inquiry.  Inquiry involves students investigating and problem solving, while addressing relevant issues both in the curriculum and their personal lives.  One of the main proponents of scientific inquiry that I have come across would be Smarter Science.  Smarter Science is an educational program that highlights inquiry in the classroom.  It originally start in the Thames Valley School District and has spread throughout Ontario.  It was something that I witnessed both at a STAO conference in Toronto as well as in one of my practicum placements.

What I witnessed in the classroom was the beginning stages of inquiry and something that I would call "guided inquiry".  Before beginning an experiment the teacher would do a pre-lab with the class to cover the basics of what they would be covering.  In doing so, she would pose the class a question as ask them to come up with ways to answer a guiding question.  She would then go over each of the responses as to what were reasonable experiments that they could perform and then eventually come to the experiment that they were going to perform.  While it was the beginning stages of inquiry, it did have students become engaged with the material as they had to come up with ways to experiment.


When attempting to engage students in a 21st century classroom it does not necessarily require the use of technology to dazzle them.  Instead it involves changing your teaching style and allowing students to have a voice in the classroom so they they feel as they are a part of the learning experience and not simply along for the ride.  Especially in terms of science, teachers can use inquiry as a way to engage students by allowing them to come up with their own ideas to solve problems and let them experiment on their own.

The Spectacle of Technology

When looking at 21st Century education and integrating technology into the classroom, something that I think educators should be aware of is how we are implementing technology and the reasoning behind it.  One of the main arguments that I have come across would be by Neil Postman in his 1990 speech regarding the use of technology in schools. 

He argues that when individuals encounter and use technology they enter a “Faustian bargain where technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure” (pg. 2).  In this argument, he is stating that when new technology is introduced it tends to favour some groups of individuals, while harming others.  He states that this bargain creates both winners and losers depending on which group benefits from the use of technology.  In the context of the education system it is most often that the students are the losers and the teachers or administration are the winners.  Teachers tend to be the winners as they attempt to teach students how to operate the technology rather than teaching them valuable skills or allowing them to create using the technology.  The teachers will encourage students to be enthusiastic about technology as they give examples of the many different tasks that can be performed more easily.  This idea can also show a parallel in the relationship between administration and teachers.  The administration may be adamant about the use of technology in the classroom and attempt to persuade teachers into using it.  Postman argues that when the losers become skeptical of the uses of technology or become bored with it, the winners will attempt to dazzle them by showing the losers marvellous feats that technology can perform.  These feats may have no relevance to the losers’ every day lives however they are still dazzled by them. 

In my practice placements I have witnessed this bargain going on in the classrooms and in some cases I have even participated in it.  In one of my placements I was teaching a grade 10 and grade 11 math class.  For the majority of the class I would use the chalkboard to present the lesson and on occasion I would use a projector and laptop to show the lessons.  This would often include simple slides to a virtual die that would roll and the result would be used to answer probability questions.  This was not often used as the technology would use its appeal.  Here this bargain would have the teachers winning as they have students' engagement for the lesson and the students would be losers as they are not learning anything relatively new or beneficial to them from the technology.

While I do not agree with this form of integrating technology, one of the main issues that I  dealt with was time constraints.  In the teaching placement I had to go into the classroom, develop lesson plans for 3 classes with limited preparation time as well as integrate myself into a new school environment.  While this is just for a practice teaching placement I can only imagine the amount of time a full time teacher would require to successfully implement technology into the classroom.

Along with the issue of time, I was also faced with limited supplies and administrative issues.  In the school there was only a single projector for an entire department however it was hid in the classroom I was in.  The limited supplies limited other teachers to what technology they could implement in the classroom.  There was a changing environment in the school as they were beginning to install smart boards into the classrooms, however there was not an observable urgency in having them implemented.  Throughout my entire 4 week placement the smart board remained in boxes in the staff room and they were not installed.  I checked back in with my associate teacher and found that the smart board had still not been installed after March Break.  While I do not know for sure if this was purely an administrative issue, I would like to think that if one was driven to integrate technology into the classroom 4 weeks would be unacceptable.

Despite these issues, it still falls on the teacher to successfully implement technology into the classroom in hopes that students acquire 21st Century skills, however we must be sure to implement it properly to provide students with learning opportunities rather than as a tool to increase engagement.