Three Trends in Education

A regular challenge for teachers who teach subjects that align to the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) standards is to keep up with instructional content that is constantly evolving. Looking ahead, here are three of the trends in education that may influence your work:   

Integrated and standards based curriculum to support college and career ready students.

Changes to California’s career technical education (CTE) standards were recently approved by the State Board of Education, bringing further momentum to the state’s educational focus on building 21st century skills in high school students and preparing them for college, careers and life. The new CTE standards and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are resources to help educators, industry partners and policy makers develop a more holistic approach to education and increase student achievement across the state. The new CTE standards include a matrix that aligns with the CCSS.

Through integrated curriculum, the new CTE standards support student mastery of the CCSS within CTE courses, to ensure students graduate college and career ready. As schools and districts implement integrate curriculum and align courses with career pathways, the new CTE standards and the Common Core State Standards are resources to help educators, industry partners and policy makers develop a more holistic approach to education and increase student achievement across the state.

The term “integrated curriculum” has different, and sometimes conflicting, meanings for educators. At ConnectEd, this term refers to lessons that are delivered by a multidisciplinary team and make meaningful connections for students across subject areas. English, mathematics, science, social studies, and career technical teachers collaborate to plan and present these lessons that center around a career-themed issue or problem. ConnectEd has developed excellent resources for integrating curriculum units.

Career academy programs help provide organization for site collaboration and program focus.

Career academies, after more than four decades of development and three decades of evaluation, have been found by a conclusive random-assignment study to be effective in improving outcomes for students during and after high school. Career academies have therefore become the most durable and best-tested component of a high school reform strategy to prepare students for both college and careers.

California Partnership Academy (CPA) programs are a network of approximately 500 programs supported by competitive state grants in California’s public high schools. Begun in 1985, the CPAs are designed to prepare students for both college and careers. 

Project Lead the Way (PLTW) has traditionally had a focus on engineering, including robotics. PLTW is currently developing curriculum for students who aspire to become computer programmers. 

Academy programs that align with the “Linked Learning Alliance” model provide an emphasis on career pathways with integrated curriculum. Alliance partners include ConnectEd, The California Center for College and Career, the National Academy Foundation, and the College and Career Academy Support Network

The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) career sector is fortunate to have many industry partners that provide resources that support academy programs and that focus on assessment and industry certification of knowledge and skills. Industry partners include the CISCO Network Academy , Adobe Education ExchangeMicrosoft IT Academy, CompTIA Academy Partner Program , the Web Professional Academy, the CIW Academy and the Oracle Academy.  These organizations typically offer professional learning, instructional resources and support, curriculum and career pathways, assessment and certification of knowledge and skills.

Professional learning communities to enable continuous improvement, shared leadership, and school reform initiatives.

Teaching today is still practiced mostly in isolation. Many educators work alone, with little interaction with professional colleagues or experts in the outside world. Professional development typically is provided in short, fragmented, and episodic workshops that offer little opportunity to integrate learning into practice. A classroom educator’s primary job is understood to be covering the assigned content and ensuring that students test well. Many educators do not have the information, the time, or the incentives to continuously improve their professional practice from year to year.

In contrast, effective teaching in the 21st century requires innovation, problem solving, creativity, continuous improvement, research, diagnostic use of data, and flexible and personalized approaches to meeting students’ diverse needs and strengths. As a result, the most effective educators are professionals with complex knowledge, expertise, and competencies, not merely deliverers of content and managers of well-behaved classrooms.

Chapter 5 of the Greatness by Design report issued by Tom Torlakson’s Task Force on Educator Excellence calls out the need in California for more opportunities for professional learning. As noted in the report: “It is clearer today than ever that educators need to learn, and that’s why professional learning has replaced professional development. Developing is not enough. Educators must be knowledgeable and wise. They must know enough in order to change. They must change to in order to get different results. They must become learners, and they must be self-developing.”