21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our times

2

The Perfect Learning Storm

FOUR CONVERGING FORCES

 

 

 

 

Automobiles are cultural icons of modern times. How cars have been designed and manufactured in the past decades can reveal just how much times have changed, as the historical fiction tale in the sidebar “Shifting Through Three Generations” illustrates.

Anita, Peter, Lee . . . three generations working, learning, and living in ways that reflect their times. So what are the societal forces that make Lee’s world so different from that of his father or his grandmother? And how are these changing forces reshaping our learning, work, and life in the 21st century?

As shown in Figure 2.1, four powerful forces are converging and leading us toward new ways of learning for life in the 21st ...