Literature Review (Doris & Jennie)
Part One: A Review on the Interaction of 21st Century Skills, ICT, and Education
With the removal of distance that usually separates us from others, and with the presence of mobile phones, Internet, satellite television, more activities have come to crowd our lives. In short, life becomes far more ‘busy’. It is seen that technological changes occur almost every day. So to be competitive in this digital era, people should be fluent in the language in which advance technology operates. Therefore, the education system should be responsible in preparing students to face the global challenges of the 21st century.
The 21st century skills are not something new in the Malaysian education system but an extension of the traditional skills of adopting new technology and work environment. According to Ruskoff (1996), "Students are natives to cyberspace, where the rest of us are immigrants." Technology has become part of today’s generation, thus the term “New Millennium Learners” were coined by Pedro (1996).
The 21st century is an era in which work requires workers to have skills including problem solving, critical thinking, team work and willingness to learn something new (National Institute of Literacy and the Small Business Administration, 1999).
Hereby are the six key elements of 21st century learning:
1. Core Subjects: Focus should be expanded beyond "basic competency" to understanding the core academic content at much higher levels.
2. Learning Skills: Students need to know more than core subjects. They need to know how to use their knowledge and skills-by thinking critically, applying knowledge to new situations, analyzing information, comprehending new ideas, communicating, collaborating, solving problems, and making decisions.
3. 21st Century Tools: Emphasizes the importance of incorporating information and communication technologies into education from the earlier grades up.
4. 21st Century Context: Experiences that are relevant to students' lives, connected with the world beyond the classroom, and based on authentic projects are the appropriate context for learning in the information age.
5. 21st Century Content: Certain content that is essential for preparing students to live and work in a 21st century world is missing from many learning institutions.
6. New Assessments that Measure 21st Century Skills: Recommendations include moving beyond standardized testing as the sole measure of student learning; balancing traditional tests with classroom assessments to measure the full range of students' skills; and using technology-based assessments to deliver immediate feedback.
In this day and age, more skills are needed to be acquired in order to prepare students for a better future. Students ought to have the ability to apply the knowledge that they have learned to face the challenges of life beyond school. Basic skills are necessary but not sufficient enough to face this challenging world. The definition of student’s achievements must be broadened to include the 21st century skills that will be required for students to thrive in the future. It is a current trend in education where students are able to solve complex problems by thinking creatively and generating original ideas from multiple sources.
Therefore, students should not be assessed only by testing the ability to answer questions but they should also be assessed on the extent of their knowledge and their ability to use the 21st century skills such as problem-solving, entrepreneurship and creativity. Recognizing the importance of 21st century skills have lead to its integration into the education system, as those implemented in western countries. It is not surprising, therefore, in some private schools in Australia, for example, some primary kids carry laptops to classes, instead of textbooks.
"Unfortunately," says Margaret Honey, vice president and director of EDC's Center for Children and Technology, "in the schools that have the most pressure on them to improve scores and grades in exams, technology often takes a back seat. Academic excellence comes first”.
However, research proves otherwise. Marc Brill, in his report on Mott Hall’s laptop computer programme (something similar to our 1Malaysia notebook programme), points out in particular, to writing skills; which have improved through the use of technology and collaborative editing. "We are finding that students revise their work more often and can better organize their work and assignments."
‘Distance learning’ programmes based on ‘virtual campuses’ have also suddenly increased. Many lecturers have used Internet as a classroom tool, with websites partially displacing books and notes. We also have moved from being totally dependent on paper-based databases to relying more and more on digital databases. This has enabled researchers to handle much greater quantities of data.
With all these advancements, the nature of literacy too has now been broadened as a result of the availability of the technologies of globalisation. To be able to use computer applications at workplace is as critical as being able to read, write and having typing skill.
It is therefore very crucial to use communication, information processing, and research tools (such as word processing, e-mail, groupware, presentation software, and the Internet) in order to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, create, and communicate information; in which are crucial in the 21st century.
Besides that, by incorporating 21st century skills into the education system, interpersonal, collaborative, and self-direction skills will be enhanced, besides inculcating values of accountability, adaptability, and social responsibility. And in increasing the efficiency of our human resource, personal development and productivity tools (such as e-learning, time managers, and collaboration tools) are used in order to enhance productivity and personal development.
Now, we would proceed to the second part of our literature review as follows:
Part Two: A Report on the Scenario and What should be done in Malaysia
In the 21st century, Malaysia faces new challenges due to globalization and the development of information and communication technology (ICT). To overcome these challenges, efforts have been made in the education system through curriculum content and learning activities that lead to the development of the physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual relevance (JERI) to current needs and future. The agenda for our country to meet higher levels of human capital depends on the national education system. Indeed, the country and throughout the community place high expectations on teachers to prepare an excellence, glorious and distinction of future generations.
In order to thrive in a digital economy, students will need digital age proficiencies. It is crucially important for the educational system to make parallel changes in order to fulfill its mission in society, namely the preparation of students for the world beyond the classroom. Therefore, the educational system must understand and embrace the following 21st century skills; through the Malaysian 21st Century Skills Instrument (M-21CSI), five elements of our 21st century skills are as follows:
i) Digital age literacy,
ii) Inventive thinking,
iii) Effective communication,
iv) High productivity;
v) and Spiritual value.
The main difference between other 21st century skills with M-21CSI is the element of spiritual values which reflects Malaysian identity (which also applies in the Spiritual aspect of our Malaysian Educational Philosophy/ Falsafah Pendidikan Negara (FPN).
As society changes, the skills that citizens need to negotiate the complexities of life also changes (NCREL, 2003). In the early 1900s, a person who had acquired simple reading, writing, and calculating skills was considered literate. It has only been in recent years that the public education system has expected all students to learn to read critically, write persuasively, think and reason logically, and solve complex problems in mathematics and science. A clear example would be the implementation and shift from KBSR/KBSM to KSSR/KSSM.
Malaysia is now said to be at the mid-point in its journey towards Vision 2020 and is transforming to become a developed nation during the second phase of a fifteen year period. Everything we witness in Malaysia world today has changed tremendously in terms of technological development, and most work need to operate globally in order to survive the competition which exists in the world these days. This change has created an impact on the nature of work where a high level use of technology is a necessity to compete in the global arena. Hence, a more flexible workforce with advanced technical skills coupled with well developed generic skills such as creative thinking, problem solving and analytical skills, are greatly needed.
Therefore, improving students’ outcomes is crucial to develop a more competitive workforce as Malaysia pushes towards being a developed nation by 2020. In order to be successful in inculcating these skills, it is argued that three significant mechanisms are demanded.
First, the public at large must acknowledge the 21st century skills as essential to the education of today’s learner. Second, schools must embrace new designs for learning based on emerging research about how people learn information processing, effective uses of technology and the 21st century skills in the context of rigorous academic content; and third, policy makers must base school accountability on assessments that measure both academic achievement and the 21st century skills.
However, we are very much limited by a number of factors, like the presence or absence of basic infrastructural items, such as electricity and telephones, habits of Internet users and, of course, the state of social inequality in a particular country (SES). We do not have to go very far to look for examples on that. To the people in Bario, Sarawak, a place located in the middle of Borneo forest that does not enjoy the taken-for-granted luxuries of electricity, piped-water supply and telephones, a special E-Community pilot project has to be created to find means and ways on how the population in Bario could have access to ICT and be wired to the outside world. It has been a costly project. Whether this could be repeated elsewhere in Malaysia is uncertain.
Even though the Malaysian government promises that in the next five years there should be one computer in every home, it would be a useless item if there is no electricity supply to these homes and telephones are not available. The basic precondition for the possibility of any form of knowledge being distributed through the ICT is the availability of basic infrastructural facilities, such as electricity supply and telephone lines, and followed by the ICT hardware and software themselves, and they have to be connected.
The users themselves must be computer literate too. To the urban inhabitants of Klang Valley, the majority of whom have access to the basic infrastructural facilities that the people in Bario do not, ownership and usage of computer is a commonplace, if not at home, it is available at the hundreds of Internet cafes in the region. However, the findings from a number of studies conducted in the Klang Valley in the last three years seems to indicate that amongst Internet users, very few actually use the Internet to access knowledge of various kinds, either for personal or other use.
A research, conducted by a group of researchers from The International Islamic University, Kuala Lumpur, amongst 442 Internet users in the Klang Valley, 56% of whom are students from local institutions of higher learning (private and public), shows that less than 10% actually use the Internet for activities that could be considered as knowledge seeking, such academic assignments. The majority use the Internet for chatting, e-mail and games.
Even those who have access to the Internet, the percentage of which, against the total Malaysian population, is very small (not more than 15%), they do not necessarily use it for knowledge enhancement, less so for knowledge production, if any at all. Digital-based knowledge located in the numerous web-based databases accessible on-line, though easily available, is not the dominant knowledge source for the majority of the population, especially in the developing countries, like Malaysia. Indeed, we still depend on paper-based knowledge and databases.
On the contrary, the western world is continuing to thrive in this aspect. A survey of first-year students by Sax, Astin, Korn, and Mahoney (1998) indicated that computer network use has become a way of life for the majority of the students. They use computers around the clock to accomplish a wide range of academic tasks (Green, 1998; Romiszowski & Mason, 1996).
Many prepare course assignments, make study notes, tutor themselves with specialized multimedia, and process data for research projects. Most exchange e-mails with faculty, peers, and remote experts. They keep up-to-date in their fields on the Internet, accessing newsgroups, bulletin boards, and web sites posted by professional organizations. Most access library catalogues, bibliographic databases, and other academic resources in text, graphics, and imagery on the World Wide Web (Green, 1998).
Sproull, Zubrow, and Kiesler (1986) recognized that some college students felt confused and a loss of personal control when they encountered technology. DeLoughry (1993) also cited that “as many as one-third of the 14 million college students in the United States suffer from ‘technophobia’”. Which is also true when applied to Malaysia students.
According to Khir (2006), most Malaysian graduates now are lacking in both technical know-how and generic skills. So what should be done to improve this situation?
In addition to integrating computer use in their courses, the faculties in the institutions of higher learning should make a regularly available and interactive hands-on workshops and demonstrations, in which undergraduates can be given individual attention. The subjects of the workshops and demonstrations should match applications being integrated into course activities, in order to enhance exposure and high levels of practice, besides building on interests.
Resources should also be allocated to on-campus hardware and infrastructure, where universities should also provide for upgrading of users’ skills and user support (Green, 1998; Shaw & Giacquinta, 2000). Opportunities for undergraduates to purchase affordable software and hardware for use at home, and remote connectivity to the campus network for all students should also be maintained. In Malaysia, we are lucky to be offered opportunities such as the 1Malaysia notebook as mentioned, besides having Wi-fi or Streamyx in our campuses, in addition to affordable rates by communication providers which offers student packages. This opens up a whole new avenue for undergraduates, as we generally prefer to do academic computing at home or at the dormitory, at our own time, rather than at the computer lab itself.
Furthermore, students who are going to participate in courses that require the use of the Internet would benefit if offered technology literacy courses prior to enrolling in courses that require its use (Hong, 2002). One may conclude that these courses would increase computer literacy, consequently improving attitudes toward learning.
These are the steps that we have proposed, in relation to the references that are found:
References:
Others:
http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/literature_review.html
http://scholar.google.com.my
Doris Chelam Kasturi
A135733
B.Ed TESL (IPGKS-UKM Twinning Programme)
Institut Pendidikan Guru Kampus Sarawak,
Jalan Bakam, 98009 Miri,
Sarawak.
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