If children are naturally disposed to being self managing and creative there is a natural entrepreneurship in them. This means there is a natural will in children to control their life, their learning and the world surrounding them. For this you need willpower, because if you don´t want to reach your goal, you won´t reach it. You need the will to succeed and overcome obstacles and the focus to continue on your goals. For selfmanaging you also need direction. You can have the will to control your world and learning and the willpower to reach it, but it is empty if you don´t have a direction. You have to realize you can make choices and recognize those choices to be able to make the important choices that will lead you in the right direction. So when you know what you want, you can create your own goals you need to reach to actually get to your main goal. In order to actually do something with the direction you want to take you have to be able to see the route that will guide you to this goal. You have to be able to plan your directions and create your own script. But you also need to be flexible about your script. Everybody will recognize that things never go the way you planned. But that doesn´t mean you can´t reach your goals, you just have to adjust your scripts as you go along. In order to recognize if your script needs to be adjusted you have to be able to just take a step back and see if your are still going in the right direction. So the last component you need for entrepreneurship is being able to create some distance. (Laevers & Bertrands, 2004)
In order to stimulate these qualities as a school, you have to support the initiatives the children take and create space, time and the opportunity for them to realize their initiatives.
All these qualities actually look familiar to me. There has been a lot of research about what children need to learn in school, to be able to take part in society as they grow up. Since the world is changing, the skills they need to become responsible and participating adults have changed. You could call these skills the 21st century skills.
All these qualities actually look familiar to me. There has been a lot of research about what children need to learn in school, to be able to take part in society as they grow up. Since the world is changing, the skills they need to become responsible and participating adults have changed. You could call these skills the 21st century skills.
In this model they have tried to show all the skills children need to learn and how they should work together.
Since it is in Dutch I will give an translation of all the concepts mentioned.
In the middle education in the 21st century is mentioned, because that´s what it is all about. Surrounding this in the light blue ring language and mathematics are placed, because you can integrate these subjects in all activities and they are essential in learning all others skills. Surrounding this they have mentioned 7 concepts.
Since it is in Dutch I will give an translation of all the concepts mentioned.
In the middle education in the 21st century is mentioned, because that´s what it is all about. Surrounding this in the light blue ring language and mathematics are placed, because you can integrate these subjects in all activities and they are essential in learning all others skills. Surrounding this they have mentioned 7 concepts.
Around these skills they have placed the other subjects you generally have in school. The last ring is representing; life – you have to be involved, werk – entrepreneurship and learning – being curious. They state that education these days has to have all of the qualities, or at least as many as possible. It means that you integrate different subjects into one program or project and you stimulate them by making it useful in real life, the can use their inner entrepreneurship and be curious about what they learn. (Voogt, 2010)
As you can see there are some similarities and you can view the first model as a specification of some parts of the second model of 21st century skills. You can conclude that the society children are growing up into makes different demands of them, than society did 50 years ago. Why is it then, we still design our educational system still in the same way?
With the project I am doing I hope I can show my mentors that there are different ways of teaching children. I am not focusing on just one subject, but we have set a goal, and in order to reach it we need to take different steps. To be able to take these steps the children need to have knowledge of different subjects and actually use it, instead of just repeating.
We are having mystery Skype conversations around the world. The children have to figure out where they are. In order to do so, they first had to think of ways we can divide the world into groups, or groups of countries. This means they have to have knowledge of the world, different countries and what the differences and similarities are. Than they have to think of what questions they are going to ask, for this they need to be creative and be critical about what’s a good question. During the conversation some need the write down the answers and tell them to another group who are searching the internet and reading maps of the world in order to find out in which country the person is, so they will need to communicate well and collaborate.
The reason why we are doing the Skype project actually has to do whit the first model. I simply asked them what they wanted to learn and we started brainstorming about how we could learn this. They told me they want to learn to speak English and use a computer. So we talked about how we could combine learning and talking English and using a computer. Through this road we came to Skype and I activated my personal network to find people who are abroad and willing to Skype with the class.
During each Skype conversation you can see the components of entrepreneurship. The children need the will to think of questions and talk in English, the direction is to figure out where the person is. Using the answers they already have they have to decide what questions to ask and maybe alter their scripts. In order to do so they have to take some distance to the conversation. By dividing the class into three groups I help them take the different steps and guide them during the conversation.
Laevers, F., & Bertrands, E. (2004). Ondernemingszin (h)erkennen. Leuven: CEGO Publishers.
Voogt, J. M. (2010). 21st Century Skills, discussienota. Twente: Universiteit Twente.
As you can see there are some similarities and you can view the first model as a specification of some parts of the second model of 21st century skills. You can conclude that the society children are growing up into makes different demands of them, than society did 50 years ago. Why is it then, we still design our educational system still in the same way?
With the project I am doing I hope I can show my mentors that there are different ways of teaching children. I am not focusing on just one subject, but we have set a goal, and in order to reach it we need to take different steps. To be able to take these steps the children need to have knowledge of different subjects and actually use it, instead of just repeating.
We are having mystery Skype conversations around the world. The children have to figure out where they are. In order to do so, they first had to think of ways we can divide the world into groups, or groups of countries. This means they have to have knowledge of the world, different countries and what the differences and similarities are. Than they have to think of what questions they are going to ask, for this they need to be creative and be critical about what’s a good question. During the conversation some need the write down the answers and tell them to another group who are searching the internet and reading maps of the world in order to find out in which country the person is, so they will need to communicate well and collaborate.
The reason why we are doing the Skype project actually has to do whit the first model. I simply asked them what they wanted to learn and we started brainstorming about how we could learn this. They told me they want to learn to speak English and use a computer. So we talked about how we could combine learning and talking English and using a computer. Through this road we came to Skype and I activated my personal network to find people who are abroad and willing to Skype with the class.
During each Skype conversation you can see the components of entrepreneurship. The children need the will to think of questions and talk in English, the direction is to figure out where the person is. Using the answers they already have they have to decide what questions to ask and maybe alter their scripts. In order to do so they have to take some distance to the conversation. By dividing the class into three groups I help them take the different steps and guide them during the conversation.
Laevers, F., & Bertrands, E. (2004). Ondernemingszin (h)erkennen. Leuven: CEGO Publishers.
Voogt, J. M. (2010). 21st Century Skills, discussienota. Twente: Universiteit Twente.