APEC Symposium

“Education to Achieve 21st Century Competencies and Skills for All: Respecting the Past to Move Toward the Future” will help to prepare the content and an agenda for the 4th APEC Education Ministerial Meeting (AEMM) to be held in Lima, Peru, in June 2008. Participants for the 2008 Symposium will be researchers, government officials, and members from the private sector concerned with the students, workers, and managers of the 21st Century. This 2nd APEC Symposium on Education Reform will be held in Xi’an, China, from January 15-17, 2008.

Key 21st Century outcomes for being competitive in the global economy are built through the integration of core subjects with 21st Century themes and 21st Century skills. These build 21st Century competencies. The 21st Century core subjects and priority areas to be focused on are:

For more information about the Symposium and its role in APEC’s education agenda, please see the attached Overview Document (PDF|DOC) or read below.

APEC leaders are aware that the economy is becoming increasingly international and increasingly knowledge and data driven. The global job market is changing rapidly, requiring workers to have a strong set of adaptable skills if they are to succeed. It is clear that schools across the region must change the way they teach students if students are to have the skills they need to cope in the new global environment.

Since 2000, all twenty-one APEC leaders agreed that to fully participate in the 21st Century world, “Education must equip the workforce with relevant knowledge and skills for the new economy and society of the 21st century.” It is now the combination of these knowledge and skills with appropriate attitudes that can bring APEC students, workers, and managers to a new level of 21st Century competencies.

Every student in APEC, especially girls, needs 21st century competencies to succeed as effective citizens, workers and leaders in the 21st century. In many of the APEC economies, there is a widening gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the competencies they need to succeed in the region’s communities and workplaces. To successfully face rigorous career technical and higher education coursework, and to compete in the globally competitive workforce, schools in the APEC region must align classroom content with real world environments that emphasize 21st century competencies.

Symposium Theme: Education to Achieve 21^st Century Competencies and Skills for All

Building on the Past: Beyond the 2004 Priorities

In the 2004 APEC Education Reform Symposium in Beijing, EDNET examined the differing traditions and educational philosophies in Eastern and Western Economies that have lead education systems in the APEC region to develop in very different ways. The focus of the 2004 Symposium was two-fold: school systems must effectively impart content knowledge, at which Eastern systems have traditionally been strong, while at the same time promoting creativity and critical thinking skills, traditionally the strengths of the West’s education systems. It was clearly acknowledged at that Symposium, and later in the 3rd APEC Education Ministerial Meeting, that all Economies have an interest in preparing students to succeed and prosper in an increasingly global economy and that we can learn from one another in these two areas. However, the emphasis for this joint learning was on conducting research that is not a strength of APEC because of its decentralized nature.

The 2008 APEC Education Reform Symposium in Xi’an will build on the content and skills themes of the Beijing Symposium but acknowledges that 21st Century workers need to go to a higher level to attain 21st Century competencies. It will also provide Ministers with some robust analyses that they can use to help their citizens attain 21st Century competencies, as opposed to only recommending research. These analyses can then be crafted to build APEC-wide tools.

Moving Toward the Future: Competencies and Education Systems

Competencies are demonstrated accomplishments inside or outside of the formal education system. Competencies are made up of combinations of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Under a competency approach, students demonstrate that they are able to use what they learn in different educational subjects or occupational areas to solve meaningful tasks and challenges.

Competencies respond to the “new division of labor” in the 21^st Century Economy:

ICT is replacing workers in jobs requiring routine lower-level skills.

Technology is enhancing the value of people with higher-level competencies involving data analyses, interpretation, and problem solving.

Trade is increasing the economic importance of being competent in communicating in a foreign language through multiple modalities.

Multiple jobs and technological innovations are increasing the importance of broader occupational competencies.

In addition, technological changes are having fundamental impacts on society and the environment. The concern over global warming and the push toward a clean environment are two prominent examples. Moreover, technology is also exerting fundamental changes in how we live individually and in social networks. A 21^st Century education needs to prepare students with the competencies to intelligently understand and manage their lives in society and the environment as well as employment.

The different elements of the education system need to be properly aligned to support students achieving the competencies and the component knowledge, skills and attitudes that support the competencies. Alignment starts with the standards that identify what students are intended to know about a content area in the context of the 21^st Century competencies. Instructional topics and teacher preparation should be aligned to ground students in the education specified by standards. Assessment and accountability systems should include assessment items that are sufficiently authentic to cover appropriate learning of both information and the application of information to approximate authentic contexts. Trade in education services, real or virtual can facilitate an economy meeting highs standards through taking advantage of international expertise

ICT is increasingly an important part of a 21^st Century education system. ICT is already an essential tool for students to use in problem solving in applied areas including mathematics, science and vocational education. But in the future, ICT can also be important for delivering instruction or professional development, as several symposium examples illustrate for language, mathematics, and science.

The Symposium will bring together researchers, policy experts, and members of the private sector to provide recommendations in four areas of education reform agreed to be of mutual concern by EDNET’s members in order to help students achieve the competencies and skills they need for the 21st century economy:

Learning Each Other’s Languages
The ability to communicate across language barriers is essential to international trade and to building mutual understanding among interconnected global economies. All APEC members are faced with the issue of how to effectively prepare multi-lingual citizens who can appreciate the culture of and communicate with speakers of other languages. In many APEC member economies, second or third language learning has historically occupied an important place in the school curriculum. Because of the primacy of English in diplomacy and trade today, many APEC members from Eastern economies have further stressed English language education, extended this to the early elementary grades, and raised their expectations for proficiency. English speaking economies, on the other hand, find it hard to motivate their students to take a second language in high school and to find teachers qualified to teach a language other than English.

Stimulating Learning in Math and Science
Facility with mathematics and science is key to success in a global economy driven by technological development and the use of information and data. However, international comparison studies have found significantly different levels of achievement and practice in science and math education in the East and West. In general, the Asian educational systems seem to excel in producing students with a strong grasp of the content knowledge and include some of the highest scoring economies on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The Western systems have other strengths; they are successful in helping students develop problem-solving skills and the ability to apply knowledge to real life situations to build 21st Century competencies. Indeed, many Western economies are among the most scientifically innovative in terms of such indicators as new scientific patents and Nobel prizes. The pressing issue is how to combine the best of both systems.

Career and Technical Education (CTE)
While CTE is a new area for EDNET, it is at the very core of the APEC mission. Career and technical education programs (sometimes referred to as vocational education) in the 21st Century must recognize the importance of meeting demand driven private sector workplace requirements. Today's workplace requires a higher level of content, technical skills, and mastery of 21st Century competencies and skills from all its employees. This is a shift from the past when higher-level skills were for a minority of workers. CTE programs of study integrate academic and technical skills to meet 21st Century, industry-based occupational standards. Through the sharing of the best standards, APEC workers can be trained to higher levels, thus facilitating trade and business facilitation.

Information Communications Technology (ICT) and Systemic Reform
Ensuring 21st Century Competencies and Skills for All may mean different things for developing and developed economies in the APEC region. Across all economies, however, is the need for governments to develop public interventions to ensure appropriate 21st Century education and workplace skills are available to all members of the economy, regardless of who they are or where they live through ICT and systemic reform efforts. Indeed, ensuring well-trained teachers or even the availability of teachers, the availability of technology for high quality professional development, disaggregating assessment data (for example, by gender, ethnicity, and race) and evaluating education programs to ensure all children, including girls, are receiving the same high-quality education are fundamental to systemic reform.

"Education to Achieve 21st Century Competencies and Skills for All: Respecting the Past to Move Toward the Future" is co-sponsored by Ministerio de Educación República del Perú, the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, and the United States Department of Education on behalf of APEC's Education Network.