Rigor Redefined

In his article, "Rigor Redefined", Tony Wagner lays out his case for a paradigm shift in education. He outlines 7 sets of survival skills that students need to demonstrate fluency in to be well prepared for the dynamic, global, information-saturated environment that they will relatively soon inhabit independently. While some things are not new, like the communication skills, what is new is the argument that these process-oriented skills are as vital as content-driven curriculum.

This article is an excellent synopsis of Wagner's book, The Global Achievement Gap (GAG), and a lot shorter!

As Wagner explains in the article, GAG tells about the hundreds of interviews he conducted with business leaders asking what they noticed young people lacked. A fascinating and very pragmatic approach: start at where we need to end up and design backwards. The most often answer that Wagner was given was that the young adults need to ask good questions, reflecting a dire need for better critical thinking skills.

“First and foremost, we look for someone who asks good questions,” Parker responded. “We can teach them the technical stuff, but we can't teach them how to ask good questions—how to think.”

"We can teach them the technical stuff", the content. What Wagner discovered was more process-oriented critical thinking skills were needed.

Are our learning environments, teaching habits, and curricular objectives set up to foster the type of critical thinking skills Wagner suggests?