Knowledge and Educational Research in the Context of ‘Twenty-First Century Learning’

Abstract

Educational researchers and academics cannot ignore the ever-present call for education, and schooling in particular, to reflect the needs of the twenty-first century knowledge economy. Since the 1990s, national curricula and education systems have reflected this call in their focus on technology and shifting pedagogy to increasingly constructivist paradigms that aim at the development of competencies rather than the acquisition of knowledge. However, despite these shifts in thinking about education and the process of schooling, there remains evidence that national education systems continue to experience lingering problems of under achievement, especially of marginalised students. An underpinning question in this article is to ask what should the key questions for research in the context of ‘twenty-first century learning’ be. It suggests that these questions arise from the knowledge—competencies nexus. Does the interest in competencies devalue or undermine knowledge? Does a social constructivist paradigm necessarily dismantle disciplinary knowledge? What is the relationship between knowledge and improving the life chances for the marginalised? Against a critical background discussion of ‘twenty-first century learning’, these questions are addressed by considering and synthesising three perspectives on knowledge (‘emergentist’, ‘social realist’, and ‘futures focused’) in relation to their particular critique of education, what they say about knowledge, and the bearing this interpretation has on how they view pedagogy and curriculum. Some critical considerations point out additional questions for education research, from a critical perspective, in the coming years of the twenty-first century.