ADAPTABILITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS: 21ST-CENTURY SKILLS AND THE PREPARATION FOR AN UNPREDICTABLE FUTURE

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the idea that the future is inherently unpredictable has gained considerable currency in educational policymaking. In this paper, we seek to critically examine and analyze the implications that stem from embracing this concept of the future. To do so, we focus on current discussions of 21-century skills, and more specifically on the work of the OECD. First, we offer a brief introduction to the prevailing conceptualization of the future as uncertain and risky, and the ensuing emphasis on the development of skills needed to adapt to this increasingly volatile future. We then explain why the emphasis on future uncertainty leads to conceptualizing education as adaptation, while disregarding the importance of the past. We argue that this results in an impoverished conception of education and the skills it should develop. Next, we focus on how the idea of an unpredictable future marginalizes the role of values in education. We maintain that this not only leads to a narrow vision of education, but also undermines the cultivation of skills heralded by 21st-century skills frameworks. We conclude by offering some remarks on the importance of attention to the past and values as the basis for a meaningful vision of education.

Keywords:

• future
• 21st-century skills
• adaptability
• values
• OECD
• education
• philosophy
• policy

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Hemy Ramiel for fruitful discussions, and the anonymous referees for their useful comments and suggestion that helped improve this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 There are countless other reports that focus on the development of 21st-century skills. The ideas in most of them resemble those presented in this paper. There are, nevertheless, some other frameworks, such as those presented by UNESCO (Delors, 1996; Tang, 2015), that take a slightly different perspective on the matter. It will not be possible to examine these within the short scope of this article.

2 It has been argued that the haziness regarding the exact meaning of skills and competencies is actually one of the reasons for these terms’ staying power, as they can be used across different contexts and for different ends (Mirra and Garcia, 2020).

3 Some frameworks, such as ATC21S, separate between social and civic skills, as the former are still relevant to job preparation while the latter extend beyond an economic focus.

4 We thank the anonymous reviewer for pushing us to clarify this point.