Around 60 educators, education influencers, and advocates in the Philippines converged for a 2-day seminar, through the partnership of British Council and Microsoft, to learn, discuss, and recommend steps on how to empower and equip today’s students with the essential 21st century skills that would prepare them for life and work.
This is one of the six East Asia policy seminars, which were also held in Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia Thailand, and Malaysia from August 2014 to December 2015. Each seminar has a specific and focused agenda, which frames debates, sharing, and recommendations on how they would integrate the following eight core deep learning skills in their curriculum, instruction strategies, and other educational initiatives in their schools:
1. Global citizenship: Global knowledge, sensitivity to and respect for other cultures and active involvement in addressing issues of human and environmental sustainability
2. Collaboration: Work in teams, learn from and contribute to the learning of others, social networking skills, empathy in working with diverse others.
3. Character: Honesty, self-regulation and responsibility, hard work, perseverance, empathy for contributing to the safety and benefit of others, self-confidence, personal health and well-being, career and life skills
4. Communication: Communicate effectively orally, in writing and with a variety of digital tools; listening skills
5. Creativity and Imagination: Economic and social entrepreneurialism, considering and pursuing novel ideas and leadership for action
6. Real World Problem Solving: Give students real experiences in creating and using new knowledge in the world beyond the classroom
7. Critical Thinking: Think critically to design and manage projects, solve problems, make effective decisions using a variety of digital tools and resources
8. Use of ICT for learning: Technology allows us discover and master content knowledge and to enable the deep learning goals of creating and using new knowledge in the world
For the Philippines, the seminar has focused into the use of three of these skills; ICT for learning, Global Citizenship, and Collaboration. Microsoft led the use of ICT in learning process, while the British Council extended its experience and expertise in working with local schools and English learning to support global citizenship.
Participants learned the regional vision and direction on education and improving on their students’ employability from the representatives of UNESCO Bangkok; as well as the local statistics, mandates, strategy, and best practices from representatives from the Department of Labor and Employment, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, and other private educational development leaders in the country.
With each of the deep learning skills discussed, participants were divided into groups and given time to converge and come up with sets of recommendations on how to integrate these skills in the curriculum, classroom instructions, and student assessment.
In the end, the use of ICT in promoting global citizenship, education and collaboration has been a key unifying thread in the three focus areas. The power of ICT to link classrooms with other schools in the Philippines and overseas paved the way for collaborative learning models. There is also a strong need for capacity building for both public and private teachers on how to effectively integrate the use of ICT tools in their subjects, a project that UNESCO can help with using existing best practices in the region.
Event Highlights
Mr. Nicholas Thomas, the Country Director of British Council in the Philippines, opened the event and welcomed the participants, while also posing a challenge to them: “How will you educate young people for jobs that do not yet exist?”.
Ms. Felicia Brown, the Academic Programme Manager of Microsoft Asia Pacific’s Education team, also gave her opening remarks and shared their company’s commitment to improve access to ICT tools to further enhance the teaching and learning practices in the region.
Lotus Postrado, British Council’s Head of Education in the Philippines, discussed that the focus of the ASEAN Deep Learning Policy Series is to highlight practices that will enable students—educated at all levels, even those with technical and vocational education and no university degree yet—to create value in today’s knowledge economy, instead of just being reactive to changes and following instructions.
To support the need for these deep learning skills, speakers composed of regional and local experts discussed the correlation between education and employability. Dr. Cheol Hee Kim, UNESCO Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau for Education’s team leader for Skills Development and Technical and Vocational Education & Training (TVET), led the discussions by giving the regional views about the topic. He shared that helping the young learners today prepare for the future is a job of the community. With the establishment of an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), there will be more pressure to improve the skills of our workforce to help make the region more globally competitive. In return, unemployment may also ease with this integration.
Department of Labor and Employment’s Assistant Secretary Katherine Brimon supported the regional view. She exclaimed that the current gaps in employment are due to mismatch in skills of graduates and those required in the market. The integration will offer about 3.1 million jobs such as agribusiness and other services that the Philippines can hone its future workforce on.
The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) Deputy Director General, Atty. Teodoro Pascua, also challenged the participants to “steer their ships to the right direction before it is too late”. Their office might be providing training for the needed technical and vocational skills, but it is upon the educators to sharpen the soft skills of the youth.
Fr. Carmelo Caluag, Chairman of Magna Anima Education Systems, shared a more practical community insight; that the Filipino youth of today from the lower income sector are more concerned about survival, not education. For him, “Building caring communities in public schools is needed to encourage a renewal movement and only after the renewal can reform happen”. This challenge is not just for the educators, but for the community as a whole to support the education and formation of its youth.
After the overview of education and employability, Ms. Felicia Brown, further discussed how ICT can support the different educational development initiatives. Microsoft aims to fill the gap in everyone’s access to education; for it to be available anytime and anywhere. She points out that more than 50% of today’s jobs require ICT skills, and would increase even more in the next decade. As learning requirements change, everyone should have access to relevant education.
Ms. Lay Cheng Tan, UNESCO’s Programme Officer for the Asia-Pacific Educational Innovation for Development (APEID), also gave participants an overview and examples on how to integrate global citizenship in their curriculum. She explained that, despite the lack of one general definition and method to incorporate global citizenship, educators still need to create a conducive environment to develop cognitive, socio-economical, and behavioural skills; which are essential to produce global citizens.
The second day of the seminar series focused more on the practical applications of ICT innovations in education and developing the students’ collaboration skills. Some best practices in ICT were shared by Mr. Mark Sy, the Education Technology Coordinator for La Salle Greenhills, one of the pioneering schools in the Philippines to fully utilise ICT tools in teaching. Participants were also given a perspective on how ICT in education plays a role in the community. Mr. Jhonny Paul Lagura, a municipal councillor from Kapatagan, Lanao del Norte, shared how ICT initiatives opens job and community development opportunities for students and urges everyone to immerse their students to their local communities.
Examples on how collaboration skills of today’s learners can be improved were given by one of the content experts for the Affordable Private Education Centre (APEC) Schools, Ms. Shaina Tantuico. She urged the educators to explore student mentorship from third-party experts or representatives, expose and immerse students to issues in their community, focus on soft-skill development, and collaborate amongst their fellow educators.
With each of the deep learning skills discussed, participants were divided into groups and given time to converge and come up with sets of recommendations on how to integrate these skills in the curriculum, classroom instructions, and student assessment.
In the end, the use of ICT in promoting global citizenship, education and collaboration has been a key unifying thread in the three focus areas. The power of ICT to link classrooms with other schools in the Philippines and overseas paved the way for collaborative learning models. There is also a strong need for capacity building for both public and private teachers on how to effectively integrate the use of ICT tools in their subjects, a project that UNESCO can help with using existing best practices in the region.
