University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Emerging practices for a changing world: a case study of 21st century learning

(USC Thesis Other)

Emerging practices for a changing world: a case study of 21st century learning

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content

EMERGING PRACTICES FOR A CHANGING WORLD: A CASE STUDY OF
21
ST
CENTURY LEARNING

by

David Charles Truby, Jr.

___________________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

May 2012

Copyright 2012 David Charles Truby, Jr.

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would first like to thank every faculty and staff member at my selected
school of study whose time, candor, and assistance made this dissertation possible.
Even though you remain anonymous in this study, I truly value and applaud your
efforts in and out of the classroom and am indebted to your assistance.
Second, I would like to thank my committee members. My committee chair
Dr. Stuart Gothold’s guidance, structure, and honesty guided me in both the
production of this work and in my growth as a collaborator, an educator, and a 21
st

century learner in my own right. My second and third committee members, Dr.
Dennis Hocevar and Dr. Michelle Riconscente, both challenged me to consider and
reconsider how to approach this study and its findings and ultimately inspired the
final direction it took.
Third, I would like to thank my “fourth committee member,” Elizabeth
Jordan, who provided me with emotional support, constructive feedback and the
inspiration of her mind and heart.
Lastly, I express my love and gratitude to my Aunt Lana and Uncle Randy
Mahaffey, who always taught me to believe in education and to never sell myself
short.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iv
Chapter 1: Overview of the Study 1
Chapter 2: Review of the Literature 15
Chapter 3: Research Methodology 55
Table: Conceptual Model for 21
st
Century Learning 57

Chapter 4: Findings 77
Chapter 5: Discussion 161
References 171
Appendices
Appendix A: Document Review Matrix 178
Appendix B: Observation Matrix 185
Appendix C: Interview Questions 187
Appendix D: Interview Handout 189
Appendix E: Survey: Programs and Practices 190

iv

ABSTRACT
As companies have adapted to the demands and opportunities of the 21
st

century, educators and businessmen alike have expressed a concern that children in
the United States are not being taught the skills that they need to be competitive in
an increasingly global workforce. While some schools are addressing this problem
in their programs and practices, it is unclear what they are doing. An urban high
school that claims to be embracing 21
st
century learning was examined in a
qualitative case study using a framework provided by The Partnership of 21
st

Century Skills. 3 relevant themes emerged from this study: 1. 21
st
century learning
is community building, 2. 21
st
century learning objectives emphasize critical
thinking, and 3. 21
st
century preparation looks beyond the classroom. Based on
these findings, recommendations are given for both future practice and research.

1

CHAPTER 1
OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
In a time of economic uncertainty and rapid technological development, the
United States’ paradigm for measuring educational progress has come under
scrutiny. After decades of prioritizing equity as the national educational goal, the
United States finds itself falling behind other industrialized nations on academic
benchmarks (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2009; Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development, 2010). As a result, a growing movement
of business and educational leaders has called for rethinking both what and how the
U.S. teaches its children. Instead of focusing only on standardization and equity,
these groups, organizations, and individuals have argued that the U.S. must adapt its
educational priorities to the demands of globalization or risk compromising the
ability of its future citizens to compete and succeed as global citizens (Dede, 2009;
Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills, 2008; Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills, 2010;
Wagner, 2008).
Two aspects of globalization have particular relevance for the education of
children in the United States. First is the growth in power, speed, influence, and
accessibility of information technologies. This growth has created an
interconnected globe that has opened the doors for international business and
personal transactions. However, with these opportunities come tremendous
complexity and volatility. Cultural differences and competing national interests,
international and civil conflicts, environmental and natural disasters—these are just
some examples of how local events become global concerns that ripple through the

2

social and economic fabric of the world at an accelerated pace. This acceleration
has clouded the obligations of citizenship in a world where one democratic vote, or
one business transaction, has immediate international ramifications. Globalization
and information technologies have begun to erase the lines that separate nations,
and with them, the lines that demarcate our personal, political, and economic lives.
These vanishing boundaries create the potential not only for cooperation and
jointly-attained prosperity, but also anxiety, hostility, and disruption (Friedman,
2007).
The second aspect of globalization, which rides on the wake of the growth
in information technologies, is the outsourcing of jobs to areas of the world that can
produce either more cheaply, more timely, or both. Outsourcing has had an
immediate impact on two types of worker in the United States: the manufacturer
and the college-educated, entry-level professional. The advantages of cheaper
wages, lower benefits, and longer work hours have encouraged many businesses to
close factories inside the United States and replace them with factories in other
countries. These same advantages have also prompted U.S. businesses to take
advantage of both high speed information technologies and college-educated,
English speaking youth in countries such as India to create a new 24-hour business
model. This model takes mostly analytic, data oriented work that ordinarily would
be the province of young, college-educated employees and sends it across the globe
to be completed before the start of the next business day, improving both time and
cost-effectiveness (Friedman, 2007). As a result, individuals trying to enter the
modern US workforce find themselves competing mostly for jobs in either the

3

service or global business industries (The Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010;
Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills, 2008).
Buoying these arguments are international testing trends that show the
United States significantly underperforming other countries (National Center for
Educational Statistics, 2009; Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development, 2010). However, current educational practices and accountability
tools may be inadequate for addressing these problems (Heckman and Montera,
2009; Ellis, 2002; O’Reilly and Sheehan, 2008; Schoen and Fusarelli, 2008;
Voithofer and Foley, 2007). Improperly preparing US students to either fill
vacancies in service sector jobs within the country or lead US businesses to
successfully do business in global markets could mire the United States in an
extended period of both unemployment and diminishing influence.
In response, many educational and business leaders have called for a
reevaluation of the United States’ educational priorities. These leaders have argued
that young Americans may enter the workforce without the requisite skills to
support the country’s economic stability at home or competitiveness abroad.
Strikingly, many common themes exist in these leaders’ differing visions of an
educational system that meets the demands of globalization. Four themes in
particular share wide agreement among educational and business leaders who are
pushing for these new priorities: adaptability, creativity, sustainability, and
interpersonal skills (Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills, 2010; Dede, 2009). In the
21
st
century, workers in the United States will have to adapt to rapidly changing
technological, professional, cultural, and political environments. They will have to

4

address the problems and conflicts that attend these changes with a creativity
grounded in critical thinking and analysis. These solutions will have to create
sustainable political, economic, and environmental models and practices that can
channel this volatility into long-term growth and prosperity. The success of such
models and practices will depend on the ability of diverse individuals to
productively communicate, support, and respect one another.
The Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills is a coalition of private and public
individuals and organizations that has sought to organize these themes into a
framework for adapting the standards-based curriculum to the demands of
globalization on education. This framework, “Core Subjects and 21
st
Century
Themes,” (Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills, 2009) catalogues skills and subjects
that address the aforementioned themes and could be incorporated into a standards-
based curriculum. With its comprehensive design and adaptability to standards-
based learning and testing, P21’s “Core Subjects and Themes” provides an
actionable blueprint for aligning education practice with the new demands of
globalization.
Statement of the Problem
As the world has become more interconnected, U.S. citizens find themselves
increasingly competing for jobs that are either going overseas or being replaced by
developing technologies. A current perception exists among business leaders that
America’s education system does not prepare students for this new reality.
International benchmark tests have substantiated some of these concerns by
unfavorably ranking U.S. students compared to those of other industrialized nations.

5

Some schools in the United States have taken the initiative in meeting the
demands of globalization. These schools show their concern for meeting the
demands of globalization by identifying 21
st
century skills and themes in their
school vision, mission statements, and web sites. However, it is unclear what
programs and practices these schools are implementing to teach, model, and
reinforce these skills and themes. In the absence of state or federal mandates, it is
unlikely that knowledge of these programs and practices will organically spread to
other schools, making a coordinated effort to implement frameworks such as P21’s
“Core Subjects and Themes” unlikely. As a result, 21
st
century education remains
pocketed within isolated sites, providing few opportunities for these schools to
share what they are doing. Without increased awareness of what schools are doing
to meet the demands of globalization, the movement to teach 21
st
century skills and
themes seems likely to stall. Such a delay could leave millions of secondary and
post-secondary graduates unfit to either compete globally for jobs or responsibly
fulfill the duties of citizenship.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of the study was to identify the programs and practices that
promote the acquisition of 21
st
century skills at a K-12 school. The study used
P21’s “Core Subjects and Themes” as a framework for cataloguing the 21
st
century
skills and themes that, if taught, would meet the demands of globalization. The
researcher chose a school that emphasized 21
st
century skills and themes in its
mission statement, vision, and web site and had a record of academic success. The
study then examined the programs, practices, and professional community of the

6

school to identify alignments with 21
st
century skills and themes and the perceived
impact of this alignment on the culture of the school.
Research Questions
1. What are the practices and programs at the school and how they are
aligned to 21
st
century skills?
2. What is the professional community at the school, and how does it
support these practices?
3. What is the perceived impact of 21
st
century skills on the culture of the
school?
Significance of the Study
The failure to address the demands of globalization on education could stifle
the future competitiveness of both U.S. citizens and the United States as a whole.
Companies have expanded their search for competent employees globally at the
same time that other nations have outpaced the U.S. on international benchmark
tests. As a result, members of the professional and educational community have
shown a growing concern that future U.S. citizens may lack the skills to attract,
lead, or create multinational companies. Such a scenario could leave the United
States with both high levels of unemployment and decreasing international
influence.
There are currently schools that are taking the initiative to teach 21
st
century
skills and themes, but they are doing so without much external support, guidance, or
recognition. Some of these schools are not only teaching 21
st
century skills and
themes, but are also successfully meeting state and national standards. Without

7

state and federal mandates, a broad initiative to teach 21
st
century skills and themes
would first require a consensus about which programs and practices successfully
promote the acquisition of these skills. A full account of what these schools are
doing would be the first step towards reaching such a consensus.
This case study was one of 9 thematic dissertations designed by a cohort of
doctoral students. Together, these studies provide a comprehensive account of what
9 different elementary, middle, and high schools are doing to promote the
acquisition of 21
st
century skills. Together, these studies contribute to developing
research on how schools are meeting the demands of globalization through their
programs and practices. In the tradition of “best practices,” the findings of these
studies may be transferable to a variety of educational settings.
Limitations and Delimitations
Limitations recognized in this study:
1. The sample size was small, limited to one urban high school
2. The findings were limited to one urban high school, and may not be
generalized to other schools of similar or different demographics or
achievement.
3. Observations, surveys, and interviews were conducted over a time
period of three months and did not observe programs, practices, or
cultural dynamics that occurred at other points of the school year.
4. Observations were subject to the researcher’s interpretation and inherent
bias.

8

5. The researcher was led to assume that all participants were truthful and
forthcoming in their responses.
6. The validity of the study was only as reliable as the instruments used.
7. Only one framework, P21’s “Core Subjects and Themes,” was used to
define 21
st
century skills and themes in this study. Other frameworks
exist and may have provided different results had they been employed.
Delimitations recognized by this study:
1. The school site was selected based on the following predetermined
criteria: 1. The mention of 21
st
century skills or themes in its mission
statement, vision, or on its web site; 2. An API score of 800 on the 2010
California Standards Test.
2. The study was confined to one urban high school in Los Angeles
County, California.
3. While surveys were given to the entire faculty and staff, the survey
sample only reflects the views and opinions of those who returned a
completed survey.
4. Interviews were conducted with a sample of faculty and staff members
and may not reflect the views and opinions of the entire faculty and
staff.
5. Classroom observations were conducted in selected classrooms and may
not reflect the classroom practices of the entire school.

9

Assumptions recognized by this study include:
1. All data collected from the California Department of Education were
accurate and valid.
2. All data collected from the district website and Student Accountability
Report Card (SARC) were accurate and valid.
3. All data collected from faculty and staff members were accurate and
valid representations of the participants’ experiences.
4. The researcher assumed that programs, practices, and cultural norms
contributed to student learning and achievement.
Definition of Terms
 21
st
Century Skills: Student outcomes identified by the Partnership for
21
st
Century Skills (P21) as essential for preparing students for the demands
of globalization in the 21
st
century. The student outcomes are organized into
three categories: “Learning and Innovation Skills,” “Information, Media,
and Technology Skills,” and “Life and Career Skills.” Central to these
outcomes are what P21 refers to as “The Four C’s”: critical thinking and
problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and
innovation. P21 advocates developing these skills through a curriculum that
also promotes an awareness of 21
st
century themes (Partnership for 21
st

Century Skills, 2009).
 21
st
Century Themes: Central ideas and topics identified by the
Partnership for 21
st
century skills (P21) as essential components of
citizenship in the 21
st
century. There are five 21
st
century themes: global

10

awareness; financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy; civic
literacy; health literacy; and environmental literacy. P21 advocates
incorporating these themes into an educational curriculum that also develops
21
st
century skills (Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills, 2009).
 21
st
Century Themes and Student Outcomes: A framework developed
by the Partnership of 21
st
Century Skills (P21) for incorporating 21
st
century
themes into a curriculum that also develops 21
st
century skills. P21’s “21
st

Century Themes and Student Outcomes” is designed to be integrated into
any standards-based single-subject content curriculum (Partnership for 21
st

Century Skills, 2009).
 Academic Performance Index (API). A number that summarizes the
performance of a group of students, a school, or a district on California's
standardized tests. For accountability purposes, the API score is used to
rank schools among other schools of the same type (elementary, middle,
high) and among the 100 schools of the same type that are most similar in
terms of students served, teacher qualifications, and other factors. API
scores are also given to schools for “numerically significant” student groups,
including ethnic subgroups, socioeconomically disadvantaged students,
English learners, and students with disabilities (Edsource, 2011).
 Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). A set of academic performance
benchmarks that states, school districts, schools, and subpopulations of
students must annually achieve for the state to receive federal funding under
Title I, Part A of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In

11

California, these benchmarks include specified percentages of students
scoring "proficient" or "advanced" on California Standards Tests in English
language arts and math; participation rates of at least 95% on those tests; (3)
specified Academic Performance Index scores or gains; and, for high
schools, a specified graduation rate or improvement in the rate (Edsource,
2011).
 California Standards Test (CST): An annual multiple choice, criterion-
referenced test based on California’s academic content standards. The
California Department of Education uses the CST to determine API and
AYP. The test covers four subject areas: English language arts (grades 2-
11); mathematics (grades 2-11); history/social science (grades 8, 10, and
11); and science (for grades 5, 8, 10, and high school students who are
taking specific subjects like biology, chemistry, or integrated science).
Students are scored as "far below basic, below basic, basic, proficient, and
advanced," with the state goal being that all students score at “proficient” or
above (Edsource, 2011).
 Cognitive Load Theory (CLT): A theory that attempts to explain how
humans process complex information and store that information into long-
term memory (Sweller, et. al 1998).
 Globalization: The increasing cooperation of, and competition between,
international financial markets and markets for goods and services. Key
components of globalization include the international mobility of national

12

resources and the interdependence and integration of national economies
(Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2005).
 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): a
coalition of countries and economies to promote policies for improving the
economic and social well-being of people around the world. Currently, 34
countries are members of the OECD (Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, 2005).
 Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills (P21): A national organization formed
by the US Department of Education and a variety of private educational and
technological organizations. P21 advocates for local, state and federal
policies that develop “21st century readiness” for every student. The
partnership defines “21
st
century readiness” as the ability to effectively
employ critical thinking and problem solving, communication,
collaboration, and creativity and innovation. P21 also provides tools and
resources to help the U.S. education system keep up with international
trends and standards (Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills, 2008).
 Problem-Based Learning (PBL): A learning model in which students
work collaboratively to solve complex domain-specific problems. In PBL,
students learn by using prior knowledge to solve problems that experts face
within a given professional field (Schmidt, 1983).
 Program for International Student Achievement (PISA): An
internationally standardized assessment, given every three years, that was
jointly developed by participating economies in the Organization for

13

Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Four assessments have so
far been administered to 4,500 and 10,000 15-year-old students in schools in
each country since 2000. The most recent test in 2009 had 65 participating
countries and economies (Edsource, 2011; Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, 2010).
 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS): A
large study that attempts to compare achievement in mathematics and
science across nations. TIMSS administers tests to students in 26 countries
at grade 4 and 41 countries at grade 8. Depending on the specific test, it is
administered to up to 21 countries at the final year of secondary school. The
most recent TIMSS test in the United States was in 2007 (Edsource, 2011;
National Center for Educational Statistics, 2009).
 Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC): One of six
educational accreditation groups in the United States. California schools
receive accreditation from WASC after being visited by WASC committee
members and completing a comprehensive self-study. To receive continued
accreditation, schools must reapply every 6 years (WASC, n.d.).
Organization of the Remainder of the Study
This study consists of 5 chapters. Chapter 2 reviews literature on the
problems that globalization present for education, why teaching 21
st
century skills
and themes provide a possible solution to those challenges, and the challenges and
potential benefits of this instruction. Chapter 3 explains the research design,
conceptual framework and model, descriptions of the sample population, and the

14

process used for data collection and analysis. Chapter 4 describes, analyzes, and
interprets the findings of the study. Chapter 5 summarizes these findings, makes
conclusions, and gives recommendations for future research and practice.

15

CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
The purpose of this literature review is to examine the challenges and
potential solutions that educators and their students face relative to globalization in
the 21
st
century. This review begins with an overview of how the recent financial
crisis, coupled with increasingly globalized economy, has created a potential job
crisis for America’s youth. Then, the review looks at the skills that today’s students
must be taught to face this challenge according to the Partnership of 21
st
Century
Skills. Theoretical and research support are given to show how problem-based
learning and technology can be appropriately applied to the instruction of media
literacy and sustainability literacy. Finally, the review looks at the organizational
obstacles that stunt necessary teacher preparation and innovation in these areas.
Statement of the Problem
The financial crisis of 2008 created a spike in unemployment with profound
implications for the future competitiveness of the United States in the global
economy. While U.S. unemployment increased from 6.2 to 9.7 percent between
2008 and 2010, unemployment among those aged 16-24 rose even more
dramatically, from 13.4 to 18.8 percent over the same period. The number of
young adults in this demographic who were unemployed and looking for work
increased from 5,493,000 to a peak of 13,658,000 in the fourth quarter of 2009,
with a recent estimate at 12,844,000 (U.S. Department of Labor, 2011). With the
oldest members of this demographic having graduated from high school at roughly
2004, we can consider this group the first wave of the NCLB generation, the first

16

students to be impacted significantly by the 2002 law that increased accountability
for schools based on standardized testing. Though this law was originally intended
to improve the standing of U.S. students internationally, recent trends have cast
doubt over whether these students have acquired the skills that will allow them to
re-enter, or simply enter, the workforce.
Paramount among these trends is the belief among American CEOs that
America’s youth are not worth the cost of employment in an age of outsourcing and
rapid technological growth. Many business leaders have expressed concern that the
extensive focus on testing in American secondary schools fails to teach students the
skills they are looking for in future hires. The American Management Association
(AMA) 2010 Critical Skills survey of 2,115 managers and executives found that
80% of respondents believed that reading, writing, and arithmetic should be coupled
with the “four C’s”—critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and
creativity—if young Americans are to be prepared to enter the current workforce.
The survey also found that business leaders believed that 70% of recent graduates in
their organization were average, below average, and of the lowest ability in these
skills (Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills, 2010).
These concerns have been exacerbated by the recent underperformance of
U.S. students relative to those of other nations on two international surveys. The
Program for International Student Achievement (PISA), developed and
administered every three years by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), gave its most recent test in 2009 and had 65 participating
countries and economies. On the 2009 PISA test, U.S. students ranked 24
th
on

17

reading, 31
st
in mathematics, and 30
th
in science compared to participating
economies. The U.S. did better on the Trends in Mathematics and Science Survey
(TIMMS), but still lags behind many countries. TIMMS, which focuses solely on
mathematics and science, has been developed and administered four times since
1995 by the National Center for Education Studies. On the most recent test, in
2007, U.S. students ranked 11
th
in mathematics at the fourth grade level, and 9
th
in
mathematics at the 4
th
grade level. In science, U.S. students ranked 7
th
in fourth
grade and 11
th
in eighth grade. There are two possible reasons for the disparity
between these two tests. First, PISA tests 15 year-olds only, targeting a higher
grade level and more complex skills for U.S. students. Second, PISA’s focus on
real-world applications of academic content excludes many concepts taught in
schools and included on the TIMMS (Wu, 2009). These explanations can hardly be
reassuring to American business leaders looking for employees who can flexibly
apply complex knowledge to novel situations.
The evidence and perception that U.S. students have fallen behind those of
other nations coincides with an increase in globalization. In globalization,
international financial markets and markets cooperate and compete in the trade of
goods and services. As labor and natural resources become increasingly mobile,
national economies become integrated and interdependent (Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development, 2005). Globalization has led to what
Thomas Friedman refers to as a global flattening. Immediate, global access to
knowledge and communication has created a global surge in collaboration and
competition. The immediate impact of this flattening on employment in the U.S. is

18

the outsourcing of jobs to countries where the same quality work can be done at a
much smaller cost (Friedman, 2007). Outsourcing has created a dramatic shift of
jobs from manufacturing to the service-sector, with 17 million service sector jobs
created between 1995 and 2005, compared to three million manufacturing jobs that
have been lost (Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills, 2008).
In its job projections for the years 2008-2018, The Bureau of Labor
Statistics (2010) notes that while 10.8 million jobs are expected to be added over
this time, these jobs will be distributed unequally across various industries. The
greatest projected instigators of job growth over this time are population growth,
population aging, technological advancement, and regulatory increase. As a result,
the only four occupational categories projected to see an increase in employment of
over ten percent are professional and related (17 percent), service (14 percent),
construction and extraction (13 percent) and management, business and financial
(11 percent).
A closer look at these projections reveals a sharp distinction between the
skills that are and are not in demand in many of the occupational categories. For
instance, while overall office and administrative support jobs are expected to
increase, these jobs are limited to those aspects of support that require personal
interaction and cannot be automated. Support positions such as filing are expected
to decline as technology, outsourcing, and consolidation will eliminate the need for
these jobs. Meanwhile, plant and factory automation will reduce the need for
workers in production jobs. As a result, fifteen of the twenty jobs expected to see
the largest decline are in production and administrative support. Overall,

19

occupations that require a postsecondary degree are expected to increase from
seventeen to nineteen percent, compared to only eight percent for jobs that only
require on the job training (Bureau of Labor and Statistics, 2010).
Tony Wagner (2008) identifies eight 21
st
century survival skills that young
adults will need to successfully compete in a global economy: critical thinking,
collaboration, adaptability, entrepreneurialism, communication, information access
and analysis, curiosity, and imagination. Having grown up in a world of rapid
technological and cultural change, the incoming generation of workers might seem
to have the adaptive and technological aptitude to adjust to these changes in the
workplace, but research has shown that this may not be the case. In fact, the
constant exposure to technological stimulus and expansive options may have
undermined the development of metacognitive knowledge and increased anxiety in
what Jo Hoffman has referred to as the “digital generation” (Hoffman, 2010).
Metacognitive knowledge refers to the ability to strategically plan and make
choices. When this knowledge is undeveloped, learners have difficulty navigating
the decision making process within complex tasks (Krathwohl and Anderson,
2001). As a result many children have not developed the ability to skillfully
evaluate, make choices, and adapt within the complex, overloaded world of
information in which they find themselves (Hoffman, 2010).
Exacerbating this problem is the potential for growing inequities in U.S.
public education. While African American and Hispanic students are projected to
be the majority by 2025, these students are more likely to attend underfunded and
poorly operated schools and demographically earn fewer college degrees than

20

White or Asian students (Darling-Hammond, 2010). The 2002 law No Child Left
Behind (NCLB) has sought to address these educational inequalities through the
implementation of high stakes testing (No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 [NCLB],
2002). However, NCLB has been accused of emphasizing test-taking over the
preparation students for the 21
st
century economy. As a result, NCLB may be
sustaining educational equity in for two reasons. First, NCLB fails to recognize the
material and technological inequity that exists in low socioeconomic and
historically segregated communities and the disadvantage these inequities create for
students in an increasingly connected world (Voithofer and Foley, 2007). Second,
NCLB objectifies mathematical knowledge in a way that both reduces the
emphasis on higher-order thinking and decision making within schools while
reinforcing the inequalities it seeks to address. Isolating mathematical knowledge
from its relevance to the actual lives of students undermines students’ ability to
make sense of the world mathematically. As a result, NCLB reinforces a labeling
aesthetic that has historically allocated power and agency based on socioeconomic
and racial biases, in the process reducing educational objectives to the narrow
application of basic skills (Ellis, 2002).
NCLB’s focus on standardized testing has similarly threatened to undermine
reading skills among K-12 students. Because these tests tend to be one dimensional
in their approach and provide no formative assessment, they fail to evaluate or
guide the development of students’ ability to develop conceptual models. These
models are necessary to construct meaning from written texts and integrate that
meaning with existing knowledge. Conceptual models allow students to evaluate

21

the usefulness, credibility, and applicability of information (O’Reilly and Sheehan,
2008). What these studies highlight is the failure of NCLB’s accountability system
to prepare students to strategically select, integrate, and use the wide range of
mathematical and textual information they are exposed to on a day to day basis,
thereby undermining its stated goal of closing achievement gaps based on race and
socio-economic status.
NCLB further ignores the need for more sweeping changes in educational
culture and approach. Instead, NCLB reflects an “industrial” mindset that no longer
has relevance in the current world’s emphasis on information, connection, and
access. As a result, the current state of education is entropic; new information and
knowledge is not being used effectively to sustain education in a changing world.
In other words, the continued emphasis on fragmented, compartmentalized
instruction reflects 20
th
century industrial philosophies of production that have little
relevance in a technologically advanced information society. In the 20
th
century
industrial world, production was “segmented, linear, and time-bound,” a trend
reflected in the grade-level, standards-based curricula that, like the 20
th
century
factory job, is designed to reduce the complexity of any given task and discourages
contemplation of the overarching goals of the educational enterprise (Heckman and
Montera, 2009).
However, simply replacing new technologies and attitudes for old methods
has its dangers as well. In fact, increasing technological access without
acknowledging the role of technological literacies in propagating inequity may be
futile. Educational leaders should therefore question the allure of novelty and

22

recognize the importance of effective implementation, mentorship, and guidance.
Otherwise, attempts to reduce inequity through NCLB or technological access will
fail to address the socio-economic and cultural factors that perpetuate educational
disparities (Warschauer, 2007b).
These trends have potential national and global consequences as the United
States attempts to solidify its leadership in the globally competitive economy and
address issues of environmental sustainability. In order for the United States to
compete in the new global economy, it must boost science and technological
education but so far lacks the necessary impetus and vision. Unlike the space race
in the 60s, the United States faces an unprecedented degree of competitors across
Europe, Asia, and the Americas and lacks a clear vision of how to accommodate to
the new economy or the time-frame involved in doing so. Meanwhile, the current
NCLB-led focus on mathematics and reading fails to recognize the role science and
technology has had on the country’s past economic success or the projected
requirements for maintaining that success (Bybee and Fuchs, 2006). This focus
also ignores the continued stress being placed on natural and human resources both
in the United States and abroad. Overconsumption by privileged societies, coupled
with increasing economic inequities, has created an unsustainable global
environment that has not been properly addressed in educational reform. The short-
sightedness of our current educational culture does not prepare students to face and
where possible, reverse these potentially disastrous trends. This overall failure to
anticipate the concurrent long term effects of the current educational model and the

23

direction of international competition and consumption has jeopardized the future
strength of the United States, with potentially global consequences (Nolet, 2009).
Solutions
Preparing our students to face and overcome the new challenges of the 21
st

century requires rethinking the goals and methods of educational instruction. One
of the most encompassing and influential frameworks for facing these challenges is
the Partnership of 21
st
Century Skills (P21), a partnership of public and private
organizations such as the Department of Education, the National Educational
Association, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Verizon, and the Walt Disney Company.
(Voithofer & Foley 2007). While other frameworks exist, P21’s framework is
notable for being “more detailed and more widely adopted,” and largely consistent
with those of other organizations (Dede, 2009). P21’s (2010) 21
st
Century
Knowledge and Skills in Educator Preparation calls for aligning 21
st
century
knowledge and skills with P-12 educational standards, assessments, curriculum and
instruction, professional development, and learning environments. The partnership
defines these skills under four recommended student outcomes: “Core Subjects and
21
st
Century Themes,” “Learning and Innovation Skills,” “Information, Media, and
Technology Skills,” and “Life and Career Skills.” According to P21, this alignment
can only occur under conditions of strong leadership with an emphasis on
interdisciplinary program cohesion and the formation of like-minded, localized
partnerships within a given institution and its community.
P21’s first recommended 21
st
century student outcome, “Core Subjects and
21
st
Century Themes,” advocates an alignment between traditional core subjects and

24

what P21 describes as 21
st
century interdisciplinary themes. The core subjects
listed by P21 are “English, reading, or language arts,” “World languages,” “Arts,”
“Mathematics,” “Economics,” “Science,” Geography,” “History,” and
“Government and civics.” The “21
st
Century interdisciplinary themes” are designed
to integrate these subjects in a way that heightens core content knowledge. P21’s
first 21
st
century theme, “Global Awareness,” involves understanding issues of
global importance, being familiar with the customs, cultures, and languages of other
nations, and being able to collaborate cross-culturally. The second 21
st
century
theme, “Financial, Economic, Business, and Entrepreneurial Literacy,” stresses
having the economic and entrepreneurial understanding to make economic and
career related choices. P21’s third 21
st
century theme, “Civic Literacy,” refers to the
ability to exercise the rights and obligations of local, national, and global
citizenship through informed civic decisions. The fourth theme, “Health Literacy,”
refers to one’s ability to make informed health-related decisions that consider health
information and services, preventative measures, and global health and safety
issues. The final 21
st
century theme, “Environmental Literacy,” involves
understanding the natural and societal conditions affecting the environment and
their potential consequences, and the ability to generate solutions for environmental
challenges. Seen as a whole, the five 21
st
century themes place an emphasis on
anticipating, addressing, and acclimating to societal problems that have global
consequences in an interconnected world.
P21’s second recommended student outcome, “Learning and Innovation
Skills,” addresses the need to prepare students for the complexities of an

25

interconnected age and its impact on work, home, and civic life. P21 identifies
three categories of recommended skills, “Creativity and Innovation,” “Critical
Thinking and Problem Solving,” “Communication and Collaboration.” P21 defines
“Creativity and Innovation” in two ways—the ability to be individually creative and
the ability to be collaboratively creative. Individual creativity involves having
strategic creative techniques, innovative ideas, and the ability to evaluate and
improve existing ideas. Collaborative creativity adds the ability to communicate
new ideas in persuasive, effective ways; respond to and incorporate diverse
perspectives and input; and maintain a realistic approach to implementing
innovative approaches. Finally, “Creativity and Innovation” requires the ability to
enact and implement new ideas within an existing system.
P21’s second recommended skill, “Critical Thinking and Problem Solving,”
has three components: effective reasoning, judgment and decision making, and
problem solving. Included in effective reasoning are the different types of
reasoning and analysis required to navigate, understand, and influence complex
systems. Judgment and decision making involves the ability to engage in critical
reflection, analysis, and evaluation to recognize, differentiate, and synthesize
evidence-based alternatives. P21 defines the third component, problem solving, as
the ability to solve unfamiliar problems by properly questioning and clarifying
various alternatives.
“Communication and Collaboration,” P21’s third recommended skill,
involves using articulation and listening skills in multicultural settings for various
purposes and emphasizes flexibility, respectful collaboration, and shared

26

responsibility. As a whole, P21’s “Learning and Innovation Skills” provide an
interconnected set of guidelines that assumes that future employees and citizens will
be increasingly connected and expected to select and use information and
technology in ways that are personally and financially beneficial.
This awareness of the vastly increasing influence of information and
technology informs P21’s third category of recommended student outcomes,
“Information, Media, and Technology Skills.” This category emphasizes three
forms of literacy, “Information Literacy,” Media Literacy,” and “ICT (Information,
Communications, and Technology) Literacy.” P21 considers these literacies
essential if future citizens are going to be able to effectively access information,
adapt to technological advancement, and take advantage of the unprecedented
opportunities for collaboration and contribution. P21 defines “Information
Literacy” as the ability to access, evaluate, use, and manage information. This
literacy emphasizes the need to critically and efficiently evaluate and select
information from a variety of sources for accurate, creative, ethical, and legal use.
“Media Literacy” refers to the ability to ethically and legally analyze and create
media products with an emphasis on the purposes, uses, and persuasive potential of
various types of media in multi-cultural settings. P21 defines “ICT Literacy” as the
ability to effectively use technology to ethically and legally access, evaluate, create,
and communicate information. Together, these literacies articulate the need for an
integrated understanding of information, media, and ICT that continues P21’s
emphasis on an ethical and legal understanding of citizenship and cross-cultural
collaboration.

27

“Life and Career Skills,” P21’s fourth category of recommended student
outcomes, recognizes that a globally competitive economy demands mastery of the
personal skills to navigate diverse work environments and responsibilities. P21
categorizes these skills as “Flexibility and Adaptability,” Initiative and Self
Direction,” “Social and Cross-Cultural Skills,” “Productivity and Accountability,”
and “Leadership and Responsibility.”
“Flexibility and Adaptability” refers to the ability to adjust to a constantly
changing work protocols and expectations and respond appropriately to feedback,
differing perspectives, and ambiguity. P21 defines “Initiative and Self Direction”
as the ability to set and balance goals with an eye towards self-improvement, and
maintain diligence and focus in the face of distractions. “Social and Cross-Cultural
Skills” emphasize open-mindedness, respect, and the ability to use cultural and
social differences as a source of synthesis and innovative thinking. Like “Initiative
and Self-Direction,” “Productivity and Accountability” also emphasizes a goal-
oriented, strategic work approach and incorporates the ability to consistently use
multiple resources and skills to produce high level work. Lastly, “Leadership and
Responsibility” refers to the use of collaboration, communication, and problem-
solving to guide others toward the attainment of group goals. As a whole, P21’s
“Life and Career Skills” identify the necessity of proactive, self-regulated
performance that identifies and approaches both personal and group goals.
P21 argues that these outcomes are only achievable if they are aligned with
the following existing support systems for student achievement: standards,
assessment, curriculum and instruction, professional development, and learning

28

environments. As previously mentioned, leadership, advocacy, interdisciplinary
cohesion, and community involvement are necessary criteria for successfully
aligning the support systems to 21
st
century outcomes.
Aligning standards with 21
st
century outcomes involves challenging an
educational emphasis on the accumulation of discrete, numerous knowledge and
skills. P21’s characterization of a successful 21
st
century standards support system
emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach that focuses on the previously articulated
21
st
century skills and trades superficial, cursory knowledge attainment for a deeper
conceptual understanding. Central to the attainment of these goals is a focus on
meaningful, experiential learning that incorporates the tools and expertise used in
actual business practices.
Educators should design 21
st
century standards in ways that allow for
measures of mastery that go beyond standardized testing. According to P21, an
aligned approach to assessment should balance summative assessments such as
standardized testing with formative assessments that are designed to guide the
learner towards clearly stated goals and demonstrate progress. Assessments should
utilize technology, feedback and student portfolios to document both student growth
and institutional effectiveness.
21
st
century curriculum and instructional alignment, as illustrated by P21,
emphasizes the need to isolate 21
st
century skills within the instruction of core
subject knowledge. This alignment calls for an interdisciplinary approach to
teaching 21
st
century skills within the core subjects that employs multiple

29

instructional approaches, such as and inquiry-based learning, with supportive
technologies and the use of community resources.
To be effective, these practices should occur within an institutional
organization that supports teachers, students, and staff. The alignment of
professional development with P21’s 21
st
century outcomes should provide teachers
with tools and strategies for implementing diverse instructional methods, evaluating
the needs of diverse students, and establishing multiple forms of assessment. This
alignment should also encourage the development of professional learning
communities that share knowledge and strategies. The alignment of 21
st
century
outcomes with professional development must be supported by an accompanying
alignment within the general learning environment that promotes and encourages
the desired practices. Such an environment would also provide students with
equitable access to contextualized learning experiences, technological learning
resources, and a physical environment that accommodates multiple forms of group
and individual learning. Finally, this environment should engage local and
international communities in ways that emphasize the relevance of educational
objectives and solidifies partnerships that can promote, support, and benefit from
educational innovation and progress. Institutions that accomplish these alignments
would be characterized by strong leadership accompanied by communication and
collaboration among its various employees and stakeholders.
What does it look like?
Because institutions that properly align 21
st
century outcomes with
curricular objectives must challenge existing organizational and accountability

30

practices, Heckman and Montera (2009) call for a new paradigm of reform, which
they refer to as Indigenous Invention. Unlike previous attempts at educational
reform, Indigenous Invention refers to the power within institutions to implement
needed changes. The authors argue that the current standards based movement
tends to reinforce an industrial model of compartmentalized educational progress
that clashes with the integrated approach recommended by P21. Therefore, simply
meeting state and federal requirements mandated by NCLB will do little to advance
the desired alignment of 21
st
century outcomes. As a result, agents within schools
and districts must assume the mantle of invention and embrace new ideas and
research in learning. In other words, schools and districts that have taken the lead
in aligning of 21
st
century and curricular outcomes will demonstrate internal
initiative to do so and direct that initiative towards innovation.
In the Indigenous Invention approach, the energy, directives and resources
that come from outside a given school system should not be shunned, but used to
radically change the assumptions of schooling. Among these assumptions are the
beliefs that learning occurs in orderly, incremental chunks, that knowledge is
transferred from teacher to student in the form of information, and that vital skills
and knowledge do not change over time. School systems that successfully bring
about these changes operate under three conditions. First, teachers and
administrators in these systems must be encouraged to challenge the assumptions of
traditional schooling and embrace an innovative approach. Second, educators must
have collaborative opportunities to evaluate their methods, share knowledge, and
imagine new approaches. Third, school systems should create partnerships with

31

third parties who can encourage new approaches and perspectives as an outsider
looking into the system. When predicated on trust, these conditions provide support
for the open flow of ideas and expertise necessary for innovation to occur at the
local level (Heckman & Montera, 2010).
However, innovatively aligning all of the different 21
st
century outcomes
requires more than organizational support, communication, and trust. Educators
need research-based strategies and organizing principles for innovation that
integrate multiple 21
st
century outcomes toward identifiable learning objectives.
While P21 provides a comprehensive framework for what should be taught, it does
not provide research-supported guidelines for instruction. Without such guidelines,
educators run the risk of wasting time, resources and learning opportunities. Three
guidelines for implementing the P21 program are 1.) clarifying the learning
objectives involved, 2.) identifying strategies for teaching these objectives that are
consistent with the human cognitive architecture, and 3.) organizing instruction
around principles that incorporate multiple components of P21’s “Core Subjects
and 21
st
Century Themes.” Together, these guidelines will ensure that educators
can answer the following three questions:
1.) What do we want to teach?
2.) How do we teach what we want to teach?
3.) How do we teach efficiently?
What do we want to teach?
Dividing P21’s “Core Subjects and 21
st
Century Themes” into domain-
specific and skill-based knowledge is the first step to clarifying teaching strategies.

32

It should be emphasized, however, that P21 has designed an integrated framework
in which skills, subjects, and themes are meant to be taught simultaneously and not
in isolation. Still, isolating the skills component of P21’s framework can illuminate
appropriate and inappropriate strategies for integrating them with the designated
subjects and themes.
Anderson and Krathwohl, et al. (2001) provide a useful model for discussing
P21’s core skills in terms of categories of knowledge and cognitive processes. The
authors delineate four knowledge types—factual, conceptual, procedural, and
metacognitive knowledge. The first two knowledge types are related in that they
involve the ability to retain and manipulate information. Factual knowledge
involves the ability to recall details and terminology, while conceptual knowledge
involves the ability to recall general principles and theories that can categorize and
classify factual knowledge. The last two types of knowledge, procedural and
metacognitive, focus on the learner’s ability to use information correctly to meet
specific goals. Procedural knowledge involves having the skill to appropriately
implement subject-specific methodology. Metacognitive knowledge consists of the
learner’s ability to use self-knowledge to strategize for and evaluate goal-oriented
tasks.
According to Anderson and Krathwohl, et al. (2001), learning objectives
should clarify both the type of knowledge students will learn and the specific
cognitive process students will demonstrate. The authors identify six categories of
cognitive processes that demonstrate student learning: remembering, understanding,
applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Therefore, a recommended learning

33

objective could be worded as follows: “Students will learn to analyze the
relationship between industry and wildlife in an ecosystem.” The cognitive process,
given as the verb in the objective, is analyze, while the knowledge type, given as
the direct object in the objective (“relationship”) falls under the category conceptual
knowledge. In other words, the students are learning conceptual knowledge about
ecosystems and demonstrating that knowledge through analysis.
The ultimate purpose of specifying the knowledge and cognitive processes
involved in learning is to promote “meaningful learning,” defined as the
“knowledge and cognitive processes…need(ed) for successful problem solving” (p.
65). Learning for meaning involves distinguishing between “retention” and
“transfer,” with the latter referring the ability to use knowledge in novel situations
(p. 63). The cognitive processes listed after remember—understand, apply, analyze,
evaluate, and create—have an increasing relation to transfer and the acquisition of
problem solving skills (Anderson and Krathwohl, et al, 2001).
The ability to solve novel problems requires the development of
metacognitive knowledge. Anderson and Krathwohl, et al (2001) define
metacognitive knowledge as one’s knowledge of and control over the learning
process itself. Subtypes of this class include strategic knowledge, knowledge about
cognitive tasks, and self-knowledge. Examples of strategic knowledge include the
awareness of strategies for memorization, organization, elaboration, the setting of
performance goals, and the use of heuristics. Examples of cognitive task
knowledge include the awareness of the usefulness, difficulties, and normative
concerns of a given task or strategy. The last subtype, self-knowledge, would be

34

exemplified through the awareness of one’s own choices, knowledge gaps, and the
awareness of the value and utility of a given task.
Therefore, a guiding principle in Anderson and Krathwohl, et al’s (2001)
taxonomy is the teaching of metacognitive knowledge for solving new problems.
When P21’s core skills are mapped onto this schematic, a new, hierarchical
organization emerges. “Flexibility and Adaptability” and “Problem Solving,” both
emerge from their designated categories and become driving objectives for the P21
“Core Subjects and Themes,” only now under the titles “transfer” and “problem
solving skills.” Contemporary literature on learning supports this isolation of
transfer and problem solving as fundamental learning objectives. Mayer (2008)
argues that “the central goal of education is to promote meaningful learning—
learning in which the learner engages in the cognitive processes leading to
transfer…the effect of previous learning on new learning or problem solving” (p.
25). Kalyuga (2010) concurs, stating that instructional models must consider that
current economic and social demands require the flexible use of knowledge to solve
problems in new situations. Even if not emphasized in P21’s “Core Subjects and
Themes,” the group recognizes the primary importance of transfer and problem
solving in its specification of the economy’s new skill demands, claiming that
“Advanced economies, innovative industries and firms, and high-growth jobs
require more educated workers with the ability to respond flexibly to complex
problems…” (p. 8). Any program that strives to implement P21’s “Core Subjects
and Themes,” would therefore do well to begin with a consideration of how to teach
for transfer and problem solving.

35

With transfer and problem solving as guiding principles, the remaining core
skills identified in P21’s “Core Subjects and Themes” can be categorized as types
of either knowledge or cognitive processes. Distinguishing between knowledge
types and cognitive processes in P21’s “Core Subjects and Themes” has value
because it allows for the construction of teachable objectives that identify the
knowledge to be gained in a lesson and the cognitive process involved.
“Information, Media, and Technology Skills” and “Communication and
Collaboration Skills,” constitute types of knowledge. Specifically, “Information,
Media, and Technology Skills” comprises factual knowledge about media,
information, and technology; conceptual knowledge of the interrelationships and
general principles guiding these three; procedural knowledge about how to produce
and disseminate information and media using technology; and the metacognitive
knowledge to strategically produce and disseminate effective media and
information. “Communication and Collaboration Skills” includes procedural
knowledge, knowing how to interact effectively with others, and the metacognitive
knowledge, or self-awareness, necessary in interpersonal communications.
Meanwhile, “Learning and Innovation Skills” largely identifies cognitive
processes—“Creativity and Innovation Skills” encompass the cognitive process
“create,” while “Critical Thinking Skills” include the cognitive processes “analyze”
and “evaluate.” Potential objectives that combine these cognitive processes with
the aforementioned learning types include “Students will learn how to evaluate
sources of media on the Internet,” or “Students will learn how to analyze the
motives and needs of other members of a collaborative group.”

36

How do we teach what we want to teach?
The effective teaching of P21’s “Core Subjects and Themes” should begin
with objectives that specify the targeted cognitive processes and knowledge, and
use teaching strategies that promote transfer and problem solving skills. Mayer
(2008) identifies four guiding principles for such strategies. First, the teaching of
problem solving should focus on skills that are well-defined and domain specific.
Second, the context of problem solving is critical; problem solving skills should
only be developed through tasks that are authentic and valued. Third, problem
solving should be personalized through process-oriented discussion. Finally,
problem solving should be taught alongside lower-level skills, and should not be
postponed until after students have mastered composite skills. Instructors should be
wary of efforts to improve or measure general intelligence and instead focus on
teaching general principles and strategies that apply to problems of a given type or
within a specific domain.
However, such a domain-specific and task specific approach to teaching
problem solving argues against the teaching of overly generalized problem solving
strategies. In fact, evolutionary theorists argue that general problem solving
strategies such as means-end analysis are evolved strategies for achieving ideal
social and behavioral states (Geary 2007). These theorists conclude that teaching
such strategies may be redundant if not detrimental to learning (Sweller, Van
Merrienboer, & Paas 1998, Sweller 2010, Kalyuga, Renkel, & Paas 2010).
Therefore, teaching problem solving strategies of medium generality that are not
task specific but are only applicable within relevant domains may be a more

37

promising way to improve problem solving and transfer (Kalyuga, et al. 2010).
Overall, it appears that the effective teaching of problem solving for transfer should
focus on principles and strategies that can be applied to various tasks in similar
domains.
One theory that articulates how students engage in novel problem solving
and recommends strategies for teaching is Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). CLT
addresses the incongruity between each student’s severely limited working memory
resources and the vast reserves of his or her long term memory (Sweller, et. al
1998). Working memory is defined largely by the amount of new information that
can be simultaneously held in consciousness, with long term consensus maintaining
that roughly seven items of information can be held in working memory (Miller,
1956). However, that number has been estimated at as low as three to four items
(Cowen 2000, Cowen, Morley, & Chen 2007). Though working memory is limited
by the amount of information it can simultaneously carry, learners can improve
processing by organizing items of information into larger information chunks
(Miller, 1956). For example, remembering more than seven random letters
becomes more manageable when those letters are organized into words. This
occurs because information that was originally presented in very small chunks (each
chunk=one letter), has now been organized into larger chunks (each chunk=one
word) that can be easily processed provided the number of words/chunks is around
four to seven.
A student’s ability to chunk information depends on what knowledge
schemas have been constructed in his or her long term memory. Knowledge

38

schemas organize information for a certain purpose and are a primary component of
expertise (Sweller, et. al 1998). In a famous example of how knowledge schemas
contribute to expertise, chess experts have demonstrated an advanced ability to
reconstruct chess configurations taken from actual games when compared to the
general population (DeGroot, 1965). This advantage disappears when chess experts
are asked to memorize pieces that are randomly distributed on a chess board (Chase
& Simon, 1973). These chess experts have automated knowledge schemas about a
vast variety of chess configurations much in the same way that expert readers have
automated schemas for recognizing a vast quantity of words (Sweller, 1998).
Unlike novices, experts have organized content knowledge in a way that
allows them to recognize meaningful information patterns and flexibly apply their
knowledge in novel situations. Therefore, experts not only have highly developed
knowledge schemas but also self-regulatory strategies for knowing how and when
use those schemas (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, Eds. 2000). Because of the
automated nature of expertise, strategic observation and interviewing are necessary
for diagnosing behaviors and cognitions that experts perform without awareness
(Clark, Feldon, Van Merrienboer, Yates, and Early 2008).
The role that knowledge schemas play in problem solving and transfer skills
can be explained by CLT. According to CLT, three factors influence working
memory’s ability to process new information. These factors are characterized as
types of cognitive load. The first type of cognitive load, intrinsic load, refers to the
complexity of the information, which is generally expressed in terms of element
interactivity, or the extent to which chunks, or elements, of information must be

39

processed simultaneously. Learning new words individually would constitute low
element interactivity, while understanding the meaning of a sentence in an
unfamiliar language would represent a higher level of element interactivity.
Intrinsic load is an unalterable characteristic of the information to be learned,
though one’s ability to process different levels of element interactivity is largely
dependent on the extent to which elements can be chunked together based on
knowledge schemas. The second type of cognitive load, extrinsic load, refers to the
impact of instructional design on the limitations of working memory. Instructional
designs that contain high extraneous load either provide information that is not
relevant to the learning objective or information that is organized in a way that
prevents students from appropriately chunking and storing that information into
long term memory. The final type of cognitive load, germane load, refers to the
working memory resources that are devoted to processing new information.
Germane load is measured by the student’s ability to consciously engage in
information processing by directing attention in ways that promote schema
acquisition. Together, intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load cannot
exceed the limited demands on working memory. Therefore, high levels of intrinsic
and extrinsic load necessarily limit the working memory resources available to
engage in conscious processing, thus decreasing germane load (Sweller, et. al
1998).
Recently, it has been argued that element interactivity, originally a function
of intrinsic load, can also explain the demands of extrinsic load on working
memory. In this formulation, extrinsic load consists of elements that are

40

detrimental to schema acquisition but cannot be isolated from the relevant elements.
For example, unfamiliar jargon in an instructional lesson would constitute
extraneous load if the knowledge of those words represented elements that were not
essential to the learning objective. The only way to reduce extrinsic load would be
to remove these elements from the instructional design. In this theory, germane
load becomes entirely a function of intrinsic and extraneous load. Germane load
increases with intrinsic load as more working memory resources are required to
process information. However, germane load decreases with added extraneous
load, as working memory resources are distracted from information processing.
Though the learner has no control over germane load, his or her possession of
knowledge schemas will determine what constitutes an element and thus the level
of intrinsic load (Sweller 2010).
Cognitive load theory can explain the difficulty of problem solving in novel
situations that require the transfer of knowledge. According to CLT, novel
problems can create high levels of cognitive load because the individual does not
contain the necessary schemas in long term memory for reducing the intrinsic load.
As a result, the individual must simultaneously consider multiple strategies, putting
a further strain on working memory. Ultimately, the high cognitive load
overwhelms the individual, further hampering his or her ability to find schemas for
solving the problem. Effective problem-solvers in familiar domains overcome this
problem by having domain-specific knowledge structures that have been effectively
integrated with prior knowledge and organized based on higher-level principles and
strategies, (Kalyuga 2010; Mayer 2008). As a result, problem-solving skills are

41

most easily developed within specific domains by helping students effectively
organize domain specific knowledge and integrate specific principles and strategies
with prior knowledge. However, it may be possible to effectively teach students to
solve problems across domains by allowing students to have more control in the
learning process. The effectiveness of this strategy would depend on students’
ability to learn metacognitive strategies and principles that could be flexibly applied
to similar problems in multiple domains (Kalyuga 2010).
One way of increasing student control is problem based learning (PBL),
which originally gained popularity as a technique for teaching medical students how
to diagnose and treat unique medical cases. In PBL, students pursue and solve
domain specific problems with varying degrees of teacher guidance (Schmidt
1983). This approach has theoretical support in constructivism, which holds that
learners do not passively receive information but learn by actively incorporating
new perceptions with prior knowledge. Therefore, information that students
directly but passively receive is likely to be incorrectly or incompletely
incorporated into prior knowledge. However, when students actively generate
conclusions and test those conclusions against prior knowledge, they are more
likely to create meaningful, and correctly understood, knowledge constructs
(Jonassen, 1991).
However, some CLT theorists question whether students can engage in the
effective, organized construction of knowledge schemas in a PBL system. When
solving novel problems, most of the learner’s working memory resources will be
used in the search for relevant information, leaving little space in working memory

42

for actual learning. Assuming that learners with partial information can master the
methods and practices of a domain fails to recognize the important distinction that
CLT makes between novice and expert problem solvers. In other words, solving
complex problems effectively requires automated, domain-specific knowledge
schemas that novice learners cannot be expected to have attained without direct
guidance and instruction. The critique turns the constructivist argument against
itself by noting that students are more likely to incorrectly construct their
knowledge schemas if they are not adequately guided by teachers with relevant
domain knowledge (Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark 2006).
Other researchers have criticized the claim that PBL provides minimal
guidance, arguing that PBL allows for the flexible adaptation of guidance and is
therefore more compatible with CTL than direct instruction. An effective PBL
program can manage the cognitive load of the learning task in three ways. First,
providing training in group collaboration skills before engaging the problem can
reduce extraneous cognitive load by clarifying roles responsibilities, and
communication norms. Second, sequencing PBL tasks from simple to complex
allows for the fact that students reduce intrinsic load as they increase in expertise.
Third, providing tutorship and restricted resources to novice PBL students can
reduce intrinsic load by sharing relevant domain knowledge and reduce extrinsic
load by preventing students from engaging in irrelevant searches or misleading
solution paths (Schmidt, Loyens, van Gog, & Paas 2006). Importantly, all of these
strategies emphasize adapting guidance in PBL to the students’ levels of expertise.

43

An effective PBL program may have advantages to conventional direct
instruction that go beyond the development of expertise. A meta-analysis
comparing a Dutch PBL medical program to conventional medical programs found
significant gains in collaborative skills, student retention, and speed of program
completion for PBL, even though gains in domain knowledge and problem solving
skills were small (Schmidt, van der Molen, te Winkle, & Wijnen 2009). These
conclusions suggest that while PBL adequately teaches domain knowledge and
problem solving skills, it may be a superior method for developing the interpersonal
skills favored by P21. Additionally, there may be a connection between
collaborative opportunities and problem solving success based on CLT. According
to CTL, intrinsic cognitive load can be reduced and germane load increased in
collaborative environments because the complexity of the task can be divided
among individuals with various supplies of background knowledge (Kirschner,
Paas, & Kirschner, 2009). A collaborative group with clarified roles and effective
communication can reduce high levels of intrinsic load because each individual now
has access to additional prior knowledge as expertise is shared among the group
members. This division of task complexity can make groups more efficient and
effective at solving complex problems than individuals (Kirschner, Paas &
Kirschner 2009; Schmidt, Loyens, Gog, & van Paas 2006).
Collaborative learning does not reduce the need for expert-informed
preparation, however. One strategy for preparing students to engage is PBL is the
use of worked examples. Worked examples provide students with a problem,
solution, and commentary to study. Students learning from worked examples

44

develop problem solving schemas more efficiently than students who try to solve
problems, especially when students are asked to generate explanations to justify the
various steps (Mayer, 2008). Having students explain each step helps them
especially on double-content tasks, such as essay writing. In double content tasks,
students have to negotiate between more general problem-solving heuristics (how to
write a successful essay) and specific domain knowledge (the subject matter of this
particular essay). Having students articulate their own explanations in double
content tasks ensures that germane cognitive load is devoted to the development of
both topic-specific and heuristic knowledge schemas (Renkl, Hilbert, & Schworm,
2008). A complementary approach to worked examples, backward fading,
scaffolds instruction by providing students with the initial steps to solving a
problem and reducing the number of provided steps as students develop expertise.
This approach flexibly reduces intrinsic load to manageable levels as learners
progress in their development of expertise, and when combined with student
explanations, improves performance in far transfer tasks (Atkinson, Renkl, & Merril
2003). Overall, learning to solve problems with worked examples helps students
develop appropriate schemas for solving future problems and reduces the demand
on working memory of seeking possible solutions paths (Mayer, 2008).
By emphasizing supervision, evaluation, and reflection in the completion of
case-based projects, PBL can help students develop expertise in both P21’s “Life
and Career Skills” and “Learning and Innovation Skills.” PBL can help students
develop a more fully integrated knowledge base that promotes advanced problem
solving and collaboration skills (Schmidt., van der Molen, Winkel, & Wijnen

45

2009). This ability to flexibly apply integrated knowledge is believed to be a core
component to adaptive expertise, metacognition, and innovative thinking
(Bransford, Brown, & Cocking. Eds. 2000).
Along with PBL, technology use in the classroom has potential benefits for
increasing student control and the flexibility of instruction design. However, the
use of technology can also present heavy demands on working memory by
increasing extraneous load. The split attention effect is one primary source of
extraneous load found with technology use. The split attention effect results when
students are asked to process visual and verbal information simultaneously. This
effect occurs when students must read text, hold that information in working
memory, and then use that information to interpret a picture. The split attention
effect can be reduced by replacing text with spoken narration, reducing the amount
of text by incorporating the information into the picture, or reducing the amount of
space between the text and the picture (Sweller 1998, Mayer & Moreno 2003). The
split-attention effect can be a primary source of extraneous load in interactive
computer based learning programs, as students are often expected hold multiple
visual states in working memory as they manipulate changes and receive guidance
on the computer screen (Kalyuga, 2007). Interactive computer learning
environments can reduce the split attention effect by giving learners more control
over the pacing and display of information on the screen. For example, students
should have control over whether and when cues are presented to help the learner
access appropriate long term knowledge. By controlling the presentation of cues,

46

students can avoid processing unneeded information or processing information
before it is needed (Wouters, Tabbers, & Paas 2007).
To summarize, the ability to solve novel problems depends on the expertise
of the learner. Expertise is developed by acquiring and automating knowledge
schemas organized around principles and theories relevant to a specific domain.
Though knowledge schemas are domain specific, learners can develop schemas that
are applicable to similar domains when they are provided with learning
opportunities that provide them with greater control in the learning process. Two
methods for increasing learner control are problem-based learning (PBL) and the
incorporation of technology. However, these methods must be implemented in a
way that does not overwhelm the working memory limitations of the learner.
Educators should provide students with worked examples prior to PBL, have
students explain the worked example process, and use backward fading to scaffold
the problem solving task. Technology use should present information in ways that
facilitate processing. Information that must be processed simultaneously should not
be separated spatially or temporally, or overload the learner’s visual processing
channel. Giving students control over information cues and presenting verbal
information audibly can lower the demands of technology use on working memory.
Overall, instructional design should flexibly attend to students’ level of expertise
and assist in the acquisition and automation of organized knowledge schemas.
How do we teach efficiently?
Once educators have identified what and how to teach, they must then
identify literacies that integrate multiple 21
st
century outcomes into identifiable

47

learning objectives. These literacies should suggest instructional strategies that
encompass multiple objectives of the P21 program without overwhelming either the
working memory of the learner or the time and resource limitations of the
classroom. Two literacies that integrate P21’s objectives are media literacy and
sustainability literacy.
The instruction of media literacy can align many 21
st
century outcomes to
curricular standards. Though P21 lists media literacy along with information
literacy and ICT literacy under “Information, Media, and Technology Skills,” it is
often recognized as a skill that incorporates all three outcomes. Media literacy
involves critical engagement with information, an expanded understanding of
textually, and the ability to ask important and appropriate questions (Thoman and
Jolls, 2004). The increasing inundation of information and its uses within the
United States economy has resulted in the need for judgment, experience and
intuition. In other words, as information becomes more accessible, the ability to
use that information becomes increasingly important (Anderson, 2008). Acquiring
such knowledge involves first recognizing the impact of digital technology on
information and its communication through media. The central role of Information
Communication Technologies (ICT) in global affairs has highlighted the
multicultural nature of global events in ways that call for a new awareness of
media’s influences and uses. This awareness should involve both the ability to
critically appraise competing voices in the media system and use technologies in
ways that promote humanistic rights and values (Varis, 2010).

48

There are multiple avenues for teaching media literacy in ways that
incorporate both information and ICT literacies. Students can engage in the
construction of knowledge and data-based decision making through an inquiry-
oriented use of media resources on the Internet (Cramer, 2007). A critical
component of media literacy, evaluation of media sources, can be enhanced by
integrating web site evaluation into a science curriculum (Pinkham, Wintle, &
Silvernail, 2008). However, increasing access to technology and information does
not guarantee that students will learn to evaluate media resources. Only when
schools promote critical inquiry and technology use do students demonstrate the
evaluative research skills critical to media literacy (Warschauer, 2007a). This
suggests that 21
st
century outcomes are most fully achieved only when information
and ICT literacies are taught within a framework of improving media literacy.
Media literacy goes beyond the critical appraisal of existing media resources
and includes the creation of media products and establishment of media based
communities through technology. Incorporating media literacy into an arts
curriculum can give students opportunities to create music, video, and interactive
art forms such as video game design (Peppler, 2010). The ubiquity of computing in
the 21
st
century provides unprecedented opportunities to create and maximize
learning communities through the production and manipulation of digital media
(Leh, Kouba, & Davis, 2005). Media literacy thus integrates all four components of
P21’s “Learning and Innovation Skills”: creativity, critical thinking, and
collaboration.

49

Teaching sustainability literacy along with media literacy would further
augment the alignment of 21
st
century outcomes with curricular standards. Nolet
(2009) argues that only by teaching students to understand the interrelation between
environmental, economic, and social equity issues can we prepare them to create
and maintain a sustainable global society. The author identifies nine themes for
teaching sustainability literacy: humanity’s stewardship of the environment; the
need to respect nature’s limits; the interdependence of ecological, economic and
social systems; the effect of economic restructuring on ecosystems, social justice
and equity; long-term perspectives and decision making; natural evolution as source
of systems expertise; global citizenship; resource distribution and its role in social
justice and equity; and importance of locality. Nolet advocates the development
and integration of curriculum materials that emphasize sustainability across subject
matters and the development of learning and professional communities geared
towards addressing sustainability issues.
An emphasis on sustainability literacy would address the final category of
21
st
century outcomes, “21
st
Century Themes,” which includes global, economic,
civic, and health literacies. Like media literacy, sustainability literacy would
incorporate all three components of P21’s “Learning and Innovation Skills,” as
students work collaboratively to critically assess and create innovative solutions to
sustainability problems.
A final example shows how PBL and technology can be used to teach media
literacy and sustainability literacy in a single educational project. Squire (2010)
studied how the use of reality games in a middle school science curriculum engaged

50

students in a collaborative, role playing exercise in using technology to solve an
ecological problem. Reality games create an immersive, situated learning
experience for students by creating an authentic problem and the experience of
participating in its solution. Such a combination of immersion and situated learning
has benefits for teaching problem solving, developing collaboration, and promoting
transfer (Dede, 2007).
In this particular game, students role-played various professions, including
water chemists, public health doctors, and wildlife ecologists as they struggled to
determine the source of a mass illness at a beach alongside Lake Michigan.
Students used personal digital assistant (PDA) computers while investigating the
site and collaboratively generating various causes and their potential effects on the
ecological system. As the author notes, the game simulates actual work experiences
by pinpointing the intrinsically motivating aspects of the various careers. The game
also engages the students in evaluating various media sites and sources of
information to correctly ascertain relevant facts. Finally, the game forces students
to understand interrelated variables in an ecological system and how simply
changing one of those variables could disrupt the system’s balance. Squire’s study
powerfully demonstrates how alignment of 21
st
century outcomes and curricular
standards can be aligned through the integration of professional, media, and
sustainability literacies.
Obstacles
While aligning 21
st
century outcomes to curricular standards requires site-
based innovation on the part of educators, many teachers lack the preparation or

51

support to assume this initiative. Teachers in the 21
st
century have the obligation to
prepare highly diverse students who are globally competitive, competent, and have
an understanding of global citizenship (Zhao, 2010). However, the idea of teaching
elite skills to all students remains a new and unsupported phenomenon, with reform
efforts still focused on providing students with basic skills and not the more
advanced global competencies (Resnick, 2010). Educational policy failure to
address 21
st
century outcomes has prevented teacher preparation and professional
development programs from fully addressing these needs.
The failure of policy makers to address the need for 21
st
century outcomes
reflects an underestimation of the skills teachers need. Successful teaching requires
a deep, flexible knowledge of both academic content and the needs of diverse
students. However, the growing trend is to provide cheaper and faster programs for
preparing teachers to fill shortages, especially in urban districts. Such programs not
only fail to adequately prepare teachers to meet the daunting challenges of the
classroom, they also betray a belief that teachers require little training beyond the
basic content knowledge they are expected to teach their students (Darling-
Hammond, 2006).
Meanwhile, the emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing has narrowed
education’s primary focus to the constant benchmarking of basic reading and math
skills. Typically, professional development allocations reflect the need to increase
test scores and not 21
st
century outcomes (Resnick, 2010). The desire for generic
strategies that can quickly boost scores has created a proliferation of professional
development workshops that are poorly integrated with curricular goals and

52

assessment practices. When these strategies do not create the desired increase in
test scores, they are typically abandoned for something new, adding to teacher
mistrust in the effectiveness of professional development (Darling-Hammond,
2010). Meanwhile, the fear associated with sanctions has discouraged innovation
and stifled creativity among educators (Schoen & Fusarelli, 2008). This
combination of fear and mistrust prevents schools from embracing systematic, long-
term solutions to 21
st
century challenges.
Education’s emphasis on standardized testing has impacted teacher
preparation programs in two ways. First, it has prevented these programs from fully
committing to 21
st
century outcomes. Teacher education programs are prone to
allocating money and resources based on current accountability measures, which
today means preparing teachers for the world of high-stakes testing. Second, the
emphasis on testing has widened the gap between theoretical and field training in
university-based teacher preparation programs. In other words, student teachers in
these programs learn educational theories that do not connect to what they see
within classrooms that are primarily focused on testing. This divide in educational
objectives—meeting testing requirements versus furthering educational theory—has
also prevented the full participation of universities and school districts in
educational partnerships (Darling-Hammond, 2006).
The challenges facing teacher preparation and development have increased
the call for systemic reforms. Teacher preparation programs should seek to
transform themselves in order to meet the demands of the 21
st
century. Pivotal to
this call for transformation is the development of professional communities for

53

educators through an emphasis on national certification standards and partnerships.
Meanwhile, residency and case study models of teacher training that build on
practices in medicine and law can begin to close the gap between theory and
practice in education (Futrell, 2010; Darling Hammond, 2006; Darling-Hammond,
2010). However, directing these changes toward a successful alignment of 21
st

century outcomes with curricular standards will involve advocating for a global
perspective in educational objectives and policy (Zhao, 2010). Such a perspective
is necessary if professional development programs are to address the complex needs
of students and teachers in a globally competitive age (Resnick, 2010). Institutional
barriers that prevent teachers from developing and growing must be addressed
before Indigenous Innovation can take root and grow in the 21
st
century.
Summary
The recent financial crisis, together with an increasingly technological and
interconnected world, has created a job market that favors critical thinking,
collaboration, creativity, adaptability, and technological acumen. The Partnership
of 21
st
Century Skills, a collaboration of private and public interests, has identified
key 21
st
century outcomes that should be aligned with the standards-based
curriculum currently used in schools. Though these outcomes are broad in scope,
they can be achieved by teaching media literacy and sustainability literacy through
the use of problem-based learning and technology. However, the successful
alignment of these outcomes with current curricular standards requires site-based
vision and innovation on the part of educators. Unfortunately, many teacher
preparation and development programs either take short cuts or promote a basic

54

skills emphasis on standardized testing. The necessary alignment of 21
st
century
objectives and curricular standards requires a teacher workforce that is adequately
trained to meet these challenges in an innovative, professional, and collaborative
way.
Many schools have claimed success in teaching both 21
st
century skills and
state educational standards. Public schools are currently evaluated based on their
performance on state-issued, standards-based tests. However, no such measurement
tool exists to determine whether schools are teaching 21
st
century outcomes, much
less whether those outcomes are aligned with standards-based instruction. This
study has three objectives. First, it will present measurement tools to determine
how 21
st
century objectives are being taught and aligned with state standards.
Second, it will examine one school that claims to be teaching both 21
st
century
objectives and state educational standards. Third, the study will assess the
perceived impact of 21
st
century objectives on the culture and community of the
school.

55

CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This study examined the programs and practices at an urban high school that
promote the acquisition of 21
st
century skills. This chapter will discuss the purpose
of the study, research questions, research design, sample and population,
instrumentation, data collection, validity and reliability, and data analysis process.
As discussed in the problem statement and the review of the literature, the
interconnectedness of the modern world has changed the skills and knowledge that
students need to succeed as global citizens. This success has been compromised by
global competition, with other industrialized nations both outpacing the United
States on academic benchmarks and providing a cheaper college-educated
workforce for global corporations. Some schools have responded to these trends by
embracing globalization in their mission statements and agendas. However, it is
unclear what programs and practices they are implementing.
The purpose of this study was to examine an urban school that claims to be
incorporating globalization into its programs and practices. The study defined
education’s role in meeting the demands of globalization as the teaching of 21
st

century skills and themes. The study chose The Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills’
“21st Century Themes and Student Outcomes” as its framework for defining 21
st

century skills and themes. The Partnership of 21
st
Century Skills (P21) divides
“21
st
Century Themes and Student Outcomes” into two categories, “Core Subjects
and 21
st
Century Themes” and “21
st
Century Education Support Systems.” “Core
Subjects and 21
st
Century Themes” consists of four categories, “Core Subjects,”

56

“21
st
Century Themes,” “Learning and Innovation Skills,” “Information, Media, and
Technology Skills,” and “Life and Career Skills.” “21
st
Century Education Support
Systems” consists of four categories, “Standards and Assessment,” “Curriculum and
Instruction,” “Professional Development,” and “Learning Environments.” This
study identified and examined programs and practices that align with this
framework. The study also determined both how the professional community of the
school supported these programs and practices, and how the school culture
responded to these programs and practices.
A thematic dissertation cohort consisting of 9 doctoral students each
conducted research on this problem at different school. The cohort formulated the
problem statement, purpose of the study, research questions, and methodology
during monthly meetings and electronic correspondence between October 2010 and
April 2011. Together, the 9 studies conducted by this cohort provide a
comprehensive examination of practices and programs that incorporate global
perspectives into educational curriculums. The organization and conceptual design
of this individual study reflect the perspectives and choices of the aforementioned
cohort.
The members of this cohort each conducted a qualitative case study to
capture the contribution of each school’s programs and practices on school-wide
cultural norms that reinforce 21
st
century skills and themes. The cohort selected
methodology that would provide multiple vantage points for examining cultural
norms. Each cohort member collected documents for review, conducted staff
interviews and surveys, and observed school-wide practices first-hand.

57

Three research questions guided this study:
1. What are the practices and programs at the school and how they are
aligned to 21
st
century skills and themes?
2. What is the professional community at the school, and how does it
supports these practices?
3. What is the perceived impact of 21
st
century skills and themes on the
culture of the school?
Figure 1
A Conceptual Model for 21
st
Century Learning

58

Research Study Framework and Model
The dissertation cohort designed the conceptual framework for this study to
illustrate the new pressures facing education and how 21
st
century learning responds
to these pressures. The large blue circle at the center of the model represents an
educational model. Outside of the blue circle are various facets and concerns of the
21
st
century world. These terms, such as “Changing Job Market,” and “Global
Citizenship,” are not presented as positive or negative outcomes, but as emerging
realities supported by the literature. These emerging realities are putting pressure
on education to respond, which is shown by the blue arrows facing inward. This
pressure threatens the structural integrity of the circle, as a collapse on any side
would compromise the balance of the model, diminishing its size, relevance, and
cohesion. An educational model with 21
st
century learning as its core vision
responds to these realities, pushing back against these pressures and maintaining a
robust and relevant presence in the world. Along the inner circumference of the
circle are P21’s “21
st
Century Themes and Student Outcomes,” each supporting the
structural integrity of the sphere. Although these skills and outcomes are arranged
to correspond to specific realities, (eg., “Health Literacy” and “Environmental
Literacy” balance the circle against the emerging concern of “Sustainability”), no
strict correspondence is asserted. Instead, each skill and outcome addresses various
realities and concerns, and only a balanced integration of the entire set can preserve
the integrity and value of the educational model.

59

Research Design
This study used a qualitative case study design to capture the influence of
globalization on an urban school’s programs, practices, professional community,
and cultural norms. Case study research has four key characteristics. First, case
studies focus on particular instances, or cases, of a specific phenomenon. Second,
case study research thoroughly examines the complexity of each case. Third, a case
study conducts research in the phenomenon’s natural context. Fourth, the
researcher interprets the phenomenon from the perspective of participants in the
phenomenon. This emic perspective allows for a possible understanding of the
phenomenon on a social and cultural level. Researchers may balance the emic
perspective with their own etic perspective as outsiders providing a theoretical
context for understanding the case (Gall, Gall, & Borg 2003).
This case study examined the phenomenon of globalization in education by
focusing on specific programs and practices that served as particular cases of this
phenomenon. An urban high school constituted the natural context for observing
this phenomenon. The study framed the emic perspectives interpreted from
observation, survey, interview, and document review with an over-arching etic
perspective—21
st
century learning as defined by P21 and clarified by educational
research.
Case studies generally serve at least one of three purposes: they provide
detailed descriptions, patterns, and/or evaluations of a given phenomenon. Detailed
description serves to reconstruct the occurrence of a phenomenon within a given
context for the purpose of analysis. A researcher may choose to explain the

60

phenomenon in terms of causal or relational patterns. Whereas causal patterns
assert that one phenomenal instance directly impacts another phenomenal instance,
relational patterns merely examine the apparent correlation or confluence of various
relational patterns (Gall, et al 2003).
This study focused on the first two purposes for conducting its case study.
The study provided detailed description in an attempt to recreate the phenomenon in
its natural context. The study also identified relational patterns for explaining that
phenomenon using Bolman and Deal’s (2008) four frames. According to Bolman
and Deal’s four frames, the patterns within a given culture reveal four key
influences on that culture’s norms. Bolman and Deal present these influences as
four frames for explaining patterns of behavior and avenues of influence within a
culture. The political frame interprets culture in terms of individual competition for
a limited supply of resources. The symbolic frame understands culture as shared
fabric of emotional attributions and collective beliefs. The structural frame
interprets culture in terms of the organizational, hierarchical, and bureaucratic limits
and demands placed upon that culture. Finally, the human resource frame
understands culture as a collection and community of individuals, In the human
resource frame, each individual’s unique beliefs, desires, skills, and knowledge
contributes to the cultural whole.
This case study provided detailed descriptions of an urban school meeting
the demands of globalization. The study also explained the programs and practices
that met these demands within each of the four frames provided by Bolman and
Deal. The study presented the role that resource distribution and competition played

61

the in the school’s teaching of 21
st
century skills and themes in terms of Bolman
and Deal’s political frame. Bolman and Deal’s symbolic frame was used to
understand the relationship between the school’s programs and practices and its
communal beliefs and attitudes about 21
st
century skills and themes. The study
examined the school’s programs and practices within Bolman and Deal’s structural
frame by analyzing the organizational, hierarchical, and bureaucratic nature of the
professional community. Finally, the study used Bolman and Deal’s human
resource frame to explain the roles that individual contribution, responsibility, and
collaboration play in the school’s teaching of 21
st
century skills and themes.
Population and Sample
The study focused Hillcrest High School (HHS), an urban high school in the
eastern Los Angeles area that appeared to be meeting the demands of globalization
by teaching 21
st
century skills. Hillcrest High School serves a population of 3,610
students, of which 67% identify themselves as Asian, 17% as White (non Hispanic),
and 12% as Hispanic or Latino. Hillcrest High School further identifies 15% of its
students as “Socioeconomically Disadvantaged,” 8% as “English Learners,” and
7% as Learners with Disabilities (Hillcrest Unified School District, 2010).
To select HHS, this study used two criteria that were developed by the
dissertation cohort. The selected school must emphasize items from the P21’s “21
st

Century Themes and Student Outcomes” and have an overall Academic
Performance Index (API) score of 800 or above.
A school’s API score reflects its academic performance based on statewide
testing. The API is generated by plotting a students’ test performance across

62

content areas upon an API scale and then creating both school-wide and
demographic sub-group averages using all students and tests. API scores can range
from 200 to 1000 and are used to rank schools based on their performance relative
to other schools with similar demographics. The API score of 800 was chosen by
the California State Board as a score to which all schools should aspire (California
Department of Education, 2009). Therefore, this study chose 800 as a minimum
API score to ensure that the studied school had been successful based on state-wide
academic standards.
Hillcrest High School met both criteria for this study. First, HHS mentions
items from P21’s “21
st
Century Themes and Student Outcomes” on its web site and
its self-study for accreditation with the Western Association of Schools and
Colleges (WASC). Second, the school received an overall API score of 890 in
2010.
On its web site, the high school addresses 21
st
century learning in its
“Principal’s Welcome.” This address, which spells out the school’s guiding
philosophy and mission, also exhibits two components of the Indigenous Innovation
model discussed earlier: a local emphasis on innovative approaches and a
collaborative working environment. The “Principal’s Message” first articulates the
need to embrace the challenges of international competition: “the faculty and staff
recognize that students must compete against the most challenging international
standards. As a result, they continue to improve and refine curriculum and
instructional approaches” (Hillcrest High School, 2010).

63

The “Principal’s Welcome” thus identifies its strategy for meeting
international standards: internally motivated adaptation and refinement. This focus
on internally motivated refinement is repeated later in later in the address, with an
added emphasis on adaptation as a “creative” and “dynamic” process that originates
from an intense focus on student preparation: “(Hillcrest High School) is not a static
organization resting on its well-deserved laurels. It is a dynamic and creative high
school that constantly strives to prepare students for the world in which they will
live and work.” (Hillcrest High School, 2010).
Having achieved a remarkable level of success based solely on state and
federal accountability measures, this “Principal’s Message” articulates an ultimate
goal, one that does not end with state-mandated testing. Preparing students for the
21
st
century, “the world in which they will live and work,” has become an internal
motivator, one that is not mandated from above, but instead calls for dynamism and
innovation at the local level. This innovation, according to the “Principal’s
Message,” is not achieved through isolated efforts, but instead exhibits an organized
collaborative approach: “Collaboration time is utilized to create common
curriculum maps, common assessments, and analyzing data to drive teaching
strategies that are proven as best practice.” (Hillcrest High School, 2010).
The “Principal’s Message” for HHS thus articulates two necessary criteria
for Indigenous Invention. First, the emphasis on dynamism, creativity, and striving
beyond current accountability measures shows a leadership that is willing to
challenge existing models for learning and attempt new approaches. Second, the

64

address shows that collaboration is a key strategy for conceiving and implementing
innovative approaches.
Along with the “Principal’s Message,” the school’s “2010 WASC Self-
Study Focus on Learning” (Hillcrest, 2010) details many instances of 21
st
century
learning at the school. The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC)
is one of six educational accreditation groups in the United States. California
schools receive accreditation from WASC after being visited by WASC committee
members and completing a comprehensive self-study. To receive continued
accreditation, schools must reapply every 6 years (WASC, n.d.).
The “2010 WASC Self Study Focus on Learning” (Hillcrest, 2010) provides
evidence of 21
st
century learning that addresses each of the three research questions
of this study. The report gives evidence of instruction and extracurricular
opportunities that incorporate technology, collaboration, critical thinking, world
languages and cultures, and environmental awareness. The report also documents
professional collaboration, parental outreach, community partnerships, and diversity
awareness, all of which are signs of a professional community and school culture
that promote 21
st
century learning.
Instrumentation
This study used multiple research instruments to collect data about a high
school instruction and reinforcement of 21
st
century skills and themes: document
review, observations, surveys, and open-ended interviews. A thematic dissertation
cohort developed these instruments between October 2010 and April 2011. The
instruments were designed to organize data according to Bolman and Deal (2008)’s

65

four frames: the structural frame, the human resource frame, the political frame, and
the symbolic frame. The use of multiple instruments strengthened the validity of
the study by triangulating the data. Triangulation strengthens a study in three ways.
First, triangulation ensures that a study uses multiple perspectives and methods for
solving a problem. Second, triangulation allows researchers to check for consistent
patterns among the different measurements, establishing cross-data consistency.
Third, triangulation highlights inconsistencies among the results that can become
the basis for elaboration or further study (Patton, 2002).
Data collection began with a document review that provided the researcher
with an overview of school demographics, programs, and performance. The data
collection allowed the researcher to pinpoint areas that may have an impact on, or
be impacted by, the school’s programs and practices. The researcher followed up
the document review by observing day-to-day routines at the school site that might
give insight about the role of 21
st
century skills and themes in the programs,
practices, professional community, and culture of the school. Finally, the
researcher conducted surveys and selective interviews to further assess the
perceived impact of the school’s programs and practices on the professional
community and culture of the school. This section will specify the data collection
that occurred in this study for each of the three research questions.
Research Question #1: What are the practices and programs at the school and
how they are aligned to 21st century skills and themes?
Document Review. The dissertation cohort developed a document review
that would address the data needs of the three research questions and be adaptable

66

to any K-12 school (Appendix A). The document review list contains documents
that can be attained from either the school site or school district. The cohort
divided the document list based on the following areas of interest: 1. the curricular,
extracurricular, and assessment practices at the school; 2. leadership and
collaborative practices and their effects on culture and practices; 3. Student and
community beliefs about the school. These divisions correspond to the data needs
for each of the three research questions.
The cohort identified four categories of data needs for answering the first
research question: curriculum, instructional strategies, extracurricular strategies,
and assessments. In the curriculum category, the cohort identified the following
documents as necessary for review: course offerings (College
preparatory/Advanced Placement[AP]/International Baccalaureate [IB] offerings),
master schedule, instructional minutes, district curricular standards, textbook
adoption list, and accreditation reviews (e.g., Western Association of Schools and
Colleges[WASC], IB). Using these documents, the study looked for
interdisciplinary course offerings, multilingual course offerings,
interdisciplinary/team teaching, cultural diversity, year of textbook adoption, global
perspectives, curricular rigor, and any components of P21’s “21
st
Century Themes
and Student Outcomes.”
The cohort identified the following documents as necessary for review in the
instructional strategies category: lesson plans, action plan (Specific, Measurable,
Attainable, Realistic, and Timely [SMART] goals), technology plan, and the School
Accountability Report Card (SARC). Using these documents, the study looked for

67

collaborative, kinesthetic, problem-based, and project-based learning; student
presentations, debates, and discussions; and student technology usage and
availability.
In the category of extra-curricular activities, the cohort identified the
following documents as necessary for review: student handbook, school website,
school calendar and announcements, and SARC. Using these documents, the study
looked for examples of clubs and activities that reflected global perspectives and
social justice, emphasized career education and preparation, and provided
opportunities for international travel.
The cohort identified the following documents as necessary for review in the
category of assessments: benchmarks, common assessments, and common rubrics.
Using these documents, the study looked for examples of curriculum embedded,
performance based, and problem-solving assessments, as well as innovative
approaches to assessment.
Observations. The dissertation cohort designed an observation matrix that
specifies subjects and guides observation in accordance with two of the study’s
three research questions (Appendix B). The matrix utilizes Bolman and Deal’s
(2008) structural, political, symbolic, and human resource frames for understanding
the dynamics of a given organization. Using these frames allowed the observer to
use different organizational perspectives to understand and articulate the
components of a changing, interpersonal system.
Using Bolman and Deal’s (2008) four frames allowed the observer to
articulate the various functions that the school’s programs and practices performed

68

within the educational organization. The cohort identified four general subjects of
observation that would assist in answering the first research question: goals,
instructional strategies, extra-curricular activities, and resources. This study
observed the school’s goals documenting the following: goal postings; faculty,
staff, and student actions that accord with school goals; and curricular practices that
accord with school goals. In order to observe instructional strategies, the observer
documented the following in-classroom occurrences: discussion, feedback, and
questioning that demonstrate application, analysis, evaluation, and creativity;
collaboration; problem-based learning; project-based learning; student participation
and independence; technological integration; cross-curricular integration; lessons
that address diversity and global awareness; course objectives; and student
outcomes. The study observed extracurricular activities by documenting the
extracurricular options, relevance to 21
st
century skill development, and
demographics of participants. The study observed school resources by
documenting the type and usage of resources, and the presence of multicultural and
international influences and perspectives in educational materials.
Interview. The cohort designed the interview to document the individual
perspectives a few select faculty and staff members had on the instruction of 21
st

century skills and themes (Appendix C). The cohort decided that interviews should
address the research needs of the study and give the interviewer flexibility in
navigating the flow of the interview. Therefore, the cohort decided to use the
research questions themselves as interview questions and compile a list of follow-
up questions to help guide the interview. The cohort chose this approach to allow

69

the interviewee freedom to explain his or her perspective on the question while
providing the interviewer with just enough structure to keep the interview focused
on the research objectives. Prior to conducting the interview, the researcher
provided the interviewee with a handout of P21’s “21st Century Themes and
Student Outcomes” (Appendix D). The cohort decided that providing such a
handout would clarify the nature of the research question and help ensure that both
the researcher and the interviewee were using common terminology and definitions.
Interviewees were chosen among faculty and staff members based their
unique perspectives on 21
st
century learning at the school. The researcher used
observed practices and feedback from the school principal to make the final
selections. Before conducting the interviews, the researcher then gained consent to
a recorded, transcribed 30-45 minute interview on the topic of 21
st
century learning
from each interviewee.
Follow-up questions for the first research question, “What are the practices
and programs at the school and how they are aligned to 21
st
century skills?” fall
under three categories: “Curriculum and Planning,” “Instructional Strategies” and
“Extra-Curricular Activities.” The cohort chose topics for these questions that
would illuminate the presence of 21
st
century skills and themes in the school’s
planning, instruction, and organization.
Survey. The cohort designed the survey to gauge staff and faculty beliefs
that are relevant to the study’s three research questions (Appendix E). The cohort
wrote and agreed upon belief statements about the programs and practices at the
school that promote the teaching of 21
st
century skills and themes, the professional

70

community of the school, and the perceived impact of the aforementioned programs
and practices on the life of the school. In order to capture the scope of all three
research questions, the cohort categorized the belief statements under three
headings: “Instruction and Pedagogy,” “Professional Community,” and “Culture of
the School.” The study measured staff and faculty responses using a four-point
Likert Scale to determine how frequently each respondent agreed with each belief
statement. For each belief statement, respondents chose one of the following
options: 1. Never, 2. Sometimes, 3. Most of The Time, and 4. Always. The cohort
chose a four point scale to force respondents into making a qualitative choice
between either two apparently positive options or two apparently negative options.
A four point scale thereby prevented respondents from choosing the middle
number, an apparently neutral option.
The cohort designed the first survey category, “Instruction and Pedagogy,”
to gauge staff and faculty beliefs that would be relevant to answering the study’s
first research question. The cohort designed the first survey category to gauge the
role of 21
st
century instructional skills and themes in the classroom.
Research Question #2: What is the professional community at the school, and
how does it supports these practices?
Document Review. The cohort designated three categories of data needs
for answering the second research question: leadership, collaboration, and
culture/climate (Appendix A). The cohort identified the following documents as
necessary for researching the leadership of the school: staff and leadership meeting
agendas, School Site Council (SSC) agendas/ meeting notes, Single Plans for

71

Student Achievement (SPSA), professional development plans, and union contracts.
Within these documents, the study looked for the following topics: any components
of P21’s “21
st
Century Themes and Student Outcomes, ” project-based learning,
problem-based learning, job-embedded professional development, support of
professional collaboration, and international travel opportunities for students. For
the category of collaboration, the cohort identified the following documents as
necessary for review: department meeting or grade level meeting notes, meeting
schedules and agendas, staff development plans, school site plans, teacher
schedules, the union contract. Within these documents, the study looked for
evidence of any components of P21’s “21
st
Century Themes and Student
Outcomes;” problem-based learning; project-based learning; examples of
curriculum embedded, performance based, and problem-solving assessments;
innovative approaches to assessment; opportunities for collaborative time; and
agreements regarding the time allotted for preparation and collaboration. The
cohort identified the California Healthy Kids Report, and the School Climate
Survey as necessary for review in the category of culture and climate. The study
looked for evidence of any components of P21’s “21
st
Century Themes and Student
Outcomes” within these documents.
Observations. The cohort identified professional development as a subject
for observation that would assist in answering research question two (Appendix B).
Using Bolman and Deal’s (2008) four frames allowed the observer to articulate the
various functions that professional development performs within this community.
The study observed professional development by documenting leadership practices;

72

the professional development’s alignment with the school’s mission, goals, and
vision; and the interactions among the faculty and staff.
Interview. Follow-up interview questions for research question number
two, “What is the professional community at the school, and how does it supports
these practices?” fall under two categories: “Leadership-Vision and Decision
Making,” and “Collaboration” (Appendix C). The cohort chose topics for these
questions that would clarify the roles that leadership and collaboration play in
supporting and developing 21
st
century learning.
Survey. The cohort designed the second survey category, “Professional
Community,” to gauge staff and faculty beliefs that would be relevant to answering
the study’s second research question (Appendix E). Survey questions seek to gauge
the role of professional development, leadership, collaboration, data and resources
in the professional community at the school.
Research Question #3: What is the perceived impact of 21
st
century skills and
themes on the culture of the school?
Document Review. The cohort designated two categories of data needs for
answering the second question: student data and community data (Appendix A).
The cohort identified student demographics, student achievement data and a blank
report card as necessary for review in the category of student data. The study
looked for the following within these documents: multilingual proficiency,
assessment of 21
st
century skills, and overall student achievement. In the category
of community data, the study identified the following documents for review: school
and district vision and mission statements, foundation mission statements and

73

descriptions, lists of PTA activities, lists and descriptions of booster clubs, SARCs,
websites, newsletters, and documents that demonstrate corporate or business
sponsorships and university relationships. Within these documents, the study
looked for evidence of community partnerships with the school that support global
perspectives, college preparation, or career preparation.
Observations. The cohort designated school culture and climate as the
observational subject that would assist in answering research question three
(Appendix B). Using Bolman and Deal’s (2008) four frames allowed the researcher
to articulate the perceived impact of 21
st
century skills and themes on the culture of
the school. The study observed school climate and culture by documenting student
behavior at the beginning of school and during transitions; interactions among
students, faculty, and staff; the presence of parents and their interactions with
faculty, staff, and students; postings with global, multicultural, or career-based
themes, the presence of school organizations and traditions in student life; the
presence of community organizations and culture in student life; School Site
Council decision-making practices; the organization and presentation of school
offices, entrances, and classrooms; and evidence of environmental awareness and
concern.
Interview. Follow-up interview questions for research question number
three, “What is the perceived impact of 21
st
century skills on the culture of the
school?” fall under three categories: “Students—Behavior, Beliefs, and Attitudes,”
“Teachers—Behavior, Beliefs, and Attitudes,” and “Community—Beliefs, Support,
and Partnerships” (Appendix C). The cohort chose topics for these questions to

74

determine how the culture, climate, and shared beliefs of the school reflect 21
st

century learning.
Survey. The cohort designed the third survey category, “Culture of the
School,” to gauge staff and faculty beliefs that would be relevant to answering the
study’s third research question (Appendix E). Survey questions seek to gauge the
role of parental involvement, extra-curricular participation, diversity, off-campus
learning opportunities, and citizenship in the culture of the school.
Data Collection
The researcher individually collected all of the data used in this study.
Document reviews, observations, surveys, and interviews were conducted between
August and December 2011.
Validity and Reliability
The cohort designed this study to achieve a high level of construct
validity. Construct validity occurs when the data a researcher acquires is relevant to
the concepts being researched. Construct validity can be threatened when concepts
are not clearly or consistently defined within the study (Patton, 2002). To achieve
high construct validity, the cohort first defined the role of K-12 schools in meeting
the demands of globalization as the teaching of 21
st
century skills and themes. The
cohort then chose a clear and consistent framework to define 21
st
century skills,
P21’s “21st Century Themes and Student Outcomes.” The cohort designed and
implemented the instrumentation of the study based on this framework to ensure
that the researcher only analyzed data that appeared to fall under the confines of the
framework. This study does not make validity claims beyond construct validity.

75

Because the study is qualitative and the sample size is limited, the study does not
claim that a specific relationship (e.g., causality) exists between the data and the
concepts. The study also does not claim that the results can be generalized to other
settings.
The cohort designed the study to achieve a high level of reliability through
internal consistency. Internal consistency occurs when all of the instruments in a
study utilize the same concepts (Patton, 2002). In order to achieve internal
consistency, the cohort designed each instrument to filter out data that did not show
relevance to P21’s “21st Century Themes and Student Outcomes.” By using this
framework in each instrument, the cohort sought to achieve consistency in its
criteria for data selection.
Data Analysis
This study had two purposes. First, the researcher sought to identify a K-12
school that claimed to be meeting the demands of globalism. Second, the
researcher tried to determine how the school was meeting those demands. The
researcher used instruments designed by a research cohort to triangulate data that
showed relevance to the study’s purpose. Then, the researcher coded and classified
each datum based on its relevance to research questions designed by the
aforementioned cohort.
Summary
A research cohort designed this study to determine how K-12 schools were
meeting the demands of globalism. The cohort determined that meeting the
demands of globalism involved teaching 21
st
century skills and themes, and chose

76

P21’s “21st Century Themes and Student Outcomes” as a catalogue of those skills
and themes. The cohort then designed research questions and instruments to
determine how the programs, practices, professional community, and culture of a
given school taught and reinforced 21
st
century skills and themes. By using a
consistent definition of 21
st
century skills and themes to design the study’s
instruments, the cohort sought to improve the construct validity and reliability of
the study. The researcher then used those instruments at an urban high school to
triangulate relevant data for coding and classification based on the research
questions.

77

CHAPTER 4
PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF THE DATA
This study identified and examined an urban public high school that
purported to be addressing the educational challenges posed by globalization. The
chosen school demonstrated all of the components of 21
st
century learning as
outlined by the Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills, with a particular emphasis on
promoting critical thinking, collaborative learning, and global perspectives. This
school maintained this focus while simultaneously scoring highly on its API. The
study looked specifically for evidence that 21
st
century skills were aligned with the
school’s programs and practices, were supported by the school’s professional
community of the school, and impacted the school’s community and culture.
Chapter 4 summarizes the findings of the study. The chapter consists of
four sections: Participants, Emergent Themes from the Data Collection, Summary
of Findings by Research Question, and Discussion of the Findings.
Participants
Hillcrest High School (HHS) is located within a solidly upper middle class
neighborhood. The environment around the school is warm, clean, and the houses
are modest yet appealing, housing mostly “families with professional or business
backgrounds” (Hillcrest High School, 2010). Overlooking the student parking lot is
the school gymnasium, on which is painted a large sign commemorating the
school’s female volleyball team. As students walk from the parking lot towards the
school, they pass two asphalt basketball courts and the aforementioned gymnasium
on the right to enter a courtyard with brick walkways, trees and shrubbery. Directly

78

across the courtyard, two single level buildings have classroom doors that open
directly to the concrete walkways that run alongside each building. Across the
courtyard and to the right of the classrooms, the main school office distinguishes
itself from the other buildings with its glass-paneled walls. The front of the main
office actually faces the street on the other side of the school from the parking lot
entrances, and is the official “face” of the school. To the left of the courtyard
stands a recently constructed science building of three levels that was paid for with
a 218 million dollar bond measure passed by the citizens of Hillcrest to modernize
facilities and resources on campus (Hillcrest High School, 2010).
Demographics have altered dramatically in the last thirty years at Hillcrest
in ways that both reflect and impact the attractiveness of Hillcrest as a destination
and a place of residence. The academic excellence of the Hillcrest Unified School
District (HUSD) began enticing Chinese immigrant families in the early 80s
(Hillcrest High School, 2010). As one teacher notes, these families brought with
them a certain ethic and awareness that has as much to do with their entrepreneurial
ambition as their cultural origins:
Now that happens in other kinds of communities too. But it happens in a
different way in a community like Hillcrest, where these are people who
have acquired the kinds of skills that are so great that they can move to this
country and succeed, somehow...In fact, they’re models for what American
citizens are going to have to be if we’re going to compete.

Currently, Hillcrest High School is composed of 3,670 students, of which
67% identify themselves as Asian, 17% as White (non-Hispanic), and 12% as
Hispanic or Latino, with the predominant ethnic group being Chinese American at
53%. Hillcrest High School identifies 15% of its students as “Socioeconomically

79

Disadvantaged,” 8% as “English Learners,” and 7% as Learners with Disabilities.
The school achieved an overall API score of 890 in 2010, with the statewide
average being a 728. This was the fifth consecutive year it had scored over an 800
on the API and the 12
th
consecutive year it had scored a 10 out of 10 on the
Statewide Ranking of Similar Schools. Because of Hillcrest’s educational
excellence, low crime rates, pristine parks and the city’s library and museum, it was
named “The Best Place to Raise Your Kids: California” in 2009 and 2010 by
Business Week magazine (Hillcrest Unified School District, 2010).
Emergent Themes from the Data Collection
Data collection at Hillcrest High School took place over a 6 week period
during the fall of 2011 and included 10 classroom observations; formal interviews
with 4 teachers and an administrator; a survey provided to 155 staff members, of
which 32 responded; and an extensive document review. The use of multiple
instruments triangulated the data around the three research questions posed by the
study:
1. What are the practices and programs at the school and how they are
aligned to 21
st
century skills and themes?
2. What is the professional community at the school, and how does it
supports these practices?
3. What is the perceived impact of 21
st
century skills and themes on the
culture of the school?
Three primary themes emerged from data collection:

80

Emergent theme 1: 21st century learning is community building.
Hillcrest High School has created an environment that brings together
students, teachers, and the larger community in both structured and organic ways.
Actively creating a strong sense of community is vital to the development of 21
st

century skills because it motivates students to be collaborative, creative, and critical
thinkers. Community building also encourages students to take leadership roles
within the school and seek out learning opportunities within the larger community.
Building a strong sense of community also unites staff members around the
educational vision of the school and marshals resources within the larger
community that make that vision possible. In short, community building at
Hillcrest High School provided the motivational and structural foundation for each
of the other emergent themes.
This theme emerged when looking at the programs, practices, professional
community, and culture of the HHS community through each of Bolman and Deal’s
four frames: Community building at HHS motivated and was impacted by the
marshaling of technological and financial resources (political frame), an emotional
commitment to HHS’s vision of excellence (symbolic frame), a shared-decision
making system that respected each member within the school’s hierarchy (structural
frame), and HHS’s ability to bring community members together in the spirit of
contribution and volunteerism (human resource frame).

81

Emergent theme 2: 21
st
century learning objectives emphasize critical
thinking.
Learning objectives and activities at Hillcrest High School utilize Anderson
and Krathwohl’s (2001) cognitive processes and knowledge types. Teaching
strategies are largely consistent with research that argues for teaching flexible
problem solving skills by accessing pre-existing knowledge schemas and
reorganizing those schemas around higher order principles and strategies through
collaboration and teacher guidance (Kalyuga, et al., 2010; Schmidt, 1983; Sweller,
et. al., 1998). These strategies motivate students to invest themselves personally in
the critical thinking process while developing problem solving skills that could
translate to collaborative work environments.
This theme emerged when looking at the programs, practices, and
professional community of the HHS community through each of Bolman and
Deal’s four frames: The teaching of critical thinking at HHS motivated and was
impacted by the marshaling of technological and financial resources (political
frame), an emphasis on an emotional and personal connection to critical thinking
activities (symbolic frame), professional development that explicitly utilized
Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) revised taxonomy (structural frame), and HHS’s
ability to communicate with community members about the importance of
innovative teaching practices that develop critical and creative thinking (human
resource frame).

82

Emergent theme 3: 21st century preparation looks beyond the classroom.
Hillcrest High School students are encouraged to actively participate in the
school and city-wide community and produce work that impacts both communities.
Teachers are moving away from solely relying on classroom-based, individualistic
instruction and assessment. Instead, these teachers are isolating the types of skills
and experiences that students will need when they are finished with schooling to
become successful. The barometer of student success is not determined by what
standards they have met, but how well students can demonstrate skills that predict
future professional achievement.
The third theme emerged when looking at the programs, practices, and
professional community of the HHS community through each of Bolman and
Deal’s four frames: 21
st
century preparation at HHS motivated and was impacted by
the marshaling of technological and financial resources (political frame), the
personal engagement of students in volunteer and educational work with a
community wide impact (symbolic frame), a professional culture that gave teachers
the freedom and support to pursue innovative methods of teaching and assessment
(structural frame), and HHS’s ability to reach out to community members to inform
students about career trajectories and give students opportunities to volunteer and
participate in valued community organizations and businesses (human resource
frame).
These themes address how 21
st
century learning at Hillcrest High School is
predicated upon 1.) the school’s ability to incorporate students, staff, parents, and
citizens into a larger community; 2.) the school’s ability to clarify the critical

83

thinking process and design lessons around that process, and 3.) the school’s
success in providing opportunities that engage students, parents, and citizens in the
21
st
century learning process. The following section will address each research
question independently and organize the data accordingly. The discussion of each
research question will be organized around the three emergent themes to reveal how
each theme emerged from the data.
Summary of Findings by Research Question
Research question#1: What are the practices and programs at the school and
how are they aligned to 21
st
century skills and themes?
Emergent theme #1: 21
st
century learning is community building.
Hillcrest High School’s implementation of the Link Crew program (Boomerang,
2011) created a strong sense of community among the students. The program
successfully incorporated freshmen into the school community and brought the
larger student community together through fundraising and social activities. The
program utilized a large number of upperclassmen and placed them in mentorship
and tutoring roles, making it beneficial to both the freshmen and upperclassmen.
Through the program, students demonstrated the development of multiple 21
st

century skills and themes, including P21’s (2009) “Life and Career Skills” and
“Learning and Innovation Skills.”
Freshman Orientation: The Link Crew. While discussing Hillcrest High
School’s successful band program, a school administrator revealed an anecdote that
perfectly captured the role of community on the HHS campus:
We have a music camp that is unprecedented in its success and its ability to
build the largest and most successful band in California and it’s been going

84

on for over 50 years. And you have this camp and these kids, 9-12, and also
you have kids who have never played an instrument. So just because we are
an elite band, you would think that you don’t have a shot coming in, but
that’s not true, you can have never touched an instrument. When you walk
around and I usually go every year and spend the night to be inspired for the
new year, what you see is you see upperclassmen…it’s very common to
walk by a tree and see, because it’s shaded, a senior working with a
freshman, one on one, very focused work on a very specific piece of music
because that kid was singled out, and no one is asking them, no one is
directing this, it’s this culture where the whole of the band is dependent on
each of the players, so if one kid is not hitting it, the upperclassmen take it
upon themselves to pull that kid off in a very positive manner and say we’re
going to work on this until you get it. Once you get it, we’re going to rejoin
the group and we’re going to keep moving forward. And it’s just pervasive,
it’s all over the place, and I sit there in amazement because really...if that
model could be used across the curriculum…that’s what you would want.

This model of incorporating novice learners into an elite program by
providing direct assistance and support is replicated in Hillcrest High School’s
programs and practices. This institutional direction grew out of a realization made
during the WASC accreditation process in 2009. While Hillcrest High School
consistently performs at an elite level on its cumulative API, a noticeable gap was
found between those who had grown up in the Hillcrest High School District and
those who were new to the district. The final WASC report found that the later a
student entered the district, the worse that student performed on the California
Standards Test. In 2009, 9 percent of Hillcrest High School’s freshman class was
new to the district and this subgroup of students registered an average API score of
780, more than 100 points below the school average of 890 (Hillcrest High School,
2010). As the administrator explained, the difficulty that new students to the
district were having was directly related to the high standards and performance of
the district and its students:

85

...we really broke the data down and found that we do such a good job of
articulating our curriculum from K-12 that students who start as
kindergarteners in this district don’t have a problem. They are going to Ivy
League schools. They are rock solid; you are going to get a world class
education. But what happens when you come in in seventh grade or fourth
grade? Well we went back and we tracked and the numbers would blow
you away. It was like 90 % of kids who came into this district after 5
th

grade were failing or were not being successful because you are coming into
a curriculum on steroids with phenomenal teaching going on. And yet, if
you have learning gaps, who’s there to help you? You’re just thrown into
the wolves. And we felt that way not just about the freshmen because it’s a
big jump from middle school, but all new kids to this school.

Hillcrest High School’s response to this disparity was to implement the
Boomerang Project’s high school orientation program, Link Crew. The Boomerang
Project has provided resources to over 3,000 schools nationwide to implement
orientation programs at both the middle school and high school levels. The purpose
of the program is to match freshmen at the school to junior and senior student
leaders who can guide and support them through the first year of high school
(Boomerang, 2011). At HHS, approximately 150 incoming juniors and seniors
applied to participate in the new program in the spring of 2011 with 130 selected
based on recommendations, academic standing, leadership qualities and interviews.
These 130 students gathered for a two day training session approximately two
weeks before the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year. Here, they learned the
responsibilities of the program and how to guide the freshman through orientation.
The following description of the school’s freshman orientation will highlight
how the Link Crew program incorporates many components of the “Life and Career
Skills” section of P21’s “21
st
Century Themes and Student Outcomes.” First, the
program encourages and develops leadership and responsibility for the
upperclassmen who serve as Link Leaders and models these skills for the freshmen.

86

Through the various speeches and activities, the program encourages “Initiative and
self-direction,” and “Flexibility and adaptability.” Finally, through various
activities designed to help students meet and learn about one another, the Link
Crew program promotes “Social and cross-cultural skills.” Overall, the Link Crew
orientation program described below serves to establish a collaborative,
community-based approach to facing both social and educational challenges.
Hillcrest High School’s first Link Crew freshman orientation began on a
Saturday, three days before the beginning of school. Because the incoming
freshman class comprised approximately 900 students, morning and afternoon
orientation sessions were scheduled with each student assigned to a specific session.
Each session began with freshmen entering the school gymnasium to meet all 130
student leaders, who were lined up in two rows inside the door to cheer the students
as they entered and congratulate them on joining the high school. The enthusiasm of
the Link Crew had a clear effect on the students as they entered, dissipating some of
the freshmen’s anxiety and generating a mood of excitement and a sense of
community. Students proceeded to a row of tables across the gym and then sat on
bleachers alongside the gym wall. Six teachers were present to run and oversee the
orientation and were each wearing the same blue Link Crew t-shirts as the students.
The common shirts gave the impression that running the orientation was a joint
endeavor by the faculty and students, which ended up being the case.
After it appeared that most students had arrived (one teacher estimated about
an 85% Freshman turnout), a teacher began addressing the group with a
microphone, leading them through some introductory cheers and activities. The

87

emphasis was on encouraging participation (at one point students were told they
would be helping lead a dance/cheer if they were caught not participating in it) and
emphasizing important lessons and themes for the students to remember during the
school year. The first lesson students were told was to trust the process ahead of
them. The 130 enthusiastic Link Crew members modeled the benefits of giving that
trust to the school’s vision. During the teacher’s presentation, the student leaders
sat among the crowd, participating in the chants and clearly enjoying themselves,
further emphasizing the incorporation of the new students into the larger school
community. After an exercise that required 12 freshmen to volunteer to come
forward and participate, the teacher introduced the second lesson, that there are
people in life who watch things happen and people who make things happen (i.e.,
volunteer). A successful high school career, the teacher explained, requires a
willingness to do both, especially if it involves stepping out of one’s comfort zone.
After completing the warm up exercises, Link Crew members descended to
the floor and lined up vertically, perpendicular to the bleachers where the freshmen
sat. One row at a time, the teacher instructed the freshmen to arise and line up
horizontally next to one of the link crew members on the floor. Each horizontal line
was then told that they would be a team completing a series of challenges but were
not allowed to talk to each other during these challenges. The first two challenges
were for each row to arrange itself by height and then order of birth. Students
completed the task not by talking but with various gestures and facial expressions.
Link Crew members modeled certain strategies for students who were initially
stumped as to how to go about each exercise. After each exercise, the teacher tied

88

what the students were doing to certain themes that would be relevant throughout
the students’ high school careers. For example, students were told that in high
school they would be making promises and commitments such as the one that they
would not talk during the exercises. They were also told that HHS needs leaders,
people who are willing to step out of their comfort zone and help others do the
same. Finally, students were told that while friends tend to stick together,
sometimes you have to be ready to cut them loose for a while to accomplish your
own goals and dreams.
The teacher introduced the next exercise as an opportunity to meet new
people. The teacher told each line to turn and face another line so that each student
was facing someone in another line and every student in each line was facing the
same direction, i.e., the same line. At that point, students were repeatedly asked to
turn, move one person forward, and say things like “Ohhh, la la,” “Nice teeth,” or
“Where have you been all my life?” Then, after one of the turns, a person from one
line was asked to tell his or her partner in the other line everything that had
happened to him or her the previous day, after which the partner repeated the
exercise, but had to tell everything that he or she did the previous day backwards.
On the next rotation, the teacher asked students to give their life stories in under 39
seconds and then tell their partners “I’m going to tell my friend about you.”
Finally, the teacher asked students to rotate again, face away from their new
partner, and with their backs against one another, sit down at the same time. Again,
the teacher used this opportunity to reinforce a new lesson, that at times students
will have to sit alone, but at other times they will need to support one another.

89

At this point, the teacher turned the focus on the Link Crew leaders, asking
first for a round of applause and drawing attention to their enthusiasm and
leadership. Then the teacher began asking questions of the Link Crew leaders, with
the leaders cheering in response. The teacher asked questions such as how many
students participated in sports and clubs, were proud of their grades, wanted to
improve their grades, were dating, and were single. The point of the questions
seemed to be to both model for the freshmen how to be an active, involved member
of the school community and show the freshmen that the Link Crew leaders were
also students with many of the same concerns and anxieties.
The freshmen were then divided into 50 groups with a Leader assuming
responsibility for each group. Each group’s Link Leader would serve as an advisor
and mentor for the freshmen in that group throughout the school year. Each student
had been previously given a number of 1-50, and the numbers were prominently
displayed and evenly spaced along three of the gym’s walls. When the freshmen
were told to separate into their groups, each student simply found their number on
the wall and stood in a line underneath it. Eventually, about 4-5 students were lined
up beneath each number and the Link Leader assumed control of the group. Each
group then dispersed; most groups went outside to find a shady area to sit, a couple
of groups found a place in the gym.
After separating and finding a spot on campus to sit, each Link Leader led
his or her group in a series of exercises provided by the Boomerang Project to
facilitate openness among the freshmen and impress the principle that each student
is part of a larger community that can guide and support them as they face the

90

challenges of being a high school student. During their training, the Link Leaders
were given a workbook that outlined each challenge and provided a scripted “Intro”
and “Outro” to said challenge that emphasized certain aforementioned principles.
For example, part of the script for the first activity, “Count Off,” mentioned how
students are not alone in the challenges they face. Another activity, called “Team
Juggling,” highlighted the fact that high school students often have to handle
multiple responsibilities and challenges at the same time but can ease some of that
stress by relying on one another. In the final activity, “64 squares,” students were
shown how the paths they choose in high school could have positive or negative
consequences. The group time ended with the Link Leader giving students a guided
tour of the school to help them visualize the ends and outs of student life from the
student’s perspective. Overall, the activities and tour were designed to be fun,
allow for bonding both among freshmen and with the Link Leader, and to show
freshmen how seeking help and making positive choices could lead to a successful
high school career.
As exemplified by this orientation, the Link Crew program strived to
incorporate new students into the larger school community by utilizing 21
st
century
skills and themes. However, the impact of the Link Crew on building and
maintaining Hillcrest High School’s community did not end with orientation.
Approximately half of the Link Crew leaders also enrolled in a Link Crew class that
met daily throughout the year. This large class consisted of approximately 45
students, met in two adjoining classrooms with a retractable (and retracted) wall,
and was supervised by two teachers. Along with freshmen mentorship, the Link

91

Crew class provided students with opportunities to model student leadership on
campus through fundraising, organizing events, and showing appreciation for the
school staff. The link crew class, on the researcher’s first impression, appeared
chaotic. After an initial meeting with the entire group to discuss various logistics,
such as communicating with parents and connecting with hard-to-reach freshmen,
the class split up to work on certain projects, with many students using the time to
quietly socialize or work on homework assignments. Meanwhile, both teachers
spent class time dealing with students who had individual problems or questions. It
soon became clear, however, that what appeared mildly chaotic was in fact loosely
structured in a way that utilized the students’ own motivation, initiative, and
responsibility. While any given snapshot of the class would reveal something that
looked much like a free period, in fact each student was in a group responsible for
completing various projects during the semester. Students who were not working
on a project in class were either waiting for a new project’s approval or had already
completed the planning stage for an upcoming project. As long as they received
updates in the students’ progress, the teachers in charge clearly trusted the students’
discretion and motivation to use their time effectively.
At the beginning of the year, the teachers had split the Link Crew into the
following 7 project teams:
1. The Appreciation Team organized projects intended to show
appreciation to the school staff. During the observed class period, the
Appreciation Team members were organizing two projects—origami t-

92

shirt designs with attached candy to distribute to staff mailboxes, and a
potluck lunch for the upcoming staff development day.
2. The Academic Team organized tutoring and study opportunities for
freshmen throughout the year.
3. The Social Team organized leader and student bonding opportunities
such as an after school gathering at Dave and Busters restaurant and
arcade.
4. The Involvement Team organized on-campus games and activities to
engage freshmen in the community.
5. The Administration Team ran and organized the Link Crew as a whole.
6. The Fundraising Team organized fundraisers for Link Crew activities.
7. The Publicity Team increased the Link Crew’s exposure and spread
information about upcoming Link Crew activities and events.
Students were responsible for planning their own projects and completing 1-
2 projects a month. At the beginning of the school year, the teachers guided this
process to help each group draft an achievable yearly project plan.
Along with their work on project teams, each Link Crew member also
developed a curriculum for monthly meetings with their freshman groups. This
curriculum included activities and talking points to help freshmen self-assess, make
goals, share their experiences and remember that they are part of the larger campus
community. The teachers guided the students in the development of their first
curriculum, and but afterwards, students were expected to develop curriculums on
their own with minimal guidance.

93

In their work with their project teams and freshman groups, students used
the cognitive processes apply, analyze, evaluate, and create to demonstrate
conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge. Students were required to
analyze their personal goals and the vision of the Link Crew program in a way that
allowed them to create projects and a student support curriculum for freshmen
students, thereby contributing to the community building at HHS. Link Crew
students demonstrated that they had the conceptual and procedural knowledge to
draft plans and put them into action, and the metacognitive knowledge to set
realistic goals and collaborate effectively with others. In the process, these students
managed to utilize the program to develop not only P21’s “The Life Career Skills,”
but the framework’s “Learning and Innovation Skills” as well.
Emergent theme 2: 21
st
century learning objectives emphasize critical
thinking. Hillcrest High School teachers used synthesis to promote critical
thinking and the development of knowledge schemas. One way they did this was
by encouraging personal reflection as part of the critical thinking process. Teachers
at HHS used personal reflection through emotional identification or curiosity to
make students metacognitively aware of preexisting knowledge schemas. The
resulting synthesis of knowledge schemas with novel information based on higher
order principles and strategies is critical to the development of flexible problem
solving skills (Kalyuga 2010, Mayer 2008). Some teachers also approached critical
thinking more collaboratively with debates and seminars that utilized aspects of
problem based learning, specifically varying teacher guidance, the division of task

94

complexity, and the development of effective communication skills (Kirschner,
Paas & Kirschner 2009; Schmidt, Loyens, Gog, & van Paas 2006).
Making critical thinking explicit: Synthesize this! Multiple classroom
observations revealed the extent to which Bloom’s revised Taxonomy (Anderson
and Krathwohl, 2001) is utilized throughout Hillcrest High School’s curriculum.
Not only are the higher cognitive processes of the revised taxonomy a focus, but
Hillcrest High School’s teachers have invested time into creating innovative
teaching strategies that utilize these processes. As one administrator noted, learning
objectives oriented around Bloom’s revised taxonomy critically constitute how
Hillcrest High School defines educational value:
When you have a large population of kids who are involved in so much
outside of school, from tutoring to extracurricular activities beyond the
school day...how do we know that we are responsible for the value added of
these components or are they picking it up somewhere else? So, you
know...being in classrooms every day, I’m confident because I see it. For
example, the amount of synthesizing that students do.

Synthesis is a subcategory of the cognitive process “Create” in the revised
Bloom’s Taxonomy and refers to the ability to establish new patterns of information
by collating and reorganizing existing facts (Anderson and Krathwohl, et al., 2001).
At Hillcrest High School, synthesis is a predominant instructional strategy as
typified by the same administrator’s example of synthesis in a social sciences
classroom:
We had our whole school assembly that we start the school year with every year,
and he created a whole lesson with some guiding questions for the kids, gave them
all envelopes for the kids to open with questions for when they got out there...and
he asked them all to text a friend and ask them what words they remember from the
assembly. And that was the warm up activity; they were talking about Hitler and
the Third Reich and his ability to move people through speech and what is the
difference between bad use of uniting people and what (the principal’s) doing at the
assembly? And then (the principal) would come in the next day and answer

95

questions, and it was very powerful. The kid’s ability...to analyze the difference
between those two-the principal’s assembly and something they read about and
watched with Hitler, about the differences and how that compares to democracy, it
was pretty amazing.

By integrating multiple constructs for organizing information, synthesis is a
primary process in the formation of knowledge schemas according to constructivism
(Jonassen, 1991). The students in this classroom used synthesis to create criteria for
evaluating the moral content of rhetorical devices, a schema that could be utilized to think
critically in multiple contexts. Throughout the school, teachers find similar ways to compel
students to examine preexisting knowledge schemas as an essential component of the
critical thinking process.
Making critical thinking personal: Curiosity, reflection, and knowledge
schemas. After first engaging students in the critical thinking process of analyzing
existing knowledge schemas, Hillcrest High School teachers demonstrated an
aptitude at scaffolding the application of this critical awareness toward the
development of subject matter expertise. One language arts class skillfully used a
prompting of metacognitive awareness to facilitate the learning and application of
subject matter vocabulary. This class began with a quotation written on the white
board: “‘I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet and I have yet to hear the
first valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.’ –Henry David Thoreau.”
The strategy of beginning with a conceptual prompt for analysis and
evaluation was implemented to promote metacognitive awareness of the
presuppositions and knowledge schemas that students access when formulating an
opinion. Individuals develop knowledge schemas to organize information for the
purpose of efficient and effective information processing (Sweller, et. al 1998).
When faced with new information—in this case, a quotation—knowledge schemas

96

determine the lenses through which students will understand and respond to this
information. Therefore, the reflective nature of the class’s warm-up assignment
was designed to urge students to consider not only the topic, but the lenses through
which they perceived and understood the topic.
This class also asked students to identify both a rhetorical device that the
quotation is using and a philosophical area of study that would incorporate the
sentiment of the quotation. Therefore, the students engaged in two cognitive
processes simultaneously: metacognitive analysis and the application of subject
matter knowledge. The resulting synthesis of preexisting knowledge schemas with
subject matter knowledge provided a framework for the discussion of the text The
Catcher in the Rye. Therefore, critical analysis of the text began with the
examination and development of knowledge schemas suited to that analysis.
In another class, students took this process a step further by identifying
rhetorical devices within an obituary for James Baldwin written by Maya Angelou,
both of whom are respected African American literary figures. This assignment
was then personalized by asking students to write a letter to a loved one that was
modeled on the rhetorical devices of Angelou’s eulogy. The assignment broke
Angelou’s eulogy into nine sections and asked students to identify the rhetorical
devices used throughout the eulogy: anaphora, quotations, allusions, antithesis, and
rhetorical questions. The students’ dedications had to follow the rhetorical style of
Angelou’s eulogy by using the same number of paragraphs and the same rhetorical
devices that Angelou uses in each paragraph. The students thereby adapted the
rhetorical flow, stylistic elements and syntax of Angelou’s eulogy to their own

97

writings. Like the aforementioned warm up assignment but on a larger scale, this
assignment synthesized two cognitive processes: the ability to apply subject matter
knowledge with the personal, potentially emotional assessment of the students’ own
knowledge schemas about formally conveying love and admiration.
This assignment highlighted the potential of developing knowledge schemas
by synthesizing cognitive processes in an emotionally resonant context. Further
observations discovered evidence of synthesis across subject matters. What all
these exercises shared was an aptitude and emphasis on personalizing the
assignment by appealing to the emotional lives of the students in productive ways.
Whereas the aforementioned assignments appealed to the students’ emotional
responses to ethical questions and interpersonal questions, other exercises simply
capitalized on students’ curiosity or desire for socially recognized achievement.
One Science class began with a “think tank” assignment, a regular exercise in the
class that began with a short demonstration designed to pique the students’
curiosity. After the demonstration, students were asked to explain it scientifically
in a written assignment to be completed at home and turned in to the school’s
website. This class’s demonstration involved a ping pong ball and hair dryer. The
teacher turned the hairdryer on, pointed it toward the ceiling, and placed the ping
pong ball in the draft of air so that the ball floated, erratically but without falling, on
the cushion of air. Then, the teacher slowly turned the hair dryer horizontally until
it was nearly at a 90 degree angle with the floor. To the amazement of the class, the
ping pong ball remained suspended in air as if by magic, still caught in the draft of
the hair dryer as it approached the 90 degree angle before finally falling. The think

98

tank question was “What keeps the ping pong ball suspended in air?” After
presenting the question, the teacher offered a parallel, pointing out that the same
principle keeps airplanes in the air, and encouraged the students to make a
physiological connection by thinking of lungs.
The success of the “think tank” assignment hinged on its appeal to students’
curiosity. Because the demonstrations were designed to challenge students’
presumptions, they elicited a personal response that prompted a reevaluation of
knowledge schemas. The critical thinking process was engaged as students worked
individually to synthesize their preexisting knowledge schemas with the surprising
new stimuli. This act of synthesizing new information with prior knowledge, when
organized by higher-level principles and strategies, captures the process of effective
problem solving and knowledge schema development (Kalyuga 2010; Mayer 2008).
Like the exercises observed in the language arts classes, critical thinking was
engaged by initiating personal reflection on the part of the students and then asking
that they apply the fruits of that reflection to new subject matter stimulus. The
critical thinking process therefore contained the following steps: 1. Reflection, 2.
Application, 3. Synthesis, 4. Reapplication, 5. Response. Critical thinking in these
classes thus focused on developing knowledge schemas at steps 2, 3, and 4, as
students applied their preexisting schemas to the new stimuli, found them
inadequate, synthesized them with the new information, reapplied the adjusted
schema, and formulated a response. The pivotal step in each class, however, was
the moment of reflection, where students became metacognitively aware of their
knowledge schemas in ways that enabled self-evaluation.

99

Making critical thinking communal: Debates, seminars, and the
continuum. These classes also shared a communal, if not strictly collaborative,
approach to engaging the process of reflection. Before the “think tank”
demonstration, the teacher displayed various examples of “think tank” responses to
the previous demonstration. Each assignment was shown anonymously on the
smart board at the front of the room and students were asked to “Be the teacher”
and give each assignment a grade in clarity between 1 and 10. After each
assignment was read aloud by the teacher, the students raised their hands and
displayed their scores with their fingers. The assignments shown were positive
models for student work, with the teacher offering supportive comments and
pointing out successful strategies like the use of analogies to explain scientific
concepts.
The eulogy in the Language Arts class employed a similar method of peer
sharing and evaluation. Each student traded their dedication with a partner, edited
that dedication, and wrote a letter to the student in response. The letter was
structured for the students into two sections, the first following a “general” reading
of the writing partner’s dedication that cordially addressed the writing partner and
shared the reader’s initial, overall impression of the writing. The second section of
the letter was designed to be written after a second, more thorough reading of the
dedication, and prompted the writing partner to identify the specific use of
rhetorical devices and syntax from Angelou’s eulogy.
These two activities promoted reflection, assessment, and discussion among
the students by personalizing the assignments through communal interactions. Both

100

reading prompts and eliciting feedback (in the Science class) and asking students to
engage in letter writing (in the Language Arts class) made the acts of reflection and
evaluation both personal and communal. These activities also reinforced the idea
that critical thinking is an ongoing, dialectical process that oscillates from memory
to community, shaping both in the process.
For one Language Arts teacher, examining knowledge schemas in a communal
format was critical to teaching ethical reasoning. During one classroom observation, this
teacher structured a debate around ethical questions pertinent to the text the class was
studying, The Crucible. The teacher began the activity by posting the following
quotation on the classroom’s smartboard—“If you are not part of the solution, then
you are part of the problem.” On one side wall was posted the sign “strongly
agree,” on the opposite side wall, the sign “strongly disagree,” and between them on
the back wall the sign “strongly torn.” The teacher then asked the students to stand
and choose a wall to stand under. About 2/3 of the class stood under the sign
“Strongly Torn,” with the rest of the students fairly evenly divided between
“Strongly Agree” and “Strongly Disagree.” The teacher then moved around the
classroom passing out cards with pictures of fish on them. Once each student had
received a card, the teacher announced that today’s debate would be “the pufferfish
vs. the whales,” with the pufferfish taking the “strongly agree” position and “the
whales” taking the “strongly disagree” position. Approximately 2/3 of the
classroom left to plan their debate points outside of the room while the remaining
students engaged in an open discussion about neutrality. Among the issues
discussed were whether lack of knowledge absolved one from responsibility,
whether acquiring knowledge is itself a civic responsibility, and ethical gray areas

101

where a solution for one group could present a problem for another. During the
discussion and ensuing debate, there was a clear decorum that the students are
expected to follow. Before presenting an opinion, each student greeted the group to
give his or her name, e.g., “Hi, I’m Jason.” When responding to something a
student had said, students began by thanking the original speaker, e.g., “Thank you
Jason, but I have to disagree…” During this discussion, the class T.A., who sat in
the front of the room, kept track of time. After five minutes had passed, the T.A.
called the two debate teams back in. Each team was allowed to give its best
arguments either for or against the axiom, with the opposing team given an
opportunity to rebut the argument. After the rebuttals, the “audience” was asked to
respond. Among the issues discussed was whether inaction is a form of action, with
Rosa Parks presented as a primary example. At one point, the teacher offered a
hypothetical situation that the students could relate to: if a teacher has to leave the
classroom during a test and 3 people cheat, are other students responsible for
turning the cheating students into the teacher? Upon completion of the debate, the
audience members were asked to take a stand and move to the side that most
strongly persuaded them.
The teacher then repeated the debate process with a second axiom: “There is
a clear difference between right and wrong.” For this maxim there was a clear
majority opinion, with most of the class moving to the “strongly disagree” side of
the room and initially only one student standing under strongly agree. After debate
teams were chosen, other students joined the “strongly agree” side, presumably to
play devil’s advocate. The ensuing debate and discussion contained a number of

102

spirited and intriguing positions and propositions. The students debated and
discussed such issues as whether it was possible to be ambivalent about the
existence of a clear difference, the relevance of extreme arguments, and whether
denying the statement was paradoxical because one was claiming to be clearly in
the right while at the same time denying the possibility that one can be clearly right
about anything. At one point, mathematics was brought up, leading to a discussion
of whether introducing mathematics “cheapened” the debate. The debate continued
until the bell rang, with the teacher proposing that the class continue the discussion
in the next class.
These students applied two ethical axioms to a variety of hypothetical
situations. Reaching these hypothetical situations first required analyzing the axiom
not just in terms of its component parts, but also its assumptions. This analysis of
assumptions directly resulted from the exercise of debating, as students attempted to
refute a position by offering exceptions to that position. The analysis of the
exception forced students to diagnose the source of the discrepancy between the
position and the exception. The students therefore began with deductive reasoning,
imagining examples of the proposition until one was found that appears to refute the
proposition. Then, the students inferred a principle from this exception that
contradicted the original proposition, e.g., “People are not part of the problem if
they are unaware of either the problem or the solution.”
The structure of the debate then required the “strongly agree” team to
synthesize the original contradiction with its counterpoint in order to continue the
debate. This synthesis resulted in the creation of new propositions, e.g., that

103

knowledge is a form of responsibility, and ignorance is thus a choice to continue to
be part of the problem. The debate then continued this pattern of deductive and
inductive analysis on the part of the “strongly disagree” team followed by synthesis
on the part of the “strongly agree” team until the process has exhausted itself or
time had run out.
Coincident with this pattern of analysis and synthesis was the constant
evaluation of the relevance and validity of each team’s reasoning. This evaluation
lead to debates about, for example, whether extreme arguments or arguments based
on highly specific contexts (such as mathematics) were open to discussion.
Critical thinking within this exercise was enhanced by the collaboration in
three ways. First, the teams collaborated with each other to develop arguments to
support their position, creating a consensus regarding the presuppositions
underlying each position. Second, students collaboratively engaged in the
dialectical format of the debate, expanding their own understandings through the
process of analysis and synthesis. Finally, the “audience” collaborated by initially
discussing the axioms and then by listening to and engaging with the debaters for
the purpose of reaching a final conclusion on the validity of the axiom.
Ultimately, the debate structure developed the students’ critical thinking
skills by engaging them in knowledge schema development. By engaging in the
discussion of these axioms, the students were creating organized, logical, abstract
schemas that could then be used for critically interpreting Arthur Miller’s The
Crucible. The students were therefore developing the conceptual knowledge
inherent in their engagement with the ideas, the procedural knowledge necessary to

104

critically assess and evaluate these ideas, and the metacognitive knowledge
necessary to the development of organized knowledge schemas that could then be
applied to the aforementioned text. The exercise’s ability to augment critical
thinking with communication and innovative reasoning incorporated multiple
components of P21’s “Learning and Innovation Skills.
This teacher’s class utilized higher level cognitive processes and
demonstrated conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge on the part of
the students. The students comprehended the different axioms and offered multiple
interpretations to discuss and debate their accuracy. Students also applied the
axioms to different contexts and analyzed both the different elements of each axiom
and the different contexts to which they could apply. What was unique about the
discussion and the debate was the extent to which students were able to approach
the topic from multiple perspectives and logically work backward from the axioms
to question the premises and assumptions on which the axioms are based. This
process promoted critical thinking by forcing students to examine their knowledge
schemas and adapt them to the stimuli provided by the exercise. The process of
addressing an intellectual challenge while simultaneously examining and critiquing
one’s own presuppositions captured the essence of critical thinking within this
classroom.
An Honors Western Civilization class took this communal approach to
learning a step further with its “student-led seminar” structure. Prior to the seminar,
students had received a list of important terms from the first chapter of their
textbook, e.g., “Paleolithic Age,” “civilization,” “Gilgamesh,” “ziggurat,” “early

105

class system,” etc. Students were asked to bring questions to class about the terms.
At the top of the handout, the teacher gave the overall objective of the assignment:
“Be able to identify, understand, and/or explain the following terms, ideas, people,
or events. Consider importance, SIGNIFICANCE and contributions of each.
WHAT? and SO WHAT? Create a list of questions related to the reading.” The
assignment and seminar both encouraged critical thinking, student engagement, and
collaboration. All of Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) cognitive processes were
present: students were expected to know and comprehend the terms well enough to
apply them in a large group discussion and analyze them critically. Students were
also encouraged during the seminar to argue and evaluate various viewpoints as part
of a larger group debate. Finally, students were encouraged to create new
understandings by synthesizing different concepts into larger historical principles.
During the seminar, students had to demonstrate factual and conceptual knowledge
about the terminology, procedural knowledge about how to engage with historical
terms critically and within the context of a group seminar, and the metacognitive
knowledge to articulate and debate differing viewpoints and interpretations.
In the previous class, the teacher had introduced the procedures of a student-
led seminar by having a practice seminar with terminology the students were
already familiar with (e.g., “school,” “training,” “participation”). This practice
seminar had given students the opportunity to learn how a seminar should look and
function in a context with low intrinsic cognitive load. The practice seminar served
to reduce the cognitive load of the first “real” seminar, helping students focus on the
focal point of the lesson, the historical terminology. The teacher then began class

106

with a five minute review of what a seminar was and what it should accomplish.
During this introduction, the teacher stressed the importance of finding relevance
and making connections, priming the students to engage in the evaluative and
creative cognitive processes during the seminar. After the introduction, the teacher
prompted the students to “form the big circle.” After the harsh grating of desk legs
on hard floor subsided, the 35 student desks made an imperfect circle that touched
all three of the four walls and left a large space in the middle where the remaining
two desks were left. At this point, the teacher held out a stack of index cards to a
student, who chose two cards randomly and called out the student names printed on
the cards. These two students, one boy and one girl, served as the student seminar
leaders for the rest of the period, standing in the middle of the room and navigating
the discussion. As the teacher explained, his plan for the day was to play an active
role in helping the student leaders facilitate the seminar, but that eventually his goal
was to fade into the woodwork and let the students run the seminar almost entirely
themselves.
At this point, the teacher reiterated the “ground rules”: One person speaks at
a time. The leaders both ask if students have questions and direct questions to other
students to answer. Students are encouraged to “keep talking, keep thinking”
throughout the exercise.
Students were originally a little stiff at the beginning of the exercise,
especially the group leaders. Initial questions followed the basic pattern “What is
the significance of ___________,” e.g., “What is the significance of the Neolithic
Age?” Eventually, with a little prodding from the teacher, the questions became a

107

little more diverse: “Why were river valley populations easy to invade?” “How is
the Neolithic Age different from the Paleolithic age?” At this point the teacher
pushed the students to consider significant changes that occurred during the
different ages and encouraged students to apply that same reasoning to modern
times. Focusing on the convention of naming historical ages by the primary
material for tool making, e.g., the iron age, the teacher asked students what the
current age would be called. “The Technological Age,” one student responded.
Another student pointed out that silicon was the primary material for technological
advancement and that we might instead call our time period “The Silicon Age.”
The teacher pointed out that silicon was made of sand, strengthening the connection
between our current time period and the past, noting that “We’ve gone from stone
tools to metal tools, and now we rely on sand,” getting a laugh from the students.
The teacher made similar connections between ancient and modern times
when explaining the structure of the ziggurat, an ancient temple, asking the students
to apply our notions of upper and lower classes to seating arrangements in the
temple. One student noted that the wealthy classes were actually seated over the
poorer classes; wealth allowed one to literally sit in the “upper” section of the
temple as opposed to the “lower” one. This observation led to a discussion of how
the ziggurat reinforced class separation in ways that still resonate in our
understanding of modern class relations.
During the seminar, the teacher also referenced different definitions of
civilization the student had received—one that came directly from the textbook and
the other from a packet the teacher had previously distributed. Here, the teacher

108

urged the students to analyze the assumptions that lay behind these differences,
particularly with regard to religion; evaluate the differing criteria; and ultimately
synthesize these differences into a larger understanding.
With about 10 minutes remaining in class, the teacher asserted more control
over the seminar, reminding students to always read what is “underneath the paper,”
make inferences, and appreciate areas where so-called “primitive” people
approximated our own understandings, e.g., in mathematics and calendar-making.
Here, the teacher revealed and modeled his enthusiasm for the history, i.e., his
excitement at the idea of discovery and how history can surprise us and challenge
our assumptions.
Throughout the seminar, the teacher challenged students to think critically
and encouraged them to make connections between different concepts, historical
periods, and source materials. During the seminar, students demonstrated all of
Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) cognitive processes, applying historical concepts
to different contexts, analyzing concepts to formulate interpretations, evaluating the
validity of different theoretical constructs, and synthesizing differing perspectives
to create an enriched understanding of complex historical ideas. The seminar
format required students to employ more advanced knowledge dimensions as well.
Students had to demonstrate a procedural understanding of how to formulate ideas
and interpretations with varied degrees of scaffolding from the teacher, and the
seminar leaders in particular had to demonstrate and model the metacognitive
knowledge necessary to effectively guide the class discussion. The communal
nature of the class gave the students opportunities to flexibly engage in reflection,

109

application, and synthesis. While the teacher prompted much of this engagement,
the communal feel and attribution of roles gave the students opportunities to
navigate much of the discussion on their own. The socially open nature of the
student-led seminar, which was mirrored in the circular seating, prompted each
student to reflect on his or her role within the class dynamic, to identify gaps in
understanding and assess when and how to contribute to the discussion. The
students thus approached the subject matter not as individuals seeking knowledge,
but as individuals finding their place within a larger continuum. This perspective
seemed to naturally encourage the students to imagine their own contributions to
the historical continuum, how they would be, in the words of the teacher, “the
generation who will make the next important tool.” Therefore, the critical thinking
process in this class relied wholly on recognition that each student was part of a
larger continuum of both learning and history. For each student, thinking critically
about history meant reflecting on his or her connection to the unfolding of
significant events, both in and out of the classroom, and across the ages.
Emergent Theme #3: 21
st
century preparation looks beyond the
classroom. At Hillcrest High School, students had multiple opportunities in their
classes and extracurricular activities to produce work that reached the larger school
and city-wide community. Some of these opportunities gave students a chance to
develop and demonstrate a high competency in media literacy, which requires
knowledge of how technology can be used to access, disseminate, or generate
information and media for a wide audience (Anderson, 2008; Leh, Kouba, & Davis,
2005; Peppler, 2010; Thoman and Jolls, 2004). Because this work and its purposes

110

often mimicked those of real-world professions, these activities generated the
collaborative and problem-solving benefits of role-playing and reality games (Dede,
2007; Squire, 2010). However, sustainability literacy, the interrelatedness of
environmental, economic, and social equity issues (Nolet, 2009), did not emerge
from the data collection as a strong emphasis at the school. This finding does not
preclude the possibility that sustainability literacy is a focus within certain clubs or
classrooms.
Real Products for Real Audiences: Film Festival, Animation, and the
News. Students at Hillcrest High School were encouraged by the programs and
practices at the school to produce work for their fellow students, as well as the
larger school and city-wide communities. As one teacher noted, these opportunities
motivate the students by increasing their sense of ownership.
One thing I would mention just that I’ve learned is that...I picked this up in
grad school: real products for real audiences. I think that is important.
From what I’ve seen in my students, when they are most engaged or when
there’s the most ownership or pride in, it’s because there’s going to be a real
product for real audiences, it’s not just going to be an assignment for (me) to
grade.

The sense of ownership that comes with producing “real products for real
audiences” provides both the catalyst for the reflection necessary for critical
thinking as well as the collaboration initiative, and flexibility vital to both the
“Learning and Innovation Skills” and “Life and Career Skills” sections of the P21
framework. Two challenges make producing real work for real audiences at such a
large high school difficult: 1. the challenge of distribution, and 2. the challenge of
producing work that is meaningful and engaging for both the creator and the
audience. Teachers and students at Hillcrest High School successfully address both

111

these challenges by utilizing technology, specifically through the computer-assisted
production and dissemination of media and animation. Teachers and students
therefore also found opportunities within the programs and practices at HHS to
address components of P21’s “Information and Media Skills” section in striking and
successful ways.
One language arts teacher recounted her experience with creating work for
real audiences. She planned to have students work in groups to create video
documentaries for their final exam but was looking for a way beyond grading to
motivate her students to produce something of meaningful quality:
I decided to make it high stakes in the sense that it’s not, like high stakes for
their grade. In fact what I did as an experiment, I gave them all A’s at the
beginning, before they even finished it, I gave them A’s on the project, but,
and this is the crazy...I sent out an email to all the staff and the
administration and said, we’re going to have a film festival, and I booked
the lecture hall that...and I said “This day, this time...come watch the film
and vote and there’s going to be like an award for the winner. And then I
told my students the next day in class...You all have As, but, there’s going to
be a film festival and your films are going to be screened by the entire
school, your other teachers are going to come watch. The principal replied
and said he was going to show up, so I had that to tell them. And I said, you
know what, you all have A’s, but my name is on the line here—I organized
this, and your name is on the line, too, because they are going to know that
you produced this film.

This teacher assumed that changing the criterion for success from a letter
grade to community-wide validation would personalize the incentives for success
and increase the motivation for students to produce meaningful work. By her
account, she assumed correctly:
And so they worked day and night and they were like...I didn’t sleep all
night, and they wanted to create just the best thing they could create. It was
like, real product, real audience...it was a show! And I didn’t have to worry
about the grade, because they were all, with the exception of one
group...they all would’ve gotten A’s had I said that I was going to grade it

112

according to the standards, they met all the criteria and went above and
beyond, and it was meaningful to them and memorable.

Providing the students with the opportunity to present their documentaries
for the school community, including the principal and staff positively motivated the
students to go “above and beyond” to produce work that was both personably
memorable and engaging for a larger audience. By giving students automatic A’s
for the assignment the teacher transferred the stakes from something largely private,
a student’s course grade, to something communal. Ironically, the transfer of the
ultimate criterion for success from private evaluation to public recognition had the
effect of personalizing the project. By making the project more socially relevant,
the teacher also made the project more personally relevant. The teacher modeled
this aspect of the project in her announcement that she was putting her own
reputation on the line in front of her peers and superiors—her fellow teachers and
the school administration. The opportunity for recognition, and the accompanying
possibility of diminishing one’s reputation, motivated the students to produce work
that was not only personally rewarding and criteria driven, but also engaging for the
audience in ways that would be socially rewarding.
Providing students with opportunities to create products for an audience
through technology had surprising results for both teacher and students. In another
language arts class, a young teacher had each students create his or her own
mythology to present to the class through multimedia. In this case, because the
project was individual, the primary mode of presentation was animation and graphic
depiction. Students used computer animation technology to give life to their
drawings and tell stories that incorporated elements of mythology learned in class.

113

One student spent hours working on detailed drawings that helped him tell his story,
which were then scanned and projected for the class. Strikingly the teacher himself
shied away from taking too much credit for the results, claiming that he really had
just given the assignment and gotten out of the way, and was as surprised as the
observer with the amount of effort and innovation. This was particularly the case
with one girl who had particular difficulty speaking, not just in front of the class,
but in general. Her voice was strained and hoarse, and her teacher hinted to me
before she began that her condition was chronic, though its origins were unclear to
the observer. Not surprisingly, the girl spoke little during her presentation, though
her words did betray a wit and intelligence to which her vocal condition could not
provide the fullest resonance. Her computer animations, however, transfixed the
class with their artistic innovation and attention to detail. For this student, the
medium of the project allowed her to display gifts that moved and surprised many
in the class. For someone who had apparent difficulty seeking social recognition
for her abilities, the project provided an opportunity that clearly motivated her to
create an engaging product that was meaningful for herself and the rest of the class.
While this assignment was not technically presented outside the classroom, the
student audience was clearly the focus. The personal investment each student made
in his or her project demonstrated that he or she was thinking beyond the course
grade in crafting such personal expressions.
Opportunities to create projects for real audiences through technology at
Hillcrest High School did extend beyond the classroom through the school’s
Wildcat News Program (WNP), an extra-curricular video production class where

114

students complete a weekly 15 minute news video and upload it to the internet via
www.youtube.com. As the school’s YouTube page explains, each week’s segment
has a different producer, and each segment lists approximately 23 students involved
in various stages of the video process (Hillcrest High’s, 2012). The following
transcription of the program’s sixth episode of the 2011-2012 school year provides
a glimpse at the scope and spirit of the production.
Opening credits: beginning in black and white, a shaky camera approaches
classroom A-201 as the intro to Maroon 5’s popular pop/rock song “Moves Like
Jagger,” a repetitive, whistled refrain accompanied rhythmically by guitar, is heard
in the background. Edit to interior of classroom as color logo fades in and out of
the center of the frame and we see AV equipment and glimpse students handling
large television cameras. Edit to a gruff, grey-haired teacher in what may be a
tweed jacket holding and snapping shut a large director’s clapboard, at which point
the music volume increases and video shifts to a color montage of the 29 members
of the Wildcat News Program in various stages of working on the show or generally
goofing around, with graphics of each member’s name presented in various fonts
and modes of appearance.
The final edit is a star that grows and reveals the two female student anchors
of that segment (Each segment alternates new anchors as well as a new producer).
The set is decorated with a holiday/Thanksgiving motif: Fir trees and snowy
mountain tops in the background, a prominent cartoon turkey dressed in pilgrim’s
garb, and what appear to be stockings and presents along the lower portion of the
set. The two anchors’ names appear in a graphic that includes two pumpkin pies.

115

The official news program begins with a National Honors Society meeting
announcement, followed by a plug for the group’s website, and information about a
money drive organized for student council to help the White Mountain Apache tribe
in northern Arizona. Each topic is accompanied by hanging graphics that resemble
those of actual televised news programs. Other announcements include a plug for
the program’s internet sponsor; information about the California Scholarship
Federation; a sophomore class ice cream social; and log-in information for
PowerSchool, which provides access to each student’s grade, attendance, and
assignments. One of the anchors then introduces the next segment with the
question “Wondering what you can do to help others over Thanksgiving?”
The next segment begins in what appears to be a warehouse full of people
and cardboard boxes. The WNP reporter rolls into the screen seated in a shopping
cart and reveals the location to be a local community center committed to providing
supplies for struggling families during the holiday. This brief intro is followed by
an interview of a woman accompanied by a graphic that reveals her name and her
title as volunteer director. As she speaks, the camera slowly fades into a panoramic
shot of the warehouse as the volunteer director reveals that they are loading food
boxes to be collected by an estimated 1500 families, and describes opportunities to
volunteer sorting, packing, documenting, and distributing the food boxes.
After the reporter recaps the segment and declares “Back to you in the
studio,” the anchors continue with a career center plug for learning about
international spring break and summer trips, an upcoming freshman council
bonding event, the opportunity to purchase $5 ASB “birthday grams,” and a segue

116

way to the next segment about HHS’s annual White Christmas drive. The food
drive is described by the student chairman of the program as an opportunity to
provide impoverished families in Hillcrest with food for the holidays. The news
program then returns to the anchors, who announce an on campus after-school
snake exhibit, a peer-outreach tutoring program that pairs high school with middle
school students. In the next segment, a male reporter reviews the latest video game
with a bucolic fantasy-inspired backdrop, interspersed with animated clips and
music from the video game reviewed in this episode. The following segment
reports on the award-winning marching band and color guard, featuring clips of the
band at practice and interviews with the staff director and student drum major. The
segment contains multiple quick and sweeping edits of the band and color guard in
action accompanied by upbeat background music, and concluding with information
about an upcoming band competition.
After this segment, the anchors ask for clubs to sign up for activities and
individuals to sign up to perform during the upcoming diversity week; announce a
sign language club fundraiser (partially in sign language), and a segue way (also
given partially in sign language) to the upcoming sports segment.
The sports segment includes graphics, multiple reporters, rock music, clever
editing, footage of the girls volleyball, boys football, and boys cross country team
in action; short interviews with cross country runners about their quest to repeat as
national champions; and a tribute to the girls golf team’s 19-1 record.
The episode returns for one last time to the anchors, who announce the
currently running school play of Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, the preselling of

117

See’s chocolates by the school’s Senior Council, and an upcoming college visit
before ending with a humorous clip of one of the WNP members still hiding
because of a recent school lockdown.
Running at 14:37, this episode of the Wildcat News Program impresses due
to its successful incorporation and implementation of actual visual motifs and
terminology used in televised news programs. The production models a savvy
awareness of media practices and a humorous awareness of its audience. The
nearly professional-quality editing, filming, and use of music and graphics
demonstrate a time-consuming effort on the part of the WNP staff, yet what is
conveyed in the episode is how much fun the students seem to be having. The
WNP does not appear to be an isolated extracurricular activity, but an important
hub of information campus and college-related information for students and an
outlet for announcements by other student clubs. The WNP also provides an
important link between students and the broader community by providing outreach
and volunteer opportunities. Because students have access to high quality cameras
and editing technology, they can successfully model media and video production
techniques for other students. Overall, the WNP provides a highly engaging and
community-oriented platform for students to learn about information media
technology and production while performing an important school-wide service.
Getting Kids in Shape for Life: Cross-Age P.E.. One popular class at
Hillcrest High School gives students the opportunity to travel to elementary schools
within the district and teach physical education classes to younger students. Cross-
Age P.E. may have originated in the 20
th
century, but the class provides an excellent

118

example of how HHS looks beyond the classroom to develop elements of the P21
framework in their students.
One teacher who coordinates and teaches the class explained how the goals
of the Cross-Age P.E. program intertwine with P21’s “Learning and Innovation
Skills”:
Cross-age PE, for your records here, is the collaboration of high school
students linking with the elementary school students and teaching the
foundational physical educational skills...this thing has been around for over
35 years, and it’s basically teaching one of our students to become a mini PE
teacher in 8 weeks or so. Obviously they can’t be absolutely professional at
it, but in 8 weeks we try to get them as best possible, and we teach
creativity, and innovation on how to get kids to actually do things you want
to do. At a lower level you are dealing with kids that are 6, 7, 8 years old
and in first and second grade. They have to come up with all sorts of
different strategies and techniques to get these little kids to execute
activities, and it’s not just play time, just running and playing, these are
actual standards that are created for the physical education program for
grades 1 and 2....

The process of learning how to teach P.E. lessons according to the criteria
set by district and state standards requires students to collaboratively design and
teach creative lessons. As a result, these students must not only develop subject
matter knowledge but also the metacognitive awareness and relevant knowledge
schemas to successfully strategize and communicate with the younger students:
So, often times it takes a lot of creative skills and thinking, a lot of thinking
outside the box, a lot of communication, and not communicating necessarily
at the level of adult to adult, you’re going adult to first grader, so how to
make that communication effective and what they have to change, even
from the simplest things as their vocabulary to make the student understand,
and that’s huge. So, cross-age—flexibility, adaptability... social and cross
cultural skills, right there—that’s cross age PE, in its finest words.

Here, the teacher is describing the success of the Cross-Age P.E. class using
the terminology of P21’s “Life and Career Skills.” The communication that this

119

teacher describes is the ability to acknowledge a fundamentally different
perspective and seek common ground in order to communicate a common purpose
(in this case, a P.E. lesson and activity). Even though this communication is
perhaps more “Cross-Age” than cross-cultural, it perfectly captures the
metacognitive and communicative process for developing the “Social and Cross-
Cultural Skills” specified by P21. Students enrolled in Cross-Age P.E. also
demonstrate the “Initiative and Self-Direction” specified by P21’s “Life and
Career” skills, as students find reaching out into the community and assuming
leadership roles inherently motivating and satisfying:
The kids themselves have so much self-direction and initiative to actually
drive down there. They take up 15 minutes of their own lunch period and
absorb that, so they have a thirty minute lunch period, 35 minute lunch
period, and they go down to those schools and they are completely self-
disciplined and self-motivated to get those little ones to move...but they love
it... The kids themselves, they learn... every kid from cross-age PE will tell
you that it’s the best class they’ve ever taken. It’s a class that they feel will
not only develop them in whether or not they want to be parents... It teaches
them if they want to be teachers in the future. And a lot of kids actually
accelerate and go towards the teaching profession because of it. The
leadership qualities they get from it build their self-confidence, they enjoy
their standing and understanding the roles that their own teachers have
because they themselves get to participate in that... It gives them such
different directions and different approaches on how to handle problems
because they are faced with things that they never thought they would be
faced with.

Cross-Age P.E. also captures the spirit of the P21 framework by
encouraging students to solve problems in a collaborative way, both by utilizing the
expertise of teachers or working with other to improve their own teaching:
And the kids, sometimes they get a little flustered and sometimes they come
back to their own teachers and say how do you handle that? And that’s what
we do every Monday and Friday, we coach how to fix that situation, we
group, we collaborate and go “Oh, you have little Jimmy jump on top of
you? How do we fix that? Little Timmy’s always crying? How do we fix

120

that?” But that’s a constant collaboration, a constant changing and constant
fixing and adapting constantly to whatever the environment is, down to the
physical weather.

Cross-Age P.E. utilizes another form of collaboration and metacognitive
development by requiring students who have taken the class for multiple year to
take on a mentorship role by teaching the first year students:
(The students who take it for multiple years) are actually responsible for
teaching the new kids coming on. So we have what are called first
years/second years. If you are a second year, you are helping us teach the
first years. So we end up breaking into smaller groups so that it’s on a 20-1
ratio. Because usually I’ve got 70-80 kids in that class...

Many students find Cross Age P.E. engaging enough to take for multiple
years, even if it means taking on the extra responsibility of mentoring another
student. This commitment to the class demonstrates how personally meaningful the
experience is for so many students, many of whom were most in need of the “Life
and Career Skills” this class develops:
We actually have had kids that have done cross-age PE three years in a row.
Which meant they walked in as a sophomore, which is incredible. And then
they never leave it—they are addicted to it, so it’s wonderful...your ideal
student to go for it would be the outgoing, want to maybe go into the
teaching profession, loves athletics...But surprisingly, you get the extremely
quiet ones who have no outlet and no connection to anything at school, and
to get involved in cross-age PE , they go, OK, I’ll try that, they get involved
and they love it because of the fact that they are given a role of leadership.
They are given a role of having to take on stuff and then they just
blossom...I’d like to say it’s your outgoing kid, but at the same time I can’t
because there are so many kids who are extremely quiet and reserved that
accelerate so well in that class. Yeah, there’s a gamut. I couldn’t say that
there is one central focus group of students that it leads towards.

By allowing students to not only step outside of the classroom but also off
campus, Cross-Age P.E. gives opportunities for collaboration, critical thinking,
problem-solving and leadership that cannot be fully replicated within a classroom.

121

The ultimate and direct rewards of Cross-Age P.E. are not found in the grade book
or report card but in the opportunity to make a difference in the life of a child, a
fellow student, and the community at large.
Research Question 2: What is the professional community at the school, and
how does it supports these practices?
Emergent theme #1: 21
st
century learning is community building. While
the professional community at Hillcrest High School rarely collaborated in official
or documented settings, the high-expectations and initiative of the teaching staff did
lead to organic, non-regimented collaboration on the HHS campus. The Hillcrest
High School leadership placed a lot of trust in its teachers, and therefore took an
active role in ensuring that new teachers were able to rise quickly to the level of the
more experienced staff through orientation and mentorship. The emphasis at HHS
on teacher competency and the opportunities for unforced, organic collaboration
was consistent with the model of Indigenous Invention (Heckman & Montera,
2010).
Unity in the fragments: High expectations, shared decision making, and
Portal Talk. Just as programs such as the Link Crew have created a sense of
community among upperclassmen and incoming students, data suggests that the
hard work and dedication of the HHS staff have united that community towards a
common educational purpose. However, serving HHS’s large student community
and maintaining a cohesive professional community has been a challenge for the
school. One administrator admitted that the school has struggled to implement a
structure for increasing teacher collaboration:

122

It equates to time, and therein lies the challenge. Everyone is working hard.
There’s no doubt about it. Our teachers are here early and they are helping kids at
their lunch, after school. So it’s very difficult to say that we are going to do
something every Tuesday after school. Any time before school lunch or after
school you are taking away from time between teachers and students.

As a result, there is an admitted disjointedness to the professional
community of HHS, something this administrator attributes to both the large staff
and the high standards of the community, as well as the lack of “a general
agreement that there is anything wrong”:
Hillcrest struggles from the University of Hillcrest philosophy, that every
teacher on this campus comes on like this sub-contractor and this expert and
they are very good at what they do, but don’t see the whole picture.

In spite of this apparent fragmentation, interviews, and observations and a
survey of staff members revealed a professional community that was strikingly
unified in standards, devotion, and the desire to personalize the learning experience
for its students. This unity was not imposed by a forceful, demanding leadership;
nor was it entirely endemic to the professional population of the school. Instead, it
seemed rooted in a mutual understanding and respect between leadership and staff:
And so my starting point as an administrator is that I’m here as a support
and a buffer and a filter to allow the teachers to have time with kids because
that’s why we’re here. So it’s very difficult then to try to do or create
anything that disrupts that. I know that as an administrator there’s a time
where you need to “pause for the cause,” and you can make quantum leaps
if you take the time to, but it’s a difficult thing with our staff here, and I
wouldn’t change it at all, but at a high performing school it’s difficult to get
acceptance... Here there is a lot of pride in what they do and the results, and
the teachers, they know that what they are doing is working. And it’s not
that people don’t understand and recognize that we’re about continuous
improvement and we can’t just keep doing the same thing, but yet where do
you find time to do that?

This response expresses a respect for the teachers’ skills, professionalism,
judgment, and time constraints, but also reflects a working reality at Hillcrest High

123

School: a union contract that mandates shared-decision making between teachers
and administrators. Shared-decision making balances the power at HHS by limiting
the ability of school leadership to implement practices opposed by the teacher’s
association. The Hillcrest Unified School District’s “Agreement
Between the BOARD OF EDUCATION and the HILLCREST TEACHERS
ASSOCIATION” (2011) goes as far as to specifically state that “The best decisions
are made when the constituents of the school community affected by those
decisions are given the opportunity to make them.” As the administrator admitted,
shared decision making sharply defines his role as a leader in the school
community:
It is a very strong union. The contract is for shared-decision making. So if
anyone were to tell you that I had the authority to do anything here, that
would be a lie. My job here is to influence, to lead through collaboration
and influence. I can’t imagine much that I could share with you that I could
just, within this room, make a decision on. What I’m going to eat for lunch
today is probably about it. That’s not a bad thing, but it has slowed the
process and my ability.

This administrator’s attitude about the need to balance professional
development with the time constraints and concerns of HHS’s teaching staff reflects
a wide-ranging skepticism about imposed professional development measures staff
survey. Of the 155 teachers at HHS, 32 responded to the staff survey, a response
rate of approximately 20%. Teachers responded to questions using the following
Likert Scale: 1=never, 2=sometimes, 3=most of the time, and 4=always. When
asked if professional development made them a better teacher, the average
response, 1.94, fell between “never” and “sometimes.” The survey revealed similar
responses for whether professional development addressed critical thinking skills

124

(1.94) and whether professional development addressed global awareness (1.44).
Average results were higher, however, for the prompts “Collaboration is
encouraged and promoted by the school” (2.76) and “I play a leadership role in the
school” (2.48), both of which fell between the categories of “Sometimes” and
“Most of the Time.” The discrepancy between these scores suggests that this
teaching community does collaborate yet remains hesitant about enforced measures
and takes pride in being part of the decision making process at the school.
These survey results are corroborated by various comments made by staff
members during the interview process. As one teacher noted, the artificiality of
forced collaboration does little to address the fragmented reality of a large staff
teaching a variety of subjects:
Collaboration-the superintendent is very fond of that word. It seems to
translate into days where we are forced to collaborate on something. I think
this staff, we’re not a warm staff, although individually they are very nice
people. I think we collaborate plenty when we need to, and will, and have.
And I think a model that imposes friendship is kind of a waste of time...

Another teacher concurred that teachers at HHS, and in general, have an
aversion to professional development measures that unnaturally minimize the
experience and input of the teaching staff:
There’s still some resistance I think in all the departments and a little bit in
ours to ideas that administrators throw out. It’s kind of a natural thing in
high schools. There’s kind of like a distrust or why are you telling us to do
this, we think what we are doing is working well... But when you have
ideas, for example, we had two years ago we had something...thinking maps.
We had someone from the outside come in and it was like we were being
force fed that, and it just didn’t work... And that kind of builds those walls.
And I mean, I can see the good in it, there’s great stuff out there; it’s just not
a natural thing that teachers share with each other.

125

The distinction between “natural” and “unnatural” forms of collaboration is
relevant because as both the survey and interviews reveal, collaboration occurs in
structured and unstructured formats that emphasize Hillcrest High School teachers’
initiative and ideas. A recent development at the district, called Portal Talk, seeks
to promote collaboration by providing opportunities for natural staff interactions by
resembling a platform many staff members are already comfortable with: Facebook.
As one teacher explained, Portal Talk demonstrates that Hillcrest Unified School
District has sought to manage teachers’ desire for more “natural” collaboration with
the time constraints of their packed schedules. By utilizing a layout similar to the
popular social networking site, teachers can comfortably share ideas and practices,
or bond socially, without leaving the classroom:
It looks just like Facebook-what they did they developed a way that
everyone in HUSD can communicate with any group or friend, whether it’s
about the lockdown drill, algebra 1 tests, anybody know anything about
Pythagorian Theorem to chatting about where are we going to go bowling or
where is happy hour, it literally spans the gamut. But what’s so great is that
(the program’s designer) made it look just like Facebook so everyone was
very comfortable with it already, and he just opened up all new
communication.

One feature of Portal Talk that this teacher stressed was the ability to create
groups based on department or interest. As a result, Portal Talk organizes
collaboration based on the needs of the teachers, who create their own groups and
can easily navigate among the groups that they have joined. Such a program is well
suited to a large high school like HHS, whose teachers often play many roles within
the school community:
...so many things are happening here at HHS and we are so large and many,
many of us have just so many different job titles, I mean, look at me, I’ve
got four. This Portal Talk is going to be amazing because we can

126

collaborate with everybody else, everybody can see everything, and at the
same time you can download files, you can pull and retrieve different
people’s, not just information, but tests and things like that, not just their
communication or rather talking about it. So that’s going to be great and
that just launched.

In the first month after Portal Talk launched, 213 different people had
logged in, 51 groups had been started and 77 files had been uploaded. This
promising start to a new program demonstrated that a willingness and desire for
natural, teacher initiated collaboration does exist within Hillcrest Unified School
District. However, because it is not “scheduled,” the worth of naturally occurring
collaboration efforts is not always recognized by accreditation committees such as
WASC. Naturally occurring collaboration is recognized by the administration at
HHS, however, as an administrator notes:
You know there’s authentic, there’s collaboration that exists naturally. In
other words, if you went down to certain social science rooms at lunch, there
are groups of humanities teachers that, voluntarily, it’s a duty free lunch...
they eat their lunch every Tuesday and Thursday together, specifically to
discuss their best practices, what’s working, what’s not, bouncing ideas off
each other. There’s a Wednesday morning, what do you call it, Wednesday
bagels where they meet and they do things. And we have that all over this
campus, so I would never want to say that we don’t have collaboration, but
on paper, when the WASC group comes in, that’s the first thing, you know,
that’s the new thing, “they go where’s your collaboration time?” And we
don’t have it. And it’s an easy ding and it looks like... the staff does not
recognize, they want it to be natural... to set a time and everyone has to be
there, all they view that is that’s thirty minutes they would have been
helping that kid be successful on the test tomorrow. And how do you
compare that and say that’s wrong?

This statement reflects a willingness on the part of the administration to let
go of practices that on paper look like evidence of strong leadership and effective
professional development but are actually ill-suited to the professional community
of Hillcrest High School. Collaboration at HHS thus grows organically out of the

127

staff’s high expectations and opportunities to use platforms such as Portal Talk.
Meanwhile, Shared-decision making forces school leadership to listen to the needs
and concerns of teachers, making the development of a competent, motivated staff
all the more important.
Focusing on the Future: Developing New Teachers. To ensure that HHS
has a teaching staff that can be trusted to make appropriate decisions, school and
district leadership focus their attention on one segment of the teaching population
where they can extend their influence: first year teachers.
Hillcrest High School focuses intensely on providing new teachers with the
training and support necessary to meet the school’s high standards. As one
administrator explained, first year teachers are provided with an on-site Beginning
Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) coordinator who can help them acclimate
to the unique demands of the school:
I think we're very strong in that area. I don't think anyone can compare,
actually... we have our own BTSA coordinator on site and it is tailored
specifically, I mean she hits all the standards required by the state, but it's
very tailored to our community, our culture, our expectations... you know,
here's your clientele, here's the expectations, here's why parents are paying 2
million dollars for a house.

This close attention to preparing teachers not simply for the demands of
teaching in general, but the teaching of a specific community of students eases the
transition of new teachers into the professional community and clearly
communicates the expectations, not only of the school itself, but also the parents
and students. This preparation helps to ensure that Hillcrest High School staff
members are united in their professional standards in spite of the fragmentation that
often occurs within a large teaching staff. As new teachers are attuned to the

128

specific demands of the teaching population, they are also thoroughly trained and
mentored in the educational philosophy and methodology of the school district, as
the administrator explained:
I mean we have a solid week long intern type thing before school even starts
where they're given the philosophy of the district from the superintendent
for a half day, they're ingrained in all of our grading policies, technology, all
of that stuff, given tours of the community... They're given the mentor
through BTSA and then our department chairs, they take them under their
wing, and then we have my assistant principals that are supervising
departments, they're touching base, we have new teacher meetings once a
month with myself and with all the assistant principals to go over broader
things like special-ed issues, things that new teachers are getting hit across
the face with, discipline issues, classroom management... you know, basic
stuff, but very important to those first year teachers to have a successful
experience.

This attention to the development of first year teachers reflects the emphasis
that Hillcrest High School places on ensuring that new teachers not only begin fully
equipped to succeed, but are monitored and assisted throughout the year, not only
by mentor teachers and the school’s BTSA coordinator but the administration as
well. The extensive attention that HHS school and district leadership bestows on
first year teachers shows how strongly the leadership at HHS believes that properly
preparing first year teachers for the specific demands of their school is worth the
time and effort. This cornerstone of HHS’s professional community-building helps
to ensure that a competent, high-caliber staff will continue to enhance 21
st
century
learning practices for the foreseeable future.
Emergent theme 2: 21
st
century learning objectives emphasize critical
thinking. Hillcrest High School’s Fall 2011 professional development session
specifically emphasized Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) revised Bloom’s
Taxonomy as part of a district- wide focus on improving rigor through the teaching

129

of critical thinking skills. This discussion initiated an effective collaboration
session where teachers developed critical-thinking oriented lessons. Consistent
with the Indigenous Invention model (Heckman & Montera, 2010), this session
gave HHS teachers opportunities to evaluate methods, share knowledge, and
generate new lessons.
Making professional development explicit: Establishing criteria with
Bloom’s Taxonomy. Extensive professional development and mandated
collaboration at HHS is focused primarily on helping first year teachers acclimate to
the new school. However, HHS did have one all-staff professional development
meeting in the fall of 2011 that emphasized Bloom’s taxonomy and critical thinking
in general. This focus nicely complemented the emphasis on critical thinking
within the classrooms and on the teacher survey (Appendix E). The highest average
score on the first section of the teacher’s survey, “Instruction and Pedagogy,” was
for the item “I model and encourage critical thinking and problem solving skills.”
This item registered an average score of 3.38 out of 4 placing it between “Most of
the Time” and “Always” on the survey’s Likurt Scale. However, in spite of the
apparent critical thinking focus among the staff, the interviewed administrator
admitted that this was a fairly new focus for school and district leadership:
...as a district the change in leadership focus is kind of our theme for this
year so that that rigor, relevance, and connectedness relationships is kind of
what we are working on... That doesn’t mean that we are giving all the kids
the (21
st
Century) skills… I mean, they could be getting into Princeton and
still not have some of these skills… I think... our end result goal would be to
know what’s the check off and how do you know that you have completed
this for a child when they graduate? So that worries us... because we are
preparing them for today, but this is talking about preparing them for
tomorrow, and that’s what we’re worried about.

130

The lack of guidance from the school’s leadership on global issues and
critical thinking was noted in the survey. The average response to the prompts
“Professional development sessions address the teaching of critical thinking skills”
and “Professional development sessions address the teaching of global education
issues” were 1.94 and 1.44, respectively, both of which falling between “Never”
and “Sometimes” on the survey’s Likurt Scale. However, as this administrator
noted, one factor inhibiting a fully invested initiative on teaching 21
st
century skills
is the lack of a “check off,” a universally accepted criteria for evaluating whether
students have mastered these skills.
It was the purpose of the professional development session and preceding
staff meeting to address issues of teaching criteria, with the specific emphasis on
critical thinking skills. The staff meeting, according to the administrator, was
specifically geared toward acknowledging the difficulty of gauging “effective
instruction”:
...so my Oct. 11th meeting I will be setting the stage actually showing a
couple of those fun Wagner videos with teaching classes videos and then
asking the staff to give the teacher a grade. And of course what happens is
that it's across the board. So I'm kind of setting the stage as the hook for this
is why it's important to talk about what we do, not that there's a right
answer, but the goal is the better that we can define as a staff what we're
doing...

In keeping with the skepticism of the professional community at HHS
towards bringing in outside help or remedies, the ultimate goal of the meeting was
to draw out the expertise and experience of the staff for the purpose of opening up
discussion and analysis of effective teaching:
...it's very empowering to the staff because I'm not bringing in an expert, I'm
treating them as experts and saying, ok you're doing it, but what does it look

131

like and how do we know that it’s happening. Back to what I was saying
with you, how do we know and that's kind of setting the stage for what
always happens, it's going to be an A through D and then we say "How did
that happen, what lense are you watching through and what are you
judging?” And then,” Let's get in groups and talk about what does good
instruction look like and what do our students need?"

During the staff meeting, the administrator began by referencing 21’st
century skills and the revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy by Anderson and Krathwohl
(2001), making the points that “What was good for them 50 years ago is not good
today,” and that “if we talk about what we do well, we will be able to continue to
doing it.” The administrator then showed a video of a fairly traditional high school
class. In the video the teacher gave a lesson on different literary components of
John Steinbeck’s The Pearl and asked the students to provide modern examples of
each literary term for the purpose of creating a modern story that mirrored the
novel. The class was discussion oriented, with the teacher in the front of the room
writing down suggestions on a white board and trying to engage the students with
questions and humor.
The staff was then asked to give the lesson a grade on the A-F scale. The
responses were across the board, ranging from D+ to A. C and B had the most
votes with 17 and 20 respectively, out of a staff of 155. As the administrator
explained, a group of 10 administrators had watched the same video and had similar
difficulty agreeing on the caliber of the lesson. The exercise was adapted from one
developed by Tony Wagner and the same effect is recounted in his book The global
achievement gap: Why even our best schools don't teach the new survival skills our
children need-and what we can do about it (2008). The intention of the exercise

132

was to open up discussion about teaching practice and shed light on the lack of
firmly established criteria for the successful instruction of critical thinking skills.
Making Professional Development Collaborative: Acknowledging the
Expertise of Teachers. This staff meeting and the ensuing professional
development session sought to build those criteria around objectives that employed
Bloom’s Taxonomy to define the critical thinking component of 21
st
Century Skills.
The session began with a guest speaker but focused primarily on allowing teachers
to work together within their subject matters to design lesson plans that utilized the
higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy: analyze, evaluate, and create. One teacher
found that the focus on critical thinking and the appeal to the expertise of the
school’s staff members facilitated an effective collaborative session:
We were talking about lessons or labs with higher levels at higher levels of
the Bloom’s Taxonomy, the higher levels to get kids thinking in that way.
So we sat together as a department and within two hours we just cranked out
two or three excellent lesson plans we all had worked together on that we’re
all going to use. The chemistry people did one or two, the biology people
did one or two, and it was neat to see the collaboration there based upon an
administrative idea, which doesn’t always click real well... there was a lot of
freedom, where the administrators said “Here’s what we want you to do, but
you have the freedom to do XYZ.” And I think that fed into our natural
inquisitiveness that we have, so we just shared ideas. It was great.

Another teacher concurred that the professional development session
successfully instigated productive discussion of critical thinking and communicated
21
st
century learning as a school-wide emphasis:
Just for developing value for these 21
st
century skills, I think you’ve been
witnessing some of that move in our school, exactly at the right time. Our
last professional development meeting was all about the revised Bloom’s
and the three higher level -analyzing, evaluating, synthesizing, creating, and
we had a speaker come in to teach us what effective instruction looks like at
these higher levels and also the rest of that day for professional development
we got into our level teams and we planned lessons together with the focus

133

of how can we better foster critical thinking in our lessons. So we designed
a lesson together. So in my department, English, for 11
th
grade, we
designed a lesson together on how to teach the building of a thesis statement
and how to facilitate better argument thinking.

Both of these teachers attributed the success of the professional
development session to the opportunity to organically discuss and share strategies
for teaching critical thinking with their colleagues. This reaction is in keeping with
the professional community of the school, which remains skeptical of professional
development measures that do not acknowledge the skill, expertise, and input of the
staff. The school leadership acknowledged and utilized this aspect of the
professional community by first presenting a clearly articulated vision (the teaching
of 21
st
century skills) and concern (the lack of accepted criteria for its instruction).
The administration then presented this vision in terminology the staff was familiar
and comfortable with, Bloom’s Taxonomy. Finally, the administration trusted the
professionalism and expertise of the teachers with developing solutions suited to
their specific subject matter domains. The response of the teachers demonstrated a
responsiveness to critical thinking instruction and willingness to engage each other
for the purpose of devising lessons that promote critical thinking.
Emergent Theme #3: 21
st
century learning preparation looks beyond
the classroom. Also consistent with the Indigenous Invention model (Heckman &
Montera, 2010) was the encouragement that Hillcrest High School administrators
gave the teaching staff to try innovative, non-traditional teaching practices.
Hillcrest High School administrators used celebratory gestures like the “Bird-
Award,” which recognizes risk-taking, and directly acknowledged and supported
teaching practices that emphasized life lessons and career skills. This support

134

encouraged teachers look outside of the traditional confines of classroom and
assessment when designing projects and assignments.
Life-Lessons and The Bird Award: Acknowledging the Value of Failure.
Once a month, a teacher at Hillcrest High School is honored with the “Bird Award”
at the school’s bimonthly staff meeting. The winner receives a small sculpture of a
bird that is described by an administrator as “hideously, anatomically incorrect.”
The award began as a tribute to a teacher who had tried something new, taken a
risk, and failed, though it has since morphed into a general honor for innovative
teaching. The Bird Award sends a clear message to the professional community,
however, about the value that risk-taking has among the school leadership. The
accompanying message is that the possibility of failure should not discourage
teachers from trying new approaches to instruction and assessment.
This attitude cultivates a professional community that has the freedom and
confidence to work outside of traditional attitudes about the nature and purpose of
student work. For one teacher, this confidence reflects the trust that has been
communicated to her based on her ability to demonstrate that her students were
learning lessons that extended beyond the classroom. This opportunity arose when
the teacher shared with her students that she would be giving the school
administration a presentation documenting her progress through the BTSA
program:
They came up with that idea, actually, because I was telling them, “Oh, I’m
going to present...” and they wanted to come and be a student panel for me.
And it’s never been done before in those presentations. So they came and
testified to the kinds of learning that they thought were valuable to them that
were different from the kinds of learning they had been doing before, and
how they called it “life lessons.”

135

These “life-lessons” grew out of a focus on unorthodox methods of teaching
and assessment that sought to appeal to students’ humanity, creativity, and cultural
awareness. The ultimate impact of the presentation, titled “Re-Humanizing
Education,” demonstrated the enthusiasm of school leadership towards
unconventional methods that served the purpose of making school more relevant
and personally meaningful for the students:
I gave that presentation and (the administrator) was watching and I talked
about some of the things that I did with my students, well, that some have
said are unconventional... things that I would do that would have to do with
engagement of students and not necessarily with curriculum all the time... he
was really excited, and when I had the end of the year debriefing with (the
administrator), he was telling me how he appreciated that. I’m new here so
sometimes there’s that pressure to just do what the old guard is doing, just
so I don’t ruffle any feathers, and he appreciated and gave me the freedom
to do those things that other teachers might feel like seem...fluffy.

This teacher believed that her student panel garnered her support and trust
from the administration before she had backed up her effectiveness with the
conventional measure of teaching success, test scores. She described the response
of the administration in emotional terms that reflected an awareness of the ultimate
value and aim of learning beyond the classroom:
what I was doing... even though I didn’t know at the time, I wasn’t sure
would come out with the students passing the AP mark at 5s, it ended up
working OK... But I think even prior to getting the results, David was giving
me the benefit of the doubt. Just because... I had brought some students into
the presentation with me. And (the administrator), he was moved by that.
And he said if I had gone in there and given my PowerPoint and said these
are the things students were learning, life lessons from me, he wouldn’t have
believed it. But it was because the students came in and said that they
walked away from my class with a B and they were OK with it because they
learned other things. That was really telling for him. I think that’s also why
he’s been giving me support.

136

The school leadership at Hillcrest High School encouraged this teacher to
pursue non-traditional teaching methods primarily because the ethical lessons that
students were learning extended beyond the test and classroom and had personally
affected the students enough that they were willing to speak on the teacher’s behalf.
And while the school leadership may not be granted responsibility for the risks that
teachers take to produce personally meaningful and memorable experiences for
their students, the administration at HHS has clearly and successfully guided their
staff with timely support, open ears, clear expectations, and more than anything,
trust.
Research Question 3: What is the perceived impact of 21
st
Century Skills on the
culture of the school?
Emergent Theme #1:21
st
Century Learning is Community Building.
Administrators and teachers at Hillcrest High School found ways to create and
harness a community-building culture within the school and the community at
large. Hillcrest High School teachers made an effort to create a dynamic culture by
both personalizing the decoration of their classrooms and utilizing music to engage
students. Meanwhile, HHS administrators found ways to engage the larger
community by cultivating diversity within its administrative team, broadcasting
information in multiple languages during PTA meetings, and utilizing a strong
parent volunteer effort to ensure an efficient beginning to the school year. Hillcrest
High School’s ability to bridge cultural differences within its community aligned
well with Heckman & Montera’s (2010) Indigenous Invention model.
Creating Culture in the Classroom. One common method of community
building found within multiple classrooms at Hillcrest High School was a concerted

137

effort on the part of teachers to create a fun, engaging, personal culture within the
classroom. Two common forms of creating culture in an HHS classroom were
teachers’ use of decorations to personally connect with students and music to bring
students together in engaging ways.
Multiple teachers used decorations as a method of communicating
important, personal information about themselves to their students. In one U.S.
Government classroom, pictures of all 44 U.S. presidents aligned the back wall,
surrounded by various framed displays of student art. As the teacher explained, he
is “an easy person to caricature,” and many of the pictures, one of which dated to
1970, emphasized the teacher’s tall, hulking frame. Two paintings were drawn to
resemble horror movies with the teacher starring in a monster-like role. The nature
of this artwork was good-humored, and as the teacher pointed out, they sent a
message to the other students, that although he may appear frightening, “more so as
I get older,” there is another side to him.
This teacher mounted one of the drawings on the wall to send a message to
himself. In this one the teacher was caricatured as a crow or buzzard-like creature
crouched sternly over his lectern. The teacher explained that he had found a smaller
version of this after class one day and was struck by its clever insightfulness. When
he addressed the class the next day, no one admitted to making the drawing. After
the year ended, the teacher received a knock on his door. Opening it, he discovered
the 2’ by 4’ drawing that now hangs on his wall, signed by a C student, someone
who had never stood out to the teacher during the year. The teacher explained that
there was a lesson to this picture for him, a reminder to not forget the students in the

138

middle, who often escape notice by not being exceptionally high or low in
achievement.
Another teacher used decorations to expose students to a variety of interests,
and inspirational sayings. Surrounding the classroom at just above eye-level were
an assortment of such quotations, some famous, some obscure, some anonymous,
each printed on an a 8”x 11” sheet of paper and placed side by side, circumventing
the classroom in a way that resembled paneling. Behind the teacher’s desk in the
corner adjacent to the room’s entrance were movie and music posters--some
authentic, some hand drawn—Star Wars, Lord of The Rings, Dinosaur Jr., a hand
drawn and colored Woody Allen poster that called attention to his various
distinctive features itemized graphically with corresponding text boxes. As
students entered this classroom, they were given a snapshot of the teacher’s own
passion for music, film, and literature.
What each classroom’s decorations provided was an opportunity for
students to see and connect with these teachers on a personal level. The humor and
passion on display was clearly intended to create a culture that encouraged personal
reflection and expression, both of which are vital to critical thinking and
collaboration as delineated in the P21 framework.
Other teachers took a more active approach to creating culture in the
classroom through the use of music. One teacher’s classroom was sparsely
decorated with traditional rows of desks and a smart board in the front. However,
as the students entered, the room came alive with the theme to the movie Rocky,
which, she later explained, was a popular motivational tool:

139

Music really helps. It’s a subtle thing... I think it is part of that culture
element. It really helps to set the tone at the beginning of the class. For
whatever reason, it’s just worked. I’ve done surveys of my students...I
research things on my students sometimes...and across the board, where I
just ask them what are some things that helped you get into the class and
that are memorable or helped you engage, and they’ve offered this—I
haven’t written it as one of the things they can check off...that the music that
I play every day as they enter the classroom has lowered barriers...

In this classroom, which emphasized collaboration and discussion,
“lowering barriers” was an important first step towards developing the
communication skills outlined within the P21 framework. Another Hillcrest High
School teacher used music not only to lower barriers but also as an interactive
learning tool within the class. After a warm up activity, the teacher distributed
handouts with the lyrics to the song “I Just Wanna Talk About Cell Division,” a
rock/pop song with educationally relevant lyrics. The students received lyric sheets
with missing words that they had to fill in so that they could complete the song.
The song itself was catchy, fun, and ridiculous, containing lyrics like “Prophase,
metaphase, anaphase, telophase, gimme interphase, too./ YAA, well I can sit and
talk for hours about mitosis with you./Ya! Please baby no television/I just want to
talk about cell division!” The teacher played the song on the room’s speaker
system and moved around the classroom, encouraging students to sing along and
playing air guitar with his yard stick. As the song continued, the students began to
loosen up and sing more loudly, eventually clapping to the song as it reached its
final climax. The students were then told that this week’s quiz would have
questions about the song.
This sing-along before the class’s main lecture served two purposes. First, it
provided a helpful mnemonic for remembering information about cell division for

140

the next quiz. Second, it stimulated and motivated the students to have a positive
outlook on the course by bringing them together in mind and spirit. As far as
transitions go, it got the students’ energy flowing between two activities that require
a degree of physical passivity—listening to and evaluating warm up assignments
and taking notes on the lecture.
Breaking down barriers, getting energy flowing, personalizing the classroom
through decorations—all these methods of creating culture within the classroom
provided students with a fun, engaging, collaborative environment that was well-
suited to 21
st
century learning. At Hillcrest High School, teaching the skills
contained within the P21 framework involved not only abandoning traditional
classroom strategies, but also abandoning traditional classroom culture. As a result,
students at HHS were encouraged to feel personally invested in the community of
the classroom, making them more willing and able to open up, engage, and work
together.
Know Your Community: Meeting Diversity with Diversity. At Hillcrest
High School, global perspectives are embedded into the larger Hillcrest Community
due to the affluence of the families that live in Hillcrest and the city’s large Asian
population. As a result, HHS has had the unique opportunity to address diverse
global perspectives within the school and throughout the city-wide community. As
one teacher noted, the emphasis on global awareness might be nurtured at HHS, but
it clearly did not originate there:
We would have to be very careful to take the credit for embracing these
themes and making it happen, not that we don’t. But these things are almost
imposed upon us by the particular community where we are. And my guess
is that when you go out to look at other high performing schools, that may

141

be something that you see a lot-Palos Verdes, Paly High, or you go up north
to go to Gunn High or Saratoga. You look at these themes, by virtue of the
kind of family that came to Hillcrest in the last 15 years, global awareness
has been placed upon us. You could have said we take a stand 15 years ago
against global awareness and that wouldn’t have stopped it.

An administrator concurred that the unique population at HHS makes global
awareness less of an educational emphasis and more of an educational factor to be
addressed:
I think also that what is specific to Hillcrest and our population, is that our
teachers don’t have to stretch to give a global awareness or relevance to
topics because our kids are very global. On spring break, they’re all over
the world…

However, it would be remiss to claim that Hillcrest High School does
nothing to address the global perspectives of its community. In fact, HHS makes a
concerted effort to incorporate those perspectives into the school’s larger
educational vision. Hillcrest High School teachers and administration demonstrated
an astute awareness of the unique qualities of its community and an ability to use
that awareness to incorporate the larger community into its educational mission.
Central to this effort is HHS’s cultivation of an administration that matches the
diverse perspectives of the community. As an administrator explained, the HHS
staff and administrative team is well suited to address a population that is culturally
unique and diverse:
Our staff is very diverse and global… 2 out of my 6 administrators are not
even U.S. citizens. So even in my own administrative meetings, I have
these voices that have very different backgrounds--educational, political,
cultural, that makes up our decision making and how we view things. I
think that’s an inherent asset.

The fruits of that staff and administrative diversity are a clear understanding
and acknowledgement of cultural discrepancies that could prevent the school from

142

connecting with and utilizing the strengths of the Hillcrest community. An
administrator shared how misunderstanding the demographics (and changing
demographics) of HHS could have a deleterious effect on the school’s efforts to
build its volunteer base:
With the changing demographics of Caucasian to Asian, we do have to
educate our parents. Because the parents are moving here solely because of
the reputation. But that doesn’t mean that they understand how we got that
reputation. So our parents who are coming from mainland China, which is
obviously different from Taiwan, different dynamic, but now it’s mostly
from mainland China...they are not allowed, they never cross through the
doors of a school in China. They are forbidden, you know, that’s it. You
don’t have a say, you don’t question. It’s a very different culture. We have
to bring them in and tell them that you’re here, that’s great, but that’s not
where your role ends. You have to be involved. We need you. We need your
money, but that’s not the important thing. We need you. You have to be
here.

Implicit in this awareness of the cultural differences within the school
population is acknowledging that while the community of Hillcrest may be more
globally diverse, cultural expectations may not always be conducive to instilling
other 21
st
century skills and themes. One teacher described the challenge of
convincing parents that creative or collaborative assignments are educationally
valuable: “Asian schooling doesn’t look quite like this, and wasn’t focused so much
on, say, collaboration, or on say, information literacy, or creativity.”
This teacher identified a mismatch between the educational experiences of
the students and their parents, many of whom come not only from a different
generation, but also a different culture. Addressing this mismatch is a central
concern at Hillcrest High School. However, communicating and explaining the
value of school norms and expectations presents a unique challenge at schools that
serve a globally diverse population. Beyond the cultural differences are language

143

barriers that inhibit HHS’s ability to easily communicate with parents. Hillcrest
High School and the accompanying community have both worked to address the
language barrier through parent groups and the school’s Parent Teachers
Association (PTA). Not only does Hillcrest High School benefit from a Chinese
Booster Club that conducts all of its meetings in Chinese, but the PTA makes a
concerted effort to accommodate its linguistically diverse community. An
administrator commented on how the Hillcrest PTA works with parent booster
clubs to addresses language barrier concerns using the technology of listening
devices:
They’re bringing those parents in that normally a language barrier would
keep those parents out. You know, its’ not comfortable, you go, you don’t
know what’s going on. But our parent boosters work as liaisons with our
PTA to bring those parents in. And they do a fantastic job. And our PTA
meetings, some of them, are like a UN, they have those listening devices,
like our freshman orientation, counselor night, our parents can pick up a
listening device and as the counselors are talking they can hear it in Spanish,
or they can hear it in Mandarin. That’s part of just knowing your clientele
and making every possible stride to try to bring them in.

The coordination with booster clubs and the use of listening devices to
broadcast announcements and information in multiple languages keeps parental
involvement robust in spite of linguistic and cultural differences. Another teacher
commented on this involvement and its’ impact in hyperbolic terms:
At (Hillcrest) High School we have hundreds, I want to say, it’s not really
hundreds though, of different parent groups, so we’re speaking community
wise, our PTA is amazing and the consistent information that gets sent out
to those parents are amazing. We have a very large community that comes
together to do anything that Hillcrest High School needs.

While HHS clearly did not create its’ globally and culturally diverse
community, its ability to acknowledge and address the different perspectives and

144

concerns of its community and bridge those differences with communication and a
shared commitment to excellence is a cornerstone of its community building efforts.
Volunteerism: How to Hit the Floor Running. One way that Hillcrest High
School utilizes the larger community is by mobilizing volunteer efforts in practical
and educationally beneficial ways. School volunteerism is strong in the Hillcrest
community, which an administrator noted is reflected in the makeup of the city’s
school board:
Unlike a lot of school boards, all of those reps have come through the
system, meaning if they didn't go here, which most of them did go to
(Hillcrest) High School and grew up here, their kids have gone through the
system, so they were PTA classroom volunteers in kindergarten and first
grade with their kids, and they then went into leadership roles in PTA from
just accountants and vice presidents, through all of the years, and three of
the current board members were my PTA presidents when their kids
graduated from high school and then they go on to run and be successfully
elected. I say that to show and demonstrate that in this community that's
what is valued. A lot of communities, school board is just a step into
politics. A lot of board members in a lot of these places have never been to
a PTA meeting. You know, they decide that they want to be a politician and
they start with the school board. That doesn't happen here, and those people
who have tried don't even get looked at. They just kind of shun them. It is
absolutely valued from the top that volunteerism and being connected to the
school district as a parent and that involvement is valued.

The high esteem placed on volunteerism in the Hillcrest community is
therefore clearly evident in the vested, long term interest that the school board
members have had in the district. Because many of the school board members were
themselves volunteers, they therefore appreciate the impact volunteerism can have
in strengthening a school district. At Hillcrest High School, this volunteerism
provides a crucial component to the teaching of 21
st
Century skills: the
establishment of the school’s rigorous approach to learning at the beginning of the
school year. Because of an extensive volunteer turnout to assist with registration,

145

the HHS teaching staff can maximize its time spent with students on the first week
of school. An administrator compared the effect volunteerism has on the first week
of school at HHS with what most schools experience:
Most schools spend a week trying to open. The first day of school teachers
are talking about, let's get your books from the library. If you come to
(Hillcrest) High School on the first day of school and open the door, you
would think that it's November. I mean there's a lecture or a presentation--
the books are open, they're engaged, and the kids are learning. It might be
an activity about connecting with the teacher, I don't mean to say that it's
cold, but it's not “let's do some fun things for the first week and
organizational things--here's some forms to fill out.” We hit the floor
running, but it's because we have hundreds of parents that run our
registration the week before school, and all that stuff's done. Every kid has
all their books, their ID, they have all their forms filled out, and they're
ready to go.

The substantial volunteer effort also indirectly affects HHS’s ability to
maximize the first week of school by allowing the school’s administrative team to
focus on other organizational issues such as the master schedule. The administrator
went on to emphasize the importance of HHS’s flawless master schedule in setting
the tone the first week:
And our master schedule is ...perfect. I mean literally, every kid is in a
class. I don't know how or why that's not expected in other places because
for me that's always been there. But you literally hear of all these places
where the first day you have all these kids with schedules that aren't right or
conflicts... you know what I mean, "If you have a problem go to the gym
because you don't have a class." That doesn't exist here. I mean it is silent,
no one in the hall, first period, first day of school. But that's because parents
do all of the work that we don't have to do, so that we can be working on the
master schedule and all of these things that are important to learning, that
equate to time on curriculum.

The Hillcrest High School administration and the district school board
therefore not only value volunteerism but have found a way to mobilize and utilize
an extensive volunteer effort to augment learning. Hillcrest High School’s

146

volunteer-led registration allows the school to set an organized, rigorous tone that
helps the teachers, school, and community to successfully begin the school year.
This effort shows how 21
st
Century Learning at HHS is not only community
building but also community reliant in how it brings the citizenry of Hillcrest
together to serve the school’s educational vision and standard.
Emergent Theme #2: 21
st
Century Learning Objectives Emphasize
Critical Thinking. Also consistent with the Indigenous Invention model’s
emphasis on creating third-party partnerships (Heckman & Montera, 2010) was
Hillcrest High School’s ability to communicate its educational vision with the
community and coalesce the community’s support. In 2006, HHS successfully
persuaded the community to pass a $218 million bond measure, which eventually
led to the construction of HHS’s state of the art Science building. With this
building, Science teachers have found ways to more efficiently and dynamically
teach scientific concepts and principles, leaving more time for problem-based
assignments oriented around critical and creative thinking.
Sharing With the School Board: Why We Don’t Teach Handwriting.
Teachers at Hillcrest High School and throughout the Hillcrest Unified School
District have recognized the importance of reassessing the values and objectives of
learning in the 21
st
century. This recognition led to a recent school board meeting
where teachers from all levels met to discuss lesson plans and explain the value of
innovative teaching practices. One HHS teacher who attended the meeting
addressed the importance of sharing the value of 21
st
Century Learning and the gap

147

that sometimes exists between how members of the community conceptualize
schools and what schools need to become:
I think that a lot of parents and community members or people whom we
want to support the schools don’t really have a concept of what teachers are
doing these days and how teaching has changed because before it really was
a lot of just rote, measurable assessment type things, quantitative things.
And one example they brought up, the Rotary (Club), they would ask, “Why
aren’t they teaching handwriting anymore?” I guess people in the
community just need a better idea of what kinds of things we are doing,
what strategies we are using to teach students now, and why it doesn’t
match with their expectations from when they were in school.

At this meeting, the teachers used the meeting’s focus, critical thinking, to
share with the larger Hillcrest community the value of learning life and career skills
such as initiative, self-direction, and accountability through self-assessment.
Among the methods discussed and explained at the meeting, the teacher went on to
explain, was the use of rubrics and peer-grading to develop the metacognitive skills
necessary for a self-reflective individual to function and thrive in the 21
st
Century
world:
I think it was interesting because across the grade levels from elementary to
12
th
grade, the students were doing a lot of peer assessment or self-
assessment, given rubrics or rubrics they’ve created themselves with the
teacher’s help. Or teachers give rubrics up front so they know the
expectations, and the students have to kind of gauge their own learning. At
the preschool/kindergarten level, they have to grade their own behavior. So
I think that’s really helpful because, with the 21
st
century student skills, the
self-awareness and then that kind of independent thinking, your
understanding of quality work is not just based on your supervisor telling
you somebody else’s second opinion, but you also have this sense of a
proper standard of where you should be. I think that’s really critical because
if it’s always some superior evaluating your work you would end up doing
the bare minimum I’d imagine, you know just what are the requirements
stipulated and then you meet it and that’s that, instead of being cutting edge
and innovative. I think having that self-awareness and the ability to critique
yourself can facilitate the innovation. And we also talked about the ability
to give and receive constructive criticism that comes from peer evaluation
and self-evaluation, to gracefully take the criticism, but also how to, in a

148

respectable way, how to interact with people to show what can be improved,
basic things like that.

As an outgrowth of this meeting, this teacher was able to successfully
connect the critical thinking, innovation, and collaboration components of P21’s
“Learning and Innovation Skills” with the initiative, self-direction, and
accountability components of P21’s “Life and Career Skills.” The meeting thus
provided unique opportunity for not only members the community to learn about
innovative teaching strategies, but for teachers to learn and reflect as well. This
teacher made both points as she explained how the meeting brought educators,
parents, and other invested citizens together as a community to share and discuss,
for the benefit of all:
It was awesome because I collected some tools for myself that I just talked
about—the use of rubrics, self-assessments. I saw some of the projects that
some of the teachers were having their students do and that gave me ideas. I
think there is a discussion that’s beginning about how can we validate what
teachers are doing to build these skills that are measureable, and also how
can the community, you know board members, parents see this, teachers at
their best.

Opportunities such as this school board meeting show how 21
st
century
learning can stimulate and strengthen communication within a community while
simultaneously enhancing professional collaboration and the public awareness of
innovative teaching practices.
A Measure for Success: Building a 21
st
Century Science Building. In
2011, Hillcrest High School opened its new Science building, a state of the art
facility paid for by the community with Measure “I”, a $218 million bond measure
passed in 2006 with 67% of the vote to refurbish and modernize school Hillcrest
Unified School District facilities. Half of these funds were allocated to HHS

149

(Hillcrest, 2010). Hillcrest High School used this extensive community support as
an opportunity to match funding with the needs of its teachers by bringing teachers
into the planning process of designing the building. One teacher explained the
process and the thinking behind it:
You know, I helped to design this building, actually, and this was the design
that I had always hoped for because for years, all my science instruction had
been where the classroom is included within the lab and so there was never
any real special feeling about this room...

The design that this teacher and others recommended was that each lab
would have an adjoining lecture hall so that the teacher could move a class back and
forth from the lecture hall to the lab depending on the needs of that part of the
lesson. Not only has the new Science building made it possible to easily separate
labs and lectures into rooms that are better suited to the purpose of the lesson, the
planning and design of the building improved collaboration and cooperation within
the science department:
there was a lot of collaboration that just went into this building, for example,
at one time, ... we wanted all the rooms to be like this, like a lab, lecture
hall, lab, lecture hall, and we presented that and the chemistry teachers and
the physical science teachers wanted more of a self-contained classroom and
lab, which you see over here. So really this building is a huge compromise
in collaboration where we actually changed the architect’s mind to do that.
I’ve been here 28 years, for the first time ever, we’re all in the same
building. We have never all been in the same place on campus. And that’s
helped to bring us close together... (another teacher) and I, we’ll even set up
a lab in one room, and then because he teaches another two sections of
physiology, we’ll just move back and forth, he’ll come into the room, it
makes it really easy, a lot less struggle in trying to set things.

The science building therefore represents a mutual investment on the part of
the community and the teachers, with the community investing money and the
teachers investing their time and shared expertise. The building itself creates an

150

opportunity for science teachers to come together, help one another, and capitalize
on a common goal of adding more creativity to their science projects and labs. This
teacher recognized the importance of reassessing the ultimate goal of science
instruction to make United States citizens more competitive on a global level:
we’ve tried really hard, or I have and most of the science teachers here have
tried to do more open-ended stuff, not like the old cookbook type labs, and
we still do those but to be a little more creative in our thinking. I think
people in the job market and when these kids get out there they are looking
for creative thinkers, not just those that follow directions, here’s how you do
it, ABC. So a lot of our labs designed in physiology and the science
department are designed to be more open-ended, more like in the real world
where scientists approach—here’s the problem we are trying to solve, how
effectively can we solve that? Not so much “here’s the way, let me tell you
the way to do it,” so more open ended labs... There was an article recently, I
can’t remember I read it, about how in some countries, although they may
be way ahead of us in science, they still lack the creativity that exists where
you have Nobel Prize winners and so forth. That’s kind of our emphasis in
here...What’s a creative way to do it?

The combination of the adjoining lab and lecture hall and the
technologically furnished rooms (e.g., both lab and lecture hall contain smart
boards, and the lecture halls also contain clickers for students to answer questions
electronically) gives science teachers at HHS more opportunities to both challenge
and engage students’ creativity. Two observations in the science building captured
an intellectually and physically animated class period. Both teachers smoothly
moved from an introductory activity in the lab to a lecture in the stadium seating
lecture hall, and then back to carry out the day’s lab. The use of smart boards to
present the lecture engaged the students and also managed to free up time for the
lab. The time saving effect of using smart boards in science and its impact on
critical and creative thinking was well noted by an administrator:

151

A lot of the curriculum is just so full, there is really not enough time to
deliver what the teachers need to deliver. One of the first assets of the new
technology is that they spend less time having to deliver the curriculum that
the teachers need to deliver so that they can spend more time with the higher
level thinking, the skill sets that these kids need—being able to build on the
information, scaffold, synthesize, analyze and then be able to articulate it
and predict, all of those skill sets… In the mini lecture halls, when their
lectures are on power point...traditionally it would have taken the teacher an
hour to write things on the chalkboard, (now) they can just read through it.
In fact a lot of teachers now … are just saying you can download the notes
tonight. Let’s get to discussion... I think that, for the science wing, and for
the science department, that has been a huge benefit. They spend more time
in labs, more time discussing and doing write-ups than in just presenting the
information.

The very act of moving the kids from the lab to the lecture hall and back
also has the benefit of keeping the students “on their toes,” as one teacher put it,
while the use of technology appeals to students own experience with media. This
appeal should not be surprising, since this teacher admitted that many presentations
were designed by students themselves:
Obviously the students live in a very fast moving, you know things move a
lot faster, pictures, diagrams, you know we can download videos that are so
good and it seems to keep their interest, it piques their interest.... Now me,
it’s kind of interesting because coming from the old school I have some of
these kids, I actually use a lot of these kids to develop things, my TA’s
presentations, because they are so much better at it than I am. I’m learning
from them... And they’ll bring ideas in to show me and they’ll say that’s
great, let’s use that. So that’s definitely... I mean they’re way ahead of me,
and I’m learning a lot, too. But it’s made a lot of difference being in here. I
think the kids are just more excited to be here.

The excitement of the students, the extra time spent on lab work, and the
new freedom to be innovative with technology and lessons, owes much to the
passage of Measure “I”. However, the passage of the bond measure was really the
beginning of a story where community, teachers, and students came together to
each contribute towards changing the dynamic of Science instruction at HHS. What

152

truly allows 21
st
century learning to occur in these classrooms is not simply the
addition of funds, technology, or mandated practices. Instead, the spirit of
cooperation and the willingness to trust in the innovative expertise of both teachers
and students have produced an engaging environment that approaches science with
creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration.
Emergent Theme #3: 21
st
Century Preparation Looks Beyond the
Classroom. Hillcrest High School has created a culture that always looks ahead to
college and a future career. Consistent again with Heckman and Montera’s (2010)
Indigenous Invention model was HHS’s ability to reach out to the community to
find speakers who could come in and tell students about potential career paths. At
the same time, the college and career-oriented culture of HHS motivated students
themselves to reach out to the community to volunteer for Hillcrest’s businesses
and public services. This culture was partially rooted in the expectations of the
community’s parents and the students themselves but was also engaged and
nurtured by the HHS staff. This staff strived to prepare all its students for college
and executed that vision with tremendous passion and purpose.
Bringing Careers to the Students (and Vice Versa): Guest Speakers and
Student Volunteers. As part of Hillcrest High School’s culture of looking beyond
the classroom, both teachers and students pursue opportunities to utilize the greater
Hillcrest area for models and experiences that might translate to success after high
school. HHS teachers have successfully looked into the community and brought
professional figures to the classroom speak, engage, and share with the students.
Meanwhile, many HHS students have actively pursed community involvement for

153

the purpose of gaining experience and contacts as well as strengthening resumes
and college applications. Together, these efforts on the part of teachers and
students reflect a culture where community involvement and engagement is
considered a vital part of the educational experience.
One Science teacher described the department’s practice of bringing
community professionals into the classrooms, providing a glimpse into the scope
and breadth of the practice:
We will probably have this year ten speakers, professionals come in to talk
to the kids in the big lecture hall here. For example, this Friday, we have a
guy coming who is an expert on anti-venom and venomous reptiles and
snakes... So he’s coming in, bringing in, they’re not going to handle them,
but showing them some venomous snakes... We’ve had dermatologists,
orthopedic surgeons, dentists, and what they’ll do is talk about their career
as well, how to get into that and give the kids some tips on that. I kind of
weed them out because... There are some that just relate to the kids a lot
better, and so we’ve had probably 40-50 speakers in here... But the kids love
it, it’s really interesting. In a year, probably 10, 10-15, I’d say.

These speakers give the students opportunities to not only hear lectures but
also experience dynamic (and in this case, venomous) presentations. The speakers
also give the school an opportunity to connect with the community and vice-versa.
As this teacher made clear, the extent of this practice is reflective of the tremendous
support and engagement of HHS’s parents:
They are friends of parents, local doctors here in the area who have come
before, and they are always really willing to come in. So one of the things I
do when we have back to school night here, I quiz the parents about do you
know any doctors, nurses anybody in the medical field, and I get a lot of
referrals that way. Parents are very actively involved here.

Guest speaking for the HHS Science department therefore provides an
opportunity for the parents as well as the larger community to participate in the
educational goals of the school, though its success is largely due the staff’s ability

154

to reach out and capitalize on this willingness in the community. However, teachers
are not the only ones reaching out to enhance the educational experience for HHS
students. In fact, one striking aspect of the HHS culture is the impressive number
of HHS students who themselves volunteer to go out into the community for both
service and educational purposes. As one teacher explained, the extent of the
community service reflects the cultural norm that most HHS students expect to
attend colleges and are competitive enough to devote hours for the purpose of
adding volunteer service to their application:
Many of our students are, of course, when college recommendations look at
service in the community, your mouth just drops. I write a lot of
recommendation for kids, and some of the hours that these kids spend is
amazing. If you go to Methodist Hospital over here across the street, they’ll
tell you “We’ve got so many Hillcrest Students over here, it’s crazy.” They
would do, like filing paperwork, wheeling patients around. The arboretum,
over here, has a lot of students that, I know a lot of our boys are Eagle
Scouts they do Eagle Scout projects when they have the plant cells over
there. Anytime anybody in this community or organization puts out “We
need help,” we put it in our bulletin, our Wildcat News, and I know they’re
overwhelmed with the kids that go out because they are really involved in
service... And then what the clubs will do, we have a number of operating
clubs here, I’m an advisor for Affinity for Animals, they’ll have things like
the SPCA, or the arboretum will need something, and they’ll talk about that
in the clubs.

As much as HHS students are motivated by their desire to enhance their
college applications, this teacher at least sees students who are also driven by a love
of service and community involvement to go above and beyond the typical
expectations of student volunteerism:
And kids love service hours here—you always wonder, if college
applications didn’t say what do you do for service, if that wasn’t important,
would that drop off, but I generally think most of our kids love doing things
outside. So we’re very much reaching out into this community. I would say
that most of the organizations here would tell you that they see Hillcrest
students involved in many, many things.

155

This dynamic—community professionals stepping into the classroom and
Hillcrest High School students stepping into the community—bespeaks a unity
within the culture of Hillcrest that embraces volunteerism on the part of children
and adults. By providing HHS students the opportunity to engage and work with
professionals, the larger HHS community plays a vital role in ensuring that HHS
students are looking beyond the classroom and developing the Life and Career
Skills that are vital to the P21 framework.
College Preparation: Hard-Work and High Expectations. Balancing their
willingness to consider and support innovative teaching practices, Hillcrest High
School leadership clearly expects that HHS will also prepare students for life
beyond the high school classroom by ensuring that they are prepared for college
classroom. The expectation that all of its students will be prepared for college is an
essential component to the school leadership’s vision. As an administrator
explained, the aim of the school leadership is to provide the expectation of college
for each student:
We all know that a common thread of students who don’t make it is that
they lack a vision. They don’t know, and nobody in their family has gone to
college, so it’s not even an expectation. We don’t allow our kids to do that.
They have a plan, and every single one of them, the plan includes the ability
to go to college. They may choose not to and go a different route, which is
A-OK as long as they continue to be a contributing member of society. But
they will be able to go to college, they will have what they need, and they
know that they will have the option. We don’t allow students to take a path
that doesn’t put them in the right seat to go to college.

The expectation that all students will be prepared for college goes beyond
lip service: HHS’s extensive counseling program is a testament to the strength of
this vision both at the school and district level. This vision permeates the school

156

and is reflected in the commitment demonstrated by its teachers. As one teacher
explained, the expectation that all students should be ready to attend college drives
teaching efforts at HHS:
At Hillcrest High School, there would be nothing short of it. And the push
is if you’re driven to go to college, or a university, and that’s a goal, then
we’re going to do everything in our power to make sure that you accelerate
and are successful in everything you do to get there. I don’t think anyone at
Hillcrest here falls by the wayside of “Well, you’re not really going to go to
college, so, it’s OK...” I don’t think we can do that here, and I think other
schools probably do. But we still push, and we push knowing that it may be
useless. But we’re kind of upfront about it. But it’s still useful, if it’s
separating you to get into college, but that’s the culture of Hillcrest.
Everyone here is expected to go to a 4 year university.

This teacher puts the efforts of the staff in heroic terms, with each staff
member driven to go above and beyond minimal expectations for the sake of
providing students with an education that properly prepares them for college and
beyond:
...there is not a teacher here that would leave at 2:45, just when the bell
rings-that teacher will stay and work, and work, and work, and we overwork
ourselves. In a good way, sometimes a bad way because everyone needs
rest, but at the same time, our staff-our teachers to our secretaries, to our
custodians, to our administration to our district office leadership-every
single person and I’m leaving out several... coaches... we give everything
and then some.

This commitment on the part of the teachers extends to extra-curricular
programs such as student government and Apache News, where life and career
skills are on prominent display. One prominent club advisor explained the toll of
this effort, and the rewards:
I like the assignment. I’m a little old for it. It’s a young man’s assignment.
I was looking at that with homecoming. It started when I woke up a 4 AM
and finished just before midnight. And I don’t bounce back any more from
days like that. But it’s fun and it puts you next to the movers and shakers,
the center of what’s going on.

157

The desire of the Hillcrest High School teaching staff to be at “the center of
what’s going on” connects their efforts to mold the “movers and shakers” of
tomorrow with their desire to build a community and culture that nurtures students
and guides them into the future. But these teachers also demonstrate a desire to be a
vital part of that very community, to be at once an instigator in the building of
culture and an active participant within that culture. The reward of that
participation, for the teachers, includes but is not limited to monetary
reimbursement. The teachers who run the Link Crew program exemplify this truth.
As one administrator explained, these teachers “receive no money, no stipends...just
their passion for helping these freshmen get adjusted.” This passion pervades the
professional culture of HHS, but as a teacher explained, it is still only one part of
the story:
I think there’s two secrets. And they’re not secrets... It takes everybody
going in the same direction. Some schools I think have not the two forces
combined. Some have the motivated teachers and staff and what not, but the
student expectation from the parents side isn’t that high, so the drive... the
kid doesn’t get the same push from home, so they’re not meeting. Here,
obviously we’re going to have parents that do and don’t, but the majority do.
I mean I would say 90-95% of our parents at home are pushing. No parent
wakes up in the morning and says “I want my student to fail today.” But
that parental drive and cultural awareness that “this is no other choice, this is
what you are doing. You are accelerating.” And those both are the secrets.
It takes community, it takes partnership, it takes a village to raise a child,
and it goes right back to that. And if we’re all going in the same direction,
partnering equally, and sometimes not—sometimes we give a little more and
sometimes we take a little more, but it requires the entire village.

Hillcrest High School succeeds in creating a rigorous academic
environment, but not because of its hard working teachers or culturally and socio-
economically driven parents. Hillcrest High School succeeds because of its ability

158

to create partnerships, i.e., the ability of a variety of educators, parents, and
professionals to reach out to others in the community and unite behind a common
goal: preparing a generation that straddles centuries for the world that lies ahead of
them.
Discussion of the Findings
This study looked at the programs, practices, professional community and
culture at Hillcrest High School. The purpose of the study was to determine how
these different components of the school aligned with, supported, and were
impacted by 21
st
Century learning practices as outlined and described by the P21
framework and associated research. The study consisted of 10 classroom
observations; interviews with 4 teachers and an administrator; a survey provided to
155 staff members, of which 32 responded; and an extensive document review.
During the course of data collection, three themes emerged that capture HHS’s
attempts teach P21’s 21
st
century skills and outcomes: 1. 21
st
century learning is
community building, 2. 21
st
century learning objectives emphasize critical thinking,
and 3. 21
st
century preparation looks beyond the classroom. These themes
consistently emerged from the triangulation of the various data collection
instruments and also emerged within the context of each of the three research
questions.
However, specification of these themes does not imply that they describe
disparate qualities of learning at Hillcrest High School. In spite of the fact that
these results are organized and presented by theme, the spirit of the data and its
presentation reflects that each theme augments and supports the others. Each data

159

example has been presented under a specific theme, yet each of them could have
represented one or both of the other themes. The choice to place an example under
a specific theme did not result from the exclusivity of that one theme within the
example, but instead because that example aptly displayed that specific theme in a
prominent way.
In more specific terms, every example of community building at Hillcrest
High School centered on the development of both critical thinking skills and
preparation that looked beyond the classroom. In other words, the community
building at HHS had a purpose, and the success of that community building
depended upon the school’s ability to capture and articulate that purpose to staff,
citizens, and students. By the same token, HHS’s success in teaching critical
thinking stemmed from HHS teachers’ treatment of critical thinking not as an
isolated activity but as a communal activity with rewards that extended beyond the
classroom walls. When administrators and teachers inspired students to look
beyond the classroom in their life preparation, what they showed students was a
community that they could invest in, benefit from, and impact through creativity
and critical thinking. 21
st
century learning at HHS cannot be captured by an
itemized agenda; each of the emergent themes are best represented as surfaces of a
prism that, when turned, revealed new and exciting colors.
At Hillcrest High School, this prism has been constituted by the partnerships
that have been created among teachers, parents, community members, and students.
No subgroup at HHS can be perfectly understood without seeing not only its
relationship, but its shared and articulated understanding with the other groups. As

160

explained above, the Hillcrest community provides HHS with a unique opportunity
to develop P21’s 21
st
century skills and outcomes in its students. By understanding,
engaging, and mobilizing that community, Hillcrest High School has successfully
begun the journey of rethinking education for this young century.
The following chapter will continue this discussion and analysis by
examining the relevance of these findings to future practices that incorporate 21
st

century learning. The chapter will then suggest further study to determine how
such a model of learning might be replicated at other schools.

161

CHAPTER 5
DISCUSSION
This chapter will first summarize the case study’s purpose, design and
research. The chapter will then discuss recommendations for future practice and
study.
Purpose and Design of the Study
Due to a confluence of social, economic, and technological factors, the 21
st

century has exhibited dramatic changes in the job market, making it easier for
companies and organizations to employ a global workforce. Some U.S. schools are
recognizing and embracing globalization in their mission statements and strategic
plans to ensure that U.S. graduates are poised to compete with worldwide talent. It
is unclear, however, what programs and practices these schools are actually
implementing.
Nine doctoral students each conducted research on this problem at different
schools as part of a thematic dissertation cohort. This thematic cohort used multiple
instruments to triangulate the data around the following three research questions:
4. What are the practices and programs at the school and how they are
aligned to 21
st
century skills and themes?
5. What is the professional community at the school, and how does it
supports these practices?
6. What is the perceived impact of 21
st
century skills and themes on the
culture of the school?

162

21
st
Century Skills: Framework and Research
This study defined education’s role in addressing globalization as the
teaching of 21
st
century skills and themes. The framework defined 21
st
century
skills and themes with The Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills’ (2009) “21st Century
Themes and Student Outcomes.” This framework was chosen because of its
comprehensive scope and consistency with likeminded frameworks. Among the
salient trends that P21’s “21
st
Century Themes and Student Outcomes” addresses
are the shifting of jobs from the manufacturing to the service-sector, the increasing
tendency of companies and organizations to seek cheaper labor overseas, and U.S.
CEO’s increasing belief that employees must bring communication, critical
thinking, collaboration and creativity skills to the workforce (Bureau of Labor and
Statistics, 2010; Friedman, 2007; Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills, 2010).
This study endeavored to determine what a school incorporating the
Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills’ (2009) “21
st
Century Themes and Student
Outcomes” looks like. Based on the research findings, this study concluded that
such a school would be a model of “Indigenous Invention,” marked by teachers
who are encouraged to challenge traditional approaches, provided with
collaborative opportunities to imagine and design new approaches, and whose
efforts are supplemented and inspired by third party partnerships (Heckman &
Montera, 2010).
A professional culture that promotes 21
st
century learning through
Indigenous Invention would also clarify the process of higher order thinking by
focusing on Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) cognitive processes and knowledge

163

types to specify objectives that promote critical thinking and metacognition. To
prepare students for a constantly changing world, such environments would seek to
incorporate prior knowledge with higher order principles and strategies for the
purpose of solving problems with varying degrees of collaboration and teacher
guidance (Kalyuga 2010; Mayer 2008; Schmidt 1983).
Because of the various components incorporated within the Partnership for
21
st
Century Skills (2009) “21
st
Century Themes and Student Outcomes,” 21
st

Century Learning would also efficiently make use of technology and methods that
incorporate multiple themes and objectives. Two promising directions for 21
st

century learning that incorporate multiple components of the framework are media
literacy and sustainability literacy. Media literacy includes the ability to critically
engage with media products, meaningfully use that information, and create media
that incorporates sophisticated communication strategies and technological skills
(Anderson, 2008; Leh, Kouba, & Davis, 2005; Peppler, 2010; Thoman and Jolls,
2004). Sustainability literacy requires that students understand how environmental,
economic, and social equity issues are interrelated and how this understanding can
be utilized to create and maintain a sustainable global society (Nolet, 2009).
Reality or role-based games that seek to recreate imagined or real-life scenarios for
the sake of critical analysis and problem solving can dynamically address media
and sustainability issues while enhancing collaboration and creative thinking skills
(Dede, 2007; Squire, 2010).

164

Summary of the Findings
This study is about Hillcrest High School (HHS), an urban high school in
the eastern Los Angeles area serving a diverse population of 3,610 students. HHS
was selected for the case study because it mentions items from P21’s “21
st
Century
Themes and Student Outcomes” on its web site and its self-study for accreditation
with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC, 2010). The school
also received an overall API score of 890 in 2010.
This study utilized Bolman and Deal’s (2008) analytical framework
whereby four frames are used to identify relational patterns, offering detailed
description that attempts to recreate the phenomenon in its natural context.
According to Bolman and Deal’s (2008) framework, there are four key influences
that may explain patterns of behavior and avenues of influence within a culture: the
political frame, symbolic frame, structural frame and human resource frame
(Bolman and Deal, 2008).
By way of using this framework, three themes consistently emerged from
the data collection process that demonstrated how the programs, practices,
professional community and culture of Hillcrest High School promoted, supported,
and were impacted by 21
st
century learning:
1. 21
st
century learning is community building. Hillcrest High School
makes a concerted effort to create a community among students,
teachers, parents, and other citizens. These efforts directly result from
the school’s assessment of its strengths and weaknesses and its

165

commitment to preparing students to be productive, successful members
of the larger economic and global community.
2. 21
st
century learning objectives emphasize critical thinking.
Administrators and teachers utilize Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001)
revised Bloom’s Taxonomy to develop and implement learning
objectives that develop conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive
knowledge through analysis, evaluation, and creation. At Hillcrest High
School, learning objectives based on Bloom’s revised taxonomy are
emphasized by the school leaders, implemented in imaginative ways in
the classroom, and are evident across the co-curriculum as well.
3. 21
st
century preparation looks beyond the classroom. Hillcrest High
School employs teaching practices and programs that engage students to
be active participants in the school and city-wide community. Students
at the Hillcrest High School have the opportunity to produce
professionally relevant work for both their classmates and the larger
community. These students are also seen as active participants, not
passive recipients, in the educational, cultural, and professional
community of Hillcrest.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The new demands of an interconnected, global economy have challenged
educators worldwide to rethink the ultimate purpose and design of education.
However, the United States has been slow at the national and state level to address
these demands and implement changes that would better prepare its students for an

166

interconnected world. As a result, U.S. schools have largely been left to their own
devices when it comes to recognizing and attending to the new challenges and
opportunities inherent in 21
st
century education.
Hillcrest High School provides a unique opportunity to gauge how a
community that demographically leans toward a global perspective can impact a
school, and vice versa. While this demographic itself cannot be replicated in every
school setting, the methods by which HHS capitalizes on its community’s makeup
and values may be useful when considering how a school might move toward a 21
st

century learning model.
Hillcrest High School’s programs and practices demonstrate that 21
st

century schools should work to develop strong connections both within and
between its professional, student, and city-wide communities. The first and most
important step in this process is initiation. An administration that wants to develop
a strong 21
st
century curriculum needs a highly competent and trustworthy teaching
staff, and the best way to develop such a staff is to focus intently on developing new
teachers. Such an administration should begin by giving new teachers a thorough
introduction to the specific expectations and challenges of that specific school and
community. Then, this administration should make a concerted effort to ensure that
new teachers are supported, encouraged, and evaluated fairly. New teachers are not
only the future of the school, they are an important source of innovative ideas and
enthusiasm. Forcing new teachers to solitarily learn their professions, students, and
school wastes their energy and ideas on frantic troubleshooting, stressfully
inefficient work, and discouraging results. Instead, the passion and innovation that

167

new teachers bring into schools should be nurtured, harnessed, and utilized to
revitalize the current school culture and ensure that the school’s future will remain
in highly competent and reliable hands.
As a complement to this initiation of new teachers, schools should
implement programs such as the Link Crew to bring incoming freshmen into the
school community and ease the transition into high school. Such a program would
not only benefit incoming freshmen; it would also provide upperclassmen with a
platform for impacting the school community and developing many of the “Life and
Career Skills” specified by P21 (2009). Most importantly, a program such as the
Link Crew would coalesce the larger school community around common
educational goals, simultaneously building the competence and confidence of the
school’s new students while increasing the visibility and prominence of its student
leaders.
Along with building a strong student and professional community, a school
administration seeking to implement a 21
st
century learning framework should also
make efforts to communicate the school’s goals and vision with the larger school
community. Parent volunteers can be used effectively to reduce the number of
overlapping logistical concerns and allow the administration to focus solely on
curriculum and scheduling. A united school community can assist in fundraising
efforts, or in the case of Hillcrest High School, allocate large quantities of funds
through bond initiatives. Community based volunteer-work and funding can help
schools make the difficult transition toward a more academically rigorous,
technologically state of the art learning environment.

168

Developing a strong bond with a city-wide community may take time and
effort, but should begin by first understanding that community’s values and
concerns. For example, understanding the cultural or economic obstacles that may
prevent parents from helping the school can inform efforts to reach out to the
community. Administrators can use this understanding to ensure that an open
forum exists for community members of all backgrounds and languages to listen,
speak, and contribute for the betterment of the school.
The value of a strong, interconnected professional, student, and city-wide
community for 21
st
century learning cannot be understated. Such a community
cannot only strengthen the vision of the school, but it can have a strong impact on
teaching 21
st
century skills such as critical thinking and innovation. Critical
thinking should be developed in communal settings with a high degree of trust and
collaboration. Students’ innovation will more likely be piqued by opportunities to
express skills and ideas to a larger community as opposed to a single teacher or
classroom, whether through volunteer services in the city, extracurricular activities,
or class projects that showcase student work for the larger community, such as film
festivals. A community that is large, invested, and united around a common vision
can provide more tools, opportunities, and experiences than one that is fragmented,
uncommunicative, and uncertain. If an administrative team truly seeks to move
beyond traditional instruction, then building a strong community around 21
st

century learning may open exciting and unimagined doors.
However, developing a comprehensive model for building such a
community lies beyond the scope of this dissertation and would require further

169

research. The findings of this study suggest that such research should focus on
better understanding the different dynamics of each component of community
building discussed. This study recommends that future research isolate and focus
on four questions in particular:
1. How do the benefits and challenges of enlisting city-wide community
involvement change when looking at communities that have different
socio-economic and cultural makeups?
2. What are the long term benefits of initiation efforts like the Link Crew
and Hillcrest High School’s focus on new teachers and how do they
compare to schools where such efforts are less prominent?
3. To what extent does learning in a communal, interactive environment
enhance the development of flexible problem solving skills?
4. What role does audience play in developing critical thinking and
innovation skills, and how does expanding that audience beyond the
classroom impact students’ development?
Better understanding these four questions through further research could
help educators isolate factors within Hillcrest High School’s programs, practices,
professional community, and culture that might be replicated in other contexts for
the expansion of 21
st
century learning.
Summary
As the global economy adapts to advances in technology and the worldwide
redistribution of labor, educational leaders worldwide realize that they must also
adapt to ensure that students are prepared to succeed in a world of shifting

170

opportunities. In the U.S., this realization has been coupled with a concern that the
U.S. lacks an agreed upon framework to prepare students for an increasingly global
economy. The Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills, a coalition of public and private
interests, addresses this issue by outlining specific skills and outcomes that schools
should focus on in the 21
st
century. While the movement has yet to instigate
nationwide guidelines and accountability measures for 21
st
century learning, certain
schools have taken the initiative to incorporate global perspectives into their
programs and practices. Hillcrest High School was chosen as one of nine such
schools by a dissertation cohort for closer study. This case study focused on how
21
st
century learning is aligned with HHS’s programs and practices, is supported by
its professional community, and perceptibly impacted its school culture. Data
collected at HHS indicates that 21
st
century learning at the school relied largely on
the school’s ability to build an interconnected student, professional, and city-wide
community. Within this community, Hillcrest High School’s administrators and
teachers successfully communicate a focus on critical thinking and provide
opportunities for students to contribute innovative, community-based, and career-
oriented work. In a world where the village is increasingly global, HHS strives to
connect each child to a community that is at once intimately personal and vastly
intertwined with the tides of the world. In doing so, Hillcrest High School assumes
that global preparation begins by showing each child what that word “village”
really means.

171

REFERENCES
Anderson L.W, Krathwohl, D. R., Airasian, P.R., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E.,
Pintrich, P.R., Raths, J., Wittrock, M.C. (Eds.)(2001). A Taxonomy for
Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of
Educational Objectives. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.

Anderson, R. E. (2008). Implications of the information and knowledge society for
education. International Handbook of Information Technology in Primary
and Secondary Education, 5-22.
Atkinson, R., Renkl, A., & Merrill, M. (2003). Transitioning from studying
examples to solving problems: Effects of self-explanation prompts and
fading worked-out steps. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(4), 774–
783.

Bolman, L.G. and Deal, T.E. (2008) Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice,
and Leadership. San Francisco:Jossey-Bass.

Boomerang Project (2011). Why Link Crew? Retrieved on October 10
th
, 2011 from
http://www.boomerangproject.com/high-school-transition.

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L. & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How experts differ
from novices in how people learn. (pp. 31-50). Washington, D.C.: National
Academy Press.
Bybee, R.W. & Fuchs, B. (2006). Preparing the 21st century workforce: A new
reform in science and technology education. Journal of Research in Science
Teaching, 43(4), 349–352.

California Department of Education. 2009. 2009-2010 Academic Performance
Index Reports Information Guide. [Data File]. Retrieved from
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/ap/documents/infoguide09.pdf

Chase, W. G., and Simon, H. A. (1973). Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology,
4, 55-81.

Clark, R.E., Feldon, D., Van Merrienboer,J.J.G., Yates, K., and Early, S. (2008).
Cognitive task analysis. In J.M. Spector, M.D. Merrill, J.J.G. van
Merrienboer, & M.P. Driscoll (Eds.). Handbook of research on educational
communications and technology (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.

Cowen, N. (2000). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration
of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 87-185.

172

Cowan, N., Morey, C.C., & Chen, Z. (2007). The legend of the magical number
seven. In S. Della Sala (Ed.), Tall tales about the brain: Things we think we
know about the mind, but ain't so (pp. 45-59). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Cramer, S. R. (2007). Update your classroom with learning objects and twenty-first-
century skills. The Clearing House 80 (3), 126-132.

Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Constructing 21-st century education. Journal of
Teacher Education, 57(3), 300-314.

Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). The Flat World and Education: How America’s
Commitment to Equity will Determine our Future. New York, NY:
Teacher’s College Press.

Dede, C. (2007). Transforming education for the 21
st
century: New pedagogies that
help all students attain sophisticated learning outcomes.

Dede, C. (2010). Comparing Frameworks for 21st Century Skills. Retrieved from
http://www.watertown.k12.ma.us/dept/ed_tech/research/pdf/ChrisDede.pdf

De Groot, A. (1965). Thought and choice in chess. The Hague, Netherlands:
Mouton. Original work published 1946.

De Groot, A. D. (1966). Perception and memory versus thought: Some old ideas
and recent findings. In Kleinmuntz, B. (ed.), Problem Solving, NY: Wiley.

Edsource (2011). Glossary Terms. Retrieved from
http://www.edsource.org/glossary.html

Ellis, M. (2008). Leaving no child behind yet allowing none too far ahead: Ensuring
(in)equity in mathematics education through the science of measurement
and instruction. Teachers College Record 110(6), 1330-1356.

Friedman, T. L. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century.
New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Futrell, M.H. 2010. Transforming teacher education to reform America's P-20
education system. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(5), 432-440.

Geary, D. (2007). Educating the evolved mind: Conceptual foundations for an
evolutionary educational psychology. In J. S. Carlson & J. R. Levin (Eds.),
Psychological perspectives on contemporary educational issues (pp. 1–99).
Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

173

Gibson, I. W.(2005). Constructing meaning in a technology-rich, global learning
environment. Computers in the Schools, 22 (1), 169 -182

Heckman, P. E. & Montera, V. L. (2009). School reform: The flatworm in a flat
world: From entropy to renewal through indigenous invention. Teachers
College Record,111(5), 1328-1351.

Hillcrest High School. (2010). Principal’s Message. Retrieved on May 8, 2011 from
http://www.hhs.husd.net

Hillcrest High School. (2010). 2010 WASC self-study focus on learning. Retrieved
on May 14, 2011 from
http://hhs.husd.net/modules/groups/homepagefiles/cms/1414167/File/2010_
WASC.pdf

Hillcrest High’s Wildcat News. (2012). Retrieved on January 21, 2012 from
http://www.youtube.com/user/WildcatNews/featured

Hillcrest Unified School District (2011). Agreement between the Board of
Education and the

Hillcrest Teachers Association. Retrieved on February 1, 2012 from
http://intranet.ausd.net/pers/contract/index.htm

Hillcrest Unified School District (2010). Hillcrest High School: School
Accountability Report Card 2009-2010. Retrieved on May 8, 2011 from
http://hillcrest.schoolwisepress.com/reports/2010/pdf/hillcrest/sarci_en_19-
64261-1930288h.pdf

Hoffman, J. (2010). What we can learn from the first digital generation:
implications for developing twenty-first century learning and thinking skills
in the primary grades. Education 3-13, 38 (1), 47- 54.

Jonassen, D. (1991). Objectivism vs. constructivism. Educational Technology
Research and Development, 39(3), 5-14.

Kalyuga, S. (2007). Enhancing instructional efficiency of interactive e-learning
environments: A cognitive load perspective. Educational Psychology
Review, 19(3), 387–399. doi:10.1007/s10648-007-9051-6

Kalyuga, S., Renkl, A., & Paas, F. (2010). Facilitating flexible problem solving: A
cognitive load perspective. Educational Psychology Review, 22, 175-186.
doi: 10.1007/s10648-010-9132-9

174

Kirschner, F., Paas, F., & Kirschner, P. A. (2009). A cognitive load approach to
collaborative learning: United brains for complex tasks. Educational
Psychology Review, 21, 31-42.

Kirschner, P.A., Sweller, J. & Clark, R.E. (2006) Why minimal guidance during
instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist,
discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching.
Educational Psychologist, 41, 75-86.

Leh, A. S. C. , Kouba, B. & Davis, D. (2005) Twenty-first century learning:
communities, interaction and ubiquitous computing. Educational Media
International, 42(3), 237 -250.

Los Angeles County Regional Occupational Program (2009). About ROP.
Retrieved May 8, 2011 from http://www.lacorop.org/AboutROP.html

Mayer, R. E. (2008). Learning and Instruction (2
nd
ed.). Pearson: Upper Saddle
River: NJ

Mayer, R. E., & Moreno, R. (2003). Nine ways to reduce cognitive load in
multimedia learning. Educational Psychologist, 38, 43–52.

Miller, O. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on
our capacity for processing information. Psychology Review, 63, 81-97.

National Center for Educational Statistics (2009). Highlights From TIMSS 2007:
Mathematics and Science Achievement of U.S. Fourth and Eighth-Grade
Students in an International Context. Retrieved from
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009001.pdf

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-110 (2002).

Nolet, V. (2009). Preparing sustainability- literate teachers. Teachers College
Record, 111(2), 409-442.

O'Reilly, Tenaha & Sheehan, Kathleen M (2008). Cognitively based assessment of,
for, and as learning: A 21st century approach for assessing reading
competency. Educational Testing Service.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2005). OECD
handbook on economic globalization indicators. Retrieved from
http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/materiales/docs/OCDE_handbook.pdf

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2010).PISA 2009 at a
glance. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/28/46660259.pdf

175

Paas, F., van Gog, T., & Sweller, J. (2010). Cognitive load theory: New
conceptualizations, specifications, and integrated research perspectives.
Educational Psychology Review, 22, 115-121.

Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills (2008). 21st century skills, education and
competitiveness: A resource and policy guide. Retrieved from
www.p21.org/.../21st_century_skills_education_and_competitiveness_guide
. pdf

Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills (2010, November 11). AMA 2010 critical skills
survey. Retrieved from
http://www.p21.org/documents/Critical%20Skills%20Survey%20Executive
%20Summary.pdf

Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills (2009). P21 framework definitions. Retrieved
from http://www.p21.org/documents/P21_Framework_Definitions.pdf

Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.

Peppler, K. A. (2010) Media arts: arts education for a digital age. Teachers College
Record, 112(8), 2118-2153.

Pinkham, C., Wintle, S. E., & Silvernail, D. L. (2008). 21st Century Teaching and
learning: An assessment of student website evaluation skills. Center for
Education Policy, Applied Research, and Evaluation, University of
Southern Maine & Sanford Junior High School.

Raulston, C.G. & Wright, V.H. (2010) Teachers' perceptions and attitudes of one
teacher laptop initiative: connections toward 21st century learning. Meridian
Middle School Computer Technologies Journal, 13(1), 1-21
Renkl, A., Hilbert, T., & Schworm, S. (2009). Example-based learning in heuristic
domains: A cognitive load theory account. Educational Psychology Review,
21, 67–78.

Resnick, L. B. (2010). Nested learning systems for the thinking curriculum.
Educational Researcher, 39 (3), 183-197.

Schmidt, H.G. (1983). Problem-based learning: Does it prepare medical students to
become medical doctors? The Medical Journal of Australia, 168, 429-430.

Schmidt, H.G., Loyens, S.M.M., van Gog, T. & Paas, F. (2007). Problem-based
learning is compatible with human cognitive architecture: Comentary on
Kirschner, Sweller, and C lark (2006). Educational Psychologist, 42(2), 91-
97.

176

Schmidt, H. G., van der Molen, H. T., Winkel, W., & Wijnen, S. (2009).
Constructivist, problem-based learning does work: A meta-analysis of
curricular comparisons involving a single medical school. Educational
Psychologist, 44(4), 227-249.

Schoen, L., & Fusarelli, L.D. (2008). Innovation, NCLB, and the fear factor : The
challenge of leading 21st-century schools in an era of accountability.
Educational Policy, 22(1), 181-203. doi: 10.1177/0895904807311291

Squire, K. (2010). From information to experience: place-based augmented reality
games as a model for learning in a globally networked society. Teachers
College Record 112(10), 2565–2602.

Sweller, J., van Merriënboer, J. J. G., & Paas, F. (1998). Cognitive architecture and
instructional design. Educational Psychology Review, 10, 251–296.

Sweller, J. (2010). Element interactivity and intrinsic, extraneous, and germane
cognitive load. Educational Psychology Review, 22, 123-138. doi:
10.1007/s10648-010-9128-5

Thoman, E. & Jolls, T. (2004). Media literacy--A national priority for a changing
world. American Behavioral Scientist 48 (1), 18-29

U.S. Department of Labor (2010, December 3). Occupational Outlook Handbook,
2010-11 Edition. Retrieved from
http://www.bls.gov/oco/oco2003.htm#education

U.S. Department of Labor. (2011, January 1). Labor force statistics from the current
population survey. Retrieved from
http://data.bls.gov:8080/PDQ/outside.jsp?survey=ln.

Van Merrenboer, J. J., Kirschner, P. A., & Kester, L. (2003). Taking a load off a
learner’s mind: Instructional design for complex learning. Educational
Psychologist, 38(1), 5-13.

Varis, T. (2010). Communication and New Literacies in the multicultural world.
Historia y Comunicación Social, 2010 (15), 13-26.

Voithofer, R. & Foley, A. (2007). Digital dissonances: Structuring absences in
national discourses on equity and educational technologies. Equity &
Excellence in Education, 40 (1), 14-25.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological
processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

177

Wagner, T. (2008). The global achievement gap: Why even our best schools don't
teach the new survival skills our children need-and what we can do about it.
NY: Basic Books.

Warschauer, M. (2007a). Information Literacy in the Laptop Classroom. Teachers
College Record, 109(11), 2511-2540

Warschauer, M. (2007b). The paradoxical future of digital learning. Learn Inq 1,
41-49

WASC Accrediting Commission for Schools (n.d.). “About WASC Accreditation.”
Retrieved May 15, 2011 from http://www.acswasc.org/about_overview.htm.
Wouters, P., Tabbers, H. K., & Paas, F. (2007). Interactivity in video-based models.
Educational Psychology Review, 19. DOI 10.1007/s10648-007-9045-4.
Zhao, Y.(2010). Preparing globally competent teachers: A new imperative for
teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(5), 422–431

178

APPENDIX A
DOCUMENT REVIEW MATRIX
Research Question #1: What are the programs/practices at the school and how
are they aligned with 21st century skills?
Data Needs Document What are we looking
for?
Curriculum
Course offerings
(College prep/AP/IB
offerings)
Interdisciplinary course
offerings
World languages
Course descriptions
that include:
 Global perspectives
 Civic literacy
 Financial literacy
 Health literacy
 Environmental
literacy
Master schedule
Instructional minutes
Interdisciplinary/ team
teaching
District curricular
standards (essential
standards) – based on
state standards
Global perspectives
Interdisciplinary
themes
Civic literacy
Financial literacy
Health literacy
Environmental literacy
Textbook adoption list

Year of adoption
(outdated?)

179

Do texts address global
perspectives, issues, or
events?
Do texts and literature
reflect authors and
titles from a variety of
cultures?
Accreditation reviews
(i.e. WASC, IB)
Rigorous curriculum-
College Ready
Instructional
Strategies
Lesson plans
Action Plan (SMART
GOALS)
group work, Whole
Brain Teaching,
presentations, problem-
based learning, inquiry
learning, debate
Technology plan
SARC
How are students using
technology
How many computers
are available for
students and how much
time is allocated for
usage?

What other technology
infrastructure is
available?
Extra-curricular
Activities
Student handbook
School website
School calendar and
Clubs, activities or
programs that reflect:
 global perspectives
 workforce (career

180

announcements
SARC

tech)
 international social
justice
 student
travel/exchange
Assessments Benchmarks
Common assessments
Common rubrics
Is there evidence of
performance-based,
curriculum-embedded
assessments, problem
solving assessment?
Creative and/or
multiple solutions?

181

Research Question #2: What is the professional community at the school?
Data Needs Document What are we looking for?
Leadership
Staff and Leadership
Meeting agenda
SSC Agenda/
meeting notes
Single Plan for
Student
Achievement
Professional
development plan
Vision and Mission
Statement
Evidence of topics:
Core content mastery
integrated with 21
st
century
skills.
Critical thinking within the
context of core subjects.
Project-based learning
Inquiry-based learning
Professional learning
community
Job-embedded professional
development
Support of collaboration
International travel
opportunities
Union contract How are decisions made?
Collaboration
Department meeting
or grade level
meeting notes
Meeting Schedules/
Agenda
Staff development
plan/school site plan
Evidence of topics:
Core content mastery
integrated with 21
st
century
skills.
Critical thinking within the
context of core subjects.
Project-based/Inquiry-based
learning
Performance-based
assessment Curriculum-
embedded assessments
Problem solving

182

assessment
Creative/innovative
solutions?
Teacher schedules Common prep periods

Opportunities for
collaboration
Union contract What is the agreement about
instructional time, prep
time, and collaborative time
Culture and
climate
California Healthy
Kids Report
School Climate
Survey (if available)
Evidence of topics:
Core content mastery
integrated with 21
st
century
skills.
Critical thinking within the
context of core subjects.
Project-based learning
Inquiry-based learning
Professional learning
community
Job-embedded professional
development
International travel
opportunities

183

Research Question #3: What is the perceived impact in the life of the
school, and how does it support these practices?
Data Needs Document What are we
looking for?
Students
Blank report card  Student progress
related to Critical
thinking,
Communication,
Collaboration,
and Creativity
 Civic literacy
 Financial literacy
 Health literacy
 Environmental
literacy
Student
Achievement Data
 CST
 CAHSEE
passage
 College Ready
score in ELA and
Math (EAP)
 Portfolios
 Authentic
assessment
 Graduation rates
 College
attendance
School district
vision and mission
Foundation mission
and description

Is there an explicit
partnership with
the local
community to
prepare students for
college/career?
Community
List of PTA
activities
List and description

Clubs, activities or

184

of booster clubs
SARC, website,
newsletters

programs that
reflect:
 global
perspectives
 workforce
(career tech)
 international
social justice
 student
travel/exchange

Corporate or
business
sponsorship
University
relationships
Is there an explicit
partnership with
the local
community to
prepare students for
college/career?
No documents that
would reveal
teacher beliefs,
attitudes?
Survey, interview

185

APPENDIX B
OBSERVATION MATRIX
OBSERVATIONS
Research
Question
What to Observe
RQ 1
 Goals – are
goals (vision
& mission)
visible?
 Are goals posted (also RQ
2)
 Faculty/staff and students’
actions (also RQ 3)
 Does curriculum in action
align with the goals?
RQ 1
 Instructional
strategies -
through
observations
you can
observe
creativity,
innovation,
communicatio
n, critical
thinking,
collaboration
(4Cs),
problem
solving, etc.
 Student talk – what kind of
conversations are students
engaging in? low/high
 Use of group work
 Levels of questions
(teachers and students)
 How is technology
integrated into curriculum?
Is it used for process and
product?
 Manipulatives
 Type of projects
 Student outcomes (also RQ
3)
 Teacher feedback
 Student participation (also
RQ 3)
 Levels of student
independence
 How is diversity address –
global awareness
 World languages
 Are subjects integrated?
 Objectives
RQ1
 Extra-
curricular
activities
 Who is participating
 What are the options
 Do they develop 21
st

century skills?

RQ 1  Resources
 What type of resources do
you see in the
classroom/school and how

186

they are being used?
 What types of books/literary
materials? Multicultural?
International?
RQ 2  Observing PD
 Who lead PD?
 How does the school’s
focus/vision/mission align?
 Observing faculty and staff
interactions
(formal/informal)

RQ2
 Culture &
climate
 How do students walk into
school?
 What do transitions look
like?
 Interactions between
students/faculty/staff/parent
s
 Are parents on campus? If
so, what are they doing?
 What’s on the wall? –
multicultural, college, jobs,
global
 Organizations (also RQ 3)
 Community (also RQ 3)
 School traditions (also RQ
3)
 School Site Council – how
are decisions made?
Collaborative? Do they
promote 21
st
century
schools?
 How are the front
office/entrance/classrooms
organized?
 Is any evidence of concern
for the environment?
(Awareness – in action – of
concern for the
environment)
When doing the observations use the four frames – use different lenses to do
the observations.

187

APPENDIX C
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Prior to questioning, the interviewer will give the interviewee a handout on
21
st
century skills (included below) as a reference.

Possible follow-up questions accompany each interview question.

Interview Question #1: What are the practices and programs at the school and how
are they aligned to 21
st
century skills?
CURRICULUM AND PLANNING
How does the school curriculum and instructional strategies reflect 21
st

Century Learning?

1. What technology is used in classroom curriculum?
2. How are world languages a part of the school curriculum?
3. How does the school promote diversity and global perspectives?
4. What interdisciplinary work is done in classrooms at this school?
5. How does the curriculum promote collaboration, investigation, higher-
order thinking, and posing of analytical questions?

EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
What kinds of extra-curricular activities reflect 21
st
Century Skills?

1. How do extra-curricular student activities include world perspectives?
2. What community outreach programs are available for students?
3. How do the extra-curricular student activities at the school build better
citizens?

Interview Question #2: What is the professional community at the school, and how
does it support these practices?
LEADERSHIP-VISION, DECISION-MAKING
What role does leadership play in supporting and developing 21
st
Century
Learning?

1. How does the school’s mission and vision statement and vision
influence decision making at the school?
2. How are these decisions put into action?

COLLABORATION
What does collaboration look like at the school?
1. How often do teachers give common assessments, and what is done
once the assessments are scored?

188

2. How often do teachers instruct interdisciplinary units?
3. What discussions and activities are evidence of a collaborative staff?

Interview Question #3: What is the perceived impact of 21
st
century skills on the
culture of the school?
STUDENTS-BEHAVIOR, BELIEFS, ATTITUDES
What student behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes reflect 21
st
Century Learning?

1. What enrichment activities are available for students, and how do these
activities address positive behavior?
2. How is citizenship, also known as life skills, taught to students, and how
do students show their life skills?

TEACHERS-BEHAVIOR, BELIEFS, ATTITUDES
What teacher behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes reflect 21
st
Century Learning?
1. Who promotes positive school culture at your school, and what does
that school culture look like?
2. How is diversity appreciated and celebrated at the school?

COMMUNITY-BELIEFS, SUPPORT, PARTNERSHIPS
What community behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes reflect 21
st
Century
Learning?

1. What organizations partner with this school to offer students
internships and classes outside of the regular school day?
2. How does the community show their support for school programs on
diversity, culture, and customs?

189

APPENDIX D

INTERVIEW HANDOUT

Interview Handout:
Partnership for 21
st
Century Skills 21
st
Century
Themes and Student Outcomes

21
st
Century Themes

• Global awareness
• Financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy
• Civic literacy
• Health literacy
 Environmental Literacy

21
st
Century Student Outcomes

Learning and Innovation Skills
• Creativity and innovation skills
• Critical thinking and problem solving skills
• Communication and collaboration skills

Information, Media and Technology Skills
• Information literacy
• Media literacy
• ICT (information and communications technology) literacy

Life and Career Skills
• Flexibility and adaptability
• Initiative and self-direction
• Social and cross-cultural skills
• Productivity and accountability
• Leadership and responsibility

190

APPENDIX E

SURVEY: PROGRAMS AND PRACTICES

Never Sometimes Most
of the
time
Always
Instruction and
Pedagogy
1 2 3 4
I utilize
cooperative
grouping

I utilize problem-
based
instruction

My instruction
involves the
use of
technology

My students use
technology

My instruction
includes
global issues

I model and
encourage
critical
thinking and
problem-
solving skills

Students

191

demonstrate
mastery in
different
ways
Students are
exposed to
different
cultures,
languages
and
experiences

My instruction
includes civic
responsibility

I utilize multi-
modal
instructional
approaches

I primarily use
the adopted
curriculum

I encourage
collaboration
in my
classroom

I encourage
creativity and
innovation in
my
classroom

192

My assignments
require
students to
demonstrate
creative
approaches

Never Sometimes Most
of the
time
Always
Professional
Community
1 2 3 4
Professional
development
sessions help
me be a
better teacher

Professional
development
sessions
address the
teaching of
critical
thinking
skills

Professional
development
sessions
address the
teaching of
global
education
issues

Collaboration is
encouraged
and promoted
by the school

I play a
leadership
role at the
school

193

Data is used by
teachers and
administrator
s to promote
best
instructional
practices

My classroom is
equipped to
meet
students’
instructional
needs

School’s vision
and mission
are aligned
with
practices and
programs

Never Sometimes Most
of the
time
Always
Life of the School 1 2 3 4
Students are
responsible
for their
behavior in
the classroom

My students
participate in
extra-
curricular
activities
related to the
vision and
mission of
the school

Parents are
involved in
school
related
activities

194

Students are
exposed to
different
cultures,
languages
and
experiences

Students are
given the
opportunity
to participate
in out of
school
activities,
such as
fieldtrips.

Parents share the
vision and
mission of
the school

Abstract (if available)

Abstract As companies have adapted to the demands and opportunities of the 21st century, educators and businessmen alike have expressed a concern that children in the United States are not being taught the skills that they need to be competitive in an increasingly global workforce. While some schools are addressing this problem in their programs and practices, it is unclear what they are doing. An urban high school that claims to be embracing 21st century learning was examined in a qualitative case study using a framework provided by The Partnership of 21st Century Skills. 3 relevant themes emerged from this study: 1. 21st century learning is community building, 2. 21st century learning objectives emphasize critical thinking, and 3. 21st century preparation looks beyond the classroom. Based on these findings, recommendations are given for both future practice and research.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

A new generation: a new model of education in the 21st century

PDF

Preparing students for the future - 21st century skills

PDF

A case study of 21st century skills programs and practices

PDF

The key essentials for learning in the 21st century: programs and practices

PDF

21st century teaching and learning with technology integration at an innovative high school: a case study

PDF

Technology practices and 21st century learning: a high school case study

PDF

The process secondary administrators use to implement twenty‐first century learning skills in secondary schools

PDF

Embracing globalization and 21st century skills in a dual language immersion school

PDF

A study of California public school district superintendents and their implementation of 21st century skills

PDF

Learning 21st century skills In a multicultural setting

PDF

A case study: technology, teaching and student learning

PDF

Investigating the dynamics of a 21st-century school integrating and implementing technology to enhance teaching and learning: a case study

PDF

Strategies California superintendents use to implement 21st century skills programs

PDF

A study of California public school district superintendents and their implementation of 21st-century skills

PDF

The influence of globalization on the Irish educational system in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and development of 21st-century skills in secondary schools

PDF

Evaluating the implementation of 21st century skills and learning

PDF

Embracing the challenge of growing the “T” in STEM and its role in teaching and learning: a case study

PDF

21st century skills practices and programs: a case study at an elementary school

PDF

Developing 21st century skills through effective professional development: a study of Jamestown Polytechnic Charter School Organization

PDF

STEM integration: a case study of a 21st century skills professional development program for math and science teachers in an urban school

Asset Metadata

Creator Truby, David C., Jr. (author)

Core Title Emerging practices for a changing world: a case study of 21st century learning

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education

Publication Date 05/09/2012

Defense Date 03/13/2012

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag 21st century learning,collaboration,Community,creativity,critical thinking,Globalization,K-12 education,OAI-PMH Harvest,P21,Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Gothold, Stuart E. (committee chair), Hocevar, Dennis (committee member), Riconscente, Michelle M. (committee member)

Creator Email dctruby@yahoo.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-39475

Unique identifier UC11290587

Identifier usctheses-c3-39475 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-TrubyDavid-839.pdf

Dmrecord 39475

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Truby, David C., Jr.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA