Dr. Jenny Smith

DIRECTOR AT SKEPSIS LEARNING LIMITED

How might a hybrid approach, embedding the development of 21st Century competencies into a knowledge-rich curriculum, support our students to have a deeper understanding of school-subject knowledge and develop the range of empowering, transferable skills they need for future learning, life and work? In this session, Dr Jenny Smith discusses her research on powerful knowledge for the 21st Century, and offers some practical approaches for learning design and classroom practice for K-12. Jenny will explore what is meant by ‘powerful knowledge’.

Why it is powerful, and how school-subject learning can be enhanced in the classroom by supporting students to be more ‘knowledge aware’. For example, how do we approach something like a physicist, or a historian – what type of knowledge is physics or history, what methods of enquiry would we use, whose perspectives are we hearing and how are ideas challenged and new knowledge produced? If we add to that the explicit recognition and development of transferable skills such as critical thinking, mental flexibility, communication skills, team working skills, resilience and problem solving, we support students to develop the positive habits of learning and future-oriented knowledge and competencies needed for life and work in a post-Covid world.

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