# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Ladder of Feedback Guide for Classroom Observations The "Ladder of Feedback"* is a protocol or structure that establishes a culture of trust and constructive support by sequencing feedback in order that is constructive.
The idea or plan is presented to the group. Then the group moves through the following steps (moving from one rung of the ladder to the next):

Step 1: Clarify
Ask clarifying questions to be sure you understand the idea or matter on the table. Avoid clarifying questions that are thinly disguised criticism.
Step 2: Value
Express what you like about the idea or matter at hand in specific terms. Do not offer perfunctory "good, but," and hurry on to the negatives.

Step 3: State concerns
State your puzzles and concerns. Avoid absolutes: "What's wrong is . . ." Use qualified terms: "I wonder if . . ." "It seems to me . . ." Avoid criticizing personal character or ability and focus on ideas, products, or particular aspects.
Step 4: Suggest
Make suggestions about how to improve things. This step is sometimes blended with step 3: people state concerns and then offer suggestions for addressing them. There is no set time limit for this process: It can be done in a few minutes or over the course of an hour.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ladder of Feedback (see Supporting Learning in Groups in the Classroom)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
· What strikes us as noteworthy about this scene?
· Our current education model was defined by the Committee of Ten over a century ago.  What skills and character traits did they want young adults to have for 20th Century assembly line jobs?
·  What skills and character traits are essential for students for career and citizenship in the 21st century?
·  Do we critique our assignments on the basis of which essential skills they’re developing?
·  How can we assess student progress on essential skills?  
·  What micro-innovations could we try to accelerate student development of essential skills?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Teaching the DP with ATL in mind

Teaching with ATL in mind needs to begin with a clear and explicit identification of what types of skills and dispositions are trying to be developed.

In general terms, the development of every ATL skill can follow the same seven basic steps.

1. Decide which particular and specific skills are going to be focused on in your classroom/subject/department/school.

2. Make the skills to be focused on explicit by clear description of each skill and by using examples of high and low skills proficiency.

3. Allow the students to self-assess their perceived competence in the skills in question.

4. Analyse the class results obtained, looking in particular for any general skills deficiencies across the class.

5. Develop mini-lessons or tutorials, or find online exercises for students to complete to bring all students up to the same skill level.

6. Build into subject lessons exercises that enable students to practise and improve the skills in focus.

7. Ask the students to continue to self-assess their proficiency.

Teaching with the development of ATL skills in mind impacts significantly on the wider pedagogical approach adopted by teachers, and in particular on how teachers view their role in the classroom. Teacher regulation of student learning is sometimes described in a continuum from strong, through shared, to loose regulation.

Strong teacher regulation

Shared teacher regulation

Loose teacher regulation

Teacher controls all information, regulates student processing, answers all questions, clarifies, explains, summarizes.

Student thinking at a minimum, teacher as maximum support.

Teacher provides access to resources, skills training, questions, problem statements, concepts, ideas, learning outcomes.

Students actively engage with information in order to answer questions, follow leads, solve problems.

Student thinking engaged, teacher as guide and support.

Teacher's only functions are supplying the learning objectives and assessing the students' level of achievement against them.

Student thinking at a maximum, teacher not involved in student thinking or learning at all.

A drawback of the strong teacher regulation model is that it can reduce the potential for the development of students' skills of self-regulation. The loose teacher regulation model also has limitations, as although it does allow for growth in students' self-regulation skills, this growth only occurs if it is instigated by the student. In contrast, adopting a shared regulation style in the classroom can be an excellent means to achieve growth in students' self-regulated learning skills.

An example of a teaching approach that can support the development of ATL skills and, in particular, students' self-regulation skills, is that of "process-oriented instruction". "Process-oriented teaching is teaching that facilitates independent learning, supporting students to become proficient learners in the field concerned and preparing them for lifelong learning" (Bolhuis and Voeten 2001). Process-oriented instruction is often contrasted with more traditional methods where the emphasis is on the transmission of information, where the teacher spends most of the time explaining the subject matter, and the main activities expected from the student are listening and writing notes. The teacher does not engage much with the students except to answer questions, assign tasks or give instruction concerning the learning process. In process-oriented instruction, the focus of the teaching is placed on the strategies and techniques the students are using to process the subject information. The teacher "teaches" learning skills by modelling, demonstration, creating skills-based tasks, monitoring performance, asking for feedback and helping build the students' metacognitive awareness (Bolhuis 2003).

In many schools, transmission is still a dominant teaching style. In 2001, a study of Dutch secondary schools observed 130 lessons-in foreign languages, Dutch, mathematics, science, social studies and the arts. The time spent by teachers using each of these teaching styles was found to be as follows (Bolhuis and Voeten 2001).

30% transmission- the teacher explains, the students listen, the teacher questions the students

40% activating-the teacher gets students to process information through directed tasks, using student feedback to guide the lesson

25% procedural and behavioural instruction

5% process-focused teaching-teaching the students to set learning goals, choose and execute learning strategies, diagnose and monitor the learning process.

Moving from a traditional subject-focused style of teaching to a skills-based, process-oriented style aimed at promoting self-regulation of learning by students can be challenging for both students and teachers, but it has the potential to yield excellent results in terms of student engagement and development of learning skills.

Whether ATL skills are taught entirely through being infused into subject lessons, or by being supplemented with standalone skills lessons, a key concern is ensuring that students transfer the skills learned in one context to other contexts. Because students often find it challenging to transfer these skills, it is important that the teaching of ATL skills also includes a focus on the importance of transfer. This "bridging" work is a vital aspect of the effective teaching of skills.

The DP encourages transfer through its emphasis on concurrency of learning. By studying different subjects and the core concurrently, it is intended that students will have more opportunities to make links and connections than they would otherwise. However, solely studying different subjects at the same time is not enough to guarantee that students are effectively transferring their learning. Instead, there needs to be explicit teaching for transfer; for example, explicitly encouraging transfer by exploring concepts across multiple subject areas, or by encouraging students to make connections between their learning in the different subjects.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teaching with ATL in mind needs to begin with a clear and explicit identification of what types of skills and dispositions are trying to be developed. In general terms, the development of every ATL skill can follow the same seven basic steps. Decide which particular and specific skills are going to be focused on in your classroom/subject/department/school.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Helping children confront challenges requires a more nuanced understanding of the "growth mindset."

As a young researcher, Carol Dweck was fascinated by how some children faced challenges and failures with aplomb while others shrunk back. Dweck, now a psychologist at Stanford University, eventually identified two core mindsets, or beliefs, about one's own traits that shape how people approach challenges: "fixed mindset," the belief that one's abilities were carved in stone and predetermined at birth, and "growth mindset," the belief that one's skills and qualities could be cultivated through effort and perseverance. Her findings brought the concepts of fixed and growth mindsets to the fore for educators and parents, inspiring the implementation of her ideas among teachers-and even companies -across the country.

But Dweck recently noticed a trend: a widespread embrace of what she refers to as "false growth mindset"-a misunderstanding of the idea's core message. Growth mindset's popularity was leading some educators to believe that it was simpler than it was, that it was only about putting forth effort or that a teacher could foster growth mindset merely by telling kids to try hard. A teacher might applaud a child for making an effort on a science test even if he'd failed it, for instance, believing that doing so would promote growth mindset in that student regardless of the outcome. But such empty praise can exacerbate some of the very problems that growth mindset is intended to counter. A new edition of Dweck's book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, updated to address false growth mindset, comes out at the end of this month. I recently spoke with Dweck about how she wants her ideas to be applied. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Christine Gross-Loh: Could you tell me about the development of the idea of growth mindset? What was it intended to correct? What were you seeing that you felt growth mindset would help improve?

Carol Dweck: I've always been interested, since graduate school, in why some children wilt and shrink back from challenges and give up in the face of obstacles, while others avidly seek challenges and become even more invested in the face of obstacles. So this has been my primary question for over 40 years. At some point, my graduate students and I realized that a student's mindset was at the foundation of whether [he or she] loved challenges and persisted in the face of failure.

When students had more of a fixed mindset-the idea that abilities are carved in stone, that you have a certain amount and that's that-they saw challenges as risky. They could fail, and their basic abilities would be called into question. When they hit obstacles, setbacks, or criticism, this was just more proof that they didn't have the abilities that they cherished.

In contrast, when students had more of a growth mindset, they held the view that talents and abilities could be developed and that challenges were the way to do it. Learning something new, something hard, sticking to things-that's how you get smarter. Setbacks and feedback weren't about your abilities, they were information you could use to help yourself learn. With a growth mindset, kids don't necessarily think that there's no such thing as talent or that everyone is the same, but they believe everyone can develop their abilities through hard work, strategies, and lots of help and mentoring from others.

Gross-Loh: When I first interviewed you about growth mindset a few years ago, I remember that it was a relatively unknown idea. But growth mindset is now so popular that I'll hear people who aren't steeped in educational theory say, "Praise the effort, not the child (or the outcome)." Why do you think this idea struck such a chord, and how did you find out there were people misunderstanding it?
"Nobody has a growth mindset in everything all the time."
Dweck: Many educators were dissatisfied with drilling for high-stakes tests. They understood that student motivation had been a neglected area, especially of late. So many educators, as well as many parents, were excited to implement something that might reenergize kids to focus on learning again, not just memorization and test taking, but on deeper, more joyful learning.

But a colleague of mine, Susan Mackie, was doing workshops with educators in Australia and observed that many of them were saying they got growth mindset and were running with it, but did not understand it deeply. She told me, "I'm seeing a lot of false growth mindset." I just did not get it initially-growth mindset is a very straightforward concept, and besides, why would people settle for a false growth mindset if they could have a real one? But I started keeping a list of all the ways people were misunderstanding growth mindset. When the list got long enough, I started speaking and writing about it.

Gross-Loh: Could you elaborate on false growth mindset?

Dweck: False growth mindset is saying you have growth mindset when you don't really have it or you don't really understand [what it is]. It's also false in the sense that nobody has a growth mindset in everything all the time. Everyone is a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets. You could have a predominant growth mindset in an area but there can still be things that trigger you into a fixed mindset trait. Something really challenging and outside your comfort zone can trigger it, or, if you encounter someone who is much better than you at something you pride yourself on, you can think "Oh, that person has ability, not me." So I think we all, students and adults, have to look for our fixed-mindset triggers and understand when we are falling into that mindset.

I think a lot of what happened [with false growth mindset among educators] is that instead of taking this long and difficult journey, where you work on understanding your triggers, working with them, and over time being able to stay in a growth mindset more and more, many educators just said, "Oh yeah, I have a growth mindset" because either they know it's the right mindset to have or they understood it in a way that made it seem easy.

Gross-Loh: Why do you think these misunderstandings occurred?

Dweck: Many people understood growth mindset deeply and implemented it in a very sophisticated and effective way. However, there were many others who understood it in a way that wasn't quite accurate, or distilled it down to something that wasn't quite effective, or assimilated it into something they already knew.

Often when we see kids who aren't learning well, we might feel frustrated or defensive, thinking it reflects on us as educators. It's often tempting to not feel it is our fault. So we might say the child has a fixed mindset, without understanding instead that, as educators, it is our responsibility to create a context in which a growth mindset can flourish.

Gross-Loh: So it seems that the danger is that some teachers think they have growth mindset and believe it will transfer to their students, even though they themselves don't really understand it. How about this: Are there educators who do understand the idea that abilities can be developed but don't understand how to pass it on to students? Are there certain children who are more vulnerable to this sort of misunderstanding of growth mindset?

Dweck: Yes, another misunderstanding [of growth mindset] that might apply to lower-achieving children is the oversimplification of growth mindset into just [being about] effort. Teachers were just praising effort that was not effective, saying "Wow, you tried really hard!" But students know that if they didn't make progress and you're praising them, it's a consolation prize. They also know you think they can't do any better. So this kind of growth-mindset idea was misappropriated to try to make kids feel good when they were not achieving.

The mindset ideas were developed as a counter to the self-esteem movement of blanketing everyone with praise, whether deserved or not. To find out that teachers were using it in the same way was of great concern to me. The whole idea of growth-mindset praise is to focus on the learning process. When you focus on effort, [you have to] show how effort created learning progress or success.

Gross-Loh: What should people do to avoid falling into this trap?

Dweck: A lot of parents or teachers say praise the effort, not the outcome. I say [that's] wrong: Praise the effort that led to the outcome or learning progress; tie the praise to it. It's not just effort, but strategy ... so support the student in finding another strategy. Effective teachers who actually have classrooms full of children with a growth mindset are always supporting children's learning strategies and showing how strategies created that success.

Students need to know that if they're stuck, they don't need just effort. You don't want them redoubling their efforts with the same ineffective strategies. You want them to know when to ask for help and when to use resources that are available.

All of this is part of the process that needs to be taught and tied to learning.
"Focus on the learning process and show how hard work, good strategies, and good use of resources lead to better learning."
Gross-Loh: Is there a right way to praise kids and encourage them to do well?

Dweck: Many parents and teachers who themselves have growth mindset aren't passing it on because they are trying to protect the child's confidence, focus on the child's ability, and kind of boost the child's view or protect the child from a failure. They're conveying anxiety about ability.

But we have a new line of research (with my former graduate student, Kyla Haimovitz) showing that the way a parent reacts to a child's failure conveys a mindset to a child regardless of the parent's mindset. If parents react to their child's failures as though there is something negative, if they rush in, are anxious, reassure the child, "Oh not everyone can be good at math, don't worry, you're good at other things," the child gets it that no, this is important, and it's fixed. That child is developing a fixed mindset, even if the parent has a growth mindset.

But if the parent reacts to a child's failure as though it's something that enhances learning, asking, "Okay, what is this teaching us? Where should we go next? Should we talk to the teacher about how we can learn this better?" that child comes to understand that abilities can be developed.

So, with praise, focus on "process praise"-focus on the learning process and show how hard work, good strategies, and good use of resources lead to better learning. Be matter-of-fact, with not too strong or too passive a reaction.

You can see evidence of fixed mindset as young as 3.5 or 4 years old; that's when mindsets can start becoming evident, where some kids are very upset when they make a mistake or get criticized and fall into a helpless place. That's when children become able to evaluate themselves. We collaborated ... with researchers from the University of Chicago who had a longitudinal project with videotape of mother-child interactions. What we found was the more praise was process-oriented-not a ton, just where the greater proportion of the praise was process praise [versus outcome praise]-the more those children had a growth mindset and a high desire for challenge five years later, when they were in second grade.

Gross-Loh: That's very helpful to know for parents of young children. But what about older kids who might feel discouraged and worn-down after years of feeling that they weren't smart enough or a fear that they would never be able to be successful? Is it ever too late to foster a growth mindset in students?

Dweck: No-we've developed a number of online workshops addressed at adolescents and shown that when we teach [those] students a growth mindset, many of them regain their motivation to learn and achieve higher grades, especially students who have been struggling or students who have been laboring under a negative stereotype about [their own] abilities.

Research conducted last year by my former graduate student, David Yeager [now a professor at the University of Texas], on 18,000 students entering ninth grade, shows us that students who took growth-mindset workshops are seeking more challenges.

You can't tell adolescents, "We're adults, we have the answer, and we're going to tell you what it is." So we said, "We're scientists from Stanford University and the University of Texas, and we need your help. We're experts on the brain and how students learn, but you're the experts on being a freshman in high school and we'd like your input for a program we're developing for future freshmen."

We then taught them about how the teenage brain is especially open to learning. We talked about how it's a time of great plasticity, a time they need to take advantage of, and that they can grow their brains through taking on hard tasks in school and sticking to them. We had the students write a letter to a struggling freshman, counseling that person in terms of the growth-mindset principle, which is often very persuasive. We had testimonials from some public figures, talking about how a growth mindset got them to where they were.

Finally we talked about why someone would want a growth mindset. We realized that some kids would be overjoyed to hear you can develop your intellectual abilities, but others might not think it was the most exciting thing. So we then had a whole section on why you might want to develop your mind. Teenagers are really excited about the idea that they can do something to make the world a better place. So we asked them what they want to make their contribution to in the future-family, community, or societal problems-and then talked about how having a strong mind could help them make their future contribution.

We're excited about this because we know the world of the future is going to be about taking on ill-defined, hard jobs that keep changing. It's going to favor people who relish those challenges and know how to fix them. We are committed to creating a nation of learners.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
development of the idea of growth mindset

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Don't Let Praise Become a Consolation Prize

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Helping children confront challenges requires a more nuanced understanding of the "growth mindset," says the psychologist Carol Dweck.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Join 40,000+ educators in getting high-quality

PD resources and insights delivered right to your inbox.

Join 40,000+ educators in getting high-quality

PD resources and insights delivered right to your inbox.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Topic - 21st Century Skills - Toddle Learn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Join 40,000+ educators in getting high-quality PD resources and insights delivered right to your inbox. Join 40,000+ educators in getting high-quality PD resources and insights delivered right to your inbox.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Developing Learning Agility This diagram was inspired by the blog post, The agile learner in a VUCA world, written by Aloha Lavina. VUCA is an acronym used to describe volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Put simply, we live in a fast-changing world and in such an unfamiliar environment, we face unpredictable changes, often are required to make decisions in complex systems, and ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I've shared a few posts about Approaches to Learning (ATL Skills) before: and I haven't posted a link to my ATL Toolkit, but have not explicitly talked about it here.

My ATL toolkit has every ATL Skill, Cluster and Indicator...but then with each indicator, it gives resources, including thinking routines, videos and strategies, to help you support students in developing those skills.

Some examples:
Communication - Give and Receive Meaningful Feedback
The spreadsheet has resources for most indicators, but not all, and it is mostly full of things that I have found and used. ​​ My request is that people share the resources they use, so that I can add it to the ATL Toolkit - many heads are better than one right?

Please share links in the comments, or you can comment directly on theATL TOOLKIT!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Knowledge is like glue that sticks information as well as learning together. When we have prior knowledge about a topic, we understand it better. It plays an important role in students' life especially in the school. If they don't have related knowledge, they face difficulties in understanding the text.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The importance of engaging prior knowledge – Center for Teaching and Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When someone asks you a question or you have a new problem to solve, the knowledge that you bring forward into your working memory to formulate an answer or explanation is the knowledge that you have already integrated into your understanding of the subject. The greater your expertise in that domain…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The importance of knowledge | Lara A. | TEDxInstitutLeRosey

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Knowledge is Good." So read the motto of the mythical Faber College in the 1978 movie, Animal House. Those of use who work in education would agree, even if we were unable to express ourselves so eloquently. But why, exactly, is knowledge good? When I've discussed this question with teachers, many have used the metaphor "It's grist for the mill." That is, the goal of education is seen not so much as the accumulation of knowledge, but as the honing of cognitive skills such as thinking critically. Knowledge comes into play mainly because if we want our students to learn how to think critically, they must have something to think about.

It's true that knowledge gives students something to think about, but a reading of the research literature from cognitive science shows that knowledge does much more than just help students hone their thinking skills: It actually makes learning easier. Knowledge is not only cumulative, it grows exponentially. Those with a rich base of factual knowledge find it easier to learn more - the rich get richer. In addition, factual knowledge enhances cognitive processes like problem solving and reasoning. The richer the knowledge base, the more smoothly and effectively these cognitive processes - the very ones that teachers target - operate. So, the more knowledge students accumulate, the smarter they become. We'll begin by exploring how knowledge brings more knowledge and then turn to how knowledge improves the quality and speed of thinking.

How knowledge brings more knowledge

The more you know, the easier it will be for you to learn new things. Learning new things is actually a seamless process, but in order to study it and understand it better, cognitive scientists have approached it as a three-stage process. And they've found that knowledge helps at every stage: as you first take in new information (either via listening or reading), as you think about this information, and as the material is stored in memory. We'll consider each of these stages in turn.

How knowledge helps you take in new information

The first stage in which factual knowledge gives you a cognitive edge is when you are taking in new information, whether by listening or reading. There is much more to comprehending oral or written language than knowing vocabulary and syntax. Comprehension demands background knowledge because language is full of semantic breaks in which knowledge is assumed and, therefore, comprehension depends on making correct inferences. In a casual conversation, the listener can gather missing background knowledge and check on his inferences by asking questions (e.g., Did you mean Bob Smith or Bob Jones? What do you mean when you describe him as an entrepreneur?) - but this is not the case when watching a movie or reading a book. (And sometimes it isn't the case in class when a student is too embarrassed to ask a question.)

To provide some concrete examples and simplify the discussion, let's focus on reading - but keep in mind that the same points apply to listening. Suppose you read this brief text: "John's face fell as he looked down at his protruding belly. The invitation specified 'black tie' and he hadn't worn his tux since his own wedding, 20 years earlier." You will likely infer that John is concerned that his tuxedo won't fit, although the text says nothing directly about this potential problem. The writer could add the specifics ("John had gained weight since he last wore his tuxedo, and worried that it would not fit"), but they are not necessary and the added words would make the text dull. Your mind is well able to fill in the gaps because you know that people are often heavier 20 years after their wedding, and that gaining weight usually means that old clothing won't fit. This background knowledge about the world is readily available and so the writer need not specify it.

Thus, an obvious way in which knowledge aids the acquisition of more knowledge lies in the greater power it affords in making correct inferences. If the writer assumes that you have some background knowledge that you lack, you'll be confused. For example, if you read, "He was a real Benedict Arnold about it" and you don't know who Benedict Arnold was, you're lost. This implication of background knowledge is straightforward and easy to grasp. It is no surprise, then, that the ability to read a text and make sense of it is highly correlated with background knowledge (Kosmoski, Gay, and Vockell, 1990). If you know more, you're a better reader.

Most of the time you are unaware of making inferences when you read. For example, when you read the text above it's unlikely you thought to yourself, "Hmmm ... let me see now ... why am I being told about the last time he wore his tuxedo? Why would thinking about that make his face fall?" Those conscious inferences are unnecessary because the cognitive processes that interpret what you read automatically access not just the literal words that you read, but also ideas associated with those words. Thus, when you read "tux," the cognitive processes that are making sense of the text can access not just "a formal suit of clothing," but all of the related concepts in your memory: Tuxedos are expensive, they are worn infrequently, they are not comfortable, they can be rented, they are often worn at weddings, and so on. As the text illustrates, the cognitive processes that extract meaning also have access to concepts represented by the intersection of ideas; "tux" makes available "clothing," and "20 years after wedding" makes available "gaining weight." The intersection of "clothing" and "gaining weight" yields the idea "clothing won't fit" and we understand why John is not happy. All of these associations and inferences happen outside of awareness. Only the outcome of this cognitive process - that John is concerned his tux won't fit anymore - enters consciousness.

Sometimes this subconscious inference-making process fails and the ideas in the text cannot be connected. When this happens, processing stops and a greater effort is made to find some connection among the words and ideas in the text. This greater effort requires conscious processing. For example, suppose that later in the same text you read, "John walked down the steps with care. Jeanine looked him up and down while she waited. Finally she said, 'Well, I'm glad I've got some fish in my purse.'" Jeanine's comment might well stop the normal flow of reading. Why would she have fish? You would search for some relationship between carrying fish to a formal event and the other elements of the situation (formal wear, stairs, purses, what you've been told of Jeanine and John). In this search you might retrieve the popular notion that wearing a tuxedo can make one look a little like a penguin, which immediately leads to the association that penguins eat fish. Jeanine is likening John to a penguin and thus she is teasing him. Sense is made, and reading can continue. Here, then, is a second and more subtle benefit of general knowledge: People with more general knowledge have richer associations among the concepts in memory; and when associations are strong, they become available to the reading process automatically. That means the person with rich general knowledge rarely has to interrupt reading in order to consciously search for connections.

This phenomenon has been verified experimentally by having subjects read texts on topics with which they are or are not very familiar. For example, Johanna Kaakinen and her colleagues (2003) had subjects read a text about four common diseases (e.g., flu) for which they were likely already familiar with the symptoms, and a text about four uncommon diseases (e.g., typhus) for which they likely were not. For each text, there was additional information about the diseases that subjects likely did not know.

The researchers used a sophisticated technology to unobtrusively measure where subjects fixated their eyes while they read each text. Researchers thus had a precise measure of reading speed, and they could tell when subjects returned to an earlier portion of the text to reread something. The researchers found that when reading unfamiliar texts, subjects more often reread parts of sentences and they more often looked back to previous sentences. Their reading speed was also slower overall compared to when they read familiar texts. These measures indicate that processing is slower when reading about something unfamiliar to you.

Thus, background knowledge makes one a better reader in two ways. First, it means that there is a greater probability that you will have the knowledge to successfully make the necessary inferences to understand a text (e.g., you will know that people are often heavier 20 years after their wedding and, thus, John is worried that his tux won't fit). Second, rich background knowledge means that you will rarely need to reread a text in an effort to consciously search for connections in the text (e.g., you will quickly realize that with her fish remark, Jeanine is likening John to a penguin).

How knowledge helps you think about new information

Comprehending a text so as to take in new information is just the first stage of learning that new information; the second is to think about it. This happens in what cognitive scientists call working memory, the staging ground for thought. Working memory is often referred to metaphorically as a space to emphasize its limited nature; one can maintain only a limited amount of information in working memory. For example, read through this list one time, then look away and see how many of the letters you can recall.

There were 16 letters on the list, and most people can recall around seven - there is not sufficient space in working memory to maintain more than that. Now try the same task again with this list.

Much easier, right? If you compare the two lists, you will see that they actually contain the same letters. The second list has been reorganized in a way that encourages you to treat C, N, and N as a single unit, rather than as three separate letters. Putting items together this way is called chunking. It greatly expands how much fits in your working memory - and, therefore, how much you can think about. The typical persons' working memory can hold about seven letters or almost the same number of multi-letter chunks or pieces of information. Note, however, that chunking depends on background knowledge. If you weren't familiar with the abbreviation for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, you couldn't treat FBI as a single chunk.

The ability to chunk and its reliance on background knowledge has been tested in a number of studies. These studies show that this ability makes people better able to briefly remember a list of items, just as you could remember more letters in the second example. This benefit has been observed in many domains, including chess (Chase and Simon, 1973), bridge (Engle and Bukstel, 1978), computer programming (McKeithen, Reitman, Rueter, and Hirtle, 1981), dance steps (Allard and Starkes, 1991), circuit design (Egan and Schwartz, 1979), maps (Gilhooly, Wood, Kinnear, and Green, 1988), and music (Sloboda, 1976).

Of course, we seldom want to briefly remember a list. The important aspect of chunking is that it leaves more free space in working memory, allowing that space to be devoted to other tasks, such as recognizing patterns in the material. For example, in one study (Recht and Leslie, 1988), the researchers tested junior high school students who were either good or poor readers (as measured by a standard reading test) and who were also knowledgeable or not about the game of baseball (as measured by a test created for the study by three semi-professional baseball players). The children read a passage written at an early 5th-grade reading level that described a half inning of a baseball game. The passage was divided into five parts, and after each part the student was asked to use a replica of a baseball field and players to reenact and describe what they read. The researchers found that baseball knowledge had a big impact on performance: Poor readers with a high knowledge of baseball displayed better comprehension than good readers with a low knowledge of baseball.

What's going on here? First, the students with a lot of knowledge of baseball were able to read a series of actions and chunk them. (For example, if some of the text described the shortstop throwing the ball to the second baseman and the second baseman throwing the ball to the first baseman resulting in two runners being out, the students with baseball knowledge would chunk those actions by recognizing them as a double play - but the students without baseball knowledge would have to try to remember the whole series of actions.) Second, because they were able to chunk, the students with baseball knowledge had free space in their working memory that they could devote to using the replica to reenact the play as well as providing a coherent verbal explanation. Without being able to chunk, the students with little baseball knowledge simply didn't have enough free space in their working memory to simultaneously remember all of the actions, keep track of their order, do the reenactment, and describe the reenactment.

This study illustrates the importance of the working memory advantage that background knowledge confers (see also Morrow, Leirer and Altieri, 1992; Spilich, Vesonder, Chiesi, and Voss, 1979). Most of the time when we are listening or reading, it's not enough to understand each sentence on its own - we need to understand a series of sentences or paragraphs and hold them in mind simultaneously so that they can be integrated or compared. Doing so is easier if the material can be chunked because it will occupy less of the limited space in working memory. But, chunking relies on background knowledge.

How knowledge helps you remember new information

Knowledge also helps when you arrive at the final stage of learning new information - remembering it. Simply put, it is easier to fix new material in your memory when you already have some knowledge of the topic (Arbuckle et al, 1990; Beier and Ackerman, 2005; Schneider, Korkel, and Weinert, 1989; Walker, 1988). Many studies in this area have subjects with either high or low amounts of knowledge on a particular topic read new material and then take a test on it some time later; inevitably those with prior knowledge remember more.

A study by David Hambrick (2003) is notable because it looked at real-world learning and did so over a longer period of time than is typical in such studies. First, Hambrick tested college students for their knowledge of basketball. This test took place in the middle of the college basketball season. Two and one-half months later (at the end of the season), subjects completed questionnaires about their exposure to basketball (e.g., game attendance, watching television, and reading magazines or newspapers) and also took tests that measured their knowledge of specific men's basketball events from the prior two and one-half months. The results showed (not surprisingly) that subjects who reported an interest in the game also reported that they had greater exposure to basketball information. The more interesting finding was that, for a given level of exposure, greater prior basketball knowledge was associated with more new basketball knowledge. That is, the people who already knew a lot about basketball tended to remember more basketball-related news than people with the same exposure to this news but less prior knowledge.* As I said in the introduction, the rich get richer.

What's behind this effect? A rich network of associations makes memory strong: New material is more likely to be remembered if it is related to what is already in memory. Remembering information on a brand new topic is difficult because there is no existing network in your memory that the new information can be tied to. But remembering new information on a familiar topic is relatively easy because developing associations between your existing network and the new material is easy.

Some researchers have suggested that prior knowledge is so important to memory that it can actually make up for or replace what we normally think of as aptitude. Some studies have administered the same memory task to high-aptitude and low-aptitude children, some of whom have prior knowledge of the subject matter and some of whom do not; the studies found that only prior knowledge is important (Britton, Stimson, Stennett, and Gülgöz, 1998; Recht and Leslie, 1988; Schneider, Korkle, and Weinert, 1989; Walker, 1988). But some researchers disagree. They report that, although prior knowledge always helps memory, it cannot eliminate the aptitude differences among people. Since everyone's memory gets better with prior knowledge, assuming equal exposure to new knowledge (as in a classroom without extra support for slower students), the student with overall lower aptitude will still be behind the student with higher aptitude (Hall and Edmondson, 1992; Hambrick and Engle, 2002; Hambrick and Oswald, 2005; Schneider, Bjorklund, and Maier-Brückner, 1996). In the end, the issue is not settled, but as a practical matter of schooling, it doesn't matter much. What matters is the central, undisputed finding: All students will learn more if they have greater background knowledge.

How knowledge improves thinking

Knowledge enhances thinking in two ways. First, it helps you solve problems by freeing up space in your working memory. Second, it helps you circumvent thinking by acting as a ready supply of things you've already thought about (e.g., if you've memorized that 5 + 5 = 10, you don't have to draw two groups of five lines and count them). To simplify the discussion, I'll focus mostly on research that explores the benefits of knowledge for problem solving, which is essentially the type of thinking that students must do in mathematics and science classes. But keep in mind that in much the same way, knowledge also improves the reasoning and critical thinking that students must do in history, literature, and other humanities classes.

How knowledge helps you solve problems

In the last section, I discussed one way that prior knowledge helps reading: It allows you to chunk some information, which leaves more room in working memory to sort through the implications of a text. You get much the same benefit if you are trying to solve a problem. If you don't have sufficient background knowledge, simply understanding the problem can consume most of your working memory, leaving no space for you to consider solutions. I can give you a sense of this impact with a sample problem called the Tower of Hanoi. The picture shows three pegs with three rings of increasing size. The goal is to move all the rings to the rightmost peg. There are just two rules: You can only move one ring at a time, and you can't put a larger ring on top of a smaller ring. See if you can solve the problem.

With some diligence, you may well be able to solve the problem. The solution is to move the rings as follows: A3, B2, A2, C3, A1, B3, A3.

Now consider this problem:

In the inns of certain Himalayan villages is practiced a refined tea ceremony. The ceremony involves a host and exactly two guests, neither more nor less. When his guests have arrived and seated themselves at his table, the host performs three services for them. These services are listed in the order of the nobility the Himalayans attribute to them: stoking the fire, fanning the flames, and pouring the tea. During the ceremony, any of those present may ask another, "Honored Sir, may I perform this onerous task for you?" However, a person may request of another only the least noble of the tasks that the other is performing. Furthermore, if a person is performing any tasks, then he may not request a task that is nobler than the least noble task he is already performing. Custom requires that by the time the tea ceremony is over, all the tasks will have been transferred from the host to the most senior of the guests. How can this be accomplished?

You would probably have to read the problem several times just to feel that you understand it - but this problem is actually identical to the Tower of Hanoi. Each guest is like a peg, and each task is like a ring. The goal and the rules of transfer are the same. The difference is that this version is much more demanding of working memory. The first version does not require you to maintain the problem in working memory because it is so effectively represented in the figure. The second version requires that the solver remember the order of nobility of the tasks, whereas in the first version you can easily chunk the order of ring size - smallest to largest.

These two problems give you a sense of the advantages of background knowledge for problem solving. The problem solver with background knowledge in a particular domain sees problems in her domain like the Tower of Hanoi; everything is simple and easy to understand. When she is outside her domain, however, the same problem solver cannot rely on background knowledge and problems seem more like the confusing tea ceremony. It's all she can do to simply understand the rules and the goal.

These examples put the "grist for the mill" metaphor in a new light: It's not sufficient for you to have some facts for the analytic cognitive processes to operate on. There must be lots of facts and you must know them well. The student must have sufficient background knowledge to recognize familiar patterns - that is, to chunk - in order to be a good analytical thinker. Consider, for example, the plight of the algebra student who has not mastered the distributive property. Every time he faces a problem with a(b + c), he must stop and plug in easy numbers to figure out whether he should write a(b) + c or a + b(c) or a(b) + a(c). The best possible outcome is that he will eventually finish the problem - but he will have taken much longer than the students who know the distributive property well (and, therefore, have chunked it as just one step in solving the problem). The more likely outcome is that his working memory will become overwhelmed and he either won't finish the problem or he'll get it wrong.

How knowledge helps you circumvent thinking

It's not just facts that reside in memory; solutions to problems, complex ideas you've teased apart, and conclusions you've drawn are also part of your store of knowledge. Let's go back to the algebra students for a moment. The student who does not have the distributive property firmly in memory must think it through every time he encounters a(b + c), but the student who does, circumvents this process. Your cognitive system would indeed be poor if this were not possible; it is much faster and less demanding to recall an answer than it is to solve the problem again. The challenge, of course, is that you don't always see the same problem, and you may not recognize that a new problem is analogous to one you've seen before. For example, you may have successfully solved the Tower of Hanoi problem and moments later not realized that the tea ceremony problem is analogous.

Fortunately, knowledge also helps with this: A considerable body of research shows that people get better at drawing analogies as they gain experience in a domain. Whereas novices focus on the surface features of a problem, those with more knowledge focus on the underlying structure of a problem. For example, in a classic experiment Michelene Chi and her colleagues (Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser, 1981) asked physics novices and experts to sort physics problems into categories. The novices sorted by the surface features of a problem - whether the problem described springs, an inclined plane, and so on. The experts, however, sorted the problems based on the physical law needed to solve it (e.g., conservation of energy). Experts don't just know more than novices - they actually see problems differently. For many problems, the expert does not need to reason, but rather, can rely on memory of prior solutions.

Indeed, in some domains, knowledge is much more important than reasoning or problem-solving abilities. For example, most of the differences among top chess players appear to be in how many game positions they know, rather than in how effective they are in searching for a good move. It seems that there are two processes to selecting a move in chess. First, there is a recognition process by which a player sees which part of the board is contested, which pieces are in a strong or weak position, and so forth. The second process is one of reasoning. The player considers possible moves and their likely outcome. The recognition process is very fast, and it identifies which pieces the slower reasoning process should focus on. But the reasoning process is very slow as the player consciously considers each possible move. Interestingly, a recent study indicates that the recognition process accounts for most of the differences among top players. Burns (2004) compared the performance of top players at normal and blitz tournaments. In blitz chess, each player has just five minutes to complete an entire game, whereas in a normal tournament, players would have at least two hours. Even though play was so sped up that the slow reasoning processes barely had any time to contribute to performance, the relative ratings of the players were almost unchanged. That indicates that what's making some players better than others is differences in their fast recognition processes, not differences in their slow reasoning processes. This finding is rather striking. Chess, the prototypical game of thinking and reflection, turns out to be largely a game of memory among those who are very skilled. Some researchers estimate that the best chess players have between 10,000 and 300,000 chess-piece chunks in memory (Gobet and Simon, 2000).

Burns's (2004) study of chess skill meshes well with studies of science education. A recent meta-analysis (Taconis, Feguson-Hessler, and Broekkamp, 2001) evaluated the results of 40 experiments that studied ways to improve students' scientific problem-solving skills. The results showed that the successful interventions were those that were designed to improve students' knowledge base. Especially effective were those in which students were asked to integrate and relate different concepts by, for example, drawing a concept map or comparing different problems. Interventions designed to improve the students' scientific problem-solving strategies had little or no impact, even though the goal of all the studies was to improve scientific problem solving.

We've seen how knowledge improves learning and thinking. But what does this mean for the classroom? Read Knowledge in the Classroom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Knowledge does much more than just help students hone their thinking skills: It actually makes learning easier. Knowledge is not only cumulative, it grows exponentially. Those with a rich base of factual knowledge find it easier to learn more - the rich get richer.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
21st Century skills are 12 abilities that today's students need to succeed in their careers during the Information Age.
The twelve 21st Century skills are:

1. Critical thinking

2. Creativity

3. Collaboration

4. Communication

5. Information literacy

6. Media literacy

7. Technology literacy

8. Flexibility

9. Leadership

10. Initiative

11. Productivity

12. Social skills

These skills are intended to help students keep up with the lightning-pace of today's modern markets. Each skill is unique in how it helps students, but they all have one quality in common.

They're essential in the age of the Internet.
On this page, we'll take a look at what's included in 21st Century skills, how they help students, and why they're so important.
You'll also be able to download a free guide on how you can teach 21st Century skills in middle or high school courses.

To start, let's dive into the three categories that 21st Century skills fall into.

The Three 21st Century Skill Categories

Each 21st Century skill is broken into one of three categories:

1. Learning skills

2. Literacy skills

3. Life skills

Learning skills (the four C's) teaches students about the mental processes required to adapt and improve upon a modern work environment.

Literacy skills (IMT) focuses on how students can discern facts, publishing outlets, and the technology behind them. There's a strong focus on determining trustworthy sources and factual information to separate it from the misinformation that floods the Internet.

Life skills (FLIPS) take a look at intangible elements of a student's everyday life. These intangibles focus on both personal and professional qualities.

Altogether, these categories cover all 12 21st Century skills that contribute to a student's future career.

This is not an exhaustive checklist of career readiness skills - but they're the career readiness skills that overlap with 21st Century skills!

Let's take a closer look at each category.

Category 1. Learning Skills (The Four C's)

The four C'sare by far the most popular 21st Century skills. These skills are also called learning skills.

More educators know about these skills because they're universal needs for any career. They also vary in terms of importance, depending on an individual's career aspirations.
The 4 C's of 21st Century Skills are:

Critical thinking: Findingsolutions to problems

Creativity: Thinking outside the box

Collaboration: Working with others

Communication: Talking to others

Arguably, critical thinking is the most important quality for someone to have in health sciences.
In business settings, critical thinking is essential to improvement. It's the mechanism that weeds out problems and replaces them with fruitful endeavors.

It's what helps students figure stuff out for themselves when they don't have a teacher at their disposal.
Related Resources:
Bonus Resource: Free Critical Thinking Lesson Download
Creativity is equally important as a means of adaptation. This skill empowers students to see concepts in a different light, which leads to innovation.
In any field, innovation is key to the adaptability and overall success of a company.

Learning creativity as a skill requires someone to understand that "the way things have always been done" may have been best 10 years ago - but someday, that has to change.
Collaboration means getting students to work together, achieve compromises, and get the best possible results from solving a problem.
Collaboration may be the most difficult concept in the four C's. But once it's mastered, it can bring companies back from the brink of bankruptcy.

The key element of collaboration is willingness. All participants have to be willing to sacrifice parts of their own ideas and adopt others to get results for the company.

That means understanding the idea of a "greater good," which in this case tends to be company-wide success.
Related Resources: Finally, communication is the glue that brings all of these educational qualities together.
Communication is a requirement for any company to maintain profitability. It's crucial for students to learn how to effectively convey ideas among different personality types.

That has the potential to eliminate confusion in a workplace, which makes your students valuable parts of their teams, departments, and companies.

Effective communication is also one of the most underrated soft skills in the United States. For many, it's viewed as a "given," and some companies may even take good communication for granted.

But when employees communicate poorly, whole projects fall apart. No one can clearly see the objectives they want to achieve. No one can take responsibility because nobody's claimed it.

Without understanding proper communication, students in the 21st Century will lack a pivotal skill to progress their careers.
Related Resources:
But the four C's are only the beginning. 21st Century skills also require students to understand the information that's around them.

Category 2. Literacy Skills (IMT)
Literacy skills are the next category of 21st Century skills.
They're sometimes called IMT skills, and they're each concerned with a different element in digital comprehension.
The three 21st Century literacy skills are:

Information literacy: Understanding facts, figures, statistics, and data

Media literacy: Understanding the methods and outlets in which information is published

Technology literacy: Understanding the machines that make the Information Age possible

Information literacy is the foundational skill. It helps students understand facts, especially data points, that they'll encounter online.
More importantly, it teaches them how to separate fact from fiction.

In an age of chronic misinformation, finding truth online has become a job all on its own. It's crucial that students can identify honesty on their own.
Related Resources: Media literacy is the practice of identifying publishing methods, outlets, and sources while distinguishing between the ones that are credible and the ones that aren't.
Otherwise, they can fall prey to myths, misconceptions, and outright lies.

Just like the previous skill, media literacy is helpful for finding truth in a world that's saturated with information.

This is how students find trustworthy sources of information in their lives. Without it, anything that lookscredible becomes credible.

But with it, they can learn which media outlets or formats to ignore. They also learn which ones to embrace, which is equally important.

Last, technology literacy goes another step further to teach students about the machines involved in the Information Age.

As computers, cloud programming, and mobile devices become more important to the world, the world needs more people to understand those concepts.

Technology literacy gives students the basic information they need to understand what gadgets perform what tasks and why.

This understanding removes the intimidating feeling that technology tends to have. After all, if you don't understand how technology works, it might as well be magic.

But technology literacy unmasks the high-powered tools that run today's world.

As a result, students can adapt to the world more effectively. They can play an important role in its evolution.

They might even guide its future.

But to truly round out a student's 21st Century skills, they need to learn from a third category.

Category 3. Life Skills (FLIPS)
The five 21st Century life skills are:
Life skills is the final category. Also called FLIPS, these skills all pertain to someone's personal life, but they also bleed into professional settings.
Flexibility is the expression of someone's ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Flexibility: Deviating from plans as needed

Leadership: Motivating a team to accomplish a goal

Initiative: Starting projects, strategies, and plans on one's own

Productivity: Maintaining efficiency in an age of distractions

Social skills: Meeting and networking with others for mutual benefit

This is one of the most challenging qualities to learn for students because it's based on two uncomfortable ideas:

1. Your way isn't always the best way

2. You have to know and admit when you're wrong

That's a struggle for a lot of students, especially in an age when you can know any bit of information at the drop of a hat.

Flexibility requires them to show humility and accept that they'll always have a lot to learn - even when they're experienced.
Leadership is someone's penchant for setting goals, walking a team through the steps required, and achieving those goals collaboratively.
Still, flexibility is crucial to a student's long-term success in a career. Knowing when to change, how to change, and how to react to change is a skill that'll pay dividends for someone's entire life.

It also plays a big role in the next skill in this category.

Whether someone's a seasoned entrepreneur or a fresh hire just starting their careers, leadership applies to career.

Entry-level workers need leadership skills for several reasons. The most important is that it helps them understand the decisions that managers and business leaders make.
Related Resources: True success also requires initiative, requiring students to be self-starters.
Then, those entry-level employees canapply their leadership skills when they're promoted to middle management (or the equivalent). This is where 21st Century skill learners can apply the previous skills they've learned.

It's also where they get the real-world experience they need to lead entire companies.

As they lead individual departments, they can learn the ins and outs of their specific careers. That gives ambitious students the expertise they need to grow professionally and lead whole corporations.

Initiative only comes naturally to a handful of people. As a result, students need to learn it to fully succeed.

This is one of the hardest skills to learn and practice. Initiative often means working on projects outside of regular working hours.

The rewards for students with extreme initiative vary from person to person. Sometimes they're good grades. Other times they're new business ventures.
Along with initiative, 21st Century skills require students to learn about productivity. That's a student's ability to complete work in an appropriate amount of time.
Sometimes, it's spending an extra 30 minutes at their jobs wrapping something up before the weekend.

Regardless, initiative is an attribute that earns rewards. It's especially indicative of someone's character in terms of work ethic and professional progress.

That goes double when initiative is practiced with qualities like flexibility and leadership.

In business terms, it's called "efficiency."

The common goal of any professional - from entry-level employee to CEO - is to get more done in less time.

By understanding productivity strategies at every level, students discover the ways in which they work best while gaining an appreciation for how others work as well.

That equips them with the practical means to carry out the ideas they determine through flexibility, leadership, and initiative.

Still, there's one last skill that ties all other 21st Century skills together.

Social skills are crucial to the ongoing success of a professional. Business is frequently done through the connections one person makes with others around them.

This concept of networking is more active in some industries than others, but proper social skills are excellent tools for forging long-lasting relationships.

While these may have been implied in past generations, the rise of social media and instant communications have changed the nature of human interaction.

As a result, today's students possess a wide range of social skills. Some are more socially adept than others. Some are far behind their peers. And some lucky few may be far ahead, as socializing comes naturally to them.

But most students need a crash course in social skills at least. Etiquette, manners, politeness, and small talk still play major roles in today's world.

That means some students need to learn them in an educational setting instead of a social setting.

For them, it's another skill to add to their lives.

Now that we've established what 21st Century skills are, let's answer the next big question.

Do employers actually want people with 21st Century skills?

What's the Demand for 21st Century Skills?

While 21st Century skills have always been important, they've become essential in a worldwide market that moves faster by the day.

These skills all double back to one key focus.

Someone's ability to enact and / or adapt to change.

This is because any industry is capable of changing at a moment's notice. Industries are now regularly disrupted with new ideas and methodologies.

Those industries that haven't been disrupted aren't immune though. They just haven't been disruptedyet.

With that in mind, the world has entered an era where nothing is guaranteed.

As a result, students need to learn to guide the change that'll inundate their lives. At the very least, they need to learn how to react to it.

Otherwise, they'll be left behind.

This is especially true as customer demand accelerates in all industries along with expectations for newer features, higher-level capabilities, and lower prices.

In today's marketplace, falling behind means becoming obsolete.

That's a familiar concept to all of today's students as tomorrow's advancements make today's miracles quaint or unimpressive.

Today, the only consistency from year to year is change.

That's why many teachers like you are incorporating the 21st Century Skills Assessment into their career readiness courses.

With 21st Century skills, your students will have the adaptive qualities they need to keep up with a business environment that's constantly evolving.

How Do You Teach 21st Century Skills?
While these skills can be taught at any grade level, we find it's most important to teach 21st Century skills in middle or early high school.
Now you know what 21st Century skills are and why employers want new hires to have them.

So how do you teach them in your daily classes?

Before getting into the details, it's important to identify who should teach 21st Century skills.

This is the time when your students need to hone their career readiness skills before they enter the workforce!

So how can middle and high school teachers teach 21st Century skills effectively?

Click below to download the Ultimate Guide to Teaching 21st Century Skills in Secondary Schools and find out!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn about 21st Century skills, why they're important, and how to teach them. Skills include: Critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, information literacy, media literacy, technology literacy, flexibility, leadership, initiative, productivity, and social skills.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We live in the Information age, where anyone can get their hands on almost anything. But simply knowing certain things does not make you skilled enough in that subject. Now, it's evident that there is a huge difference between knowledge and skills.

It's easy to confuse knowledge with skills. When you learn something new, notice how quickly you picked it up and then assume you're skilled at it. But the truth is that they are two different things.

For example, knowledge alone isn't enough to qualify you for an online writing job. Writing online requires skills that are more than just what reading books about writing can give you. It's also about being able to synthesize your knowledge and apply it to a range of professional situations.

In this article, we'll discuss the meaning, types, and the key difference between knowledge and skills.

What is knowledge?

Knowledge is the information that is known to a person. It can be found in books and the internet, and it's important for understanding the facts. Knowledge is also a handy tool because it helps you find answers to your questions.

Knowledge can be remembered or learned by reading articles about a topic or listening to someone talk about that topic. For example, if you know how an engine works, you will know how each part works together with all of the other parts inside your car's engine compartment, which you've learned about.

Types of knowledge

Prior knowledge is the knowledge of things one can just readily conclude by reading or being aware of specific facts. Having prior knowledge is useful for this because our minds tend to build on top of one another; when something makes sense based on our existing ideas about life (or whatever subject matter we're discussing). Then we can spend less time processing and more time thinking critically about whether or not something else makes sense too.
Also read: The 7 best online survey apps in 2022
Dispersed knowledge is defined as knowledge that any person cannot attain. The knowledge is distributed among several people. For instance, a physician can treat for common cold, cough, and flu, but they cannot do surgeries on the heart because medicine is a vast field of study, and not anyone can grasp it just yet.

Expert knowledge is a bit more specific and focused on a particular topic. It's related to one specific area of expertise, which can be very broad (like "physics") or very narrow ("nuclear physics"). Expert knowledge is often used in an industry, such as finance, marketing, or healthcare.

The knowledge that we gain through our five senses is called empirical knowledge. Illustrated books are prime examples of empirical knowledge. An illustrator draws what he sees; therefore, all his drawings carry sensitive data.

Explicit knowledge is often called "codified" or recorded knowledge. It can be easily documented and transferred to others. This knowledge is most commonly found in books, documents, and manuals. However, it also includes databases, videos, etc.
Related: The 7 best free email marketing tools in 2022
Imperative knowledge is the information you need to solve problems and perform tasks. This can be anything from knowing how to use a hammer or how to use your laptop. It includes skills like driving an automobile or cooking a meal.

What is a skill?

Skill is the ability to do something well. It's a learned ability, not an inherent one. That is, it's not innate; you have to practice and train until your skills are honed enough for you to use them effectively in new situations. If you haven't read about or practiced something before, you might feel unprepared for it when the time comes.

Skills include being able to talk confidently and clearly about your ideas in front of a group of people or writing an essay that gets good grades on its merit rather than just because it's due at the right time of term (which would be more knowledge-based).

Types of Skills

Communication is transmitting information and common understanding from one person to another. It is a two-way process in which both people play a part; hence, it's not just about what you say but also how you say it. Communication skills are crucial for your future career, as they are needed in all walks of life: business, education, and interpersonal relationships (to name a few).

Teamwork is a lot more nuanced than simply getting along. A team must have common goals and shared responsibilities. Still, in order to be successful, they should also communicate effectively, follow a hierarchy of leadership, and take responsibility for their actions as individuals.

Negotiation is a process of bargaining in which two parties agree on an issue. It requires certain skills like listening, analyzing information, deciding to take action, etc. Persuasion is obtaining consent from someone else to have their way.
Related: 6 online research tools every online learner should know about
Leadership is the ability to motivate, influence, and guide people in order to achieve a common goal. It's more than just knowing what needs to be done; it's about having the ability to take the initiative and make decisions for yourself or others.

Commercial awareness is the ability to identify and understand the needs and wants of your customers. This skill is important because it allows you to think critically about how best to reach your target market and your overall business strategy.

Working under pressure is a skill you need to know if you want to be successful in your career. It's one of the most important skills that people can develop. You have to accomplish tasks and reach goals even when things are difficult or stressful. This means knowing how to deal with stress and pressure so that they don't prevent you from reaching your goals or getting things done at work.

This may be hard to believe, but confidence is a skill that can be learned and practiced. Confidence comes from knowing who you are, what you stand for, what your values are, and where you want to go in life-and expressing yourself confidently in any situation.
Related: Top 5 social media management tools in 2022 you must use
Key differences between knowledge and skill

The main difference between knowledge and skills is their degree of application.

Knowledge is general, while skills are specific. Knowledge tells you what something is, but it doesn't tell you how to do it. It can be taught in a classroom or read in a book.

Skills are what you know about doing something to help you achieve an outcome (e.g., playing guitar). They require practice and training to acquire them.

The difference between knowledge and skills is between what you know and how you apply that knowledge. Knowledge can be taught effectively, while skill is developed through repeated application.

For example, if someone tells you everything there is to know about playing chess, then you could have a long conversation about it (and maybe even play a few games). But if they never showed you how to play chess so that all those facts could be applied in practice, then your chess skills would be limited.
Also read: Best free invoice software of 2022
Knowledge can be acquired, while skill is acquired by practice. Knowledge is a broad concept acquired from reading, listening, and watching. It is often abstract and general, while skill refers to the ability to perform tasks or activities. Skills are specific to an area of interest or practice and are developed through practice over time. A skill can be learned by practicing it (for example, playing the piano).

An interesting thing about skills is that they tend to be domain-specific - an expert at one activity may not necessarily be great at another. For example, someone who has extensive knowledge of finance may not necessarily have any expertise in marketing because their skills do not transfer across domains.

Knowledge can be gained through formal education, but skills are learned through experience and training. A college graduate may know that it's better to use a verb rather than an adjective in their writing, but they haven't yet learned when to use one over the other in any given situation.

Another difference between knowledge and skills is that while knowledge is theoretical (it exists only in your mind), skills are practical (they exist outside your mind). Knowledge is what you learn; skill is what you do with what you learn. This means that if someone has a lot of knowledge about fixing cars but doesn't know how to fix them themselves, they don't have much of either-and aren't likely going anywhere anytime soon!

While you can read up on the best way to play chess or become an expert public speaker, your ability will be limited by your natural mental and physical skills when it comes down to playing chess or giving speeches.

You may have all the knowledge in the world about how to play chess, but if you're not good at math or don't have fast enough reflexes for quick decision-making (two things required for playing this game), then no amount of study alone will help improve these skills beyond what you were born with.

Knowledge is the direct expansion of the mind, whereas skill is the practical application of that knowledge. Skill, in this context, refers to an individual's capacity to carry out a task with a defined degree of proficiency. It can be applied across many different areas of life and work.

For example, someone has a high level of skill at playing tennis if they can win games consistently. But it also applies specifically to knowledge: someone who knows a lot about tennis could still have no ability whatsoever when it comes to playing matches themselves.

Knowing something does not mean you know how to do it, which is the difference between knowledge and skills. So when you learn something new, if you want to be able to use it in real life for practical purposes, you need to turn that knowledge into a practical skill.

The key takeaway

The fact is that knowledge and skill are entirely different, and it's essential to know the difference. Understanding something won't do you much good if you aren't skilled in it. It's pretty simple: reading about something isn't going to make you a master at it.

Reading, researching, and doing those other things will make you knowledgeable on a particular subject, but they won't make you skilled. As a result, it's up to you to use that knowledge and apply those skills to become good at whatever you're trying to do. After all, knowing without skill leaves you with ignorance - and nobody wants that.

Bridge the difference between knowledge and skills with Graphy

Graphy brings knowledge and skills together. As a learning management system (LMS), Graphy helps users make connections by providing them with courses they can turn into skills they can use as needed. Aside from its great integration features, Graphy also acts as a complete class management tool that allows instructors and teachers to seamlessly teach lessons using its platform.

Why choose Graphy for creating your online course?

Launch your online course with a branded website & mobile apps.

Multi-layer security to prevent your content from unauthorized accessibility and piracy.

Integrate multiple-payment gateways

No transaction fees

Market your course by creating promos or discounts

Create an extraordinary website and mobile app without any coding required

SEO optimized landing pages to rank better on search engine

Excellent customer support through dedicated account managers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The difference between knowledge and skills: knowing does not make you skilled

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We live in the Information age, where anyone can get their hands on almost anything. But simply knowing certain things does not make you skilled enough in that subject. Now, it's evident that there is a huge difference between knowledge and skills. It's easy to confuse knowledge with skills.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Majority of Parents Say Kids Are Dishonest, Disrespectful, and Lazy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Parents are significantly concerned about the poor behavior of today’s school-age kids and are looking to schools for help, survey shows.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We love this art from @chrisgadbury - check out his inspiration, the #WorldsLargestLesson !

# data[].attributes.headline
Approaches to Teaching and Learning ATL Skills

# data[].attributes.subject
Approaches to Teaching and Learning ATL Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Session 3 - ATL in the DP Reflection tool

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Pursuing avenues to spread messages and instruments from The Good Project to a larger audience of educators and students through collaborations with complementary organizations, reformatting of existing resources, and other strategies.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Active Listening Techniques of Hostage & Crisis Negotiators

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Techniques to help prevent and settle conflicts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Student self-assessment occurs when learners assess their own performance. With practice, they learn to:

objectively reflect on and critically evaluate their own progress and skill development

identify gaps in their understanding and capabilities

discern how to improve their performance

learn independently and think critically.

Use self-assessment to develop the learning skills students will need for professional competence, and to make them aware of and more responsible for their own learning processes.

Sometimes teachers use self-assessment and peer assessment together. For example, they might require students to use a rubric to critique the work of their peers, and then to apply the same criteria to their own work. Nulty (n.d.) argues that students must first learn to peer assess if they are to self-assess effectively.

Skilled self-assessment can be as reliable as other forms of assessment, but teachers must provide students with training and practice if they want results to closely align with other assessors' results.

You can introduce students to the idea of self-assessment using:

ongoing structured formative learning (for example, by using online quizzes that give students immediate feedback on their performance) or

summative assessment (for example, requiring students to grade their own performance).

The literature suggests that self-assessment may be more useful as a formative learning tool than as a summative assessment.

Benefits

Self-assessment benefits students by:

helping them develop important meta-cognitive skills that contribute to a range of important graduate capabilities. All professionals must be able to evaluate their own performance; thus, this practice should be embedded in higher-education learning as early as possible.

increasing their self-awareness through reflective practice, making the criteria for self-evaluation explicit, and making performance-improvement practices intrinsic to ongoing learning.

contributing to the development of critical reviewing skills, enabling students to more objectively evaluate their own performance and, when used in conjunction with peer assessment, others' performance as well. With peer assessment, students become more practised in giving constructive feedback and receiving and acting on the feedback they receive.

helping them take control of their own learning and assessment, and giving them the chance to manage their own learning and development more independently.

giving them greater agency regarding assessment, thus enriching their learning.

possibly, in the long run, reducing the teacher's assessment workload - although this benefit is not sufficient on its own to introduce student self-assessment.

Challenges

Although studies have shown that most students are fairly capable self-assessors, introducing self-assessment can raise dilemmas and challenges. For example:

Lower-performing and less experienced students tend to overestimate their achievements. As with peer assessment, students' ability to self-assess accurately must be developed over time, and with substantial guidance. It is definitely not initially a time-saving exercise for the teacher.

Students may resist self-assessment, perceiving assessment and grading to be the teacher's job, or having no confidence in their ability to assess themselves.

Issues can arise if students' self-assessments are not consistent with peer or staff assessments.

Designing self-assessment

Students often readily accept the use of self-assessment as part of a formative learning process. It satisfies their need for formal self-reflection on their progress, and gives them agency when they are planning their learning. It may also give them valuable experience in self-assessment that they can apply throughout the course.

Design self-assessment carefully, and ensure that you integrate its use into the assessment plan. This way you optimise the benefits to learning, appropriately engage students in the process by giving them clear directions and explanations and ensure that contingency plans are in place if issues arise.

Here are some factors to consider when including student self-assessment in your learning design:

How experienced are students in self-assessing?

It is unreasonable to expect students to become experts in self-assessment after a single course.

It is reasonable to expect that they will be capable self-assessors by the end of their undergraduate program.

How will I introduce students to self-assessment?

Consider students' different experience levels when designing tasks, and support the development of their self-assessment capabilities accordingly.

Provide more guidance and facilitation for less experienced students.

Make clear to students the rationale for self-assessment and its intended benefits to their learning, so that they do not misconstrue the strategy as indicating that the teacher is lazy.

Who should develop the assessment criteria?

At first, you can provide predetermined assessment criteria for students to use in self-assessing their work. In some areas and at higher levels of study, these may be best determined by the teacher.

Students may find it significantly more interesting and motivating if you involve them in developing the assessment criteria. This also encourages their autonomy and self-management as learners.

Helping develop assessment criteria develops students' assessment literacy and promotes a shared understanding of tasks and assessment standards.

How can I support my students as they develop their self-assessment skills?

Students can be capable assessors of their own and their peers' performance. Help them build their meta-awareness about this capability so that they can articulate and defend their critiques of their own work, and clarify what they can do to improve their performance.

Providing an expert assessment of students' work allows them to cross-check their self-assessment, as does combining self-assessment with peer assessment.

Use assessed examples of students' work to illustrate different levels of achievement. This will clarify the standards and show how criteria are applied.

Should students' self-assessment contribute to the summative grade?

This is a complex decision. Self-assessment for grading may be more appropriate in high-level undergraduate or postgraduate courses, especially where class sizes are smaller.

If you decide that self-assessment will contribute to the grade, precisely state to both students and assessors, at the outset, how much it will contribute.

Introduce self-assessment for practice and familiarisation before you use it to contribute to grading. For example, have students attach a self-assessment report to their submitted work.

What processes will I use to moderate student self-assessment?

Assessment of learning is intrinsically inexact and subjective. Use assessment rubrics, whether predetermined by the teacher or negotiated with students, to specify expected standards of performance against stated criteria.

Shared use of a rubric by staff and students can prompt valuable conversations about assessment principles and quality standards.

The more a student's self-assessment contributes to the grade, the greater will be the need for the teacher to moderate the grade with their own assessment. Remember, though, that "if tutors moderate student self-assessments with anything other than a light touch, students do not put their hearts into being objective in their self-assessment" (Race, 2001, p. 14). But if self-assessment results are not moderated, the fairness of the process will be questionable, no matter how capable the students may be as self-assessors.

A moderation process can simply consist of comparing the tutor's and/or peer's grade and the student's self-assessed grade. Where they are very different, you can discuss the discrepancy with the student, with an eye to possibly reviewing the grade. Such processes are more difficult to manage in very large classes.

Practical methods

Reflective journal

Having students produce a reflective journal about their own learning and achievements is a logical way to engage them in self-assessment, as it gives both them and their assessors insights into their learning.

Extend the reflective-journal task to include their thoughts on how they can improve their performance.

You can assess the reflective journal, or the students can reflect on their reflections, or assess their peers' journals and give feedback.

One version of this type of assessment task is the "self-assessment schedule" (Boud, 1992), a formal document prepared by the student that presents their achievements alongside their learning goals and comments on what they feel they have achieved.

Self-assessment prompts for students

You can incorporate self-assessment into almost any assessment task, either when or after students submit their assignments.

Race (2001) suggests structuring the self-assessment by prompting students; for example, by asking them:

What do you think is a fair grade for the work you have handed in, and why do you think so?

What did you do best in this assessment task?

What did you do least well in this assessment task?

What did you find was the hardest part?

What was the most important thing you learned in doing this assessment task?

If you had more time to complete the task, what (if anything) would you change, and why?

Self-assessment in group work

Self-assessment can focus on aspects of a task that only the student can comment on, such as their contribution to teamwork and the collaborative production of a group's outputs. When students are allowed to do this, they see it as reducing the risk of being judged unfairly (Nulty, n.d.).

Self-assessment of class participation

Assessing students' participation in class discussions and activities is often seen as an overly subjective process. If students can see that you value their perceptions of the quality of their own and their peers' contributions, they are likely to become more active in the classroom. Combining student self- and peer assessment with tutor assessment makes for a more reliable grade (Dancer & Kamvounias, 2005).

Using technology

Use online tools such as journals or blogs to manage self-assessment based on reflective activities. You might, for example, require students to publish regular reflections in response to question prompts. Both you and they can then assess their learning process. You can set up a private journal for this purpose, or a blog that can be shared with other students (or made public) and comments invited.

For more objective tasks, such as scientific or mathematical calculation, you can provide automatically marked online tests. Invite students to create questions to contribute to the test database; this adds a meta-cognitive layer to the exercise. Online tools such as Peerwise are being developed for this purpose, but the Moodle Learning Management System allows the compilation of question banks, and self-assessment can be incorporated into a workshop activity.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Student self-assessment occurs when learners assess their own performance. With practice, they learn to: objectively reflect on and critically evaluate their own progress and skill development identify gaps in their understanding and capabilities discern how to improve their performance learn independently and think critically.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Self Management Workshop 21 June 2025.docx

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Approaches to learning skills and sub-skills IB PYP

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Exploring Multiple Perspectives on a Controversial Issue

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Thinking skills -Trip to the supermarket

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Thinking skills in DP English Lang Lit: Modeling and Practicing Metacognition in Poetry Analysis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Thinking skills learning experiences PYP