Identifying 21st century capabilities

Int. J. Learning and Change, Vol. 6, Nos. 3/4, 2012 123

Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Identifying 21st century capabilities

Robert Stevens Schooling Research, Department of Education and Communities, New South Wales, Australia Email: [email protected]

Abstract: What are the capabilities necessary to meet 21st century challenges? Much of the literature on 21st century skills focuses on skills necessary to meet those challenges associated with future work in a globalised world. The result is a limited characterisation of those capabilities necessary to address 21st century social, health and particularly ecological challenges. In this paper I seek to describe those capabilities necessary to address a broad range of 21st century challenges by conducting a conceptual or philosophical analysis of 21st century capabilities and their relationship to 21st century challenges. If we are to effectively meet 21st century challenges then the next generation will need to be highly adept (even more so than the current generation) in critical thinking, holistic thinking, practical reasoning, creativity and imagination.

Keywords: capabilities; educational research; holistic thinking; creativity; critical thinking; imagination.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Stevens, R. (2012) ‘Identifying 21st century capabilities’, Int. J. Learning and Change, Vol. 6, Nos. 3/4, pp.123–137.

Biographical notes: Robert Stevens is Manager, Schooling Research at the New South Wales Department of Education and Communities. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Sydney. He has a Doctorate in Philosophy from Macquarie University. His research interests include teaching and assessing 21st century capabilities, curriculum for the future, applied comparative education and philosophy of education.

1 Introduction

Education is a largely future-oriented enterprise. Among its purposes are preparing people to live well in the future, as future citizens and as future workers. A pressing question for education is: what kind of capabilities should we be aiming to develop in young people to prepare them for their future lives? One way of addressing these questions is to consider the key challenges and opportunities that we, particularly in developed nations, face now, and are likely to face in the medium to longer term, and then to consider what kind of capabilities are necessary for future citizens to meet these challenges and opportunities.

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In this paper I outline a set of capabilities necessary for future citizens to address the major challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. I do not consider in this paper how these capabilities can be taught, learned or assessed.

1.1 Definitions and caveats

Challenge

By challenge I mean a demanding or stimulating situation, “something that makes demands on one’s abilities” (Macquarie Dictionary) and a change imperative. Each of the challenges discussed in this paper also presents an opportunity – “an appropriate or favourable time” (Macquarie Dictionary) – to make the world a better place. So the term challenge as used in this paper is short for challenge and opportunity.

Capability

For the purposes of this paper, I adopt the US philosopher, Martha Nussbaum’s definition of capability as “the ability to perform functions that are necessary for a good life” (e.g. Nussbaum, 1995, p.80). Thus understood, capabilities involve or require knowledge, understanding, values and skills.

21st century capabilities

By 21st century capabilities I mean capabilities necessary to address 21st century challenges. Use of this term does not imply that these capabilities are exclusive to the 21st century and had no applicability previously. The use of this term does not imply these capabilities are new. Critical thinking for example is at least as old as Philosophy.

21st century challenges

By 21st century challenges I mean challenges, opportunities or change imperatives that are most significant for the 21st century – now and in the medium to longer term. I am not considering challenges that are likely to be faced in 2090 for example, as it is impossible to anticipate what these challenges will be.

Generic and higher order capabilities

It should be noted that 21st century capabilities are generic, rather than specific to a particular discipline, because the challenges they relate to do not occur within an academic discipline or a particular practice but are real-world, practical challenges. 21st century capabilities are also distinct from basic or foundational capabilities. These are lower order capabilities such as reading and writing which are vital to the development of other capabilities – including the ability to think, argue, reflect and debate – that are directly necessary to meeting 21st century challenges.

The 2010 Intergenerational Report Australia to 2050: Future Challenges makes a similar distinction when it notes that:

The basic skills acquired in early childhood and school years, particularly literacy and numeracy, are necessary foundations for developing higher order skills that contribute to a more productive workforce. (page xix)

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To put it another way, basic skills, and particularly literacy and numeracy, are foundations for developing the higher order capabilities required for success in those industries that are fastest growing in 21st century economies. So to describe them this way is by no means to suggest that they are unimportant.

1.2 The 21st century skills movement

There is a burgeoning literature on 21st century skills: what they are, how they might be cultivated and assessed. This literature is characterised by the identification of current and future challenges and the skills or capabilities necessary to address these challenges. This literature has been generated largely by a technology industry-led movement, beginning with the US-based Partnership for 21st Century Learning, and the Australian-based Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills – a consortium of Microsoft, Intel, Cisco and the University of Melbourne. This movement has generated two recent books, both collections of papers – Bellanca and Brandt (2010) and Griffin et al. (2012). The Partnership for 21st Century Learning has developed a practical guide for teachers in cultivating 21st century skills (Trilling and Fadel, 2009).

A number of organisations around the globe have developed frameworks for 21st century skills. Binkley et al. (2012) analysed 12 such frameworks including the Partnership for 21st Century Learning P21 Framework, the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, Scotland’s A Curriculum for Excellence – the four capabilities, and the European Union’s Key Competencies for Lifelong Learning. While noting significant differences between the frameworks in the ways in which the skills are described Binkley et al. identify ten skills in four broad categories that are inclusive of all approaches. These are:

• Ways of Thinking – Creativity and innovation; Critical thinking; problem solving, decision making; Learning to learn, meta-cognition

• Ways of Working – Communication; Collaboration (teamwork)

• Tools for Working – Information literacy (includes research on sources, evidence, biases etc.), ICT literacy

• Living in the World – Citizenship – local and global; Life and career; Personal and social responsibility – including cultural awareness and competence (Binkley et al., 2012, p.36).

On the margins of 21st century capabilities literature is Martha Nussbaum’s Not for Profit in which she seeks to identify what abilities are needed to meet a particular social challenge – the promotion of a “humane, people sensitive democracy” (Nussbaum, 2010, p.25).

This paper is a contribution to the 21st century capabilities literature, and in particular, to refining the characterisations of 21st century capabilities. I will suggest that much of the literature on 21st century skills emphasises skills necessary to address economic and technological challenges, and to a lesser extent social challenges. It under-emphasises health and ecological challenges and the capabilities necessary to address them. To that extent, these accounts of 21st century capabilities are limited. A richer understanding of 21st century capabilities flows from consideration of a broader set of 21st century challenges.

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2 Methodology

This paper is a conceptual or philosophical analysis of 21st century capabilities and their relationship to 21st century challenges. This paper is not intended as a comprehensive review of the literature on 21st capabilities, much less 21st century challenges. Rather, what I aim to do is identify 21st century capabilities through a critical discussion of a selection of literature. The literature I have selected is highly varied. The authors include a leading psychologist (Howard Gardner), a prominent philosopher (Martha Nussbaum), a technology company (Cisco) and a council of Ministers of Education (Ministerial Council of Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs – MCEETYA). These authors consider 21st century capabilities from varied disciplinary perspectives: Gardner from the perspective of Psychology; Nussbaum from the perspective of the Humanities; Cisco from the perspective of Economics and Technology and MCEETYA from the perspective of Education. They also consider 21st Century capabilities in relation to different challenges, as discussed below.

The methodology is comparative in the sense that in identifying 21st century capabilities, I compare and contrast the points of view of the selected authors, identifying shortcomings in some accounts by reference to the strengths of other accounts. The methodology is also synthetic in that each text complements and adds to the others to build a richer account of 21st century capabilities. I draw on, and adapt, the capabilities identified in the selected texts to develop an account of 21st century capabilities necessary to address a wide range of 21st century challenges.

Considering 21st century capabilities from multiple perspectives, comparing and contrasting these ideas, allows for a deeper understanding of 21st century capabilities, and a richer conceptualisation of them.

According to Amartya Sen, reasoned scrutiny from different perspectives is an essential part of the demands of objectivity for ethical and personal convictions, including those about justice and injustice (Sen, 2010, p.44). Reasoned scrutiny from different perspectives allows greater objectivity in the refinement of other philosophical notions, such as 21st century capabilities.

My methodology consists of a philosophical critique (reasoned scrutiny from different perspectives) of various characterisations of 21st century capabilities.

In this paper I firstly outline some significant 21st century challenges. I then examine and critique what a number of writers have recently suggested are the capabilities necessary to address these challenges. Next, I identify capabilities necessary to address 21st century ecological challenges. Finally I identify a set of capabilities necessary to address economic, technological, social, health and ecological challenges.

3 What are the 21st century challenges facing the world?

The challenges facing the modern world are numerous and the list below is far from comprehensive, but I will identify five major challenges, particularly challenges for developed nations, most of which are discussed in the literature on 21st century skills and capabilities.

I classify these challenges as: economic; technological; social; health; and ecological.


What I have called ecological challenges could be referred to as environmental challenges. I prefer the term ecological to environmental since the latter term implies that humans and human culture are separate from nature or ‘our environment’ – a self-other; culture-nature dichotomy. The term ecological does not have these connotations. We, individually, and the cultures to which we belong are part of, not apart from, ecosystems, and the biosphere.

This classification of challenges is somewhat arbitrary. Not all of the challenges fit neatly into any one of these categories and the categories overlap, but following is a rough characterisation of the challenges.

1 Economic challenge:

Cisco notes that the world today is more interdependent than ever before. The information and communications technology revolution, along with improved transportation, has integrated world markets and introduced new, lower-cost producers into the world market reducing prices but also the profit margins of producers.

This process also allows the labour needed to manufacture a product to be bought from almost anywhere. Jobs may be speedily transferred from one side of the world to the other (Cisco, 2010, p.4).

Technology has cut the demand for unskilled jobs and jobs that are governed by deductive rules and easily recognisable patterns, and are therefore amenable to automation. By contrast, it has raised the demand for high-skilled jobs such as software engineers and management consultants or jobs which cannot be easily replaced by technology, such as care workers (Cisco, 2010, p.5).

Most jobs now require specialised knowledge and skills and the nature of work is likely to change ever more rapidly. Thus as Linda-Darling Hammond has recently observed “the new mission of schools is to prepare students to work at jobs that do not yet exist, creating ideas and solutions for products and problems that have not yet been identified, using technologies that have not yet been invented” (Darling-Hammond, 2011, p.2).

2 Technological challenge:

The forces of globalisation, resulting, in part from significant recent advances in information and communications technologies and transport, entail major changes in all our lives such as: the increasing power of and dependence on science and technology; increasing connectivity and inter-dependence; voluminous quantities of information, often of questionable quality, that is increasingly readily accessible; global integration, and the increased international mobility of human beings (Gardner, 2010, pp.7–8).

3 Social challenge:

In Not for Profit, Nussbaum argues that we face a social challenge of maintaining and improving the health and vitality of a democratic society – sustaining decent democratic institutions across the many divisions that a modern society contains, and a strong role for fundamental rights protecting political liberty and entitlements in areas such as health and education (derived from Nussbaum, 2010).

With the rush to profitability in the global market, values precious for the future of democracy, especially in an era of religious and economic anxiety, are in danger of getting lost (Nussbaum, 2010, p.6).

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4 Health challenge:

In affluent countries such as Australia there is a high prevalence of mental disorders. One in five Australians aged 16–85 years had a mental disorder in 2007 and almost one in two (or 7.3 million people) had experienced a mental disorder at some point in their lives (ABS, 2009).

The weight of evidence suggests that the prevalence of mental disorders has increased over successive generations of youth. Significant tangible factors contributing to the decline in mental health include family conflict and breakdown, education and work pressures, media and technological impacts, dietary changes and pollution. However, the causes may also include cultural intangible factors, such as excessive materialism and individualism. Social and cultural changes have made it harder for young people in particular to develop a strong sense of identity, purpose and belonging – to feel that life is meaningful and worthwhile (Eckersley, 2008, p.5).

5 Ecological challenge:

A combination of increased human population, increased consumption, and refinements to technology and organisation of labour has contributed to harm to living systems (such as deforestation, over-fishing and habitat loss), damage to ecosystems that sustain life, resource depletion and increased competition and conflict amongst humans for scarce resources. While these processes have operated for many centuries, the trends to greater harm have accelerated in the 20th and 21st centuries. To meet this ecological challenge we need to stabilise or reduce the Earth’s human population, or reduce consumption (to the level we need to flourish) or adapt technology and organisation of the labour process to reduce the impact on living systems or a combination of these (Curry, 2006, p.13).

4 What are the 21st century capabilities we need to develop?

What kinds of capabilities are required for citizens to be equipped to address these challenges? In this paper I will consider what capabilities various contemporary thinkers have suggested are required to address some or all of these challenges. The writings I will examine are: Cisco The Learning Society; Howard Gardner Five Minds for the Future; Martha Nussbaum Not for profit; and MCEETYA Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians.

4.1 Cisco’s skills

Cisco has succinctly identified a number of skills required to address 21st century challenges (primarily, though, economic challenges, such as challenge 1 above, relating to future workforce needs). These are: gathering, synthesising, and analysing information; working autonomously to a high standard with minimal supervision; leading other autonomous workers through influence; being creative and turning that creativity into action; thinking critically and asking the right questions; striving to understand others’ perspectives and to understand the entirety of an issue; communicating effectively, often using technology; working ethically, firmly based in both your own society and the planet as a whole (Cisco, 2010, p.7).


Although these skills may be pressed into service to address 21st century technological, social, health and ecological challenges, they appear to be primarily orientated towards skills necessary for future work. A number of these skills are explicitly work related – “working autonomously”, “leading other autonomous workers”, “working ethically”. The others resemble employment-related key competencies identified by Finn (1991) including: Language and Communication (e.g. accessing and using information); Problem Solving (e.g. analysis, critical thinking, creative thinking); Cultural Understanding; Personal and Interpersonal (e.g. negotiating and team skills, initiative and leadership, ethics).

These capabilities are inadequate for dealing with ecological challenges. This requires, for example, living and consuming ethically as well as working ethically.

4.2 Gardner’s five minds

In Five Minds for the Future, Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner identifies five kinds of ‘mind’ that we should cultivate in the future. He argues that success in the 21st century (particularly in addressing challenges 1 and 2 above – the economic and technological challenge) entails the cultivation of five kinds of mind – effectively five broad capabilities. These are: the disciplined mind: “Employing the ways of thinking associated with the major scholarly disciplines… and major professions…” (Gardner, 2008, p.154); the synthesising mind: “selecting crucial information from the copious amounts available: arraying that information in ways that make sense to self and others” (Gardner, 2008, p.155); the creating mind: “Going beyond existing knowledge and syntheses to pose new questions, offer new solutions, fashion works that stretch existing genres or configure new ones…” (Gardner, 2008, p.156); the respectful mind: “responding sympathetically and constructively to differences among individuals and groups; seeking to understand and work with those who are different; extending beyond mere tolerance and political correctness” (Gardner, 2008, p.157); the ethical mind: “abstracting crucial features of one’s role at work and one’s role as a citizen and acting consistently with those conceptualisations; striving toward good work and good citizenship” (Gardner, 2008, p.154).

Like Cisco’s skills, the focus of Gardner’s five minds is primarily future workforce needs. The disciplined mind involves employing ways of thinking associated with the major professions. The synthesising mind is a disciplined mind connecting to other disciplines. The creating mind is a disciplined mind pushing the boundaries of its discipline in novel directions. The respectful mind primarily involves seeking to work well with others who are different and the ethical mind primarily involves striving towards good work.

Gardner does mention good citizenship. He seems to assume that good work and good citizenship – one’s role at work and one’s role as a citizen – require much the same kind of mind.

However, the capabilities required for good work in a globalised world may be different from those required for democratic participation for all. According to Amartya Sen, democracy is best seen as ‘government by discussion’ – not just in terms of the demands for public balloting. Public reasoning plays a crucial role in the practice of democracy. Public reasoning in turn requires the ability to think well about political and ethical issues to examine, reflect, argue and debate (Sen, 2010, chapter 15) For Gardner, a

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disciplined mind is a discipline specialist. Good work requires mastery of a discipline – the development of discipline-specific ways of thinking and acting. If Sen is right, democratic participation, or good citizenship demands a different kind of mind – a generalist mind – capable of good reasoning or critical thinking outside of specific discipline context.

Gardner’s five minds are primarily employment related capabilities that are orientated to meeting economic and technological challenges (specifically challenges 1 and 2 above). They are less serviceable to deal with social, health and ecological challenges – challenges 3, 4 and 5.

4.3 Nussbaum’s abilities

US philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that the abilities that are required of citizens to promote a humane, people-sensitive democracy (Challenge 3) include the ability to: think well about political issues to examine, reflect, argue and debate; recognise fellow citizens as people with equal rights, to look at them with respect, as ends; have concern for the lives of others; imagine well a variety of complex issues affecting the story of a human life as it unfolds: to think about childhood, adolescence, family relationships, illness, death, and much more in a way informed by an understanding of a wide range of human stories, not just by aggregate data; judge political leaders critically, but with an informed sense of the options available to them; think about the good of a nation as a whole, as well as that of one’s own local group; to see one’s own nation as part of a complicated world order (Nussbaum, 2010, pp.25–26).

To Nussbaum’s list I would add the ability of political activism understood as actions (generally collaborative) to promote (or impede) economic, technological, social, and ecological change. Examples include civil disobedience, non-violent non-cooperation, protest, boycott, letter writing and political campaigning.

For Nussbaum, a key element of the ability to think well is critical thinking, the ability to: think and argue for oneself, rather than defer uncritically to tradition or authority; stop, reflect and analyse, so that crucial issues are not missed by haste and inadvertence (Nussbaum, 2010, p.50) probe, evaluate evidence, write papers with well-structured arguments, and analyse the arguments presented in other texts (Nussbaum, 2010, p.55).

Nussbaum claims that these abilities are required to address the 21st century social challenges relating to democracy (challenge 3 above). Arguably, however, the ability to think well, for example, to examine, to reflect, to argue and to debate are important in addressing 21st century economic challenges relating to work in globalised world. Robert Reich notes that in the US economy two categories of work are growing. (These trends are even more magnified in Australia.) The first he calls symbolic analytic work that has to do with identifying and solving new problems, and with analysing, manipulating and communicating through abstract symbols – numbers, shapes, words, ideas (Reich, 2005, p.128) The capacities to think well, examine, reflect, argue and debate clearly facilitate this category of work.

The second growing category of work involves personal services, such as nursing, child care, aged care, teaching and other caring services (Reich, 2005, p.129). Success in these occupations would certainly be facilitated by the ability to recognise fellow citizens


as people with equal rights, to look at them with respect, as ends; the ability to have concern for the lives of others, to grasp what policies of many types mean for the opportunities and experiences of one’s fellow citizens; the ability to imagine well a variety of complex issues affecting the story of a human life as it unfolds.

Increasingly, success in personal service work (and to some extent symbolic analytic work) requires a strong ethical capability. For example youth workers are required, as part of their responsibilities:

• to take steps to identify risks; take reasonable care in response; assess the situation and act accordingly

• to balance reasonable care against other, sometimes competing, responsibilities, such as the safety of other people, privacy and confidentiality and the needs of clients

• to balance safety (duty of care) with other rights of clients such as the right to privacy and the right to lead as normal a life as possible, even if this creates risks

• to observe other laws, standards, codes and guidelines covering specific situations, such as preventing violence, food safety standards, complaints, prescribed medication and child protection

• to recognise legal limits on care, for example anti-discrimination laws, privacy laws that conflict with safety in some circumstances because privacy laws restrict use and disclosure of information about clients, public health law and, tenancy law that puts limits on how much landlords can intrude on the privacy and independence of their tenants

• to consider clients’ mental abilities that may vary enormously, and may even change from day to day

• to consider that when working with adults and teenagers, you may not have the right or the ability to stop the client from taking risks, for example by physically restraining them.

And, to top it all off,

• to more than follow standards, if the standards are not adequate.

(Derived from http://www.yapa.org.au/youthwork/facts/dutyofcare.php)

This is quite a complex set of ethical demands for relatively lowly paid and time-stressed youth workers. Developing ethical capabilities of the kind required for success as a youth worker – or a nurse, an aged care worker, a disability support worker, a child care worker, a teacher – would be strongly facilitated by an ability to think well, examine, reflect, argue and debate.

Nussbaum’s abilities are explicitly orientated towards addressing social challenges, and in particular, the promotion of a humane, people-sensitive democracy. In this respect they add to and amplify Cisco’s skills and Gardner’s five minds. These abilities are also important in relation to future workforce needs.

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4.4 The Melbourne Declaration’s abilities

The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (MCEETYA 2008) states that Australian governments commit to working in collaboration with all school sectors to support all young Australians to become: successful learners; confident and creative individuals; active and informed citizens

Successful learners: are able to think deeply and logically, and obtain and evaluate evidence in a disciplined way as the result of studying fundamental disciplines; are creative, innovative and resourceful, and are able to solve problems in ways that draw upon a range of learning areas and disciplines; are able to make sense of their world and think about how things have become the way they are.

Confident and creative individuals: [are able] to manage their emotional, mental, spiritual and physical wellbeing; are enterprising, show initiative and use their creative abilities; develop personal values and attributes such as honesty, resilience, empathy and respect for others; have the knowledge, skills, understanding and values to establish and maintain healthy, satisfying lives; relate well to others and form and maintain healthy relationships.

Active and informed citizens: act with moral and ethical integrity; appreciate Australia’s social, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity; understand and acknowledge the value of Indigenous cultures; are able to relate to different cultures and communicate across cultures; work for the common good, in particular sustaining and improving natural and social environments; are responsible global and local citizens.

The Ministers of Education in Australia have carefully articulated those capabilities necessary to meet those 21st century economic, technological and social challenges as well as those associated with health – both physical and mental (challenge 4). A concern with these health challenges is not evident in many other lists of 21st century capabilities. But if we are concerned to articulate those capabilities necessary for success in life in the 21st century, not simply success in work, then the capability to take good care of oneself and others needs to be considered.

5 What capabilities are necessary to address ecological challenges?

The literature on 21st century skills described above identifies those capabilities required to address the economic, social, technological and health challenges. None of these frameworks focus on or emphasise ecological challenges and the capabilities necessary to address them.

We have seen that Cisco and Gardner focus on economic, technological, and to a limited extent social challenges in their accounts of 21st century skills/minds. Nussbaum focuses exclusively on a social challenge. They make little or no mention of ecological challenges and do not consider in any detail the skills or capabilities necessary to address them.

The Melbourne Declaration mentions climate change as one example of a problem that goes beyond national boundaries and requires collaboration between nations to solve. But it gives little prominence to ecological challenges. The Melbourne Declaration mentions the ability to “work for the common good, in particular sustaining and improving natural and social environments.” This is the only mention of a capability to address ecological challenges in a 20-page document.


So what capabilities are necessary to address 21st century ecological challenges?

Critical thinking

Clearly, some of the capabilities discussed above are significant in addressing ecological challenges, since ecological challenges are ethical challenges, relating to how we should live. For example the following capabilities are necessary to address ecological challenges: Nussbaum’s ability to think well, to examine, reflect, argue and debate; Cisco’s thinking critically and asking the right questions; striving to understand others’ perspectives and to understand the entirety of an issue; working ethically, firmly based in both your own society and the planet as a whole.

A bio-centric respectful and ethical mind

To be of service in meeting 21st century ecological challenges, Gardner’s respectful mind and ethical mind would best be re-defined in terms of our responsibilities to all living systems, and not, as Gardner does, exclusively in terms of our obligations to humans.

If we are to best meet 21st century ecological challenges then we will need to recognise that all living systems, from microbial speck to the Great Barrier Reef, have interests. That is, they can be benefited or harmed. Some things are good for them and other things are bad. Further, we will need to recognise that this has ethical implications, that is, implications for how we should live. In other words, best meeting 21st century ecological challenges requires a bio-centric, or eco-centric ethic, rather than the human-centred or anthropocentric ethic advocated by Gardner.

A holistic mind

Gardner considers the question of whether there might be other ‘minds’ besides his five. I believe there is a case for adding another mind – the holistic mind. The holistic mind is able to understand how the whole influences and shapes its components; for example: how a genome influences its component genes; how a cell influences the functions of its component organelles and macromolecular components; how a multi-cellular organism influences its component cells (for example, in cell specialisation); how a super-organism (such as an ant colony) influences its component organisms (for example, in the combination of labour in the colony and the development of ‘castes’); how a human society influences its members (for example in a combination of labour) how a system influences a school, how a school influences teachers and students, and how a classroom influences its students; how an ecosystem influences the characteristics of the component organisms – through providing ecological niches.

The ability to think holistically is necessary to be able to understand climate science, ecosystems, the value of bio-diversity, and it could even be argued, the source of morality.

The ability to traverse the sciences and humanities

The ability to traverse the whole spectrum from the sciences to the humanities (a form of Gardner’s synthesising mind) is crucial to addressing ecological challenges. Too much specialisation in the humanities can result in a human centredness that can impede cultivating the understanding of our place in nature that is arguably necessary to address ecological challenges. The study of the sciences is necessary to a nuanced understanding

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of our place in broader living systems. On the other hand, too much specialisation in the sciences can result in too little reflection on living well, in particular on consideration of the ethical issues which are necessary to address our ecological challenges.

Imagining ourselves as part of a community of all living systems

A key capability for addressing ecological challenges is the ability to imagine ourselves as part of a wider community of living systems on Earth.

Nussbaum’s list of capabilities necessary to promote a humane, people-sensitive democracy could be adapted to a list of capabilities necessary to promote a compassionate, life-sensitive society – inclusive of but not limited to a humane, people sensitive democracy. This broader list might include the ability to: think well about issues affecting the biosphere, to examine, reflect, argue and debate; recognise fellow living systems as of intrinsic value, even though they may be different in species: to look at them with respect, as ends, not just as tools to be manipulated for one’s own profit; have concern for the lives of other living systems; imagine well a variety of complex issues affecting the story of a life as it unfolds: to think about development, illness, death, relationships with other living systems and much more in a way informed by an understanding of a wide range of stories, not just by aggregate data; think about the good of all living systems, not just that of one’s own species or community; see one’s own self and society, in turn, as part of a complicated living system – as part of an ecosystem and the biosphere.

Such a formulation complements the views of Carolyn Merchant in Reinventing Eden, in which she proposes five precepts for a human community in a sustainable partnership with a non-human community:

1 equity between the human and non-human communities

2 moral consideration for both humans and other species

3 respect for both cultural diversity and biodiversity

4 inclusion of women, minorities and non-human nature in the code of ethical accountability

5 an ecologically sound management that is consistent with the continued health of both the human and non-human communities (Merchant, 2004, p.224).

Philosophical thinking

A crucial capability necessary to address 21st century ecological challenges is the ability to think philosophically – specifically about human nature, our place in the biosphere, and the implications of this for how we should live. In particular to address 21st century ecological challenges we require the capability to reflect on and discuss issues about the source of value – good, bad, right, wrong, beauty, ugliness and worth.

Historically there have been two kinds of views about the source of value. The first is that the source of value is transcendent, it comes from beyond nature, for example, from God.

A second view about the source of values is that values arise not from a transcendent realm but from the valuing activity of human beings (Grayling, 2003, p.1).


A third view, by no means as prominent as the transcendental and humanist views, is that value arises from life, and the valuing activities of life. All living things are internally organised for a purpose, to live, live well and live better. Relative to these purposes living systems have interests – they can be benefited or harmed. Relative to these purposes, living systems have intrinsic worth.

Our capacity to effectively meet 21st century ecological challenges depends on our views about the source of value. The view that all living systems have interests and intrinsic worth tends to encourage ecological activism and gives it urgency. An ability to think philosophically about the source of value and our place in nature provides no guarantee of addressing 21st century ecological challenges. It is, however, necessary to meet these challenges.

6 Conclusion

I conclude by articulating what I see to be five capabilities for the future. This is based on a synthesis of Cisco’s skills, Gardner’s five minds, Nussbaum’s abilities and the Melbourne Declaration, modified to take account of capabilities necessary to address ecological challenges.

• Critical thinking – including the ability to: examine, reflect, argue and debate; think deeply and logically, and obtain and evaluate evidence in a disciplined way as the result of studying fundamental disciplines; make sense of one’s world and think about how things have become the way they are, and how they might be different.

• Holistic thinking – including the ability to understand how the whole influences and shapes its components; see one’s own self and society, in turn, as part of a complicated living system – as part of an ecosystem and the biosphere; and traverse the sciences and the humanities.

• Creativity – including the ability to be creative, innovative and resourceful; go beyond existing knowledge and syntheses to pose new questions, offer new solutions, fashion works that stretch existing genres or configure new ones.

• Imagination – including the ability to imagine well a variety of complex issues affecting the story of a life as it unfolds: to think about development, illness, death, relationships with other living systems (including humans) in a way informed by an understanding of a wide range of stories, not just by aggregate data; put yourself in another being’s shoes; recognise fellow living systems as of intrinsic value, even though they may be different in species, or culture or religion: to look at them with respect, as ends, not just as tools to be manipulated for one’s own profit.

• Practical reasoning – including the ability to manage one’s emotional, mental, spiritual and physical wellbeing; relate well to others and form and maintain healthy relationships; think about the good of all living systems, not just that of one’s own species or community.

What are the implications of this for practice? An implication of the 21st century capabilities literature is that teaching and learning needs to focus as much on the cultivation of 21st century capabilities than on memorisation of facts. A second implication is that cultivating 21st century capabilities is likely to require the use of a

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broader range of pedagogies than the largely transmissive pedagogies suitable for inculcating students with large quantities of factual knowledge. For example, critical thinking and practical reasoning are best cultivated by encouraging students to engage in discussion and debate through what Nussbaum calls Socratic Pedagogy (Nussbaum, 2010, chapter 4).

If we are to effectively meet 21st century challenges then the next generation will need to be highly adept (even more so than the current generation) in critical thinking, holistic thinking, practical reasoning, creativity and imagination.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for reading and commenting on earlier versions of this paper: Carolyn Williams, Paul Brock, Cynthia Townley, Neil Harrison, Tamara Stojanovic and many colleagues from the Student Engagement and Program Evaluation Bureau at the New South Wales Department of Education and Communities. I would also like to thank the assessors of the International Journal of Learning and Change for their most helpful comments.

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