Teaching and learning in the 21st Century is an attempt at postulating the needs of both Educators and learners suitable for achieving learning outcomes of the 21st century. The presentation throws more light on the future of teaching and learning now that technology has entered into our classrooms. This sets the stage for the incorporation of digital literacies into our daily teaching life as practitioners.

1. TEACHING AND LEARNING IN THE
21st CENTURY
BY
PETER KIZZA KIYINGI
BA.ED/M.A.MAK
SCHOOL PRINCIPAL-KASANGATI HIGH
BOARD CHAIR-TOGETHER FOR AFRICA-UGANDA
peterkizza12@gmail.com
peterkizzakiyingi@yahoo.com

2. INTRODUCTION
The 21st century presents new opportunities,
possibilities and challenges for creating learning spaces
that empower, engage and excite all learners in all
contexts.
Today, learners from various socio-cultural backgrounds and
contexts at different educational levels enter physical, virtual,
and blended learning spaces with varied concerns, desires,
expectations, experiences and interests.

3. The attainment of that goal in different countries lies
majorly on teachers’ understanding of the learners
characteristics and how teachers enact situated
pedagogies and technologies and other resources to
create learning spaces that increase student-agency/
urgency in the learning process

4. The 21st century teacher

5. The students don’t need a perfect
Teacher
They need a Teacher who gets them excited about
learning,
A Teacher who smiles and makes them enjoy coming
to school each and everyday

6. The digital age presents new opportunities and
possibilities but also poses new challenges that make
teaching and teacher preparation even more complex.
Reflecting on the complexity of teaching and teacher
preparation.
It should be noted that “no amount of preparatory
education and training can fully prepare trainees for
the challenges that they will face when they become
teachers

7. To meet the learning needs and interests of the 21st
century learner, contemporary educational enterprise
demands a range of habits of the mind from educators,
curriculum designers, and policy makers. It is helpful to
envisage experiences, needs, and interests of the
learners of the 21st century before discussing what and
how teachers must learn to teach them

8. Additionally, the achievement of that goal will also
depend on policy makers’ creation of enabling policy
environments in which curriculum designers, teachers,
school leaders, teacher educators, and assessors of
learning can effectively deconstruct traditional
curricula, pedagogies, and assessment practices and
reconstruct and enact new ones.
Teaching is a complex enterprise in and of itself.

9. “ it is important that new technologies are integrated
into learning and teaching only when driven by
pedagogy, rather than technology for technology’s
sake” .
In a similar vein, we also note that “ while we
recognize that ICT use is by no means synonymous
with engagement, the unique communicative
capabilities of the technology as well as its
increasingly ubiquitous ‘anytime anywhere” qualities
offer much to those seeking to optimize student
engagement in the 21st century

10. Aside from these debates, scholars seem to
agree that it is important that current and
future leaders know the characteristics of 21st
century learners and how they learn in various
learning contexts and spaces in order to teach
them well.

11. Research has found out that in relation to learning “ young people
were more likely to use the internet for fact finding (definition of
words and checking facts) and training ( looking for jobs, e-
learning, online courses) while (author’s assertion) older digital
natives were more likely to use the internet for shopping,
investment and travel” .

12. However, several researchers report
increasing improvement in technological
connectivity in learning spaces in
developing countries and increase in
student enthusiasm in using technology for
learning despite several bottlenecks

13. In a critical review of research on multiple
literacies and multimodality in classrooms, it is
argued that technological changes in the
communication mediascape call for a
deconstruction of what literacy is about.
What must be learned, how it must be learned,
and how must learning be assessed in the
emerging digitized, fluid, global and networked
knowledge economy?

14. Developments in technologised landscapes and
mediascapes, question long held traditional
curricula, design, pedagogic, and assessment
practices, and therefore what counts for being
literate in the 21st century.

15. In addition, researchers on multi-literacies
and multimodality approaches to learning
challenge teachers, curriculum designers,
assessors of learning and policy makers to
reconsider what it means to be literate in
the 21st century

16. In sum, preparing teachers for teaching in the 21st
century learning environments remains as complex
as teaching has always been.
Reflecting on the current teacher education
programs, it should be noticed that “deep
understanding of learning and learning differences
as the basis of constructing curriculum has not
historically been a central part of teacher
education”.

17. Information and communication technologies
(ICTs) have enabled the establishment of a
global society whose citizens have
unprecedented real-time connectivity via social
media platforms enabled by smart phones,
Tablets (Ipads) and computers in developed and
developing economies.

18. It is encouraging that many countries
under the auspices of the United Nations
have committed to providing lifelong
learning for all to achieve the fourth goal
for sustainable development from 2030
going forward

19. It is pertinent to understand learners’
socio-cultural backgrounds and attitudes to
effectively engage them in the learning
process.
“Teachers also need to understand the
person, the spirit, of every child and find a
way to nurture that spirit”

20. It therefore questions the traditional
monologued relationship between teacher
and student, setting out to make the
classroom walls porous and to take the
students’ experiences, interests, and
existing technological and discourse
resources as a starting point.

21. Learning to teach in the 21st century requires
specific habits of the mind, habits of the heart;
and habits of the hands.
This means that teachers must learn to
deconstruct and reconstruct curricula,
pedagogical, and assessment practices for
critical engagement with student design,
existing technological resources, identity,
interests, power, technological literacies and
values

22. Nonetheless, even with high levels of
global technological connectivity the digital
divide abides in various contexts between
developed and developing countries,
between the rich and the poor, between
and among those who are knowledgeable
and those who are not

23. Nonetheless, other scholars argue that the
descriptions of digital natives and digital
immigrants are more rhetorical than evidence-
based.
There is not enough evidence, critics say, that
points at the existence of significant differences
between digital natives and digital immigrants
as described based on age

24. A study in the UK defined young adults
born between 1983 and 1990 as the first
generation digital natives, and teenagers
from after 1990 as the second generation
digital natives.

25. It is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous
environment and sheer volume of their interaction
with it, today’s students think and process
information fundamentally different from their
predecessors” .
Further more there are claims that “the single biggest
problem facing our digital immigrant instructors, who
speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital
age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks
an entirely new language.”

26. Providers of continuous professional
development need to design activities and
experiences that engage teachers in reflective
practices and that lead to intentional
deconstruction of pedagogic practices toward
co-construction of knowledge in partnership
with their students

27. Researchers caution educators and educational
policy makers against discarding evidence based
educational practices that have been proven to
work in favour of non-evidence based practices
that pontificates the use of new technologies as
the driving force that will revolutionalise
learning for digital natives

28. Scholars observe that there is scanty evidence, if at all
there is, suggesting that digital natives as the 21st
century learner are defined speak an entirely new
language that digital immigrants do not know much
about .
A survey conducted in the U.S at 11 universities
revealed that freshmen “expressed a lower interest in
technology in their course activity and reported lower
skill levels in course related technologies

29. Several researchers point at ICT as the driver of 21st century
learning and as the key descriptor of the 21st century learner.
Today, majority of learners in schools and in institutions of
higher learning were born into a digitally prolific society
enabled by ICT after the intervention of the internet.
This generation is often referred to as the Net Generation,
where as others categorise them as Generation Y on their
part, or netizens and digital natives respectively.
Nevertheless digital natives have “spent their entire lives
surrounded by using computers, videogames, digital music
players, video cams, cell phones and all the other related
tools of the digital age”.

30. ……… multiple literacies view of literacy “sets out to stretch
literacy beyond the constraints of official standard forms of
written and spoken language to connect with the culturally
and linguistically diverse landscapes and the multi-modal
texts that are mobilized and circulate across these
landscapes”.
………………………. the pedagogic aim of multiple literacies is to
attend to the multiple and multimodal texts that and wide
range of literacy practices that students are engaged in.

31. Teacher Educators need to prepare
teachers that can create learning
spaces and enact situated curricula,
pedagogies and assessments for 21st
Century learners to thrive in different
contexts

32. Teachers in the 21st century must develop a range of
attitudes, competencies, and skills to facilitate
learning in culturally diverse environments.
Teachers must acquire knowledge and competencies
to teach with interdisciplinarity

33. Teachers must have competencies in using multi-
media technologies and social media platforms in the
classroom and beyond the classroom.
Teachers must learn to hybridise pedagogies and to
use multiple tools to assess learning

34. Teachers will figure out how to navigate some issues and situations
on the job but would do well to have a large enough ‘toolkit’ to
work with as they prepare to teach.
What then might be the scope and focus of Teacher education
going forward?
How differently must Teacher Educators prepare 21st Century
Teachers?
What attitudes, competencies, and habits of the mind, knowledge
and skills might teachers need to facilitate learning in and across
multiple learning spaces?
This article reviews research on current global trends in Teacher
Education and peeks into the future of what Teacher Education
might look like as the 21st Century evolves.

35. CONCLUSION
Learning is changing in the 21st century.
Learning happens in the classrooms, homes,
communities, and indoor settings mediated by
emerging technologies.
The design of learning space is important for
desirable learning outcomes to be achieved.

36. Furthermore, technology has evolved and
transformed our lives and society, and learning space
is now enhanced by currently high technologies such
as interactive tutorials, wireless networks,
whiteboards, and mobile devices, maximizing
students' learning is a top priority in designing or
redesigning a learning space.

37. Well-designed learning spaces support
pedagogical practices that engage,
challenge, and equip learners with the
knowledge, skills, and attributes they need
to succeed in a complex and rapidly
changing world.

38. MANY THANKS