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from The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner

The Third Survival Skill: Agility and Adaptability

The portrait of the New World of Work that is emerging is a complex one. The shift from a hierarchical authority that tells you what to do to a team-based environment has been both rapid and profound. Similarly, the intensifying rate of change, the overwhelming amount of data, and the increasing complexity of problems that individuals and teams face every day in their work are dramatic new challenges for everyone in the organization. All of these changes illuminate the importance of another set of essential survival skills for work today: agility and adaptability.

Last week, I was in a meeting with campus administrators where they were introduced to the new English Language Arts TEKS. It was quite surprising to that group that in 2009-2010, teachers would have new ELA objectives to teach. The corporate world is not the only place where things are changing.

We not only have to teach students agility and adaptability, we have to have those skills ourselves!

Image citation: hop! by uomoelettrico.

This entry was posted on March 4, 2009 at 4:09 pm and is filed under Teaching & Learning. Tagged: 21st century skills, 21stcenturyskills, adaptability, agility, flexibility. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.