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and activities are organized around electronically processed information networks”
(Castells, 2001).
Thinking Skills for the Knowledge Age
Many have argued that education needs to respond to the accelerating rate of tech-
nological and social change associated with the knowledge age and globalisation.
In particular a need is seen for more adaptability or “learning to learn” throughout
the lifespan (e.g., Levin & Rumberger, 1995; Quisumbing, 2005). Castells supports
this trend in arguing that this shift in the social economy “calls into question the
entire education system developed during the industrial era” and demands that we
develop a new pedagogy (Castells, 2001, p. 278). In the UK the influential Leitch
report (2006) extrapolated the same trends to argue that to compete successfully
in the global economy of the knowledge age we need to teach more Higher Order
generic skills. The Leitch report defines these as “Level 4” skills but says little about
their specific nature beyond the fact that they are associated with degree level qual-
ifications. Bernie Trilling, head of Oracle Education, goes further and defines the
skills we need for the knowledge age as the Seven Cs (see Table 16.1).
Table 16.1
Skills for the knowledge age as the Seven Cs
Seven Cs
Component skills
Critical thinking and doing
Problem solving, research, analysis, project management,
etc
Creativity
New knowledge creation, “Best Fit” design solutions, artful
storytelling, etc
Collaboration
Cooperation, compromise, consensus, community-building
etc
Cross-cultural understanding
Across diverse ethnic, knowledge and organisational
cultures
Communication
Crafting messages and using media effectively
Computing
Effective use of electronic information and knowledge tools
Career and learning self-reliance
Managing change, lifelong learning and career redefinition
(From Trilling & Hood, 2001)
While this is just one list it is reasonably representative of the range of lists
articulating the skills needed to survive and thrive in the knowledge age (e.g., Bruns,
2007). With their focus on creative and critical thinking as well as on learning to
learn, these lists are clearly a development in the same tradition as the teaching
thinking skills movement, offering a new version of the sort of thinking that we
should value and ought to teach more of because there is not enough of it about.
However they do not entirely fit the cognitive assumptions that lie behind many more
traditional approaches to teaching thinking. It is the argument of this chapter that the
idea of the knowledge age and the kinds of skills, habits, and dispositions associated
