Developing Leadership Skills

Across Africa more than 7 million young people enter the job market each year…

Yet most youth can expect only to remain unemployed or underemployed and to live on less than $2 a day. Because they lack the 21st century skills required to succeed in the majorly informal labour market.

A deeper look into Skills Based Education

One of the core pillars in Educate! programming is the skills-based education approach. We design to give students experiences that allow them to practice skills in school. These experiences are shaped intentionally at the level of:

curriculum
delivery methods
assessment

In the Design Academy you will learn HOW designers can facilitate this process. In this session you will learn WHAT skills we target and how these specific skills can be best developed.

Other resources

Globally, prominent education organizations and networks are researching best ways to develop and assess 21st century skills, check out a few resources below:

Educate! Skills Map part I

We have revamped our skills map in line with recent studies on developing 21st century skills. Below is the new edition of the Educate! skills map of Leadership skills. In session C) you will dive deeper into Entrepreneurship skills.

Leadership Skills - 6Cs

(adopted from New Pedagogies for Deep Learning)

Critical thinking

Critically evaluating information and arguments, seeing patterns and connections, constructing meaningful knowledge, and applying it in the real world.

In simple terms: Objectively evaluating information, seeing patterns and connections and applying this knowledge in the real world.

Citizenship

Thinking like global citizens, considering global issues based on a deep understanding of diverse values and worldviews, and with a genuine interest and ability to solve ambiguous and complex real‐world problems that impact human and environmental sustainability.

In simple terms: Able to solve complex real-world problems keeping in mind local and global dynamics.

Character

Learning to deep learn, armed with the essential character traits of grit, tenacity, perseverance, and resilience; and the ability to make learning an integral part of living.

In simple terms: Self-aware and confident, looks out for learning opportunities and perseveres at difficult tasks.

Collaboration

Work interdependently and synergistically in teams with strong interpersonal and team‐related skills including effective management of team dynamics and challenges, making substantive decisions together, and learning from and contributing to the learning of others.

In simple terms: Work with others and manage team dynamics and challenges.

Communication

Communicating effectively with a variety of styles, modes, and tools (including digital tools), tailored for a range of audiences.

In simple terms: Send and receive information effectively with a variety of styles, modes, and tools, tailored for a range of audiences.

Creativity

Having an ‘entrepreneurial eye’ for economic and social opportunities, asking the right inquiry questions to generate novel ideas, and leadership to pursue those ideas and turn them into action.

In simple terms: Generates new ideas and pursues them independently and with others.

Designing for skilled learning

Throughout the Design Academy you will learn how you can design sessions, modules and program models that will create skilled learning and acquisition of the target skills. To start with, let me ask you a question....

How does a child in pre-school learn how to communicate?

Does the teacher run a session around the topic of verbal and non-verbal communication? The benefits and disadvantages of each? Then different steps to communicate? NO! That would be silly. The teacher instead observes the children play together, asks them to describe what they are doing, uses visual arts to have to learners tell a story, but also helps them deal with conflict over their toys, etc.

Developing soft skills happens by doing but also by smartly shaping experiences, ways of working and a lot of responding to naturally emerging situations. So how can you make sure that secondary students advance their collaboration skills? And their communication skills? One first hint is that simply structuring a lesson as a Skills Lab is not enough, just grouping students around a table doesn't mean they will work together.... Here are a few suggestions, but please research some more and show us your findings in the assignment below.

Clover Foundation

Critical thinking

Ensure that the task simulates a real life problem or experience.
Encourage use of different information sources (you, peers, facilitator, written/audio/visual).
In the presentation and/or assessment focus on the process, not just the outcome.
Have learners express what they believe will happen (assumptions) and test these assumptions through various means.

Tip: Learn more about testing assumptions here on the Design Academy.

Creativity

Expose learners to role models and successful entrepreneurs who have creatively solved a community need.
Reflect on problems learners face in the process and help strategize.
Encourage learners to ask questions to find out new information/explanations for a phenomenon.
Expose learners to creativity strategies like brainstorm and ‘what if’ and eventually let them choose their own creativity strategies.

Tip: Learn more about writing empowering case studies here on the Design Academy.

Citizenship

Include activities/conversations that connect local problems to regional, national and global implications/causes.
Do something about real life problems (PEDVU) in and out of class.
Allow space for learners to express their personal opinions and listen to views that may differ.

Tip: Learn more about solving real-life problems here on the Design Academy.

Character

Give learners options of what they like to work on and space for personal direction.
Diversify ways of getting (and seeking) feedback.
Include a conversation about WHAT learners learn from an activity, HOW they have learned this and WHY this is important.
Entice learners to learn outside of the classroom and build in opportunities to reflect on this experience.
Build in scaffolding in-class and out-of-class.

Tip: Learn more about space for personal direction here on the Design Academy.

Tip: Learn more about scaffolding here on the Design Academy.

Collaboration

Let groups agree on how they like to work together during an exercise.
Help teams reflect on how everyone contributed to the task.
Make a task challenging enough for team members to depend on each other and their unique strengths to solve it.
Give groups members the opportunity to express their perspective and then move to a win-win solution.

Tip: Learn more about neriage as a method to bring group work to another level here on the Design Academy.

Communication

Model different modes of communication in Build.
Diversify presentation & communication modes (written, audio, visual, 3d).
Help learners reflect on and research the preferences and interests of different audiences.
Use frameworks like GEPIC to strengthen communication for action.

Tip: Learn more about 'making meaning' through language here on the Design Academy.

Assignment#2 Improve a group activity to boost one of the Leadership skills

Choose one of the following group activities pulled from the Skills Lab Starter Kit and make at least 3 changes to boost one of the 6Cs of your choice.

Note: Stay within the time allocated and work towards the lesson objectives.

Submit a 1 page document including:

The Leadersip skill you selected and why you think this activity currently does not bring out this skill optimally.
A new step-by-step activity guide to strengthen the selected skill.
A description of how you predict the changes you made will improve the selected skill (share with us some new resources you found on this topic).
Criteria the facilitator can use to assess whether learners acquired the skill.

Note: The improvement should include at least 3 significant changes to the activity.

Option #1 Economics 'Taxation'

LWBAT:

Explain the importance of taxation to the economy
Assess Effects of taxation among business people

Group Activity Practice: (50minutes)

Divide class into 5 skills lab teams
Students work in groups to go outside to the shops or market and interview business men while taking notes on the challenges they face with government levying tax on them and also the benefits they get when they pay those taxes. (if going out is not possible, invite a resource person to be interviewed).
Give students 10 minutes to draft their questionnaires before going out.

Option #2 Mathematics 'Geometry Nets and Solids'

LWBAT:

Generate different shapes and solids in geometry
Calculate the perimeter, volume and total surface area of their class room.

Group Activity Practice: (40minutes)

Divide class into 5 skills lab teams.
Assign every a group a shape / solid to construct using manila paper, banana fibre or another material.

Every group constructs their shape.
They determine the different dimensions of the shape/solid constructed using rulers.
They also note down how that shape or solid can be applied in real life.

Calculate the perimeter, volume and total surface area occupied by the shape or solid constructed and also vector angles.
As a final challenge groups will also use a metre rule to measure the dimensions of their classroom and calculate the perimeter and internal area of their class room in sq. metres.

Option #3 Christian Religious Education 'Smoking'

LWBAT:

Analyse dangers of smoking to an individual and community at large.
Advise smokers to adopt other forms of good leisure activities rather than smoking.

Group Activity Practice: (40 Minutes)

Divide students into 5 skills lab teams.
Each group will develop an anti-smoking skit bringing out:
- Reasons why people smoke
- Dangers of smoking
- Other forms of good leisure activities

Teacher gives students fifteen (15) minutes to practice the scene before the actual presentation.

Frequently Asked Questions about Skills-Based Education

Does skills-based education mean we ignore knowledge and/or theory?

First of all, knowledge, skills and attitudes are hard to separate. None can work in isolation from the other when it comes to experience-based education. When you design learning activities that we call skill-based it means the ultimate end-goal is the application of the skill towards leadership and entrepreneurship. Activities can be knowledge lean or knowledge-dense and we use both! Learners constantly need to acquire new knowledge and continuously learn, test and revise theories that explain the world around us. There is a big difference from the traditional knowledge-based education though, that is for us knowledge is living and not static. It can also be created by all of us, not just owned and passed on by the teacher!

Why don't we focus on ICT skills when we talk of 21st century skills?

Indeed, ICT and digitization are at the centre of future labor processes. Educate! currently works in a resource-constrained environment limiting our opportunities to boost ICT skills. However, we welcome all Design Academy participants to think with us; how can we boost ICT skills within the East African context?

A lot of literature on 21st century skills is focused on the global North, won't the global South need different skills?

Probably yes! Globalization hits us all, so to compete in the global market young people will need a lot of the same skills all over the world. Maybe even more than peers in the North, young people in East Africa need creativity to use scarce resources, grit and flexibility to start small, etc. If you like to know more about how livelihood opportunities in East Africa are changing and evolving we can recommend the work of the MasterCard Foundation Youth Tank. This group of young researchers studied livelihood opportunities in the agriculture and tourism sector. Find the first report on the agriculture sector here and a general report on youth livelihoods here.

Let us know what insights you have about unique skills young people in Africa will need today and tomorrow!

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