Education for Life and Work

Private foundations, policy makers, and education organizations use a variety of names for the lists of broad skills seen as valuable. To help the public understand the research related to the teaching and learning of such skills, several foundations charged the National Research Council (NRC) to:

• Define the set of key skills that are referenced by the labels "deeper learning," "21st century skills," "college and career readiness," "student centered learning," "next generation learning," "new basic skills," and "higher order thinking."
• Describe how these skills relate to each other and to more traditional academic skills and content in the key disciplines of reading, mathematics, and science.
• Summarize the findings of the research that investigates the importance of such skills to success in education, work, and other areas of adult responsibility and that demonstrates the importance of developing these skills in K-16 education.
• Summarize what is known—and what research is needed—about how these skills can be learned, taught, and assessed.
• Identify features of educational interventions that research suggests could be used as indicators that an intervention is likely to develop the key skills in a substantial and meaningful way.