“In the beginning of the 21st century, we are experiencing an interesting evolution of the demand for learning both by individuals, societies and education authorities. Evidently, the acrimonious relation between the education provision and the social mandates of growth (performance) and social inclusion is becoming extremely complex. Economic globalization and the emergence of what has been identified as the Knowledge Society go, hand-in-hand, with a gradually changing set of key competences. They have been feeding in the dialogue about academic and policy implementation of what some thinkers and stakeholders already have named as the Literacies of the 21st century.
It seems that we are facing a demanding exercise of re-defining the Literacies in a lifelong learning perspective. This challenge goes from their starting definition (see the three Rs: Reading, Writing and Arithmetics), that corresponded to the Industrial Society’s massively comprehensive education model, to what today and for the coming years seems to prevail as the widely accepted necessary set (and level) of Competencies in the worlds of the individuals’ “life” (personal and cultural development, citizenship, etc.) and “work” (specific knowledge and skills). This has to be a set of Competencies, which, in its turn, correspond to the societal and conceptual structures of the emerging Knowledge Society. These Competencies – or the new Literacies –, which to a certain extent are related to the technical coding of the 21st century, are still being conceived as the pillars of Knowledge building and Skills development, not to mention their impact on the structuring of the School Education system (K-12) paradigm.
There is already considerable academic work to define and, more important, to effectively embed the above mentioned Competencies into the school education system. Recently a group of EU national experts have also reached a consensus on a rather arbitrary but probably functioning set of Key Competencies, in which the Digital Literacy is included, one among eight others. Yet, presenting a strong “horizontal” character compared to the other seven, possibly with the exception of the Learning-to-learn Competency!
Whether or not we deal with a paradigm shift, we certainly need to face the increasing Policy inter-dependence between Education and Social Inclusion. In other words, the new Equity Challenge implies that we have to re-engineer our learning systems, from the delivery of massive education to the engagement of people in massive knowledge experiences, by up-grading their Learning-to-learn Competence, whereby Digital Literacy takes a pivotal meaning.”
