We hear a lot about the 21st century learner – but what about the 21st century teacher? Andrew Churches investigates what makes them succeed.

What are the characteristics we would expect to see in a successful 21st century educator? Well, we know they are student-centric, holistic, and they’re teaching about how to learn as much as teaching about the subject area. We know, too, that they must be 21st century learners as well. But highly effective teachers in today’s classrooms are more than this – much more.

1. Adapting
Harnessed as we are to an assessment-focused education model, the 21st century educator must be able to adapt the curriculum and the requirements to teach to the curriculum in imaginative ways. They must also be able to adapt software and hardware designed for a business model into tools to be used by a variety of age groups and abilities. They must also be able to adapt to a dynamic teaching experience. When it all goes wrong in the middle of a class, when the technologies fail, the show must go on.

2. Being visionary
Imagination is a crucial component of the educator of today and tomorrow. They must look across the disciplines and through the curricula; they must see the potential in the emerging tools and Web technologies, grasp these and manipulate them to serve their needs. If we look at the technologies we currently see emerging, how many are developed for education? The visionary teacher can look at others’ ideas and envisage how they would use these in their class.

3. Collaborating
Blogger, Wikispaces, Bebo, MSN, MySpace, Second life, Twitter, RSS – as an educator we must be able to leverage these collaborative tools to enhance and captivate our learners. We, too, must be collaborators; sharing, contributing, adapting and inventing.

4. Taking risks
There’s so much to learn. How can you as an educator know all these things? You must take risks and sometimes surrender yourself to the students’ knowledge. Have a vision of what you want and what the technology can achieve, identify the goals and facilitate the learning. Use the strengths of the digital natives to understand and navigate new products, have them teach each other. Trust your students.

5. Learning
We expect our students to be life-long learners. Teachers, must continue to absorb experiences and knowledge, as well. We must endeavour to stay current. I wonder how many people are still using their lesson and unit plans from five years ago. To be a teacher, you must learn and adapt as the horizons and landscapes change.

6. Communicating
To have anywhere, anytime learning, the teacher must be anywhere and anytime. The 21st century teacher is fluent in tools and technologies that enable communication and collaboration. They go beyond learning just how to do it; they also know how to facilitate it, stimulate and control it, moderate and manage it.

7. Modelling behaviour
There is an expectation that teachers will teach values, so we must model the behaviors that we expect from our students. We are often the most consistent part of their life, seeing them more often, for longer and more reliably than even their parents. The 21st century educator also models tolerance, global awareness, and reflective practice, whether it’s the quiet, personal inspection of their teaching and learning, or through blogs, twitter and other media, effective educators look both inwards and outwards.

8. Leading
Whether they are a champion of the process of ICT integration, a quiet technology coach, the 21st century educator is a leader. Like clear goals and objectives, leadership is crucial to the success or failure of any project.

ANDREW CHURCHES IS HOD INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AT KRISTIN SCHOOL IN AUCKLAND.

Very Apt and well said. Also the teachers ought to be WWW: Where ever, What ever, When Ever and that is only possible when the teacher is IT Savvy a must for all at all points to explore.

Great list, Andrew. I've blogged about your post on my site http://kevinblissett.com.

Will definitely be the teacher who makes the difference,the technology can't do it on it's own.Great to see NZ educators up their with the rest.

Great points. Funny how this applies to more than one industry. I'm a web developer/design/photographer, and if you are passionate about what you do (and want to stay ahead of the game in your field), these points can be applied to all facets.

I wish the people from the Universities who observe our practice teachers could read this. They seem so negative and zero in on the wrong behaviors. I am sending this to one "newby" who needs to read what a great teacher really needs to know and understand. Thanks

Thank you for this well put and concise piece. I often find it difficult to explain to other educators why and how we should go about integrating technology into our classrooms. I feel confident pointing them to this article to begin a conversation. Thank you.

Thank you for this important information. I will show to my coworkers tomorrow in the meeting. We need to face the ICT challenges and the most important, we must act, because we can write an excellent lesson plan with the use of the ICT and everything but If we continue teaching as the same way like 10 years before, we are not making our students competitive and they are not going to be prepared as life-long learners. Thank you.

This information is really important for every single teacher. Nowadays, if a teacher is not aware of those challenges that we need to face, everything will be a waste of time. Thank you for helping us to become that 21st. century educator. Esteban.

Great article! I have posted a blog entry highlighting this article as my blog centers around helping bring teachers into the 21st century. These are great traits that a 21st century educator would exhibit. I also pointed out that, as educators, we need to be doing the things we should be teaching our students to be competive when they leave school for the working world. The blog entry can be found here: http://teacherofthe21stcentury.blogspot.com/2009/09/eight-habits-of-highly-effective-21st.html.

i am printing this off to help guide my tutoring practices with uni/college and EFL students. thank you :-)

that is the coolest thing about 21st learning

I will printing this out and putting it in the front of my lesson plan book. Thanks!

Thank you very much for this. If you don't mind, I am going to take the liberty of using these 8 points and show how, through the adoption of technology as a teaching tool, teachers may demonstrate that they have indeed cultivated these good habits. I will post this later today on my blog: http://www.e4africa.co.za. The purpose of my blog is to encourage teachers in Africa to use available technology to enhance teaching and learning.

Thank you very much for this. If you don't mind, I am going to take the liberty of using these 8 points and show how, through the adoption of technology as a teaching tool, teachers may demonstrate that they have indeed cultivated these good habits. I will post this later today on my blog: http://www.e4africa.co.za. The purpose of my blog is to encourage teachers in Africa to use available technology to enhance teaching and learning.