4K model of learning

The 4K model (4K for short, Four Cs or 4Cs) formulates competencies that are of outstanding importance for learners in the 21st century: communication , collaboration , creativity and critical thinking .

While the model is broadly anchored in education policy in the USA, it has gained popularity in German-speaking countries primarily through the lecture by educational researcher and OECD employee Andreas Schleicher at Re: publica 2013.

Origin and rationale of the model

The 4C go back to the Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21), a US non-profit organization in which business representatives, education specialists and those involved in the legislative process have been promoting education in a digital context since 2002. P21 has developed a “Framework for 21st Century Learning” in which the 4C are assigned to so-called “learning and innovation skills”. They are intended to describe competencies that represent the basis for self-directed learning and adaptation. P21 assumes that these skills will be particularly important in the work environment of the 21st century. Each of the four Ks has its own research dossier.

Visualization of the P21 framework

The coordinator of the PISA studies, Andreas Schleicher, also argues on the basis of professional requirements that put traditional subjects in the background. In his opinion, the 4K gives learners the ability to gain new insights and make connections:

"Rather than just learning to read, 21st century literacy is about reading to learn and developing the capacity and motivation to identify, understand, interpret, create and communicate knowledge."

- Source: Andreas Schleicher, The Case for 21st Century Learning

Importance of the model

The orientation towards the 4K was adopted by many schools in their mission statements in the USA, because they clearly identify interdisciplinary competencies and thus enable the formulation of goals independently of subject-related learning. Schleicher emphasizes that the way knowledge is handled has changed: content is no longer stored and then passed on from teachers to learners. Rather, they flow, says Schleicher, in streams of incessant communication and collaboration. In this sense, the 4K represents a reaction to knowledge work in digital contexts. Education researcher Lisa Rosa shares this view when she cites three reasons that make the 4K model a point of reference for didactics in the 21st century :

More and more work is being done by machines.
Every new job requires more complex thinking, well-positioned, independent decisions and the ability to develop relationships.
The social problems to be solved are so complex that they can only be dealt with with collective intelligence.

Rosa embeds the 4K in a comprehensive modeling of learning and thus points out that this is not a learning method, but a prerequisite for effective learning. The 4K cannot be separated, but always relate to each other: Effective communication is not possible without creativity, collaboration and critical thinking, etc. In the German-speaking area, the Zurich University of Education has been offering teacher training courses based on the 4K model since 2016.

Extension of the model

Daniel Goleman and Peter Senge's request to teach schools to think in terms of systems can be seen as an extension of the 4K model, even if the authors do not make this connection. In their book "Triple Focus - A New Approach to Education", the two authors argue for aligning education in the 21st century with problems in a global context:

"The core dilemma of the Anthropocene Age is learning how to understand the systemic consequences of our own actions at a global scale. This works reminds us that the real challenge is not about becoming smarter or more clever in the most non-systemic ways of thinking that have enabled the accelerated change of the Industrial Age - but in tapping and developing our deeper intelligences of self, other and system at a time when we really need them. "

- Source: Daniel Goleman and Peter Senge, Triple Focus: A New Approach to Education , Morethansound.net 2014, ISBN 978-1-934441-78-7 , Kindle position 691

Critical discussion

Individual education experts such as the education journalist Christian Füller fundamentally question whether business organizations should intervene in such a formative way in the formulation of new teaching-learning concepts. This criticism also hits the OECD, which strongly supports the 4K concept. In the political field of “digitization” in particular, a large number of organizations have been formed that are directly or indirectly influenced by industry (e.g. in Germany the D21 initiative , the Digital Game Culture Foundation). Like lobbyists, they exert a strong influence on educational institutions. The primacy of the pedagogical will be replaced by competence requirements from the digital economy. The 4K concept is seen as a vehicle for this in this context.

Christian Füller sees signs of a “culture war” in the excessive elevation of the 4K:

“Andreas Schleicher, head of the OECD education department and inventor of Pisa, recently declared the 4K as the new highest educational goal. And as catchy as the leitmotif is - who wouldn't want to raise children creatively and critically - it conflicts with the old educational idea of the grammar school. Many councilors - and not only they - translate “4K” roughly like this: Collaboration means “always relying on others”. They translate creativity as insubstantial. Communicative students tend to see them as show-offs. And critical thinking is, in their eyes, a synonym for "rum oil". "

- Source: Christian Füller, Met Im Nerv , Der Freitag, 2915/2015.

Parents, according to Füller, "may have lived with 4K in their job for a long time, but they no longer have anything to do with their old idea of learning, deepening and hard work."

Lisa Rosa also sees the danger that 4K would be introduced as part of an efficiency logic that would harm deeper learning:

“[W] hen Andreas Schleicher's 4K hits the heart of the matter […], then it cannot mean pursuing the neoliberal idea of efficiency and adapting the activities to the available learning time (gaining a lot of material from many students in little time to let). Then it can only mean, conversely, to reserve time for knowledge-building 4K learning, and more and more of it. "

- Source: Lisa Rosa, Learning to Teach in the Internet Age