Over 150 years ago Herbert Spencer wrote an essay titled What Knowledge is of Most Worth in which he bemoaned the fact that most of the discussion around what is worth knowing in his day and age was based not on any rational discussion of the issues and the benefits and costs of learning one thing versus the other, but rather driven by instincts and “personal predilections.” It appears that we are at the same situation today as well – as we argue and attempt to define what we mean by 21st Century Learning.

The question raised by Spencer is the starting point of an article by my friend Hiller Spiers in which she (and her co-authors) seek to use Spencer’s question to frame a discussion around reading and the language arts (using the lens of the TPACK framework to do so). It is a chapter in a book edited by Young and Kajder (I had blogged about the book in a post titled: New TPACK themed book on English Education). Hiller has made her chapter available on the web, a full reference and link is provided below:

Spires, H., Hervey, L., & Watson, T. (2013). Scaffolding the TPACK framework in reading and language arts: New literacies, new minds. In C.A. Young & S. Kajder (Eds.), Research on technology in English education (pp. 33-61). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.