One of the deepest pleasures of an academic life is when something you helped create, an idea, a framework, gets a life of its own. Others run across it, who knows how that happens… and they find meaning in it and use it to guide their work. It is both unexpected and gratifying.
This was brought home to me recently the kickoff of an innovative fellowship program at Maricopa Community Colleges focused on addressing health inequities through STEAM education (titled: Collaborative STEAM Solutions for Arizona’s Health Challenges).
The story begins in an unlikely place – the fifth floor of Erickson Hall at Michigan State University, almost 15 years ago. Working with my then-graduate student Kristen Kereluik, we found ourselves surrounded by papers scattered across a table, trying to make sense of what “21st century learning” really meant. We analyzed reports from organizations worldwide, from Howard Gardner to the European Union, cutting and sorting ideas until a framework emerged. What we discovered was both novel and timeless – that meaningful learning exists at the intersection of three kinds of knowledge: foundational knowledge (the what), meta-knowledge (the how), and humanistic knowledge (the why).
Each dimension of the framework serves a distinct purpose in learning: Foundational Knowledge provides the core disciplinary and cross-disciplinary content, including digital literacy; Meta-Knowledge encompasses the skills needed to work with this knowledge, from creativity and critical thinking to communication and collaboration; and Humanistic Knowledge addresses the human dimension – the cultural competence, ethical awareness, and life skills that guide how we apply our knowledge and capabilities in the world.
The 21st Century Learning Model (introduced in Mishra & Kereluik, 2011)
We first presented this work at the SITE conference in 2011 (Mishra & Kereluik, 2011) and then it became a formal publication in 2013 (Kereluik et. al., 2013). Fast forward to today, and this framework continues to find new applications. Recently, it helped guide the Future Substance of STEM Education project, where I worked with wonderful team co-led by Ariel Anbar, Cathy Manduca and Larry Ragan to support engineering education faculty across the US in reimagining their curricula. And now, it’s being used to structure an ambitious project addressing health inequities in Arizona communities through STEAM education.
What makes this latest application particularly meaningful is its ambitious vision to reshape how we address health inequities through STEAM education. The project has a powerful threefold mission: to illuminate the landscape of health inequities within academic study, to catalyze meaningful faculty-student collaborations, and to pioneer culturally responsive approaches that resonate with Arizona’s diverse communities. At its core, this initiative embodies all three dimensions of our framework – but goes beyond mere academic exercise. It asks faculty-student pairs to dive into the cutting edge of healthcare innovation, grapple with complex ethical challenges around privacy and data ownership, and develop solutions that honor community needs and values. Most importantly, it recognizes that effective healthcare solutions must be rooted in the nuanced realities of local contexts, cultures, and challenges.
The webinar itself exemplified this integrated approach. Following my discussion of the framework, Alison Cook-Sather shared insights based on her extensive experience with student-faculty partnerships – a reminder that effective education is always relational and human-centered.
What is impressive about this project is how it grounds theoretical frameworks in community reality. As I mentioned during the webinar, community colleges are often better connected to local needs than research universities. Their students live and work in the communities they study, making the impact of their work immediate and tangible.
Of course AI popped up in our conversation (how could it not?). As I shared during the webinar, AI can be like a “smart, drunk, biased, extremely confident intern” – useful for generating ideas but requiring human judgment and values to guide its application.
I am looking forward to seeing how these faculty-student teams will use the framework in their own work to make a difference in their communities. As something that I had helped create over 15 years ago – it is extremely meaningful to me that the framework did not just sit in an academic paper, but is helping structure meaningful work that impacts real lives.
You can learn more about the project by going to their website, and the webinar video is embedded below.
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