Constructive Mutualism: Teaching 21st Century Skills in 21st Century Classrooms

For more than fifty years education systems have been striving to go “beyond Behaviorism” without being able to reach a reliable way of mediating relationships in classrooms which assure full student engagement. ‘Constructive Mutualism’ is the name we are giving to a different paradigm, one which has been present in human societies from the moment we could call them human, and which provides the mechanism we are looking for. This paradigm is based on an explicit social dynamic which, once entered into by teacher and student, stimulates the student to willingly do their best work and to self- regulate to avoid classroom disruptions. For a student to enter such a relationship they must so value what it is that the teacher wants to provide them that full engagement becomes effortless. A key strength of this type of relationship is that once students have explicitly entered it, the teacher can direct their attention to other areas where the teacher wishes to impart their knowledge or otherwise facilitate learning. There are only a small number of teachers who have these relationships with all their students today, and we propose that the reason for this is a mismatch between what teachers are providing, which they believe is of high value, and how students are experiencing it, which many find not to be of such high value. The move towards the adoption of twenty-first century skills opens the door to a wider range of capacities that we believe are of intrinsic value to students and that could form the basis for a relationship of the type described. Our study shows that overwhelmingly students (and teachers) value psychological safety and although a large majority of teachers say they are providing this, a majority of students are not experiencing it to the required degree. We believe that this ‘gap’ can be explained though the realization that psychological safety cannot be provided consistently within the Behaviorist paradigm as this paradigm is always conditional. It is under Constructive Mutualism that students’ needs for psychological safety can be fully met. Thus, we can, finally, make a clean break from Behaviorism.