Teachers as brokers: Bridging formal and informal learning in the 21st century

A review of schooling practices from learners’ and teachers’ perspectives relative to 21st century goals is conducted. Although schools try to embed 21st century literacies into the curriculum, there is an overemphasis on content knowledge. The instructional orientation used in schools is inconsistent with the softer skills of 21st century literacies. Instead of embedding 21st century literacies in the already packed curricula, a proposition is made for teachers to become brokers who bridge students’ learning in classroom and informal contexts such as sports activities and social media environments. Using a case study, we posit that metacognitive brokering with learners plays a critical function in bridging formal and informal learning. To encourage learners to tinker, teachers’ roles in classrooms can be transformed from one of content sages to brokers who help learners see similarities and recontextualize learning across contexts. The brokering process bridges learning across disciplines and contexts to gradually restructure schools as interdisciplinary avenues of learning. We recognize that teachers have workload and time constraints. Thus, technologies can be a mediatory tool to help teachers engage in the brokering process.