Enabling Students with 21st Century Competency Skills for Delivering Innovation

In India, students’ level of learning is measured through their reading, writing and arithmetic abilities. Although prerequisite, but these are not sufficient for excelling as individuals in the 21st century, for preparing future leaders within the nation and for expediting growth of a nation into an economic powerhouse. In our view, we need to equip students with a new extended skill set as identified by Partnership for 21st century skills (P21) so that they can apply their academic learning innovatively into new situations for overcoming day-to-today challenges in their lives and in the society. Therefore, a novel Conceptual Research Experience program was introduced at Indus World School in Indore(India), where selected secondary and higher secondary school students underwent research process and were encouraged to be creative, critically think, collaborate and communicate their research findings on a topic ranging from science and commerce to law and humanities. These students not only improved reading, writing and arithmetic abilities, but with better conceptual understanding were able to deliver an innovative solution for a practical problem and disseminate it at an international level, thus creating new opportunities for themselves and for their nation.