What is it that helps us to feel at ease in a new job or role, or in a new level of consciousness, that is, in a new way of seeing the world?

The absolute key is to feel valued and accepted by key people – a new boss, if we are going into a new job or role, a significant adult if we are shifting our level of consciousness. For students, that significant adult is most likely a teacher, or, at the very least a teacher could usefully play that role.

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Several weeks ago, I wrote about how we have an existential need to find where we fit in our world (see here) or, put another way, we have a need to be attuned with our world.

Research indicates that it takes about 18 months to get fully up to speed in a new job, and for adults who have experienced this, they can feel pretty inadequate and down during this time.

It is this experience that young people have when they make a shift in consciousness.

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Last week I talked about the elements of ‘rationality’ paralleling the key components of 21st century skills: critical thinking, creativity and collaboration.

These were: inference, insight and caring.

So, how do we develop them? Through developing them we become more rational, in other words, we become wiser.

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I attended a webinar (Equipping students for the 21st century: The Big Five Challenges in Education in a Changed World – ACER) that was looking at how 21st century skills could be taught, learnt and assessed. The three skills that were used for illustration were creative thinking, creativity, and collaboration.

In cognitive science there is a proposal that simply being intelligent (which is a largely fixed quantity for any given individual) is not enough as even with high intelligence we can do foolish things or be deluded. What cognitive science proposes is that being wise is the state where we can see through delusion and foolishness and act more closely in line with reality.

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