A "cultural shift" brought about by an ongoing technological revolution is underway in the nation's classrooms, according to social scientist and author Jennifer James, who spoke at a national education conference on April 3. If students are to succeed in the information economy, James said, teachers must lead the way by embracing new approaches to learning, including the effective integration of classroom technologies, and leaving behind processes designed for a different era.

James' remarks came as part of a morning keynote address delivered during the second day of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development's (ASCD's) annual conference and exposition in Orlando. Her message represented a call to action for educators, many of whom spent the weekend in search of ways to address a glaring disconnect between the demands of the new knowledge-based economy and the drill-and-practice mentality currently driving education in the nation's classrooms.

"We are at a tipping point in the technological revolution," James said. "Technology is changing everything."

Where it used to be enough to simply herd learners through the system with a firm grasp of basic skills, James says, that approach falls short in today's information era, where advanced skills--critical thinking and deductive reasoning, to name a few--are held at a premium.

"This human shift brought about by technological change is creating many new openings," James explained. In order to take advantage of new opportunities, however, teachers first must equip students with the necessary skill sets.

Rather then teach the kinds of skills that schools relied on in the past, James encouraged educators to begin stressing such higher-order thinking skills as problem-solving and critical analysis.

And it isn't just about changing the overall approach, she said, educators must rethink the very makeup of schools. Falling in line with visionaries in the business world, including Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, whose private foundation has donated close to $1 billion to school reform, James advocated for the creation of smaller, more intimate learning environments and increasingly diverse student bodies (See "Gates, governors: Upgrade high school").

"Many of us have in our gut this sort of 1965 view of what education should be," explained James. "If you walk through the halls of your schools and see nothing but mythology, then you're suffering from cognitive dissonance."

And schools aren't the only places where the realities of the 21st century seem to be passing us by, she states. Many of the nation's top education leaders, including the framers of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), also are missing the point.

"One of the reasons we have NCLB in the United States is because the group that cooked it up has no idea what they are doing," she said to applause from the crowd. "When you don't understand something, the first thing you try and do is measure it."