21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn Book Wins Gold Medal Award

Chicago, Illinois – June 10, 2011:  Renowned educational author and professional developer James Bellanca has received the 2011 Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal Award in Education by the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) for his recent publication, 21^st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn,co-edited with Ron Brandt, former editor of ASCD’s Educational Leadership. Solution Tree Press (Bloomington, Indiana), the book’s publisher will be accepting the award.

The Gold Medal Book is a collection of articles by leading educational voices who are advocating the return of critical thinking and problem solving, creative thinking and innovation, collaboration and communication to the classroom. In the book, well known names such as Linda Darling Hammond, Ken Kay, Will Richardson, Cheryl Lemke, Howard Gardner, Roger and David Johnson, Jay McTighe, Brian Pete and Robin Fogarty make multiple cases for helping students prepare for their future education and careers by including 21^st Century Skill development in rigorous and relevant curriculum in order to prepare them for the future.

In the past decade, Bellanca’s writings have countered what he calls the “drill and kill” emphasis of the No Child Left Behind law. Most recently, he has promoted what federal and state education legislators are labeling the “21^st Century Skills” movement. To further advance the 21^st Century Skills agenda, Bellanca has also published,  Enriched Learning Projects (Solution Tree Press, 2010), and Classrooms without Borders, (with Terry Stirling, Teachers College Press, 2011).

Bellanca has worked closely with leading educational theorists and researchers including Howard Gardner, Reuven Feuerstein, Roger and David Johnson, and John Goodland for three decades. His work illustrates how to connect educational theory and research in the classroom setting. Additionally, his practical classroom application has been adopted in many venues as standard professional development practice.

Bellanca founded the International Renewal Institute (IRI) in 1980 bringing his passion and commitment to professional learning opportunities for educators. To complement IRI’s mission of providing world-class, highly practical teacher training programs and materials, he then launched Skylight (later sold to Pearson Education), the first publishing company dedicated solely to providing educators with professional development materials that focus on innovative instructional strategies.

Bellanca has also designed two alternative school programs, an intermediate service center that pioneered practical professional development programs, a state-wide, strategy-based set of courses for teachers, and  Illinois largest and most dynamic field-based Master’s Degree Program for teachers. He has served as a mentor to numerous highly regarded educational authors such as Robin Fogarty, Carolyn Chapman, Renee Rodriguez, and Kay Burke. Today, Bellanca is Executive Director of Illinois 21: The Illinois Consortium for 21^st Century Schools, a not-for-profit service group dedicated to the development of a 21^st Century Enriched Learning School model with full integration of 21^st Century Skills across all curricular areas and instruction.