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What are the 4 C's of 21st-century learning skills?

In the modern education system, the 3 R's (reading, writing and arithmetic) are no longer sufficient to enable a student to compete in the complex work and social structures in which they exist.

To develop successful members of the global society, education must be based on a framework of the Four C's: communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creative thinking.

In the last 30 or so years, there has been a well-researched and -documented decline in “routine” work , with a simultaneous rapid increase in jobs requiring communication, analytic, collaborative and creative skills. To adequately prepare students to meet this demand, it’s vital to focus on the intertwined 4 C's of 21st-century learning.

What are the 4 C's?

Critical thinking.

Critical thinking is all about looking at problems in a new way and analysing the “how” and “why” of an issue. These types of thinking skills examples include the ability to compare evidence,  evaluate claims and consider information to make sensible decisions.

We are required to sift through an almost incomprehensible amount of information around financial, health, civic, environmental and work every day – this skill allows you to link disciplines and skills to evaluate a situation at a greater depth and explore a greater range of solutions.

One example of how critical thinking is essential for everyday life is made clear by the ongoing debate about climate change. Critical thinking allows us to go beyond the information provided at face value and instead consider the source of the information, the medium of the information, who benefits from the claim, and so on. This analytical approach to this – and all – situations helps us get to the root of the issue and take rational action.

This skill is experiencing a boom as technology opens up the ways in which we can be creative and demands that we exercise the skill. Creativity isn’t limited to artistic endeavours, it’s about innovation and invention, and is available to everyone. In the competitive 21st century, an innovative and creative approach is essential for personal and professional success. Critical and creative thinking skills are closely linked – after using critical skills to analyse a situation, creative thinking is applied to find an original approach.

To follow the example above about using the 4Cs of 21st-century learning to tackle the issue of climate change, creative thinking has been vital in many of the steps taken thus far in this arena. Instead of just accepting that energy had to come from non-renewable sources, creative minds sought new ways of creating power – giving us solar, hydro and wind power. Consider also the creativity behind using worms to break down plastic .

Collaboration

These days, most significant work is accomplished by people working together: in teams, between departments, across disciplines and between cultures. Collaboration is about working together to reach a goal and combining different and complementary skills, expertise and experience. As the world becomes more and more connected, the skill of collaboration becomes more vital for the workforce as well as for members of society.

In addressing climate change, collaboration is key to success. No one discipline or expert can meet the crisis alone; we need to take an interdisciplinary, international collaborative approach to find and implement holistic solutions.

Only by collaborating and building on each others’ skills, knowledge and backgrounds can we expect to succeed. Scientists must work with economists to understand the economic impacts of inaction or different actions; with members of the media to share information; with NGOs to support affected groups; with religious and cultural leaders to correctly educate their communities; and with scientists from different disciplines to explore possible solutions.

Communication

The skill of communication has always been vital but in the 21st century, the ability to express thoughts clearly, articulate opinions, give coherent instructions and motivate others through speech is increasingly important. Communication is about sharing thoughts, questions, ideas and solutions effectively – understanding that people and groups from different cultures, ages and backgrounds require different communication styles and methods. Learning how to leverage current and emerging technologies to communicate is vital for professional and private success.

In the context of the climate crisis, good communication skills are essential for educating the general public about the situation effectively. The average layperson doesn’t have the scientific background to interpret complex information themselves, so the information must be shared in a way that makes it accessible to everyone. Media roles in particular require strong communication abilities.

How to develop your 4 C's?

The Four C's are important because they help people navigate a world that is exponentially more complex than it was just a few decades ago. We now need literacy that goes beyond the R's, to allow us to process information, handle technology, collaborate globally and problem solve in a way that allows us to face complicated modern challenges and opportunities.

If you’re ready to develop your critical thinking and creative thinking skills, our Creative and Critical Thinking Digital Badge will cultivate your ability to generate new ideas, and formulate judgements based on evidence.

After just six to 12 hours, you will be approaching problems through analytical, perceptive and creative lenses, taking fresh perspectives in the pursuit of positive outcomes and applying original theories to your decision-making process. Find out more about this 100% online short course here .

Alison Lamb

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A Comprehensive Guide to 21st Century Skills

Jenna Buckle

The concept of "21st century skills" isn't new—skills like critical thinking, collaboration, and problem solving have been taught in classrooms for decades. 

Yet, as the demands of our changing economy rise, many school districts are now including 21st century skills in strategic plans to better prepare students for college, career, and life.

What are 21st century skills, why do they matter, and how can your district implement 21st century learning strategies into curriculum, assessment, and instruction? This guide shares information, research, and examples to bring you up to speed.

Table of Contents

1. What Are 21st Century Skills?

2. The Importance of 21st Century Skills

3. Frameworks and Examples of 21st Century Skills

4. 21st Century Learning Strategies and Implementation

5. Additional Resources

Free Download: Panorama's Social-Emotional Learning Survey

What Are 21st Century Skills?

Districts, schools, and organizations prioritize different 21st century skills depending on what is most important to their respective communities. Generally, however, educators agree that schools must weave these skills into learning experiences and common core instruction. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the most commonly cited 21st century skills.

• Critical thinking
• Communication skills
• Problem solving
• Perseverance
• Collaboration
• Information literacy
• Technology skills and digital literacy
• Media literacy
• Global awareness
• Self-direction
• Social skills
• Literacy skills
• Civic literacy
• Social responsibility
• Innovation skills
• Thinking skills

The Importance of 21st Century Skills

While the bar used to be high school graduation, the bar for today's students is now college, career, and real-world success. Let’s take a look at why 21st century skills matter.

• Higher-education and business leaders cite soft skills as being the most important driver of success in higher-level courses and in the workplace.
• In today’s world, our schools are preparing students for jobs that might not yet exist. Career readiness means equipping students with a nuanced set of skills that can prepare them for the unknown.
• Social media has changed human interaction and created new challenges in navigating social situations.
• The age of the Internet has dramatically increased access to knowledge. Students need to learn how to process and analyze large amounts of information.
• Content knowledge from core subjects can only go so far; students need to be taught how to apply facts and ideas towards complex problems.

We've reviewed the definition of 21st century skills and why they're important in a changing world. Now, let's review a few frameworks and how school districts are putting 21st century learning into practice.

Frameworks for 21st Century Skills

The framework for 21st century learning.

This popular framework was designed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) . Describing the skills, knowledge, and expertise students must master to succeed in work and life, the framework combines content knowledge, specific skills, expertise, and literacies. P21 believes that the "base" of 21st century learning is the acquisition of key academic subject knowledge, and that schools must build on that base with additional skills including Learning Skills, Life Skills, and Literacy Skills.

• Learning Skills: Also known as the "four Cs" of 21st century learning, these include critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.
• Life Skills: Flexibility, initiative, social skills, productivity, leadership
• Literacy Skills: Information literacy, media literacy, technology literacy

World Health Organization 

The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies the fundamental life skills as decision-making and problem solving, creative thinking and critical thinking, communication and interpersonal skills, self-awareness and empathy, and coping with emotions and stress. The WHO focuses on broad psychosocial skills that can be improved over time with conscious effort.

Redefining Ready! Initiative 

The American Association of School Administrators (AASA) Redefining Ready! initiative offers a framework that many districts use to define college, career, and life readiness. AASA provides readiness indicators to capture the educational landscape of the 21st century. Metrics include Advanced Placement courses, standardized testing, college credits, industry credentials, attendance, community service, and more. On the topic of life readiness, AASA argues:

School District Frameworks

21st century skills take hold in various ways for school districts. A " Portrait of a Graduate " is one common strategy for communicating what it means for students to be college, career, and future ready. To develop a profile of a graduate, districts often adapt existing 21st century skill frameworks to fit their needs. Input from stakeholders—such as the district board, teachers, parents, partner organizations, and students—ensures that the final "portrait" is authentic to their community. Here are some Portrait of a Graduate examples.

Everett Public Schools in Everett, Washington defines 21st century skills as citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking, and growth mindset. The district believes that graduates are college, career, and life ready when they have the academic knowledge, attitudes, and skills to transition to college level coursework, workforce training, and/or employment.

Gresham-Barlow School District (GBSD) in Gresham, Oregon has a mission to develop culturally responsive graduates who will thrive in an ever-changing global community. The district’s Portrait of a Graduate represents the GBSD community's collective vision of what their graduates should look like. The portrait consists of six learner profiles: Independent Lifelong Learner, Adaptable Collaborator, Compassionate Communicator, Responsible Creator, Open-Minded Critical Thinker, and Globally Aware Community Member.

Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District (SCUC ISD) in Schertz, Texas has a strategic goal around graduating college and/or career and/or military ready students. Within this vision, SCUC ISD has outlined five Traits of a Graduate: Dynamic Leader, Self-Motivated, Skilled Communicator, Service Oriented, and Future Ready.

Council Bluffs Community School District in Council Bluffs, Iowa, developed a Profile of a FutureReady Graduate that encompasses both academic and social-emotional indicators of success. The district’s social-emotional indicators—aligned to the CASEL framework—include Self-Management, Self Awareness, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision Making.

North Kansas City Schools just north of Kansas City, Missouri, identified seven competencies that span time, space, jobs, and occupations, ensuring that students' life skills are highly transferable. The district's competencies—developed with input from students, community and business leaders, teachers, and administrators—include Adaptability, Communication, Collaboration, Empathy, Integrity, Learner's Mindset, and Problem Solving. 

Download our guide to developing your district's own vision for college, career, and life readiness

21st Century Learning Strategies & Implementation

Having a strong vision for 21st century learning is just the first step. Without an intentionally designed plan for implementation, it's unlikely that your students will acquire the skills outlined in your district's vision. Here are some best practices from Panorama's partner districts to set you up for success.

1. Build staff capacity to demonstrate 21st century skills in support of student learning.

It all starts with the adults in your building. Teachers and staff need to deeply understand and model the skills that you want your students to develop. Integrate 21st century skills into staff professional development as a precursor to growing these competencies in students. Download our Adult SEL Toolkit for ideas, worksheets, and activities to build adult SEL.

2. Develop strategies to support teachers with implementation of 21st century skills.

It can be helpful to create a playbook of recommended strategies and approaches that span across content areas. For instance, you might encourage teachers to add comments to report cards about students' 21st century skills.

3. Assess students’ 21st century learning skills.

What gets measured matters. Regularly collect data on how students are progressing in this area, whether the data is anecdotal, qualitative, or quantitative. For example, you might administer a biannual survey in which students reflect on their development of 21st century, social-emotional skills . Keep in mind that the data you gather should be formative rather than evaluative. Be transparent about the purpose.

4. Equip educators with data to proactively identify and support students who are off track.

Once you have data on students' 21st century skills, you'll want to ensure that the data is actionable for educators. Many districts opt to implement an early warning system with indicators across academics, attendance, behavior, and social-emotional learning/21st century skills. This helps educators make data-driven decisions about the best way to keep each student on track.

Additional Resources

Looking for more information on 21st century skills? Here are some other articles and resources to explore:

• "Why Social and Emotional Learning and Employability Skills Should Be Prioritized in Education" via CASEL and Committee for Children 
• "Teaching 21st Century Skills For 21st Century Success Requires An Ecosystem Approach" via Forbes
• "Bringing 21st Century Skill Development to the Forefront of K-12 Education" via Hanover Research
• "How Do You Define 21st-Century Learning?" via Education Week

Honing in on 21st century skills is essential to ensuring that students are prepared for college, career, and civic life . While there is no one "right" way to approach this work, we hope that the information in this guide inspires you to explore what 21st century learning could look like in your district!

Develop students' 21st century skills with Panorama's Social-Emotional Learning Survey

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Integrating 21st century skills into education systems: From rhetoric to reality

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, ramya vivekanandan rv ramya vivekanandan senior education specialist, learning assessment systems - gpe secretariat.

February 14, 2019

This is the third post in a series about  education systems alignment in teaching, learning, and assessing 21st century skills .

What does it mean to be a successful learner or graduate in today’s world? While in years past, a solid acquisition of the “three Rs” (reading, writing, and arithmetic) and mastery in the core academic subjects may have been the measure of attainment, the world of the 21 st century requires a radically different orientation. To participate effectively in the increasingly complex societies and globalized economy that characterize today’s world, students need to think critically, communicate effectively, collaborate with diverse peers, solve complex problems, adopt a global mindset, and engage with information and communications technologies, to name but just a few requirements. The new report from Brookings, “ Education system alignment for 21st century skills: Focus on assessment ,” illuminates this imperative in depth.

Recognizing that traditional education systems have generally not been preparing learners to face such challenges, the global education community has increasingly talked about and mobilized in favor of the changes required. This has resulted in a suite of initiatives and research around the broad area of “21st century skills,” which culminated most notably with the adoption of Sustainable Development Goal 4 and the Education 2030 agenda, including Target 4.7, which commits countries to ensure that learners acquire knowledge and skills in areas such as sustainable development, human rights, gender equality, global citizenship, and others.

In this landscape, Global Partnership for Education (GPE) has a core mandate of improving equity and learning by strengthening education systems. GPE supports developing countries, many of which are affected by fragility and conflict, to develop and implement robust education sector plans. Depending on the country, GPE implementation grants support a broad range of activities including teacher training, textbook provision, interventions to promote girls’ education, incentives for marginalized groups, the strengthening of data and learning assessment systems, early childhood education, and many other areas.

This work is buttressed by thematic work at the global level, including in the area of learning assessment. The strengthening of learning assessment systems is a strategic priority for GPE because of its relevance to both improving learning outcomes and ensuring effective and efficient education systems, which are two of the three key goals of the GPE strategic plan for the 2016-2020 period . The work on learning assessment includes the Assessment for Learning (A4L) initiative, which aims to strengthen learning assessment systems and to promote a holistic measurement of learning.

Under A4L, we are undertaking a landscape review on the measurement of 21st century skills, using a definition derived from Binkley et. al . and Scoular and Care :

“21st century skills are tools that can be universally applied to enhance ways of thinking, learning, working and living in the world. The skills include critical thinking/reasoning, creativity/creative thinking, problem solving, metacognition, collaboration, communication and global citizenship. 21st century skills also include literacies such as reading literacy, writing literacy, numeracy, information literacy, ICT [information and communications technologies] digital literacy, communication and can be described broadly as learning domains.”

Using this lens, the landscape review examines the research literature, the efforts of GPE partners that have been active in this space, and data collected from a sample of countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia in regard to the assessment of these skills. These research efforts were led by Brookings and coordinated by the UNESCO offices in Dakar and Bangkok. As another important piece of this work, we are also taking stock of the latest education sector plans and implementation grants of these same countries (nine in sub-Saharan Africa and six in Asia), to explore the extent to which the integration of 21st century skills is reflected in sector plans and, vitally, in their implementation.

Though the work is in progress, the initial findings provide food for thought. Reflecting the conclusions of the new report by Brookings, as well as its earlier breadth of work on skills mapping, a large majority of these 15 countries note ambitious objectives related to 21st century skills in their education sector plans, particularly in their vision or mission statements and/or statements of policy priorities. “Skills” such as creativity and innovation, critical thinking, problem-solving, decisionmaking, life and career skills, citizenship, personal and social responsibility, and information and communications technology literacy were strongly featured, as opposed to areas such as collaboration, communication, information literacy, and metacognition.

However, when we look at the planned interventions noted in these sector plans, there is not a strong indication that countries plan to operationalize their intentions to promote 21st century skills. Not surprisingly then, when we look at their implementation grants, which are one of the financing instruments through which education sector plans are implemented, only two of the 15 grants examined include activities aimed at promoting 21st century skills among their program components. Because the GPE model mandates that national governments determine the program components and allocation of resources for these within their grant, the bottom line seems to echo the findings of the Brookings report: vision and aspiration are rife, but action is scarce.

While the sample of countries studied in this exercise is small (and other countries’ education sector plans and grants may well include integration of 21st century skills), it’s the disconnect between the 15 countries’ policy orientation around these skills and their implementation that is telling. Why this gap? Why, if countries espouse the importance of 21st century skills in their sector plans, do they not concretely move to addressing them in their implementation? The reasons for this may be manifold, but the challenges highlighted by the Brookings report in terms of incorporating a 21 st century learning agenda in education systems are indeed telling. As a field, we still have much work to do to understand the nature of these skills, to develop learning progressions for them, and to design appropriate and authentic assessment of them. In other words, it may be that countries have difficulty in imagining how to move from rhetoric to reality.

However, in another perspective, there may be a challenge associated with how countries (and the broader education community) perceive 21st century skills in general. In contexts of limited resources, crowded curricula, inadequately trained teachers, fragility, weak governance, and other challenges that are characteristic of GPE partner countries, there is sometimes an unfortunate tendency to view 21st century skills and the “basics” as a tradeoff. In such settings, there can be a perception that 21st century skills are the concern of more advanced or higher-income countries. It is thus no wonder that, in the words of the Brookings report, “a global mobilization of efforts to respond to the 21CS [21st century skills] shift is non-existent, and individual countries struggle alone to plan the shift.”

This suggests that those who are committed to a holistic view of education have much work to do in terms of research, sharing of experience, capacity building, and advocacy around the potential and need for all countries, regardless of context, to move in this direction. The Brookings report makes a very valuable contribution in this regard. GPE’s landscape review, which will be published this spring, will inform how the partnership thinks about and approaches 21st century skills in its work and will thereby provide a complementary perspective.

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How to implement the 4Cs in education to teach 21st-century skills

What are the 4cs in education.

The 4Cs in education are collaboration, communication, creation, and critical thinking, which represent the knowledge, skills, and expertise students need today to prepare for tomorrow’s workforce. The Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21) claims that with the influx of technology and trends in our global economy, students need more interpersonal and intrapersonal skills to achieve professional and personal success. In its Frameworks for 21st Century Learning, P21 describes how the 4Cs of 21st-century skills are foundational for learning and innovation and are skills that everyone needs to practice and hone throughout schooling. These skills are not independent — they are entwined with one another when promoting progress in the classroom.

What is the importance of 4Cs in education?

The 4Cs approach to teaching and learning focuses on whole child education and makes it easier for a school to establish a positive school culture and build a common community among its stakeholders: students, families, and teachers. Most educators will not be surprised by this perspective, as whole child education has been a constant thread in schools for decades. In whole child education , teachers seek to support not just the academic but also the emotional and social skills of individual children. Since the days of Dewey, educators have sought to support children’s overall well-being while inciting their curiosity to become lifelong learners. In addition to a mastery of key subjects, P21 wove in interdisciplinary themes such as global awareness and civic literacy as part of their framework. However, it was their learning and innovation skills that took hold. Many educators now lean on this idea of the 4Cs in constructing their curriculum and daily activities. The importance of 4Cs in education has even led many to personalize the 4Cs by adding a fifth, sixth, or seventh C—whether that C stands for Community, Citizenship, or Character.

Teaching the 4Cs with technology tools: Nearpod

When it comes to technology, nowadays, students can find an answer with a click of a button. The clout of memorization has lost its hold, as students are now challenged to apply their newfound knowledge and expand upon it—not just recite it. Educational trends have shifted, especially with the influx of digital technologies, and classrooms must step up to prepare students to be effective and engaging contributors. Start teaching the 4Cs with technology using Nearpod . Platforms like Nearpod support educators in providing rich content while also challenging students to analyze, apply, evaluate, and create through active learning strategies and formative assessment, all to drive student engagement. Nearpod encourages students and teachers alike to take a personalized approach to education by leveraging the 4Cs in education through working with the whole class, small groups, and individuals. Students are more actively engaged in learning when presented with media-rich content and interactive functionality. Plus, educators receive real-time assessment data from their classrooms, enabling them to pivot and be more responsive in their teaching methods.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free below to access these resources, interactive activities, and engaging lessons.

Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Curriculum Program

Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program includes over 400 SEL lessons, activities, and videos built on CASEL’s five core competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.

Provide educators with an easy way to integrate SEL practices like positive interactions, gratitude, and reflective moments into daily learning to help create safe, inclusive, and effective classroom environments. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to explore Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program  and  unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

1. Collaboration

From the early days of kindergarten, kids learn the importance of cooperation, which is fundamental to the notion of collaboration, which is when two or more people work together towards a common goal. Good collaboration takes trust and respect to work together, be heard, and make decisions. Traditionally, educators promote collaboration with active learning strategies such as think-pair-share or jigsaw. They build small group work into lesson activities so that students learn and practice such participation and team-building skills.

Nearpod’s Collaborate Board makes it easy for students to share their thinking, comment on their posts, and build upon each other’s ideas in real time. Whether in person or working remotely, students can connect with one another via the interactive board, and teachers can monitor and review all perspectives. Nearpod provides a safe space for such collaboration to occur, and educators can foster such an exchange of ideas in a productive manner.

See Collaborate Board in action through these science lessons about infectious diseases . Use this lesson in high school classrooms to deconstruct sophisticated ideas about transmission and outbreaks of communicable diseases to share in their own words via a Collaborate Board.

Here are some tips from this blog post sharing ways to create collaborative learning experiences in the classroom:

• Make collaborative classroom discussions part of every lesson
• Keep feedback at the center of classroom discussions
• Make collaborative learning visible
• Collaborate and contribute in multiple formats
• Build community and social emotional skills

2. Communication

Part and parcel of collaboration are strong communication skills. Today’s communication skills are more nuanced depending on whether communication is happening in person, in writing, or virtually online. There has been more of a focus on the 21st-century literacy skills of speaking and listening since we have more dynamic communication channels these days. From the science of reading to digital literacy and media literacy , students are schooled in ways to be not only effective but respectful communicators. Teachers strive to promote creative expression so students can find their own voice while appreciating others’. 

Nearpod promotes class discussions within the pre-made lessons to spark meaningful conversations. Polls can be used to initiate discussions. Open-ended questions invite diverse perspective taking for 4Cs education. Students can practice articulating and conveying their ideas, whether they seek to inform, instruct, motivate, or persuade others. Nearpod’s formative interactive assessments , which can be embedded into videos and slides, open up avenues of exchanges, whether in person or through written responses . Students can practice listening effectively and exercise flexibility to promote dialogue, which can occur 24/7 and not just within the hours of a school day.

3. Creativity

Creativity has finally clawed its way to the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy . The apex of higher-order thinking now culminates in creating something new via self-expression. Many teachers strive to take a cross-curricular approach to designing their learning objectives so that students can better digest and make connections with new knowledge; they can then find application in their real world and build upon their own skill sets. Improv and design thinking have long embraced the notion of “Yes, and …” to encourage risk-taking and innovation.

Regarding creativity, Nearpod celebrates all learning styles and provides various ways for students to read, watch, and interact with content. Teachers can add multimedia to their lessons, and in turn, students can use interactive tools like Collaborate Board to brainstorm ideas and respond to or build upon the lesson content. The Draw It tool provides a digital whiteboard for students to draw, type, and add images to communicate and refine their ideas and responses. For instance, when learning about Ancient Greece , students can dive into an article, watch a video, or take a Virtual Reality (VR) Field Trip related to architecture and then be challenged to map out a blueprint or to draw their own interpretation of or enhance a famous relic. Students are able to “show what they know” in original ways in real time.

“Designing a City Zoo,” a 3-lesson experience built in partnership with Freckle , teaches elementary students about whole-number quotients through problem-solving. The lessons for grade 3 invite students to ask their own questions and to answer them creatively with tools such as Drag and Drop and Draw It:

• Designing a City Zoo: Part 1  
• Designing a City Zoo: Part 2  
• Designing a City Zoo: Part 3  

4. Critical thinking

Lastly, but underlining all tasks, is the importance of critical thinking skills. This focus on decision making and problem solving goes beyond mere mathematics by promoting high-order thinking across key subject areas. Critical thinking requires the ability to interpret, analyze, and evaluate information (facts and otherwise!) to refute arguments, make judgments, and think through solutions. Such logic skills also include developing a true willingness to listen to and consider others’ ideas. This iterative mindset is crucial in an ever-changing world that negates one-and-done solutions. Critical thinking skills are key to the other Cs in helping students become thoughtful questioners (communication), helpful participants (collaboration), and transformational contributors (creativity).

Nearpod lessons are built with scaffolded interactive activities designed to help students build toward higher-order critical thinking. Learning objectives are designed to have students analyze, evaluate, explain, problem-solve, and more, which are all components of critical thinking. Teachers can add reflective questions into their lessons, as such systematic thinking behooves us all regarding future personal and professional challenges.

Additionally, specific Nearpod features and content types are designed to encourage critical thinking, such as PhET simulations for math and science instruction .

5. Combining all 4Cs

The 4Cs in education focus on teaching students essential 21st-century skills. The 4Cs in education—collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking—have been vital for two decades and will continue to be, as educators aim to prepare students for future success. Nearpod continues to prepare students for the 21st century by providing an all-in-one platform with interactive lessons, gamified learning, and formative assessments to challenge students’ 4Cs education. Our Corinth high school science lessons incorporate the 4Cs. In the Integumentary System lesson, students can individually explore a 3D model of this system before synthesizing complex information in order to answer a series of questions collaboratively.

Start teaching the 4Cs with Nearpod

We challenge educators daily to design learning experiences that build students into confident and curious learners (two other valuable Cs!). 21st-century learning should look and feel different than a more traditional classroom we might be familiar with and the landscape will continue to evolve so that students develop the knowledge and skills they need. Plus, Nearpod provides professional development to continue improving educators’ skills regarding the 4Cs. These real-world skills of collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creative skills are ever-important as we all seek to be lifelong learners.

New to Nearpod? Make sure you’re signed up to access these lessons and activities!

Teachers can sign up for free below to access and create interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to explore Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program  and  unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

Darri Stephens is a dedicated LX (learning experience) designer, passionate about creating quality content and programs for kids, families, and educators. With MAs in Education from both Harvard and Stanford, and work experience at best-in-class ed tech organizations including Wonder Workshop, Nickelodeon, and Common Sense Education, she is steeped in the design thinking process and committed to agile and iterative project management, which has resulted in multi-award-winning programs and products.

Darri Stephens

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Instructing & Assessing 21st Century Skills: A Focus on Critical Thinking

Research and Best Practices: One in a Series on 21st Century Skills

For the full collection of related blog posts and literature reviews, see the Center for Assessment’s toolkit, Assessing 21 st Century Skills .

Educational philosophers from Plato and Socrates to John Dewey highlighted the importance of critical thinking and the intrinsic value of instruction that reaches beyond simple factual recall. However there is considerable dispute about how to define critical thinking, let alone instruct and assess students’ critical thinking over time. This post briefly defines critical thinking, explains what we know from the research about how critical thinking develops and is best instructed, and provides an overview of some major assessment issues. Our full literature review on critical thinking can be accessed  here .

Overall, findings from the literature suggest that critical thinking involves both cognitive skills  and  dispositions. These two aspects are captured in a consensus definition reached by a panel of leading critical thinking scholars and researchers and reported in the Delphi Report:

“purposeful, self-regulatory  judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation  of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based”  ( Facione, 1990 , p. 3).

Debate continues about the extent to which critical thinking is generic or discipline-specific. If critical thinking is generic, then it arguably could be taught in separate courses, with the sole focus being on the development of critical thinking skills. However, if critical thinking is particular to a discipline, the instruction to develop it must be embedded within disciplinary content. Though debate exists, we argue that what constitutes critical thinking in science likely differs somewhat from what constitutes critical thinking in history or art. Therefore, critical thinking is best understood as discipline-specific with some transferable, generic commonalities.

Critical thinking is also intertwined with other cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal competencies. For example, many researchers have connected creativity and critical thinking. Furthermore, one’s ability to demonstrate critical thinking relies on effective communication, metacognition, self-direction, motivation, and other related competencies.

Development

Adults do not always employ critical thinking when it’s called for. Many find personal experience more compelling than logical thought or empirical evidence. That said, research suggests that even young children can demonstrate aspects of critical thinking.

However, little is known about how critical thinking skills and dispositions develop; there are no empirically-validated learning progressions of critical thinking skills and dispositions. Indeed, the Delphi Report cautioned that its framework for critical thinking should not be interpreted as implying a developmental progression or hierarchical taxonomy.

Instruction

Empirical research shows that critical thinking can be taught and that some specific instructional approaches and strategies promote more critical thinking. These instructional approaches include explicit teaching of disciplinary content within a course that also teaches critical thinking skills.

Instructional strategies that promote critical thinking include providing…

• Opportunities for students to solve problems with multiple solutions,
• Structure that allows students to respond to open-ended questions and formulate solutions to problems, and
• A variety of learning activities that allow students to choose and engage in solving authentic problems.

Implications of Research for Classroom Assessment Design

Critical thinking is typically assessed within content areas. For example, students analyze evidence, construct arguments, and evaluate the veracity of information and arguments in relation to disciplinary core ideas and content. Assessing students’ level of sophistication with critical thinking skills and dispositions requires close attention to the nature of the task used to elicit students’ critical thinking. Assessments must be thoughtfully designed and structured to (a) prompt complex judgments; (b) include open-ended tasks that allow for multiple, defensible solutions; and (c) make student reasoning visible to teachers. Each is discussed in detail below.

• Assessment tasks should prompt complex judgments.  While some students may exhibit critical thinking without being prompted, most student responses will rise or sink to what the task requires. Therefore, the materials (visual, texts, etc.) used to elicit students’ critical thinking are crucial and have a sizable impact on the extent to which critical thinking is elicited in any given assessment experience. If the task doesn’t ask students to think critically, they likely will not demonstrate evidence of critical thinking. The task, embedded in projects or other curriculum activities, must be designed and structured thoughtfully to elicit students’ critical thinking.
• Assessment tasks should include open-ended tasks.  Open-ended tasks are the opposite of traditional standardized assessments, which rely heavily on selected-response item types that assess limited aspects of critical thinking and other 21 st  century skills ( Ku, 2009 ;  Lai & Viering, 2012 ). Open-ended tasks allow students to decide what information is relevant, how to use the information, and how to demonstrate their understanding of the information; open-ended tasks also allow multiple solution pathways. In contrast, closed tasks typically have one correct solution, and the teacher indicates what information is relevant and how the information is to be presented.
• Assessment tasks should make student thinking visible to teachers.  To provide formative feedback regarding the quality of students’ critical thinking, teachers must administer assessment tasks that render student thinking visible. This can be accomplished in multiple ways, but their commonality is that all approaches likely will require students to provide written or verbal evidence that support their claims, judgments, assertions, and so on.

For a more complete discussion of the topics covered in this post, the full literature review on critical thinking is available  here .

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Communication Skills | 21st Century Skills

What Are the 4 C's of 21st Century Skills?

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March 26th, 2024 | 9 min. read

Brad Hummel

Coming from a family of educators, Brad knows both the joys and challenges of teaching well. Through his own teaching background, he’s experienced both firsthand. As a writer for iCEV, Brad’s goal is to help teachers empower their students by listening to educators’ concerns and creating content that answers their most pressing questions about career and technical education.

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As a middle or high school career readiness teacher, you likely need to teach 21st century skills as part of your curriculum.

While all twelve of those skills are necessary to teach, the "four C's" are often considered to be the most important. 

The four C’s of 21st Century skills  are:

• Critical thinking
• Collaboration
• Communication

These four skills are essential for modern students to succeed in school and the workplace.

They often make the biggest impact in terms of setting your students apart when applying for positions and starting their careers.

In this article, you'll discover what each skill entails and why they are so important to teach.

You'll also be able to download a free guide on how you can teach the 4 C's of 21st Century skills in middle or high school courses.

1. Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the practice of solving problems, among other qualities.

In addition to working through problems , solving puzzles, and similar activities, critical thinking also includes an element of skepticism.

This is important in the 21st Century because it’s harder than ever to verify accurate information (mostly thanks to the internet).

Critical thinking empowers students to discover the truth in assertions, especially when it comes to separating fact from opinion.

With critical thinking, students don’t just learn a set of facts or figures. Instead, they learn how to discover the facts and figures for themselves.

Through asking questions, learners become engaged in the world around them. Then they can help spread their knowledge to their peers, helping others to think critically, too. Students sharing the knowledge they've mastered with others might be the most important aspect of developing critical thinking skills.

Whether they learn how to think critically from spending time online or simply asking “Why?” in everyday life, this skill prepares students for a life of independence and purposeful thought.

Still, critical thinking is just one of the four C’s in 21st Century skills.

It works just fine when students use it alone. But when students combine it with the   next   skill, the sky is the limit to what they can achieve. 

2. Creativity

Creativity is the practice of thinking outside the box.

While creativity is often treated like a you-have-it-or-you-don’t quality, students can   learn   how to be creative by solving problems, creating systems, or just trying something they haven’t tried before. 

That doesn’t mean every student will become an artist or a writer. Instead, it means they’ll be able to look at a problem from multiple perspectives — including those that others may not see.

Creativity allows students to embrace their inner strengths from big-picture planning to meticulous organization . As students learn about their creativity, they also learn how to express it in healthy and productive ways.

More importantly, they also become   motivated   to share that creativity with others. Just like with critical thinking, that makes creativity contagious.

When a student creates an interesting or innovative  solution to a problem , the next student can become inspired to try something similar.

That’s not to say every single creative endeavor will be a ringing success. Students will fail at some point, and some of their ideas simply won’t work. But that’s okay.

The point of creativity is to encourage students to think differently than convention demands. They don’t have to do things the way they’ve always been done. Instead, they can figure out a better way.

Students don’t have to embrace their creativity alone, either. In fact, creativity works best when combined with the next 21st Century skill .

3. Collaboration

Collaboration   is the practice of working together to achieve a common goal.

Collaboration   is important because whether students realize it or not, they’ll probably work with other people for the rest of their lives.

Virtually every job requires someone to work with another person at some point, even if it’s for something as simple as what to get for lunch.

Practicing collaboration and teamwork helps students understand how to address a problem, pitch solutions, and decide the best course of action.

It’s also helpful for them to learn that other people don’t always have the same ideas that they do. In fact, as students practice collaboration more and more, they’ll learn that they have almost   none   of the same ideas that others do.

This can affect students in one of two ways. First, it could discourage them since nobody seems to agree with them that often. Second, it could embolden them because they realize they’re bringing something unique to every conversation.

As a teacher, it’s crucial that you encourage students to look at themselves through that second lens. That way, students learn that they should speak up when they have an idea.

Even when their ideas aren't the best suited to the problem, speaking up and sharing their solutions can help them when collaborating with others.

4. Communication

Communication is the practice of conveying ideas quickly and clearly.

Communication   is often taken for granted in today’s society. After all, if you say something, that means you conveyed an idea, right?

But in the age of text-based communications — including texting, emails, and social media — it’s never been more important for students to learn how to convey their thoughts in a way that others can understand them.

That’s because text-based communications lack   tone , which is critical to understanding the context of someone’s words.

Still, even in situations where vocal tone is available, students need to learn how to communicate effectively. That includes minimizing tangents, speaking directly to an idea, and checking other participants to make sure they’re engaged.

Reading an audience — even if it’s just two other people in a group discussion — lets students determine whether they should keep expanding on an idea or wrap up their point. Their audience could even be their family at Thanksgiving dinner.

The point is that as students practice communication, they become better at efficiently conveying an idea without losing their point—or their audience.

When they master the art of effective communication, students can streamline their ideas and make a positive impression on those around them.

Still, it’s important to note that communication isn’t enough on its own to help students with 21st Century skills. To really succeed, students need to use all four of these skills together.

How Do the Four C’s Work Together?

The four C’s of 21st Century skills work together as a system to help students comprehensively understand subjects and navigate living and working in the 21st century.

Because each of the four C's are general skills that help students throughout their personal and professional lives, they are essential qualities that people need to succeed in a wide range of situations.

Each of the four C's cover interrelated concepts paramount to being an educated person:

• Critical thinking teaches students to question claims and seek truth.
• Creativity teaches students to think in a way that’s unique to them.
• Collaboration teaches students that groups can create something bigger and better than you can on your own.
• Communication teaches students how to efficiently convey ideas.

Combined, the four C’s empower students to be discerning people capable of expressing themselves and working with others to find insightful solutions to everyday challenges.

When working together, learners who have mastered the four C's of 21st century skills have ability to make a profound impact on both their professional workplaces and their communities.

How Do You Teach the Four C's of 21st Century Skills?

Now you know what the four C's of 21st Century skills are and why employers want new hires to have them.

So now you're probably wondering how to teach 21st Century skills in your daily middle and high school classes.

Click below to get your free guide on teaching  critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication!

News Literacy: Critical-Thinking Skills for the 21st Century

Three methods for teaching critical thinking skills and smart media consumption habits to a generation growing up in a climate of information overload.

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Every teacher I've worked with over the last five years recalls two kinds of digital experiences with students.

The first I think of as digital native moments , when a student uses a piece of technology with almost eerie intuitiveness. As digital natives, today's teens have grown up with these tools and have assimilated their logic. Young people just seem to understand when to click and drag or copy and paste, and how to move, merge and mix digital elements.

The second I call digital naiveté moments , when a student trusts a source of information that is obviously unreliable. Even though they know how easy it is to create and distribute information online, many young people believe -- sometimes passionately -- the most dubious rumors , tempting hoaxes (including convincingly staged encounters designed to look raw and unplanned ) and implausible theories .

How can these coexist? How can students be so technologically savvy while also displaying their lack of basic skills for navigating the digital world?

What to Believe?

Understanding this extends beyond customary generational finger wagging. While it's tempting to blame students themselves for failing to think critically, we should remember that the digital revolution represents one of the most radical changes in human history.

Students today face a greater challenge in evaluating information than their parents or grandparents did at their age. The cumulative amount of information that exists on the planet, from the beginning of recorded history to the present, is, by realistic estimates , doubling every two years. And even though digital natives have grown up in the information age, many of the adults and institutions in their lives are still grappling with its implications. In other words, it's likely that the kind of credulity we see in young people reflects our own collective uncertainty about what we encounter on the digital frontier. Finally, the skills that students need to effectively sort fact from fiction are often missing from school curricula.

This isn't to suggest any shortcoming on the part of today's teachers. Without the classroom time, quality teaching materials and professional development opportunities in the emerging field of news literacy , teachers cannot reasonably be expected to guide their students to achieve these new skills.

News literacy is a relatively new field in media studies that focuses on defining and teaching the skills that citizens need to evaluate the credibility of the information they encounter, and on examining the role that credible information plays in a representative democracy.

It's also a subject that most students find inherently engaging and relevant. In fact, a recent study found that 84 percent of young people between the ages of 15 and 25 say they would benefit from learning these skills.

3 Exercises in News Literacy

But the question for teachers remains: "How can I integrate news literacy into my classroom amid so many other priorities, standards and goals?" I'd like to share three accessible ideas for how to do so.

Reinvent Current Events

Have students collect examples of information that they feel is timely and important. Then lead a discussion about who produced the content and for what purpose. Is it intended to inform? Persuade? Entertain? Sell? Create small groups and assign each a key characteristic of credibility to study:

• Quality sourcing
• Verification
• Word choice
• Documentation

Then have each team lead an assessment of its assigned attribute. Consider writing a group letter to the reporter, creator or editor about items that are either exemplary or problematic.

Explore the Power of Information

Pose an "essential question for the day" that explores the power and impact of information (e.g., "What changes would we see in the U.S. if the First Amendment protections of speech and press were repealed?"). Then use such websites as the Committee to Protect Journalists or Reporters Without Borders to examine press freedoms around the world. Track the number of journalists jailed, kidnapped or killed in 2014, and investigate the circumstances surrounding these incidents.

Fact-Checking Challenge

Display a different example of dubious information each week or month and challenge your students to research its accuracy using non-partisan fact-checking resources and advanced web searching . Give prizes or extra credit to those who get it right, or work collaboratively to seek answers as a class.

The Practice of Critical Thinking

Not only can these ideas be adapted to explore a range of relevant issues in a variety of academic subjects and grade levels, they also embody the principles of 21st century learning and are aligned with Common Core State Standards .

News literacy education has the potential to engage students and ignite their critical thinking. More importantly, it can empower them to make better-informed choices in their lives as they move beyond the classroom and into the world.

For more information about the News Literacy Project, including our free online professional development session this spring, visit our website .

Created by the Great Schools Partnership , the GLOSSARY OF EDUCATION REFORM is a comprehensive online resource that describes widely used school-improvement terms, concepts, and strategies for journalists, parents, and community members. | Learn more »

21st Century Skills

The term 21 st century skills refers to a broad set of knowledge, skills, work habits, and character traits that are believed—by educators, school reformers, college professors, employers, and others—to be critically important to success in today’s world, particularly in collegiate programs and contemporary careers and workplaces. Generally speaking, 21 st century skills can be applied in all academic subject areas, and in all educational, career, and civic settings throughout a student’s life.

It should be noted that the “21 st century skills” concept encompasses a wide-ranging and amorphous body of knowledge and skills that is not easy to define and that has not been officially codified or categorized. While the term is widely used in education, it is not always defined consistently, which can lead to confusion and divergent interpretations. In addition, a number of related terms—including applied skills , cross-curricular skills , cross-disciplinary skills , interdisciplinary skills , transferable skills , transversal skills , noncognitive skills , and soft skills , among others—are also widely used in reference to the general forms of knowledge and skill commonly associated with 21 st  century skills. While these different terms may not be strictly synonymous, and they may have divergent or specialized meanings in certain technical contexts, these diverse sets of skills are being addressed in this one entry for the purposes of practicality and usefulness.

While the specific skills deemed to be “21 st century skills” may be defined, categorized, and determined differently from person to person, place to place, or school to school, the term does reflect a general—if somewhat loose and shifting—consensus. The following list provides a brief illustrative overview of the knowledge, skills, work habits, and character traits commonly associated with 21 st century skills:

• Critical thinking, problem solving, reasoning, analysis, interpretation, synthesizing information
• Research skills and practices, interrogative questioning
• Creativity, artistry, curiosity, imagination, innovation, personal expression
• Perseverance, self-direction, planning, self-discipline, adaptability, initiative
• Oral and written communication, public speaking and presenting, listening
• Leadership, teamwork, collaboration, cooperation, facility in using virtual workspaces
• Information and communication technology (ICT) literacy, media and internet literacy, data interpretation and analysis, computer programming
• Civic, ethical, and social-justice literacy
• Economic and financial literacy, entrepreneurialism
• Global awareness, multicultural literacy, humanitarianism
• Scientific literacy and reasoning, the scientific method
• Environmental and conservation literacy, ecosystems understanding
• Health and wellness literacy, including nutrition, diet, exercise, and public health and safety

While many individuals and organizations have proposed definitions of 21 st century skills, and most states have adopted learning standards that include or address cross-disciplinary skills, the following are three popular models that can serve to illustrate the concept and its applications in education:

• Framework for 21 st Century Learning  (The Partnership for 21 st Century Skills)
• Four Keys to College and Career Readiness  (David T. Conley and the Educational Policy Improvement Center)
• Seven Survival Skills  (Tony Wagner and the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education)

For related discussions, see content knowledge and learning standards .

Generally speaking, the 21 st century skills concept is motivated by the belief that teaching students the most relevant, useful, in-demand, and universally applicable skills should be prioritized in today’s schools, and by the related belief that many schools may not sufficiently prioritize such skills or effectively teach them to students. The basic idea is that students, who will come of age in the 21 st century, need to be taught different skills than those learned by students in the 20 th century, and that the skills they learn should reflect the specific demands that will placed upon them in a complex, competitive, knowledge-based, information-age, technology-driven economy and society.

While 21 st century skills are relevant to all areas of schooling and academic study, and the skills may be taught in a wide variety of in-school and outside-of-school settings, there are a few primary ways in which 21 st century skills intersect with efforts to improve schools:

• Teachers may be more intentional about teaching cross-disciplinary skills in subject-area courses. For example, in a science course students might be required to learn research methods that can also be applied in other disciplines; articulate technical scientific concepts in verbal, written, and graphic forms; present lab results to a panel of working scientists; or use sophisticated technologies, software programs, and multimedia applications as an extension of an assigned project.
• States, accrediting organizations, and schools may require 21 st century skills to be taught and assessed in courses. For example, states can adopt learning standards that explicitly describe cross-disciplinary skills, and assessments may be designed or modified to evaluate whether students have acquired and mastered certain skills.
• Schools and teachers may use educational approaches that inherently encourage or facilitate the acquisition of cross-disciplinary skills. For example, educational strategies such as authentic learning , demonstrations of learning , or  project-based learning tend to be cross-disciplinary in nature, and students—in the process of completing a research project, for example—may have to use a variety of applied skills, multiple technologies, and new ways of analyzing and processing information, while also taking initiative, thinking creatively, planning out the process, and working collaboratively in teams with other students.
• Schools may allow students to pursue alternative learning pathways in which students earn academic credit and satisfy graduation requirements by completing an internship, apprenticeship, or volunteer experience, for example. In this case, students might acquire a variety of practical, job-related skills and work habits, while also completing academic coursework and meeting the same learning standards required of students in more traditional academic courses.

While there is broad agreement that today’s students need different skills than were perhaps taught to previous generations, and that cross-disciplinary skills such as writing, critical thinking, self-initiative, group collaboration, and technological literacy are essential to success in higher education, modern workplaces, and adult life, there is still a great deal of debate about 21 st century skills—from what skills are most important to how such skills should be taught to their appropriate role in public education. Given that there is no clear consensus on what skills specifically constitute “21 st century skills,” the concept tends to be interpreted and applied in different ways from state to state or school to school, which can lead to ambiguity, confusion, and inconsistency.

Calls for placing a greater emphasis on cross-disciplinary skills in public education are, generally speaking, a response to the perception that most public schools pay insufficient attention to the postsecondary preparation and success of students. In other words, the concept has become a touchstone in a larger debate about what public schools should be teaching and what the purpose of public education should be. For example: Is the purpose of public education to get students to pass a test and earn a high school diploma? Or is the purpose to prepare students for success in higher education and modern careers? The push to prioritize 21 st century skills is typically motivated by the belief that all students should be equipped with the knowledge, skills, work habits, and character traits they will need to pursue continued education and challenging careers after graduation, and that a failure to adequately prepare students effectively denies them opportunities, with potentially significant consequences for our economy, democracy, and society.

A related debate centers on the distinction between “knowledge” and “skills,” and how schools and teachers may interpret—or misinterpret—the concepts. Some educators argue that it’s not possible to teach cross-disciplinary skills separately from knowledge and conceptual understanding—for example, students can’t learn to write well if they don’t have ideas, facts, principles, and philosophies to write about. The basic idea is that “21 st century skills” is an artificial concept that can’t be separated out from subject-area knowledge and instruction. Other educators may argue that cross-disciplinary skills have historically been ignored or under-prioritized in schools, and the push to give more emphasis and attention to these skills is simply a commonsense response to a changing world.

The following list provides a few additional examples of representative arguments that may be made in support of teaching 21 st century skills:

• In today’s world, information and knowledge are increasing at such an astronomical rate that no one can learn everything about every subject, what may appear true today could be proven to be false tomorrow, and the jobs that students will get after they graduate may not yet exist. For this reason, students need to be taught how to process, parse, and use information, and they need adaptable skills they can apply in all areas of life—just teaching them ideas and facts, without teaching them how to use them in real-life settings, is no longer enough.
• Schools need to adapt and develop new ways of teaching and learning that reflect a changing world. The purpose of school should be to prepare students for success after graduation, and therefore schools need to prioritize the knowledge and skills that will be in the greatest demand, such as those skills deemed to be most important by college professors and employers. Only teaching students to perform well in school or on a test is no longer sufficient.
• Given the widespread availability of information today, students no longer need teachers to lecture to them on the causes of the Civil War, for example, because that information is readily available—and often in more engaging formats that a typical classroom lecture. For this reason, educators should use in-school time to teach students how to find, interpret, and use information, rather than using most or all of the time to present information.

The following list provides a few examples of representative arguments that may be made against the concept of 21 st century skills:

• Public schools and teachers have always taught, and will continue to teach, cross-disciplinary skills—they just never gave it a label. The debate over “content vs. skills” is not new—educators have been talking about and wrestling with these issues for a century—which makes the term “21 st century skills” somewhat misleading and inaccurate.
• Focusing too much on cross-disciplinary skills could water-down academic courses, and students may not get “the basics.” The more time teachers spend on skill-related instruction, the less time they will have for content-based instruction. And if schools privilege cross-disciplinary skills over content knowledge , students may be denied opportunities because they are insufficiently knowledgeable. Students need a broad knowledge base, which they won’t receive if teachers focus too much on skill-related instruction or “learning how to learn.”
• Cross-disciplinary skills are extremely difficult to assess reliably and consistently. There are no formal tests for 21 st century skills, so the public won’t know how well schools are doing in teaching these skills.

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Enfoque Educación

The ABCs of Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Matters

January 10, 2024 por Valentina Gimenez Leave a Comment

Thinking is a natural act for human beings. Every day, we have thousands of thoughts. However, just because we are thinking does not mean we are doing it well or that all our thoughts require critical reasoning because doing so would be too exhausting. Critical thinking becomes a core skill in a world that is changing so dynamically. Thinking critically not only helps with generating a well-founded personal opinion but also helps solve complex problems in many ways.

Given the importance of this skill, the good news is that critical thinking can be exercised and trained. In other words, this 21st-century skill can be intentionally taught. Below, we will explain how.

What Is Critical Thinking?

According to the publication of the brief series Life Skills. Fostering Critical Thinking by the 21st Century Skills Initiative, “critical thinking mainly aims at assessing the strength and appropriateness of a statement, theory, or idea through a questioning  and  perspective-taking  process, which  may  or  may  not  in  turn  result in a possibly novel statement or  theory.”

Furthermore, in this publication by Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin , it is argued that “critical thinking need not lead to an original position to a problem. The most conventional one may be the most appropriate. However, it typically involves examining and evaluating different possible positions”.

In other words, it is not limited to solving problems after a reflection. It is also about being able and willing to challenge the core assumptions of accepted theories, paradigms, or knowledge.

Critical thinking implies recognizing that other perspectives may also have merit and, therefore, evaluating each argument or theory’s possible strengths, weaknesses, and biases is possible, no matter how unaligned they are with what we think.

Critical thinking involves using logic, reasoning, and creativity to reach conclusions.

Why Is Critical Thinking Important?

Critical thinking is a skill that has applications in practically all aspects of daily life. It can help you make better decisions, improve employability, and better understand the world. In other words, critical thinking is a fundamental skill for being a 21st-century citizen.

What Is Critical Thinking Used For?

Critical thinking has various functionalities in everyday life, whether in fulfilling professional obligations or carrying out personal activities. Thinking critically is used to:

• Make good decisions : it is important as an exercise to analyze and evaluate sources of information based on their truthfulness, relevance, and reasoning, which leads to better decision-making. Ask or question before blindly accepting things as they appear, and form your judgment based on the facts, information, and knowledge available.
• Solve problems: use logic and reasoning to analyze and deconstruct problems and choose the best solutions considering the weaknesses and strengths of each alternative solution.
• Promote creativity : this is one of the main characteristics of critical thinking and is associated with the previous point, by questioning facts, theories, or concepts, space is also opened up which is very useful for developing new solutions to problems.
• Improve employability: especially in the digital age, where many jobs are being automated, there is consensus that critical thinking and creativity are two fundamental skills for improving people’s employment prospects.
• Digital and global citizenship : Critical thinking plays a role in individual well-being, but above all, it is considered an essential pillar of the functioning of modern democracies. The ability to voice an independent and well-founded opinion to vote and weigh the quality of arguments presented in the media and other sources of information. In addition, when misinformation, fallacies, and fake news can be a problem for democratic systems, critical thinking helps prevent the spread of false information. It contributes verified, respectful, and ethical content to digital communities and social networks.

4 Steps to Exercise Critical Thinking

According to the publication on critical thinking, there are four key cognitive processes involved in exercising critical thinking:

Determining and understanding the problem is an important first dimension of a critical thinking inquisitive process. This sometimes includes asking why the problem is posed in a certain way, examining whether associated solutions or claims can be based on inaccurate facts or reasoning, and identifying knowledge gaps. This inquiry process partly concerns rational thinking (checking facts, observing, and analyzing reasoning). Still, it includes a more ‘critical’ dimension when identifying possible limitations of the solution and questioning some of the underlying assumptions and interpretations, even when the facts are accurate.

In critical thinking, imagination plays an important role in the mental elaboration of an idea, but all thinking involves some level of imagination. At a higher level, imagination also consists of identifying and reviewing alternative or competing worldviews and theories with an open mind to consider the problem from multiple perspectives.

This allows for a better identification of the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed evidence, arguments, and assumptions, although this evaluation also belongs to the inquisitive process.

The product of critical thinking is one’s position or solution to a problem or judgment about others’ positions or solutions. This mainly involves good inference, a balance between different ways of looking at the problem, and, therefore, recognition of its possible complexities.

As with good thinking, critical thinking involves the ability to argue and justify one’s position rationally, with relevant information, under existing perspectives and socially recognized forms of reasoning, or possibly some new ones.

4. Reflect or evaluate

Finally, although one may consider their stance or way of thinking to be superior to some alternatives, perhaps because it encompasses a broader view or is better supported by existing evidence, critical thinking involves some process of self-reflection on the perspective one espouses, It is possible limitations, and uncertainties. Therefore, this type of thinking implies a certain level of humility, as thinking critically also involves openness to competing ideas.

While one should not adopt ancient skepticism and suspend judgment in all cases, sometimes this may be the most appropriate position.

You may also be interested: 4 Benefits of Developing Listening Skills and the Steps to Achieve It

How to Be a Critical Thinker?

Being a critical thinker brings enormous benefits that go beyond the workplace. It is also good for personal development and daily life in the community. So how do you achieve it?

To be a critical thinker you have to exercise other habits and skills, such as fostering curiosity, questioning the established, improving analysis and communication skills, maintaining self-discipline and being alert to cognitive biases.

Let’s review some of the key skills acquired by great critical thinkers:

• Identify relationships between variables and hypothesis testing.
• Master systemic thinking and scientific reasoning.
• Understand the underlying social, natural, and technological relationships in a system.
• Exercise informational literacy, which includes understanding, finding, and obtaining data, reading, interpreting, evaluating, and handling data.
• Avoid cognitive biases; consider all available information, not just what aligns with your point of view.
• Create a strategy, theory, method, or argument based on evidence synthesis.
• Create an argument that goes beyond the available information.
• Computational thinking: for example, abstractions and generalizations of patterns, structured problem decomposition, and iterative thinking.
• Be able to criticize a work product regarding its credibility, relevance, and bias using a set of standards or a specific framework.

These activities to promote critical thinking can be driven at home, at school, or individually.

Teaching Critical Thinking

Although education systems do not usually have a subject specifically dedicated to developing critical thinking, this skill can be developed as part of other learning. Therefore, the publication “Life Skills: Fostering Critical Thinking” develops some strategies for teaching this skill in schools.

Including Critical Thinking in Education

• Use conceptual rubrics that clarify the skills involved.
• Include critical thinking as a learning objective in lesson plans.
• Provide students with tasks and problems that encourage them to question their cognitive abilities and assumptions and explore multiple perspectives.
• Generate an environment in which students feel safe to take risks expressing their thoughts and expressions that arise from their reasoning.
• Assess critical thinking by including it in exams and national assessments.

By fostering these strategies at all educational levels, students can be better prepared for the future with critical thinking skills and improve the quality of their education.

And you, do you consider yourself a critical thinker? How has exercising critical thinking helped you in your life? Check out our blog and discover more content to boost your critical thinking!

Valentina Gimenez

Valentina Giménez es coordinadora de comunicación de la División de Educación en el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo. Es uruguaya. Fue periodista y productora de contenidos, especializada en temas políticos. Ha trabajado para televisión y prensa escrita. Tiene un MBA por la UCU Business School y es Licenciada en Comunicación Social por la Universidad Católica del Uruguay. Fue consultora en asuntos públicos y comunicación estratégica en su país.

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What are 21st century skills?

The 21st century skills are a set of abilities that students need to develop in order to succeed in the information age. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills lists three types:

Learning Skills

• Critical Thinking
• Creative Thinking
• Collaborating
• Communicating

Literacy Skills

• Information Literacy
• Media Literacy
• Technology Literacy

Life Skills

• Flexibility
• Social Skills
• Productivity

New Skills for New Jobs

These skills have always been important for students, though they are particularly important in our information-based economy. When most workers held jobs in industry, the key skills were knowing a trade, following directions, getting along with others, working hard, and being professional—efficient, prompt, honest, and fair. Schools have done an excellent job of teaching these skills, and students still need them.

To hold information-age jobs, though, students also need to think deeply about issues, solve problems creatively, work in teams, communicate clearly in many media, learn ever-changing technologies, and deal with a flood of information. The rapid changes in our world require students to be flexible, to take the initiative and lead when necessary, and to produce something new and useful.

Demand in the Workplace

These are not just anecdotal observations. The following quotations come from Up to the Challenge , a report by the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), Career Technical Education (CTE), and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21):

• The employment titan Manpower reports that despite the recession, 31 percent of employers throughout the world struggle to find qualified workers because of “a talent mismatch between workers’ qualifications and the specific skill sets and combinations of skills employers want.”
• The American Management Corporation reports that employers want workers who can think critically, solve problems creatively, innovate, collaborate, and communicate.
• The National Association of Manufacturers reports, “Today’s skill shortages are extremely broad and deep, cutting across industry sectors and impacting more than 80 percent of companies surveyed. This human capital performance gap threatens our nation’s ability to compete . . . [and] is emerging as our nation’s most critical business issue."
• The National Academies indicate that “The danger exists that Americans may not know enough about science, technology, or mathematics to contribute significantly to, or fully benefit from, the knowledge-based economy that is already taking shape around us.”
• The New York Times reports that low-skilled workers are being laid off and "turned away at the factory door and increasingly becoming the long-term unemployed . . .” This issue results from a disparity between the skills that worker have and those that employers need.

We want to hear from you! How critically and creatively do your students think? How well do they collaborate and communicate? Share your insights below.

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Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

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• The Future of Jobs and Jobs Training
• Theme 2: Learners must cultivate 21st‑century skills, capabilities and attributes

Table of Contents

• About this canvassing of experts
• Theme 1: The training ecosystem will evolve, with a mix of innovation in all education formats
• Theme 3: New credentialing systems will arise as self‑directed learning expands
• Theme 4: Training and learning systems will not meet 21st‑century needs by 2026
• Theme 5: Jobs? What jobs? Technological forces will fundamentally change work and the economic landscape
• Acknowledgments

Will training for the skills likely to be most important in the jobs of the future work be effective in large-scale settings by 2026? Respondents in this canvassing overwhelmingly said yes, anticipating improvements in such education will continue. However, when respondents answered the question, “Which of these skills can be taught effectively via online systems?” most generally listed a number of “hard skills” such as fact-based knowledge or step-by-step processes such as programming or calculation – the types of skills that analysts say machines are taking over at an alarming pace right now. And then, when asked, “What are the most important skills needed to succeed in the workplace of the future?” while some respondents mentioned lessons that might be taught in a large-scale setting (such as understanding how to partner with AI systems or how use fast-evolving digital tools) most concentrated on the need for “soft skills” best developed organically, mentioning attributes such as adaptability, empathy, persistence, problem-solving, conflict resolution, collaboration and people skills, and critical thinking.

Tough-to-teach intangibles such as emotional intelligence, curiosity, creativity, adaptability, resilience and critical thinking will be most highly valued

Learning will, in itself, become important. The skill to continue to learn will be important in all jobs Anonymous respondent

[how to use]

Overall, as these respondents foresee a big re-sorting of workplace roles for machines and humans, they expect that the jobs-related training systems of the future will often focus on adding or upgrading the particular capabilities humans can cultivate that machines might not be able to match.

An anonymous respondent ’s terse description of top future skills was echoed by many dozens of others in this study: “Learning will, in itself, become important. The skill to continue to learn will be important in all jobs.”

Susan M ernit , CEO and co-founder at Hack the Hood, explained, “At Hack the Hood, the tech-inclusion nonprofit I lead, the most valuable skill we teach low-income young people of color, ages 16-25, is that they have the ability and the discipline to learn harder and harder things – the most critical skill for the emerging workplace. Research shows that for our cohorts a blend of online and real-world learning is an effective mix.”

George McKee , a retiree, predicted, “As always, the most important skills will be the ability to learn and organize new things and to discriminate sense from nonsense. Public schools will continue to fall behind in their ability to foster these skills in large populations.”

Meryl Krieger , career specialist at Indiana University, Bloomington’s Jacobs School, replied, “The most important skills in the workforce of the future are 1) transferrable skills and 2) training in how to contextualize and actually transfer them. These are really hard to teach at scale, but then the workforce of the future is something we are barely coming to have the dimmest perceptions about.”

Jessica Vitak , an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, observed that the most-needed skills are capabilities that have always had value, writing, “As much as people like to imagine the future being heavily reliant on robots and high-tech gadgets, I don’t see too much of the workforce shifting dramatically in terms of the skills required to complete tasks.”

Many of the skills of the future are hybrid skills – requiring expertise or fluency across some of our traditional domains. Trevor Hughes

Many other participants in this study said highly valued strengths of human character will be necessary to partner with technology in jobs of the future. An anonymous respondent wrote, “The increasing reach of data, automation and eventually AI will force those jobs that remain to require even greater human touch.”

Susan Price , a digital architect at Continuum Analytics, expanded on that point, explaining, “People will continue to prefer and increasingly value human nurses, teachers, writers, artists, counselors, ethicists and philosophers. This shift has been apparent over the past 20 years or so. As we have come to prefer ATMs over tellers and travel apps over travel agents, our patronage of other ‘human contact’ specialists such as counselors and therapists, personal trainers, manicurists, and massage therapists has increased. Example: People skills in user interface and experience design will be increasingly in demand, but will greatly benefit from artificial intelligence and machine learning for usability evaluations and testing. Another example: The role of truck drivers will need to evolve as they are replaced with self-driving transports. There will remain the need for humans to manage transportation tracking and auditing, perform problem-solving, and occupy stakeholder contact roles such as sales and customer support communication.”

Trevor Hughes , CEO at the International Association of Privacy Professionals, replied, “Training will indeed be an important part of preparing the workforce for our digital future, but it won’t be easy. Many of the skills of the future are hybrid skills – requiring expertise or fluency across some of our traditional domains. Take privacy as an example. Any digital economy professional needs to understand privacy and how it creates risk for organizations. But that means grasping law and policy, business management, and technology. Modern professionals will need to bridge all of these fields.”

An anonymous respondent replied, “The two trends with the most hype right now are AI and VR. Let’s assume that these technologies will have a large impact on the nature of the future work. The workforce of the future (that is not completely displaced by this tech) then needs the skills to utilize these technologies. Some broad skills I anticipate are interacting with machine learning systems, reasoning with underlying algorithms and embedded judgments, being comfortable delegating tactical decisions to those algorithms, etc.”

Michael Rogers, author and futurist at Practical Futurist, said, “In a rapidly changing work environment populated by many intelligent machines, we will need to train people from an early age in communication skills, problem-solving, collaboration and basic scientific literacy. Without those basics in place, occupational training is insufficient.”

The anonymous director of evaluation and research at a university ranked in the top 10 in the U.S. wrote, “Sure, Lynda.com and Udacity and others that can provide skills, just like the corporate training programs we use now. … But those skills won’t be the same as an education – as the habits of mind and social interleavings that make for the types of problem definition, interdisciplinary perspectives, and incisive thought that will be most needed – deep engagement with the stuff of distinctly human capabilities.”

Justin Reich , executive director at the MIT Teaching Systems Lab, observed, “The most important skills for the future will be the kinds of things that computers cannot readily do, places where human workers have a comparative advantage over computers. Two important domains of human comparative advantage are ill-structured problem solving and complex, persuasive communication. (Frank Levy and Richard Murnane’s ‘ Dancing with Robots ’ offers a nice summary of the research informing this position.) Ironically, computers are most effective at teaching and assessing routine tasks, the kinds of things that we no longer need human beings to do. Large-scale learning, which generally depends on automated assessment, is most effective at teaching the kinds of skills and routine tasks that no longer command a living wage in the labor market.”

An anonymous CEO for a nonprofit technology network argued that some “soft” skills can be taught, observing, “Many research reports have demonstrated that one of the most important skills in our developing workforce is reasoning and complex problem solving. The internet enables us to teach and practice these skills in a unique and appropriate way by connecting and engaging people across geographies, backgrounds, ages, etc.” And an anonymous professor at the University of California, Berkeley said, “I do think there will be a lot more online training in the future – and it will actually be more successful at teaching things that are not directly translatable to jobs (humanities subjects, such as art history, media studies, etc.) – the things that television documentaries are already good at teaching. I’m not sure that great writing skills or public speaking/presentation skills will be taught in this format.”

Alf Rehn , professor and chair of management and organization at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, responded, “The key thing to realize about skills and the future is that there is no one set of skills that we can identify as core or important. The future of skills is going to be one of continuous change and renewal, and any one special skill we can identify now will almost certainly be outdated in not too long. Creativity and critical thinking will be as important in the future as it is today, but beyond this we should be very careful not to arrogantly assume too much. And this is precisely why new programs, online and off, will be so crucial. Innovative, faster and more agile training systems will not only be helpful, they’ll be critical.”

An anonymous self-described “chief problem solver” said the world needs problem solvers, writing, “Huge portions of the human condition can be effectively learned through one-to-many learning environments enabled through the internet. Many cannot. … If you take a look at the prevalence of strong problem-solving skills in our society now versus 20 years ago, you’ll notice that an overwhelming majority are now quite specialized in their particular areas of interest/work, but on average have less ability than their counterparts 20 years ago to adequately handle new/incongruous/conflicting information or tasks. Instead of figuring it out and thereby training up our ingenuity-focused skills, we now tend to simply Google someone else’s answer. While this is ‘efficient’ in terms of getting to an adequate solution rapidly, it means that … people are not able to handle new inputs, be flexible, or actually puzzle out new problems.”

Many participants mentioned the general categories of communication and people skills. An anonymous respondent summed it up, writing, “No matter what kind of hard skills one comes to the workplace with, at the end of the day things always seem to boil down to people and communication challenges.”

Micah Altman , director of research at MIT Libraries, wrote, “Given the increased rate of technical change and the regular disruptions this creates in established industries, the most important skills for workforces in developed countries are those that support adaptability and which enable workers to engage with new technologies (and especially information and communication technologies) and to effectively collaborate in different organizational structures.”

No matter what kind of hard skills one comes to the workplace with, at the end of the day things always seem to boil down to people and communication challenges. Anonymous respondent

An anonymous technology analyst for Cisco Systems commented, “The gig economy takes over, and micro-skill training will come to the fore. Debate is a most important skill that can be taught online, emphasizing the importance of preparation.”

[there will be]

An anonymous respondent observed, “The job of the future is the one that combines technical, operational, managerial and entrepreneurial skills.”

Axel Bruns , professor in the Digital Media Research Center at Queensland University of Technology, wrote, “Over the past decade there has been a substantial growth in generic digital literacies training, and this is now being replaced or enhanced by literacies training in specific areas and for particular purposes (social media literacy for communication professionals, data literacy for journalists, etc., to name just two particularly obvious fields). There has also been the emergence of a range of specialist positions that address the cutting edge of such literacies – under job titles such as data scientist or computational journalist, for instance. Across the creative industries, and beyond, the possession of such skills will increasingly serve as a differentiator between job applicants, and within organisational hierarchies in the workplace. Those who possess these skills are also more likely to branch out beyond their core disciplines and industries, as many such skills are inherently interdisciplinary and enable the worker to engage in a wider range of activities. Beyond generic digital literacies, some of the key areas I see as important are: 1) platform-specific literacies, e.g., social media literacies; 2) data science, i.e., the ability to gather, process, combine, and analyse ‘big data’ from a range of sources; 3) data visualisation. Until the accreditation schemes for workers with these skills are standardised, which eventually they will be, we will continue to see leading workers in these areas … be able to enter the workplace on the basis of their demonstrated expertise and track record rather than on the basis of formal accreditation. While there are many MOOCs and other online courses now purporting to teach these skills, it is important to point out that there is a substantial qualitative component to these skills – somewhat paradoxically, perhaps, especially where they deal with ‘big data’: the engagement with such large datasets is less about simply generating robust quantitative metrics and more about developing a qualitative understanding of what such metrics actually mean . Such an understanding is difficult to teach through semi-automated online courseware; direct teacher/learner interaction remains crucial here.”

An anonymous vice president of product at a new startup commented, “In a grand folly of correlation being mistaken for causation, we’re trying to pipeline all kids into college to try to juice their earnings, while steering kids away from practical technical skills like manufacturing tech that might be a better fit, opting instead to saddle them with student loans for a degree they won’t finish from a school that no employer will respect.”

The consultant said one more skill that could be most critical: “An important skill for the workforce of the future is an ability to cultivate a strong network, so if your job disappears you’re able to quickly find a new role.”

[to choose]

Practical experiential learning via apprenticeships and mentoring will advance

Several experts wrote about the likelihood that apprenticeship programs will be refashioned offline and online via evolving application of human knowledge and technology tools. An anonymous security engineer at Square commented, “Never before in history has it been so easy for anyone to learn to become anything they want to be, and that will only continue to improve.”

Connecting the virtual to the physical will change everything. Will Kent

Cory Salveson , learning systems and analytics lead at RSM US, predicted, “There will be a big market for this: more self-directed or coached/mentored, project-based, online learning options that coexist with traditional brick-and-mortar university degree credentialing to make the labor market more agile, whether it wants to be or not.”

Will Kent , e-resources librarian at Loyola University-Chicago, replied, “Connecting the virtual to the physical will change everything. Anyone can learn anything online now. With the right kind of career or social positioning/privilege/luck/connections, users can sidestep traditional degree processes. For those in industries that still demand degrees as currency, the requirements for degrees will change, continuing education will become more embedded in the workplace or new types of evaluation will become more popular. Deliverable-based time constraints rather than 9-5, asynchronous offices/projects will be commonplace, and employers will have to make time for employees to self-educate or else they will fall behind. New credentialing systems will complement, not compete with, older iterations. One will not be favored above the other in practice (i.e., if you can do your work, no one will question how you learned what you learned).”

D. Yvette Wohn , assistant professor of information systems at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, wrote, “Knowledge can be acquired through massive online means, but skills will still require a small-group, personalized approach with much individual feedback. In the future, the technology will be advanced such that the modality – online or offline – is not the issue; rather, it is the size and intimacy of the learning environment that will matter. Formalized apprenticeships that require both technical skills and interpersonal interaction will become more important. As more people get degrees, university degrees will matter less, but that does not mean that higher education does not have its place. Schools that are able to provide a more holistic learning experience that does not focus on a specific skill but is able to provide students with an interdisciplinary and social experience will become more valuable.”

John B. Keller , director of e-learning at the Metropolitan School District of Warren Township, Indiana, wrote, “Online training will continue to improve, and … any skills or knowledge updating that can reasonably be delivered online will be. That said, there will still be a need in many areas for verifiable performance of complex skills and behaviors that may not be possible to be accomplished algorithmically. Skills demanded in the future will include analysis of big data sets, interpretation of trends within historic contexts, clear and effective intercultural communication, design and systems thinking, as well as the ability to advance and advocate for distinctly human contributions to progress and the advance of culture. As more and more skills are broken down into repeatable processes, they will be handed off to technology and video as key transfer platforms. The demand for skills that cannot be easily transferred via online systems will ensure that experience, mentorship, coaching, apprenticeship and demonstrated proficiency all have prominent roles to play against a backdrop of online learning.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Online classes can teach prerequisite knowledge that can prepare workers for further hands-on training or apprenticeship.”

[I include]

Some respondents believe mentoring does not have to be in person – in the traditional face-to-face sense – to be one-to-one. In fact, they say the online world has already multiplied the number of available mentors in every subject.

Valerie Bock , VCB Consulting, former Technical Services Lead at Q2 Learning, responded, “To develop proficiency, we seem to need exposure to war stories of others who were there when the usual rules didn’t apply. MIT’s … EdX platform has a code checker built in, which means well-structured classes can be created with automatically graded exercises supplemented by discussion forums where students can ask their questions and move past places where they are stuck. These courses actually provide the coaching learners need to become skillful. So yeah, coding is probably a skill that can be taught and credentialed effectively via a self-directed online course. In the meantime, a lot of coders learn their craft informally, by examining code written by others and asking questions about it. To me, the most promising application of the internet is the way it increases the number of potential mentors. Global organizations are already leveraging the asynchronous properties of online venues to put their subject matter experts in touch with mentees half the world away, spanning time and distance obstacles. … People use the internet every day, informally, to learn bits and pieces that help them be more effective in the work (paid and unpaid) they do, sometimes by accessing content, but often by contacting other people. The value added to human welfare by parenting forums, elder care discussions, recipe exchanges, addiction recovery communities and even stain removal resources is deeply underestimated.”

Ed Dodds , digital strategist at Conmergence, added, “The global startup ecosystem and makerspace ecosystem will both be intersecting and growing in parallel. … More intentional formal mentorship networks (guilds) are likely to proliferate.”

“What would help,” added an anonymous respondent , “is improving people’s efficiency at providing supports to others. Sort of Slack on steroids.”

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• Senior secondary

Senior subjects

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21st century skills

21st century skills: Preparing students for a changing world

Young people in the 21st century need to be

What are the 21st century skills in the senior syllabuses?

Hover over an image for an explanation of the associated skills.

• adaptability/flexibility
• management (self, career, time, planning and organising)
• character (resilience, mindfulness, open- and fair-mindedness, self-awareness)
• citizenship
• cultural awareness

• analytical thinking
• problem-solving
• decision-making
• reflecting and evaluating
• intellectual flexibility

• relating to others
• recognising and using diverse perspectives
• participating and contributing
• community connections

• operations and concepts
• accessing and critically analysing information
• being productive users of technology
• digital citizenship (being safe, positive and responsible online)

• initiative and enterprise
• curiosity and imagination
• generating and applying new ideas
• identifying alternatives
• seeing or making new links

• effective oral and written communication
• using language, symbols and texts
• communicating ideas effectively with diverse audiences

Detailed description of this diagram

The following written resources are provided to strengthen understanding about the skills students require in the 21st century:

• UPDATED   Explanations of 21st century skills and associated skills (PDF, 195.3 KB)
• Position paper (PDF, 168.6 KB)
• Preparing students for a changing world (PDF, 460.2 KB)

The following videos explore the idea of the skills students require in the 21st century:

• Introduction to the 21st century skills
• Steve Baxter
• Orange Sky Laundry: Lucas Patchett and Nicholas Marchesi
• Penelope Twemlow
• Leslie Chong
• Michael Bremner

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Why Digital Literacy is Essential for Students in the 21st Century

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, digital literacy has become as fundamental as traditional literacy and numeracy. For students navigating the 21st century, the ability to effectively use technology is not just a desirable skill—it’s a necessity. As technology continues to shape the way we live, work, and learn, developing strong digital skills is crucial for academic and professional success.

The Foundation of 21st-Century Skills

Digital literacy encompasses a range of skills, from basic computer use to advanced problem-solving in digital environments. These skills are integral to what educators often refer to as “21st-century skills,” which include critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication. In a world where information is at our fingertips, students must be adept at not only accessing digital information but also evaluating its credibility and using it effectively.

For students, particularly those in the Transition Year, developing these skills early on provides a strong foundation for future learning and career opportunities. Transition Year students who engage in digital literacy programs are better equipped to handle the complexities of higher education and the workforce, where digital competence is increasingly valued.

Academic Success Through Digital Literacy

The integration of technology in education has transformed traditional learning environments. Classrooms are no longer confined to four walls; they are global, connected, and interactive. Digital literacy allows students to participate fully in this new learning paradigm.

Students who are proficient in digital skills can leverage technology to enhance their learning experiences. Whether it’s using online resources for research, participating in virtual classrooms, or collaborating with peers on digital platforms, digital literacy is key to academic success. Moreover, as digital assessments become more common, students with strong digital skills are better positioned to perform well in these evaluations.

Preparing for the Future Workforce

The modern workplace demands a workforce that is not only familiar with digital tools but is also capable of adapting to new technologies. From basic word processing to advanced data analysis and coding, digital skills are essential across all industries. Employers are increasingly looking for candidates who are not just knowledgeable but are also comfortable using digital tools to solve problems and improve efficiency.

For Transition Year students, acquiring these digital skills early on offers a significant advantage. It prepares them for internships, college applications, and eventually, their professional careers. Moreover, digital literacy fosters an innovative mindset, encouraging students to think creatively and develop solutions that can drive business success.

The Role of Schools in Promoting Digital Literacy

Schools play a critical role in ensuring that students develop the digital literacy skills necessary for success in the 21st century. By integrating digital literacy into the curriculum, schools can provide students with the tools they need to thrive in both academic and professional settings.

Programs like ICDL Digital Student Essentials are designed to equip students with the foundational digital skills required for school and life. Such programs offer structured learning paths that are aligned with the needs of today’s students, ensuring they are prepared for the challenges of the digital age.

In conclusion, digital literacy is not just a skill; it’s a critical component of student success in the 21st century. As technology continues to influence every aspect of our lives, ensuring that students are digitally literate is essential for their academic achievements and future career readiness. Schools must prioritize digital literacy to prepare students for the demands of the modern world.

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In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, digital literacy has become as fundamental as traditional literacy and numeracy. For students navigating the 21st century, the ability to effectively use technology is not just a desirable skill—it’s a necessity. As technology continues to shape the way we live, work, and learn, developing strong digital skills is crucial … Read More

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Wellington College International Tianjin has taken the pioneering step to become the city's first Accredited Test Centre (ATC) of ICDL. This partnership enables the school to offer ICDL program to its Senior School pupils, benefiting over 40 students who are set to participate in the ICDL Digital Student program in the initial phase of implementation. Read More

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21st Century Skills

How ai can foster creative thinking in the classroom and beyond, by abbie misha     sep 18, 2024.

Image Credit: Billion Photos / Shutterstock

For many years, educators have envisioned personalized learning as a way to tailor education to each student's unique needs. With advances in artificial intelligence, this vision is becoming a reality. AI has the potential to transform classrooms by offering personalized learning experiences that align with individual strengths, interests and learning needs.

At the same time, there is a growing emphasis on fostering creativity and authenticity in student work. AI can play a pivotal role in supporting the creative process, from generating ideas to refining projects. By making the creative process more explicit and accessible, AI empowers students to overcome obstacles and express their unique perspectives. This approach not only boosts engagement but also prepares students for a future where creative thinking and problem-solving are indispensable skills.

Recently, EdSurge spoke with Brian Johnsrud , the director of education learning and advocacy at Adobe , about using educational tools that not only harness the power of AI but also uphold the creative integrity of students and teachers. He highlights how AI can help personalize learning by allowing students to present their understanding and ideas in diverse and individualized ways. This shift from standardized assignments to personalized projects can make learning more engaging and relevant for each student.

EdSurge: How can educators safely and responsibly leverage AI for more personalized learning?

Johnsrud: The dream of learning personalization has been around for decades. The first phase really focused on getting the right content to the right student at the right time. Now, with AI, we're in the second phase, which isn't just about personalizing content but also about how students present their understanding and share their knowledge. Because a hallmark of creativity is uniqueness. So if we want students to be doing creative thinking, then 30 assignments done by 30 different students should all look different.

As for deploying AI safely and responsibly, schools are paying attention to a number of things right now. The first step is to check if the AI tool is actually designed for education specifically. If it wasn't made for the classroom, it probably wasn't made to improve learning. It won’t necessarily have those pedagogical pieces baked in or the accessibility and other edtech integrations that you need.

Part of being designed for safety and responsibility includes ensuring that the tools don't train their models on student or teacher projects because the creative work you develop as a teacher or student in the classroom should be respected and protected. If you're using a tool that benefits or takes inspiration from your creative masterpiece, it's not truly aligned with core creative values and academic integrity.

In what ways does AI help foster creativity while ensuring that student work remains authentic?

AI can support any part of the creative process. If a student is stuck in brainstorming, AI can help generate multiple ideas. If another student is good at brainstorming but needs help refining their work, AI can act as a thought partner, providing critique. This is what's exciting about AI designed for creativity! It makes the steps of the creative process explicit and helps students overcome obstacles. It removes that fear of the blank canvas.

I hope AI helps shift the focus from teachers being the content creators to students taking on that role. As an example inspired by my time as a social studies teacher, instead of asking students to write a paragraph about continuity and change in a historical era, you could have them choose an era, pick a topic that shows continuity, and design an imaginary propaganda poster from that period. The benefits of this creative assignment are clear to every educator. But with rigid standards and a packed curriculum, it's challenging to dedicate two weeks to it. The good news is, with AI, you could complete this assignment in just 30 minutes during class.

Interestingly, we crave authenticity more than ever in the age of AI. AI tools are moving beyond the basic prompt-and-result, “grab and go” approach. They're becoming integrated into our creative workflows, allowing us to bring our best ideas to life and express ourselves more genuinely. The goal isn't for AI to do the work for us but to help us create more authentic, meaningful content so we can be impactful storytellers. As a teacher, you should be able to see each student's unique voice in the work they produce.

How do AI literacy and creative thinking equip students for future job market demands?

In just a few years, AI skills have become essential. The 2024 Work Trend Index Report found that 66 percent of industry leaders wouldn't hire someone without AI skills . It's amazing how quickly this has become a hiring dealbreaker. In that same report, 71 percent of leaders said they're more likely to hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them. For students, this means having AI skills can level the playing field with more seasoned professionals.

At the same time, creativity and creative thinking are also in high demand. The World Economic Forum's 2023 Future of Jobs Report highlighted creative thinking as a top skill for the future . The creator economy is booming, with 200,000 new creative jobs created in the United States in 2023 alone. Students who can combine AI skills with creative problem-solving are able to seize some pretty incredible opportunities.

Research has shown that the more students are able to create, the more they thrive. And AI opens up more opportunities for student creation. A 2019 Gallup report found that educators who focus on creativity and use technology in transformative ways see significant gains — students are more engaged, demonstrate better critical thinking, retain more, make connections between subjects and achieve deeper learning. For educators, seeing students excited and proud of their work is incredibly rewarding, especially in a time of increased teacher burnout.

How can educators easily incorporate creative thinking into their lessons?

Start by identifying areas in your curriculum where students need to dive deep into a concept or fully demonstrate their understanding. These are the moments where creative activities can replace traditional methods like note-taking or multiple-choice questions and garner a much wider and deeper set of learning outcomes.

This article was sponsored by Adobe Express and produced by the Solutions Studio team.

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