what is 21st century skills essay

21st-Century Skills – What They Are and Why They’re Important

Credentialate

• 21st century skills , digital badges , durable skills , employability , graduate outcomes , micro-credentials , skills , soft skills , transferable skills , upskilling , workplace skills

We often hear the term, “21st-century skills.” However, it is not often clear exactly what that means and how it relates to things like employability, education, and hiring. As old jobs fall victim to automation and advancing technology, the need for transferrable skills and new knowledge and competencies has increased. In this information-rich Credentialate Guide, we examine the workplace needs of the global economy, 21st-century terms and definitions, what skills are important and how are they are taught and assessed.

Updated March 2024 – to include updated terms, impact of AI and more recent references

The Essentials: 21st-century skills

• What are the drivers behind the need for 21st-century skills? There is a skills gap across an entire generation of workers. If that gap isn’t addressed, it could have dire consequences for the new global economy. Additionally, the nature of work itself is undergoing rapid transformations, from too much specialisation, automation and the rapid rise of the digital age – particularly AI.
• What are the workforce requirements of the new global economy? The need for durable and transferable skills, new knowledge and competencies has increased exponentially. At the same time, employers struggle to find candidates with the skills their business needs. Recruiters find it hard to identify strengths, soft skills and transferrable skills that are not easily shared on a resume or through interviewing.
• Is there a difference between 21st-century, professional, workplace and soft skills? There are many terms used interchangeably to describe modern skills , including 21st-century skills, professional skills, workplace skills, durable skills, transferable skills and soft-skills. By and large, there is a common meaning across all terms to mean the same or very similar set of skills.
• What are the 21st-century skills? 21st-century skills are based primarily on “deeper learning” skills (like critical thinking, problem solving, and teamwork) and are comprised of a combination of soft-skills (such as interaction, collaboration, processing information, and managing people) and hard-skills (with a mainly IT focus. Dgital literacy, media literacy, etc.).
• How do 21st-century skills help to address the skills gap? 21st-century skills are those that hiring managers value most .  Displaced workers who upskill and reskill to learn these new skills have the opportunity to progress in their roles, transition to new roles or reenter the workforce in a meaningful way, along with providing for the means for them to support themselves and their economies.
• What are the issues with teaching 21st-century and career skills? Many curricula have become standardised since the identification of these core skills. The outdated “transmission” model of learning has been replaced by more creative and freestyle type of learning. Every student learns differently, and training must be personalised. In response to this, short-form learning, skills-based learning and micro-credentials , are on the rise, along with workplace-based and real world learning. 
• How do you assess attainment of 21st-century skills? Unlike traditional assessments, where there is a definitive right and wrong answer, soft- skills are far more intangible to measure against. Performance-based or authentic assessment has arisen in response and is open ended or task-based. Learners utilise their 21st-century skills and are scored against grading rubrics that allow educators to assess without bias.
• What is the role of micro-credentials in 21st-century skill development? Micro-credentials are based on small, well-designed courses that target specific skills or subsets of skills. They are “bite-sized” compared to traditional credentials – usually available over weeks or months, not years’ – and cost less as a result. Micro-credentials are increasingly compared on the same level as traditional degrees and are validated in digital format, such as a digital credential or digital badge .
• How Credentialate provides a new perspective Credentialate is the world’s first Credential Evidence Platform. It helps you discover and share evidence of workplace skills. Credentialate is the only Credential Evidence Platform that includes a personalised qualitative, quantitative and artefact evidence record that is verified and aligned to industry frameworks, available via links from the digital badge. Educators can map and manage their skills infrastructure and track skills attainment across the institution and against existing frameworks.

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The Full Story: What 21st-century skills are, why they are important, how they are taught and assessed

What are the drivers behind the need for 21st-century skills, what are the workforce requirements of the new global economy, is there a difference between 21st-century, professional, workplace and soft skills, what are the 21st-century skills, how do 21st-century skills help to address the skills gap, what are the issues with teaching 21st-century and career skills, how do you assess attainment of 21st-century skills, what is the role of micro-credentials in 21st-century skill development, how credentialate provides a new perspective.

We often hear the term, “21st-century skills.” However, it is not often clear exactly what that means and how it relates to things like employability, education and hiring. The expression does legitimately refer to a discrete body of specific competencies. The value of these competencies came to light in a recent discovery about our global workforce: there is a skills gap across an entire generation of workers. If that gap isn’t addressed, it could have dire consequences for global economies in the first half of the 21st century.

Recent studies have shown that some professionals over the age of thirty-five follow an outdated paradigm. They learn one trade and become increasingly good at it until at some point they reach a “skills plateau.”

This specialisation isn’t necessarily negative. In fact, humankind has needed it in one form or another since the dawn of the industrial age. We’re now living in a rapidly progressing digital age. Jobs and skills have emerged in the last ten years that didn’t exist before. Rapid technological advancements have been increasingly changing the workplace, particularly since the rise in the proliferation of AI  enabled technologies, such as ChatGPT and the need for AI skills . However, job training and education in general haven’t changed enough to keep up.

Governments, employers, and educators began noticing the need for these changes in the 1980s. In 1991, a movement to address these issues emerged, even though at the time the reality of the need appeared to be long-term.

The US Secretary of Labor issued a report called What Work Requires of Schools . This report identified key fundamental skills required to survive in a modern, high-performance workplace that required more flexible and nimble workers, who could transfer skills from one position to another. They came to three primary conclusions:

• All American high school students must develop a new set of competencies and foundation skills if they are to enjoy a productive, full, and satisfying life. Whether they go next to work, apprenticeship, the armed services, or college, all young Americans should leave high school with the know-how they need to make their way in the world.
• The qualities of high performance that today characterise our most competitive companies must become the standard for the vast majority of our companies, large and small, local, and global. “High performance” means work settings relentlessly committed to excellence, product quality, and customer satisfaction. These goals are pursued by combining technology and people in new ways.
• The nation’s schools must be transformed into high-performance organisations in their own right. Transforming schools in the US into high- performance organisations, means being relentlessly committed to producing skilled graduates as the norm, not the exception.

That flexibility and willingness to take on new or additional roles underscores the skills gap possessed by previous generations. Work goals have changed significantly over the decades. The Baby Boomers sought job stability. Subsequent generations wanted less of that and focused more on finding happiness and fulfillment in their careers. This is important given, one’s career no longer means a few decades with one company, but perhaps a variety of positions that changes frequently.

Today’s generation craves job mobility ahead of job stability. Now, students and young professionals expect to change job roles and fields at least a dozen times in their careers – with a mean of 4.6 years for many workers . Professionals with more specialisation and less flexibility have trouble adapting to the dizzying pace of workplace changes. The good news is that even these workers can be retrained and transfer the skills they do possess . But they must be taught how in order to do so.

As old jobs fall victim to automation, advancing technology and AI, demand for many job skills and areas of expertise has diminished. The need for transferrable skills, with new knowledge and changing competencies has increased . Employees have long embraced the need for professional development and lifelong learning , but even those with core capability and the potential to learn skills or apply those they already possess struggle to prove their worth to employers.

Likewise, employers struggle to identify strengths and the durable and transferrable soft skills that are not easily shared on a resume or through interviewing and testing. Employees are missing out on opportunities and employers are missing potential superstar employees to fill key roles.

Practices like remote monitoring, automation and the use of AI to aid in decision making, analysis, and other tasks, have rendered many employees obsolete and further shaped the future of work . New jobs and opportunities abound, but it means a shift in thinking about job training, job seeking, human resources and hiring, and certifications like the use of micro-credentials to highlight capabilities, durable and transferable skills and competency.

The COVID pandemic saw record levels of unemployment, with many workers taking early retirement when offered rather than learning new skills or upskilling to start over in new positions.

What have we been doing wrong? Workplace reskilling and upskilling has traditionally focused on getting better at specific job tasks and meeting performance standards. This made more sense when jobs and roles were clearly defined. However, this focus on outcome-based learning rather than skills-based learning that in turn creates new competencies has missed the mark. This has resulted in a sizeable part of the workforce, an entire generation, becoming overspecialised and ill-equipped to meet new labour demands. These professionals now have no choice. They must adapt to the demands of change or go the way of the dodo.

There are many terms used interchangeably to describe 21-century skills, including:

21st-century skills – The term “21st-century skills” is generally used to refer to certain core competencies such as collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving that advocates believe educators need to teach to help students thrive in today’s world .

Professional skills – Professional skills are career competencies that often are not taught (or acquired) as part of traditional coursework. Professional skills such as leadership, mentoring, project management, and conflict resolution are value-added skills essential to any career.

Workplace skills – Workplace skills are the basic skills a person must have to succeed in any workplace. They are the core knowledge, skills and attitudes that allow workers to understand instructions, solve problems and get along with co-workers and customers.

Employability skills – Employability skills refer to a set of transferable skills and key personal attributes which are highly valued by employers and essential for effective performance in the workplace. Employability skills include things like good communication, motivation and initiative.

Durable skills – Durable skills include a combination of how you use what you know – skills like critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity – as well as character skills like fortitude, growth mindset, and leadership.

Transferable skills – Transferable skills, sometimes called portable skills, are the skills you have developed that can be transferred from one job to another, like communication or time management skills.

Soft-skills – Soft skills are a combination of people skills, social skills, communication skills, character or personality traits, attitudes, career attributes, social intelligence and emotional intelligence quotients, among others, that enable people to navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well, and achieve their goals with complementing hard skills.

As you can see, there’s a lot of commonality across all of the definitions used to describe these skill sets. As such, the term selected is usually determined by the market segment using it.

So what are these 21st-century skills? They are a set of knowledge, skills, and learning dispositions that prepare learners to succeed in a rapidly changing, digital world. Educators, business leaders and academics worldwide have contributed to identifying, categorising, and developing lists of these workspace skills. They aren’t primarily based on content knowledge, but on “deeper learning” skills like critical thinking, problem solving, and teamwork.

Whatever term you choose to use, these skills are a combination of “soft skills” and “hard skills”. The hard skill component focuses on digital literacy, which is in increasingly high demand. Soft skills are people skills that involve interaction, collaboration, processing information, and managing people. The latter is known as “enablement skills” or “power skills” because they are transferable to different roles and positions and durable in that they are used in a variety of employment environments.

According to EdGlossary , while the specific skills deemed to be “21st century skills” may be defined differently, the following identifies the knowledge, skills, work habits, and character traits commonly associated with 21st 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

Using a popular framework , these can be further categorised into:

The American Association of Colleges and Universities recognised some of these 21st-century skills in existing programs and, over time, recommended other goals to form part of essential learning outcomes for students.

Essential college and career skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, and written communication are the skills that hiring managers value most above and beyond specific content knowledge.

However, these skills are often not explicitly taught as part of college curricula, nor are they reflected on a college transcript . While content knowledge is a requisite part of a student’s education, it alone is insufficient for a student to thrive academically and professionally.

On a global scale, 21st-century skills have gained recognition and adoption into traditional education models.

Half of all available jobs today remain unfilled because people don’t have the needed skills for them. Many businesses can’t grow because they can’t get the workforce needed to grow. The skill gap remains, and it is preventing economies from developing. The old adage of “location, location, location” now refers to the local availability of talent and appropriately educated and skilled workers as anything else, and many companies offer incentives to employees to move in order to join their teams.

Many workers are able to adapt to working remotely have been able to thrive, and companies who seek to take advantage of that have expanded their workforce far beyond any geographic location. This requires a certain “digital literacy” and those able to take advantage of this development have found new freedom from the ability to work from anywhere.

How do we impart those skills to those who don’t have them, though? How do we close the skills gap and enable displaced workers to upskill, retrain, and re-enter the workforce in a meaningful way?

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We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented in order to solve problems that we don’t even know are problems yet.

Education in 21st-century skills has been a work in progress in many countries. The methods of instruction vary as personalised teaching methods dictate how learners achieve competencies in the classroom. Thankfully, many curricula have become standardised since the identification of these core skills. Modern teachers replaced the outdated “transmission” model of learning. But teaching these skills is a challenge, because every student learns differently, and training must be personalised to their needs and learning style .

Success using these teaching methods has varied. Educators can facilitate effective learning as long as they follow some key precepts. Students are empowered to guide their own learning. Learners flourish in an inquiry-based classroom environment. They’re encouraged to collaborate, and they’re given the opportunity to develop critical thinking skills. Each course is designed to bring out the learners’ creativity.

The sticking point is that much of this effective learning focuses on K-12 education. There are fewer options for adult learners seeking to develop 21st-century skills. Many professionals cannot put their lives and jobs on hold so that they can return to classroom learning. Soft skills and digital literacy need to become a part of ongoing personal development, but there are challenges to overcome.

Adult learners need upskilling that does not take a full two years to complete. The valuable competencies are needed now, not 24 months from now. They need learning methods that won’t cut into their normal job hours and won’t tie them down to a physical classroom location. Adult students need to benefit from the methods that have made achievement successful for secondary and post-secondary students.

One solution is a new kind of job training, based on frameworks that highlight capability, transferable skills, and result in new competencies. Since this kind of training does not result in a “degree” or “certification” in the traditional sense, learners must also be able to “prove” their skills and validate their learning through another means, one that is more robust, specific, and verifiable and verifiable in modern formats, such as micro-credentials or digital badges.

And as the shift towards shorter, skills-based and employment-focused micro-credentials builds momentum, education providers must strategically evolve their credentials and curriculum to meet demand.

Interest is shifting towards shorter, skills-based and employment-focused micro-credentials. Businesses know this, and some are bypassing degrees and developing their own micro-credentials to create a talent pool with the precise skills needed to fill designated roles. Further, most adult learners are primarily motivated to acquire a credential, micro or macro, in order to secure meaningful paid employment, or more broadly, career advantage. But if credentials of all sizes are a bridge between education and work, then providers need to consider that if work has changed, then so has employability, and so must credentials and curriculum.

Employability, however defined, must be related to empirically observable employment outcomes . Future research is needed to determine:

• The factors that affect a graduate’s likelihood of success in finding, creating and retaining work over a lifetime;
• Whether those factors can be influenced and if so, how; and
• Which factors can be influenced during a learner’s enrolment, regardless or age or stage?

Rethinking employability in higher education has the potential to bridge across the intersection between the need for development of durable and transferable skills such as 21st-century skills, to deliver better employment outcomes .

Given that the need for 21 st -century skills is clear, the question of how to assess a learners’ attainment of these essential skills becomes the next challenge. Unlike traditional multiple choice assessments, where there is a definitive right and wrong answer, performance tasks allow an opportunity for a much more authentic experience.

In a five-year study into using performance-based assessment to measure “those skills our students need to thrive as 21st century learners, workers, and citizens”, it was discovered that measuring outcomes such as critical and creative thinking was somewhat of a tall order.

• Creating performance tasks to measure students’ critical-thinking, problem solving, and written communication skills
• Generating rubrics to score the responses, and
• Developing and implementing a viable scoring process

After refinement and pilot testing, they were able to validate that  performance tasks could be used to make valid inferences about their students’ 21 st century skills and abilities.

A mission-driven, non-profit organisation, CAE develops performance-based and custom assessments that authentically measure students’ essential skills and identify opportunities for growth. CAE’s flagship assessments – CLA+, CWRA+ and SSA+ – evaluate the skills educational institutions and employers demand most and which are predictive of positive college and career outcomes: critical thinking, problem-solving and written communication.

Micro-credentials are based on small, well-designed courses that target specific skills or subsets of skills. They are “bite-sized” compared to traditional credentials like university degrees. You would expect to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and 2-4 years of your life on a college education. A micro-credential can be earned in weeks or months for a fraction of the cost of college – or in some cases the costs of a single college course.

This method of learning has found favour with employees and employers in recent years. It addresses specific needs brought by the rapidly changing times. More employers are removing degree requirements , and some have developed their own internal frameworks for establishing and verifying micro-credentials. They have shifted to hiring practices that target specific, transferable skills, or skill sets. These qualities make it an excellent vehicle for earning 21st-century skills.

Innumerable work veterans need inexpensive, time-flexible ways of learning new skills that will get them new jobs. Alternatively, they need a reliable method of surfacing evidence of those skills if they already have them. A LinkedIn survey of global talent trends validated what these skills were.

It revealed that companies struggle to assess those skills without a formal process, and this is really where micro-credentials and the frameworks being developed around them shine.

Credentialate is a secure, configurable platform that assesses and tracks attainment of competencies and issues micro-credentials to students backed by personalised evidence at scale. By automatically extracting data from existing platforms and using an organization’s own assessment rubrics, we can objectively measure awarding criteria and validate its evidence.

By this same method we can automate the assessment, monitoring, promotion and validation of evidence-backed skills. For an institution, we provide the data and insights required to track skills and competencies across courses and entire programs.

Finally, we have decades of collective experience in educational technology and long-standing ties with global educational powerhouses. These solidify our ability to produce credible digital badges.

Credentialate assesses, monitors, promotes and validates learners’ attainment of evidence-backed skills, supporting the transition from learner to earner. It is a secure, configurable platform that assesses and tracks attainment of competencies and issues micro-credentials to students. If you’d like to learn more About Us and how we can work together, contact us or Schedule a Demo and let’s discuss!

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Credentials just got personal – Unleash the power of your skills data and personal credentials

Credentialate is the world’s first Credential Evidence Platform that helps discover and share evidence of workplace skills. Launched In 2019, it was initially developed in close collaboration with leading design partner, UNSW Sydney, in support of a multi-year, cross-faculty community of practice and micro-credential research project. Credentialate has continued to evolve at an accelerated pace, informed in partnership with educators and industry leaders from around the world. Credentialate provides a Skills Core that creates order from chaotic data, provides meaningful insight through framework alignment and equips learners with rich personal industry-aligned evidence of their skills and competencies.

Find out more at:  edalex.com/credentialate

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21st-Century Skills That Every Learner Needs

You’ve probably heard about the importance of critical thinking, teamwork, creativity, and other “21st-century skills.” These skills are acknowledged to be essential to thrive in today’s world. However, you might be asking what those super skills are and how you can master them.

In this article, we’ll discuss which 21st-century skills are necessary and how they can benefit your studies, interpersonal communication, and personal growth. After all, your academic performance and working experience might not be enough for success in modern times. Get ready to learn everything about 21st-century skills! For more interesting topics and tips, check out our free essay database .

• 🌐 What Are 21st-Century Skills?
• 🤝 21st-Century Skills Types
• 🛎️ The Ultimate List of Skills

👩‍💻 How to Develop 21st-Century Skills

• 🏁 Conclusion

🔗 References

🌐 what are 21 st -century skills.

The term 21st-century skills encompasses a broad set of knowledge, habits, and character traits that educators, employers, and others find essential to succeed in today’s world. The list of 21st-century skills includes critical thinking, collaboration, leadership, and many other abilities needed in collegiate programs and modern workplaces.

21 st -Century Learning

The role of 21 st -century education is to help every student learn how to learn. Modern learning encourages collaboration, inspires creativity, and rewards critical thinking. It teaches students how to make sense of the never-ending flow of information and use it wisely. By providing students with these fundamental abilities, 21st-century education helps them thrive in the workplace.

Here are some critical features of 21st-century learning:

• It aims to develop creativity in students . The more complex the world becomes, the more creative solutions people need to overcome its challenges.
• It is highly individual. In modern society, people value individuality and authenticity. 21st-century education seeks a unique approach for every student.
• It uses technologies. Books used to be the primary source of information for people. However, nowadays, you can develop 21st-century skills with the help of workshops, online courses, and even YouTube.
• It highly values students’ progress . A 21st-century education isn’t about making students memorize information to get an A+ on their assignments. Modern learning systems adhere to the idea that average standardized scores shouldn’t measure a student’s success.

Why Are 21st-Century Skills Essential?

The modern world is characterized by globalization, rapid technological development , and social diversity, making 21st-century skills more essential to students than ever. These processes require educators to create a framework for successful studying methods and to ensure young people can prosper in a world of constant transformation. Opportunities for 21st-century students are also expanding. They include international study programs , global knowledge exchanges, and projects organized by companies with the possibility of obtaining a job, etc.

The 21st-century workplace has also become more innovative and competitive. To succeed in modern information-age jobs, students need to solve problems creatively, work in teams, communicate on social media, learn to use new technologies, and deal with a flood of information. Top managers highly value employees who can meet these standards and have the energy to expand their skills, even if they lack some academic or working experience. Hence, 21st-century skills have become a must for anyone who wants a well-paying job in a modern company.

Who Needs These Skills?

The 21st century has experienced significant economic changes and breakthrough discoveries. We now have cryptocurrency, driverless cars, and blockchain technology, among other inventions. And with these innovations, we need to learn: 1) how to use them and 2) how to adapt to unpredictable circumstances.

21st-century skills are essential for high-school and college students just now entering the corporate world. Numerous new careers are appearing in today’s labor market: for example, cybersecurity experts, SMM specialists, and many others. New professions, as well as the jobs of the future, are full of unknown challenges. Consequently, employers seek creative and observant candidates with skills to deal with unpredictable aspects of work. So, our advice is to prepare yourself for new technologies and careers that might not yet exist.

🤝 21st-Century Skills – Main Types

Usually, experts divide 21st-century skills into three groups: learning skills, digital literacy skills, and life skills. These groups contain hard and soft skills that help workers adapt to the modern world’s changes and trends. Let’s discuss each group in more detail.

1. Learning Skills

Modern learning involves much more than memorizing materials before an exam. Instead, it is a life-long journey where every new experience can turn into a valuable lesson. These 21st-century skills are essential for a person to become capable of growth and change. Often these skills are called the 4C’s: critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication:

• Critical thinking Critical thinking is essential in both business and science to achieve success. It enables you to think outside the box and form your own ideas.
• Creativity Creativity is key to innovation. People who think creatively can see things from different angles. This skill can help you find easier solutions to more complicated tasks.
• Collaboration Collaboration might be the most challenging skill to master among the 4 C’s. However, once you learn to work with others, you learn to compromise and achieve the best results from teamwork.
• Communication Effective communication is essential for building lifelong connections with other people. Employers highly value good communicators that can approach people with different personality types.

2. Digital & Information Literacy Skills

There’s no doubt that social media and technology have become an important part of almost every aspect of modern life. This set of skills is a must for people to create and share digital information. The top three 21st-century literacy competencies are:

• Information literacy Information literacy means finding, evaluating, organizing, and using information in its various formats efficiently. It also enables a person to differentiate facts from fiction. Nowadays, finding valuable information can be a real challenge since the Internet is full of misleading content.
• Media literacy The amount of time people spend online has dramatically increased over the past decade, making media literacy a vital skill. This ability strengthens your ability to analyze, create, and interact with online messages and sources. It also lets people find the most effective methods of creating and sharing information.
• Technology literacy Technology literacy is a hard skill connected with computers, cloud computing, and mobile devices. Once you master technology literacy, you’ll have a core understanding of how gadgets work and the chance to work as a data scientist.

3. Life Skills

Life skills allow people to find new ways of thinking and problem-solving and develop greater self-awareness. Even when students do their best to improve their grades, many still struggle to gain this set of skills. At the same time, employers consider life skills just as necessary as academic performance, making these competencies a great advantage when applying for a job.

Consider these examples of life skills:

• Flexibility Flexibility is someone’s ability to adapt to changes and the unknown. Many people find it hard to adjust to new circumstances and people. However, flexibility is essential for long-term success in your career and personal life.
• Leadership Leadership is a vital skill for entrepreneurs and everyone who aims to achieve their goals. Leading a team can be stressful, but good leaders are highly valued in all situations.
• Social skills Networking has never been more significant than in today’s world. Effective communication, empathy, and active listening can significantly contribute to success.

🛎️ The Ultimate List of 21st-Century Skills – 2024

The list of 21st-century skills goes beyond the categories discussed above. Most of them are universal and can benefit various aspects of your life. However, others can be applied to specific spheres like business, politics, or science.

Here is the extended list of top 21st-century skills.

• Cultural literacy.
• Global awareness.
• Creative thinking.
• Adaptability.
• Presentation skills.
• Risk management.
• Cooperation.
• Time management.
• Problem-solving.
• Self-direction and social responsibility.
• Productivity .
• Oral and written communication.
• Planning and time management.
• Leadership.
• Active listening.
• Initiative.
• Networking.
• Stress management.
• Decision-making.
• Willingness to learn.
• Punctuality.
• Sense of style.
• Negotiation skills.
• Media literacy.
• Multitasking.
• Emotional intelligence.
• Delegation.
• Deductive and inductive reasoning.
• Attention to detail.
• Storytelling.
• Motivation and support.
• Logical thinking.
• Prioritizing.
• Technical literacy.
• Positive attitude.
• Project management.
• Engagement.
• Self-reflection.
• Stress resistance.
• Dealing with new media.
• Analytical skills.
• Confidence.
• Language knowledge.
• Improvisation.
• Self-management.
• Situational awareness.
• Assertiveness.

Not all schools and colleges teach students contemporary skills. Luckily, there are several ways you can master these competencies yourself. Consider these tips if you want to boost your 21st-century skillset and become the best version of yourself.

• Prioritize the skill you want to develop. It’s better to advance in your learning process step-by-step. Focus on one skill at a time to master it. You will need to spend time on research and practice.
• Ask others for feedback . Self-reflection can be challenging for some people since we are usually not our best judges. It’s a great idea to ask your friends, classmates, or colleagues to highlight your strengths and weaknesses.
• Step outside your comfort zone. New experiences can bring the most valuable life lessons. Say “yes” to the opportunities appearing on your way if you want to discover new things about yourself.
• Stay aware of new technologies and media . Using different kinds of media and technologies can significantly improve your digital literacy. Luckily, plenty of courses are available online.
• Take leadership positions . At first, you might feel pressure, but your confidence will grow over time. Taking a leadership position, even temporarily, will boost your interpersonal and management skills.

📍 Conclusion

21st-century skills focus on what it is like to live, study, and work in today’s society. They prepare people to take on any challenges they might face in the future. Such skills are a great advantage when applying for college or a job. Besides, they can significantly benefit your academic performance.

There is no doubt that 21st-century skills are essential for everyone, and fortunately, there are plenty of ways to develop them. Our final advice is to regularly go out of your comfort zone and take all the opportunities available to challenge yourself. Remember that learning is a life-long journey!

❓ Soft Skills FAQ

What are 21st-century skills.

21st-century skills are the set of competencies considered to be crucial to thriving in today’s world. Experts divide them into three categories: learning skills, digital literacy skills, and life skills. These competencies help deal with modern challenges and are highly valued by employers.

What are 21st-century skills in education?

Modern education focuses on 21st-century skills because they teach students how to learn, work, and live in the world. Current education systems help students learn how to learn, spark their creativity, and encourage them to collaborate.

Why are 21st-century skills necessary?

21st-century skills provide a foundation for college studies and ensure that students will succeed in their adult lives. These competencies concern real-life challenges, technological development, and their future workplace. 21st-century skills help to prepare students for the unknown.

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

The “four C’s” are often considered the most essential of all 21st-century skills. They are critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication. These four skills help students to succeed at school and in the workplace.

How to develop 21st-century skills?

Most colleges understand the importance of 21st-century skills and implement them in their curriculum. However, there are numerous ways to master these competencies yourself. Our advice is to ask others for feedback on your strengths and weaknesses, develop one skill at a time, and volunteer for leadership positions.

• What Are 21st Century Skills?
• What Are the 4 C’s of 21st Century Skills?
• What Is Digital Literacy? 5 Skills That Will Serve You Well | Rasmussen University
• Life Skills: Definition, Examples, & Skills to Build – The Berkeley Well-Being Institute
• 21st-Century Skills: Definition and Examples | Indeed.com
• How Do You Define 21st-Century Learning? | EducationWeek
• Globalization, Educational Trends and the Open Society | Stanford University, 2005
• 25 Websites for Students: Smart Spending, Education, Productivity, & More! | Blog StudyCorgi.com
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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.

Alphabetical Search

Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century (2012)

Chapter: 3 importance of deeper learning and 21st century skills.

3 Importance of Deeper Learning and 21st Century Skills

This chapter summarizes research on the importance of deeper learning and “21st century skills” to success in education, work, and other areas of adult responsibility. The first section focuses on educational achievement and attainment, the second section on work, the third on health and relationship skills, and the fourth on civic participation. Overall, the research reviewed in these sections finds statistically significant, positive relationships of modest size between various cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies and desirable adult outcomes. However, these relationships are based on correlational research methods.

We also reviewed evidence on the role of formal schooling in adult success, which we include in the sections on work and health. We found statistically significant, positive relationships between years of educational attainment and labor market success, not only in research using correlational methods, but also in studies using stronger research methods (see discussion below). Measured cognitive, intrapersonal, or interpersonal competencies appeared to account for surprisingly little of these relationships between years of educational attainment and labor market success. In the fifth section, we show that the benefits of additional years of formal schooling for individuals include not only higher wages but also somewhat greater adaptability to changes in workplace technology and in jobs.

The literature discussed in this chapter comes from a variety of disciplines, including industrial-organizational psychology, developmental psychology, human resource development, and economics. Researchers in these disciplines have investigated the relationship between a range of different skills and abilities and later outcomes, using a variety of methods and data

sets. Some of the evidence we present is correlational in nature, and we call these “simple correlations.” Other evidence is longitudinal, in which competencies and other capacities measured at one point are related to outcomes measured years later, often after adjusting for individuals’ differences in family backgrounds. We call these “adjusted correlations” and view this evidence as more suggestive of causal connections than the evidence from simple correlations, but still prone to biases from a variety of sources. The strongest causal evidence, particularly the evidence of the impacts of years of completed schooling on adult outcomes, comes from statistical methods that are designed to approximate experiments.

IMPORTANCE TO EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS

Many more studies of school success have focused on the role of general cognitive ability (IQ) than specific interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies (see Table 3-1 ). Economists tend to lump all competencies other than IQ into the category of “noncognitive skills.” Personality and developmental psychologists have developed a much more refined taxonomy of them.

Most personality psychologists have centered their work on the “big five” personality traits—conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness, emotional stability, and extroversion—plus general cognitive ability. Although these traits have traditionally been viewed as relatively stable across the life span, a growing body of evidence indicates that that personality traits change in response to general life experiences (e.g., Roberts, Walton, and Viechtbauer, 2006; Almlund et al., 2011) and to structured interventions (see Chapters 4 and 5 ).

Developmental psychologists have a dynamic view of competence and behavioral development, with children’s competencies and behaviors determined by the interplay between their innate abilities and dispositions and the quality of their early experiences (National Research Council, 2000). Both groups have investigated associations among cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies and children’s success in school.

Personality Factors and School Success

The comprehensive Almlund et al. (2011) study of personality and attainment offers the following summary of “prediction” evidence on correlations and, in some cases, adjusted correlations between personality traits and educational attainment (see also Table 3-1 ):

Measures of personality predict a range of educational outcomes. Of the Big Five, Conscientiousness best predicts overall attainment and achieve-

ment. Other traits, such as Openness to Experience, predict finer measures of educational attainment, such as attendance and course difficulty. Traits related to Neuroticism also affect educational attainment, but the relationship is not always monotonic. Conscientiousness predicts college grades to the same degree that SAT scores do. Personality measures predict performance on achievement tests and, to a lesser degree, performance on intelligence tests. (p. 127)

It is important to note that while these associations are large enough to pass conventional thresholds of statistical significance, they almost never account for more than a nominal amount of the variation in the educational attainment outcomes under study.

The most noteworthy meta-analysis of these kinds of data is by Poropat (2009), who examined studies of the simple correlations between personality factors and school grades in primary, secondary, and higher education. 1 He found a significant positive association between conscientiousness and grades in primary school through college (see top half of Table 3-2 ). The simple correlations between conscientiousness and grades in high school and college were in the 0.20-0.25 range, about as high as the correlations between measures of general cognitive ability and grades in high school and college. 2 In comparison with other correlates of grades identified in previous studies, these two correlations are at approximately the same level as socioeconomic status (Sirin, 2005) and slightly lower than the correlations found for conscientiousness in industry training programs (Arthur et al., 2003).

In elementary school, general cognitive ability is the strongest correlate of grades, although all five personality factors are positively correlated with grades. Correlations between personality factors and grades generally fall over the course of high school and college. In higher education, among the five personality factors, only conscientiousness is correlated with grades.

Three studies of the correlations between “big five” personality traits and completed schooling have included at least some regression controls (Goldberg et al., 1998; van Eijck and de Graaf, 2004; Almlund et al., 2011). All find positive adjusted associations for concientiousness that range from 0.05 to 0.18, and all find modest negative adjusted associations for extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

___________________

1 The Poropat (2009) analysis included many more studies focused on grades in secondary (24-35 studies) and higher education (75-92 studies) than in elementary school (8 studies).

2 In social science research, such correlations are generally interpreted following rules of thumb developed by Cohen (1988), in which a correlation of 0.20 is considered small, a correlation of 0.50 is considered medium, and a correlation of 0.80 is considered large.

TABLE 3-1 Key Studies Cited in Chapter 3 : The Importance of Deeper Learning and 21st Century Skills

SOURCE: Created by the committee.

TABLE 3-2 Correlations and Regression-Adjusted Associations Among Skills, Behaviors, and School Performance

NOTE: Concurrent correlations for personality factors and cognitive ability come from Poropat (2009). Concurrent correlations for skills and behaviors in kindergarten and fifth grade come from Duncan and Magnuson (2011). Longitudinal and regression-adjusted correlations are from Duncan et al. (2007). Regression controls in the final column include family background, child temperament, and IQ. SOURCE: Created by the committee.

Skills, Behaviors, and School Success

There are many ways that developmental psychologists classify competencies in the cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal domains, and some of their categories correspond to some of the “big five” personality traits. One recent review classified important competencies into four groups: achievement, attention, behavior problems, and mental health (Duncan and Magnuson, 2011).

Achievement, in the cognitive domain, refers to concrete academic competencies such as literacy (e.g., for kindergarteners, decoding skills such as beginning to associate sounds with letters at the beginning and end of words) and basic mathematics (e.g., ability to recognize numbers and shapes and to compare relative sizes). Although scores on tests of cognitive ability and achievement tend to have substantial correlations, there is an important conceptual difference between cognitive ability as a relatively stable trait and the concrete achievement competencies that develop in response to schooling and other environmental inputs.

Attention, in the intrapersonal domain, refers to the ability to control impulses and focus on tasks (e.g., Raver, 2004). Developmental psychologists often distinguish between two broad dimensions of behavior problems that reflect the domains of interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies—externalizing and internalizing. Externalizing behavior refers to a cluster of related behaviors, including antisocial behavior, conduct disorders, and more general aggression (Moffitt, 1993; Campbell, Shaw, and Gilliom, 2000). Internalizing behavior refers to a similarly broad set of mental health constructs, including anxiety and depression as well as somatic complaints and withdrawn behavior (Bongers et al. ,2003). 3

Many studies have established simple and, in some cases, adjusted correlations between this set of intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies and academic outcomes in the early grades (e.g., Vitaro et al., 2005, and Currie and Stabile, 2007, for attention; Pianta and Stuhlman, 2004, for antisocial behavior; and Fantuzzo et al., 2003, for depressive symptoms). Duncan and Magnuson (2011) use nationally representative data on kindergarteners and fifth graders to compute the simple correlations shown in the bottom left panel of Table 3-2 . Since letter grades are rarely recorded in the early grades, the table shows correlations between reading achievement and measures of attention, antisocial behavior and mental health. All are substantial by fifth grade, with the expected positive achievement

3 Cutting across the attention and externalizing categories is the idea of self-regulation, which current theory and research often subdivides into separate cognitive (cool) and emotional components (hot) (Raver, 2004; Eisenberg et al., 2005; Raver et al., 2005). Cognitive self-regulation fits into our “attention” category while emotional self-regulation fits into our “behavior problems” category.

associations for attention and negative associations for antisocial behavior and mental health problems. All of these associations are smaller in kindergarten, which, in contrast with the research on personality factors (Poropat, 2009), suggests increasing correlations as children grow older.

Averaging across six longitudinal data sets, Duncan et al. (2007) calculate the bivariate correlations shown in the “longitudinal correlations” column of Table 3-2 . Shown here are simple correlations among kindergarten entry achievement, attention and behavioral competencies, and math and reading test scores measured 2-8 years later. Correlations between later achievement and the three measures of attention, antisocial behavior, and mental health problems are similar to what was found for corresponding correlations with kindergarten achievement shown in the first column. As might be expected, correlations between math and reading competencies at school entry and later in the elementary school years are quite high.

To more accurately assess the importance of any one of these competencies and behaviors for school and career success, some studies have gone beyond these simple correlations to account for the fact that children with different levels of a given competency or behavior are likely to differ in many other ways as well. Children with, say, higher math scores may also have higher IQs, be better readers, exhibit less antisocial behavior, or come from more advantaged families. When adjustments for differences in these other conditions are made, the size of the relationship between early competencies and behaviors and later outcomes tends to shrink. This is shown in the fifth and sixth columns of numbers in Table 3-2 . A clear conclusion from these columns of numbers is that only three of the five school-entry competencies have noteworthy adjusted correlations with subsequent reading and math achievement: reading, math, and attention. Neither behavior problems nor mental health problems demonstrated a statistically significant positive correlation with later achievement, once achievement and child and family characteristics are held constant. 4

Studies estimating bivariate correlations between high school completion and measures of early competencies and behaviors—including achievement, attention, behavior problems, and mental health—find them to be quite modest (.05 to .10; Entwisle, Alexander, and Olson, 2005; Duncan and Magnuson, 2011, Appendix Table 3.A9). Even when these competencies and behaviors are measured at age 14, none of the correlations with high school completion is stronger than .20.

Much larger correlations are observed for early indications that children have persistent deficits in some of these competencies and behaviors. In particular, children with persistently low mathematics achievement and

4 A replication and extension analysis by Grissmer et al. (2010) also found predictive power for measures of fine motor skills.

persistently high levels of antisocial behavior across elementary school were 10-13 percentage points less likely to graduate high school and about 25 percentage points less likely to attend college than children who never have these problems (Duncan and Magnuson, 2011). In contrast, persistent reading and attention problems had very low adjusted correlations with these attainment outcomes. 5

IMPORTANCE TO WORKPLACE SUCCESS

Technological advances, globalization, and other changes have fueled demand for more highly educated workers over the past four decades. Across much of the 1980s, the inflation-adjusted earnings of high school graduates plunged by 16 percent, while the earnings of college-educated workers rose by nearly 10 percent. In the following two decades, low-skill worker earnings continued to fall, while the earnings of college-educated workers continued their modest rise. 6

How these occupation and education-related changes in the labor market affect the demand for cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies is the subject of this section. We begin with a brief review of the large literature on the economic payoff to years of formal education, and of the remarkably modest extent to which prior cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal skills account for that payoff. We then turn to a more detailed discussion of trends in demand for 21st century competencies.

Educational Attainment and Employment Outcomes

From the pioneering work in the 1960s and 1970s of Schultz (1961), Becker (1964), and Mincer (1974) to the present, studies have shown that investments in education produce rates of monetary return that are comparable or higher than market rates on investment in physical capital. Remarkable in this literature is that the estimates have changed little as increasingly sophisticated studies have eliminated likely sources of bias in the estimation of the economic payoff to education, the most prominent of which is the self-selection of more able or motivated into higher levels of completed schooling. 7

5 These results come from an analysis in which the predictive power of any given skill or behavior was assessed after adjusting for the others and for family background characteristics.

6 Autor, Katz, and Kearney (2008, Table 1). Data are based on weekly earnings for full-time workers with 5 years of experience. Earnings of high school dropouts fell even more than the earnings of high school graduates (see also Levy and Murnane, 2004).

7 An overview of the efforts to address these bias issues is provided in Card (1999). One strategy for reducing bias from genetic factors is to use siblings or even identical twins to relate earnings and employment differences to schooling differences pairs of otherwise ¨similar¨

In most studies, the so-called private rate of return to added years of schooling (which relates the after-tax earnings benefits enjoyed by workers to the portion of the education costs they have borne) for the United States has varied between 7 and 11 percent, with even higher rates in many other countries (Psacharoupoulos and Patrinos, 2004). The social rate of return tends to be lower than the private rate of return because it includes the full resource costs of schooling provision, much of which is paid through government subsidies rather than the students themselves.

Barrow and Rouse (2005) have concluded that each additional year of schooling generates additional income of about 10 percent, a return that is about the same across the races. And Autor, Katz, and Kearney (2008, Figure 2A) estimate that the earnings advantage for college as opposed to high school graduates rose from about 50 percent higher in the mid-1970s to close to twice as high in 2005. In their summary of evidence on education curriculum, Altonji, Blom, and Maghir (2012) find greater labor market returns to more advanced high school courses and to engineering, business, and science majors in college.

Looking beyond earnings, Oreopoulos and Salvanes (2011) find that workers with higher educational attainment enjoy more nonmonetary employment advantages, including a higher sense of achievement, work in more prestigious occupations, and greater job satisfaction than comparable workers with lower levels of education. Those with more formal education are more likely to be selected for jobs that require further training and that merit training investment. Presumably, the rationale for basing selection decisions on the candidate’s level of education is that the costs of training for reaching job proficiency are reduced when more educated persons are chosen for training programs (Thurow, 1975; Lynch, 1994). Finally, evidence suggests that one person’s added years of schooling benefits others by raising the productivity of other workers at all levels of education (Moretti, 2004). 8

In short, the economic importance of a highly educated workforce is impressive and, if anything, increasing. Since the schooling process

individuals. For example, using Norwegian data, Oreopoulos and Salvanes (2011) find that, in comparison with their siblings, siblings with 1 additional year of education have annual incomes that are about 5 percent higher and lower probabilities of being unemployed or on welfare. Another is to use instrumental variable strategies based on, for example, compulsory schooling laws, where the obligatory age of school attendance determines the number of years and the permissible date at which students can leave. Since years of schooling under the compulsory attendance requirements are not subject to voluntary choice, differences in education are exogenous to other influences that might affect the amount of education obtained. None of these strategies is free from all potential biases, however.

8 Using a different estimation strategy that focuses only on the returns to secondary schooling for individuals subject to compulsory school attendance laws, Acemoglu and Angrist produce a smaller, but still positive, estimate of external returns than Moretti (2004).

presumably imparts the competencies and behaviors that are responsible for these productivity advantages, it is important to know how cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies are connected to education’s high rates of return.

Test Scores, Education, and Employment Outcomes

Cognitive competencies (as measured by standardized test scores) have the potential to play an important role in accounting for the links between schooling and earnings. First, since smarter people are more likely to acquire more schooling, failure to control for differences in prior cognitive competencies may bias estimates of the role of education per se . But second, even if two graduating high school seniors with identical cognitive competencies make different decisions about whether to attend college, the college experience itself might develop capabilities that command higher earnings from employers.

Surprisingly, empirical studies show that cognitive competencies are able to account for only a small fraction of the association between education and earning. Bowles, Gintis, and Osborne (2001) summarized 25 studies conducted over four decades, which yielded 58 estimates of earnings functions that incorporated test scores. They found that the estimated effect of schooling on earnings retained about 82 percent of its value, on average, after accounting for prior test scores, suggesting that most of the impact of years of educational attainment on earnings was attributable to determinants other than the cognitive competencies.

A second, more direct, approach to investigating the role of cognitive competencies on labor market outcomes does not involve the intervening role played by schooling. An extensive literature, including meta-analyses (e.g., Schmidt and Hunter, 1998, 2004) has examined the simple, unadjusted correlations between cognitive ability, personality factors, and job performance. Schmidt and Hunter (2004) reviewed several studies and meta-analyses, finding that measures of general cognitive ability were strongly correlated (the magnitude of these correlations was higher than 0.53) with occupational level, income, job performance, and job training performance. Comparing these correlations with those found in studies of the association between personality traits and job outcomes, they concluded that general cognitive ability was more important for later job success than conscientiousness or any other intrapersonal or interpersonal competency.

It is worth noting that an NRC committee (1989) reanalyzed the data from over 700 criterion-related studies of the concurrent correlations between scores on a test of general cognitive ability and measures of job performance (typically supervisor ratings, but in some cases, grades in a training course) in about 500 jobs. They found that, despite claims of

much higher predictive validities (i.e., correlations) in the literature (U.S. Department of Labor, 1983), the average correlation in studies that had been conducted since 1972 was about .25 after correction for sampling error. Cognitive test scores explained about 6 percent of the variance in performance, leaving 94 percent to be explained by other factors. Estimates of predictive validities in one subsequent review of the empirical literature also reflected this modest range (Sackett et al., 2001).

Economists have favored prospective longitudinal studies of the relationship between cognitive competencies and earnings (Hanushek and Woessman, 2008). In their examination of the associations between earnings and the cognitive skills of 15-18-year-olds as measured by the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, Neal and Johnson (1996) found that, with no controls for family background, a one-standard deviation increase in test scores was associated with roughly a 20 percent increase in earnings for both men and women. Using data from the National Child Development Survey (NCDS), which has followed a cohort of British children born in 1958 through midlife, Currie and Thomas (1999) related scores on reading and math tests administered at age 7 to wages and employment at age 33. Even in the presence of extensive family background controls, their models show 10-20 percent earnings differentials when comparing both males and females in the top and bottom quartiles of the two test score distributions. Murnane, Willett, and Levy (1995) show links between the mathematics tests scores of two cohorts of high school seniors and their wages at age 24.

Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Competencies and Employment Outcomes

In an effort to understand the large amount of variation in earnings and other employment outcomes that cannot be attributed to cognitive competencies, researchers have begun to examine the role of a variety of intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies. As with our earlier review of the determinants of achievement and attainment, research divides into a focus on personality factors and on other competencies and behaviors.

Personality Factors

Almlund et al. (2011) summarize their review of correlational evidence on the role of “big five” personality traits for labor market outcomes as follows:

Personality measures also predict a variety of labor market outcomes. Of the Big Five traits, Conscientiousness best predicts overall job performance but is less predictive than measures of intelligence. Conscientiousness,

however, predicts performance and wages across a broad range of occupational categories, whereas the predictive power of measures of intelligence decreases with job complexity. Additionally, traits related to Neuroticism (e.g. locus of control and self-esteem) predict a variety of labor market outcomes, including job search effort. Many traits predict sorting into occupations, consistent with the economic models of comparative advantage…. Personality traits are valued differentially across occupations. (p. 127)

A key study in this literature is Barrick, Mount, and Judge (2001), which conducts a second-order meta-analysis of the results of 11 prior meta-analyses of the simple associations between Five Factor Model personality traits and job performance. They find that conscientiousness is a valid correlate of job performance across all performance measures studied, with average correlations ranging from the mid .20s to low .30s. Emotional stability was correlated with overall work performance although not with all of the work performance criteria examined. The remaining factors—extroversion, openness and agreeableness—failed to correlate consistently with overall work performance.

Skills, Behaviors, and Earnings

The literature on links between earnings and specific achievement and behavioral skills has employed prospective longitudinal data and well-controlled regression models, yielding stronger evidence than that provided by studies of simple correlations. For example, Heckman, Stixrud, and Urzua (2006), using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY) estimate substantial adjusted correlations between earnings and a scale combining adolescent self-esteem and sense of personal effectiveness.

Carneiro, Crawford, and Goodman (2007) use data from the British NCDS to relate a wide variety of achievement and behavioral measures assessed when the sample children were 11 years old to later earnings. The diversity of their behavioral measures is reflected in their names: “anxiety for acceptance,” “hostility toward adults,” “withdrawal,” and “restlessness.” When summed into a single index, a standard deviation increase in this collection of antisocial skills and behaviors is found to be associated (net of parental background) with a 3.3 percent decrease in age-42 earnings, about one-fifth of the estimated positive association for a one standard-deviation increase in achievement tests scores. Ironically, an examination of the social and behavioral subscales found the greatest explanatory power for “inconsequential behavior”—a heterogeneous mixture of items related to inattention (“too restless to remember for long”), antisocial behavior (“in informal play starts off with others in scrapping and rough play”), and inconsistency (“sometimes eager, sometimes doesn’t bother”).

In more recent work, Cunha and Heckman (2008) used longitudinal data to study cognitive and noncognitive development over time as it affects high school completion and earnings. They developed a battery of noncognitive scores focused on an antisocial construct using student anxiety, headstrongness, hyperactivity, and peer conflict to go along with cognitive test scores in this analysis. Based upon the psychological, neurological, social, and other aspects of child development, they modeled the developmental path and estimated the impact of investments in cognitive and noncognitive competencies on high school graduation and earnings (at age 23) at three different periods during the age span from 6 to 13. The parental investments studied included purchases of books and musical instruments, newspaper subscriptions, special lessons, trips to the museum, and trips to the theater.

The authors found that the impact of investment returns shifts markedly as the child ages, from cognitive competencies at the earlier ages (6 and 7 to 8 and 9) to noncognitive competencies during the later period (9-13). They also found evidence that noncognitive outcomes contribute to cognitive test results, but little evidence that test scores affect noncognitive outcomes. This finding suggests that investments in noncognitive competencies may contribute to economic productivity not only directly but also by increasing cognitive achievement.

One difficulty in research evaluating and comparing the relative associations between labor market outcomes and both cognitive and noncognitive competencies is the lack of strong measures of noncognitive competencies. Cognitive competencies are measured using well-established and validated standardized testing methods. By contrast, noncognitive competencies are almost always measured by ratings rather than tests—either self-ratings or ratings by observers who are not experts.

Better measurement methods, for example, by trained psychologist observers, might result in more valid measurement and therefore an increase in the estimated importance of noncognitive competencies. This apparently is the finding of a study by Lindqvist and Vestman (2011), which analyzed data on military enlistees in Sweden, where enlistment is compulsory for male 18-year-olds. These individuals complete a cognitive ability test and an extensive questionnaire. A trained psychologist combined the latter with results from a 30-minute clinical interview to assess the individual’s noncognitive competencies, particularly, responsibility, independence, outgoingness, persistence, emotional stability, and initiative. The researchers examined a Swedish database and were able to match labor market outcomes of 14,703 32- to 41-year-olds who had earlier been tested through the enlistment. Comparing the impact of cognitive and noncognitive measures on wages, unemployment, and annual earnings, they found that, in general, the adjusted correlations between these outcomes and their noncognitive

variable were larger than the correlations of earnings with their cognitive variable. Men who did poorly in the labor market were especially likely to lack noncognitive abilities. In contrast, cognitive ability was a stronger correlate of wages and earnings for workers with earnings above the median.

But while this body of research on intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies is growing rapidly, there is little consensus emerging from it. The prospective studies reviewed above capitalize on the haphazard availability of measures in their data sets. Much further investment is needed to specify such competencies and measure them in a streamlined way. Such specification will be useful in understanding how best to teach noncognitive skills to students (Durlak and Weissberg 2011; see Chapter 6 ) and how mastery of such competencies may, in turn, affect employment, earnings, and other adult outcomes. The European Commission has begun to examine how noncognitive competencies and personality traits contribute to workplace success (Brunello and Schlotter, 2010).

Trends in Demand for 21st Century Competencies

Clearly, labor market demand for increased years of schooling has risen over the past four decades. There is also some evidence that employers currently value and reward a poorly identified mix of cognitive, intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies. As noted in previous chapters, the committee views 21st century skills as dimensions of human competence that have been valuable for many centuries, rather than skills that are suddenly new, unique, and valuable today. One change from the past may lie in society’s desire that all students now attain levels of mastery—across multiple areas of skill and knowledge—that were previously unnecessary for individual success in education and the workplace. Another change may lie in the pervasive spread of digital technologies to communicate and share information. Although the underlying communications and information-processing competencies have not changed, they are applied at an increasing pace to accomplish tasks across various life contexts, including the home, school, workplace, and social networks. According to recent press reports, over half of the estimated 845 million Facebook users around the globe log on daily; among those aged 18 to 34, nearly half check Facebook within minutes of waking up and 28 percent do so before getting out of bed (Marche, 2012). An estimated 400 million people use Twitter to send or receive brief messages. Even in the world of print media, the pace of communication has quickened, as newspapers adopt a “digital first” strategy and publish fresh information online as news stories break (Zuckerman, 2012). Here, we review research addressing the question of whether such changes are increasing demand for cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies, and, if so, whether this will continue in the future.

The economy’s need for different kinds of worker competencies has shifted over time due to a variety of factors, including shifts in the distribution of occupations. Blue collar jobs have shrunk dramatically over the past 40 years, declining from nearly one-third of all jobs in 1979 to only one-fifth of all jobs in 2009. Over the same time period, white collar administrative support jobs, such as filing clerks and secretaries, also declined. This rapid decline in middle-skill, middle-wage jobs has been accompanied by rapid growth at the top and bottom of the labor market, with a trend toward increasing polarization in wages and educational requirements (Autor, Katz, and Kearney, 2008).

The growth jobs at the top and bottom of the labor market is illustrated by Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, which organizes all occupations in 10 large clusters, three of which—professional/related, service, and sales—constitute fully half of the labor force. The two largest clusters—professional/related (e.g., computer science, education, healthcare professions) and service (e.g., janitorial, food service, nursing aids, home healthcare workers)—are at the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of education and wages. These two clusters are projected to create more new jobs than all of the other 8 occupational clusters combined over the period 2008 to 2018 (Lacey and Wright, 2009).

Autor, Levy, and Murnane (2003) conducted a study that analyzed not only the mix of occupations but also the competencies demanded within occupations. Drawing on the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (a large catalogue of occupations and their characteristics), they developed measures of the routine and nonroutine cognitive tasks and routine and nonroutine manual tasks required by various occupations. Comparing tasks over time, from 1960 to 1998, they concluded that beginning in 1970 computers reduced routine cognitive and manual tasks and increased nonroutine cognitive and interactive tasks. Their model explained 60 percent of the growth in demand for college-educated labor over the period from 1970-1988. The authors concluded that computers substitute for workers in performing routine tasks and complement workers in performing nonroutine tasks.

Building on this study, Levy and Murnane (2004) argued that demand is growing for expert thinking (nonroutine problem solving) and complex communication competencies (nonroutine interactive skills). Levy and Murnane (2004) also proposed, that demand is growing for verbal and quantitative literacy. They view reading, writing, and mathematics as essential enabling competencies that supported individuals in mastering tasks that require expert thinking and complex communication production processes. Predicting that jobs requiring low or moderate levels of competence will continue to decline in the future, the authors recommended that schools teach complex communication and nonroutine problem-solving competencies, along with verbal and quantitative literacy, to all students.

More recently, Autor, Katz, and Kearney (2008) analyzed data on wages and education levels from 1962 to 2005. The analysis supports the argument that computers complement workers in performing abstract tasks (nonroutine cognitive tasks) and substitute for workers performing routine tasks. However, it also suggests that the continued growth of low-wage service jobs can be explained by computers’ lack of impact on nonroutine manual tasks. Noting that these tasks, performed in service jobs such as health aides, security guards, cleaners, and restaurant servers, require interpersonal and environmental adaptability that has proven difficult to computerize, Autor, Katz, and Kearney (2008) suggest that low-wage service work may grow as a share of the labor market.

Goos, Manning, and Salomons (2009) reached a similar conclusion, based on an analysis of occupational and wage data in Europe. They concluded that technology was the primary cause of polarization in European labor markets, eliminating routine tasks concentrated in mid-level manufacturing and clerical work while complementing nonroutine tasks in both high-wage professional jobs and low-wage service jobs.

These two studies both suggest that low-wage service work involves nonroutine tasks that cannot be readily replaced by computers. There is debate in the literature about the level of cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies required to perform such work. Some case studies and surveys suggest that successful performance in low-wage service jobs requires complex communications skills and nonroutine problem solving (Gatta, Boushey, and Appelbaum, 2007). However, the low levels of education required to enter these jobs, together with their low wages and a plentiful supply of unskilled labor, suggests that their competency demands are—and will remain—low (Autor, 2007). Yet another view is that the competencies required by these and other jobs depend largely on management decisions about how the job is structured and the level and type of training provided (National Research Council, 2008).

Borghans, ter Weel, and Weinberg (2008) studied the role of interpersonal competencies in the labor market and concluded that “people skills” are an important determinant of occupations and wages. They argue that interpersonal competencies vary both with personality and across occupations, and that individuals are most productive in jobs that match their personality. They also found evidence that youth sociability affects job assignment in adulthood, and that interpersonal interactions are consistent with the assignment model. This study built on earlier, unpublished work which suggested that technological and organizational changes have increased the importance of interpersonal competencies in the workplace (Borghans, ter Weel, and Weinberg, 2005).

While these studies propose that demand for cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies has grown in recent decades and will

continue to grow in the future, some experts disagree. For example, Bowles, Gintis, and Osborne (2001) analyzed longitudinal studies that presented 65 different correlational estimates of the relationship between cognitive test scores and earnings over a 30-year period. The authors found no increase in the estimates over time, indicating that labor market demand for cognitive competencies had not grown. Based on responses to a new national survey of skills, technology, and management practices, Handel (2010) argues that, for most jobs in the U.S. economy, education and academic skill demands are low to moderate, noting that large numbers of workers report educational attainments that exceed the requirements of their jobs.

All efforts to predict future competency demands are, of necessity, based on past trends. For example, BLS has often been criticized for using past trends to project detailed occupational requirements and competency needs a decade into the future (National Research Council, 2000). Similarly, Levy and Murnane (2004) call for schools to teach complex communications skills and nonroutine problem solving based on the assumption that the trends identified by Autor, Levy, and Murnane (2003) will continue for decades.

IMPORTANCE TO HEALTH AND RELATIONSHIP SKILLS

Education, Competencies, and Health Outcomes

There is a long history of research on the associations between education and health. Researchers statistically analyze data from self-reports on health status, behavior, and challenges in terms of explanatory variables, including gender, race, age, education, and income. Based on these analyses, they construct a health gradient demonstrating the conditional relation between education and health status. The overwhelming finding is that general health status, specific health outcomes, and healthy behaviors are strongly and positively correlated with educational attainment.

Cutler and Lleras-Muney (2010a) summarized the literature in which educational attainment is linked both statistically and substantively to health outcomes and behaviors. They found higher levels of educational attainment were associated with an array of reductions in adverse health events and increases in healthy eating and exercise. For example, the age-adjusted mortality rate of high school dropouts was found to be about twice that of those with some college in the 25-64-year-old age group in 1999.

Although these findings are widely accepted, two important questions dominate the literature. The first is to what degree is this relation causal as opposed to the explanation that those with better health are more likely to succeed educationally? That is, to what degree is the coefficient or gradient for health by level of educational attainment biased upward by

reverse causation or omitted determinants of both education and health. The second question refers to the mechanism by which education improves health results. While the simplest explanation is that more educated persons are more knowledgeable about how to improve and maintain their health status and are better able to respond to health problems, there are other explanations. These include the effects of education on access to the healthcare system (for example, through higher income) or effects of education on increasing consideration for the long-run consequences of present behavior and taking preventative measures.

To answer the first question, health economists have relied increasingly on the use of instrumental variables techniques to isolate the exogenous effects of education on health outcomes. Following the studies on education and labor market outcomes, they have used externally imposed differences in compulsory schooling such as changes in compulsory attendance requirements that affect the amount of education attained. To control for genetic factors and family backgrounds, they have also compared the health of siblings who have different educational attainments. Lochner (2011) provides a recent review of the latest set of studies employing these sophisticated methodologies. His preferred set of 39 estimates shows a wide range of estimates of education effects on mortality, self-reported health, and disability, as well as two health-related behaviors—smoking and obesity. Not all of the estimates are statistically significant, and some have the wrong signs. By and large, the links tend to be stronger in U.S. than European studies.

With respect to trying to isolate the mechanisms by which education influences health outcomes and behavior, the relations are less clear. There is some evidence that both the general cognitive capabilities of more educated persons as well as specific knowledge contributes to this relation. Cutler and Lleras-Muney (2010b) have also attempted to decompose the education-health nexus into major components including differences associated with education, socioeconomic status and income, and access to social networks. They find that about 30 percent of the education-health gradient is due to a combination of the advantages of income, health insurance, and family background associated with more education; 10 percent is due to the advantages of social networks; and about 30 percent is due directly to education. They also explore the educational mechanisms that might account for the relationship. They conclude that it may not be the specific health knowledge conferred by education as much as greater interest and trust of science and general skills such as critical thinking and decision-making abilities, analytic abilities, and information processing skills that enable educated individuals to make better health-related decisions. Such mechanisms as risk aversion and longer-range time considerations (low time discount rate) do not seem to have substantial support in explaining the health gradients.

A few studies have attempted to estimate links between health and cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies. The Almlund et al. (2011) review reaches the following conclusions regarding personality traits:

All Big Five traits predict some health outcomes. Conscientiousness, however, is the most predictive and can better predict longevity than does intelligence or background. Personality measures predict health both through the channel of education and by improving health-related behavior, such as smoking. (pp. 127-128)

Many of these conclusions are based on the meta-analysis of Roberts et al. (2007), who review evidence from 34 different studies on links between longevity and the “big five” personality traits. They find that conscientiousness was the strongest predictor among the “big five” traits and a stronger predictor than either IQ or socioeconomic status. openness to experience and agreeableness were also associated with longevity, while neuroticism was associated with shorter life spans.

Among individual studies, Conti, Heckman, and Urzua (2010a, 2010b) estimate a multifactor model of schooling, earnings, and health outcomes using data from the British Cohort Study. They find that cognitive ability is not a very important determinant of smoking decisions or obesity but that noncognitive competencies are generally more important for smoking, obesity, and self-reported health. More recently, Hauser and Palloni (2011) studied the relationship between high school class ranking, cognitive ability, and mortality in a large sample of American high school graduates. They found that the relationship between cognitive ability (IQ) and survival was entirely explained by a measure of cumulative academic performance (rank in high school class) that was only moderately associated with IQ. Moreover, the effect of class ranking on survival was three times greater than that of IQ. The authors’ interpretation of these findings is that higher cognitive ability improves the chances of survival by encouraging responsible, well-organized, timely behaviors appropriate to the situation—both in terms of high school academics and in later-life health behaviors.

COMPETENCIES AND HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS IN ADULTHOOD

Insights into the importance of transferable competencies for healthy marriages and other relationships in adulthood can be gleaned from the literature in a number of areas. Our review concentrates on three: (1) studies of couple satisfaction and marriage duration, (2) programs designed to promote healthy marriages, and (3) programs targeting teen relationship building.

A literature review by Halford et al. (2003; see also Gonzaga, Campos, and Bradbury, 2007) suggests four broad classes of variables that impact the trajectory of relationship satisfaction over time: couple interaction, life events impinging upon the couple, enduring individual characteristics of the partners, and contextual variables. Most relevant to the committee charge are the enduring individual characteristics and interactions.

Behavioral genetic studies show substantial heritabilities for divorce in adulthood (McGue and Lykken, 1992; Jockin, McGue, and Lykken, 1996). A handful of studies have examined early childhood correlates of adult relationship stability. Two of the most relevant drew data from the Dunedon birth cohort study. Newman et al. (1997) found that undercontrolled temperament observed at age 3 predicted greater levels of conflict in romantic relationships at age 21. Relatedly, Moffitt et al. (2011) found that childhood self-control predicts the likelihood of being a single parent.

Most personality traits are not very predictive of relationship satisfaction (e.g., Gottman, 1994; Karney and Bradbury, 1995). However, low neuroticism (i.e., high ability to regulate negative affect) as an adult has been found to predict high relationship satisfaction (Karney and Bradbury, 1997). In addition, Davila and Bradbury (2001) find that low anxiety over abandonment and comfort with emotional closeness are also predictive.

Among the elements of couple interaction, effective communication competencies has predicted relationship satisfaction in numerous studies although, interestingly enough, prospectively and not concurrently (Karney and Bradbury, 1995).

Insights into needed skills can also be gleaned from the curricula of effective adult couple relationship education programs. Many such programs attempt to boost couples’ positive communication, conflict management, and positive expressions of affection (Halford et al., 2003). In contrast, curricula for teen relationship programs promote positive attitudes and beliefs rather than skills, although, as with adult programs, some also target relationship behavior (Karney et al., 2007).

IMPORTANCE TO CIVIC PARTICIPATION

Civic engagement is variously understood to include involvement in activities focused on improving one’s community, involvement in electoral activities (voting, working on campaigns, etc.), and efforts to exercise voice and opinion (e.g., protests, writing to elected officials, etc.) (Zukin et al., 2006). Academics, foundations, and policy makers have expressed concern about decreasing levels of political engagement in the United States, particularly among youth. For example, political scientist Robert Putnam (2000) drew attention to Americans’ lack of connection through clubs, civic associations, and other groups in his influential book Bowling Alone .

In response to these concerns, there has been a resurgence of interest in the development of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that facilitate civic engagement—this cluster of knowledge, skills, and dispositions is sometimes referred to as “civic literacy.” Studies are looking at the roles played by peers, schools, the media, and other factors in civic literacy and engagement (Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1997; Niemi and Junn, 1998). A recent review of this literature (Garcia Bedolla, 2010) finds that schools have a greater impact on civic literacy than was previously thought, and it has also pointed to the importance of parents and neighborhoods. However, these studies have focused on young people’s attitudes, dispositions, or intentions about future political behavior, and have not linked school-based civics programs with later voting behavior and other civic activities in adulthood.

Prevalence of Civic Participation

Recent survey data suggest that some forms of engagement are fairly widespread (e.g., voting in general elections, volunteerism, consumer boycotts). A majority of young people report that they regularly follow public affairs (Lopez et al., 2006). But upward of 60 percent of young people are unable to describe activities that they can attribute to civic or political engagement, and a significant percentage is “highly disengaged.” These young people do not generally believe their civic or political actions are likely to make much difference. Another type of civic participation is direct political action—protest, work on political campaigns, and the like. Overall, just 13 percent of young people are reported as being intensely involved in politics at this level—survey data indicate they are motivated by a desire to address a social or political problem.

Factors Associated with Civic Participation

Studies have shed light on the factors that correlate with political engagement, focusing on the role of family, schools, and peers in the development of children’s political attitudes and behaviors. Early studies found that families tend to be more important than schools, as political orientations and other attitudes and perspectives appeared to be socially inherited from parents to children (Abramowitz, 1983; Achen, 2002). Indeed, research over four decades has demonstrated that socioeconomic status (SES) is a strong predictor of engagement and participation (Garcia Bedolla, 2010). More recent studies underscore the importance of parents and neighborhoods in the socialization process; they also indicate that schools can play a more important role than was previously believed (Niemi and Junn, 1998; Kahne and Sporte, 2008).

The literature linking years of schooling with civic outcomes is extensive. However, as with labor market and health outcomes, studies providing convincing causal estimates are relatively rare. Lochner (2011) provides a review of these rigorous studies and concludes that this literature suggests important effects of completed schooling on a wide range of political behaviors in the United States, but not in the United Kingdom or Germany. The U.S. impacts are found for voting registration and behavior, political interest, and the acquisition of political information.

Smith (1999) examined the effects of early investments in young people’s social capital on political involvement and “civic virtue” in young adulthood. Using longitudinal data, she examined parental involvement, youth religious involvement, and participation in voluntary associations. She found that early extensive connections to others, close family relationships, and participation in religious activities and extracurricular activities during adolescence were significant predictors of greater political and civic involvement in young adulthood.

EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT AND TRANSFER IN THE LABOR MARKET

A general theme of the evidence presented in this chapter is that measurable cognitive competencies, personality traits, and other intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies developed in childhood and adolescence are, at best, modestly predictive of adult successes, particularly labor market productivity. Cognitive ability does appear to matter and, among personality traits, so, apparently, does conscientiousness. But, in the research to date, their predictive power is modest. In terms of “transfer,” we are unable to point to a particular set of competencies or behaviors that have been shown to transfer well to the labor market. (Boosting these skills may increase educational attainment, however, as discussed in the following chapters.)

Education attainment, in contrast, is strongly predictive of labor market success, even in research approaches designed to approximate random assignment experiments. Measurable cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies account for surprisingly little of the impact of education on future productivity. But even if we do not know exactly what it is about spending an additional year in school that makes people more productive, a policy approach designed to promote attainment might be promising, particularly if it can be shown that attainment promotes competencies that are transferable across jobs or across an individual’s entire career.

Prior to the human capital revolution of the 1960s, the manpower planning approach assumed that each job and occupation required a specific level and type of education. Education policy planners produced projections

of economic output by sector multiplied by a fixed formula of occupational requirements per unit of output that was further translated into a rigid formula of educational needs of a future labor force. Needless to say, the manpower forecasts failed, largely because of the rigid assumptions relating educational requirements to occupation and occupational requirements to economic output. Changes in technology, organization, and the market prices of labor and capital, and error-prone projections of sectoral output all undermined the accuracy of the projections of educational need. 9

Becker’s (1964) early work on human capital took a more general approach by distinguishing between general and specific human capital. He proposed that education developed “general” human capital that was valuable across different firms, while training and experience within a firm work developed “specific” human capital, valuable only in a particular firm. Becker’s (1964) human capital model depended upon market dynamics in which adjustments would take place through responses to the costs and productivity of different kinds of labor. Labor supply and demand were expected to adapt, as any changes in demand for human capital resulting from changes in the firm’s organization, technology, and mix of outputs would be met by individual and company investments in education, job training, and on-the-job learning.

There is considerable evidence that labor supply, allocation, and productivity are widely adaptable to changes in the economy, especially over the long run. This is because education increases the capacity of workers to learn on the job, benefit from further training, and respond to productive needs as they arise. Workers with more education are generally able to learn their jobs more quickly and do them more proficiently. They can work more intelligently and with greater precision and can accomplish more within the same time period. Greater levels of education increase their ability to benefit from training for more complex job situations, and this is evidenced in the literature on training. 10 The research demonstrating the overall impact of education on productivity and economic outcomes did not address precisely what competencies were developed by educational investments. However, an important insight was established by Nelson and Phelps (1966), who suggested that a major contribution of education was to enable workers to adapt to technological change.

Welch (1970) and Schultz (1975) generalized this insight to suggest that investments in more educated workers had an even greater impact on a firm’s ability to adapt to technological change. They argued that hiring more educated workers can improve a firm’s productivity not only because, relative to less educated workers, these workers are more productive in

9 See Blaug (1975) for a trenchant critique of this type of approach.

10 See Lynch (1992); Leuven and Oosterbeek (1997); Blundell et al. (1999).

their current jobs and can be more quickly and easily trained for complex jobs, but also because they can allocate their time and other resources more efficiently in their own jobs and in related jobs in ways that increase the overall productivity of the firm. In this way, the contributions of more educated workers go beyond their own job performance to impact the overall performance of the organization. For both Welch and Schultz, these benefits represent the greatest opportunity for investments in more educated workers to pay off for the firm.

More education, and higher education in particular, appears to develop workers’ abilities to master an understanding of the production process and to tacitly make adjustments to changes in prices, technology, the productivity of inputs, or mix of outputs. These continuous adjustments allow the firm to “return to equilibrium” (in economic terms), maximizing productivities and profits. Neither Welch nor Schultz addressed which specific aspects of schooling contributed to the ability of workers to make the tacit adjustments to production that will increase productivity and profitability. It is possible that schooling develops not only cognitive competencies but also intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies that enable workers to make decisions that benefit the firm.

Welch (1970) and Schultz (1975) provide many examples of how investments in more educated workers may help firms adjust to optimize their productivity and profits, but there are also many examples of adjustments to disequilibria in the overall labor market. During the Second World War, women replaced males in the labor force in what had been male occupations, continuing the high rates of productivity needed to support both the war effort and the economy (Goldin, 1991). Chung (1990) studied vocationally trained workers for particular occupations who had been employed in those occupations or in occupations that were not matched specifically to their training. He found that workers who had received vocational training for a declining manufacturing industry, textiles, were substantially switching to a growing and thriving manufacturing industry, electronics, and were receiving considerably higher earnings in the latter than in the former. That is, the supply of workers was adapting in the short run to the changes in demand, and in the longer run the occupational training choice of workers was adapting too.

The historical evidence suggests that education is transferable across occupations because many occupations require common skills. For example, Gathmann and Schonberg (2010) found that competencies developed at work (which Becker viewed as “specific” and not valuable outside the firm) were more portable than previously thought. Analyzing data on the complete job histories and wages of over 100,000 German workers, along with detailed information on the tasks used in different occupations, they found that workers developed task-specific knowledge and skills and were

rewarded accordingly, with higher wages as they gained experience in an occupation. On average, workers who changed occupations—whether voluntarily or because they were laid off—were more likely to move to an occupation requiring similar tasks (and attendant competencies) to their previous occupation than to a “distant” occupation requiring very different competencies. Laid-off workers who were unable to find work in similar occupations and were forced to move to a distant occupation experienced higher wage losses than those who were able to find work in similar occupations.

The authors found that university graduates appeared to gain more task-specific knowledge and skills than less educated workers and to be rewarded accordingly with higher wages. However, when more highly educated workers were required to move to distant occupations, their wages declined more than did the wages of less highly educated workers who had to move to a distant occupation. This suggests that the deep task-specific competencies developed by the highly educated workers were less transferable than the shallower competencies developed by the less educated workers. Overall, the study suggests that workers are more easily able to transfer competencies developed on the job to a similar occupation, involving similar tasks, than to a dissimilar occupation. This is analogous to research findings from the learning sciences, which have found that transfer of learning to a new task or problem is facilitated when the new task or problem has similar elements to the learned task (see Chapter 4 ).

Other evidence suggests that even workers with relatively lower levels of education may be able to adapt to the demands of complex jobs. One measure of adaptability is the substitutability among workers with different levels of education. Economists measure employers’ ability to substitute workers at one level of education for jobs that normally are associated with a higher level of education by examining how the mix of more and less educated workers changes as relative wages for different educational levels change. Historical studies in the United States suggest that each 10 percent increase in the labor costs of a higher level of education is associated with a 15 percent decrease in employment at that educational level and increase in workers with less education to replace them (Ciccone and Peri, 2005). This implies that employers view workers as highly adaptable to perform jobs that traditionally require more education, when relative wages encourage such substitution.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The research evidence related to the relationship between various cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies is limited and uneven in quality. Some of the evidence reviewed in this chapter is correlational

in nature and should be considered, at best, suggestive of possible causal linkages. Other evidence, from longitudinal studies, is more suggestive of causal connections than the correlational evidence, but it is still prone to biases from a variety of sources. The strongest causal evidence, particularly the evidence of the impacts of years of completed schooling on adult outcomes, comes from statistical methods that are designed to approximate experiments.

• Conclusion: The available research evidence is limited and primarily correlational in nature; to date, only a few studies have demonstrated a causal relationship between one or more 21st century competencies and adult outcomes. The research has examined a wide range of different competencies that are not always clearly defined or distinguished from related competencies.

Many more studies of the relationships between various competencies and outcomes (in education, the labor market, health, and other domains) have focused on the role of general cognitive ability (IQ) than on specific intrapersonal and interpersonal skills (see Table 3-1 ). Economists who conduct such studies tend to lump all competencies other than IQ into the category of “noncognitive skills,” while personality and developmental psychologists have developed a much more refined taxonomy of them. All three groups have investigated the relationships between cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies and outcomes in adolescence and adulthood.

• Conclusion: Cognitive competencies have been more extensively studied than intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies, showing consistent, positive correlations (of modest size) with desirable educational, career, and health outcomes. Early academic competencies are also positively correlated with these outcomes.
• Conclusion: Among intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies, conscientiousness (staying organized, responsible, and hardworking) is most highly correlated with desirable outcomes in education and the workplace. Antisocial behavior, which has both intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions, is negatively correlated with these outcomes.

Across the available studies, the relative size of the correlations with the three different domains of skills is mixed. There is some evidence that better measurement of noncognitive competencies might result in a higher estimate of their importance in education and in the workplace.

A general theme of the evidence presented in this chapter is that measurable cognitive skills, personality traits, and other intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies developed in childhood and adolescence are, at best, modestly predictive of adult successes, particularly in the labor market. Educational attainment, in contrast, is strongly predictive of labor market success, even in research approaches designed to approximate random assignment experiments. Measurable cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies account for surprisingly little of the impact of education on future wages (wages, in economic theory, reflect productivity).

Studies by economists have found that more highly educated workers are more productive than those with less years of schooling are because more highly educated workers are better able to accomplish a given set of work tasks and are also more able to benefit from training for more complex tasks. In addition, more highly educated workers have the capacity to allocate resources more efficiently in their own work activities and in behalf of the enterprise in which they work than do workers with fewer years of schooling.

• Conclusion: Educational attainment—the number of years a person spends in school—strongly predicts adult earnings, and also predicts health and civic engagement. Moreover, individuals with higher levels of education appear to gain more knowledge and skills on the job than do those with lower levels of education and they are able, to some extent, to transfer what they learn across occupations. Since it is not known what mixture of cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies accounts for the labor market benefits of additional schooling, promoting educational attainment itself may constitute a useful complementary strategy for developing 21st century competencies.

The limited and uneven quality of the research reviewed in this chapter limits our understanding of the relationships between various cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies and adult outcomes.

• Recommendation 1: Foundations and federal agencies should support further research designed to increase our understanding of the relationships between 21st century competencies and successful adult outcomes. To provide stronger causal evidence about such relationships, the programs of research should move beyond simple correlational studies to include more longitudinal studies with controls for differences in individuals’ family backgrounds and more studies using statistical methods that are designed to approximate

experiments. Such research would benefit from efforts to achieve common definitions of 21st century competencies and an associated set of activities designed to produce valid and reliable assessments of the various individual competencies.

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Americans have long recognized that investments in public education contribute to the common good, enhancing national prosperity and supporting stable families, neighborhoods, and communities. Education is even more critical today, in the face of economic, environmental, and social challenges. Today's children can meet future challenges if their schooling and informal learning activities prepare them for adult roles as citizens, employees, managers, parents, volunteers, and entrepreneurs. To achieve their full potential as adults, young people need to develop a range of skills and knowledge that facilitate mastery and application of English, mathematics, and other school subjects. At the same time, business and political leaders are increasingly asking schools to develop skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and self-management - often referred to as "21st century skills."

Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century describes this important set of key skills that increase deeper learning, college and career readiness, student-centered learning, and higher order thinking. These labels include both cognitive and non-cognitive skills- such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, effective communication, motivation, persistence, and learning to learn. 21st century skills also include creativity, innovation, and ethics that are important to later success and may be developed in formal or informal learning environments.

This report also describes how these skills relate to each other and to more traditional academic skills and content in the key disciplines of reading, mathematics, and science. Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century summarizes the findings of the research that investigates the importance of such skills to success in education, work, and other areas of adult responsibility and that demonstrates the importance of developing these skills in K-16 education. In this report, features related to learning these skills are identified, which include teacher professional development, curriculum, assessment, after-school and out-of-school programs, and informal learning centers such as exhibits and museums.

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Directions in Education

21st-Century Skills: Evidence, Relevance, and Effectiveness

• By Scott Aronowitz

"The 21st century isn't coming; it's already here.... Public schools must prepare our young people to understand and address global issues, and educators must re-examine their teaching strategies and curriculum so that all students can thrive in this global and interdependent society." --Dennis Van Roekel, president, National Education Association , April 2010

The new millennium. A new epoch? Sure it was seismic, even apocalyptic in the eyes of some. But that's the thing about perspective. How something moves from point A to point B depends entirely on how you look at it. Einstein said so. And all he'd learned up to that point were 19th-century skills.

But even with an extra fivescore under our belts, Albert's theory still applies. Perception informs all knowledge and opinion, and there is no universal definition of a 21st-century skill. But let's give ourselves a break. We're barely a decade into said century. And we were still debating the merits of teaching trigonometry and humanities to future auto mechanics and beauticians into the late 1990s. Some believe we'll put a man on Saturn before we put Thomas Mann on the workbench of someone repairing a Saturn (a gross generalization, to be sure, and my sincerest apologies to anyone who has before them Death in Venice to their left and a fuel injection valve to their right).

As with any journey of a thousand miles in as many different directions, though, we have to take that first step. So how about a template, a set of broad classifications that at least suggest some practicable goals? Does there exist such a Rosetta Stone?

Believe it or not, there is not one, but rather a spectrum of them, from the very broad to the very discreet. To date, one of the more pervasive templates among education experts and curriculum designers has been the National Education Technology Standards, for Students (NETS-S), and for Teachers (NETS-T), initially devised in 1998, and then revised and updated in 2007 (2008 for teachers), by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). But while these standards are an adequate top-line entrée into the realm of 21st-century skills, they are quite broad, and they don't explore the long-term goals; nor do they suggest means for achieving them.

Several states have taken the NETS standards one to several steps further in identifying what K-12 education must achieve in terms of facilitating student proficiency in the defined skills. These efforts have, in some cases, led to standards being issued by each state for its own students to meet, including:

• Arizona Technology Education Standards
• Massachusetts Technology Literacy Standards
• New Jersey 2009 Core Curriculum Content Standards
• Oregon Ed Tech Standards, Aligned to the NETS-S and NETS-T

Finally, the Partnership for 21st-Century Skills (P21) has created a series of detailed "maps," practical guides containing well defined tasks at multiple education levels, designed to help schools guide their students along a consistent path on their way to full proficiency in 21st-century skills over the course of their K-12 education. Each of these maps covers a major subject, such as English, mathematics, or science, and gives goals that should be met for each skill by 4th, 8th, and 12th grades in order for a student to be considered proficient at that level of education.

The maps are the result of a collaboration between several organizations focused on integrated educational content and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. According to P21, they "are useful in helping teachers in each discipline understand the ways in which 21st century skills can be integrated into instruction."

For example, for the skill defined as "media literacy," the geography map recommends that, by the completion of 8th grade, a student be able to demonstrate a "fundamental understanding of the ethical and legal issues surrounding the access and use of information." The map then suggests the example of having students use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology, such as software or digital maps from Google , Yahoo , etc. to play the role of a geographic consultant and select the optimal location for a new youth center in a well developed community. The students further have to research the social, economic, and environmental impacts, drawing from the understanding of such issues and research proficiency reasonably expected of an 8th-grader, and use what they learn to solve the problem and support the reasoning behind their respective answers. Such assignments are usually pursued by groups of students rather than individuals, with each student taking on a portion or component of the necessary research, which also contributes to the skills of collaboration and interaction.

The Partnership's Skills Maps for each subject can be found at the following links:

• Natural/Physical Sciences
• Social Studies

The maps for mathematics, foreign languages, and the arts are still being developed. The Partnership expects to have these completed by summer 2010.

Are These Skills We Can Teach? Jay Mathews is the education reporter and columnist for The Washington Post and the author of five books on education, including, most recently, Work Hard, Be Nice: How Two Inspiring Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America. He is also, quite proudly, an outspoken critic of efforts to introduce 21st-century skills into America's schools when, in his opinion, we still haven't hit on a really effective way to teach the traditional subject areas so that they'll stick.

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How to Thrive in the 21st Century

• Posted November 22, 2016
• By Heather Beasley Doyle

When Fernando Reimers , a professor of international education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), talks and writes about what he wants children around the world to learn, the conversation runs deep and reaches far. Individual success, he says, increasingly depends upon students’ interpersonal dexterity, creativity, and ability to innovate. And our collective success — our ability to navigate complexities and to build and sustain a peaceful world — also hinges on these kinds of skills. Together, these skills form the basis of an emerging set of core competencies that will influence education policy and practice around the world.

In Teaching and Learning for the Twenty-First Century , Reimers and his co-editor, HGSE lecturer Connie K. Chung , explore how school systems in six countries are defining and supporting these global competencies. Their aim is to develop a shared framework for promoting the skills students will need in order to thrive as global citizens in a sustainable world in the decades ahead.

“Young people are in a context where they’re saturated and inundated with issues from around the world,” says Chung. Between new technologies, multiplying media, and layers of intercontinental connection, “global citizenship education is a ‘must have’ and not a ‘nice to have’ — for everyone,” says Chung.

Reimers and Chung used the National Research Council’s 2012 report, Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century , as a jumping off point for their investigation of policies and curricula that are best positioned to nurture global citizens. That report (read the research brief here) identifies three broad domains of competence: cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal. “This is not just talking about knowledge,” says Chung. Rather, it includes such strengths as intercultural literacy, self-discipline, and flexibility in social and work domains.

The Cognitive Competencies

As Chung suggests, the 21st-century global citizen’s cognitive skill set includes traditional, testable basics such as math and literacy, but extends beyond that to encompass a particularly strong emphasis on the world in which we live. “Current events highlight some of the fears around otherness,” she says. The key to informed citizenship is getting to know other cultures — and valuing them.

In addition to rounding out kids’ knowledge base to include a nuanced understanding of world geography and cultures , schools must teach them the skills to use this knowledge as active and engaged citizens.

That means being able to:

• Communicate effectively and listen actively
• Use evidence and assess information
• Speak at least one language beyond one’s native tongue
• Think critically and analyze local and global issues, challenges, and opportunities
• Reason logically and interpret clearly
• Become and remain digitally literate, including the ability to “weigh and judge the validity of the content that’s in front of you,” Chung says.

In some ways, digital literacy is a linchpin of the other competencies. “Technology gives us humans the possibility to collaborate in ways that are unprecedented, to think and produce things no one could produce individually,” Reimers says.

The Interpersonal Competencies

Empathy is a cornerstone 21st-century global competency. We’re all familiar with empathy between individuals: someone’s hurt, and another person deeply understands the pain. But Reimers and Chung envision the concept on a global scale. Empathy resides in the ability to consider the complexity of issues , Chung says — in an interconnected worldview that recognizes that “what we do impacts someone else.”

Anchored in tolerance and respect for other people, interpersonal intelligence breaks down into several overlapping skills, including:

• Collaboration
• Teamwork and cooperation
• Leadership and responsibility
• Assertive communication
• Social influence

As Reimers says, “We need to make sure that we can get along, and that we can see our differences as an opportunity, as a source of strength.” Both regionally and nationally, students need the skills to transcend the limits of fragmentation, “where people can only relate to those who they perceive to be like them.”

The Intrapersonal Competencies

A particular blend of honed personal characteristics underpins the cognitive and intrapersonal competencies. Reimers points to an ethical orientation and strong work and mind habits, including self-regulation and intellectual openness , as traits that 21st-century educators must nurture in their students.

The world is less predictable than it used to be: “People know that half of the jobs that are going to be around 10 years from now have not been invented,” Reimers says. That means teaching young people in such a way that makes them flexible and adaptable . It means enabling them to think of themselves as creators and inventors who feel comfortable taking the initiative and persevering — the skills necessary for starting one’s own business, for example.

Instilling in students the value of thinking beyond the short term will give them the best chance to tackle some of the world’s most daunting challenges, including climate change. For example, educators in Singapore were challenged to imagine their country not five, 10, or 15 years down the road, but 30 years in the future, Chung says. Encouraging students to think on that kind of a time scale helps them to grasp the reverberations of their actions and decisions.

Values, Attitudes, and Moving to Pedagogy

In Teaching and Learning for the Twenty-First Century  (which has been published in Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish editions as well), Reimers, Chung, and global colleagues interviewed education researchers and stakeholders in Chile (in a chapter by Cristián Bellei and Liliana Morawietz), China (by Yan Wang), India (by Aditya Natraj, Monal Jayaram, Jahnavi Contractor, and Payal Agrawal), Mexico (by Sergio Cárdenas), Singapore (by Oon-Seng Tan and Ee-Ling Low), and the United States (by Chung and Reimers). They explored curriculum frameworks, seeking to understand how values and attitudes unique to each country and region were informing policy goals and ultimately shaping students’ learning opportunities.

Drawing on that survey of 21st-century competencies and the frameworks for their support, Reimers, Chung, and their digitally connected global network of educators are now teasing out a pedagogy for educators everywhere. Reimers and Chung co-authored (with Vidur Chopra, Julia Higdon, and E.B. O’Donnell) another new book, Empowering Global Citizens, which lays out a K–12 curriculum for global citizenship education called The World Course. Its aim is to position students and communities to thrive amid globalization — to lead, to steward, and to safeguard this complex world in the current century and beyond.

Additional Resources

• The Think Tank on Global Education , a professional education program with Fernando Reimers that invites teachers to experiment with a new curriulum on empowering global citizens
• The Global Education Innovation Initiative , a multi-country exploration of education for the 21st century, led by Reimers
• The introduction [PDF] of Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century , which describes the rationale for the book’s comparative study
• Fifteen Letters on Education in Singapore , in which U.S. educators visit Singapore to learn how that country’s education innovations have fueled a prosperous knowledge economy — and what lessons may apply. (Available as a f ree Kindle book .)
• Reflections on turning students into global citizens
• Creating a Course for the World  (a Harvard EdCast exploring the new global curriculum)

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How Do You Define 21st-Century Learning?

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The term “21st-century skills” is generally used to refer to certain core competencies such as collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving that advocates believe schools need to teach to help students thrive in today’s world. In a broader sense, however, the idea of what learning in the 21st century should look like is open to interpretation—and controversy.

To get a sense of how views on the subject align—and differ—we recently asked a range of education experts to define 21st-century learning from their own perspectives.

Richard Allington Professor of Education, University of Tennessee; Early-Reading Expert

I’m an old guy. I’ve never Tweeted, Skyped, Facebooked, or YouTubed. Oddly, I don’t feel the least bit disenfranchised by technology. I am preparing this response on my laptop, I use (though not much) my Blackberry every day, and I will e-mail this response. But I’m still stuck on fostering 18th-century literacy in citizens. As far as I can tell, illiterates rarely use 21st-century literacies if only because they never developed the 18th-century kind of literacy. I think we actually could teach everyone to read (the old way) and for the life of me I cannot understand why schools would spend funds on computers when their libraries are almost empty of things students might want to read. I cannot understand why classrooms have whiteboards but no classroom libraries. The research, to date, has provided no evidence that having either computers or whiteboards in schools has any positive effect on students’ reading and writing proficiencies. But school and classroom libraries are well established as essential if we plan to develop a literate citizenry. However, there is no buzz about books.

Barnett Berry Founder and CEO, Center for Teaching Quality

Twenty-first-century learning means that students master content while producing, synthesizing, and evaluating information from a wide variety of subjects and sources with an understanding of and respect for diverse cultures. Students demonstrate the three Rs, but also the three Cs: creativity, communication, and collaboration. They demonstrate digital literacy as well as civic responsibility. Virtual tools and open-source software create borderless learning territories for students of all ages, anytime and anywhere.

Powerful learning of this nature demands well-prepared teachers who draw on advances in cognitive science and are strategically organized in teams, in and out of cyberspace. Many will emerge as teacherpreneurs who work closely with students in their local communities while also serving as learning concierges, virtual network guides, gaming experts, community organizers, and policy researchers.

Sarah Brown Wessling 2010 National Teacher of the Year

Twenty-first-century learning embodies an approach to teaching that marries content to skill. Without skills, students are left to memorize facts, recall details for worksheets, and relegate their educational experience to passivity. Without content, students may engage in problem-solving or team-working experiences that fall into triviality, into relevance without rigor. Instead, the 21st-century learning paradigm offers an opportunity to synergize the margins of the content vs. skills debate and bring it into a framework that dispels these dichotomies. Twenty-first-century learning means hearkening to cornerstones of the past to help us navigate our future. Embracing a 21st-century learning model requires consideration of those elements that could comprise such a shift: creating learners who take intellectual risks, fostering learning dispositions, and nurturing school communities where everyone is a learner.

Karen Cator Director, Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education

Success in the 21st century requires knowing how to learn. Students today will likely have several careers in their lifetime. They must develop strong critical thinking and interpersonal communication skills in order to be successful in an increasingly fluid, interconnected, and complex world. Technology allows for 24/7 access to information, constant social interaction, and easily created and shared digital content. In this setting, educators can leverage technology to create an engaging and personalized environment to meet the emerging educational needs of this generation. No longer does learning have to be one-size-fits-all or confined to the classroom. The opportunities afforded by technology should be used to re-imagine 21st-century education, focusing on preparing students to be learners for life.

Milton Chen Senior Fellow & Executive Director, Emeritus, The George Lucas Educational Foundation; author of Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in Our Schools

Twenty-first-century learning shouldn’t be controversial. It is simply an effort to define modern learning using modern tools. (The problem is that what’s modern in 2010 has accelerated far beyond 2000, a year which now seems “so last century.”)

Twenty-first-century learning builds upon such past conceptions of learning as “core knowledge in subject areas” and recasts them for today’s world, where a global perspective and collaboration skills are critical. It’s no longer enough to “know things.” It’s even more important to stay curious about finding out things.

The Internet, which has enabled instant global communication and access to information, likewise holds the key to enacting a new educational system, where students use information at their fingertips and work in teams to accomplish more than what one individual can alone, mirroring the 21st-century workplace. If 10 years from now we are still debating 21st-century learning, it would be a clear sign that a permanent myopia has clouded what should be 20/20 vision.

Steven Farr Chief Knowledge Officer, Teach For America; author of Teaching as Leadership: The Highly Effective Teacher’s Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap

Twenty-first-century learning must include the 20th-century ideals of Brown v. Board of Education . Sadly, we have failed to deliver on that promise. Our system perpetuates a racial and socioeconomic achievement gap that undermines our ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity.

As we study what distinguishes highly effective teachers in our nation’s most challenging contexts, we see that education reform requires much more than lists of skills. We need classroom leaders setting an ambitious vision, rallying others to work hard to achieve it, planning and executing to ensure student learning, and defining the very notion of teaching as changing the life paths of students. What will make America a global leader in the 21st century is acting on what we know to educate all children, regardless of socioeconomic background.

Steve Hargadon Founder, Classroom 2.0; Social Learning Consultant, Elluminate

Twenty-first-century learning will ultimately be “learner-driven.” Our old stories of education (factory-model, top-down, compliance-driven) are breaking down or broken, and this is because the Internet is releasing intellectual energy that comes from our latent desires as human beings to have a voice, to create, and to participate. The knowledge-based results look a lot like free-market economies or democratic governments (think: Wikipedia ). Loosely governed and highly self-directed, these teaching and learning activities exist beyond the sanction or control of formal educational institutions. I believe the political and institutional responses will be to continue to promote stories about education that are highly-structured and defined from above, like national standards or (ironically) the teaching of 21st-century skills. These will, however, seem increasingly out-of-sync not just with parents, educators, and administrators watching the Internet Revolution, but with students, who themselves are largely prepared to drive their own educations.

Lynne Munson President and Executive Director, Common Core

I define 21st-century learning as 20th- (or even 19th!-) century learning but with better tools. Today’s students are fortunate to have powerful learning tools at their disposal that allow them to locate, acquire, and even create knowledge much more quickly than their predecessors. But being able to Google is no substitute for true understanding. Students still need to know and deeply understand the history that brought them and our nation to where we are today. They need to be able to enjoy man’s greatest artistic and scientific achievements and to speak a language besides their mother tongue. According to most 21st-century skills’ advocates, students needn’t actually walk around with such knowledge in their heads, they need only to have the skills to find it. I disagree. Twenty-first-century technology should be seen as an opportunity to acquire more knowledge, not an excuse to know less.

Keith Moore Director, Bureau of Indian Education, Department of Interior

Students in the 21st century learn in a global classroom and it’s not necessarily within four walls. They are more inclined to find information by accessing the Internet through cellphones and computers, or chatting with friends on a social networking site. Similarly, many teachers are monitoring and issuing assignments via virtual classrooms.

Many of our Bureau of Indian Education schools are located in disadvantaged rural and remote areas. The BIE is working with various stakeholders to ensure that our schools have a Common Operating Environment so that students and teachers can access information beyond the classroom.

Within the federal BIE school system, we must rely upon the vision and the ability of our tribal leadership, parents, teachers, and students to work with the federal leadership to keep education a top priority.

Diane Ravitch Education Historian; author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System

To be prepared for the 21st century, our children require the following skills and knowledge: an understanding of history, civics, geography, mathematics, and science, so they may comprehend unforeseen events and act wisely; the ability to speak, write, and read English well; mastery of a foreign language; engagement in the arts, to enrich their lives; close encounters with great literature, to gain insight into timeless dilemmas and the human condition; a love of learning, so they continue to develop their minds when their formal schooling ends; self-discipline, to pursue their goals to completion; ethical and moral character; the social skills to collaborate fruitfully with others; the ability to use technology wisely; the ability to make and repair useful objects, for personal independence; and the ability to play a musical instrument, for personal satisfaction.

Susan Rundell Singer Laurence McKinley Gould Professor of Natural Sciences, Carleton College

Adaptability, complex communication skills, non-routine problem solving, self-management, and systems-thinking are essential skills in the 21st-century workforce. From my perspective as a scientist and science educator, the most effective way to prepare students for the workforce and college is to implement and scale what is already known about effective learning and teaching. Content vs. process wars should be ancient history, based on the evidence from the learning sciences. Integrating core concepts with key skills will prepare students for the workplace and college. We need to move past mile-wide and inch-deep coverage of ever-expanding content in the classroom. Developing skills in the context of core concepts is simply good practice. It’s time to let go of polarizing debates, consider the evidence, and get to work.

A version of this article appeared in the October 12, 2010 edition of Teacher PD Sourcebook as How Do You Define 21st-Century Learning?

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21st-Century Learning: What It Is and Why It’s Important

21st-century learning  is a term used to describe a shift in education from the traditional methods of the past to a more modern approach. This new approach focuses on preparing students for the future by teaching them the skills they need to be successful in a global economy. 21st-century learning is not memorization or recitation but critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration. It is about preparing students for the real world, not just for a test.

Table of Contents

Introduction

It is becoming increasingly clear that 21st-century learning is essential for students to be successful in an ever-changing global economy. 21st-century learning is not simply an update to traditional education; it is a fundamental shift in how we think about and prepare students for their future.

21st-century learning is more than just the 3Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic). It emphasizes the importance of critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication – skills essential for students to thrive in the 21st century.

What is also clear is that 21st-century learning cannot occur in a traditional classroom setting. Students need to be actively engaged in their learning and have opportunities to apply what they are learning to real-world situations.

There are several ways that schools can incorporate 21st-century learning into their curriculum. One way to integrate 21st-century learning into the classroom is to focus on project-based learning. In project-based learning, students work on a project together. They use their creativity and critical thinking skills to solve problems. This type of learning is effective because it helps students learn how to work together and think critically.

Another way to incorporate 21st-century learning is to use technology in the classroom. Technology can facilitate collaboration and communication and provide students with opportunities to be creative and think critically.

The bottom line is that 21st-century learning is essential for students to be successful in the 21st century. It is about much more than just the 3Rs and cannot occur in a traditional classroom setting. Schools need to be creative in incorporating 21st-century learning into their curriculum.

21st-Century Skills Students Need for Learning

As the world changes, so do students’ skills to succeed. Here are 21st-century skills students need for learning:

• Communication:  Good communication skills are essential for students to work together and share their ideas.
• Critical Thinking:  The student needs to be able to think critically to analyze information and solve problems.
• Collaboration:  One must work effectively with others to achieve a common goal.
• Creativity:  Students need to think creatively to generate new ideas and solve problems innovatively.
• Digital Literacy:  Students must use technology effectively to access and create digital information.
• Information Literacy:  They must find, evaluate, and use information effectively.
• Media Literacy:  Students must critically analyze media messages to understand their impact on individuals and society. This critical analysis will help them understand how media messages can influence individuals and society.
• Problem-Solving:  Students must identify and solve problems to improve their learning.
• Self-Management:  Students need to be able to manage their learning to be successful independent learners.
• Social and Cultural Awareness:  Students need to be aware of the influence of social and cultural factors on their learning.
• Technological Literacy:  Students must use technology effectively to access and create digital information.
• Flexibility and Adaptability:  Students need to be able to adapt their learning to new situations and technologies.
• Initiative and Self-Direction:  Students need to take the initiative and be self-directed in their learning to be successful.
• Productivity and Accountability:  They must be productive and take responsibility for their learning.
• Leadership:  The students must take the lead in their education and motivate others to join them in learning.
• Social Responsibility:  Students must be aware of how their learning affects those around them and be respectful of others while learning.
• Sustainability:  It is essential for students to be aware of the impact their learning can have on the environment and to be considerate of environmental sustainability when they are learning.
• Ethical Responsibility:  Students need to be aware of the ethical implications of their learning and consider ethical responsibility in their learning.
• Global Perspective:  It is essential for students to be aware of the global context of their learning and to be considerate of international perspectives in their learning.
• Cultural Competence:  It is vital for students to be aware of the influence of culture on their learning and to be competent in cross-cultural communication.
• Diversity:  Students need to be aware of the diversity of perspectives and experiences in the world and be respectful of diversity in their learning.

These are just some skills students need to learn in the 21st century. As the world changes, so do students’ skills to succeed. Educators must stay up-to-date on the latest research and trends to prepare their students for the future.

The Importance of 21st-Century Learning

Here are just a few of the reasons why 21st-century learning is so important:

1.  It helps students develop the skills they need for the real world.

In the 21st century, employers are looking for workers who are not only knowledgeable but also adaptable, creative, and able to work collaboratively. 21st-century learning helps students develop these essential skills.

2.  It prepares students for an increasingly globalized world.

In today’s world, it’s more important than ever for students to be able to communicate and work with people from other cultures. 21st-century learning helps students develop the global perspective they need to be successful in an increasingly connected world.

3.  It helps students learn how to learn.

In a world where information is constantly changing, students need to be able to learn new things quickly and effectively. 21st-century learning helps students develop the metacognitive skills they need to be lifelong learners.

4.  It helps students develop a love of learning.

21st-century learning is hands-on, interactive, and engaging. This helps students develop a love of learning that will stay with them throughout their lives.

5.  It’s more relevant to students’ lives.

21st-century learning is relevant to students’ lives and the world they live in. It’s not just about memorizing facts but about developing the skills, students need to be successful in their personal and professional lives.

The importance of 21st-century learning cannot be overstated. In a constantly changing world, it’s more important than ever for students to develop the skills they need to be successful.

The Challenges of 21st-Century Learning

In the 21st century, learning is becoming increasingly complex and challenging. With the rapid pace of change in the world, it is difficult for students to keep up with the latest information and skills. In addition, they must also be able to apply what they have learned to real-world situations.

The following are some of the challenges of 21st-century learning:

1.  The pace of change is accelerating.

In the past, knowledge and skills were acquired slowly over time. However, in the 21st century, the pace of change is much faster, meaning students must learn more quickly to keep up with the latest information.

2.  The world is becoming more complex.

As the world becomes more complex and interconnected, students must be able to understand and navigate complex systems. They must also be able to think critically and solve problems.

3.  Students must be able to apply what they have learned.

In the past, students were often tested on their ability to remember and regurgitate information. However, in the 21st century, students need to be able to apply what they have learned to real-world situations. This requires them to be creative and to think critically.

4.  There is a greater emphasis on collaboration.

In the 21st century, there is a greater emphasis on collaboration. This means that students must be able to work effectively with others to achieve common goals. They must also be able to communicate effectively.

5.  Technology is changing the way we learn.

Technology is changing the way students learn. With the advent of the internet and mobile devices, students can now access information and resources that were previously unavailable. This has changed how students learn and made it possible for students to learn anywhere and at any time.

6.  Learning is no longer just about acquiring knowledge.

In the 21st century, learning is about more than just acquiring knowledge; it is also about developing skills, values, and attitudes. This means that students must be able to learn how to learn and adapt to change and different situations.

The 21st century presents many challenges for learners. However, it also provides many opportunities. With the right approach, students can overcome these challenges and be successful in the 21st century.

How Educators Can Support 21st-Century learning

There are several ways in which educators can support 21st-century learning. 

First,  they can create learning experiences relevant to the real world.  This means incorporating problems and scenarios that students will likely encounter in their future lives and careers.

Second,  educators can use technology to support 21st-century learning.  Technology can be used to create engaging and interactive learning experiences, and it can also be used to provide students with access to information and resources that they would not otherwise have.

Finally,  educators can model 21st-century learning for their students.  This means being flexible and adaptable in their teaching and using technology and real-world examples to illustrate their points. By modeling 21st-century learning, educators can show their students that learning can be relevant, engaging, and fun.

In the 21st century, educators must be prepared to meet the challenges of an ever-changing world. By creating relevant learning experiences, using technology to support learning, and modeling 21st-century learning for their students, educators can provide students with the skills they need to be successful in the 21st century.

Final Thoughts

As educators, we must prepare our students for the 21st century. We can do this by providing opportunities for them to develop essential 21st-century skills. Project-based learning is one of the best ways to do this.

Ultimately, we must commit to giving our students the 21st-century learning they deserve. This way, they will have the tools they need to thrive in a constantly changing world. They will also have the skills they need to succeed in whatever they choose to do.

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

Llego, M. A. (2022, September 14). 21st-Century Learning: What It Is and Why It’s Important. TeacherPH. Retrieved September 14, 2022 from, https://www.teacherph.com/21st-century-learning/

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Mark Anthony Llego, hailing from the Philippines, has made a profound impact on the teaching profession by enabling thousands of teachers nationwide to access crucial information and engage in meaningful exchanges of ideas. His contributions have significantly enhanced their instructional and supervisory capabilities, elevating the quality of education in the Philippines. Beyond his domestic influence, Mark's insightful articles on teaching have garnered international recognition, being featured on highly respected educational websites in the United States. As an agent of change, he continues to empower teachers, both locally and internationally, to excel in their roles and make a lasting difference in the lives of their students, serving as a shining example of the transformative power of knowledge-sharing and collaboration within the teaching community.

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21st Century Skills

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“21st Century Skills” have become part of the lexicon in education. In 1997, the National Academy of Sciences in the United States released the report, Preparing for the 21st Century: The Education Imperative . The papers contained within the report examined challenges in education for the upcoming century. As we entered the 21st century, several new reports emerged over the next two decades that set out to define the 21st century skills needed to prepare students for success in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. Although the 21st century skills listed in these reports varied, there were a number of overlapping skills deemed essential. At the center of all the recommendations was a solid education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In addition to a strong STEM education, 21st century skills also include several soft skills and dispositions including cross-cultural skills, collaboration skills, critical thinking, and problem-solving. A central theme in the literature is the need for creativity and innovation, and one of the major recommendations truly unique to the 21st century is the need to prepare students for the digital age. Although there is general agreement that 21st century skills are essential for all students, there is much debate surrounding the role of K-12 education on how to help students learn these skills. This chapter highlights 21st century skills as presented in various international policy documents. The focus to date has been on the identification of 21st century skills. It may be time to move past identifying skills by refocusing research and policy efforts on better aligning standardized assessments to include 21st century skills, evaluating the level of implementation of 21st century skills in the classroom, and building expertise in the pedagogies that support their inclusion.

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Further Reading on Model 21CS STEM Schools

Denver School for Science and Technology, Colorado: https://www.greatschools.org/colorado/denver/2427-Denver-School-Of-Science-And-Technology-Stapleton-High-School/ .

High Tech High Charter School, San Diego, California: https://www.hightechhigh.org/ .

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Kennedy, T.J., Sundberg, C.W. (2020). 21st Century Skills. In: Akpan, B., Kennedy, T.J. (eds) Science Education in Theory and Practice. Springer Texts in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43620-9_32

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Teaching and Learning 21st Century Skills

Lessons from the learning sciences.

The dominant approach to compulsory education in much of the world is still the “transmission” model, through which teachers transmit factual knowledge to students through lectures and textbooks. In the U.S. context, for example, the standards and accountability movement that began in the early 1990s led to the development of standards that have been taught predominantly through the transmission model and tested through recall-based assessments. Even among many national board certified-U.S. teachers, the transmission model dominates. Though many countries are shifting the focus of their educational systems away from this model, it often prevails for two primary reasons—because educational systems are hard to change and because the transmission model demands less disciplinary and pedagogical expertise from teachers than does the contrasting “constructivist” model through which students actively—rather than passively—gain skills and knowledge. Through the transmission model, students have the opportunity to learn information, but typically do not have much practice applying the knowledge to new contexts, communicating it in complex ways, using it to solve problems, or using it as a platform to develop creativity. Therefore, it is not the most effective way to teach 21st century skills.

The Science of Learning

Hong Kong and Shanghai, two of the highest-performing systems in the world, moved away from the transmission model a decade ago. In both systems, reforms address students as holistic learners, mobilize widespread social support and appropriately balanced centralized versus decentralized control. How did they do it?

It started with decades of empirical research on how individuals learn critical lessons. Read the full report and research notes, but for the purposes of this article, we will refer to it as the science of learning.

The science of learning can be distilled into nine points, all of which are about how students learn 21st century skills and how pedagogy can address new learning needs. Many of the lessons—particularly transfer, metacognition, teamwork, technology, and creativity—are also 21st century skills in themselves. Use them as points of advice that other education systems can apply.

1. Make it relevant

To be effective, any curriculum must be relevant to students’ lives. Transmission and rote memorization of factual knowledge can make any subject matter seem irrelevant. Irrelevance leads to lack of motivation, which in turn leads to decreased learning.

To make curriculum relevant, teachers need to begin with generative topics, ones that have an important place in the disciplinary or interdisciplinary study at hand and resonate with learners and teachers.

Choosing a generative topic is the first stage of the well-known Teaching for Understanding [LINK http://www.pz.harvard.edu/research/TfU.htm ] framework, developed through a five-year project by Project Zero researchers and used by teachers worldwide.

Both teachers and students benefit from the use of generative topics and reinforcement of relevance. Teachers like this method because it allows for the freedom to teach creatively. Students like it because it makes learning feel more interesting and engaging, and they find that understanding is something they can use, rather than simply possess.

2. Teach through the disciplines

Learning through disciplines entails learning not only the knowledge of the discipline but also the skills associated with the production of knowledge within the discipline. Through disciplinary curriculum and instruction students should learn why the discipline is important, how experts create new knowledge, and how they communicate about it.

Continued learning in any discipline requires that the student—or expert—become deeply familiar with a knowledge base, know how to use that knowledge base, articulate a problem, creatively address the problem, and communicate findings in sophisticated ways. Therefore, mastering a discipline means using many 21st century skills.

3. Simultaneously develop lower and higher order thinking skills

Lower-order exercises are fairly common in existing curricula, while higher-order thinking activities are much less common. Higher-level thinking tends to be difficult for students because it requires them not only to understand the relationship between different variables (lower-order thinking) but also how to apply—or transfer—that understanding to a new, uncharted context (higher-order thinking).

Transfer (which we will discuss in more detail below), tends to be very difficult for most people. However, applying new understandings to a new, uncharted context is also exactly what students need to do to successfully negotiate the demands of the 21st century.

Higher-level thinking skills take time to develop, and teaching them generally requires a tradeoff of breadth for depth.

4. Encourage transfer of learning

Students must apply the skills and knowledge they gain in one discipline to another. They must also apply what they learn in school to other areas of their lives. This application—or transfer—can be challenging for students (and for adults as well).

There are a number of specific ways that teachers can encourage low- and high-road transfer.46 To encourage low-road transfer, teachers can use methods like the following:

• Design learning experiences that are similar to situations where the students might need to apply the knowledge and skills
• Set expectations, by telling students that they will need to structure their historical argument homework essay in the same way that they are practicing in class
• Ask students to practice debating a topic privately in pairs before holding a large-scale debate in front of the class
• Organize mock trials, mock congressional deliberations, or other role-playing exercises as a way for students to practice civic engagement
• Talk through solving a particular mathematics problem so that students understand the thinking process they might apply to a similar problem
• Practice finding and using historical evidence from a primary source and then askstudents to do the same with a different primary source

The purpose of each of these activities is to develop students’ familiarity and comfort with a learning situation that is very similar to a new learning situation to which they will need to transfer their skills, concepts, etc.

Teachers can use other methods to encourage high-road transfer. For example teachers can ask students to:

• brainstorm about ways in which they might apply a particular skill, attitude, concept, etc. to another situation
• generalize broad principles from a specific piece of information, such as a law of science or a political action
• make analogies between a topic and something different, like between ecosystems and financial markets
• study the same problem at home and at school, to practice drawing parallels between contextual similarities and differences

Shanghai education experts believe that training students to transfer their knowledge and skills to real problems contributed to their success on the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The importance of transfer brings us back to the fundamental rationale for learning 21st century skills in the first place—so that students can transfer them to the economic, civic and global 21st century contexts that demand them.

5. Teach students to learn how to learn

There is a limit to the skills, attitudes, and dispositions that students can learn through formal schooling. Therefore, educating them for the 21st century requires teaching them how to learn on their own. To do so, students need to be aware of how they learn.

Teachers can develop students’ metacognitive capacity by encouraging them to explicitly examine how they think. it is also important for students to develop positive mental models about how we learn, the limits of our learning, and indications of failure. Students benefit from believing that intelligence and capacity increase with effort (known as the “incremental” model of intelligence) and that mistakes and failures are opportunities for self-inquiry and growth rather than indictments of worth or ability.

6. Address misunderstandings directly

Another well-documented science-of-learning theory is that learners have many misunderstandings about how the world really works, and they hold onto these misconceptions until they have the opportunity to build alternative explanations based on experience. To overcome misconceptions, learners of any age need to actively construct new understandings.

There are several ways to counter misunderstandings, including teaching generative topics deeply, encouraging students to model concepts, and providing explicit instruction about misunderstandings.

7. Promote teamwork as a process and outcome

Students learn better with peers. There are many ways in which teachers can design instruction to promote learning with others.

Students can discuss concepts in pairs or groups and share what they understand with the rest of the class. They can develop arguments and debate them. They can role-play. They can divide up materials about a given topic and then teach others about their piece. Together, students and the teacher can use a studio format in which several students work through a given issue, talking through their thinking process while the others comment.

8. Make full use of technology to support learning

Technology offers the potential to provide students with new ways to develop their problem solving, critical thinking, and communication skills, transfer them to different contexts, reflect on their thinking and that of their peers, practice addressing their misunderstandings, and collaborate with peers—all on topics relevant to their lives and using engaging tools.

There are also many other examples of web-based forums through which students and their peers from around the world can interact, share, debate, and learn from each other.

The nature of the Internet’s countless sources, many of which provide inconsistent information and contribute substantive source bias, provide students with the opportunity to learn to assess sources for their reliability and validity. It gives them an opportunity to practice filtering out information from unreliable sources and synthesizing information from legitimate ones.

9. Foster students’ creativity

A common definition of creativity is “the cognitive ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.” Creativity is prized in the economic, civic, and global spheres because it sparks innovations that can create jobs, address challenges, and motivate social and individual progress. Like intelligence and learning capacity, creativity is not a fixed characteristic that people either have or do not have. Rather, it is incremental, such that students can learn to be more creative. In contrast to the common misconception that the way to develop creativity is through uncontrolled, let-the kids-run-wild techniques—or only through the arts—creative development requires structure and intentionality from both teachers and students and can be learned through the disciplines.

The science of learning lessons was extracted from Teaching and Learning 21st Century Skills: Lessons from the Learning Sciences . It includes pedagogical examples from around the world, as well as research notes and a full bibliography.

The report was authored by Anna Rosefsky Saavedra and V. Darleen Opfer from The RAND Corporation.

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The 21st Century Skills Movement

Premium Resource

• Educators recommended a combination of rigorous courses imparting both core content knowledge and skills to engage students and increase achievement.
• Civic and community groups outlined a set of 21st century skills and knowledge that citizens in a participatory democracy must possess.
• Business leaders identified skills and knowledge they perceive as essential for success in the workplace.
• Core subjects and 21st century themes (such as language arts, mathematics, science, global awareness, and financial literacy).
• Learning and innovation skills (such as creativity and innovation and critical thinking and problem solving).
• Information, media, and technology skills .
• Life and career skills (such as initiative and self-direction).

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Home / Essay Samples / Education / Study Skills / Thriving in the 21st Century: Essential Skills for Success

Thriving in the 21st Century: Essential Skills for Success

• Category: Sociology , Life , Education
• Topic: Communication Skills , Skills , Study Skills

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• Learners at the centre: It is important that the learners are recognized as the core participants, and are encouraged to engage actively and develop an understanding of their own activity, so as to maximize the effectiveness of the learning outcomes.
• Recognizing individual differences: We also should ensure that differences of each student are taken into account in the 21st Century skills-set so that each of them is empowered for their full potential.
• Assessment of learning: The learning environment should also operate with clarity of expectations through proper assessment strategies, and a strong emphasis on constructive feedback to facilitate smooth learning of individuals.

21st Century Skills and My Teaching

The most important skill for students’ success.

• Choi, A. (2015, December 22). What the best education systems are doing right. 
• 7 Principles of 21st-century learning and eLearning. 
• Guiding Principles for learning in the 21st Century. 
• World Bank. (2018). Ch 2: The great school expansion- and those it has left behind. In The World Development Report 2018: LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise. 

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