21st Century skills are the key abilities that today’s students need to succeed in their careers during the Information Age.

1. 21st Century Skills
By Oumama Abdallah
Inspectors: Mr. Mahmoud Laifa
Mrs. Saida Jandoubi
CREFOC Gafsa
Date: May 4th, 2019

2. Content
 What is the notion of “21st Century Skills”?
 The Three 21st Century Skills Categories
 The Debate
 Why Teach 21st Century Skills?
 Tips for Teachers

3. What is the notion of “21st Century
Skills”?
According to Glossary of Educational Reform “The term…refers to a broad set of
knowledge, skills, work habits, and character traits that are believed – by educators, school
reformers, college professors, employees, and others – to be critically important to success in
today’s world, particularly in collegiate programs and contemporary careers and workplaces.”
21st Century skills are the key abilities that today’s students need to succeed in
their careers during the Information Age.
 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 used in reference to or
associated with 21st century skills.
What is included in 21st Century skills?

4. What does
“Skill” mean?
The Oxford dictionary defines
Skill as a particular ability.
Examples:
 The skill of leadership.
 The skills of life.
What is the
“Information Age”?
Computer Age, Digital Age, New Media Age, or Age of Internet.
The Oxford dictionary defines it as the era in which the
retrieval, management, and transmission of information,
especially by using computer technology, is a principal
activity. (Origin: 1960s)
 It is characterized by the rapid shift from traditional industry
(Industrial Revolution) to an economy based on information
technology that shapes a knowledge-based society
surrounded by a high-tech global economy.

5. What is included in 21st Century skills?
 There are 12 key skills:
21st
Century
skills
Critical thinking
Collaboration
Creativity
Communication
Information
literacy
Media literacy
Technology
literacy
Flexibility
Leadership
Initiative
Productivity
Social skills

6. What is included in 21st Century skills?
 Each of 12 21st Century skill is broken into one of three categories:
The Three 21st Century Skill
Categories
III
Life skills
II
Literacy
skills
I
Learning
skills

7. Category I
Learning Skills
These are called the 4C’s
 Critical thinking
 Creativity
 Collaboration
 Communication
 They teach students about the mental processes required to adapt and
improve upon a modern work environment.
The 4 C’s are by far the most popular 21st Century skills.

8. Category I
Learning Skills: 4C’s
Definitions
1- Critical thinking
• the objective
analysis and
evaluation of an
issue in order to
form a judgment.
• Accessing and
analyzing
information, and
finding solutions to
problems
2- Creativity
• the use of
imagination or
original ideas to
create something;
inventiveness.
• Thinking outside
the box
3- Collaboration
• the action of
working with
someone to
produce
something.
• Working with
others
4- Communication
• (both written and
oral)
• the imparting or
exchanging of
information by
speaking, writing, or
using some other
medium.
• Conveying ideas

9. Critical Thinking:
Why is it Important?
Students need the ability to think
analytically, which includes proficiency with
comparing, contrasting, evaluating,
synthesizing, and applying without
instruction or supervision.
 Analytical thinkers see data and
information in many different dimensions,
and from multiple angles. They are adept
at conceptualization, organization and
classification, and knowledge synthesis.
 It empowers students to make effective
and level-headed decisions. It’s easy to
see why critical and analytical thinking
skills are important to success beyond
school.
Problem-solvers are initiative
takers who enjoy risk, and they
aren’t afraid to make mistakes.
 They learn from those
mistakes, and habitually
debrief their processes
to create more efficient and
economical solutions.
 Problem-solving is a skill that
comes naturally to students
and this can be advanced
profoundly with the proper
engagement in their learning.
This comes from doing
rewarding projects and
meaningful tasks that give
them challenges to overcome.

10. Critical
Thinking
Problem Solving Analytic thinking
=
solving complex
problems effectively in
real time using unique
and carefully designed
solutions.
=
being able to use the
higher end of Bloom’s
Digital Taxonomy or
higher-order thinking
skills (HOTS).

11. Quote
 American essayist, poet, philosopher,
abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister,
development critic, surveyor, yogi, and
historian.

12. Creativity:
Why is it important?
 Creativity is equally important as a means of adaptation.
 This skill empowers students to see concepts in a different light, which leads
to innovation.
 Students need to be able to think and work creatively in both digital and
nondigital environments to develop unique and useful solutions.
“People who’ve learned to ask great questions and have learned to be
inquisitive are the ones who move the fastest in our environment because they
solve the biggest problems in ways that have the most impact on innovation.”,
said by Mike Summers, vice president for Global Talent Management at Dell

13. Quotes

14. Collaboration: Importance
Collaboration means getting students to work together, achieve compromises,
and get the best possible results from solving a problem.
All participants have to be willing to sacrifice parts of their own ideas and
adopt others to get results for the team. That means understanding the idea of
a “greater good”.
 Connection and collaboration with others are essential not only to their
learning but their mental and emotional health.
 Teamwork is no longer just about working with others in your building.
Christie Pedra, CEO of Siemens, explained, “Technology has allowed for
virtual teams. We have teams working on major infrastructure projects that
are all over the U.S. On other projects, you’re working with people all
around the world on solving a software problem. Every week they’re on a
variety of conference calls; they’re doing Web casts; they’re doing net
meetings.”
 Students must possess the ability to collaborate in both physical and virtual
spaces, with real and virtual partners globally.

15. Quotes

16. Communication: Importance
Students must be able to communicate in multiple multimedia formats
(through video and imagery) as effectively as they do with text and speech.
 Encouraging students to develop and refine their communication skills will
serve them well in both their personal and professional lives.
 It’s crucial for students to learn how to effectively convey ideas, because
effective communication eliminates confusion.
 Mike Summers, vice president for Global Talent Management at Dell,
said “We are routinely surprised at the difficulty some young people have in
communicating: verbal skills, written skills, presentation skills. They have
difficulty being clear and concise; it’s hard for them to create focus, energy,
and passion around the points they want to make. If you’re talking to an
exec, the first thing you’ll get asked if you haven’t made it perfectly clear in
the first 60 seconds of your presentation is, ‘What do you want me to take
away from this meeting?’ They don’t know how to answer that question.”

17. Quotes
American essayist, lecturer, lead
the transcendentalist movement.
American writer and influencer.
Founded Success Motivation Institute
and dedicated it to "motivating people
to their full potential”.

18. Category II
Literacy Skills
These are called IMT skills
= application of technology to work flow
 1- Information Literacy
 2- Media Literacy
 3- Technology literacy
They’re each concerned with a different element in digital comprehension.
(The ability to understand and to use computer technology)

19. Category II
Literacy Skills
(IMT skills)
 Focus on how students:
¤ discern facts, publishing outlets, and the technology behind them;
¤ can determine trustworthy sources and factual information to separate it from
misinformation that floods the Internet.
 Skills, work habits, and character traits commonly associated with IMT:
Information and communication technology (ICT) literacy, data interpretation and analysis, computer
programming…
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.
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.

20. Literacy Skills:
Definitions
1- Information Literacy
• Information means facts provided or learned about something or someone.
• Literacy means the ability to read and write + Competence or knowledge in a
specified area.
• Information literacy: Understanding facts, figures, statistics, and data
2- Media Literacy
• Media: the main means of mass communication (broadcasting, publishing, and the
Internet).
• Media Literacy: the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms
of communication.
• Media literacy education is intended to promote awareness of media influence and
create an active stance towards both consuming and creating media.
3- Technology literacy
• Technology means the machinery and equipment developed from the application of
scientific knowledge.
• Technology literacy is the ability to use, manage, understand, and assess technology.

21. 1- Information Literacy Skill:
Why is it important?
Information literacy is the foundational skill.
 It helps students understand facts, especially data points, that they’ll
encounter online.
 It teaches them how to separate fact from fiction.
 In an age of chronic misinformation, finding truth online has become a job all
on its own. It’s crucial that students can identify honesty on their own.
Otherwise, they can fall prey to myths, misconceptions, and outright lies.

22. 2- Media Literacy Skill:
Why is it important?
Media literacy is the practice of identifying publishing methods, outlets, and
sources while distinguishing between the ones that are credible and the ones
that aren’t.
It is understanding the methods and outlets in which information is published
 Just like the previous skill, media literacy is helpful for students to find
trustworthy sources of information.
 With it, they can learn which media outlets or formats to ignore or which
ones to embrace.

23. 3- Technology literacy Skill:
Importance
It is understanding the machines that make the Information Age possible
Technology literacy teaches students about the machines involved in the
Information Age. As computers, cloud programming, and mobile devices become more
important to the world, the world needs more people to understand those concepts.
 It gives students the basic information they need to understand what gadgets
perform what tasks and why.
 As a result, students can adapt to the world more effectively and can play an
important role in its evolution.

24. Quote

25. Category III
Life Skills
These are called FLIPS
These skills all pertain to someone’s personal life, but they also bleed into
professional settings.
 Flexibility
 Leadership
 Initiative
 Productivity
 Social skills

26. Life Skills:
Definitions
The Oxford Dictionary Definition Skills, work habits, and character traits
commonly associated with it
Flexibility The willingness to change or compromise. Agility, Adaptability
Leadership The action of leading a group of people or
an organization.
Perseverance, self-direction, planning, self-
discipline, the ability to influence.
Initiative The power or opportunity to act or take
charge before others do.
Proactive, taking action, have courage to
speak up and point the flaws
Productivity The effectiveness of productive effort,
especially in industry, as measured in terms
of the rate of output per unit of input.
Efficiency, time management
Social skills The skills required for successful social
interaction.
Global awareness, multicultural literacy,
humanitarianism, Civic, ethical, and social-
justice literacy …

27. 1- Flexibility: Importance
Flexibility is the expression of someone’s ability to adapt to changing
circumstances.
 Knowing when to change, how to change, and how to react to change is a
crucial skill to a student’s long-term success.
 Clay Parker, president of the Chemical Management Division of BOC,
explained that anyone who works at BOC Edwards today “has to think, be
flexible, change, and use a variety of tools to solve new problems. We change
what we do all the time. I can guarantee the job I hire someone to do will
change or may not exist in the future, so this is why adaptability and learning
skills are more important than technical skills.”

29. 2- Leadership : Importance
Leadership is someone’s penchant for setting goals, walking a team through
the steps required, and achieving those goals collaboratively.
 It gives ambitious students the expertise they need to grow professionally and
lead whole corporations.
 Leadership alone isn’t enough to get ahead though.

30. Quote

31. 3- Initiative: Importance
 True success also requires initiative, requiring students to be self-starters.
 This is one of the hardest skills to learn and practice. Initiative often means
working on projects outside of regular working hours.
 It is an attribute that earns rewards. It’s especially indicative of someone’s
character in terms of work ethic and professional progress.
 That goes double when initiative is practiced with qualities like flexibility and
leadership.
 Mark Chandler, senior vice president and general counsel at Cisco, was one of
the strongest proponents of initiative: “I say to my employees, if you try five
things and get all five of them right, you may be failing. If you try 10 things,
and get eight of them right, you’re a hero. You’ll never be blamed for failing
to reach a stretch goal, but you will be blamed for not trying. One of the
problems of a large company is risk aversion. Our challenge is how to create
an entrepreneurial culture in a larger organization.”

32. Quotes
German-born Jewish diarist.

33. 4- Productivity: Importance
Productivity is a student’s ability to complete work in an appropriate amount
of time.
In business terms, it’s called “efficiency.”
 The common goal of any professional is to get more done in less time.
 That equips them with the practical means to carry out the ideas they
determine through flexibility, leadership, and initiative.
 By understanding productivity strategies at every level, students discover the
ways in which they work best while gaining an appreciation for
how others work as well.

34.  Social skills help students to act and communicate with others in a
meaningful way.
Social Skills
The Schooling
Students Need
dealing with anger/frustrationy
cooperating with others
making friends
asking questions appropriately
joining a group activity
5- Social skills: Importance

35. 21st Century Skills:
The Debate
There is a great deal of debate about 21st century skills:
 What skills are most important? How such skills should be taught to their appropriate role in
education?
 There is no clear consensus on what skills specifically constitute “21st century skills,” the concept
tends to be interpreted and applied in different ways, which can lead to ambiguity, confusion, and
inconsistency.
 Schools and teachers have always taught, and will continue to teach, 21st Century skills—they just
never gave it a label. The debate over “content vs. skills” is not new, which makes the term
“21st century skills” somewhat misleading and inaccurate.
 21st century skills are extremely difficult to assess reliably and consistently.
 Focusing too much on 21st century 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.
 The calls for placing a greater emphasis on 21st century skills in education has become a touchstone
in a larger debate about what schools should be teaching and what the purpose of 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?

36. Why Teach
21st Century Skills?
There is broad agreement that today’s students need different skills than were perhaps taught to
previous generations.
 With 21st Century skills, your students will have the adaptive qualities they need to keep up with
21st Century economy and society.
 Students need to be taught how to process, parse, and use information.
 Just teaching students 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.
Each skill is unique in how it helps students, but they all have one key focus:
Someone’s ability to enact and / or adapt to change
• As teacher, we need to establish what 21st Century skills are.

37. Why Teach
21st Century Skills?
a worldwide market that
moves faster by the day and
the only consistency from
year to year is change.
21st Century
economy and society.
complex
knowledge-based
information-age
modern workplaces
higher-level capabilities
technology-driven
information and knowledge
are increasing at such an
astronomical rate that no
one can learn everything
about every subject
constantly evolving
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.
The skills students learn should reflect the specific demands that will be placed upon them in 21st Century
economy and society:
lower prices
newer features

38. 21st Century Life Skills:
Tips for Teachers
 Skills are not taught in an isolated or haphazard manner but instead are incorporated
into content in meaningful ways that allow students to build upon their skill
development.
 It is important that we explain each skill, and perhaps let students discuss with their
peers what it will look like and sound like when the skill is being practiced or learned.
 Because skill development happens over time, it is an on-going process. Whenever
students are working on skill development, we need to be explicit about which skill or
skills are being addressed.
 Knowing how and whether students are improving their skills requires continuous
monitoring, providing groups and individuals feedback, and allowing students to reflect
on their progress in writing or through conversations.
 We have to constantly be on the lookout for ways to update strategies already in our
repertoires and for additional strategies to use that allow students to practice and
demonstrate 21st century skills.

39. 21st Century Life Skills:
Tips for Teachers
 Sarah Brown Wessling of the Teaching Channel has clarified the charge that has
been placed on educators in the following way: “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
synthesize the margins of the content vs. skills debate and bring it into a framework
that dispels these dichotomies.” Thus, skills are not taught in an isolated or
haphazard manner but instead are incorporated into content in meaningful ways
that allow students to build upon their skill development.

41. References
 https://www.edglossary.org
 Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for The Innovation Era,Tony Wagner
 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com