21st Century Skills
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is the leading advocacy organization focused on infusing skills for the 21st century into education. The organization brings together the business community, education leaders, and policy makers to define a powerful vision for 21st century education to ensure every child's success as citizens and workers by providing tools and resources to help facilitate and drive change.
Today's students will spend their adult lives in a multitasking, multifaceted, technology-driven, diverse, vibrant world—and they must arrive equipped to do so. The goal of 21st Century Learning is to bridge the gap between how students live and how they learn.
21st century student outcomes can be organized into four sections, each describing a particular set of skills, knowledge, and expertise.
Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes
Let's start with Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes. Today's students will still need to master core subjects such as English (reading or language arts), world languages, arts, mathematics, economics, sciences, geography, history, government, and civics. However, they can move beyond basic competence to higher levels of understanding if schools weave into those subjects such themes as global awareness; financial, economic, business, and entrepreneurial literacy; civic literacy; and health literacy.
Learning and Innovation Skills
The next section, Learning and Innovation Skills, prepares students for increasingly complex life and work environments. Skills such as creativity and innovation allow students to implement, analyze, refine, and evaluate new ideas. Critical thinking and problem-solving skills allow students to make their way through the multistep process required to find solutions—be they conventional or innovative—to non-familiar problems. Communication and collaboration skills will be key to success in today's global, interconnected, multicultural world.
Information, Media, and Technology Skills
The 21st century is a technology-and media-suffused environment that requires mastery of the skills in the blue section—Information, Media, and Technology Skills. These skills include information literacy, media literacy, and ICT (information, communications, and technology) literacy. Students must learn to access, evaluate, and use information from a wide variety of sources. They will need to know how to recognize, understand, and create media messages. In order to function in the new knowledge economy, today's students will need to use digital devices, communication and networking tools, and social networks professionally as well as personally.
Life and Career Skills
The ultimate goal is to prepare students for success beyond the classroom with Life and Career Skills. This is a globally competitive information age with complex life and work environments. These environments require such skills as flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross-cultural skills, productivity and accountability, and leadership and responsibility.
Adapted from Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 177 N. Church Avenue, Suite 305, Tucson, AZ 85701, 520-623-2466; www.21stcenturyskills.org.
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