Teachers' Workshop
What are 21st century skills?
The 21st century skills are a set of abilities that students need to develop in order to succeed in the information age. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills lists three types:
Learning Skills
Critical Thinking
Creative Thinking
Collaborating
Communicating
Literacy Skills
Information Literacy
Media Literacy
Technology Literacy
Life Skills
Flexibility
Initiative Social Skills
Productivity
Leadership
21st Century Standards
- Focus on 21st century skills, content knowledge and expertise.
- Build understanding across and among academic subjects as well as 21st century interdisciplinary themes
- Emphasize deep understanding rather than shallow knowledge
- Engage students with the real world data, tools, and experts they will encounter in college, on the job, and in life--students learn best when actively engaged in solving meaningful problems
- Allow for multiple measures of mastery
Characteristics of 21st Century
21st Century Teacher
21st Century Classrooms
21st Century Learner
Assessment of 21st Century Skills
- Support a balance of assessments, including high-quality standardized testing along with effective classroom formative and summative assessments
- Emphasize useful feedback on student performance that is embedded into everyday learning
- Require a balance of technology-enhanced, formative and summative assessments that measure student mastery of 21st century skills
- Enable development of portfolios of student work that demonstrate mastery of 21st century skills to educators and prospective employers
- Enable a balanced portfolio of measures to assess the educational system's effectiveness at reaching high levels of student competency in 21st century skills