Why 21st century skills

The Baby Boomers sought job stability. Subsequent generations wanted less of that and focused more on finding happiness and fulfillment in their careers. 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. Professionals with more specialization 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 and advancing technology, 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 potentially transferrable 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 artificial intelligence 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, transferrable skills, and competency. It will cause major disruptions in many job fields due to the substitution of labour. Employees who have specialised in these tasks must be offered reskilling options and education on the language of employability and the knowledge to highlight and demonstrate transferrable skills.

Add to this the fact that half a billion people worldwide cannot find decent work in The COVID pandemic has seen record levels of unemployment, 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.

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, often called employability 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.

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 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. 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. 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. On a global scale, 21st-century skills have gained recognition and adoption into traditional education models. Cooperation — Working well with others is a foundational life skill for students to develop as they learn to navigate relationships in the classroom, at home, and eventually, in the workplace. These skills are ultimately the building blocks for fostering a greater sense of empathy in your classroom.

Empatico experiences more broadly also relate to other 21st century themes such as global awareness, creativity and innovation, problem solving, and collaboration as they expose students to different ways of thinking and different cultures.

Empatico Skills: perspective taking, critical thinking, respectful communication, and cooperation. So why are these skills so important? Learning about different perspectives also stimulates creativity and innovation by offering new ways of thinking, which can enhance group problem-solving.

The ability and willingness to learn from others who have different viewpoints can also be beneficial for communicating complex ideas and resolving conflicts. Supporting this, studies show that children with diverse friends are more likely to be prosocial and have higher levels of social satisfaction and leadership potential than those without. It all starts with the adults in your building. Teachers and staff need to deeply understand and model the skills that you want your students to develop.

Integrate 21st century skills into staff professional development as a precursor to growing these competencies in students. It can be helpful to create a playbook of recommended strategies and approaches that span across content areas. For instance, you might encourage teachers to add comments to report cards about students' 21st century skills.

What gets measured matters. Regularly collect data on how students are progressing in this area, whether the data is anecdotal, qualitative, or quantitative. For example, you might administer a biannual survey in which students reflect on their development of 21st century, social-emotional skills.

Keep in mind that the data you gather should be formative rather than evaluative. Be transparent about the purpose. Once you have data on students' 21st century skills, you'll want to ensure that the data is actionable for educators.

This helps educators make data-driven decisions about the best way to keep each student on track. Looking for more information on 21st century skills? Here are some other articles and resources to explore:. Before getting into the details, it's important to identify who should teach 21st Century skills. While these skills can be taught at any grade level, we find it's most important to teach 21st Century skills in middle or early high school.

This is the time when your students need to hone their career readiness skills before they enter the workforce! Bri collaborates with others at AES to create content that answers your questions about teaching classes, preparing students for certifications, and making the most of the AES digital curriculum. Categories Follow Us Subscribe. To start, let's dive into the three categories that 21st Century skills fall into. Category 1. The 4 C's of 21st Century Skills are: Critical thinking : Finding solutions to problems Creativity : Thinking outside the box Collaboration : Working with others Communication : Talking to others Arguably, critical thinking is the most important quality for someone to have in health sciences.

In any field, innovation is key to the adaptability and overall success of a company. Top Collaborative Learning Lesson Plans for Middle School Finally, communication is the glue that brings all of these educational qualities together. Category 2. The three 21st Century literacy skills are: Information literacy : Understanding facts, figures, statistics, and data Media literacy : Understanding the methods and outlets in which information is published Technology literacy : Understanding the machines that make the Information Age possible Information literacy is the foundational skill.

More importantly, it teaches them how to separate fact from fiction. Otherwise, they can fall prey to myths, misconceptions, and outright lies. They might even guide its future. Category 3. It also plays a big role in the next skill in this category. That goes double when initiative is practiced with qualities like flexibility and leadership.

These skills all double back to one key focus. With that in mind, the world has entered an era where nothing is guaranteed. Today, the only consistency from year to year is change. Now you know what 21st Century skills are and why employers want new hires to have them.