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What are 21st Century Skills?
What are 21st Century Skills?
The four C’s are by far the most popular 21st Century skills. These skills are also called learning skills.
More educators know about these skills because they’re universal needs for any career. They also vary in terms of importance, depending on an individual’s career aspirations.
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. Critical thinking requires both deep knowledge of the content as well as analytical thinking.
In business settings, critical thinking is essential to improvement. It’s the mechanism that weeds out problems and replaces them with fruitful endeavors.
It’s what helps students figure stuff out for themselves when they don’t have a teacher at their disposal.
Related Resources:
The three 21st Century literacy skills are:
Information literacy: Understanding facts, figures, statistics, and data; knowing how to effectively search for information
Media literacy: Understanding the methods and outlets in which information is published, as well as being able to create digital media that effectively communicates
Google Applied Digital Skills
Technology literacy: Understanding the machines that make the Information Age possible
Information literacy is the foundational skill. It helps students understand facts, especially data points, that they’ll encounter online.
More importantly, 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.
The five 21st Century life skills are:
Flexibility: Deviating from plans as needed
Leadership: Motivating a team to accomplish a goal
Initiative: Starting projects, strategies, and plans on one’s own
Productivity: Maintaining efficiency in an age of distractions
Social skills: Meeting and networking with others for mutual benefit
Flexibility is the expression of someone’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances.
This is one of the most challenging qualities to learn for students because it’s based on two uncomfortable ideas:
Your way isn’t always the best way
You have to know and admit when you’re wrong
That’s a struggle for a lot of students, especially in an age when you can know any bit of information at the drop of a hat.
Flexibility requires them to show humility and accept that they’ll always have a lot to learn — even when they’re experienced.
Still, flexibility is crucial to a student’s long-term success in a career. Knowing when to change, how to change, and how to react to change is a skill that’ll pay dividends for someone’s entire life.
It also plays a big role in the next skill in this category.
Leadership is someone’s penchant for setting goals, walking a team through the steps required, and achieving those goals collaboratively.
Whether someone’s a seasoned entrepreneur or a fresh hire just starting their careers, leadership applies to career.
Entry-level workers need leadership skills for several reasons. The most important is that it helps them understand the decisions that managers and business leaders make.
Then, those entry-level employees can apply their leadership skills when they’re promoted to middle management (or the equivalent). This is where 21st Century skill learners can apply the previous skills they’ve learned.
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