Page 16 - 21st Century Competencies: Foundation Document for Discussion

14 21st Century Competencies
Competencies in the intrapersonal domain contribute significantly to students’ well-being, character development, and success.
Recently, the Boston-based Center for Curriculum Redesign (CCR) published a Character Qualities Framework that identifies six essential character qualities – mindfulness, curiosity, courage, resilience, ethics, and leadership – that have emerged from its research. Bialik, Bogan, Fadel,
and Horvathova (2015) make the case for CCR’s framework and focus on character qualities by arguing that “facing the challenges of the 21st century requires a deliberate effort to cultivate in students personal growth and the ability to fulfill social and community responsibilities as global citizens” (p. 1).
As mentioned previously, there is a growing body of research (Dweck, 2010; Duckworth, Matthews, Kelly, & Peterson, 2007; Tough, 2012) demonstrating that non-academic, intrapersonal competencies such as perseverance, grit, tenacity, and a growth mindset have a strong relationship with an individual’s capacity to overcome challenges and achieve long-term success. These competencies are often linked to well-being and can be found in various competency frameworks under labels such as “Life and Career Skills”
(P21, 2009), “Character Education” (Fullan, 2013), and “Lifelong Learning, Personal Management, and Well-being” (Alberta Education, 2011).
According to Tough’s (2012) research on how children succeed, helping children at a young age to learn how to manage failure (in “child-sized adversity”) is important to building the self-confidence, self-regulation
skills, sense of efficacy, and resilience that enable children to persist and overcome challenging circumstances. Research in the areas of innovation, entrepreneurship, and leadership also notes the importance of cultivating workforce capacities for risk-taking, perseverance, and managing for failure. Research is under way to improve our understanding of how learning environments can more effectively support the development of competencies in the intrapersonal domain.
Motivation and emotion play a central role in the development of intrapersonal competencies, and are also recognized as important determinants of thinking and learning. An understanding of the factors that influence motivation
and emotion is therefore essential to providing a learning environment that promotes student success. An OECD report found that “students’ learning goals and goals in life, their thoughts about their own competence . . . their attributions of academic success or failure on various potential causes,