Page 7 - 21st Century Competencies: Foundation Document for Discussion

SECTION ONE
Introduction
Many international thought leaders and business leaders – and many young people, too – are increasingly asking education systems to prepare students with “21st century” competencies1 that will enable them to face complex challenges now and in the future. These competencies – knowledge, skills, and attributes that help children and youth to reach their full potential – are additional to the important foundational skills of literacy and mathematics, and to the core learning in other subjects.
What’s new about “21st century” competencies?
Changing times are transforming the nature of competencies that have been valuable throughout history, such as communication and collaboration.
The nature of collaboration, for example, is evolving to require an increasingly sophisticated set of competencies. As Dede (2010) explains, “In addition to collaborating face-to-face with colleagues across a conference table, 21st century workers increasingly accomplish tasks through mediated interactions with peers halfway across the world whom they may never meet face-to-face. Thus, even though perennial in nature, collaboration is worthy of inclusion as a 21st century skill because the importance of cooperative interpersonal capabilities is higher and the skills involved are more sophisticated than in the prior industrial era” (p. 53).
1. Other labels associated with the term “21st century competencies” include “deeper learning”, “21st century skills”, “global competencies”, “college and career readiness”, “student-centred learning”, “next-generation learning”, “new basic skills”, and “higher-order thinking”. These labels are typically used to include both cognitive and non-cognitive skills, knowledge,
and attitudes.
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