21st Century skills

21st Century skills are 12 abilities that today’s students need to succeed in their
careers during the Information Age.

The twelve 21st Century skills are: 

1. Critical thinking
2. Creativity
3. Collaboration
4. Communication
5. Information literacy
6. Media literacy
7. Technology literacy
8. Flexibility
9. Leadership
10. Initiative
11. Productivity
12. Social skills

These skills are intended to help students keep up with the lightning-pace of
today’s modern markets. Each skill is unique in how it helps students, but they all
have one quality in common.

They’re essential in the age of the Internet.

Full Credit and Source

1
https://www.aeseducation.com/blog/what-are-21st-century-skills

2
The Three 21st Century Skill Categories
Each 21st Century skill is broken into one of three categories:

1. Learning skills
2. Literacy skills
3. Life skills

Learning skills (the four C’s) teaches students about the mental processes
required to adapt and improve upon a modern work environment.

Literacy skills (IMT) focuses on how students can discern facts, publishing

outlets, and the technology behind them. There’s a strong focus on determining
trustworthy sources and factual information to separate it from the
misinformation that floods the Internet.

Life skills (FLIPS) take a look at intangible elements of a student’s everyday life.

These intangibles focus on both personal and professional qualities.

Altogether, these categories cover all 12 21st Century skills that contribute to a
student’s future career.

This is not an exhaustive checklist of career readiness skills — but they're the
career readiness skills that overlap with 21st Century skills!

3
Let’s take a closer look at each category.

Category 1. Learning Skills (The Four C’s)

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

4
 ● Collaboration: Working with others
● Communication: Talking to others

Arguably, critical thinking is the most important quality for someone to

have in health sciences.

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.

Creativity is equally important as a means of adaptation. This skill

empowers students to see concepts in a different light, which leads to
innovation.

In any field, innovation is key to the adaptability and overall success of a

company.

Learning creativity as a skill requires someone to understand that “the way things
have always been done” may have been best 10 years ago — but someday, that
has to change.

Collaboration means getting students to work together, achieve

compromises, and get the best possible results from solving a problem.

Collaboration may be the most difficult concept in the four C’s. But once it’s
mastered, it can bring companies back from the brink of bankruptcy.

5
The key element of collaboration is willingness. All participants have to be willing
to sacrifice parts of their own ideas and adopt others to get results for the
company.

That means understanding the idea of a “greater good,” which in this case tends
to be company-wide success.

Finally, communication is the glue that brings all of these educational

qualities together.

Communication is a requirement for any company to maintain profitability. It’s

crucial for students to learn how to effectively convey ideas among different
personality types.

That has the potential to eliminate confusion in a workplace, which makes your
students valuable parts of their teams, departments, and companies.

Effective communication is also one of the most underrated soft skills in the
United States. For many, it’s viewed as a “given,” and some companies may even
take good communication for granted.

But when employees communicate poorly, whole projects fall apart. No one can
clearly see the objectives they want to achieve. No one can take responsibility
because nobody’s claimed it.

Without understanding proper communication, students in the 21st Century will

lack a pivotal skill to progress their careers.

6
But the four C’s are only the beginning. 21st Century skills also require students
to understand the information that’s around them.

Category 2. Literacy Skills (IMT)

Literacy skills are the next category of 21st Century skills.

They’re sometimes called IMT skills, and they’re each concerned with a different
element in digital comprehension.

The three 21st Century literacy skills are:

● Information literacy: Understanding facts, figures, statistics, and data

7
 ● 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. 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. 

Related Resources:

● Best Places to Find Information Literacy Lesson Plans for Middle School
● 5 Essential Steps to Teach Information Literacy in Middle School

Media literacy is the practice of identifying publishing methods, outlets,

and sources while distinguishing between the ones that are credible and the
ones that aren’t.

Just like the previous skill, media literacy is helpful for finding truth in a world
that’s saturated with information.

This is how students find trustworthy sources of information in their lives.

Without it, anything that looks credible becomes credible.

8
But with it, they can learn which media outlets or formats to ignore. They also
learn which ones to embrace, which is equally important.

Last, technology literacy goes another step further to teach students about

the machines involved in the Information Age.

As computers, cloud programming, and mobile devices become more important

to the world, the world needs more people to understand those concepts.

Technology literacy gives students the basic information they need to

understand what gadgets perform what tasks and why.

This understanding removes the intimidating feeling that technology tends to

have. After all, if you don’t understand how technology works, it might as well be
magic.

But technology literacy unmasks the high-powered tools that run today’s world.

As a result, students can adapt to the world more effectively. They can play an
important role in its evolution.

They might even guide its future.

But to truly round out a student’s 21st Century skills, they need to learn from a
third category.

Category 3. Life Skills (FLIPS)

9
Life skills is the final category.  Also called FLIPS, these skills all pertain to
someone’s personal life, but they also bleed into professional settings.

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:

1. Your way isn’t always the best way

2. You have to know and admit when you’re wrong

10
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.  

It’s also where they get the real-world experience they need to lead entire
companies.

11
As they lead individual departments, they can learn the ins and outs of their
specific careers. That gives ambitious students the expertise they need to grow
professionally and lead whole corporations.

True success also requires initiative, requiring students to be self-starters.

Initiative only comes naturally to a handful of people. As a result, students need

to learn it to fully succeed.

This is one of the hardest skills to learn and practice. Initiative often means
working on projects outside of regular working hours.

The rewards for students with extreme initiative vary from person to person.
Sometimes they’re good grades. Other times they’re new business ventures.

Sometimes, it’s spending an extra 30 minutes at their jobs wrapping something

up before the weekend.

Regardless, initiative is an attribute that earns rewards. It’s especially indicative of

someone’s character in terms of work ethic and professional progress.

That goes double when initiative is practiced with qualities like flexibility and
leadership.

Along with initiative, 21st Century skills require students to learn

about productivity. That’s a student’s ability to complete work in an
appropriate amount of time.

In business terms, it’s called “efficiency.”

12
The common goal of any professional — from entry-level employee to CEO — is
to get more done in less time.

By understanding productivity strategies at every level, students discover the

ways in which they work best while gaining an appreciation for how others work
as well.

That equips them with the practical means to carry out the ideas they determine
through flexibility, leadership, and initiative.

Still, there’s one last skill that ties all other 21st Century skills together.

Social skills are crucial to the ongoing success of a professional. Business is

frequently done through the connections one person makes with others around
them.

This concept of networking is more active in some industries than others, but
proper social skills are excellent tools for forging long-lasting relationships.

While these may have been implied in past generations, the rise of social media
and instant communications have changed the nature of human interaction.

As a result, today’s students possess a wide range of social skills. Some are more
socially adept than others. Some are far behind their peers. And some lucky few
may be far ahead, as socializing comes naturally to them.

But most students need a crash course in social skills at least. Etiquette, manners,
politeness, and small talk still play major roles in today’s world.

13
That means some students need to learn them in an educational setting instead
of a social setting.

For them, it’s another skill to add to their lives.

Full Credit and Source

https://www.aeseducation.com/blog/what-are-21st-century-skills

14