21st century skills of CEIT teacher candidates and the prominence of these skills in the CEIT undergraduate curriculum

Abstract

In the age of globalization and information and technology, changes as in all the fields of human life are being actualized in the education systems, too. It is of great importance for the teachers who are the most notable agents to transfer the changes to the next generations to be equipped with skills and knowledge so called 21st century skills in their pre-service education and start their profession. In this respect, the prominence of these skills in pre-service teacher education curriculum is a subject to be considered. With the constant emphasis on technology age, Computer and Instructional Technologies (CEIT) teacher candidates should have 21st century skills in terms of their contribution to their students as well as the schools they will work in. In this study, the “Multidimensional 21th Century Skills Scale” developed by Çevik and Şentürk (2019) was applied to 123 teacher candidates studying CEIT Department of Gazi University, Gazi Faculty of Education in 2018-2019 Spring Semester. The CEIT curricula were also examined in terms of their inclusiveness about the 21st century skills. The analyses of the scale indicated that CEIT teacher candidates’ scores are generally high for the scale overall but highest in Career consciousness and lowest in Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills sub-dimensions. It is also seen that 21st century skills are generally reflected in the CEIT curricula with the courses and their contents especially in the updated curriculum which shows that curriculum development processes were performed according to the changes and needs in the world. Further studies could be conducted for the efficiency of the updated curriculum in the following years.