Abstract
Background: Within the current labor market, continuously changing and accelerating since the COVID-19 crisis (World Economic Forum, 2021), the educational system must offer a pedagogical alternative to face and anticipate these 21st century changes and demands (OECD, 2018). Based on the four-dimensional education framework, from the Center for Curriculum Redesign (CCR), the online learning literature, and students’ perspectives, the Beyond Education (BE) organization has proposed a series of interactive online pedagogical programs aiming to develop 21st-century competencies in school-age students. Methods: The aim of this paper is to propose both quantitative and qualitative data analyses of the first pilot program: “BE a Global Citizen” through a semi-experimental study, using a mixed-method approach, analyzing the pre- and post-tests results of 26 students aged 16 to 18 years old. Results: Analyses presented evidence of the program’s efficacy at developing 21st century competencies in students, particularly those competencies targeted by the program, which were significantly increased. Conclusions: Although these are promising results, a replicability study needs to be done on a larger sample in order to generalize the results.
Highlights
The 21st century has shown a disconnection between the education system and the competencies needed in our uncertain job market [1,2,3,4]
Global citizenship appears as a 21st century concept that can be defined from different perspectives, proposing curiosity [16], critical thinking [17], ethics [18,19], collaboration, and communication [20], as important 21st century competencies within it
Reysen & Katzarska-Miller [21] explained that having global awareness and participating in an environment that praises global citizenship, work as antecedents that mediate the effect on prosocial behaviors, which is consistent with Reimers [22,23] who defined global citizenship as the capacity of empathy and collaboration with people from different national, religious, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds
Summary
The 21st century has shown a disconnection between the education system and the competencies needed in our uncertain job market [1,2,3,4]. Identifying, developing and assessing these competencies have been goals widely shared by educators and governments all around the world [8,9,10,11,12,13,14], highlighting that public policies in youth and child education must focus on the development of these competencies [6] In this line, global citizenship appears as a 21st century concept that can be defined from different perspectives (for a review see [15]), proposing curiosity [16], critical thinking [17], ethics [18,19], collaboration, and communication [20], as important 21st century competencies within it.
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