How Do Students Value the Importance of Twenty-first Century Skills?

Abstract

Frameworks of twenty-first century skills have attained a central role in school development and curriculum changes all over the world. There is a common understanding of the need for meta-skills such as problem solving, reasoning, collaboration, and self-regulation. This article presents results from a Finnish study, in which 718 school pupils aged 11 to 15 years were asked to anticipate the skills they would need in the future. Accordingly, they were asked to value and rank the twenty-first century skills listed in existing frameworks and pick out those they regarded as the most important they had learned. Social skills and collaboration were ranked highest, both in the listed frameworks and in the students' free responses. As might have been expected, the boys appreciated technical skills more, while the girls ranked social skills more highly.