Teaching 21st Century Skills in a New Norm among Malaysian English Language Teachers

Abstract

Teaching and learning process today becomes more challenging to teachers and students all over the world due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A lot of schools are shut down to contain the virus from spreading widely. In Malaysia too, all schools are closed, hence the teachers and students are required to have online distance learning, where all teaching and learning sessions are conducted virtually. In the 21st century, teachers are not only required to teach subject matters virtually to the students, but they also need to teach and train 21st century skills (skills of critical thinking, creative thinking, communication, collaboration, and values and ethics) to them. This paper presented a pilot study which was conducted to investigate the techniques of teaching 21st century skills among secondary school English language teachers in Malaysia. A quantitative approach was employed in this study, specifically using the survey research design. Questionnaires were distributed to 150 respondents through Google Form which was an online survey platform. Descriptive statistics analyses were performed to identify the techniques commonly used by the respondents to teach and train the 21st century skills. One of the outstanding results revealed through the analyses was that most respondents agreed they trained values and ethics the most, compared to the other 21st century skills.