REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, CULTURE AND RESEARCH

ALECU RUSSO BĂLȚI STATE UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF PHILOLOGY
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND GERMAN PHILOLOGY

TEACHING 21ST CENTURY SKILLS IN THE 8TH

FORM

Bachelor’s Thesis

Author:
Student, gr. ES45Z
Olga IANCEVSKAIA
_____________
(signature)

Scientific Adviser:
Victoria MASCALIUC,
PhD, Associate Professor
__________________
(signature)

Bălți, 2019

1
 REPUBLICA MOLDOVA
MINISTERUL EDUCAȚIEI, CULTURII ȘI CERCETĂRII
UNIVERSITATEA DE STAT „ALECU RUSSO” DIN BĂLȚI
FACULTATEA DE LITERE
CATEDRA DE FILOLOGIE ENGLEZĂ ȘI GERMANĂ

PREDAREA ABILITĂȚILOR SECOLULUI 21 ÎN CLASA

A 8-A
Teză de licență

Autor:
Studenta grupei__ES45Z
Olga IANCEVSKAIA
______________
(semnătura)

Conducător științific:
Victoria MASCALIUC
dr., conf. univ.
____________
(semnătura)

Bălți, 2019
2
 ABSTRACT
Working, living, and learning in the 21st century will require an expanded set of skills,
competencies, and flexibilities. We must prepare for a continuous learning and reskilling process
throughout our lives and careers.

21st century earning requires organizations to meet the current requirements of our
standardized tests while also striving to achieve the 4Cs: communication, collaboration,
creativity, and critical thinking. The skills needed for success in college and career are becoming
increasingly complex, and schools must rise to meet new demands.

The main aim of the license paper is to underline the main concepts connected with the
most useful 21st century skills: creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration,
and to identify methods and techniques of teaching these skills.
This work shows an analysis of the definition of four Cs skills. This paper was written
based on scientific works in English.
Key-words: skill, critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, tasks,

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 ADNOTARE

Munca, traiul și învățarea în secolul 21 necesită un set extins de competențe,

competențe și flexibilități. Trebuie să ne pregătim pentru un proces continuu de învățare și
recalificare pe tot parcursul vieții și carierei. Încrederea în secolul 21 necesită ca organizațiile să
îndeplinească cerințele actuale ale testelor standardizate, încercând, de asemenea, să realizeze
cele 4C-uri: comunicare, colaborare, creativitate și gândire critică. Competențele necesare pentru
succesul în colegiu și în carieră devin din ce în ce mai complexe, iar școlile trebuie să își ridice
nivelul pentru a răspunde noilor cerințe.
Scopul principal al tezei de licență este sublinierea principalelor concepte legate de cele
mai folositoare abilități a secolului 21: creativitatea, gîndirea critică, comunicarea și colaborarea,
și de a identifica metode și tehnicni de predare a acestor abilități.
Lucrarea dată prezintă o analiză a definițiilor celor patru abilități. Lucrarea de față a fost scrisă în
baza lucrărilor științifice scrise în Engleză.

Cuvinte-cheie: abilitate, gîndire critică, creativitate, comunicare, colaborare, însărcinări,

abilități

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 CONTENTS

Introduction.....................................................................................................................................
Chapter I. An overview on 21st century skills
1.1. Introductory remarks …………………………………………………………………
1.2. Definitions. Concepts …………………………………………………………………
1.3. Developing 21st century skills ………………………………………………………..
1.3.1. Developing critical thinking………………………………………………………….
1.3.2. Developing creativity………………………………………………………………..
1.3.3. Developing communication skills……………………………………………………
1.3.4. Developing collaboration skills………………………………………………………
1.4. 21st century skills in teaching English as a foreign language………………………..

INTRODUCTION
In 21st century learning, students have almost unlimited access to information. On the
other hand, many students lack the skills to benefit from this abundance of information. Students
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gather and read information from libraries, textbooks, and digital materials. To be prepared for
global learning opportunities, teachers must teach for these challenging times. Students must
learn how to develop and apply four competencies within core content areas and beyond –
critical thinking, creative thinking, collaboration, and communication.

Critical thinking is a key component of 21st century learning. Students must engage in
learning experiences that require depth and complexity of thinking as they analyze, infer,
compare, reason, interpret, synthesize, and evaluate. Students need to question data, consider
various perspectives of issues, determine patterns of information, form judgments, and present
individual points of view with evidence and logical reasoning. These are merely a few of the
critical thinking skills essential for students to acquire in order to become citizens and productive
members of a future workplace.

Creativity includes innovation, original ideas, and risk-taking. Students demonstrate

creativity in many forms and through multiple learning style preferences. When students
examine and evaluate ideas from different perspectives, think in new directions, and synthesize
information in useful ways, they demonstrate their creative thinking abilities. Planning
instruction that purposefully encourages students to apply creative thinking and problem skills is
essential.

In the world today, individuals from diverse backgrounds and people with different
abilities work together to study and bring resolution to ongoing issues or problems. Thus,
students must learn how to collaborate with others, respecting knowledge, cultures, differences,
and viewpoints. Teachers serve in the capacity of facilitators, modeling standards of behavior
that guide 21st century learners as they acquire the skills for collaborative problem solving.
Teachers might incorporate onsite discussions as well as promote digital contact with thinkers
beyond the school walls and from other parts of our global society. Multiple and varied learning
opportunities should be designed that lead students to value individual contributions. Students
can work with partners or in small groups to investigate and collaborate about texts, current
learning, or other relevant topics. Instructional activities might include discussing characters’
actions, predicting future events, designing creative solutions, analyzing and responding to text,
drawing inferences or conclusions, and making personal real-world connections.

Unlimited opportunities are present for communicating in 21st century classrooms and
showcasing different ways of thinking. Students demonstrate effective communication skills by
clearly expressing their thoughts to various audiences and for a range of purposes. The purposes
include entertaining, persuading, or informing. Communication comes in many forms including

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printed texts, digital texts, or visual texts. Students should learn to move easily from print to
nonprint, and from communicating face-to-face with peers to communicating through other
technological means such as online learning environments.

This The Bachelor’s Thesis is divided into 2 chapters. The first chapter offers an
overview on concepts and definitions of 21st skills. It also incorporates characteristics and
pequiliarites of 21st century skills, and givesa wide collection of teaching techniques used in
teaching 21st century skills.

The second chapter is a practical one.

The Bachelor’s Thesis ends with concluding remarks and a wide bibliography.

CHAPTER I: AN OVERVIEW ON 21ST CENTURY SKILLS

1.1. Intoructory remarks

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 21st century skills are a series of higher-order skills, abilities, and learning dispositions
that have been identified as being required for success in 21st century society and workplaces by
educators, business leaders, academics, and governmental agencies. Students need critical
thinking, creative thinking, collaboration, and communication skills to thrive in an
internationally competitive environment. Schools must integrate developing of 21 st century skills
into core academic area instruction. These skills should be an integral part of teaching and
learning to ensure highly effective teaching and to make learning more rigorous and relevant in
the 21st century. The infusion of the four Cs into education denes a powerful learning
environment, producing students who emerge with the skills needed to be successful citizens and
leaders of tomorrow.

All these skills of the 21st century are closely related with the concept of lifelong
learning. It will be appropriate for students to lead all of their learning activity that they
undertake throughout their lives, with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competencies
within a personal, civic, social and/or employment-related perspective

This chapter is dedicated to a deep overview of 21 st century skills. We are going to

analyze the main concepts connected to 21st century skills: critical thinking, creativity,
communicative skills and collaboration.

The main aim of this chapter is to offer definitions of 21 st century skills of different
authors and to underline effective ways of developing these skills through English lessons.

1.2. Defining 21st Century skills

Today, it is extremely fashionable to speak about skill development, and there is a great
number of definitions and terms referring to the same concept. Here we might mention three sets
of terms: soft skills, 21st century skills and 4C’s.
There are many definitions for the term “soft skills.” These definitions are based on years
of research in the field of psychology, sociology and education. The reason for the large number
of definitions is that soft skills encompass many areas and components.The term “soft skills”
gained popularity in the 1960s and 1970s. In those years, the term soft skills included the skills
needed to build interpersonal relationships. The term “soft skills” included: listening, empathy,
interpersonal communication, team building, group dynamics, sensitivity to others, compassion,
integrity, and honesty.In recent years, the term “soft skills” has again aroused the interest of

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researchers, who believe that “soft skills” are the decisive factor in order to succeed in
developing business, government and communities in the 21st century.
According to the 2006 report “Are They Really Ready to Work? Employers’ Perspectives
on the Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of New Entrants to the 21st Century U.S.
Workforce”, modern employers believe that having “soft skills ” is much more important than
reading, writing and arithmetic. More than four hundred employers were interviewed, who
ranked skills on a scale of importance. Among employers were such corporations as: Microsoft,
the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Dell, Inc., Phillip Morris, State Farm, Ford, and Pearson
Education.
The goal of the study was not only to identify important skills, but also to show that soft
skills became requirements for recruitment. Researchers claim that too many young people are
not sufficiently prepared to succeed in the workplace, due to the lack of oral and written
communication skills, collaboration skills, work ethic, creativity and critical thinking. The
researchers came to the conclusion that in the 21st century, applied skills exceeded basic
knowledge and became more important than basic knowledge.
Soft skills are difficult to pinpoint, as their characteristics change with the emergence of
new competencies and requirements. According to Maxine Kamin, the author of the book “Soft
Skills Revolution”, “soft skills are interpersonal skills that demonstrate a person’s ability to
communicate effectively and build relationships with others in one-on-one interactions as well as
in groups and teams. Skills include listening and responding in a receptive way to others’ points
of view; cooperation, and the ability to be flexible and take positive action in situations that
require understanding of the circumstance, environment, and the culture of the person,
organization, team, or family in which specific interactions occur. The practice of soft skills aids
in communication and promotes problem solving, negotiation, conflict resolution, and team
building” (Kamin, 2013:45).
The humanistic educational movement was based on human self-knowledge, as the main
characteristics for the growth and development of the individual. In the 1960s-1970s, soft skills
gained their popularity and became studied disciplines in many universities and colleges, and
also became the topics of seminars held in the United States. So, at the School of Massachusetts
University, one of the most popular disciplines, were courses on sensitivity training and group
dynamics, as well as “Education of the Self (Ed Self)”, which entered the curriculum. Later,
these studies were discontinued in favor of modular credit workshops. At that time, “School of
Ed,” was founded, which became the “home” for such renowned teachers as Ken Blanchard,
Sydney Simon and Gerald Weinstein. Jack Canfield, co-author of the book "Chicken Soup for
the Soul," held his seminars near the campus. This school encouraged people to explore their
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own behavior, motives, values, and beliefs. Such topics as racism, culture, sexism, which were
previously ignored in the educational circle, were of interest. All studied topics flowed from
personal stories, discoveries and experiences of students. Feelings began to be considered a
decisive factor for understanding human interaction.

In contrast to hard skills with their narrow scope, soft skills are applicable in broad
contexts and are not limited to professional activities. We can say that soft skills are the resources
that help to cope with the challenges and tasks to be addressed to growing children in the modern
world.
Soft Skills correlates with some terms of a very close meaning: Life Skills, Emotional
Intelligence Quotients, Social Skills, and Interpersonal Skills.
According to John Dewey, the term 21st century skills refers to a broad set of knowledge,
skills, work habits, and character traits that are believed—by educators, school reformers,
college professors, employers, and others—to be critically important to success in today’s world,
particularly in collegiate programs and contemporary careers and workplaces. Generally
speaking, 21st century skills can be applied in all academic subject areas, and in all educational,
career, and civic settings throughout a student’s life.

21st century skills comprise skills, abilities, and learning dispositions that have been
identified as being required for success in 21st century society and workplaces by educators,
business leaders, academics, and governmental agencies. This is part of a growing international
movement focusing on the skills required for students to master in preparation for success in a
rapidly changing, digital society. Many of these skills are also associated with deeper learning,
which is based on mastering skills such as analytic reasoning, complex problem solving,
and teamwork. These skills differ from traditional academic skills in that they are not primarily
content knowledge-based.

During the latter decades of the 20th century and into the 21st century, society has
undergone an accelerating pace of change in economy and technology. Its effects on
the workplace, and thus on the demands on the educational system preparing students for
the workforce, have been significant in several ways. Beginning in the 1980s, government,
educators, and major employers issued a series of reports identifying key skills and
implementation strategies to steer students and workers towards meeting the demands of the
changing workplace and society. Sometimes the linguists summarize the 21st century skills as the
learning and innovation skills (critical thinking and problem solving, communications and
collaboration, creativity and innovation) digital literacy skills (information literacy, media

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literacy, Information and communication technologies literacy); career and life skills: flexibility
and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross-cultural
interaction, productivity and accountability. Many of these skills are also identified as key
qualities of progressive education, a pedagogical movement that began in the late nineteenth
century and continues in various forms to the present.

D. Borcoman argues that “the specific skills deemed to be “21 st century skills” may be
defined, categorized, and determined differently from person to person, place to place, or school
to school, the term does reflect a general—if somewhat loose and shifting—consensus.”
The other term used to refer to the above-mentioned concept is 4 Cs. Back in the 50s of
the last century, specialists in the field of development and education began to search, describe
and try to measure key competencies - a set of skills that a person needs to develop in order to
success in society.
One of the last and most famous steps in this direction was the so-called Davos skills, or
skills-2020. They were called Davos, because they were proclaimed in 2016 at the World
Economic Forum in Davos. And they were called 2020 - because these are the ten most sought-
after qualities and skills that should be developed to be in demand in 2020. There were 10 most
important skills:
1. Complex problem solving.
2. Critical thinking.
3. Creativity.
4. People management.
5. Coordinating with others.
6. Emotional intelligence.
7. Judgement and decision making.
8. Service orientation.
9. Negotiation.
10. Cognitive flexibility (Beckford, 2018).
Over time, these “10 skills” were transformed into more narrowly focused concepts.
Thus, the “Four Cs” model appeared - four characteristics of a person beginning with the letter
“C”: critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication.

We shall use this definition in our paper in reference to 21st century skills.
1.3. 4 Cs and Methodology of Training them

As we are interested in 4 Cs, first, the definitions of these four is to be provided.

According to John Deweycritical thinking is "Active, persistent and careful consideration of a
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belief or supposed form of knowledge in light of the grounds that support it, and the further
conclusions to which it tends" (Dewey, 1909:45).

Robert Ennis states that ”reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe
or do. In addition to 12 CT abilities, CT also includes 14 dispositions. Namely: to seek a clear
statement of the thesis or question; to seek reasons; to try to be well informed; to use credible
sources and mention them; to take into account the total situation; to try to remain relevant to the
main point; to keep in mind the original or basic concern; to look for alternatives; to be open-
minded; to take a position when the evidence and reasons are sufficient to do so; to seek as much
precision as the subject permits; to deal in an orderly manner with the parts of a complex whole;
to use one's CT abilities; to be sensitive to feelings, level of knowledge, and degree of
sophistication of others" (Ennis 1987: 76).

J. Browne (2000) defines critical thinking as “a process that begins with an argument and
progresses toward evaluation. The process is activated by three interrelated activities:

a. Asking key questions designed to identify and assess what is being said,

b. Answering those questions by focusing on their impact on stated inferences, and

c. Displaying the desire to deploy critical questions.

We believe that critical thinking is an ability to ask and answer questions, to formulate
and solve problems and to evaluate any situation.
Another skill is creativity. The American philosopher John Dewey defines creative
thinking as “the way to look at things as if they could be otherwise” (J. Dewey 1989: 54).
Creative thinking is the ability to create and find new original ideas, deviating from the
accepted thinking patterns to solve successfully the challenges in an unusual way. Richard
Florida, in his book “The Rise of the Creative Class” writes that creativity is “intersection of
novelty, utility, and surprise.” In addition, Robert DiYanni finds that key factor for creativity is
“satisfying constraints” because “limitations imposed by constraints release the imagination, as
when a poet works within the confines of a highly constraining literary form such as the haiku or
the sonnet”.(R. Florida, 1978:98)
The relationship between criticality and creativity is commonly misunderstood. Critical
and creative thought are both achievements of thought. Creativity masters a process of making or
producing, criticality a process of assessing or judging.

The very definition of the word “creative” implies a critical component (e.g., “having or
showing imagination and artistic or intellectual inventiveness”). When engaged in high-quality

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thought, the mind must simultaneously produce and assess, both generate and judge the products
it fabricates. In short, sound thinking requires both imagination and intellectual standards. We
believe that creative thinking, especially, must be demystified and brought down to earth.

Collaboration skill is the ability to perform jointly activities aimed at the implementation
of projects and achieving benefits by its participants. Collaboration is defined as a relationship
binding at least two people, based on cooperation, the aim of which is to achieve benefits by
participants of cooperation.
The word communication comes from Latin verb ‘communicare’ that means ‘to share’.
In English language communication means “the imparting or exchanging of information by
speaking, writing, or using some other medium”. In a wider context, communication is
considered an important social skill, thanks to which people can not only communicate and
exchange information, but also express themselves and satisfy their important needs.
Due to the multidimensional nature of the communication process of people, it is the
object of interest of representatives of many disciplines - psychologists, sociologists, political
scientists, philosophers, linguists, ethnographers, representatives of management sciences.
C. S. Rayudu (Rayudu, 2009:14) writes, “Communication is like birth, death, breath and
wanting to be loved as a part of life itself. Man is communicating animal; he alone has the power
to express in words. Communication is the story of man and his efforts to communicate
effectively. Civilization and culture progress to the extent communication has made these
possible.” Communication skills are the ability of a person to establish contact with other
people, correctly interpret their speech, behavior and respond adequately.
It is impossible to train these skills individually. They should be trained together in the
process of teaching content. It is believed that the methodology framed to integrate skills in content
teaching is through project based learning and technology.

Project Based Learning is a teaching methods in which students gain knowledge and
skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic,
engaging, and complex question, problem, or challenge. Project Based Learning is becoming
widely used in schools and other educational settings, with different varieties being practiced.
However, there are key characteristics that differentiate "doing a project" from engaging
in rigorous project based learning.

We find it helpful to distinguish a "dessert project" - a short, intellectually-light project

served up after the teacher covers the content of a unit in the usual way - from a "main course"
project, in which the project is the unit. In Project Based Learning, the project is the vehicle for
teaching the important knowledge and skills student need to learn. The project contains and
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frames curriculum and instruction. Project Based Learning requires critical thinking, problem
solving, collaboration, and various forms of communication. To answer a driving question and
create high-quality work, students need to do much more than remember information. They need
to use higher-order thinking skills and learn to work as a team.

Genius Hour in the classroom is an approach to learning built around student curiosity,
self-directed learning, and passion-based work. In traditional learning, teachers map out
academic standards, and plan units and lessons based around those standards. In Genius Hour,
students are in control, choosing what they study, how they study it, and what they do, produce,
or create as a result. As a learning model, it promotes inquiry, research, creativity, and self-
directed learning.
Genius Hour is most notably associated with Google, where employees are able to spend
up to 20% of their time working on projects they’re interested in and passionate about. The study
and work is motivated intrinsically, not extrinsically. The big idea for Google is that employees
motivated by curiosity and passion will be happier, more creative, and more productive, which
will benefit the company in terms of both morale, “off-Genius” productivity, and “on-Genius”
performance.

Genius Hour provides students freedom to design their own learning during a set period
of time during school. It allows students to explore their own curiosity through a self-manifested
sense of purpose and study while within the support system of the classroom. Developing hard and
soft skills is crucial to a successful teaching and learning experience. However, while the majority of
educators believe that technology has a positive impact when it comes to teachable skills such as IT
literacy, many still feel that it either hinders, or has no bearing, on a student’s personality-oriented
interpersonal skills.

You have to add what platforms should be used to develop all the skills / technology

1.4. Concluding remarks

The 21st Century Skills are a set of competences that pupils need to develop in order to
succeed in the information age. The collaboration and communication, creativity and innovation,
critical thinking and problem solving skills shall be trained at schools as earlier as possible.
According to literature, studies show that pupils shall be able to think deeply about problems,
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solve issues in a creative manners, work in groups, communicate clearly using analogue and
digital tools and at the same time deal with information. In fact, the rapid changes which occur in
our economy and information driven world require pupils to get flexible, take initiatives, lead if
necessary and create something new. In this context, technology may open up huge opportunities
for us, language teachers.

However, we must also be aware that technology does not substitute some in-classroom
analogue approaches and strategies which contribute and are highly effective in the development
of these skills. Authentic story books may be quite adequate in the training of critical thinking
skill, as they pose pupils questions and invite them to solve some problem-based situations. They
are a means which offers cross-cultural approaches by making pupils contact with authentic and
cultural products of the target-language.

REFERENCES

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2. Beckford, A. (6 August 2018 г.). The Skills You Need To Succeed In 2020. Получено из
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to-succeed-in-2020/#70d785b9288a
3. Collins English Dictionary, 12th Edition, Martin Guha (Author), Glasgow: Emerald Group
Publishing Limited, 2015.

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