How Can 21st Century Skills Be Taught: Design and Implementation of an Undergraduate Course for Prospective Teachers

21st century skills teacher education curriculum development course design

Authors

21st century skills are stated among the most significant subjects in education-related contexts. However, lack of a detailed and systematic curriculum focusing on how those skills could be taught remains as an issue to be solved.   Designed as a mixed study, present study aims at developing and implementing a course curriculum focusing on how to teach 21st century skills for prospective teachers.  Data were collected through document and content analysis, interviews and "The Scale for Identifying Perceptions of Having 21st Century skills" that was developed for this study to find out the significance of difference prior to and after the implementation of the developed course. The study consisted of three phases: needs analysis process, design and piloting of the course, and implementation of the developed course with prospective teachers. Participants of the study were 17 academicians working at faculties of education from various universities and a total of 73 prospective teachers (56 for piloting and 17 for real implementation). Findings of the needs analysis revealed that there was a need for such a course, and as a result, an undergraduate modular-based course aiming at teaching how to teach 21st century skills was developed within the principles of the philosophy of progressivism and constructivist approach for prospective teachers after an implementation lasted for a total of 28 weeks (14 for pilot and 14 for real implementation). The implementation of the course was structured on micro-teaching activities.