Teachers’ strategies and challenges in teaching 21st century skills: Little common understanding

Abstract

Faced with a world of accelerating change and rapidly-evolving technology, education systems must provide students with the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century. However, many countries have failed to incorporate the teaching of these skills within their schools. Our study therefore looks to portray teachers’ understanding, strategies and obstacles in teaching these skills across Latin American classrooms. To do so, we analyzed the responses to an online survey from 1391 active teachers across 20 countries in the region. This revealed varying understandings of 21st century skills, with little common understanding. Most teachers failed to mention the skills included in the most popular framework (the 4 Cs); those who did reported using the same strategies, regardless of the skill being taught. These strategies included project-based learning, oracy activities, literacy strategies, and teamwork. We conclude that there is little or no common understanding around these skills, nor the best strategies for developing them. Our study helps understand the potential causes preventing the teaching of these skills in the classroom, a problem that extends beyond Latin America.