what is critical thinking in 21st century skills

Instructing & Assessing 21st Century Skills: A Focus on Critical Thinking

Research and Best Practices: One in a Series on 21st Century Skills

For the full collection of related blog posts and literature reviews, see the Center for Assessment’s toolkit, Assessing 21 st Century Skills .

Educational philosophers from Plato and Socrates to John Dewey highlighted the importance of critical thinking and the intrinsic value of instruction that reaches beyond simple factual recall. However there is considerable dispute about how to define critical thinking, let alone instruct and assess students’ critical thinking over time. This post briefly defines critical thinking, explains what we know from the research about how critical thinking develops and is best instructed, and provides an overview of some major assessment issues. Our full literature review on critical thinking can be accessed  here .

Overall, findings from the literature suggest that critical thinking involves both cognitive skills  and  dispositions. These two aspects are captured in a consensus definition reached by a panel of leading critical thinking scholars and researchers and reported in the Delphi Report:

“purposeful, self-regulatory  judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation  of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based”  ( Facione, 1990 , p. 3).

Debate continues about the extent to which critical thinking is generic or discipline-specific. If critical thinking is generic, then it arguably could be taught in separate courses, with the sole focus being on the development of critical thinking skills. However, if critical thinking is particular to a discipline, the instruction to develop it must be embedded within disciplinary content. Though debate exists, we argue that what constitutes critical thinking in science likely differs somewhat from what constitutes critical thinking in history or art. Therefore, critical thinking is best understood as discipline-specific with some transferable, generic commonalities.

Critical thinking is also intertwined with other cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal competencies. For example, many researchers have connected creativity and critical thinking. Furthermore, one’s ability to demonstrate critical thinking relies on effective communication, metacognition, self-direction, motivation, and other related competencies.

Development

Adults do not always employ critical thinking when it’s called for. Many find personal experience more compelling than logical thought or empirical evidence. That said, research suggests that even young children can demonstrate aspects of critical thinking.

However, little is known about how critical thinking skills and dispositions develop; there are no empirically-validated learning progressions of critical thinking skills and dispositions. Indeed, the Delphi Report cautioned that its framework for critical thinking should not be interpreted as implying a developmental progression or hierarchical taxonomy.

Instruction

Empirical research shows that critical thinking can be taught and that some specific instructional approaches and strategies promote more critical thinking. These instructional approaches include explicit teaching of disciplinary content within a course that also teaches critical thinking skills.

Instructional strategies that promote critical thinking include providing…

• Opportunities for students to solve problems with multiple solutions,
• Structure that allows students to respond to open-ended questions and formulate solutions to problems, and
• A variety of learning activities that allow students to choose and engage in solving authentic problems.

Implications of Research for Classroom Assessment Design

Critical thinking is typically assessed within content areas. For example, students analyze evidence, construct arguments, and evaluate the veracity of information and arguments in relation to disciplinary core ideas and content. Assessing students’ level of sophistication with critical thinking skills and dispositions requires close attention to the nature of the task used to elicit students’ critical thinking. Assessments must be thoughtfully designed and structured to (a) prompt complex judgments; (b) include open-ended tasks that allow for multiple, defensible solutions; and (c) make student reasoning visible to teachers. Each is discussed in detail below.

• Assessment tasks should prompt complex judgments.  While some students may exhibit critical thinking without being prompted, most student responses will rise or sink to what the task requires. Therefore, the materials (visual, texts, etc.) used to elicit students’ critical thinking are crucial and have a sizable impact on the extent to which critical thinking is elicited in any given assessment experience. If the task doesn’t ask students to think critically, they likely will not demonstrate evidence of critical thinking. The task, embedded in projects or other curriculum activities, must be designed and structured thoughtfully to elicit students’ critical thinking.
• Assessment tasks should include open-ended tasks.  Open-ended tasks are the opposite of traditional standardized assessments, which rely heavily on selected-response item types that assess limited aspects of critical thinking and other 21 st  century skills ( Ku, 2009 ;  Lai & Viering, 2012 ). Open-ended tasks allow students to decide what information is relevant, how to use the information, and how to demonstrate their understanding of the information; open-ended tasks also allow multiple solution pathways. In contrast, closed tasks typically have one correct solution, and the teacher indicates what information is relevant and how the information is to be presented.
• Assessment tasks should make student thinking visible to teachers.  To provide formative feedback regarding the quality of students’ critical thinking, teachers must administer assessment tasks that render student thinking visible. This can be accomplished in multiple ways, but their commonality is that all approaches likely will require students to provide written or verbal evidence that support their claims, judgments, assertions, and so on.

For a more complete discussion of the topics covered in this post, the full literature review on critical thinking is available  here .

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What Are Critical Thinking Skills and Why Are They Important?

Learn what critical thinking skills are, why they’re important, and how to develop and apply them in your workplace and everyday life.

We often use critical thinking skills without even realizing it. When you make a decision, such as which cereal to eat for breakfast, you're using critical thinking to determine the best option for you that day.

Critical thinking is like a muscle that can be exercised and built over time. It is a skill that can help propel your career to new heights. You'll be able to solve workplace issues, use trial and error to troubleshoot ideas, and more.

We'll take you through what it is and some examples so you can begin your journey in mastering this skill.

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is the ability to interpret, evaluate, and analyze facts and information that are available, to form a judgment or decide if something is right or wrong.

More than just being curious about the world around you, critical thinkers make connections between logical ideas to see the bigger picture. Building your critical thinking skills means being able to advocate your ideas and opinions, present them in a logical fashion, and make decisions for improvement.

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Why is critical thinking important?

Critical thinking is useful in many areas of your life, including your career. It makes you a well-rounded individual, one who has looked at all of their options and possible solutions before making a choice.

According to the University of the People in California, having critical thinking skills is important because they are [ 1 ]:

Crucial for the economy

Essential for improving language and presentation skills

Very helpful in promoting creativity

Important for self-reflection

The basis of science and democracy 

Critical thinking skills are used every day in a myriad of ways and can be applied to situations such as a CEO approaching a group project or a nurse deciding in which order to treat their patients.

Examples of common critical thinking skills

Critical thinking skills differ from individual to individual and are utilized in various ways. Examples of common critical thinking skills include:

Identification of biases: Identifying biases means knowing there are certain people or things that may have an unfair prejudice or influence on the situation at hand. Pointing out these biases helps to remove them from contention when it comes to solving the problem and allows you to see things from a different perspective.

Research: Researching details and facts allows you to be prepared when presenting your information to people. You’ll know exactly what you’re talking about due to the time you’ve spent with the subject material, and you’ll be well-spoken and know what questions to ask to gain more knowledge. When researching, always use credible sources and factual information.

Open-mindedness: Being open-minded when having a conversation or participating in a group activity is crucial to success. Dismissing someone else’s ideas before you’ve heard them will inhibit you from progressing to a solution, and will often create animosity. If you truly want to solve a problem, you need to be willing to hear everyone’s opinions and ideas if you want them to hear yours.

Analysis: Analyzing your research will lead to you having a better understanding of the things you’ve heard and read. As a true critical thinker, you’ll want to seek out the truth and get to the source of issues. It’s important to avoid taking things at face value and always dig deeper.

Problem-solving: Problem-solving is perhaps the most important skill that critical thinkers can possess. The ability to solve issues and bounce back from conflict is what helps you succeed, be a leader, and effect change. One way to properly solve problems is to first recognize there’s a problem that needs solving. By determining the issue at hand, you can then analyze it and come up with several potential solutions.

How to develop critical thinking skills

You can develop critical thinking skills every day if you approach problems in a logical manner. Here are a few ways you can start your path to improvement:

1. Ask questions.

Be inquisitive about everything. Maintain a neutral perspective and develop a natural curiosity, so you can ask questions that develop your understanding of the situation or task at hand. The more details, facts, and information you have, the better informed you are to make decisions.

2. Practice active listening.

Utilize active listening techniques, which are founded in empathy, to really listen to what the other person is saying. Critical thinking, in part, is the cognitive process of reading the situation: the words coming out of their mouth, their body language, their reactions to your own words. Then, you might paraphrase to clarify what they're saying, so both of you agree you're on the same page.

3. Develop your logic and reasoning.

This is perhaps a more abstract task that requires practice and long-term development. However, think of a schoolteacher assessing the classroom to determine how to energize the lesson. There's options such as playing a game, watching a video, or challenging the students with a reward system. Using logic, you might decide that the reward system will take up too much time and is not an immediate fix. A video is not exactly relevant at this time. So, the teacher decides to play a simple word association game.

Scenarios like this happen every day, so next time, you can be more aware of what will work and what won't. Over time, developing your logic and reasoning will strengthen your critical thinking skills.

Learn tips and tricks on how to become a better critical thinker and problem solver through online courses from notable educational institutions on Coursera. Start with Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking from Duke University or Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age from the University of Michigan.

Article sources

University of the People, “ Why is Critical Thinking Important?: A Survival Guide , https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/why-is-critical-thinking-important/.” Accessed May 18, 2023.

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The ABCs of Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Matters

January 10, 2024 por Valentina Gimenez Leave a Comment

Thinking is a natural act for human beings. Every day, we have thousands of thoughts. However, just because we are thinking does not mean we are doing it well or that all our thoughts require critical reasoning because doing so would be too exhausting. Critical thinking becomes a core skill in a world that is changing so dynamically. Thinking critically not only helps with generating a well-founded personal opinion but also helps solve complex problems in many ways.

Given the importance of this skill, the good news is that critical thinking can be exercised and trained. In other words, this 21st-century skill can be intentionally taught. Below, we will explain how.

What Is Critical Thinking?

According to the publication of the brief series Life Skills. Fostering Critical Thinking by the 21st Century Skills Initiative, “critical thinking mainly aims at assessing the strength and appropriateness of a statement, theory, or idea through a questioning  and  perspective-taking  process, which  may  or  may  not  in  turn  result in a possibly novel statement or  theory.”

Furthermore, in this publication by Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin , it is argued that “critical thinking need not lead to an original position to a problem. The most conventional one may be the most appropriate. However, it typically involves examining and evaluating different possible positions”.

In other words, it is not limited to solving problems after a reflection. It is also about being able and willing to challenge the core assumptions of accepted theories, paradigms, or knowledge.

Critical thinking implies recognizing that other perspectives may also have merit and, therefore, evaluating each argument or theory’s possible strengths, weaknesses, and biases is possible, no matter how unaligned they are with what we think.

Critical thinking involves using logic, reasoning, and creativity to reach conclusions.

Why Is Critical Thinking Important?

Critical thinking is a skill that has applications in practically all aspects of daily life. It can help you make better decisions, improve employability, and better understand the world. In other words, critical thinking is a fundamental skill for being a 21st-century citizen.

What Is Critical Thinking Used For?

Critical thinking has various functionalities in everyday life, whether in fulfilling professional obligations or carrying out personal activities. Thinking critically is used to:

• Make good decisions : it is important as an exercise to analyze and evaluate sources of information based on their truthfulness, relevance, and reasoning, which leads to better decision-making. Ask or question before blindly accepting things as they appear, and form your judgment based on the facts, information, and knowledge available.
• Solve problems: use logic and reasoning to analyze and deconstruct problems and choose the best solutions considering the weaknesses and strengths of each alternative solution.
• Promote creativity : this is one of the main characteristics of critical thinking and is associated with the previous point, by questioning facts, theories, or concepts, space is also opened up which is very useful for developing new solutions to problems.
• Improve employability: especially in the digital age, where many jobs are being automated, there is consensus that critical thinking and creativity are two fundamental skills for improving people’s employment prospects.
• Digital and global citizenship : Critical thinking plays a role in individual well-being, but above all, it is considered an essential pillar of the functioning of modern democracies. The ability to voice an independent and well-founded opinion to vote and weigh the quality of arguments presented in the media and other sources of information. In addition, when misinformation, fallacies, and fake news can be a problem for democratic systems, critical thinking helps prevent the spread of false information. It contributes verified, respectful, and ethical content to digital communities and social networks.

4 Steps to Exercise Critical Thinking

According to the publication on critical thinking, there are four key cognitive processes involved in exercising critical thinking:

Determining and understanding the problem is an important first dimension of a critical thinking inquisitive process. This sometimes includes asking why the problem is posed in a certain way, examining whether associated solutions or claims can be based on inaccurate facts or reasoning, and identifying knowledge gaps. This inquiry process partly concerns rational thinking (checking facts, observing, and analyzing reasoning). Still, it includes a more ‘critical’ dimension when identifying possible limitations of the solution and questioning some of the underlying assumptions and interpretations, even when the facts are accurate.

In critical thinking, imagination plays an important role in the mental elaboration of an idea, but all thinking involves some level of imagination. At a higher level, imagination also consists of identifying and reviewing alternative or competing worldviews and theories with an open mind to consider the problem from multiple perspectives.

This allows for a better identification of the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed evidence, arguments, and assumptions, although this evaluation also belongs to the inquisitive process.

The product of critical thinking is one’s position or solution to a problem or judgment about others’ positions or solutions. This mainly involves good inference, a balance between different ways of looking at the problem, and, therefore, recognition of its possible complexities.

As with good thinking, critical thinking involves the ability to argue and justify one’s position rationally, with relevant information, under existing perspectives and socially recognized forms of reasoning, or possibly some new ones.

4. Reflect or evaluate

Finally, although one may consider their stance or way of thinking to be superior to some alternatives, perhaps because it encompasses a broader view or is better supported by existing evidence, critical thinking involves some process of self-reflection on the perspective one espouses, It is possible limitations, and uncertainties. Therefore, this type of thinking implies a certain level of humility, as thinking critically also involves openness to competing ideas.

While one should not adopt ancient skepticism and suspend judgment in all cases, sometimes this may be the most appropriate position.

You may also be interested: 4 Benefits of Developing Listening Skills and the Steps to Achieve It

How to Be a Critical Thinker?

Being a critical thinker brings enormous benefits that go beyond the workplace. It is also good for personal development and daily life in the community. So how do you achieve it?

To be a critical thinker you have to exercise other habits and skills, such as fostering curiosity, questioning the established, improving analysis and communication skills, maintaining self-discipline and being alert to cognitive biases.

Let’s review some of the key skills acquired by great critical thinkers:

• Identify relationships between variables and hypothesis testing.
• Master systemic thinking and scientific reasoning.
• Understand the underlying social, natural, and technological relationships in a system.
• Exercise informational literacy, which includes understanding, finding, and obtaining data, reading, interpreting, evaluating, and handling data.
• Avoid cognitive biases; consider all available information, not just what aligns with your point of view.
• Create a strategy, theory, method, or argument based on evidence synthesis.
• Create an argument that goes beyond the available information.
• Computational thinking: for example, abstractions and generalizations of patterns, structured problem decomposition, and iterative thinking.
• Be able to criticize a work product regarding its credibility, relevance, and bias using a set of standards or a specific framework.

These activities to promote critical thinking can be driven at home, at school, or individually.

Teaching Critical Thinking

Although education systems do not usually have a subject specifically dedicated to developing critical thinking, this skill can be developed as part of other learning. Therefore, the publication “Life Skills: Fostering Critical Thinking” develops some strategies for teaching this skill in schools.

Including Critical Thinking in Education

• Use conceptual rubrics that clarify the skills involved.
• Include critical thinking as a learning objective in lesson plans.
• Provide students with tasks and problems that encourage them to question their cognitive abilities and assumptions and explore multiple perspectives.
• Generate an environment in which students feel safe to take risks expressing their thoughts and expressions that arise from their reasoning.
• Assess critical thinking by including it in exams and national assessments.

By fostering these strategies at all educational levels, students can be better prepared for the future with critical thinking skills and improve the quality of their education.

And you, do you consider yourself a critical thinker? How has exercising critical thinking helped you in your life? Check out our blog and discover more content to boost your critical thinking!

Valentina Gimenez

Valentina Giménez es coordinadora de comunicación de la División de Educación en el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo. Es uruguaya. Fue periodista y productora de contenidos, especializada en temas políticos. Ha trabajado para televisión y prensa escrita. Tiene un MBA por la UCU Business School y es Licenciada en Comunicación Social por la Universidad Católica del Uruguay. Fue consultora en asuntos públicos y comunicación estratégica en su país.

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Critical Thinking – a crucial 21st century skill

As English language teachers our primary focus is on the 4 language skills - Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking. While our students get a hang of these, we have to nudge them towards the 21st century skills especially the 4 Cs - Critical thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, and Communication.

All these can be seamlessly fostered in the English language classrooms. Critical thinking can be introduced with effective questioning . Teachers must guide the students towards the fine art of questioning. Students many times struggle to understand the nuances in a question and are not able to give the expected answer. They lose marks because of this. There is subtle difference between the question words such as ‘contrast’ and ‘differentiate’. Explain, Discuss, Elaborate, Comment and Describe are a few other question words which need answers to be presented in different styles.

There is a simple critical thinking activity which has given positive results with my students. After teaching and discussing the major and minor points of a text, I set this home task for my students.

• Every student gets as many questions as possible from the text along with the expected answer.
• During the next class, every student gets a chance to ask one question to the class. The teacher facilitates the session by making students volunteer to answer the question.
• The answer is evaluated with respect to all the value points. The student who prepared the question is actively involved in the evaluation process as it is his/her question. When the answer is satisfactory, other students record the answer as a point sheet which includes all the value points.
• The class then proceeds to the next question and the question and answer session goes on till we have exhausted all possible questions.
• Factual, extrapolative, descriptive as well as questions based on Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) and higher Order thinking Skills (HOTS) are asked as well their answers discussed in the class.

The first few times, the questions were mainly based on remembering, understanding and applying – LOTS of Bloom’s Taxonomy . As I continued this exercise after each text, I was able to make my students realize the importance of moving to applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating (HOTS of Bloom’s Taxonomy) . It can be observed that applying begins the transition from LOTS to HOTS.

With proper guidance they started thinking critically and became more creative in framing questions. They are now able to frame questions that go beyond the text. My announcement that their question(s) may make an appearance in the next test acted as incentive.

Students have now got the grasp of the art of questioning which has enhanced their critical thinking and creativity.

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The importance of critical thinking in the 21st Century

The International Baccalaureate (IB) will be hosting its annual African Education Festival in Johannesburg, South Africa on 27 – 28 February 2020 under the theme of Leading and Learning in the 21st Century, with a special focus on ”Inspire, Innovate, Integrate” .

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Defining Deeper Learning and 21st Century Skills

Life in the 21st century requires people to be prepared to fill a variety of roles—as workers, parents, citizens, and consumers—in which they will need to apply their knowledge and skills effectively to rapidly changing situations. Recognizing this need, business, political, and educational leaders are increasingly asking schools to teach students the competencies they will need to navigate a changing world—skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, and collaboration. Such skills are often referred to as “21st century skills,” “soft skills,” or “deeper learning.”

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Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century

Americans have long recognized that investments in public education contribute to the common good, enhancing national prosperity and supporting stable families, neighborhoods, and communities. Education is even more critical today, in the face of economic, environmental, and social challenges. Today's children can meet future challenges if their schooling and informal learning activities prepare them for adult roles as citizens, employees, managers, parents, volunteers, and entrepreneurs. To achieve their full potential as adults, young people need to develop a range of skills and knowledge that facilitate mastery and application of English, mathematics, and other school subjects. At the same time, business and political leaders are increasingly asking schools to develop skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and self-management - often referred to as "21st century skills."

Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century describes this important set of key skills that increase deeper learning, college and career readiness, student-centered learning, and higher order thinking. These labels include both cognitive and non-cognitive skills- such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, effective communication, motivation, persistence, and learning to learn. 21st century skills also include creativity, innovation, and ethics that are important to later success and may be developed in formal or informal learning environments.

This report also describes how these skills relate to each other and to more traditional academic skills and content in the key disciplines of reading, mathematics, and science. Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century summarizes the findings of the research that investigates the importance of such skills to success in education, work, and other areas of adult responsibility and that demonstrates the importance of developing these skills in K-16 education. In this report, features related to learning these skills are identified, which include teacher professional development, curriculum, assessment, after-school and out-of-school programs, and informal learning centers such as exhibits and museums.

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An ad hoc committee will review and synthesize current research on the nature of deeper learning and 21st century skills and will address the following:

• Define the set of key skills that are referenced by the labels “deeper learning,” “21st century skills,” “college and career readiness,” “student centered learning,” “next generation learning,” “new basic skills,” and “higher order thinking.”  These labels are typically used to include both cognitive and non cognitive skills - such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, effective communication, motivation, persistence, and learning to learn that can be demonstrated within core academic content areas and that are important to success in education, work, and other areas of adult responsibility.  The labels are also sometimes used to include other important capacities - such as creativity, innovation, and ethics - that are important to later success and may also be developed in formal or informal learning environments.
• Describe how these skills relate to each other and to more traditional academic skills and content in the key disciplines of reading, mathematics, and science.   In particular, consider these skills in the context of the work of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers in specifying Common Core State Standards for English language arts and mathematics, and the work of the NRC in specifying a Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards.
• Summarize the findings of the research that investigates the importance of such skills to success in education, work, and other areas of adult responsibility and that demonstrates the importance of developing these skills in K-16 education.
• Summarize what is known - and what research is needed - about how these skills can be learned, taught, and assessed.  This summary should include both the cognitive foundations of these skills in learning theory and research about effective approaches to teaching and learning these skills, including approaches using digital media.
• Identify features of educational interventions that research suggests could be used as indicators that an intervention is likely to develop the key skills in a substantial and meaningful way.  In particular, for learning in formal school-based environments, identify features related to learning these skills in educational interventions in a) teacher professional development, b) curriculum, and c) assessment   For learning in informal environments, identify features related to learning these skills in educational interventions in d) after-school and out-of-school programs and e) exhibits, museums, and other informal learning centers.   For learning in both formal and informal environments, identify features related to learning these skills in education interventions in f) digital media.

The conclusions and recommendations of the report will provide a common foundation for further research and policy work that seeks to improve the way these skills are developed in K-16 education.  The primary messages from the report will be distilled into a short report brief that could be broadly disseminated.

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A Crash Course in Critical Thinking

What you need to know—and read—about one of the essential skills needed today..

Posted April 8, 2024 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

• In research for "A More Beautiful Question," I did a deep dive into the current crisis in critical thinking.
• Many people may think of themselves as critical thinkers, but they actually are not.
• Here is a series of questions you can ask yourself to try to ensure that you are thinking critically.

Conspiracy theories. Inability to distinguish facts from falsehoods. Widespread confusion about who and what to believe.

These are some of the hallmarks of the current crisis in critical thinking—which just might be the issue of our times. Because if people aren’t willing or able to think critically as they choose potential leaders, they’re apt to choose bad ones. And if they can’t judge whether the information they’re receiving is sound, they may follow faulty advice while ignoring recommendations that are science-based and solid (and perhaps life-saving).

Moreover, as a society, if we can’t think critically about the many serious challenges we face, it becomes more difficult to agree on what those challenges are—much less solve them.

On a personal level, critical thinking can enable you to make better everyday decisions. It can help you make sense of an increasingly complex and confusing world.

In the new expanded edition of my book A More Beautiful Question ( AMBQ ), I took a deep dive into critical thinking. Here are a few key things I learned.

First off, before you can get better at critical thinking, you should understand what it is. It’s not just about being a skeptic. When thinking critically, we are thoughtfully reasoning, evaluating, and making decisions based on evidence and logic. And—perhaps most important—while doing this, a critical thinker always strives to be open-minded and fair-minded . That’s not easy: It demands that you constantly question your assumptions and biases and that you always remain open to considering opposing views.

In today’s polarized environment, many people think of themselves as critical thinkers simply because they ask skeptical questions—often directed at, say, certain government policies or ideas espoused by those on the “other side” of the political divide. The problem is, they may not be asking these questions with an open mind or a willingness to fairly consider opposing views.

When people do this, they’re engaging in “weak-sense critical thinking”—a term popularized by the late Richard Paul, a co-founder of The Foundation for Critical Thinking . “Weak-sense critical thinking” means applying the tools and practices of critical thinking—questioning, investigating, evaluating—but with the sole purpose of confirming one’s own bias or serving an agenda.

In AMBQ , I lay out a series of questions you can ask yourself to try to ensure that you’re thinking critically. Here are some of the questions to consider:

• Why do I believe what I believe?
• Are my views based on evidence?
• Have I fairly and thoughtfully considered differing viewpoints?
• Am I truly open to changing my mind?

Of course, becoming a better critical thinker is not as simple as just asking yourself a few questions. Critical thinking is a habit of mind that must be developed and strengthened over time. In effect, you must train yourself to think in a manner that is more effortful, aware, grounded, and balanced.

For those interested in giving themselves a crash course in critical thinking—something I did myself, as I was working on my book—I thought it might be helpful to share a list of some of the books that have shaped my own thinking on this subject. As a self-interested author, I naturally would suggest that you start with the new 10th-anniversary edition of A More Beautiful Question , but beyond that, here are the top eight critical-thinking books I’d recommend.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark , by Carl Sagan

This book simply must top the list, because the late scientist and author Carl Sagan continues to be such a bright shining light in the critical thinking universe. Chapter 12 includes the details on Sagan’s famous “baloney detection kit,” a collection of lessons and tips on how to deal with bogus arguments and logical fallacies.

Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments Into Extraordinary Results , by Shane Parrish

The creator of the Farnham Street website and host of the “Knowledge Project” podcast explains how to contend with biases and unconscious reactions so you can make better everyday decisions. It contains insights from many of the brilliant thinkers Shane has studied.

Good Thinking: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World , by David Robert Grimes

A brilliant, comprehensive 2021 book on critical thinking that, to my mind, hasn’t received nearly enough attention . The scientist Grimes dissects bad thinking, shows why it persists, and offers the tools to defeat it.

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know , by Adam Grant

Intellectual humility—being willing to admit that you might be wrong—is what this book is primarily about. But Adam, the renowned Wharton psychology professor and bestselling author, takes the reader on a mind-opening journey with colorful stories and characters.

Think Like a Detective: A Kid's Guide to Critical Thinking , by David Pakman

The popular YouTuber and podcast host Pakman—normally known for talking politics —has written a terrific primer on critical thinking for children. The illustrated book presents critical thinking as a “superpower” that enables kids to unlock mysteries and dig for truth. (I also recommend Pakman’s second kids’ book called Think Like a Scientist .)

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters , by Steven Pinker

The Harvard psychology professor Pinker tackles conspiracy theories head-on but also explores concepts involving risk/reward, probability and randomness, and correlation/causation. And if that strikes you as daunting, be assured that Pinker makes it lively and accessible.

How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion and Persuasion , by David McRaney

David is a science writer who hosts the popular podcast “You Are Not So Smart” (and his ideas are featured in A More Beautiful Question ). His well-written book looks at ways you can actually get through to people who see the world very differently than you (hint: bludgeoning them with facts definitely won’t work).

A Healthy Democracy's Best Hope: Building the Critical Thinking Habit , by M Neil Browne and Chelsea Kulhanek

Neil Browne, author of the seminal Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking, has been a pioneer in presenting critical thinking as a question-based approach to making sense of the world around us. His newest book, co-authored with Chelsea Kulhanek, breaks down critical thinking into “11 explosive questions”—including the “priors question” (which challenges us to question assumptions), the “evidence question” (focusing on how to evaluate and weigh evidence), and the “humility question” (which reminds us that a critical thinker must be humble enough to consider the possibility of being wrong).

Warren Berger is a longtime journalist and author of A More Beautiful Question .

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Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a widely accepted educational goal. Its definition is contested, but the competing definitions can be understood as differing conceptions of the same basic concept: careful thinking directed to a goal. Conceptions differ with respect to the scope of such thinking, the type of goal, the criteria and norms for thinking carefully, and the thinking components on which they focus. Its adoption as an educational goal has been recommended on the basis of respect for students’ autonomy and preparing students for success in life and for democratic citizenship. “Critical thinkers” have the dispositions and abilities that lead them to think critically when appropriate. The abilities can be identified directly; the dispositions indirectly, by considering what factors contribute to or impede exercise of the abilities. Standardized tests have been developed to assess the degree to which a person possesses such dispositions and abilities. Educational intervention has been shown experimentally to improve them, particularly when it includes dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring. Controversies have arisen over the generalizability of critical thinking across domains, over alleged bias in critical thinking theories and instruction, and over the relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking.

2.1 Dewey’s Three Main Examples

2.2 dewey’s other examples, 2.3 further examples, 2.4 non-examples, 3. the definition of critical thinking, 4. its value, 5. the process of thinking critically, 6. components of the process, 7. contributory dispositions and abilities, 8.1 initiating dispositions, 8.2 internal dispositions, 9. critical thinking abilities, 10. required knowledge, 11. educational methods, 12.1 the generalizability of critical thinking, 12.2 bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, 12.3 relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking, other internet resources, related entries.

Use of the term ‘critical thinking’ to describe an educational goal goes back to the American philosopher John Dewey (1910), who more commonly called it ‘reflective thinking’. He defined it as

active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends. (Dewey 1910: 6; 1933: 9)

and identified a habit of such consideration with a scientific attitude of mind. His lengthy quotations of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill indicate that he was not the first person to propose development of a scientific attitude of mind as an educational goal.

In the 1930s, many of the schools that participated in the Eight-Year Study of the Progressive Education Association (Aikin 1942) adopted critical thinking as an educational goal, for whose achievement the study’s Evaluation Staff developed tests (Smith, Tyler, & Evaluation Staff 1942). Glaser (1941) showed experimentally that it was possible to improve the critical thinking of high school students. Bloom’s influential taxonomy of cognitive educational objectives (Bloom et al. 1956) incorporated critical thinking abilities. Ennis (1962) proposed 12 aspects of critical thinking as a basis for research on the teaching and evaluation of critical thinking ability.

Since 1980, an annual international conference in California on critical thinking and educational reform has attracted tens of thousands of educators from all levels of education and from many parts of the world. Also since 1980, the state university system in California has required all undergraduate students to take a critical thinking course. Since 1983, the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking has sponsored sessions in conjunction with the divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association (APA). In 1987, the APA’s Committee on Pre-College Philosophy commissioned a consensus statement on critical thinking for purposes of educational assessment and instruction (Facione 1990a). Researchers have developed standardized tests of critical thinking abilities and dispositions; for details, see the Supplement on Assessment . Educational jurisdictions around the world now include critical thinking in guidelines for curriculum and assessment.

For details on this history, see the Supplement on History .

2. Examples and Non-Examples

Before considering the definition of critical thinking, it will be helpful to have in mind some examples of critical thinking, as well as some examples of kinds of thinking that would apparently not count as critical thinking.

Dewey (1910: 68–71; 1933: 91–94) takes as paradigms of reflective thinking three class papers of students in which they describe their thinking. The examples range from the everyday to the scientific.

Transit : “The other day, when I was down town on 16th Street, a clock caught my eye. I saw that the hands pointed to 12:20. This suggested that I had an engagement at 124th Street, at one o’clock. I reasoned that as it had taken me an hour to come down on a surface car, I should probably be twenty minutes late if I returned the same way. I might save twenty minutes by a subway express. But was there a station near? If not, I might lose more than twenty minutes in looking for one. Then I thought of the elevated, and I saw there was such a line within two blocks. But where was the station? If it were several blocks above or below the street I was on, I should lose time instead of gaining it. My mind went back to the subway express as quicker than the elevated; furthermore, I remembered that it went nearer than the elevated to the part of 124th Street I wished to reach, so that time would be saved at the end of the journey. I concluded in favor of the subway, and reached my destination by one o’clock.” (Dewey 1910: 68–69; 1933: 91–92)

Ferryboat : “Projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat on which I daily cross the river is a long white pole, having a gilded ball at its tip. It suggested a flagpole when I first saw it; its color, shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. But soon difficulties presented themselves. The pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere on the boat two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. It seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying.

“I then tried to imagine all possible purposes of the pole, and to consider for which of these it was best suited: (a) Possibly it was an ornament. But as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (b) Possibly it was the terminal of a wireless telegraph. But the same considerations made this improbable. Besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house. (c) Its purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving.

“In support of this conclusion, I discovered that the pole was lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it. Moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the pilot’s position, it must appear to project far out in front of the boat. Moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, he would need some such guide as to its direction. Tugboats would also need poles for such a purpose. This hypothesis was so much more probable than the others that I accepted it. I formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to enable him to steer correctly.” (Dewey 1910: 69–70; 1933: 92–93)

Bubbles : “In washing tumblers in hot soapsuds and placing them mouth downward on a plate, bubbles appeared on the outside of the mouth of the tumblers and then went inside. Why? The presence of bubbles suggests air, which I note must come from inside the tumbler. I see that the soapy water on the plate prevents escape of the air save as it may be caught in bubbles. But why should air leave the tumbler? There was no substance entering to force it out. It must have expanded. It expands by increase of heat, or by decrease of pressure, or both. Could the air have become heated after the tumbler was taken from the hot suds? Clearly not the air that was already entangled in the water. If heated air was the cause, cold air must have entered in transferring the tumblers from the suds to the plate. I test to see if this supposition is true by taking several more tumblers out. Some I shake so as to make sure of entrapping cold air in them. Some I take out holding mouth downward in order to prevent cold air from entering. Bubbles appear on the outside of every one of the former and on none of the latter. I must be right in my inference. Air from the outside must have been expanded by the heat of the tumbler, which explains the appearance of the bubbles on the outside. But why do they then go inside? Cold contracts. The tumbler cooled and also the air inside it. Tension was removed, and hence bubbles appeared inside. To be sure of this, I test by placing a cup of ice on the tumbler while the bubbles are still forming outside. They soon reverse” (Dewey 1910: 70–71; 1933: 93–94).

Dewey (1910, 1933) sprinkles his book with other examples of critical thinking. We will refer to the following.

Weather : A man on a walk notices that it has suddenly become cool, thinks that it is probably going to rain, looks up and sees a dark cloud obscuring the sun, and quickens his steps (1910: 6–10; 1933: 9–13).

Disorder : A man finds his rooms on his return to them in disorder with his belongings thrown about, thinks at first of burglary as an explanation, then thinks of mischievous children as being an alternative explanation, then looks to see whether valuables are missing, and discovers that they are (1910: 82–83; 1933: 166–168).

Typhoid : A physician diagnosing a patient whose conspicuous symptoms suggest typhoid avoids drawing a conclusion until more data are gathered by questioning the patient and by making tests (1910: 85–86; 1933: 170).

Blur : A moving blur catches our eye in the distance, we ask ourselves whether it is a cloud of whirling dust or a tree moving its branches or a man signaling to us, we think of other traits that should be found on each of those possibilities, and we look and see if those traits are found (1910: 102, 108; 1933: 121, 133).

Suction pump : In thinking about the suction pump, the scientist first notes that it will draw water only to a maximum height of 33 feet at sea level and to a lesser maximum height at higher elevations, selects for attention the differing atmospheric pressure at these elevations, sets up experiments in which the air is removed from a vessel containing water (when suction no longer works) and in which the weight of air at various levels is calculated, compares the results of reasoning about the height to which a given weight of air will allow a suction pump to raise water with the observed maximum height at different elevations, and finally assimilates the suction pump to such apparently different phenomena as the siphon and the rising of a balloon (1910: 150–153; 1933: 195–198).

Diamond : A passenger in a car driving in a diamond lane reserved for vehicles with at least one passenger notices that the diamond marks on the pavement are far apart in some places and close together in others. Why? The driver suggests that the reason may be that the diamond marks are not needed where there is a solid double line separating the diamond lane from the adjoining lane, but are needed when there is a dotted single line permitting crossing into the diamond lane. Further observation confirms that the diamonds are close together when a dotted line separates the diamond lane from its neighbour, but otherwise far apart.

Rash : A woman suddenly develops a very itchy red rash on her throat and upper chest. She recently noticed a mark on the back of her right hand, but was not sure whether the mark was a rash or a scrape. She lies down in bed and thinks about what might be causing the rash and what to do about it. About two weeks before, she began taking blood pressure medication that contained a sulfa drug, and the pharmacist had warned her, in view of a previous allergic reaction to a medication containing a sulfa drug, to be on the alert for an allergic reaction; however, she had been taking the medication for two weeks with no such effect. The day before, she began using a new cream on her neck and upper chest; against the new cream as the cause was mark on the back of her hand, which had not been exposed to the cream. She began taking probiotics about a month before. She also recently started new eye drops, but she supposed that manufacturers of eye drops would be careful not to include allergy-causing components in the medication. The rash might be a heat rash, since she recently was sweating profusely from her upper body. Since she is about to go away on a short vacation, where she would not have access to her usual physician, she decides to keep taking the probiotics and using the new eye drops but to discontinue the blood pressure medication and to switch back to the old cream for her neck and upper chest. She forms a plan to consult her regular physician on her return about the blood pressure medication.

Candidate : Although Dewey included no examples of thinking directed at appraising the arguments of others, such thinking has come to be considered a kind of critical thinking. We find an example of such thinking in the performance task on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), which its sponsoring organization describes as

a performance-based assessment that provides a measure of an institution’s contribution to the development of critical-thinking and written communication skills of its students. (Council for Aid to Education 2017)

A sample task posted on its website requires the test-taker to write a report for public distribution evaluating a fictional candidate’s policy proposals and their supporting arguments, using supplied background documents, with a recommendation on whether to endorse the candidate.

Immediate acceptance of an idea that suggests itself as a solution to a problem (e.g., a possible explanation of an event or phenomenon, an action that seems likely to produce a desired result) is “uncritical thinking, the minimum of reflection” (Dewey 1910: 13). On-going suspension of judgment in the light of doubt about a possible solution is not critical thinking (Dewey 1910: 108). Critique driven by a dogmatically held political or religious ideology is not critical thinking; thus Paulo Freire (1968 [1970]) is using the term (e.g., at 1970: 71, 81, 100, 146) in a more politically freighted sense that includes not only reflection but also revolutionary action against oppression. Derivation of a conclusion from given data using an algorithm is not critical thinking.

What is critical thinking? There are many definitions. Ennis (2016) lists 14 philosophically oriented scholarly definitions and three dictionary definitions. Following Rawls (1971), who distinguished his conception of justice from a utilitarian conception but regarded them as rival conceptions of the same concept, Ennis maintains that the 17 definitions are different conceptions of the same concept. Rawls articulated the shared concept of justice as

a characteristic set of principles for assigning basic rights and duties and for determining… the proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. (Rawls 1971: 5)

Bailin et al. (1999b) claim that, if one considers what sorts of thinking an educator would take not to be critical thinking and what sorts to be critical thinking, one can conclude that educators typically understand critical thinking to have at least three features.

• It is done for the purpose of making up one’s mind about what to believe or do.
• The person engaging in the thinking is trying to fulfill standards of adequacy and accuracy appropriate to the thinking.
• The thinking fulfills the relevant standards to some threshold level.

One could sum up the core concept that involves these three features by saying that critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking. This core concept seems to apply to all the examples of critical thinking described in the previous section. As for the non-examples, their exclusion depends on construing careful thinking as excluding jumping immediately to conclusions, suspending judgment no matter how strong the evidence, reasoning from an unquestioned ideological or religious perspective, and routinely using an algorithm to answer a question.

If the core of critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking, conceptions of it can vary according to its presumed scope, its presumed goal, one’s criteria and threshold for being careful, and the thinking component on which one focuses. As to its scope, some conceptions (e.g., Dewey 1910, 1933) restrict it to constructive thinking on the basis of one’s own observations and experiments, others (e.g., Ennis 1962; Fisher & Scriven 1997; Johnson 1992) to appraisal of the products of such thinking. Ennis (1991) and Bailin et al. (1999b) take it to cover both construction and appraisal. As to its goal, some conceptions restrict it to forming a judgment (Dewey 1910, 1933; Lipman 1987; Facione 1990a). Others allow for actions as well as beliefs as the end point of a process of critical thinking (Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b). As to the criteria and threshold for being careful, definitions vary in the term used to indicate that critical thinking satisfies certain norms: “intellectually disciplined” (Scriven & Paul 1987), “reasonable” (Ennis 1991), “skillful” (Lipman 1987), “skilled” (Fisher & Scriven 1997), “careful” (Bailin & Battersby 2009). Some definitions specify these norms, referring variously to “consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Dewey 1910, 1933); “the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning” (Glaser 1941); “conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication” (Scriven & Paul 1987); the requirement that “it is sensitive to context, relies on criteria, and is self-correcting” (Lipman 1987); “evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations” (Facione 1990a); and “plus-minus considerations of the product in terms of appropriate standards (or criteria)” (Johnson 1992). Stanovich and Stanovich (2010) propose to ground the concept of critical thinking in the concept of rationality, which they understand as combining epistemic rationality (fitting one’s beliefs to the world) and instrumental rationality (optimizing goal fulfillment); a critical thinker, in their view, is someone with “a propensity to override suboptimal responses from the autonomous mind” (2010: 227). These variant specifications of norms for critical thinking are not necessarily incompatible with one another, and in any case presuppose the core notion of thinking carefully. As to the thinking component singled out, some definitions focus on suspension of judgment during the thinking (Dewey 1910; McPeck 1981), others on inquiry while judgment is suspended (Bailin & Battersby 2009, 2021), others on the resulting judgment (Facione 1990a), and still others on responsiveness to reasons (Siegel 1988). Kuhn (2019) takes critical thinking to be more a dialogic practice of advancing and responding to arguments than an individual ability.

In educational contexts, a definition of critical thinking is a “programmatic definition” (Scheffler 1960: 19). It expresses a practical program for achieving an educational goal. For this purpose, a one-sentence formulaic definition is much less useful than articulation of a critical thinking process, with criteria and standards for the kinds of thinking that the process may involve. The real educational goal is recognition, adoption and implementation by students of those criteria and standards. That adoption and implementation in turn consists in acquiring the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker.

Conceptions of critical thinking generally do not include moral integrity as part of the concept. Dewey, for example, took critical thinking to be the ultimate intellectual goal of education, but distinguished it from the development of social cooperation among school children, which he took to be the central moral goal. Ennis (1996, 2011) added to his previous list of critical thinking dispositions a group of dispositions to care about the dignity and worth of every person, which he described as a “correlative” (1996) disposition without which critical thinking would be less valuable and perhaps harmful. An educational program that aimed at developing critical thinking but not the correlative disposition to care about the dignity and worth of every person, he asserted, “would be deficient and perhaps dangerous” (Ennis 1996: 172).

Dewey thought that education for reflective thinking would be of value to both the individual and society; recognition in educational practice of the kinship to the scientific attitude of children’s native curiosity, fertile imagination and love of experimental inquiry “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste” (Dewey 1910: iii). Schools participating in the Eight-Year Study took development of the habit of reflective thinking and skill in solving problems as a means to leading young people to understand, appreciate and live the democratic way of life characteristic of the United States (Aikin 1942: 17–18, 81). Harvey Siegel (1988: 55–61) has offered four considerations in support of adopting critical thinking as an educational ideal. (1) Respect for persons requires that schools and teachers honour students’ demands for reasons and explanations, deal with students honestly, and recognize the need to confront students’ independent judgment; these requirements concern the manner in which teachers treat students. (2) Education has the task of preparing children to be successful adults, a task that requires development of their self-sufficiency. (3) Education should initiate children into the rational traditions in such fields as history, science and mathematics. (4) Education should prepare children to become democratic citizens, which requires reasoned procedures and critical talents and attitudes. To supplement these considerations, Siegel (1988: 62–90) responds to two objections: the ideology objection that adoption of any educational ideal requires a prior ideological commitment and the indoctrination objection that cultivation of critical thinking cannot escape being a form of indoctrination.

Despite the diversity of our 11 examples, one can recognize a common pattern. Dewey analyzed it as consisting of five phases:

• suggestions , in which the mind leaps forward to a possible solution;
• an intellectualization of the difficulty or perplexity into a problem to be solved, a question for which the answer must be sought;
• the use of one suggestion after another as a leading idea, or hypothesis , to initiate and guide observation and other operations in collection of factual material;
• the mental elaboration of the idea or supposition as an idea or supposition ( reasoning , in the sense on which reasoning is a part, not the whole, of inference); and
• testing the hypothesis by overt or imaginative action. (Dewey 1933: 106–107; italics in original)

The process of reflective thinking consisting of these phases would be preceded by a perplexed, troubled or confused situation and followed by a cleared-up, unified, resolved situation (Dewey 1933: 106). The term ‘phases’ replaced the term ‘steps’ (Dewey 1910: 72), thus removing the earlier suggestion of an invariant sequence. Variants of the above analysis appeared in (Dewey 1916: 177) and (Dewey 1938: 101–119).

The variant formulations indicate the difficulty of giving a single logical analysis of such a varied process. The process of critical thinking may have a spiral pattern, with the problem being redefined in the light of obstacles to solving it as originally formulated. For example, the person in Transit might have concluded that getting to the appointment at the scheduled time was impossible and have reformulated the problem as that of rescheduling the appointment for a mutually convenient time. Further, defining a problem does not always follow after or lead immediately to an idea of a suggested solution. Nor should it do so, as Dewey himself recognized in describing the physician in Typhoid as avoiding any strong preference for this or that conclusion before getting further information (Dewey 1910: 85; 1933: 170). People with a hypothesis in mind, even one to which they have a very weak commitment, have a so-called “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998): they are likely to pay attention to evidence that confirms the hypothesis and to ignore evidence that counts against it or for some competing hypothesis. Detectives, intelligence agencies, and investigators of airplane accidents are well advised to gather relevant evidence systematically and to postpone even tentative adoption of an explanatory hypothesis until the collected evidence rules out with the appropriate degree of certainty all but one explanation. Dewey’s analysis of the critical thinking process can be faulted as well for requiring acceptance or rejection of a possible solution to a defined problem, with no allowance for deciding in the light of the available evidence to suspend judgment. Further, given the great variety of kinds of problems for which reflection is appropriate, there is likely to be variation in its component events. Perhaps the best way to conceptualize the critical thinking process is as a checklist whose component events can occur in a variety of orders, selectively, and more than once. These component events might include (1) noticing a difficulty, (2) defining the problem, (3) dividing the problem into manageable sub-problems, (4) formulating a variety of possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (5) determining what evidence is relevant to deciding among possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (6) devising a plan of systematic observation or experiment that will uncover the relevant evidence, (7) carrying out the plan of systematic observation or experimentation, (8) noting the results of the systematic observation or experiment, (9) gathering relevant testimony and information from others, (10) judging the credibility of testimony and information gathered from others, (11) drawing conclusions from gathered evidence and accepted testimony, and (12) accepting a solution that the evidence adequately supports (cf. Hitchcock 2017: 485).

Checklist conceptions of the process of critical thinking are open to the objection that they are too mechanical and procedural to fit the multi-dimensional and emotionally charged issues for which critical thinking is urgently needed (Paul 1984). For such issues, a more dialectical process is advocated, in which competing relevant world views are identified, their implications explored, and some sort of creative synthesis attempted.

If one considers the critical thinking process illustrated by the 11 examples, one can identify distinct kinds of mental acts and mental states that form part of it. To distinguish, label and briefly characterize these components is a useful preliminary to identifying abilities, skills, dispositions, attitudes, habits and the like that contribute causally to thinking critically. Identifying such abilities and habits is in turn a useful preliminary to setting educational goals. Setting the goals is in its turn a useful preliminary to designing strategies for helping learners to achieve the goals and to designing ways of measuring the extent to which learners have done so. Such measures provide both feedback to learners on their achievement and a basis for experimental research on the effectiveness of various strategies for educating people to think critically. Let us begin, then, by distinguishing the kinds of mental acts and mental events that can occur in a critical thinking process.

• Observing : One notices something in one’s immediate environment (sudden cooling of temperature in Weather , bubbles forming outside a glass and then going inside in Bubbles , a moving blur in the distance in Blur , a rash in Rash ). Or one notes the results of an experiment or systematic observation (valuables missing in Disorder , no suction without air pressure in Suction pump )
• Feeling : One feels puzzled or uncertain about something (how to get to an appointment on time in Transit , why the diamonds vary in spacing in Diamond ). One wants to resolve this perplexity. One feels satisfaction once one has worked out an answer (to take the subway express in Transit , diamonds closer when needed as a warning in Diamond ).
• Wondering : One formulates a question to be addressed (why bubbles form outside a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , how suction pumps work in Suction pump , what caused the rash in Rash ).
• Imagining : One thinks of possible answers (bus or subway or elevated in Transit , flagpole or ornament or wireless communication aid or direction indicator in Ferryboat , allergic reaction or heat rash in Rash ).
• Inferring : One works out what would be the case if a possible answer were assumed (valuables missing if there has been a burglary in Disorder , earlier start to the rash if it is an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug in Rash ). Or one draws a conclusion once sufficient relevant evidence is gathered (take the subway in Transit , burglary in Disorder , discontinue blood pressure medication and new cream in Rash ).
• Knowledge : One uses stored knowledge of the subject-matter to generate possible answers or to infer what would be expected on the assumption of a particular answer (knowledge of a city’s public transit system in Transit , of the requirements for a flagpole in Ferryboat , of Boyle’s law in Bubbles , of allergic reactions in Rash ).
• Experimenting : One designs and carries out an experiment or a systematic observation to find out whether the results deduced from a possible answer will occur (looking at the location of the flagpole in relation to the pilot’s position in Ferryboat , putting an ice cube on top of a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , measuring the height to which a suction pump will draw water at different elevations in Suction pump , noticing the spacing of diamonds when movement to or from a diamond lane is allowed in Diamond ).
• Consulting : One finds a source of information, gets the information from the source, and makes a judgment on whether to accept it. None of our 11 examples include searching for sources of information. In this respect they are unrepresentative, since most people nowadays have almost instant access to information relevant to answering any question, including many of those illustrated by the examples. However, Candidate includes the activities of extracting information from sources and evaluating its credibility.
• Identifying and analyzing arguments : One notices an argument and works out its structure and content as a preliminary to evaluating its strength. This activity is central to Candidate . It is an important part of a critical thinking process in which one surveys arguments for various positions on an issue.
• Judging : One makes a judgment on the basis of accumulated evidence and reasoning, such as the judgment in Ferryboat that the purpose of the pole is to provide direction to the pilot.
• Deciding : One makes a decision on what to do or on what policy to adopt, as in the decision in Transit to take the subway.

By definition, a person who does something voluntarily is both willing and able to do that thing at that time. Both the willingness and the ability contribute causally to the person’s action, in the sense that the voluntary action would not occur if either (or both) of these were lacking. For example, suppose that one is standing with one’s arms at one’s sides and one voluntarily lifts one’s right arm to an extended horizontal position. One would not do so if one were unable to lift one’s arm, if for example one’s right side was paralyzed as the result of a stroke. Nor would one do so if one were unwilling to lift one’s arm, if for example one were participating in a street demonstration at which a white supremacist was urging the crowd to lift their right arm in a Nazi salute and one were unwilling to express support in this way for the racist Nazi ideology. The same analysis applies to a voluntary mental process of thinking critically. It requires both willingness and ability to think critically, including willingness and ability to perform each of the mental acts that compose the process and to coordinate those acts in a sequence that is directed at resolving the initiating perplexity.

Consider willingness first. We can identify causal contributors to willingness to think critically by considering factors that would cause a person who was able to think critically about an issue nevertheless not to do so (Hamby 2014). For each factor, the opposite condition thus contributes causally to willingness to think critically on a particular occasion. For example, people who habitually jump to conclusions without considering alternatives will not think critically about issues that arise, even if they have the required abilities. The contrary condition of willingness to suspend judgment is thus a causal contributor to thinking critically.

Now consider ability. In contrast to the ability to move one’s arm, which can be completely absent because a stroke has left the arm paralyzed, the ability to think critically is a developed ability, whose absence is not a complete absence of ability to think but absence of ability to think well. We can identify the ability to think well directly, in terms of the norms and standards for good thinking. In general, to be able do well the thinking activities that can be components of a critical thinking process, one needs to know the concepts and principles that characterize their good performance, to recognize in particular cases that the concepts and principles apply, and to apply them. The knowledge, recognition and application may be procedural rather than declarative. It may be domain-specific rather than widely applicable, and in either case may need subject-matter knowledge, sometimes of a deep kind.

Reflections of the sort illustrated by the previous two paragraphs have led scholars to identify the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a “critical thinker”, i.e., someone who thinks critically whenever it is appropriate to do so. We turn now to these three types of causal contributors to thinking critically. We start with dispositions, since arguably these are the most powerful contributors to being a critical thinker, can be fostered at an early stage of a child’s development, and are susceptible to general improvement (Glaser 1941: 175)

8. Critical Thinking Dispositions

Educational researchers use the term ‘dispositions’ broadly for the habits of mind and attitudes that contribute causally to being a critical thinker. Some writers (e.g., Paul & Elder 2006; Hamby 2014; Bailin & Battersby 2016a) propose to use the term ‘virtues’ for this dimension of a critical thinker. The virtues in question, although they are virtues of character, concern the person’s ways of thinking rather than the person’s ways of behaving towards others. They are not moral virtues but intellectual virtues, of the sort articulated by Zagzebski (1996) and discussed by Turri, Alfano, and Greco (2017).

On a realistic conception, thinking dispositions or intellectual virtues are real properties of thinkers. They are general tendencies, propensities, or inclinations to think in particular ways in particular circumstances, and can be genuinely explanatory (Siegel 1999). Sceptics argue that there is no evidence for a specific mental basis for the habits of mind that contribute to thinking critically, and that it is pedagogically misleading to posit such a basis (Bailin et al. 1999a). Whatever their status, critical thinking dispositions need motivation for their initial formation in a child—motivation that may be external or internal. As children develop, the force of habit will gradually become important in sustaining the disposition (Nieto & Valenzuela 2012). Mere force of habit, however, is unlikely to sustain critical thinking dispositions. Critical thinkers must value and enjoy using their knowledge and abilities to think things through for themselves. They must be committed to, and lovers of, inquiry.

A person may have a critical thinking disposition with respect to only some kinds of issues. For example, one could be open-minded about scientific issues but not about religious issues. Similarly, one could be confident in one’s ability to reason about the theological implications of the existence of evil in the world but not in one’s ability to reason about the best design for a guided ballistic missile.

Facione (1990a: 25) divides “affective dispositions” of critical thinking into approaches to life and living in general and approaches to specific issues, questions or problems. Adapting this distinction, one can usefully divide critical thinking dispositions into initiating dispositions (those that contribute causally to starting to think critically about an issue) and internal dispositions (those that contribute causally to doing a good job of thinking critically once one has started). The two categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, open-mindedness, in the sense of willingness to consider alternative points of view to one’s own, is both an initiating and an internal disposition.

Using the strategy of considering factors that would block people with the ability to think critically from doing so, we can identify as initiating dispositions for thinking critically attentiveness, a habit of inquiry, self-confidence, courage, open-mindedness, willingness to suspend judgment, trust in reason, wanting evidence for one’s beliefs, and seeking the truth. We consider briefly what each of these dispositions amounts to, in each case citing sources that acknowledge them.

• Attentiveness : One will not think critically if one fails to recognize an issue that needs to be thought through. For example, the pedestrian in Weather would not have looked up if he had not noticed that the air was suddenly cooler. To be a critical thinker, then, one needs to be habitually attentive to one’s surroundings, noticing not only what one senses but also sources of perplexity in messages received and in one’s own beliefs and attitudes (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Habit of inquiry : Inquiry is effortful, and one needs an internal push to engage in it. For example, the student in Bubbles could easily have stopped at idle wondering about the cause of the bubbles rather than reasoning to a hypothesis, then designing and executing an experiment to test it. Thus willingness to think critically needs mental energy and initiative. What can supply that energy? Love of inquiry, or perhaps just a habit of inquiry. Hamby (2015) has argued that willingness to inquire is the central critical thinking virtue, one that encompasses all the others. It is recognized as a critical thinking disposition by Dewey (1910: 29; 1933: 35), Glaser (1941: 5), Ennis (1987: 12; 1991: 8), Facione (1990a: 25), Bailin et al. (1999b: 294), Halpern (1998: 452), and Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo (2001).
• Self-confidence : Lack of confidence in one’s abilities can block critical thinking. For example, if the woman in Rash lacked confidence in her ability to figure things out for herself, she might just have assumed that the rash on her chest was the allergic reaction to her medication against which the pharmacist had warned her. Thus willingness to think critically requires confidence in one’s ability to inquire (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Courage : Fear of thinking for oneself can stop one from doing it. Thus willingness to think critically requires intellectual courage (Paul & Elder 2006: 16).
• Open-mindedness : A dogmatic attitude will impede thinking critically. For example, a person who adheres rigidly to a “pro-choice” position on the issue of the legal status of induced abortion is likely to be unwilling to consider seriously the issue of when in its development an unborn child acquires a moral right to life. Thus willingness to think critically requires open-mindedness, in the sense of a willingness to examine questions to which one already accepts an answer but which further evidence or reasoning might cause one to answer differently (Dewey 1933; Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b; Halpern 1998, Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). Paul (1981) emphasizes open-mindedness about alternative world-views, and recommends a dialectical approach to integrating such views as central to what he calls “strong sense” critical thinking. In three studies, Haran, Ritov, & Mellers (2013) found that actively open-minded thinking, including “the tendency to weigh new evidence against a favored belief, to spend sufficient time on a problem before giving up, and to consider carefully the opinions of others in forming one’s own”, led study participants to acquire information and thus to make accurate estimations.
• Willingness to suspend judgment : Premature closure on an initial solution will block critical thinking. Thus willingness to think critically requires a willingness to suspend judgment while alternatives are explored (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Halpern 1998).
• Trust in reason : Since distrust in the processes of reasoned inquiry will dissuade one from engaging in it, trust in them is an initiating critical thinking disposition (Facione 1990a, 25; Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001; Paul & Elder 2006). In reaction to an allegedly exclusive emphasis on reason in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, Thayer-Bacon (2000) argues that intuition, imagination, and emotion have important roles to play in an adequate conception of critical thinking that she calls “constructive thinking”. From her point of view, critical thinking requires trust not only in reason but also in intuition, imagination, and emotion.
• Seeking the truth : If one does not care about the truth but is content to stick with one’s initial bias on an issue, then one will not think critically about it. Seeking the truth is thus an initiating critical thinking disposition (Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). A disposition to seek the truth is implicit in more specific critical thinking dispositions, such as trying to be well-informed, considering seriously points of view other than one’s own, looking for alternatives, suspending judgment when the evidence is insufficient, and adopting a position when the evidence supporting it is sufficient.

Some of the initiating dispositions, such as open-mindedness and willingness to suspend judgment, are also internal critical thinking dispositions, in the sense of mental habits or attitudes that contribute causally to doing a good job of critical thinking once one starts the process. But there are many other internal critical thinking dispositions. Some of them are parasitic on one’s conception of good thinking. For example, it is constitutive of good thinking about an issue to formulate the issue clearly and to maintain focus on it. For this purpose, one needs not only the corresponding ability but also the corresponding disposition. Ennis (1991: 8) describes it as the disposition “to determine and maintain focus on the conclusion or question”, Facione (1990a: 25) as “clarity in stating the question or concern”. Other internal dispositions are motivators to continue or adjust the critical thinking process, such as willingness to persist in a complex task and willingness to abandon nonproductive strategies in an attempt to self-correct (Halpern 1998: 452). For a list of identified internal critical thinking dispositions, see the Supplement on Internal Critical Thinking Dispositions .

Some theorists postulate skills, i.e., acquired abilities, as operative in critical thinking. It is not obvious, however, that a good mental act is the exercise of a generic acquired skill. Inferring an expected time of arrival, as in Transit , has some generic components but also uses non-generic subject-matter knowledge. Bailin et al. (1999a) argue against viewing critical thinking skills as generic and discrete, on the ground that skilled performance at a critical thinking task cannot be separated from knowledge of concepts and from domain-specific principles of good thinking. Talk of skills, they concede, is unproblematic if it means merely that a person with critical thinking skills is capable of intelligent performance.

Despite such scepticism, theorists of critical thinking have listed as general contributors to critical thinking what they variously call abilities (Glaser 1941; Ennis 1962, 1991), skills (Facione 1990a; Halpern 1998) or competencies (Fisher & Scriven 1997). Amalgamating these lists would produce a confusing and chaotic cornucopia of more than 50 possible educational objectives, with only partial overlap among them. It makes sense instead to try to understand the reasons for the multiplicity and diversity, and to make a selection according to one’s own reasons for singling out abilities to be developed in a critical thinking curriculum. Two reasons for diversity among lists of critical thinking abilities are the underlying conception of critical thinking and the envisaged educational level. Appraisal-only conceptions, for example, involve a different suite of abilities than constructive-only conceptions. Some lists, such as those in (Glaser 1941), are put forward as educational objectives for secondary school students, whereas others are proposed as objectives for college students (e.g., Facione 1990a).

The abilities described in the remaining paragraphs of this section emerge from reflection on the general abilities needed to do well the thinking activities identified in section 6 as components of the critical thinking process described in section 5 . The derivation of each collection of abilities is accompanied by citation of sources that list such abilities and of standardized tests that claim to test them.

Observational abilities : Careful and accurate observation sometimes requires specialist expertise and practice, as in the case of observing birds and observing accident scenes. However, there are general abilities of noticing what one’s senses are picking up from one’s environment and of being able to articulate clearly and accurately to oneself and others what one has observed. It helps in exercising them to be able to recognize and take into account factors that make one’s observation less trustworthy, such as prior framing of the situation, inadequate time, deficient senses, poor observation conditions, and the like. It helps as well to be skilled at taking steps to make one’s observation more trustworthy, such as moving closer to get a better look, measuring something three times and taking the average, and checking what one thinks one is observing with someone else who is in a good position to observe it. It also helps to be skilled at recognizing respects in which one’s report of one’s observation involves inference rather than direct observation, so that one can then consider whether the inference is justified. These abilities come into play as well when one thinks about whether and with what degree of confidence to accept an observation report, for example in the study of history or in a criminal investigation or in assessing news reports. Observational abilities show up in some lists of critical thinking abilities (Ennis 1962: 90; Facione 1990a: 16; Ennis 1991: 9). There are items testing a person’s ability to judge the credibility of observation reports in the Cornell Critical Thinking Tests, Levels X and Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). Norris and King (1983, 1985, 1990a, 1990b) is a test of ability to appraise observation reports.

Emotional abilities : The emotions that drive a critical thinking process are perplexity or puzzlement, a wish to resolve it, and satisfaction at achieving the desired resolution. Children experience these emotions at an early age, without being trained to do so. Education that takes critical thinking as a goal needs only to channel these emotions and to make sure not to stifle them. Collaborative critical thinking benefits from ability to recognize one’s own and others’ emotional commitments and reactions.

Questioning abilities : A critical thinking process needs transformation of an inchoate sense of perplexity into a clear question. Formulating a question well requires not building in questionable assumptions, not prejudging the issue, and using language that in context is unambiguous and precise enough (Ennis 1962: 97; 1991: 9).

Imaginative abilities : Thinking directed at finding the correct causal explanation of a general phenomenon or particular event requires an ability to imagine possible explanations. Thinking about what policy or plan of action to adopt requires generation of options and consideration of possible consequences of each option. Domain knowledge is required for such creative activity, but a general ability to imagine alternatives is helpful and can be nurtured so as to become easier, quicker, more extensive, and deeper (Dewey 1910: 34–39; 1933: 40–47). Facione (1990a) and Halpern (1998) include the ability to imagine alternatives as a critical thinking ability.

Inferential abilities : The ability to draw conclusions from given information, and to recognize with what degree of certainty one’s own or others’ conclusions follow, is universally recognized as a general critical thinking ability. All 11 examples in section 2 of this article include inferences, some from hypotheses or options (as in Transit , Ferryboat and Disorder ), others from something observed (as in Weather and Rash ). None of these inferences is formally valid. Rather, they are licensed by general, sometimes qualified substantive rules of inference (Toulmin 1958) that rest on domain knowledge—that a bus trip takes about the same time in each direction, that the terminal of a wireless telegraph would be located on the highest possible place, that sudden cooling is often followed by rain, that an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug generally shows up soon after one starts taking it. It is a matter of controversy to what extent the specialized ability to deduce conclusions from premisses using formal rules of inference is needed for critical thinking. Dewey (1933) locates logical forms in setting out the products of reflection rather than in the process of reflection. Ennis (1981a), on the other hand, maintains that a liberally-educated person should have the following abilities: to translate natural-language statements into statements using the standard logical operators, to use appropriately the language of necessary and sufficient conditions, to deal with argument forms and arguments containing symbols, to determine whether in virtue of an argument’s form its conclusion follows necessarily from its premisses, to reason with logically complex propositions, and to apply the rules and procedures of deductive logic. Inferential abilities are recognized as critical thinking abilities by Glaser (1941: 6), Facione (1990a: 9), Ennis (1991: 9), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 99, 111), and Halpern (1998: 452). Items testing inferential abilities constitute two of the five subtests of the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Watson & Glaser 1980a, 1980b, 1994), two of the four sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), three of the seven sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), 11 of the 34 items on Forms A and B of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992), and a high but variable proportion of the 25 selected-response questions in the Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Experimenting abilities : Knowing how to design and execute an experiment is important not just in scientific research but also in everyday life, as in Rash . Dewey devoted a whole chapter of his How We Think (1910: 145–156; 1933: 190–202) to the superiority of experimentation over observation in advancing knowledge. Experimenting abilities come into play at one remove in appraising reports of scientific studies. Skill in designing and executing experiments includes the acknowledged abilities to appraise evidence (Glaser 1941: 6), to carry out experiments and to apply appropriate statistical inference techniques (Facione 1990a: 9), to judge inductions to an explanatory hypothesis (Ennis 1991: 9), and to recognize the need for an adequately large sample size (Halpern 1998). The Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) includes four items (out of 52) on experimental design. The Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) makes room for appraisal of study design in both its performance task and its selected-response questions.

Consulting abilities : Skill at consulting sources of information comes into play when one seeks information to help resolve a problem, as in Candidate . Ability to find and appraise information includes ability to gather and marshal pertinent information (Glaser 1941: 6), to judge whether a statement made by an alleged authority is acceptable (Ennis 1962: 84), to plan a search for desired information (Facione 1990a: 9), and to judge the credibility of a source (Ennis 1991: 9). Ability to judge the credibility of statements is tested by 24 items (out of 76) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) and by four items (out of 52) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). The College Learning Assessment’s performance task requires evaluation of whether information in documents is credible or unreliable (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Argument analysis abilities : The ability to identify and analyze arguments contributes to the process of surveying arguments on an issue in order to form one’s own reasoned judgment, as in Candidate . The ability to detect and analyze arguments is recognized as a critical thinking skill by Facione (1990a: 7–8), Ennis (1991: 9) and Halpern (1998). Five items (out of 34) on the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992) test skill at argument analysis. The College Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) incorporates argument analysis in its selected-response tests of critical reading and evaluation and of critiquing an argument.

Judging skills and deciding skills : Skill at judging and deciding is skill at recognizing what judgment or decision the available evidence and argument supports, and with what degree of confidence. It is thus a component of the inferential skills already discussed.

Lists and tests of critical thinking abilities often include two more abilities: identifying assumptions and constructing and evaluating definitions.

In addition to dispositions and abilities, critical thinking needs knowledge: of critical thinking concepts, of critical thinking principles, and of the subject-matter of the thinking.

We can derive a short list of concepts whose understanding contributes to critical thinking from the critical thinking abilities described in the preceding section. Observational abilities require an understanding of the difference between observation and inference. Questioning abilities require an understanding of the concepts of ambiguity and vagueness. Inferential abilities require an understanding of the difference between conclusive and defeasible inference (traditionally, between deduction and induction), as well as of the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. Experimenting abilities require an understanding of the concepts of hypothesis, null hypothesis, assumption and prediction, as well as of the concept of statistical significance and of its difference from importance. They also require an understanding of the difference between an experiment and an observational study, and in particular of the difference between a randomized controlled trial, a prospective correlational study and a retrospective (case-control) study. Argument analysis abilities require an understanding of the concepts of argument, premiss, assumption, conclusion and counter-consideration. Additional critical thinking concepts are proposed by Bailin et al. (1999b: 293), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 105–106), Black (2012), and Blair (2021).

According to Glaser (1941: 25), ability to think critically requires knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning. If we review the list of abilities in the preceding section, however, we can see that some of them can be acquired and exercised merely through practice, possibly guided in an educational setting, followed by feedback. Searching intelligently for a causal explanation of some phenomenon or event requires that one consider a full range of possible causal contributors, but it seems more important that one implements this principle in one’s practice than that one is able to articulate it. What is important is “operational knowledge” of the standards and principles of good thinking (Bailin et al. 1999b: 291–293). But the development of such critical thinking abilities as designing an experiment or constructing an operational definition can benefit from learning their underlying theory. Further, explicit knowledge of quirks of human thinking seems useful as a cautionary guide. Human memory is not just fallible about details, as people learn from their own experiences of misremembering, but is so malleable that a detailed, clear and vivid recollection of an event can be a total fabrication (Loftus 2017). People seek or interpret evidence in ways that are partial to their existing beliefs and expectations, often unconscious of their “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998). Not only are people subject to this and other cognitive biases (Kahneman 2011), of which they are typically unaware, but it may be counter-productive for one to make oneself aware of them and try consciously to counteract them or to counteract social biases such as racial or sexual stereotypes (Kenyon & Beaulac 2014). It is helpful to be aware of these facts and of the superior effectiveness of blocking the operation of biases—for example, by making an immediate record of one’s observations, refraining from forming a preliminary explanatory hypothesis, blind refereeing, double-blind randomized trials, and blind grading of students’ work. It is also helpful to be aware of the prevalence of “noise” (unwanted unsystematic variability of judgments), of how to detect noise (through a noise audit), and of how to reduce noise: make accuracy the goal, think statistically, break a process of arriving at a judgment into independent tasks, resist premature intuitions, in a group get independent judgments first, favour comparative judgments and scales (Kahneman, Sibony, & Sunstein 2021). It is helpful as well to be aware of the concept of “bounded rationality” in decision-making and of the related distinction between “satisficing” and optimizing (Simon 1956; Gigerenzer 2001).

Critical thinking about an issue requires substantive knowledge of the domain to which the issue belongs. Critical thinking abilities are not a magic elixir that can be applied to any issue whatever by somebody who has no knowledge of the facts relevant to exploring that issue. For example, the student in Bubbles needed to know that gases do not penetrate solid objects like a glass, that air expands when heated, that the volume of an enclosed gas varies directly with its temperature and inversely with its pressure, and that hot objects will spontaneously cool down to the ambient temperature of their surroundings unless kept hot by insulation or a source of heat. Critical thinkers thus need a rich fund of subject-matter knowledge relevant to the variety of situations they encounter. This fact is recognized in the inclusion among critical thinking dispositions of a concern to become and remain generally well informed.

Experimental educational interventions, with control groups, have shown that education can improve critical thinking skills and dispositions, as measured by standardized tests. For information about these tests, see the Supplement on Assessment .

What educational methods are most effective at developing the dispositions, abilities and knowledge of a critical thinker? In a comprehensive meta-analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental studies of strategies for teaching students to think critically, Abrami et al. (2015) found that dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring each increased the effectiveness of the educational intervention, and that they were most effective when combined. They also found that in these studies a combination of separate instruction in critical thinking with subject-matter instruction in which students are encouraged to think critically was more effective than either by itself. However, the difference was not statistically significant; that is, it might have arisen by chance.

Most of these studies lack the longitudinal follow-up required to determine whether the observed differential improvements in critical thinking abilities or dispositions continue over time, for example until high school or college graduation. For details on studies of methods of developing critical thinking skills and dispositions, see the Supplement on Educational Methods .

12. Controversies

Scholars have denied the generalizability of critical thinking abilities across subject domains, have alleged bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, and have investigated the relationship of critical thinking to other kinds of thinking.

McPeck (1981) attacked the thinking skills movement of the 1970s, including the critical thinking movement. He argued that there are no general thinking skills, since thinking is always thinking about some subject-matter. It is futile, he claimed, for schools and colleges to teach thinking as if it were a separate subject. Rather, teachers should lead their pupils to become autonomous thinkers by teaching school subjects in a way that brings out their cognitive structure and that encourages and rewards discussion and argument. As some of his critics (e.g., Paul 1985; Siegel 1985) pointed out, McPeck’s central argument needs elaboration, since it has obvious counter-examples in writing and speaking, for which (up to a certain level of complexity) there are teachable general abilities even though they are always about some subject-matter. To make his argument convincing, McPeck needs to explain how thinking differs from writing and speaking in a way that does not permit useful abstraction of its components from the subject-matters with which it deals. He has not done so. Nevertheless, his position that the dispositions and abilities of a critical thinker are best developed in the context of subject-matter instruction is shared by many theorists of critical thinking, including Dewey (1910, 1933), Glaser (1941), Passmore (1980), Weinstein (1990), Bailin et al. (1999b), and Willingham (2019).

McPeck’s challenge prompted reflection on the extent to which critical thinking is subject-specific. McPeck argued for a strong subject-specificity thesis, according to which it is a conceptual truth that all critical thinking abilities are specific to a subject. (He did not however extend his subject-specificity thesis to critical thinking dispositions. In particular, he took the disposition to suspend judgment in situations of cognitive dissonance to be a general disposition.) Conceptual subject-specificity is subject to obvious counter-examples, such as the general ability to recognize confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. A more modest thesis, also endorsed by McPeck, is epistemological subject-specificity, according to which the norms of good thinking vary from one field to another. Epistemological subject-specificity clearly holds to a certain extent; for example, the principles in accordance with which one solves a differential equation are quite different from the principles in accordance with which one determines whether a painting is a genuine Picasso. But the thesis suffers, as Ennis (1989) points out, from vagueness of the concept of a field or subject and from the obvious existence of inter-field principles, however broadly the concept of a field is construed. For example, the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning hold for all the varied fields in which such reasoning occurs. A third kind of subject-specificity is empirical subject-specificity, according to which as a matter of empirically observable fact a person with the abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker in one area of investigation will not necessarily have them in another area of investigation.

The thesis of empirical subject-specificity raises the general problem of transfer. If critical thinking abilities and dispositions have to be developed independently in each school subject, how are they of any use in dealing with the problems of everyday life and the political and social issues of contemporary society, most of which do not fit into the framework of a traditional school subject? Proponents of empirical subject-specificity tend to argue that transfer is more likely to occur if there is critical thinking instruction in a variety of domains, with explicit attention to dispositions and abilities that cut across domains. But evidence for this claim is scanty. There is a need for well-designed empirical studies that investigate the conditions that make transfer more likely.

It is common ground in debates about the generality or subject-specificity of critical thinking dispositions and abilities that critical thinking about any topic requires background knowledge about the topic. For example, the most sophisticated understanding of the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning is of no help unless accompanied by some knowledge of what might be plausible explanations of some phenomenon under investigation.

Critics have objected to bias in the theory, pedagogy and practice of critical thinking. Commentators (e.g., Alston 1995; Ennis 1998) have noted that anyone who takes a position has a bias in the neutral sense of being inclined in one direction rather than others. The critics, however, are objecting to bias in the pejorative sense of an unjustified favoring of certain ways of knowing over others, frequently alleging that the unjustly favoured ways are those of a dominant sex or culture (Bailin 1995). These ways favour:

• reinforcement of egocentric and sociocentric biases over dialectical engagement with opposing world-views (Paul 1981, 1984; Warren 1998)
• distancing from the object of inquiry over closeness to it (Martin 1992; Thayer-Bacon 1992)
• indifference to the situation of others over care for them (Martin 1992)
• orientation to thought over orientation to action (Martin 1992)
• being reasonable over caring to understand people’s ideas (Thayer-Bacon 1993)
• being neutral and objective over being embodied and situated (Thayer-Bacon 1995a)
• doubting over believing (Thayer-Bacon 1995b)
• reason over emotion, imagination and intuition (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• solitary thinking over collaborative thinking (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• written and spoken assignments over other forms of expression (Alston 2001)
• attention to written and spoken communications over attention to human problems (Alston 2001)
• winning debates in the public sphere over making and understanding meaning (Alston 2001)

A common thread in this smorgasbord of accusations is dissatisfaction with focusing on the logical analysis and evaluation of reasoning and arguments. While these authors acknowledge that such analysis and evaluation is part of critical thinking and should be part of its conceptualization and pedagogy, they insist that it is only a part. Paul (1981), for example, bemoans the tendency of atomistic teaching of methods of analyzing and evaluating arguments to turn students into more able sophists, adept at finding fault with positions and arguments with which they disagree but even more entrenched in the egocentric and sociocentric biases with which they began. Martin (1992) and Thayer-Bacon (1992) cite with approval the self-reported intimacy with their subject-matter of leading researchers in biology and medicine, an intimacy that conflicts with the distancing allegedly recommended in standard conceptions and pedagogy of critical thinking. Thayer-Bacon (2000) contrasts the embodied and socially embedded learning of her elementary school students in a Montessori school, who used their imagination, intuition and emotions as well as their reason, with conceptions of critical thinking as

thinking that is used to critique arguments, offer justifications, and make judgments about what are the good reasons, or the right answers. (Thayer-Bacon 2000: 127–128)

Alston (2001) reports that her students in a women’s studies class were able to see the flaws in the Cinderella myth that pervades much romantic fiction but in their own romantic relationships still acted as if all failures were the woman’s fault and still accepted the notions of love at first sight and living happily ever after. Students, she writes, should

be able to connect their intellectual critique to a more affective, somatic, and ethical account of making risky choices that have sexist, racist, classist, familial, sexual, or other consequences for themselves and those both near and far… critical thinking that reads arguments, texts, or practices merely on the surface without connections to feeling/desiring/doing or action lacks an ethical depth that should infuse the difference between mere cognitive activity and something we want to call critical thinking. (Alston 2001: 34)

Some critics portray such biases as unfair to women. Thayer-Bacon (1992), for example, has charged modern critical thinking theory with being sexist, on the ground that it separates the self from the object and causes one to lose touch with one’s inner voice, and thus stigmatizes women, who (she asserts) link self to object and listen to their inner voice. Her charge does not imply that women as a group are on average less able than men to analyze and evaluate arguments. Facione (1990c) found no difference by sex in performance on his California Critical Thinking Skills Test. Kuhn (1991: 280–281) found no difference by sex in either the disposition or the competence to engage in argumentative thinking.

The critics propose a variety of remedies for the biases that they allege. In general, they do not propose to eliminate or downplay critical thinking as an educational goal. Rather, they propose to conceptualize critical thinking differently and to change its pedagogy accordingly. Their pedagogical proposals arise logically from their objections. They can be summarized as follows:

• Focus on argument networks with dialectical exchanges reflecting contesting points of view rather than on atomic arguments, so as to develop “strong sense” critical thinking that transcends egocentric and sociocentric biases (Paul 1981, 1984).
• Foster closeness to the subject-matter and feeling connected to others in order to inform a humane democracy (Martin 1992).
• Develop “constructive thinking” as a social activity in a community of physically embodied and socially embedded inquirers with personal voices who value not only reason but also imagination, intuition and emotion (Thayer-Bacon 2000).
• In developing critical thinking in school subjects, treat as important neither skills nor dispositions but opening worlds of meaning (Alston 2001).
• Attend to the development of critical thinking dispositions as well as skills, and adopt the “critical pedagogy” practised and advocated by Freire (1968 [1970]) and hooks (1994) (Dalgleish, Girard, & Davies 2017).

A common thread in these proposals is treatment of critical thinking as a social, interactive, personally engaged activity like that of a quilting bee or a barn-raising (Thayer-Bacon 2000) rather than as an individual, solitary, distanced activity symbolized by Rodin’s The Thinker . One can get a vivid description of education with the former type of goal from the writings of bell hooks (1994, 2010). Critical thinking for her is open-minded dialectical exchange across opposing standpoints and from multiple perspectives, a conception similar to Paul’s “strong sense” critical thinking (Paul 1981). She abandons the structure of domination in the traditional classroom. In an introductory course on black women writers, for example, she assigns students to write an autobiographical paragraph about an early racial memory, then to read it aloud as the others listen, thus affirming the uniqueness and value of each voice and creating a communal awareness of the diversity of the group’s experiences (hooks 1994: 84). Her “engaged pedagogy” is thus similar to the “freedom under guidance” implemented in John Dewey’s Laboratory School of Chicago in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It incorporates the dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring that Abrami (2015) found to be most effective in improving critical thinking skills and dispositions.

What is the relationship of critical thinking to problem solving, decision-making, higher-order thinking, creative thinking, and other recognized types of thinking? One’s answer to this question obviously depends on how one defines the terms used in the question. If critical thinking is conceived broadly to cover any careful thinking about any topic for any purpose, then problem solving and decision making will be kinds of critical thinking, if they are done carefully. Historically, ‘critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’ were two names for the same thing. If critical thinking is conceived more narrowly as consisting solely of appraisal of intellectual products, then it will be disjoint with problem solving and decision making, which are constructive.

Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives used the phrase “intellectual abilities and skills” for what had been labeled “critical thinking” by some, “reflective thinking” by Dewey and others, and “problem solving” by still others (Bloom et al. 1956: 38). Thus, the so-called “higher-order thinking skills” at the taxonomy’s top levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation are just critical thinking skills, although they do not come with general criteria for their assessment (Ennis 1981b). The revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001) likewise treats critical thinking as cutting across those types of cognitive process that involve more than remembering (Anderson et al. 2001: 269–270). For details, see the Supplement on History .

As to creative thinking, it overlaps with critical thinking (Bailin 1987, 1988). Thinking about the explanation of some phenomenon or event, as in Ferryboat , requires creative imagination in constructing plausible explanatory hypotheses. Likewise, thinking about a policy question, as in Candidate , requires creativity in coming up with options. Conversely, creativity in any field needs to be balanced by critical appraisal of the draft painting or novel or mathematical theory.

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• Vincent-Lancrin, Stéphan, Carlos González-Sancho, Mathias Bouckaert, Federico de Luca, Meritxell Fernández-Barrerra, Gwénaël Jacotin, Joaquin Urgel, and Quentin Vidal, 2019, Fostering Students’ Creativity and Critical Thinking: What It Means in School. Educational Research and Innovation , Paris: OECD Publishing.
• Warren, Karen J. 1988. “Critical Thinking and Feminism”, Informal Logic , 10(1): 31–44. [ Warren 1988 available online ]
• Watson, Goodwin, and Edward M. Glaser, 1980a, Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, Form A , San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.
• –––, 1980b, Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal: Forms A and B; Manual , San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation,
• –––, 1994, Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, Form B , San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.
• Weinstein, Mark, 1990, “Towards a Research Agenda for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking”, Informal Logic , 12(3): 121–143. [ Weinstein 1990 available online ]
• –––, 2013, Logic, Truth and Inquiry , London: College Publications.
• Willingham, Daniel T., 2019, “How to Teach Critical Thinking”, Education: Future Frontiers , 1: 1–17. [Available online at https://prod65.education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/main-education/teaching-and-learning/education-for-a-changing-world/media/documents/How-to-teach-critical-thinking-Willingham.pdf.]
• Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus, 1996, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139174763

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• The Nature of Critical Thinking: An Outline of Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities , by Robert H. Ennis

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A Comprehensive Guide to 21st Century Skills

Jenna Buckle

The concept of "21st century skills" isn't new—skills like critical thinking, collaboration, and problem solving have been taught in classrooms for decades. 

Yet, as the demands of our changing economy rise, many school districts are now including 21st century skills in strategic plans to better prepare students for college, career, and life.

What are 21st century skills, why do they matter, and how can your district implement 21st century learning strategies into curriculum, assessment, and instruction? This guide shares information, research, and examples to bring you up to speed.

Table of Contents

1. What Are 21st Century Skills?

2. The Importance of 21st Century Skills

3. Frameworks and Examples of 21st Century Skills

4. 21st Century Learning Strategies and Implementation

5. Additional Resources

Free Download: Panorama's Social-Emotional Learning Survey

What Are 21st Century Skills?

Districts, schools, and organizations prioritize different 21st century skills depending on what is most important to their respective communities. Generally, however, educators agree that schools must weave these skills into learning experiences and common core instruction. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the most commonly cited 21st century skills.

• Critical thinking
• Communication skills
• Problem solving
• Perseverance
• Collaboration
• Information literacy
• Technology skills and digital literacy
• Media literacy
• Global awareness
• Self-direction
• Social skills
• Literacy skills
• Civic literacy
• Social responsibility
• Innovation skills
• Thinking skills

The Importance of 21st Century Skills

While the bar used to be high school graduation, the bar for today's students is now college, career, and real-world success. Let’s take a look at why 21st century skills matter.

• Higher-education and business leaders cite soft skills as being the most important driver of success in higher-level courses and in the workplace.
• In today’s world, our schools are preparing students for jobs that might not yet exist. Career readiness means equipping students with a nuanced set of skills that can prepare them for the unknown.
• Social media has changed human interaction and created new challenges in navigating social situations.
• The age of the Internet has dramatically increased access to knowledge. Students need to learn how to process and analyze large amounts of information.
• Content knowledge from core subjects can only go so far; students need to be taught how to apply facts and ideas towards complex problems.

We've reviewed the definition of 21st century skills and why they're important in a changing world. Now, let's review a few frameworks and how school districts are putting 21st century learning into practice.

Frameworks for 21st Century Skills

The framework for 21st century learning.

This popular framework was designed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) . Describing the skills, knowledge, and expertise students must master to succeed in work and life, the framework combines content knowledge, specific skills, expertise, and literacies. P21 believes that the "base" of 21st century learning is the acquisition of key academic subject knowledge, and that schools must build on that base with additional skills including Learning Skills, Life Skills, and Literacy Skills.

• Learning Skills: Also known as the "four Cs" of 21st century learning, these include critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.
• Life Skills: Flexibility, initiative, social skills, productivity, leadership
• Literacy Skills: Information literacy, media literacy, technology literacy

World Health Organization 

The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies the fundamental life skills as decision-making and problem solving, creative thinking and critical thinking, communication and interpersonal skills, self-awareness and empathy, and coping with emotions and stress. The WHO focuses on broad psychosocial skills that can be improved over time with conscious effort.

Redefining Ready! Initiative 

The American Association of School Administrators (AASA) Redefining Ready! initiative offers a framework that many districts use to define college, career, and life readiness. AASA provides readiness indicators to capture the educational landscape of the 21st century. Metrics include Advanced Placement courses, standardized testing, college credits, industry credentials, attendance, community service, and more. On the topic of life readiness, AASA argues:

School District Frameworks

21st century skills take hold in various ways for school districts. A " Portrait of a Graduate " is one common strategy for communicating what it means for students to be college, career, and future ready. To develop a profile of a graduate, districts often adapt existing 21st century skill frameworks to fit their needs. Input from stakeholders—such as the district board, teachers, parents, partner organizations, and students—ensures that the final "portrait" is authentic to their community. Here are some Portrait of a Graduate examples.

Everett Public Schools in Everett, Washington defines 21st century skills as citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking, and growth mindset. The district believes that graduates are college, career, and life ready when they have the academic knowledge, attitudes, and skills to transition to college level coursework, workforce training, and/or employment.

Gresham-Barlow School District (GBSD) in Gresham, Oregon has a mission to develop culturally responsive graduates who will thrive in an ever-changing global community. The district’s Portrait of a Graduate represents the GBSD community's collective vision of what their graduates should look like. The portrait consists of six learner profiles: Independent Lifelong Learner, Adaptable Collaborator, Compassionate Communicator, Responsible Creator, Open-Minded Critical Thinker, and Globally Aware Community Member.

Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District (SCUC ISD) in Schertz, Texas has a strategic goal around graduating college and/or career and/or military ready students. Within this vision, SCUC ISD has outlined five Traits of a Graduate: Dynamic Leader, Self-Motivated, Skilled Communicator, Service Oriented, and Future Ready.

Council Bluffs Community School District in Council Bluffs, Iowa, developed a Profile of a FutureReady Graduate that encompasses both academic and social-emotional indicators of success. The district’s social-emotional indicators—aligned to the CASEL framework—include Self-Management, Self Awareness, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision Making.

North Kansas City Schools just north of Kansas City, Missouri, identified seven competencies that span time, space, jobs, and occupations, ensuring that students' life skills are highly transferable. The district's competencies—developed with input from students, community and business leaders, teachers, and administrators—include Adaptability, Communication, Collaboration, Empathy, Integrity, Learner's Mindset, and Problem Solving. 

Download our guide to developing your district's own vision for college, career, and life readiness

21st Century Learning Strategies & Implementation

Having a strong vision for 21st century learning is just the first step. Without an intentionally designed plan for implementation, it's unlikely that your students will acquire the skills outlined in your district's vision. Here are some best practices from Panorama's partner districts to set you up for success.

1. Build staff capacity to demonstrate 21st century skills in support of student learning.

It all starts with the adults in your building. Teachers and staff need to deeply understand and model the skills that you want your students to develop. Integrate 21st century skills into staff professional development as a precursor to growing these competencies in students. Download our Adult SEL Toolkit for ideas, worksheets, and activities to build adult SEL.

2. Develop strategies to support teachers with implementation of 21st century skills.

It can be helpful to create a playbook of recommended strategies and approaches that span across content areas. For instance, you might encourage teachers to add comments to report cards about students' 21st century skills.

3. Assess students’ 21st century learning skills.

What gets measured matters. Regularly collect data on how students are progressing in this area, whether the data is anecdotal, qualitative, or quantitative. For example, you might administer a biannual survey in which students reflect on their development of 21st century, social-emotional skills . Keep in mind that the data you gather should be formative rather than evaluative. Be transparent about the purpose.

4. Equip educators with data to proactively identify and support students who are off track.

Once you have data on students' 21st century skills, you'll want to ensure that the data is actionable for educators. Many districts opt to implement an early warning system with indicators across academics, attendance, behavior, and social-emotional learning/21st century skills. This helps educators make data-driven decisions about the best way to keep each student on track.

Additional Resources

Looking for more information on 21st century skills? Here are some other articles and resources to explore:

• "Why Social and Emotional Learning and Employability Skills Should Be Prioritized in Education" via CASEL and Committee for Children 
• "Teaching 21st Century Skills For 21st Century Success Requires An Ecosystem Approach" via Forbes
• "Bringing 21st Century Skill Development to the Forefront of K-12 Education" via Hanover Research
• "How Do You Define 21st-Century Learning?" via Education Week

Honing in on 21st century skills is essential to ensuring that students are prepared for college, career, and civic life . While there is no one "right" way to approach this work, we hope that the information in this guide inspires you to explore what 21st century learning could look like in your district!

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Integrating 21st century skills into education systems: From rhetoric to reality

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, ramya vivekanandan rv ramya vivekanandan senior education specialist, learning assessment systems - gpe secretariat.

February 14, 2019

This is the third post in a series about  education systems alignment in teaching, learning, and assessing 21st century skills .

What does it mean to be a successful learner or graduate in today’s world? While in years past, a solid acquisition of the “three Rs” (reading, writing, and arithmetic) and mastery in the core academic subjects may have been the measure of attainment, the world of the 21 st century requires a radically different orientation. To participate effectively in the increasingly complex societies and globalized economy that characterize today’s world, students need to think critically, communicate effectively, collaborate with diverse peers, solve complex problems, adopt a global mindset, and engage with information and communications technologies, to name but just a few requirements. The new report from Brookings, “ Education system alignment for 21st century skills: Focus on assessment ,” illuminates this imperative in depth.

Recognizing that traditional education systems have generally not been preparing learners to face such challenges, the global education community has increasingly talked about and mobilized in favor of the changes required. This has resulted in a suite of initiatives and research around the broad area of “21st century skills,” which culminated most notably with the adoption of Sustainable Development Goal 4 and the Education 2030 agenda, including Target 4.7, which commits countries to ensure that learners acquire knowledge and skills in areas such as sustainable development, human rights, gender equality, global citizenship, and others.

In this landscape, Global Partnership for Education (GPE) has a core mandate of improving equity and learning by strengthening education systems. GPE supports developing countries, many of which are affected by fragility and conflict, to develop and implement robust education sector plans. Depending on the country, GPE implementation grants support a broad range of activities including teacher training, textbook provision, interventions to promote girls’ education, incentives for marginalized groups, the strengthening of data and learning assessment systems, early childhood education, and many other areas.

This work is buttressed by thematic work at the global level, including in the area of learning assessment. The strengthening of learning assessment systems is a strategic priority for GPE because of its relevance to both improving learning outcomes and ensuring effective and efficient education systems, which are two of the three key goals of the GPE strategic plan for the 2016-2020 period . The work on learning assessment includes the Assessment for Learning (A4L) initiative, which aims to strengthen learning assessment systems and to promote a holistic measurement of learning.

Under A4L, we are undertaking a landscape review on the measurement of 21st century skills, using a definition derived from Binkley et. al . and Scoular and Care :

“21st century skills are tools that can be universally applied to enhance ways of thinking, learning, working and living in the world. The skills include critical thinking/reasoning, creativity/creative thinking, problem solving, metacognition, collaboration, communication and global citizenship. 21st century skills also include literacies such as reading literacy, writing literacy, numeracy, information literacy, ICT [information and communications technologies] digital literacy, communication and can be described broadly as learning domains.”

Using this lens, the landscape review examines the research literature, the efforts of GPE partners that have been active in this space, and data collected from a sample of countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia in regard to the assessment of these skills. These research efforts were led by Brookings and coordinated by the UNESCO offices in Dakar and Bangkok. As another important piece of this work, we are also taking stock of the latest education sector plans and implementation grants of these same countries (nine in sub-Saharan Africa and six in Asia), to explore the extent to which the integration of 21st century skills is reflected in sector plans and, vitally, in their implementation.

Though the work is in progress, the initial findings provide food for thought. Reflecting the conclusions of the new report by Brookings, as well as its earlier breadth of work on skills mapping, a large majority of these 15 countries note ambitious objectives related to 21st century skills in their education sector plans, particularly in their vision or mission statements and/or statements of policy priorities. “Skills” such as creativity and innovation, critical thinking, problem-solving, decisionmaking, life and career skills, citizenship, personal and social responsibility, and information and communications technology literacy were strongly featured, as opposed to areas such as collaboration, communication, information literacy, and metacognition.

However, when we look at the planned interventions noted in these sector plans, there is not a strong indication that countries plan to operationalize their intentions to promote 21st century skills. Not surprisingly then, when we look at their implementation grants, which are one of the financing instruments through which education sector plans are implemented, only two of the 15 grants examined include activities aimed at promoting 21st century skills among their program components. Because the GPE model mandates that national governments determine the program components and allocation of resources for these within their grant, the bottom line seems to echo the findings of the Brookings report: vision and aspiration are rife, but action is scarce.

While the sample of countries studied in this exercise is small (and other countries’ education sector plans and grants may well include integration of 21st century skills), it’s the disconnect between the 15 countries’ policy orientation around these skills and their implementation that is telling. Why this gap? Why, if countries espouse the importance of 21st century skills in their sector plans, do they not concretely move to addressing them in their implementation? The reasons for this may be manifold, but the challenges highlighted by the Brookings report in terms of incorporating a 21 st century learning agenda in education systems are indeed telling. As a field, we still have much work to do to understand the nature of these skills, to develop learning progressions for them, and to design appropriate and authentic assessment of them. In other words, it may be that countries have difficulty in imagining how to move from rhetoric to reality.

However, in another perspective, there may be a challenge associated with how countries (and the broader education community) perceive 21st century skills in general. In contexts of limited resources, crowded curricula, inadequately trained teachers, fragility, weak governance, and other challenges that are characteristic of GPE partner countries, there is sometimes an unfortunate tendency to view 21st century skills and the “basics” as a tradeoff. In such settings, there can be a perception that 21st century skills are the concern of more advanced or higher-income countries. It is thus no wonder that, in the words of the Brookings report, “a global mobilization of efforts to respond to the 21CS [21st century skills] shift is non-existent, and individual countries struggle alone to plan the shift.”

This suggests that those who are committed to a holistic view of education have much work to do in terms of research, sharing of experience, capacity building, and advocacy around the potential and need for all countries, regardless of context, to move in this direction. The Brookings report makes a very valuable contribution in this regard. GPE’s landscape review, which will be published this spring, will inform how the partnership thinks about and approaches 21st century skills in its work and will thereby provide a complementary perspective.

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21st Century Skills

21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times

Superseded by Four-Dimensional Education

Description

Table of contents, other languages, what is 21st century skills about.

This important resource introduces a framework for 21st century learning that maps out the skills needed to survive and thrive in a complex and connected world. 21st Century content includes the basic core subjects of reading, writing, and arithmetic-but also emphasizes global awareness, financial/economic literacy, and health issues. The skills fall into three categories: learning and innovations skills, digital literacy skills, and life and career skills. This book is filled with vignettes, international examples, and classroom samples that help illustrate the framework and provide an exciting view of what twenty-first century teaching and learning can achieve.

• A vital resource that outlines the skills needed for students to excel in the twenty-first century
• Explores the three main categories of 21st Century Skills: learning and innovations skills, digital literacy skills, and life and career skills
• Addresses timely issues such as the rapid advance of technology and increased economic competition
• Based on a framework developed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21)

Praise for 21st Century Skills from Education Thought Leaders

“The authors have done nothing less than provide a bold framework for designing a 21st century approach to education, an approach aimed at preparing all of our children to successfully meet the challenges of this brave, new world.”

– Paul Reville, Secretary of Education, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, former director of the Education Policy and Management Program, Harvard Graduate School of Education

“Trilling and Fadel describe in very readable, practical terms how to infuse 21st Century skills from standards all the way into the classroom. The DVD is full of wonderful ‘a-ha’ moments to illustrate the possibilities. A terrific traveling companion for educators, parents, and business and government decision-makers concerned about the future of our kids.”

— Paige Johnson, 2009 chair, Partnership for 21st Century Skills; Global K-12 Manager,  Intel Corporation

“It’s about time that we have such an accessible and wise book about the 21st century skills that so many companies, policymakers, and educators are talking about. Trilling and Fadel distill insights from diverse communities of reflective inquiry on what redesigns of learning environments are needed to foster these skills, and provide path-finding tools for the exciting expeditions into the future of learning.”

— Roy Pea, professor, Education and the Learning Sciences,  Stanford University

“Trilling and Fadel lay out a comprehensive understanding of what is meant by 21st century skills. Read this book with a note pad—you’ll be jotting down ideas for how to use the information in your school district. A must read for superintendents, curriculum directors, and teachers.”

— Anne L. Bryant, executive director, National School Boards Association

“Trilling and Fadel take the 21st Century skills debate beyond rhetoric, providing a substantive, compelling, and engaging argument for the skills and competencies that our children need to succeed in a knowledge age economy. The skills they describe are the essential life-blood of a productive, engaged, and intelligent citizenry – this book is a must-read for skeptics and enthusiasts alike!”

— Margaret Honey, president and CEO, New York Hall of Science

  “Hooray to Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel for demystifying 21st century skills. This book makes clear why education must change: to help prepare students to meet complex challenges, fulfill their civic responsibilities, and live fulfilling lives. Full of crisp descriptions, 21st Century Skills persuasively shows why policymakers and educators should run—not walk—to implement 21st learning designs. As Trilling and Fadel simply put it, it’s time to give all students the chance to learn how to build a better world.”

— John Wilson, executive director, National Education Association

“With 21st Century Skills , Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel have given us a global ‘search and replace’ for outdated educational thinking. Replace ‘scope and sequence’ with the ‘21st Century Learning Framework,’ the P21 rainbow. Replace ‘models of curriculum and instruction’ with their ‘Project Learning Bicycle.’ And don’t miss their ‘Kingdom of Learning, Learnalot,’ one of the most clever educational parables ever told.”

— Milton Chen, executive director, The George Lucas Educational Foundation

“Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel have written a book that is truly visionary, providing sound insight into education in the 21st century. Their book provides solid, practical advice for educators, policymakers, business leaders and others interested in improving America’s position in the global economy. I recommend it to anyone interested in maximizing classroom effectiveness in this digital age.”

— Dr. Steven L. Paine, superintendent of schools, West Virginia

  “A must read for anyone interested in the United States ability to compete in a global economy. Educators, policy makers, business leaders, parents and students will benefit from the comprehensive information in 21st Century Skills .”

— Mary Ann Wolf, executive director, State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA)

“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. This is a powerful exploration of what we collectively face as we live the future. A must read!”

— Elliott Masie, CEO and Chair, The Learning Consortium

“Charles & Bernie’s book cuts to the core challenge facing our country—Is our education system preparing our children with the skills to succeed in a ‘flat’ 21st century world? Much more than a treatise on what is wrong with education, they provide a compelling vision for education as it should be and a roadmap for getting where we need to go.”

— Keith R. Krueger, CEO, Consortium for School Networking (CoSN)

  “This book presents an innovative, comprehensive strategy for evolving education to meet the needs of 21st century society.”

— Chris Dede, Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies, Harvard Graduate School of Education

  “ 21st Century Skills is full of interesting examples illustrating both what work will look like in the years ahead and how thoughtful educators are preparing children to thrive in tomorrow’s workplaces. The richness of the examples reflects the authors’ extensive knowledge of how work is changing in the nation’s most innovative firms and their deep involvement in the efforts to improve America’s schools.”

— Richard J. Murnane, Thompson Professor of Education and Society, Harvard Graduate School of Education

  “Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel have been two of the essential intellects behind the growth of the 21st century skills movement. We have been asked for years to provide an in-depth treatment of the 21st century skills framework. Here it is.”

— Ken Kay, executive director, Partnership for 21st Century Skills; CEO, e–Luminate Group

“Trilling and Fadel have captured powerful insight into critical 21st century learning skills. Life goes on and so must learning – this book is a must for anyone interested in the future of education.”

— Allan Weis, former IBM vice president; founder of ThinkQuest and Advanced Network and Services

“This is a very informed, insightful, accessible book that will help policy makers, education leaders, teachers, parents—anyone interested in improving education—understand the profound global forces that are reshaping our society and their implications for education reform. 21st Century Skills provides specific recommendations for how we can—indeed must—change the curriculum, teaching, assessment, use of technology and the organization of our schools to better prepare students to be productive, creative citizens and workers in the global society and economy of the 21st century.”

— Robert B. Kozma, Ph.D., emeritus director, Center for Technology in Learning, SRI International

“Bernie and Charles have presented a well researched and futuristic frame work for changing how we teach and learn for the 21st Century. It will be up to all of us to accept this challenge and move our country and world into and beyond the 21st Century.”

— Kathy Hurley, senior vice president, Pearson K-12 Solutions & Pearson Foundation; incoming chairman, The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

  “This is a well written and referenced roadmap for the complicated and interconnected collection of skills, knowledge and attitudes that are essential for citizens to master in our increasingly complex and rapidly changing technological society.”

— John E. Abele, founding chairman of the board, Boston Scientific

“Inspirational and motivational, this book is a practical guide to implementing and understanding 21st Century Skills. Every teacher and parent should read it so they can prepare their children and their students to solve the problems of tomorrow, today.”

       — Dr. Barbara “Bobbi” Kurshan, executive director, Curriki

  “After all the talk about organizing education, this book leads us back to what education is for. 21st Century Skills is a comprehensive and elegant survey of our changing world, the skills it requires, and how those skills can be taught and learned. Here is a blueprint for 21st century schooling.”

— Michael Stevenson, vice president global education, Cisco

  “This book presents an excellent case and roadmap for K–12 schools, for balancing content knowledge delivery with the development of necessary skills for success. It can serve as a valuable guide for parents, educators, and policy makers.”

— Ioannis Miaoulis, Ph.D., president and director, Museum of Science, Boston

  “For anyone who cares about the future of our children and their success in a global economy, 21st Century Skills is required reading.”

— Gerald Chertavian, chairman, Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s 21st Century Skills Task Force; founder and CEO, YearUp

  “Struggling to understand or explain the imperative for 21st century skills in our schools? Begin here.”

— Julie A. Walker, executive director, American Association of School Librarians (AASL)

“ 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in our Times is a necessary and readable articulation of the reality of 21st Century Skills in educating today’s generation of learners. Kudos to the authors for achieving clarity on this timely topic.”

— Karen Cator, past chair, Partnership for 21st Century Skills

  “Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel have moved beyond the hype and buzz surrounding ‘21st Century Skills’ —to provide an insightful and commonsense guide to rethink learning & teaching in a world that urgently demands innovative, inventive, self–motivated/self–directed, creative problem–solvers to confront increasingly complex global problems. As they demonstrate in their comprehensive work, by proactively developing learner–centric tools that enhance context, communication, creation and collaboration, we stand a chance of retooling our obsolete industrial–era ‘conveyor belt’ educational system—to produce a flexible, future–ready way to learn and teach in and for the new millennium. The liberating result is sure to benefit not only students in the 21st century, but those to come in the 22nd century and beyond.”

— Paul Reynolds, CEO, FableVision

Figures and Tables The Authors Prologue:  The Search for Innovative Learning Introduction:  Learning to Innovate, Innovating Learning

• The Four Question Exercise
• About This Book
• A Map of the Book

Part One:  What Is 21st Century Learning?

1. Learning Past and Future

• Learning a Living: The Future of Work and Careers
• Learning Through Time

2. The Perfect Learning Storm: Four Converging Forces

• Knowledge Work
• Thinking Tools
• Digital Lifestyles
• Learning Research
• The Forces of Resistance
• The Turning of Learning: Toward a New Balance
• The Top 21st Century Challenge

Part Two:  What Are 21st Century Skills?

3. Learning and Innovation Skills: Learning to Create Together

• The Knowledge-and-Skills Rainbow
• Learning to Learn and Innovate
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
• Communication and Collaboration
• Creativity and Innovation

4. Digital Literacy Skills: Info-Savvy, Media-Fluent, Tech-Tuned

• Information Literacy
• Media Literacy
• ICT Literacy

5. Career and Life Skills: Work-Ready, Prepared for Life

• Flexibility and Adaptability
• Initiative and Self-Direction
• Social and Cross-Cultural Interaction
• Productivity and Accountability
• Leadership and Responsibility

Part Three:  21st Century Learning in Practice

6. 21st Century Learning and Teaching

• Learning P’s and Q’s: Problems and Questions
• Roads to Answers and Solutions: Science and Engineering

7. Powerful Learning: Proven Practices, Researched Results

• The 21st Century Project Learning Bicycle
• Creativity Through Projects
• Evidence That Project Learning Works
• Obstacles to Collaborative Inquiry and Design Learning

8. Retooling Schooling: Reshaping Support Systems

• Shifting Systems in Sync
• Support Systems
• From Skills to Expertise: Future Learning Frameworks

9. Conclusion: Learning for Life—Building a Better World

Appendix A  Resources

• 21st Century Skills Example Videos DVD
• Resources from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills
• Selected Online Resources

Appendix B  About the Partnership for 21st Century Skills

• What Is P21?
• What Does P21 Do?
• How the P21 Learning Framework Came into Being

Appendix C  3Rs · 7Cs = 21st Century Learning

Acknowledgments Notes References Credits How to Use the DVD Index

21 st Century Skills : Learning for Life in Our Times was translated into Korean, Mandarin Chinese (sim plified), Mandarin Chinese (traditional – Taiwan), and Russian. Interested in information about the book in these languages? Please Contact Us .

Published February 2012 256 pages Copyright © John Wiley And Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. ISBN-13: 978-1118157060

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{{item.title}}, my essentials, ask for help, contact edconnect, directory a to z, how to guides, education for a changing world, key skills for the 21st century, about the report.

Stephen Lamb, Esther Doecke and Quentin Maire from Victoria University's Centre for International Research on Education Systems (CIRES) investigate the evidence for 21st-century skills and how they might be best taught and assessed.

The report investigates the evidence base for nine commonly identified 21st-century skills:

• Critical thinking
• Creative thinking
• Metacognition
• Problem-solving
• Collaboration
• Self-efficacy
• Conscientiousness
• Perseverance

Published: August 2017.

Download the report

Future Frontiers Analytical Report: Key Skills for the 21st Century [PDF 2MB]

Executive Summary [PDF 288KB]

Listen to the podcast

[School bell ringing, sounds of children playing in a playground; introductory sound bites]

Jennifer Macey:

From the New South Wales Department of Education – this is Charlie’s Future.

Stephen Lamb:

The concept for example of an inquiring mind, a lifelong learner, an ethical citizen, the concept of somebody who's entrepreneurial. You want people, in no matter what sphere of life, to become actively engaged as a citizen. These sorts of skills are important, and increasingly important in a world where the world of work itself is changing.

Welcome to Charlie’s Future, a podcast series that explores the role of education in preparing young people to thrive in an age of Artificial Intelligence. This podcast is part of the ‘Education for a Changing World initiative’ by the New South Wales Department of Education.

Join us as we meet some of the leading thinkers on this issue. We’ll explore the future of work, the future of education, and the future skills needed to navigate this brave new world.

At Sydney Olympic Park, high school students are competing in the annual regional first robotics challenge.

Female student:

So the robots start inside the field and then the robots have to try and get gears, and the robots drive over and catch the gears, which they put onto the steam ship.

Each school team have physically built and coded their own robot on wheels. They use remote controls to manoeuvre these machines across a field, make their robots climb a rope, and manipulate their robot to collect and drop plastic gears or discs into baskets.

The human player which is the pilot inside the tower will pick up the gear. Once they have a certain amount of gears, they can turn the gears and activate a rotor. There are four rotors and you get points for each rotor you get.

This high-stakes competition doesn’t just involve the ICT skills of coding, or engineering – these students are using all their 21st century skills, including collaboration, communication, computational thinking...

Male student:

One of the main things we have to talk about is where do we want to start and also discuss our end-game strategy:

... creativity, problem solving and even resilience when faced with a disappointing call from an umpire.

Critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, resilience – these are some of the 21st century skills that schools are now being encouraged to teach alongside traditional skills of numeracy and literacy. But what exactly are 21st century skills? How do you teach them? How do you assess them?

Remember Charlie and their friends? They’re starting school, which means they’ll be finishing school in about 2030 or 2040. So what skills that will best equip Charlie to navigate an AI future?

The New South Wales Department of Education commissioned some of the country’s leading thinkers on the future of education to consider these questions. The researchers at the Centre for International Research on Education Systems at Victoria University examine school systems around the world to find out where these 21st century skills are being taught and who’s doing it best.

Professor Stephen Lamb, Dr Quentin Maire and Esther Doeke collected evidence from around the world and produced a report titled ‘Key Skills for the 21st Century: an evidence-based review’ which is available on the Department’s website.

[While we were recording this interview – the Victorian police were testing their emergency alarms throughout the city.]

So to begin, what exactly are 21st century skills?

Quentin Maire:

Generally, we think about them as what students will need in the future to succeed in life, in work but also in life more broadly. As part of this report we identified nine skills that most states or countries focus on. They can be grouped in different ways but one way of looking at them would be to focus on the more cognitive heavy skills, so those where thinking is really at the centre, and these ones are critical thinking, creativity, metacognition, and problem solving. But also some more dispositional or attitudinal skills that matter as well and these can be skills like collaboration, working with others, motivation, self-efficacy (so: can I can I do it? can I succeed?), conscientiousness and grit or perseverance. So, these other nine skills that we've looked at.

And they're sometimes called soft skills aren't they?

Yes because they're not necessarily considered in the same way as literacy and numeracy and the things that we take as hard skills associated with the sort of traditional subject areas. So they’re more competencies or capacities that somebody has that they can apply across all areas of their life so to speak, in thinking about work and thinking about the way they live, the ways of thinking and so on.

It's important to note, right up front that this isn’t an exhaustive list and it’s not unassailable because a lot of this interest came around through thinking through the impact of digital literacy and sort of management of information and how it's important today to become very competent and being able to use computers for example and iPads and Facebook and all the sorts of things that are associated with it and apply across so many different domains and areas.

There are also these other sorts of skills that are associated with critical thinking and problem solving. So it’s more about the ways of thinking and the tools that we think with rather than just the knowledge that sits at the base of a lot of subject areas.

What about digital literacy? There seems to be a recent push in many schools to teach coding - but Esther Doeke says 21st century skills are more than just coding, and being able to critically analyse big data is one skill that will become increasingly important.

Esther Doeke:

I’ll start with digital literacy. That’s a really important skill, not only from the mechanics from being able to code or being able to set up the ICT infrastructure required, but also the ability to critically assess the information they get online. That’s obviously a big buzzword at the moment with fake news; but it’s true, it’s a real skill and students should be given opportunities to develop those skills within schools.

Critical thinking involves a judgment or an evaluation of claims of evidence of arguments to decide what is right or what should be done. So it's really that evaluation dimension of what is there and how solid is it that matters.

Then we have other and other skills that are important. Metacognition is really about is thinking about one's thinking, in a sense, so meta-thinking, if you wish, and really that's about monitoring how your thinking works in the achievement of a given goal. So if I want to solve something, I want to complete something, how's is my thinking helping or on track to get this done? So students can think about what they did right or wrong and still be, in a way, engaging with their own thinking.

I think it may also be worth mentioning that these skills do not replace some other skills like literacy and numeracy - these are not being discarded, they're coming in as a broader set of skills that students are expected to develop.

So why are these key 21st century skills so important?

There are various reasons why I think why countries or states are focusing on these skills. One of the reasons is because they are associated with positive outcomes in schools or in education. So, students who do well at examinations or in Year 12 for example, generally tend to do well in these areas as well: so they tend to be pretty good at considering that it can succeed, they are conscientious, they can focus on the tasks etc. So that's a first reason.

But there is another reason which is related to the changes that are happening in the workforce and the types of work or labour that these students will do in the future.

Yes - there is an economist called James Heckman who did all this work on, looking from very early on, what predicts future success. And he identified that these sorts of skills including some things that almost sound like traits which are, you know, your perseverance, your conscientiousness, your application, your motivation, these sorts of things and the levels of them, were associated with future success well beyond the impact of qualifications.

So how do you teach 21st century skills, such as critical thinking or meta-cognition in a classroom. Can they be taught as a subject like maths and English?

That’s a really good question because of a lot of systems and other countries spend a lot of time in defining these concepts - and there is no one real definition, there’s multiple definitions. So when it comes down to collecting evidence about teaching it, we actually can’t find a lot out there. We can point to some really positive practice that we can see, for instance, it comes to mind, applied learning, project based learning is a really great way to incorporate a range of these skills within various disciplines, and giving kids the chance to develop these skills in a meaningful way.

So for instance in VET or Vocational Education and Training, it’s about applied learning, students are say in a hospitality kitchen and within that there’s a unit on communication. So, students are learning how to communicate, how to work with the chef, and that’s very valuable, because it’s not communication being learnt in an esoteric way, they’re applying it.

Well one of the difficulties or one of the issues is that we have a long history of taking up our subject areas like mathematics and English and we've worked out over a period of time the sorts of texts and the way that this knowledge should be taught. With these sorts of skills these newly discussed sorts of skills that we're talking about, there isn't the long history we have about knowing how best to teach them. So in many of the schools and systems that have attempted to emphasise this in recent times, they have come to, even within their subject areas, focus on the sorts of tasks that may involve project based learning that Esther has just talked about as a means of promoting things like collaboration, communication skills, problem solving within the context of a project. Because this brings students and learners together and it allows them to operate together and emphasise the sorts of skills and outlooks that they need and that we're talking about in relation to these sorts of skills.

And what about things like grit or perseverance – aren’t these innate characteristics that can be developed in children before they even start school?

How do we teach young people to be resilient for example - there isn't necessarily easy tasks that we can go to or activities within a classroom that they can teach that in that sort of way. So this is where this new knowledge being having to be formed about the best sorts of ways in which resilience and grit and perseverance can happen, because we can see within subject areas like mathematics, as tasks become harder, to teach teacher can't afford really, doesn't want the children to give up. They've got to be able to display a capacity to keep on task and keep doing what's required. And that's true of every subject area - just because things become harder, we can't necessarily allow students to give up on their learning. So, it's how we teach that grit and perseverance so that they keep going even under some difficult circumstances. It's a very valuable skill and applies to so many different areas.

So we've been engaged with half a dozen schools that have taken on some sets of tasks in which we can look at how well students have acquired certain skills around critical thinking in particular. There was a task that actually involved trying to answer the question, think about the evidence that's available in and around whether we have landed on the moon. So there’s a set of tasks built up around that can which teachers take on and there's quite a range of evidence that’s there which people can pursue to look at about whether we have or haven't. There's evidence both ways and so it's getting somebody or some students to think through what that evidence looks like, where they would go to get it, and how that looks, and then to be able to make judgements and rational judgments themselves based on that evidence. What do they think coming to that point of view. There isn't necessarily a right or wrong answer here, but it's the process they go through, their reasoning that's what's important.

So the natural follow-up question would be: how should a school assess something like resilience or critical thinking skills?

Some of the skills can be assessed more directly through direct assessment like we'd have a NAPLAN test, but many of these skills that we're describing can't be got at in that sort of way. For example, the concept of resilience: it's not clear how you would get that through a direct assessment.

That could come about through teacher judgment and teachers standing back and judging how resilient a student is or their critical thinking or problem solving or other sorts of skills, or we can use self-reported tests, which is a longstanding way of doing this, which is to actually ask students a set of items give them a set of items to which they respond. And from that being able to assess their level of based on what they report their level of skill.

The research report found that in the US, the core districts of California have embraced the teaching of these 21st century skills and have already set up tools to test for and measure their students proficiency in these skills.

Look, the core districts are a good example. They cover about 1.2 million students across a series of districts in California that have grouped together. They have implemented it at a whole-of-district level, across all of their districts, and they apply it both in the learning and what students are expected to acquire whilst they’re at school, but they’ve also gone on to think about assessment and judgement.

I think the core districts really stood out for us because they’re not only interested in these concepts and putting them into the curriculum and defining them, they’re also measuring them within their students and using them as a way for school improvement. And they’re measuring these concepts, through a student self-reported measure: so, asking the students a series of questions that can then determine a rating of how well the students are going on concepts such as growth mindset, and self-efficacy and self-management.

The truth is that they’re one of the first school districts or school systems to do this type of stuff, to measure it in such a comprehensive way. Our systems here in Australia do run, say for instance in NSW, there’s the ‘Tell Them From Me’ survey, which is asking students every year in NSW, respond to a series of questions, defining how much they feel belonging, or how much they feel safe at school. But this is actually stepping back and measuring these key skills for 21st century in a different way and providing schools with the means from which to learn from each other and improve.

And they've done some work which compares whether teacher judgments, self-reporting and direct assessment, and found that the student assessment self-reporting is quite robust. And they've taken it as far now as including it within their school performance framework, so they actually judge schools by the levels of skills that students display and have acquired in school.

So this is going much further than most of the systems where we're still trying to identify what it is going to focus on and how we're going to do it. Here's a system that's actually taken that to a point of thinking about how well their schools are doing in delivering on these things.

The teaching and testing of 21st century skills are at different stages of development in school systems around the world. The researchers point out that one of the aspects holding some systems back is a lack of support for teachers to implement the concepts and assessments.

It’s really important that teachers are supported. We have to firstly value their teacher judgement of these concepts, know that they are already assessing students on many of these dimensions that we have identified as key skills. We should value what they’re already doing in schools. And something that we felt that came out to us when we were reading through all the materials is that, we’re seeing lots of development on the policy front in terms of schools, but we’re not seeing then teacher training programs taking it onboard, saying we’re going to start working this through our programs. If teachers aren’t prepared to work in this 'new frontier', so to speak, we can’t expect them to start delivering on it, it’s not fair.

I think you're right, I think the point that Esther made about teachers and their preparation, their readiness for teaching these skills is very important. And in fact, we have evidence from New Zealand actually showing that teachers and schools find it, or have found it difficult, to teach these skills and to make sure students learn these skills. But at the same time, we also have evidence from New Zealand, as well, of grass-root developments in schools of teachers and schools coming together to develop tools and instruments, pedagogical tools to help students learn these [skills]. So, I think we’re in the early stages of evidence based that we need to understand how we can teach and develop these skills.

Teacher training is very important, and so is professional development: I mean they’re the two main mechanisms. So at the present moment I don't think that these skills have necessarily filtered their way through to teacher training and have been taken up with the sort of systematic rigour that's required; but this is needed in the future.

Well I think that, the way it’s framed in the Australian Curriculum at the moment, which is that these [skills] should be across all disciplines, and ideally would like all teachers to come together and plan in a team-based approach which skill is coming into which subject and when – I think ideally, that would be great. But knowing how schools work, obviously not all teachers can make the time to do that. So, for instance, we see in the social and ethical understanding subjects in Victoria, we find a lot of PE (Physical Education) teachers being put into that type of planning because people think that’s the ideal fit. But really it would be great for all subjects to get onboard and see where it can fit in some way.

There has been an evaluation in New Zealand about these 21st century skills or key skills, and they looked at secondary schools and between 2012 and 2015. They found that little progress had occurred in student’s exposure to the skills or opportunities for developing these skills. And then they actually asked teachers and principals why that was the case, and they mentioned exactly what you said: that the schedule is too tight, there is too much, we have to focus on senior secondary examinations, there is a lot, and therefore this doesn't come high enough in our priority list, in a sense.

And there seems to be some agreement in this report with the previous report on ‘The Best and Worst of Times’ by the academics at Sydney University - that schools should not just be a preparing students for industry and university, but also to be critical and engaged citizens who can thrive in an increasingly complex future.

I think if we were to ask a group of employers, for example, they would point to these things as being critical. So yes, they want people with content knowledge, but they want people with more than just content knowledge, who can be adaptable and flexible, and think about things in new sorts of ways, so that they are creative and innovative in the way that they operate.

If we undertake this correctly. yeah, it could be very revolutionary. If we think it through deeply, and enact change over various fronts, and not just put this emphasis in the prep into year ten area of schooling - we mention in our report we don’t want our schools to be just ATAR factories or university preparatory systems - we want them also to factor this in for when students are in the crucial final stages of schooling. So, don’t create this just for the early years. And if we can transfer these learnings into the upper secondary years, perhaps that could be quite revolutionary, I think.

The concept for example of an inquiring mind, a lifelong learner, an ethical citizen, the concept of somebody who's entrepreneurial - these are goals that we're thinking about, and these tie over to professions and jobs that people have. You want people no matter what sphere of life to have those sorts of qualities. But they do cover all spheres of life, engaging for example in local politics, your local community, becoming actively engaged as a citizen. These sorts of skills are increasingly important in a world where the world of work itself is changing and we can't guarantee now the sorts of jobs that have been there in the past will be there in the future. But what we can ensure is that people who have and are equipped and skilled in certain ways, with these sorts of skills, will be more flexible will be more adaptable. The concept of an inquiry mind for example to learn for themselves and to be able to be more self-sufficient as learners and agents.

What final words of wisdom would our researchers have for little Charlie, who is starting school this year?

I would say remaining open minded to various approaches to learning, and learning about different things, and including these skills that can then broaden the perspective and the views or outlooks on life.

Well you could just focus in on the sorts of skills that Charlie may need in the future. An important message here is that systems have to be able to help Charlie along the way, and that's what this is really all about: trying to identify what schools can do, and school administrations, to be able to ensure that everything's in place so that Charlie can make the best out of their schooling and walk away with the sort of platform of skills that Charlie needs to be able to operate successfully in a future world.

I guess I would say to Charlie that the skills that we’re talking about also might change in 5 or 10 years, so hopefully, they will be able to be dynamic in the way they conceptualise skills in that we’re not being definitive, giving them that freedom for the future.

That was Professor Stephen Lamb, Dr Quentin Maire and Esther Doeke from the Centre for International Research on Education Systems at Victoria University in Melbourne, ending this episode of Charlie’s Future – a podcast series by the New South Wales Education Department.

Go online to read the full report - 'Key Skills for the 21st Century: an evidence-based review'. Just do a search for ‘Future Frontiers’ on the Department’s website. There you’ll also find links to all the reports commissioned for the Education for a Changing World initiative.

And do join this conversation. If you have comments get in touch with us through our Facebook group: Future Frontiers: Education for a Changing World. Our Twitter handle is: @education2040, Hashtag #futurefrontiers, or email us at [email protected].

Thanks so much for joining us. This is Charlie’s Future.

Additional resources

Watch the Charlie's Future animation that explores what the world will look like for children starting school today, and what skills they will need to flourish.

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Teaching students 21st-century skills in the classroom

As a 21st-century teacher, you’ve probably heard of 21st-century skills that are essential in the classroom: the broad range of competencies that students need to navigate our changing world. P21’s Framework for 21st Century Learning places the 4 Cs — critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication — alongside literacy and life skills as essential qualities for 21st-century learners to master.

As transferable “soft” skills, they can be integrated across subject curricula. Despite the name, they’re not specific to more modern subjects like ICT. In fact, educators have been training students in some of these skills for hundreds of years !

Let’s take a look at the most commonly designated 21st-century skills in the classroom, and how you can integrate them into your teaching practice.

What are the 4 Cs? 21st-century learning skills in the classroom

1. critical thinking.

Critical thinking describes the ability to analyze, synthesize, and come to rational conclusions about information that comes our way. Experts have emphasized the need for more critical thinking training in schools.

To nurture students’ critical thinking skills, ask open-ended questions and encourage students to work their way towards their own conclusions. Ask students to question their assumptions , and be open to challenges from students when they question yours!

Class discussions are a great way of honing students’ critical thinking capabilities. Debating important issues — where students might disagree and have strong opinions — and encouraging them to back up their positions with arguments and evidence will turn them into stronger thinkers. There are countless such debate ideas in Kialo Edu’s Topic Template Library !

2. Creativity

Creativity describes the ability to produce diverse and unique ideas. It’s not just important in expressive subjects such as art or creative writing — creative thinkers are able to problem solve and advance innovative solutions.

Help students hone their creative thinking by giving them space to experiment with novel ideas and approaches. A project-based learning approach allows students flexibility in executing assignments, which prompts them to make creative decisions within a meaningful context. When students have more choices, they feel stronger ownership over their learning process.

3. Communication

Students need to be able to express their ideas clearly, efficiently, and with the appropriate audience in mind. Teachers should give students opportunities to communicate across different media and in different environments.

Guide students to become confident speakers and considerate listeners. Class presentations are an effective way of building students’ public speaking abilities. Have students practice their presentations in groups, and provide each other with encouragement and constructive feedback. You can promote peer-to-peer communication during whole class presentations by designating groups of question-askers for each presenter.

Similarly, having classroom discussions can help students to feel comfortable expressing themselves while training them to communicate effectively. Always set up ground rules for discussion, and work to promote a culture of civil discourse in the classroom.

To integrate technology, why not try using Kialo Edu to have online, written discussions? These give students more time to clarify their thoughts and can take some of the heat out of classroom debates on sensitive or controversial topics .

4. Collaboration

Collaboration describes the ability to work collectively with others towards a shared goal. It includes the interpersonal skills necessary to work harmoniously with others or mitigate problems when they arise. Being able to accept and deliver meaningful feedback, and compromise on your own vision, are all key aspects of collaboration.

Group activities with explicit goals, defined responsibilities, and a clear structure can help to foster meaningful collaboration . Consider asking the class to work together to generate their own assessment rubric for a given assignment – it could be for an essay, presentation, or project. Have students consider the problem, brainstorm in groups, present to the class, and deliberate until they agree on the final rubric: That’s all of the 4 Cs in one activity!

The benefits of 21st-century literacy skills for students

Under the framework of 21st-century skills in the classroom, literacy encompasses not just reading and writing, but information literacy , media literacy, and technology literacy. Students should be capable users of modern technology, able to reap its benefits, and also aware of potential dangers around internet security or online misinformation.

To become responsible digital citizens, help your students to identify reliable and unreliable sources of information online. Develop a code of conduct for digital interactions in your class, so that students can build healthy online habits that will see them through to later life.

The benefits of 21st-century life skills for students

Like the 4 Cs, educators have been instilling life skills in their students since long before the invention of the internet! A 21st-century framework focuses on the explicit teaching of the social-emotional competencies needed to navigate group dynamics and personal challenges. These include flexibility, initiative, productivity, leadership, and social skills.

Try to cultivate students’ self-awareness of their own social-emotional needs by creating periods of reflection through journaling or check-in activities. Encourage a growth mindset by emphasizing the process of learning, presenting challenges as opportunities to think deeper about a problem rather than failures.

Sometimes the language of 21st-century skills seems all-encompassing — it’s a pretty exhaustive list! Luckily, educators include many of these across their lessons already. The difference in a 21st-century approach is that it entails an explicit awareness and incorporation of these into a teacher’s practice.

How has your experience been teaching 21st-century skills to your students? Let us know at [email protected] , or reach out to us on social media!

Looking for more inspiration on how to teach critical thinking in your classroom? We’ve got lots of other resources!

Want to try Kialo Edu with your class?

Sign up for free and use Kialo Edu to have thoughtful classroom discussions and train students’ argumentation and critical thinking skills.

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Career and Technical Education (CTE) | 21st Century Skills

What Are 21st Century Skills?

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March 14th, 2024 | 11 min. read

Brad Hummel

Coming from a family of educators, Brad knows both the joys and challenges of teaching well. Through his own teaching background, he’s experienced both firsthand. As a writer for iCEV, Brad’s goal is to help teachers empower their students by listening to educators’ concerns and creating content that answers their most pressing questions about career and technical education.

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21st Century skills are 12 abilities that today’s students need to succeed in their careers during the Information Age.

The twelve 21st Century skills are: 

• Critical thinking

Collaboration

Communication.

• Information literacy
• Media literacy
• Technology literacy

Flexibility

Productivity.

• Social skills

These skills are intended to help students keep up with the lightning pace of today’s modern markets. Each skill is unique in how it helps students, but they all have one quality in common: they are essential in the age of the internet.

On this page, we’ll take a look at what’s included in 21st Century skills, how they help students, and why they’re so important.

You'll also be able to download a free guide on how you can teach 21st Century skills in middle or high school courses.

To start, let's dive into the three categories within 21st Century skills.

The Three 21st Century Skills Categories

Each 21st Century skill is broken into one of three categories:

• Learning skills
• Literacy skills
• Life skills

Learning skills (the four C’s) teach students about the mental processes required to adapt and improve upon a modern work environment.

Literacy skills (IMT) focuses on how students can discern facts, publishing outlets, and the technology behind them. There’s a strong focus on determining trustworthy sources and factual information to separate it from the misinformation that floods the Internet.

Life skills (FLIPS) take a look at intangible elements of a student’s everyday life. These intangibles focus on both personal and professional qualities.

Altogether, these categories cover all twelve 21st Century skills that contribute to a student’s future career.

This is not an exhaustive checklist of career readiness skills — but they're the career readiness skills that overlap with 21st Century skills!

Let’s take a closer look at each category.

Category 1. Learning Skills (The Four C’s)

The four C’s are by far the most popular 21st Century skills. These skills are also called learning skills .

More educators know about these skills because they’re universal needs for any career. They also vary in terms of importance, depending on an individual’s career aspirations.

The 4 C's of 21st Century Skills are:

• Critical thinking : Finding solutions to problems
• Creativity : Thinking outside the box
• Collaboration : Working with others
• Communication : Talking to others

Below, we'll consider each of these skills and their implications for students' careers.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is one the most important qualities for today's professionals to have.

In the classroom, effective critical thinking inspires students to solve problems and make new discoveries. It’s what helps students figure things out for themselves when they don’t have a teacher at their disposal.

In business settings, critical thinking is essential for improvement. It’s the mechanism that eliminates obstacles and replaces them with fruitful endeavors.

Creativity is equally important as a means of adaptation. This skill empowers students to see concepts in a different light, which leads to innovation.

In any field, innovation is key to the adaptability and overall success of a company.

Learning creativity as a skill requires someone to understand that “the way things have always been done” doesn't necessarily inspire progress or growth. It's the realization that change may be necessary to solve problems with innovative solutions.

Collaboration means getting students to work together, achieve compromises, and get the best possible results from solving a problem.

Collaboration may be the most difficult concept in the four C’s. But once it’s mastered, it can bring companies back from the brink of bankruptcy.

The key element of collaboration is willingness. All participants have to be willing to sacrifice parts of their own ideas and adopt others to get results for the company.

That means understanding the idea of a “greater good,” which in this case tends to be company-wide success.

Finally, communication is the glue that brings all of these educational qualities together.

Communication is a requirement for any company to maintain profitability. It’s crucial for students to learn how to effectively convey ideas among different personality types.

That has the potential to eliminate confusion in the workplace, which makes your students valuable parts of their teams, departments, and companies.

Effective communication is also one of the most underrated soft skills in the United States. For many, it’s viewed as a “given,” and some companies may even take good communication for granted.

But when employees communicate poorly, whole projects fall apart. No one can clearly see the objectives they want to achieve. No one can take responsibility because nobody’s claimed it.

Without understanding proper communication , students in the 21st Century will lack a pivotal skill to progress in their careers.

But the four C’s are only the beginning. 21st Century skills also require students to understand the information that’s around them.

Category 2. Literacy Skills (IMT)

Literacy skills are the next category of 21st Century skills.

They’re sometimes called IMT skills, and they’re each concerned with a different element of digital literacy and comprehension.

The three 21st Century literacy skills are:

• Information literacy : Understanding facts, figures, statistics, and data
• Media literacy : Understanding the methods and outlets in which information is published
• Technology literacy : Understanding the machines that make the Information Age possible

Let's consider these three interrelated skills and how they help learners navigate the world we live in.

Information Literacy

Information literacy is a foundational skill. It helps students understand facts, especially data points, that they’ll encounter online.

More importantly, it teaches them how to separate fact from fiction.

In an age of chronic misinformation, finding truth online has become a job all on its own. It’s crucial that students can identify honesty on their own. Otherwise, they can fall prey to myths, misconceptions, and outright lies. 

Media Literacy

Media literacy is the practice of identifying publishing methods, outlets, and sources while distinguishing between the ones that are credible and the ones that aren’t.

Just like the previous skill, media literacy is helpful for finding truth in a world that’s saturated with information.

This is how students find trustworthy sources of information in their lives. Without it, anything that looks credible becomes credible.

But by becoming media literate, students can discern which media outlets or formats to ignore. They also learn which ones to embrace, which is equally important.

Technology Literacy

Last, technology literacy goes another step further to teach students about the machines involved in the Information Age.

As computers, cloud programming, and mobile devices become more important to the world, the world needs more people to understand those concepts.

Technology literacy gives students the basic information they need to understand what gadgets perform what tasks and why. This understanding removes the intimidating feeling that technology tends to have.

After all, if you don’t understand how technology works, it might as well be magic. But technology literacy unmasks the high-powered tools that run today’s world.

As a result, students can adapt to the world more effectively. They can play an important role in its evolution and guide its future.

But to truly round out a student’s 21st Century skills, they need to learn from a third category, one that influences them personally as well as professionally.

Category 3. Life Skills (FLIPS)

Life skills is the final category.   Also called FLIPS, these skills all pertain to someone’s personal life, but they also bleed into professional settings.

The five 21st Century life skills are:

• Flexibility : Deviating from plans as needed
• Leadership : Motivating a team to accomplish a goal
• Initiative : Starting projects, strategies, and plans on one’s own
• Productivity : Maintaining efficiency in an age of distractions
• Social skills : Meeting and networking with others for mutual benefit

Together, the five life skills help ensure that a person can lead a successful and independent life both personally and professionally.

Flexibility is the expression of someone’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

This is one of the most challenging qualities to learn for students because it’s based on two uncomfortable ideas:

• Your way isn’t always the best way
• You have to know and admit when you’re wrong

That’s a struggle for a lot of students, especially in an age when you can know any bit of information at the drop of a hat.

Flexibility requires them to show humility and accept that they’ll always have a lot to learn — even when they’re experienced.

Still, flexibility is crucial to a student’s long-term success in a career. Knowing when to change, how to change, and how to react to change is a skill that’ll pay dividends for someone’s entire life.

It also plays a big role in the next skill in this category.

Leadership is someone’s penchant for setting goals, walking a team through the steps required, and achieving those goals collaboratively.

Whether someone’s a seasoned entrepreneur or a fresh hire just starting out, leadership applies to their career.

Entry-level workers need leadership skills for several reasons. The most important is that it helps them understand the decisions that managers and business leaders make.

Then, those entry-level employees can apply their leadership skills when they’re promoted to middle management (or the equivalent). This is where 21st Century skill learners can apply the previous skills they’ve learned.  

It’s also where they get the real-world experience they need to lead entire companies.

As they lead individual departments, they can learn the ins and outs of their specific careers. That gives ambitious students the expertise they need to grow professionally and lead whole corporations.

True success also requires initiative, requiring students to be self-starters.

Initiative only comes naturally to a handful of people. As a result, students need to learn it to fully succeed.

This is one of the hardest skills to learn and practice. Initiative often means working on projects outside of regular working hours.

The rewards for students with extreme initiative vary from person to person. Sometimes they’re good grades. Other times they’re new business ventures. Sometimes, it’s spending an extra 30 minutes at their jobs wrapping something up before the weekend.

Regardless, initiative is an attribute that earns rewards. It’s especially indicative of someone’s character in terms of work ethic and professional progress.

That goes double when initiative is practiced with qualities like flexibility and leadership.

Along with initiative, 21st Century skills require students to learn about productivity. That’s a student’s ability to complete work in an appropriate amount of time.

In business terms, it’s called “efficiency.” The common goal of any professional — from an entry-level employee to a CEO — is to get more done in less time.

By understanding productivity strategies at every level, students discover the ways in which they work best while gaining an appreciation for how others work as well.

This equips them with the practical means to carry out the ideas they determine through flexibility, leadership, and initiative.

Still, there’s one last skill that ties all other 21st Century skills together.

Social Skills

Social skills are crucial to the ongoing success of a professional. Business is frequently done through the connections one person makes with others around them.

This concept of networking is more active in some industries than others, but proper social skills are excellent tools for forging long-lasting relationships. While these may have been implied in past generations, the rise of social media and instant communications has changed the nature of human interaction.

As a result, today’s students possess a wide range of social skills. Some are more socially adept than others. Some are far behind their peers. And some lucky few may be far ahead, as socializing comes naturally to them.

But most students need a crash course in social skills at least. Etiquette, manners, politeness, and small talk still play major roles in today’s world. That means some students need to learn them in an educational setting instead of a social setting. For them, it’s another skill to add to their lives.

Now that we’ve established what 21st Century skills are let’s answer the next big question: do employers actually want people with 21st Century skills?

What Is the Demand for 21st Century Skills?

While 21st Century skills have always been important, they’ve become essential in a worldwide market that moves faster by the day.

These skills all double back to one key focus: a person's ability to enact and/or adapt to change. 

This is because any industry is capable of changing at a moment’s notice. Industries are now regularly disrupted with new ideas and methodologies. Those industries that haven’t been disrupted aren’t immune; they just haven’t been disrupted yet.

With that in mind, the world has entered an era where nothing is guaranteed. As a result, students need to learn to guide the change that’ll inundate their lives. At the very least, they need to learn how to react to it. Otherwise, they’ll be left behind.

This is especially true as customer demand accelerates in all industries, along with expectations for newer features, higher-level capabilities, and lower prices.

In today’s marketplace, falling behind means becoming obsolete. That’s a familiar concept to all of today’s students as tomorrow’s advancements make today’s breakthroughs seem quaint or unimpressive.

Today, the only consistency from year to year is change. That's why many teachers like you are incorporating the 21st Century Skills Assessment into their career readiness courses.

When you teach 21st Century skills , your students will have the adaptive qualities they need to keep up with a work environment that’s constantly evolving.

How Do You Teach 21st Century Skills?

Now you know what 21st Century skills are and why employers want new hires to have them. So how do you teach them in your daily classes?

Before getting into the details, it's important to identify who should teach 21st Century skills.

While these skills can be taught at any grade level, we find it's most important to teach 21st Century skills in middle or early high school.

This is the time when your students need to hone their career readiness skills before they enter the workforce!

So how can middle and high school teachers teach 21st Century skills effectively?

Click below to download the Ultimate Guide to Teaching 21st Century Skills in Secondary Schools and find out!

21st-Century Skills – What They Are and Why They’re Important

Credentialate

• 21st century skills , digital badges , durable skills , employability , graduate outcomes , micro-credentials , skills , soft skills , transferable skills , upskilling , workplace skills

We often hear the term, “21st-century skills.” However, it is not often clear exactly what that means and how it relates to things like employability, education, and hiring. As old jobs fall victim to automation and advancing technology, the need for transferrable skills and new knowledge and competencies has increased. In this information-rich Credentialate Guide, we examine the workplace needs of the global economy, 21st-century terms and definitions, what skills are important and how are they are taught and assessed.

Updated March 2024 – to include updated terms, impact of AI and more recent references

The Essentials: 21st-century skills

• What are the drivers behind the need for 21st-century skills? There is a skills gap across an entire generation of workers. If that gap isn’t addressed, it could have dire consequences for the new global economy. Additionally, the nature of work itself is undergoing rapid transformations, from too much specialisation, automation and the rapid rise of the digital age – particularly AI.
• What are the workforce requirements of the new global economy? The need for durable and transferable skills, new knowledge and competencies has increased exponentially. At the same time, employers struggle to find candidates with the skills their business needs. Recruiters find it hard to identify strengths, soft skills and transferrable skills that are not easily shared on a resume or through interviewing.
• Is there a difference between 21st-century, professional, workplace and soft skills? There are many terms used interchangeably to describe modern skills , including 21st-century skills, professional skills, workplace skills, durable skills, transferable skills and soft-skills. By and large, there is a common meaning across all terms to mean the same or very similar set of skills.
• What are the 21st-century skills? 21st-century skills are based primarily on “deeper learning” skills (like critical thinking, problem solving, and teamwork) and are comprised of a combination of soft-skills (such as interaction, collaboration, processing information, and managing people) and hard-skills (with a mainly IT focus. Dgital literacy, media literacy, etc.).
• How do 21st-century skills help to address the skills gap? 21st-century skills are those that hiring managers value most .  Displaced workers who upskill and reskill to learn these new skills have the opportunity to progress in their roles, transition to new roles or reenter the workforce in a meaningful way, along with providing for the means for them to support themselves and their economies.
• What are the issues with teaching 21st-century and career skills? Many curricula have become standardised since the identification of these core skills. The outdated “transmission” model of learning has been replaced by more creative and freestyle type of learning. Every student learns differently, and training must be personalised. In response to this, short-form learning, skills-based learning and micro-credentials , are on the rise, along with workplace-based and real world learning. 
• How do you assess attainment of 21st-century skills? Unlike traditional assessments, where there is a definitive right and wrong answer, soft- skills are far more intangible to measure against. Performance-based or authentic assessment has arisen in response and is open ended or task-based. Learners utilise their 21st-century skills and are scored against grading rubrics that allow educators to assess without bias.
• What is the role of micro-credentials in 21st-century skill development? Micro-credentials are based on small, well-designed courses that target specific skills or subsets of skills. They are “bite-sized” compared to traditional credentials – usually available over weeks or months, not years’ – and cost less as a result. Micro-credentials are increasingly compared on the same level as traditional degrees and are validated in digital format, such as a digital credential or digital badge .
• How Credentialate provides a new perspective Credentialate is the world’s first Credential Evidence Platform. It helps you discover and share evidence of workplace skills. Credentialate is the only Credential Evidence Platform that includes a personalised qualitative, quantitative and artefact evidence record that is verified and aligned to industry frameworks, available via links from the digital badge. Educators can map and manage their skills infrastructure and track skills attainment across the institution and against existing frameworks.

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The Full Story: What 21st-century skills are, why they are important, how they are taught and assessed

What are the drivers behind the need for 21st-century skills, what are the workforce requirements of the new global economy, is there a difference between 21st-century, professional, workplace and soft skills, what are the 21st-century skills, how do 21st-century skills help to address the skills gap, what are the issues with teaching 21st-century and career skills, how do you assess attainment of 21st-century skills, what is the role of micro-credentials in 21st-century skill development, how credentialate provides a new perspective.

We often hear the term, “21st-century skills.” However, it is not often clear exactly what that means and how it relates to things like employability, education and hiring. The expression does legitimately refer to a discrete body of specific competencies. The value of these competencies came to light in a recent discovery about our global workforce: there is a skills gap across an entire generation of workers. If that gap isn’t addressed, it could have dire consequences for global economies in the first half of the 21st century.

Recent studies have shown that some professionals over the age of thirty-five follow an outdated paradigm. They learn one trade and become increasingly good at it until at some point they reach a “skills plateau.”

This specialisation isn’t necessarily negative. In fact, humankind has needed it in one form or another since the dawn of the industrial age. We’re now living in a rapidly progressing digital age. Jobs and skills have emerged in the last ten years that didn’t exist before. Rapid technological advancements have been increasingly changing the workplace, particularly since the rise in the proliferation of AI  enabled technologies, such as ChatGPT and the need for AI skills . However, job training and education in general haven’t changed enough to keep up.

Governments, employers, and educators began noticing the need for these changes in the 1980s. In 1991, a movement to address these issues emerged, even though at the time the reality of the need appeared to be long-term.

The US Secretary of Labor issued a report called What Work Requires of Schools . This report identified key fundamental skills required to survive in a modern, high-performance workplace that required more flexible and nimble workers, who could transfer skills from one position to another. They came to three primary conclusions:

• All American high school students must develop a new set of competencies and foundation skills if they are to enjoy a productive, full, and satisfying life. Whether they go next to work, apprenticeship, the armed services, or college, all young Americans should leave high school with the know-how they need to make their way in the world.
• The qualities of high performance that today characterise our most competitive companies must become the standard for the vast majority of our companies, large and small, local, and global. “High performance” means work settings relentlessly committed to excellence, product quality, and customer satisfaction. These goals are pursued by combining technology and people in new ways.
• The nation’s schools must be transformed into high-performance organisations in their own right. Transforming schools in the US into high- performance organisations, means being relentlessly committed to producing skilled graduates as the norm, not the exception.

That flexibility and willingness to take on new or additional roles underscores the skills gap possessed by previous generations. Work goals have changed significantly over the decades. The Baby Boomers sought job stability. Subsequent generations wanted less of that and focused more on finding happiness and fulfillment in their careers. This is important given, one’s career no longer means a few decades with one company, but perhaps a variety of positions that changes frequently.

Today’s generation craves job mobility ahead of job stability. Now, students and young professionals expect to change job roles and fields at least a dozen times in their careers – with a mean of 4.6 years for many workers . Professionals with more specialisation and less flexibility have trouble adapting to the dizzying pace of workplace changes. The good news is that even these workers can be retrained and transfer the skills they do possess . But they must be taught how in order to do so.

As old jobs fall victim to automation, advancing technology and AI, demand for many job skills and areas of expertise has diminished. The need for transferrable skills, with new knowledge and changing competencies has increased . Employees have long embraced the need for professional development and lifelong learning , but even those with core capability and the potential to learn skills or apply those they already possess struggle to prove their worth to employers.

Likewise, employers struggle to identify strengths and the durable and transferrable soft skills that are not easily shared on a resume or through interviewing and testing. Employees are missing out on opportunities and employers are missing potential superstar employees to fill key roles.

Practices like remote monitoring, automation and the use of AI to aid in decision making, analysis, and other tasks, have rendered many employees obsolete and further shaped the future of work . New jobs and opportunities abound, but it means a shift in thinking about job training, job seeking, human resources and hiring, and certifications like the use of micro-credentials to highlight capabilities, durable and transferable skills and competency.

The COVID pandemic saw record levels of unemployment, with many workers taking early retirement when offered rather than learning new skills or upskilling to start over in new positions.

What have we been doing wrong? Workplace reskilling and upskilling has traditionally focused on getting better at specific job tasks and meeting performance standards. This made more sense when jobs and roles were clearly defined. However, this focus on outcome-based learning rather than skills-based learning that in turn creates new competencies has missed the mark. This has resulted in a sizeable part of the workforce, an entire generation, becoming overspecialised and ill-equipped to meet new labour demands. These professionals now have no choice. They must adapt to the demands of change or go the way of the dodo.

There are many terms used interchangeably to describe 21-century skills, including:

21st-century skills – The term “21st-century skills” is generally used to refer to certain core competencies such as collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving that advocates believe educators need to teach to help students thrive in today’s world .

Professional skills – Professional skills are career competencies that often are not taught (or acquired) as part of traditional coursework. Professional skills such as leadership, mentoring, project management, and conflict resolution are value-added skills essential to any career.

Workplace skills – Workplace skills are the basic skills a person must have to succeed in any workplace. They are the core knowledge, skills and attitudes that allow workers to understand instructions, solve problems and get along with co-workers and customers.

Employability skills – Employability skills refer to a set of transferable skills and key personal attributes which are highly valued by employers and essential for effective performance in the workplace. Employability skills include things like good communication, motivation and initiative.

Durable skills – Durable skills include a combination of how you use what you know – skills like critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity – as well as character skills like fortitude, growth mindset, and leadership.

Transferable skills – Transferable skills, sometimes called portable skills, are the skills you have developed that can be transferred from one job to another, like communication or time management skills.

Soft-skills – Soft skills are a combination of people skills, social skills, communication skills, character or personality traits, attitudes, career attributes, social intelligence and emotional intelligence quotients, among others, that enable people to navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well, and achieve their goals with complementing hard skills.

As you can see, there’s a lot of commonality across all of the definitions used to describe these skill sets. As such, the term selected is usually determined by the market segment using it.

So what are these 21st-century skills? They are a set of knowledge, skills, and learning dispositions that prepare learners to succeed in a rapidly changing, digital world. Educators, business leaders and academics worldwide have contributed to identifying, categorising, and developing lists of these workspace skills. They aren’t primarily based on content knowledge, but on “deeper learning” skills like critical thinking, problem solving, and teamwork.

Whatever term you choose to use, these skills are a combination of “soft skills” and “hard skills”. The hard skill component focuses on digital literacy, which is in increasingly high demand. Soft skills are people skills that involve interaction, collaboration, processing information, and managing people. The latter is known as “enablement skills” or “power skills” because they are transferable to different roles and positions and durable in that they are used in a variety of employment environments.

According to EdGlossary , while the specific skills deemed to be “21st century skills” may be defined differently, the following identifies the knowledge, skills, work habits, and character traits commonly associated with 21st century skills:

• Critical thinking, problem solving, reasoning, analysis, interpretation, synthesizing information
• Research skills and practices, interrogative questioning
• Creativity, artistry, curiosity, imagination, innovation, personal expression
• Perseverance, self-direction, planning, self-discipline, adaptability, initiative
• Oral and written communication, public speaking and presenting, listening
• Leadership, teamwork, collaboration, cooperation, facility in using virtual workspaces
• Information and communication technology (ICT) literacy, media and internet literacy, data interpretation and analysis, computer programming
• Civic, ethical, and social-justice literacy
• Economic and financial literacy, entrepreneurialism
• Global awareness, multicultural literacy, humanitarianism
• Scientific literacy and reasoning, the scientific method
• Environmental and conservation literacy, ecosystems understanding
• Health and wellness literacy, including nutrition, diet, exercise, and public health and safety

Using a popular framework , these can be further categorised into:

The American Association of Colleges and Universities recognised some of these 21st-century skills in existing programs and, over time, recommended other goals to form part of essential learning outcomes for students.

Essential college and career skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, and written communication are the skills that hiring managers value most above and beyond specific content knowledge.

However, these skills are often not explicitly taught as part of college curricula, nor are they reflected on a college transcript . While content knowledge is a requisite part of a student’s education, it alone is insufficient for a student to thrive academically and professionally.

On a global scale, 21st-century skills have gained recognition and adoption into traditional education models.

Half of all available jobs today remain unfilled because people don’t have the needed skills for them. Many businesses can’t grow because they can’t get the workforce needed to grow. The skill gap remains, and it is preventing economies from developing. The old adage of “location, location, location” now refers to the local availability of talent and appropriately educated and skilled workers as anything else, and many companies offer incentives to employees to move in order to join their teams.

Many workers are able to adapt to working remotely have been able to thrive, and companies who seek to take advantage of that have expanded their workforce far beyond any geographic location. This requires a certain “digital literacy” and those able to take advantage of this development have found new freedom from the ability to work from anywhere.

How do we impart those skills to those who don’t have them, though? How do we close the skills gap and enable displaced workers to upskill, retrain, and re-enter the workforce in a meaningful way?

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We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented in order to solve problems that we don’t even know are problems yet.

Education in 21st-century skills has been a work in progress in many countries. The methods of instruction vary as personalised teaching methods dictate how learners achieve competencies in the classroom. Thankfully, many curricula have become standardised since the identification of these core skills. Modern teachers replaced the outdated “transmission” model of learning. But teaching these skills is a challenge, because every student learns differently, and training must be personalised to their needs and learning style .

Success using these teaching methods has varied. Educators can facilitate effective learning as long as they follow some key precepts. Students are empowered to guide their own learning. Learners flourish in an inquiry-based classroom environment. They’re encouraged to collaborate, and they’re given the opportunity to develop critical thinking skills. Each course is designed to bring out the learners’ creativity.

The sticking point is that much of this effective learning focuses on K-12 education. There are fewer options for adult learners seeking to develop 21st-century skills. Many professionals cannot put their lives and jobs on hold so that they can return to classroom learning. Soft skills and digital literacy need to become a part of ongoing personal development, but there are challenges to overcome.

Adult learners need upskilling that does not take a full two years to complete. The valuable competencies are needed now, not 24 months from now. They need learning methods that won’t cut into their normal job hours and won’t tie them down to a physical classroom location. Adult students need to benefit from the methods that have made achievement successful for secondary and post-secondary students.

One solution is a new kind of job training, based on frameworks that highlight capability, transferable skills, and result in new competencies. Since this kind of training does not result in a “degree” or “certification” in the traditional sense, learners must also be able to “prove” their skills and validate their learning through another means, one that is more robust, specific, and verifiable and verifiable in modern formats, such as micro-credentials or digital badges.

And as the shift towards shorter, skills-based and employment-focused micro-credentials builds momentum, education providers must strategically evolve their credentials and curriculum to meet demand.

Interest is shifting towards shorter, skills-based and employment-focused micro-credentials. Businesses know this, and some are bypassing degrees and developing their own micro-credentials to create a talent pool with the precise skills needed to fill designated roles. Further, most adult learners are primarily motivated to acquire a credential, micro or macro, in order to secure meaningful paid employment, or more broadly, career advantage. But if credentials of all sizes are a bridge between education and work, then providers need to consider that if work has changed, then so has employability, and so must credentials and curriculum.

Employability, however defined, must be related to empirically observable employment outcomes . Future research is needed to determine:

• The factors that affect a graduate’s likelihood of success in finding, creating and retaining work over a lifetime;
• Whether those factors can be influenced and if so, how; and
• Which factors can be influenced during a learner’s enrolment, regardless or age or stage?

Rethinking employability in higher education has the potential to bridge across the intersection between the need for development of durable and transferable skills such as 21st-century skills, to deliver better employment outcomes .

Given that the need for 21 st -century skills is clear, the question of how to assess a learners’ attainment of these essential skills becomes the next challenge. Unlike traditional multiple choice assessments, where there is a definitive right and wrong answer, performance tasks allow an opportunity for a much more authentic experience.

In a five-year study into using performance-based assessment to measure “those skills our students need to thrive as 21st century learners, workers, and citizens”, it was discovered that measuring outcomes such as critical and creative thinking was somewhat of a tall order.

• Creating performance tasks to measure students’ critical-thinking, problem solving, and written communication skills
• Generating rubrics to score the responses, and
• Developing and implementing a viable scoring process

After refinement and pilot testing, they were able to validate that  performance tasks could be used to make valid inferences about their students’ 21 st century skills and abilities.

A mission-driven, non-profit organisation, CAE develops performance-based and custom assessments that authentically measure students’ essential skills and identify opportunities for growth. CAE’s flagship assessments – CLA+, CWRA+ and SSA+ – evaluate the skills educational institutions and employers demand most and which are predictive of positive college and career outcomes: critical thinking, problem-solving and written communication.

Micro-credentials are based on small, well-designed courses that target specific skills or subsets of skills. They are “bite-sized” compared to traditional credentials like university degrees. You would expect to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and 2-4 years of your life on a college education. A micro-credential can be earned in weeks or months for a fraction of the cost of college – or in some cases the costs of a single college course.

This method of learning has found favour with employees and employers in recent years. It addresses specific needs brought by the rapidly changing times. More employers are removing degree requirements , and some have developed their own internal frameworks for establishing and verifying micro-credentials. They have shifted to hiring practices that target specific, transferable skills, or skill sets. These qualities make it an excellent vehicle for earning 21st-century skills.

Innumerable work veterans need inexpensive, time-flexible ways of learning new skills that will get them new jobs. Alternatively, they need a reliable method of surfacing evidence of those skills if they already have them. A LinkedIn survey of global talent trends validated what these skills were.

It revealed that companies struggle to assess those skills without a formal process, and this is really where micro-credentials and the frameworks being developed around them shine.

Credentialate is a secure, configurable platform that assesses and tracks attainment of competencies and issues micro-credentials to students backed by personalised evidence at scale. By automatically extracting data from existing platforms and using an organization’s own assessment rubrics, we can objectively measure awarding criteria and validate its evidence.

By this same method we can automate the assessment, monitoring, promotion and validation of evidence-backed skills. For an institution, we provide the data and insights required to track skills and competencies across courses and entire programs.

Finally, we have decades of collective experience in educational technology and long-standing ties with global educational powerhouses. These solidify our ability to produce credible digital badges.

Credentialate assesses, monitors, promotes and validates learners’ attainment of evidence-backed skills, supporting the transition from learner to earner. It is a secure, configurable platform that assesses and tracks attainment of competencies and issues micro-credentials to students. If you’d like to learn more About Us and how we can work together, contact us or Schedule a Demo and let’s discuss!

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Credentials just got personal – Unleash the power of your skills data and personal credentials

Credentialate is the world’s first Credential Evidence Platform that helps discover and share evidence of workplace skills. Launched In 2019, it was initially developed in close collaboration with leading design partner, UNSW Sydney, in support of a multi-year, cross-faculty community of practice and micro-credential research project. Credentialate has continued to evolve at an accelerated pace, informed in partnership with educators and industry leaders from around the world. Credentialate provides a Skills Core that creates order from chaotic data, provides meaningful insight through framework alignment and equips learners with rich personal industry-aligned evidence of their skills and competencies.

Find out more at:  edalex.com/credentialate

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How to develop 21st-century skills in students

It is becoming more and more important for students to showcase skills and achievements outside of the classroom to reflect the changing requirements from universities and workplaces. Here’s some ways in which counsellors can support that

Nayantara Handa

• More on this topic

In today’s ever-changing world, students applying for an undergraduate degree must showcase more than just academic achievement to stand out to university admissions. 

Universities are looking for students who are constantly challenging themselves, who will actively contribute to a diverse undergraduate community, and who have a well-rounded personality with strong interpersonal skills.

It is becoming more and more important for students to develop skills and interests outside of the classroom in order to ensure that they are preparing themselves, not just for university, but also for the world of work. 

University applications

A qualitative application to a university includes a personal essay that reflects a student’s academic strengths and relevant choice of subjects. Importantly, it must be a true reflection of themselves. The essay plays a crucial role in telling a student’s story about “who they really are”.

The most organic essays will “show rather than tell”. Succinctly written, they will demonstrate qualities currently at the forefront of the undergraduate landscape. These include empathy, leadership and integrity and reflect a student’s inner voice through an authentic story, learning or incident that has been instrumental in shaping them.

Academic ability is important, but universities are also looking for evidence of interdisciplinary skills, which will eventually enable students to adapt to new age careers and rapidly changing workplaces.

Detailed and evidence-based letters of recommendation serve to enhance a student’s academic and extracurricular strengths. Academic ability is important, but so are interdisciplinary skills, passion, initiative and a true desire to be the best at what a student chooses to do.

Last, but not least, are a student’s achievements and interests outside of school: universities are looking for accomplishments that show a student is willing to stretch the boundaries of their knowledge both inside and outside of the classroom.

This could be, for example, a student identifying a need in the community and responding through a community service project or innovating a solution. Initiative, compassion and a genuine respect for diverse cultures and communities are crucial in today’s interconnected world.  

How to develop students’ skills

The key lies in focusing on a student’s inherent strengths, managing their time well and choosing subjects in high school that are both reflective of their academic abilities and interests, as well as being relevant to university choices. 

The student, for their part, must look beyond the rankings in a quest to find a university where they will flourish and come into their own. The right fit between a student and a university lays the foundation for   personal success. 

A university guidance counsellor on their part can ensure that students develop these skills during their high school journey. Planning out a road map so that a student can build on their interests and skills could, for example, include active participation in school clubs, seeking out student council positions to build leadership skills, debating and MUN opportunities to build public-speaking skills and performance opportunities such as the school choir to build on creative skills.

Creating a realistic timeline with achievable academic and extracurricular goals helps students develop into well-rounded individuals with strong interpersonal and communication skills.

How to List 21st Century Skills on Your Resume - Definition & 30 Examples

Whether you’re seeking academic opportunities or looking to build a career-accelerating resume, 21st century skills for students and professionals showcase your innovative potential. But what are 21st century skills? Let’s find out!

by Hailey Brophy | Career Advice Expert

Last Updated: April 09, 2024

Table of contents

What are 21st century skills and why do they matter?

21st century skills examples to include on your resume, how to include 21st century skills on your resume, more skills resources, key takeaways.

The modern workplace moves quickly. To succeed, you need a resume that demonstrates your modern skill set and ability to adapt and innovate. Enter the so-called “21st century skills.”

Exhibiting 21st century skills in the classroom or the office will help you stand out as someone poised and ready to take advantage of the fast-paced and opportunity-rich environment of the information age.

But, why are 21st century skills important? Read on to find:

• What 21st century skills are and why they can be an asset for your resume.
• A 21st century skills list that you can use as a reference and incorporate into your resume.
• How to add 21st century skills to your resume for maximum impact.
• Key takeaways so you can remember the important stuff.

Need a resume to add your skills to? Get started with our Resume Builder . This tool will help you create a strong resume using professionally written text suggestions that you can customize as needed, automatic formatting help to ensure your resume meets your standards and guidance to help you beat that pesky writer’s block.

You’re already a citizen of the 21st century, so you might be wondering, “What makes 21st century skills any different from… regular old resume skills ?” Well, for starters, most of the skills that we’ll define as “21st century skills” fall under the soft skills umbrella. This means that they’re subtle personality-based skills that are transferable across a range of industries and contexts.

But more than that, 21st century skills are skills that allow you to navigate the working and learning environments of the information age. Adaptability to new technologies, the drive and desire to learn independently and the open-mindedness required to connect and collaborate with all sorts of colleagues are skills that make you a uniquely valuable candidate in a modern setting.

So why are 21st century skills so important? They’re the skills that help you navigate this modern world effectively. In other words, they’re the skills that make you a strong, thoughtful and flexible worker. And who doesn’t want that on their team?

On top of that, even careers outside of the technology sector have been forever changed by the tech boom. Knowing how to use modern tools to your advantage is indispensable and can easily make the difference between landing that dream role and thriving in your responsibilities and getting passed over for a more prepared candidate.

Now that you know why 21st century skills matter, it’s time to dive into some examples that you can use on your resume, college applications or even just keep in mind as you hone your professional abilities.

But first, let’s talk about a commonly used framework for 21st century skills. There are no definitive 21st century skills standards, but these three key categories are a great way to break down this concept into bite-sized pieces that you can focus on separately.

Let’s dive into each of the categories of the 21st century skills framework.

21st century life skills

These are the soft skills that help you navigate the modern world inside and outside of the workplace. Life skills help you manage your time, make meaningful connections and decide the direction of your life and career.

Examples of life skills:

• Flexibility
• Time management
• Self-motivation
• Independence
• Responsibility
• Accountability
• Collaboration

21st century learning skills

Learning skills are the 21st century skills in education and in the workplace that prepare you to tackle new challenges. Learning skills help you think creatively and collaborate with others. In fact, creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking are sometimes called the “four Cs” of learning skills.

Examples of learning skills:

• Creative thinking
• Adobe Creative Cloud
• Open-mindedness
• Critical thinking
• Communication
• Active listening
• Organization

21st century literacy skills

Literacy skills build on learning skills to help you make sense of the way that information moves in the 21st century. Things that fall under literacy skills include your comfort level with computer technology, specific software and your ability to critically read and analyze communications and media.

Examples of literacy skills:

• Media literacy
• Resourcefulness
• Technology skills
• Computer skills
• Microsoft Office Suite
• Google Workspace Suite

With a newfound sense of what 21st century skills are, you can now get to work on including them on your resume. Here’s how to get started:

Pay attention to keywords from the job description

Any job listing is going to include responsibilities and skills that the ideal candidate should have. These keywords are important to show that you align with the expectations of the role, and many of them will qualify as 21st century skills.

Make sure that the soft skills that you list match the job listing, and pay attention to the technical skills listed. Familiarity with the technology that a workplace uses can be a significant advantage for a candidate.

Matching your skills to the job listing also helps position your resume to pass through applicant tracking systems (ATS) , which are designed to screen out unqualified candidates.

Include 21st century skills in your skills section

Your skills section is the most obvious place to showcase your 21st century skills. Use this section to draw attention to your adaptability and showcase your best talents from all three of the 21st century skills framework categories.

Add skills throughout the rest of your resume

Your skills shouldn’t be limited to your skills section. Use your resume profile to highlight a few key 21st century skills at the top of your resume and use your work experience section to describe how you’ve put your skills to use to achieve results.

If you’re an entry-level applicant whose resume is going to focus more on skills than experience, a functional resume format might help you make the most out of your 21st century skills.

Don’t forget about your cover letter

A cover letter is a valuable opportunity to expand on your qualifications. It’s also a great place to show off your 21st century skills and how they’ve helped you advance your career and accomplish great things.

Write a cover letter that highlights specific skills and how they align with the expectations of your target role. Check out some cover letter examples to inspire you and leverage our Cover Letter Builder if you need help getting started.

Looking for help understanding, displaying or developing a different type of career skills? Let us help!

• Hard skills
• Hard vs soft skills

Now, let’s dive into some final takeaways to remember the next time you think about 21st century skills.

Develop life skills

Work on the key soft skills like accountability and leadership that allow you to achieve goals and feel in control of your life’s direction.

Remember the “four Cs” of learning

Creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication help you learn effectively and grow alongside your colleagues.

Emphasize literacy skills

Thoughtful analysis will help you develop your comfort with computer technology while also empowering you to understand modern communication styles and make truly informed decisions at school and in the workplace.

Showcase 21st century skills on your resume

Your 21st century skills should be present throughout your resume and should align with the job description for a resume that passes through ATS and positions you as the best possible candidate.

Be flexible

No matter how you slice it, each category of 21st century skills really comes down to your adaptability and willingness to learn. So, be quick on your feet, interested in growing as a professional and ready to learn from mistakes.

Was this information helpful? Let us know!

Hailey Brophy

Hailey Brophy is an experienced writer with a diverse career in digital publication. She is passionate about using her unique skills and experiences to help job seekers find the information that they need to succeed.

Read more articles by Hailey Brophy

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A Glimpse Into The 5 Cs Of 21st Century Skills

As we progress into an increasingly tech-driven world, the workings around us are rapidly changing, and so are the skills that are required to succeed at this fast pace. In today’s highly competitive and globalized economy, it is essential not only for kids but for every individual to possess a certain set of skills that go beyond the traditional academic curriculum. These skills are known as the “5 Cs”: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, and character . These 21st century skills for students can provide them with a great head start in life as they go on to tackle different obstacles.

In this blog, we will explore each of the 5 c’s skills in detail, discuss why they are important, and provide tips on how you can develop and enhance them in yourself. So, whether you are a student, a professional, or someone who is simply looking to improve their skill set, this blog is just for you!

Table of contents

Critical thinking, communication, collaboration, why is the 5 cs education important, frequently asked questions (faqs).

The capacity to analyze information and assess arguments is referred to as “critical thinking,” which is the first of the 5 c’s and one of the crucial 21st century skills for students.  In today’s digital era, when we are continuously bombarded with information, being able to filter through it and discern what is factual and credible is critical. Critical thinking involves asking questions, evaluating opposing points of view, and drawing educated conclusions based on facts. Something that lays the foundation of complex problem-solving skills in young minds at the start itself. 

BrightChamps programming for kids nurtures critical thinking, empowering young learners with essential problem-solving skills for a successful future.

Tips for developing critical thinking and complex problem-solving skills. 

• Practice asking questions and seeking out different viewpoints.
• Read a variety of sources and evaluate the credibility of the information presented.
• Engage in debates and discussions with others to refine your argumentation skills.

Communication skills have always been crucial, but they are becoming increasingly important in the twenty-first century. With remote work and virtual collaboration becoming the norm, the ability to communicate clearly and efficiently over numerous channels, such as email, video conferencing, and instant messaging, is critical. Individuals with strong communication abilities may also form connections and operate successfully in groups.

Tips for developing communication skills:

• Practice active listening by paying attention to what others are saying and asking clarifying questions
• Work on expressing your ideas clearly and concisely
• Use nonverbal cues, such as body language and facial expressions, to enhance your communication

Collaboration is the ability to work effectively with others towards a common objective, which is another of the 5 c’s. Teamwork is crucial in today’s increasingly interconnected and globalized environment. Collaborative skills entail not just working together but also negotiating and compromising when required.

Tips for developing collaboration skills:

• Practice working in teams on group projects or volunteer activities
• Develop your negotiation skills by listening to the perspectives of others and finding common ground
• Build trust and respect with your team members by being reliable and accountable

The capacity to develop fresh and inventive ideas is referred to as creativity. To handle issues and face difficulties in today’s fast-changing environment, it is critical to be able to adapt and think creatively. Creative abilities are important 21st century skills for students, and they include not just the ability to generate ideas but also the capacity to effectively apply them.

Tips for developing creativity skills:

• Practice brainstorming and generating new ideas
• Look for inspiration from a variety of sources, such as art, music, and literature
• Experiment with different approaches to problem-solving and be open to trying new things

Character  

Personal attributes such as honesty, integrity, and resilience are examples of character. In the twenty-first century, having a strong moral compass and a sense of purpose is becoming increasingly crucial. People with strong character are more inclined to persist in the face of adversity.

Remember, the developing character is a lifelong process. Be patient with yourself, stay committed to your values, and continue to seek out opportunities for growth and development.

Tips for developing character:

• Take some time to reflect on what you value most in life.
• Take time to reflect on your actions and consider how they align with your values. Ask for feedback from others and be open to constructive criticism.
• Identify areas where you would like to improve and set goals for yourself.
• Surround yourself with people who share your values and support your growth.

The 5 c’s of 21st century skills for students – critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, and character – are becoming increasingly important in today’s world. Just like nourishing your kids with the benefits of stem education , giving them the 5 Cs education is crucial. Here are some reasons why:

Adaptability: The world is changing swiftly, and people who possess the 5 Cs are better able to adapt to new problems and opportunities. They can think critically, communicate easily, interact with others, produce original ideas, and work well with individuals from a variety of backgrounds.

Employability: There’s no question that employers are looking for people who exhibit the 5 Cs. These abilities are vital in today’s workforce, where collaboration, problem-solving, and creativity are valued.

Success in life: The 5 c’s are vital not just for professional success, but also for personal achievement. Individuals with these skills are better able to negotiate complicated social, cultural, and political situations. They can comprehend and accept multiple points of view, work well with varied groups, and give back to their communities.

Innovation: Creativity and innovation are required to handle the difficult issues that our planet faces today. Individuals that possess the 5 Cs education are more suited for developing new and original ideas, thinking outside the box, and solving complicated issues creatively.

Globalization: Individuals who possess the 5 Cs education are more suited to effectively interact with people from varied origins and cultures as the globe becomes more interconnected. They can respect other points of view, communicate effectively, and interact with others in a global setting.

The 5 Cs of 21st century skills are important for success in today’s rapidly changing world. They provide individuals with the adaptability, employability, and personal and professional skills necessary to manage complex environments and add to their communities. Whether you are seeking career success, personal growth, or simply want to become a more effective and adaptable individual, developing the 5 Cs education is a worthwhile pursuit. Developing these characteristics in kids from an early age can be extremely beneficial for them.

Know more about kids coding languages in this article.

In conclusion, in today’s society, the 5 Cs of 21st century abilities—critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, and character—are becoming increasingly vital. These abilities are necessary not just for professional success but also for personal growth and development. It’s possible to build and improve your 5 Cs by recognizing your values, practicing self-awareness, creating objectives, developing positive relationships, practicing gratitude, accepting difficulties, and committing to lifelong learning. 

Remember that acquiring these abilities is a lifetime process that takes patience, perseverance, and a desire to make personal progress. However, the advantages of having these talents are numerous, ranging from flexibility and employability to personal and professional success. So begin your journey now and cultivate your 5 Cs to become a more successful, flexible, and productive person.

BrightChamps provides financial education for kids , equipping them with essential money management knowledge for a successful future.

The 5 Cs of 21st century skills are critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, and character.

The 5 Cs are important for several reasons, including adaptability, employability, personal and professional success, innovation, and globalization.

Examples of critical thinking skills include analyzing information, evaluating arguments, solving problems, making decisions, and applying knowledge.

Examples of communication skills including speaking clearly and effectively, active listening, writing clearly and effectively, nonverbal communication, and adapting to different communication styles.

Developing the 5 Cs is a lifelong process that requires patience, dedication, and a commitment to personal growth. It may take time to develop these skills, but the benefits are immense, from personal and professional success to contributing to your communities and making a positive impact on the world.

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Links to 21st century learning

On this page:, what is it.

21st century learning is the development of a highly valuable skill set for the future. 21st century skills are flagged as critical for the digital and evolving economy. Instead of specific subject knowledge, 21st century skills are ways of thinking, ways of working and ways of living.

The Australian Curriculum includes seven general capabilities:

• Information and communication technology (ICT) capability
• Critical and creative thinking
• Personal and social capability
• Ethical understanding
• Intercultural understanding

The list below from the Assessment & Teaching of 21st Century Skills website shows another approach to categorising these skills:

Ways of thinking

• Creativity and innovation
• Critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making
• Learning to learn, metacognition

Ways of working

• Communication
• Collaboration

Tools for working

• Information literacy
• ICT literacy

Living in the world

• Citizenship — local and global
• Life and career
• Personal and social responsibility — including cultural awareness and competence

Best practice STEM education is complementary to 21st century learning. At the same time as developing important skills and knowledge in the STEM subjects, students engage in activities and projects that promote 21st century skills such as critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration.

How does it help?

Linking to 21st century learning prepares students for the future world of work, and arms them with critical life skills. It supports students to be critical and creative-thinkers, communicators and collaborators.

How do you do it?

21st century skills can be included in the classroom through:

• Project-based learning provided on the NSW Government Education website.
• Creating lessons that promote critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.

6 crucial soft skills every student needs to master in the 21st century

T hriving in this ever-changing world not only requires a breadth of skills rooted in academic competencies for children but also abilities like teamwork, critical thinking, communication, persistence, and creativity amongst others. These skills are in fact interconnected.

We live in an era when students require these diverse sets of skills to survive and be successful. It is no longer enough to rely on conventional skill sets like the power of memory and recall, rote, and repetition.

Schools are aware of the evolution of society and the economy and hence are equipping teachers in terms of upskilling and adapting curriculum to ensure conceptual understanding, development of competencies, and growth in character, to ensure that students are nurtured, challenged, and empowered to achieve their academic and personal goals.

What skills then would be useful to students who have to shape their lives in tune with the rapidly changing world?

Here are six crucial soft skills every student needs to master in the 21 st century as listed by Shweta Sastri, Managing Director, Canadian International School, Bangalore:

1. ADAPTABILITY AND CREATIVITY

In the digital age, things are changing very rapidly. By the time students learn one set of skills, a newer version is already emerging.

Students will need to adapt to changing conditions and learn things quickly and efficiently and mentors will have to ensure that students are aware of the best methods to learn new things. Learning how to learn is an important skill that cannot be overemphasised!

2. COLLABORATION SKILLS ARE VITAL

It's quite possible that traditional classrooms may encourage competition and independence compared to collaboration and teamwork. Schools have to keep pace with changing scenarios and bring in a culture of collaboration which are crucial to achieving collective goals.

Every professional today works collaboratively with others in some capacity.  From engineers to artists, learning how to work in a group setting or leading a team that needs motivation requires practice.  What better way to foster these lifelong skills than in a classroom?

3. COMMUNICATION SKILLS

In the new digital age, there is great emphasis on the ability to communicate; hence, students have to be familiar with emerging technologies used in communication. In the current era, technology is omnipresent and schools need to adapt to new communication changes.

In addition to conceptual understanding, students should have the opportunity to grow in character to become well-rounded global citizens who have the confidence to impact a remarkable and sustainable future.

4. CRITICAL THINKING AND PROBLEM-SOLVING

Creating an environment that focuses on conceptual understanding and application of that knowledge to real-world skills leads to lifelong learning and retention of knowledge. 

Building an environment that fosters critical thinking, risk-taking, creativity, and the courage to make mistakes and move beyond them should be a priority.  

Focusing on learning to understand rather than learning to test should be a high priority for educators.

The ability to think critically is not easy and needs instruction and support. However once this skill is mastered, it will help develop analytical capabilities that will help students be competitive in an ever-changing global market.

5. CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING

Growing and learning in a multicultural environment gives children a greater understanding of others' beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours. As globalisation continues to bring cultures together, it is imperative to equip students with the continued experience to be citizens of a global future.

These experiences come from an education model that includes diverse narratives, qualities, and viewpoints, which facilitate an understanding of social pluralism. Multiculturalism promotes principles of inclusion, democracy, and a sense of togetherness, among many other positive traits.

6. UPSKILLING AND ALWAYS BEING AT THE CUTTING EDGE IN TECH 

Technology has shaped human history over the years and will undoubtedly continue to do so. Today, the digital revolution is spreading across the globe, creating connections never before thought of and students will have to have a breadth of broad technological skills.

Whether it is called the Second Machine Age, the Digital Revolution, or the 4th Industrial Revolution, technologists, economists and academics are all concerned with recent rapid technological advances and their implications for the future.

The world is constantly changing and the pace at which the economy is progressing makes agility a great value and in the modern world, there is no one better placed than those who can multitask in a quick time.

Recognising the nature of these changes is vital in understanding the current context in which we live, and the changes to be expected in the future. This, in turn, helps us determine how we view education and the need for the breadth of skills approach.

It is now central that we explore how to align these aspirations in the context of the educational environment.

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