In a World of Pandemia — How has the pandemia effected required skills of the youth?
21st Century Competencies
In my first academic position as a research assistant in one of the uviversities of Istanbul I never thought that kind of complex mission will be delivered to my side. Once my professor told me to start your first course co-assistance role, I was so fascinated by the mission that points me out the topic which is ‘Competencies of the New Era’.
I am still thrilled what skills, what talents might possible students will require in the following 10 years. I’ve started my research delibirately and felt that it is a compulsory to prepare a detailed guidance for a larger community.
Even from my first years at my bachelors, I observed what kind of informations, what kind of skills that I don’t have, could have been critical for a qualified and prestigious life.
In the area of a pandemia youngs -mostly students- engages with education corporations via online resources. Being missing one-on-one touches from an educator makes it even worse by not having guides and role models for gaining competencies required for the future. According to a study at MIT in 2006, this situation can trigger the phenomena called ‘the participation gap’ which means unequal access to resources, experiences, skills causes distinction between full participation in the world of tomorrow and the youth.
On the other side employers are demanding people with competencies like complex thinking and communications skills for four decades longer-changing economical situations; because of globalization and rapidly changing technologies.
“We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don’t yet exist… in order to solve problems that we don’t even know are problems yet.”
Competencies, Skills, Qualifications, Abilities …
When we had done a research about what might those skill sets might be required in the following run; well, here are the findings.
Core Skills
Bascially we can say everything like academic success starts with basic qualifications. These skill set is the floor of all the complex skills that is desired in this century. Foreign Language, History, Mathematics are the main abilities.
Self Skills
Some researchs (Dede, 2009) are classified some self concepts like self-motivation, self-management, self-confidence, self-control, self-esteem, self-awareness, self-consciousness, self-efficacy (which some of are really detailed and argued concepts in the field of Psychology) in the core skills which wanted and looked for in depth. We are not going to look in detail just for not making so technical writing so if you are interested on of them kindly check from Google.
Don’t forget to mention, it is not just the new Steve Jobs or Elon Musk that requires that core skills. It is a must in todays labor market, there are some really detailed personality tests that are applied to candidates to identify who are going to be the leaders of the future business world. Check: owiwi — gamified psychometric tests.
The twelve 21st Century skills are:
Learning Skills
- Critical Thinking : Ability to identify, analyse and evaluate situations, ideas and information to formulate responses and solutions.
- Creativity : Ability to imagine and devise new, innovative ways of addressing problems, answering questions or expressing meaning through the application, synthesis or repurposing of knowledge.
- Collaboration : Ability to work in a team towards a common goal, including the ability to prevent and manage conflict.
- Communication : Ability to listen to, understand, convey and contextualize information through verbal, nonverbal, visual and written means.
Literacy Skills
According to World Economic Forum, literacies can be enlarge to six by adding Financial, Cultural and Scientific literacies.
- Information literacy : Ability to read, understand and use written language, understanding facts, figures, statistics, and data.
- Media literacy : Understanding the methods and outlets in which information is published.
- Technology literacy : Ability to use and create technology-based content, including finding and sharing information, answering questions, interacting with other people and computer programming.
Life Skills
- Flexibility : Deviating from plans as needed.
- Leadership : Ability to effectively direct, guide and inspire others to accomplish a common goal.
- Initiative : Starting projects, strategies, and plans on one’s own.
- Productivity : Maintaining efficiency in an age of distractions.
- Social skills : Ability to interact with other people in a socially, culturally and ethically appropriate way.
To sum
The below table shows what labor market demands moving direction is; in the scale of complexity of the roles and the 50 years of time where market growths and free-will economy boomed. As we already guessed from the 21-century compentencies routines abilities are decreasing when nonroutine jobs are getting more and more demanded in the modern era.
In the time of lockdowns and other consequences we are facing because of the COVID-19, the newly showed up researches about work-life are showing us 21-century competencies are much more demanded in the time of recessions and economical crisis .
Consequently I don’t know what can be suggested to the college students but as a guidance, I can show the path that is going to be walked no matter what the pandemia or something else happens. Peace ✌️
Barış Orak
Sources :
Buckingham Shum, S., & Crick, R. D. (2016). Learning Analytics for 21st Century Competencies. Journal of Learning Analytics, 3(2), 6–21.
Finegold, D., & Notabartolo, A. S. (2010). 21st century competencies and their impact: An interdisciplinary literature review. Transforming the US workforce development system, 19.
Voogt, J., Erstad, O., Dede, C., & Mishra, P. (2013). Challenges to learning and schooling in the digital networked world of the 21st century. Journal of computer assisted learning, 29(5), 403–413.
Wolters, C. A. (2010). Self-regulated learning and the 21st century competencies. Universidad de Houston: Department of Educational Psychology. Consultado en: http://www. hewlett. org/uploads/Self_Regulated_Learning__21st_Century_Competencies. pdf.
Web Sources :
https://www.aeseducation.com/blog/what-are-21st-century-skills
https://beta.moe.gov.sg/education-in-SG/21st-century-competencies/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_century_skills
https://www.oecd.org/site/educeri21st/40756908.pdf
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEFUSA_NewVisionforEducation_Report2015.pdf
Free Course :
How To Land the Job You Want (Capstone Project) — University of Maryland, Charles Duqette; Coursera : https://www.coursera.org/learn/job-interview-capstone#syllabus
