TR
EN
An Investigation of Prospective Teachers’ and Teacher Trainers’ 21st Century Skills Awareness
Abstract
This study aims to investigate prospective teachers of English’ (PTE) and teacher trainers of English’ (TTE) 21st century skills awareness levels, and to examine participants’ perceptions on their 21st century skills awareness. It was carried out in a mixed method research design, and it was conducted with 167 3rd and 4th-grade PTEs studying in Necmettin Erbakan University Department of English Language Teaching (ELT) in the 2022-2023 academic year, and 8 (all) TTEs working in Necmettin Erbakan University department of ELT. ‘21st Century Skills Efficiency Perceptions Scale for Teacher Candidates’ was used to collect the quantitative data and a semi-structured interview was used to collect the qualitative data of this research study. Interviews were conducted online with 20 purposefully selected prospective teachers of English and 4 randomly selected teacher trainers of English. The quantitative data were analysed using the SPSS 26.0 package program while the qualitative data were analysed using the content analysis method. Quantitative results showed that the 21st century skills awareness levels of PTEs and TTEs were moderate. The qualitative results showed that the PTEs think having 21st century skills is important, the most effective skill in ELT is communication, they mostly consider themselves sufficient, and they improve themselves mostly in social environments; besides, TTEs think having 21st century skills is important, the most effective skill in ELT is critical thinking, half of them consider themselves sufficient while the other half consider themselves in need of improvement, and they improve themselves mostly by attending vocational training and reading.
Keywords
References
- Ahonen, A. K., & Kinnunen, P. (2014). How do students value the importance of twenty-first century skills? Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 59(4), 395–412.
- Ainley, J., Fraillon, J., Schulz, W., & Gebhardt, E. (2016). Conceptualizing and measuring computer and information literacy in cross-national contexts. Applied Measurement in Education, 29(4), 291–309.
- American Association of Colleges and Universities. (2007). College learning for the new global century.
- Anagün, Ş. S. (2018). Teachers’ Perceptions about the Relationship between 21st Century Skills and Managing Constructivist Learning Environments. International Journal of Instruction, 11(4), 825–840.
- Anagün, Ş. S., Atalay, N., Kılıç, Z., & Yaşar, S. (2016). Öğretmen adaylarına yönelik 21. yüzyıl becerileri yeterlilik algıları ölçeğinin geliştirilmesi: Geçerlik ve güvenirlik çalışması. Pamukkale University Journal of Education, 40, 160–175.
- Aydın, A., & Tan-Şişman, G. (2021). Hizmet öncesi İngilizce öğretmen eğitiminde 21. yüzyıl becerileri. Türk Eğitim Bilimleri Dergisi, 19(2), 1223–1251.
- Baran-Łucarz, M., & Klimas, A. (2020). Developing 21st century skills in a foreign language classroom: EFL student teachers’ beliefs and self-awareness. Academic Journal of Modern Philology, 10, 23–38.
- Bedir, H. (2019). Pre-service ELT teachers’ beliefs and perceptions on 21st century learning and innovation skills (4Cs). Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 15(1), 231–246.
Details
Primary Language
English
Subjects
Teacher Education and Professional Development of Educators
Journal Section
Research Article
Early Pub Date
October 22, 2023
Publication Date
October 29, 2023
Submission Date
August 14, 2023
Acceptance Date
October 12, 2023
Published in Issue
Year 2023 Volume: 5 Number: 3