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21ST CENTURY
Health Science SKILLS

What Are 21st

Business Education

Computer Applications
Century Skills?
Career Readiness

Teaching Strategies
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January 10th, 2022 | 12 min. read

 Bri Stauffer
For nearly 10 years, Bri has
focused on creating content to
address the questions and
concerns educators have about
teaching classes, preparing
students for certifications, and
making the most of the AES
curriculum system.

! " !

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:

1. Critical thinking
2. Creativity
3. Collaboration
4. Communication
5. Information literacy
6. Media literacy
7. Technology literacy
8. Flexibility
 9. Leadership
10. Initiative
11. Productivity
12. 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’re 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 that 21st Century skills fall
into.

The Three 21st

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

1. Learning skills
2. Literacy skills
3. Life skills

Learning skills (the four C’s) teaches

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

12 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.

Read Your Guide on

Teaching 21st Century
Skills

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

Arguably, critical thinking is the

most important quality for someone
to have in health sciences.

In business settings, critical thinking is

essential to improvement. It’s the
mechanism that weeds out problems
and replaces them with fruitful
endeavors.

It’s what helps students figure stuff

out for themselves when they don’t
have a teacher at their disposal.

Related Resources:

Top Critical Thinking Lesson Plans

Problem Solving Lesson Plans for
Middle School

Bonus Resource:

Free Critical Thinking Lesson

Download

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” may
have been best 10 years ago — but
someday, that has to change.

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.

Related Resources:

What Is Collaborative Learning &

How Do You Teach It?
Top Collaborative Learning
Lesson Plans for Middle School

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 a 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 their careers.

Related Resources:

What are Workplace

Communication Skills and How
Do You Teach Them?
Best Communication Lesson
Plans for Middle School
Best Resources to Teach
Communication Skills in High
 School

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 in digital
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

Information literacy is the

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.

Related Resources:

Best Places to Find Information

Literacy Lesson Plans for Middle
School
5 Essential Steps to Teach
 Information Literacy in Middle
School

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 with it, they can learn which media

outlets or formats to ignore. They also
learn which ones to embrace, which is
equally important.

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.
They might even guide its future.

But to truly round out a student’s 21st

Century skills, they need to learn from
a third category.

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

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:

1. Your way isn’t always the best

way
2. 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 their careers, leadership
applies to 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.

Related Resources:

Best Leadership Lesson Plans for

High School
Leadership Activities for High
School Students

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 entry-level employee to 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.

That 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 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
have 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’s 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.

Someone’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 though. 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
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 miracles
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.

With 21st Century skills, your students

will have the adaptive qualities they
need to keep up with a business
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!

Read Your Guide on

Teaching 21st Century
Skills

CONTACT

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Lancaster, PA 17602
800-220-2175

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