College Teachers’ Awareness of and Pedagogic Practices for 21st Century Skills
Background: To succeed in today’s world requires learning and innovation skills, life and career skills, and information, media, and technology skills. These 21st century skills can be taught and learned using inquiry-based learning, project-based learning, collaborative learning, and reciprocal teaching.
Purpose: Find college teachers’ level of awareness of and extent of pedagogic practices for enhancing 21st century skills of students.
Participants: 180 college teachers from seven curriculum strands in a large Philippine university during the 2015-2016 school year
Research design: Descriptive-comparative research
Data collection and analysis: A researcher-constructed, self-administered questionnaire asked participants to rate themselves on how aware they were of eleven skills and on how often they practiced four pedagogic practices. Means, analyses of variance at a .05 significance level, and post hoc analyses using the Scheffe test were used. Interviews with some school administrators were conducted to validate the results from the responses.
Findings: The participants were fully aware of the eleven skills, with those from some strands being significantly more aware and those from one strand being significantly less aware. Inquiry-based learning was practiced to a very great extent while the other three practices were practiced to a great extent. The extent of pedagogic practices varied significantly when participants were grouped according to strands.
Recommendations: Administrators could provide support to teachers from the strands identified as less aware or practicing to a lesser extent. Similar studies could be conducted in other schools to improve the generalizability of the findings.
Author: Donna Marie Aoanan Oyam
Keywords: 21st century skills, awareness, pedagogic practices, curriculum strands