When 21ST Century Skills Meet the English Language Skills

Aysen Gilroy
Zayed University
Academic Bridge Program
Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Abstract

Recently, Zayed University’s Academic Bridge Program reviewed its curriculum. The
review clearly identified a need for a component where 21 st Century skills are developed
alongside language skills. As a consequence, a series of Integrated Skills Projects (ISPs)
were created and subsequently implemented. ISPs are projects where language skills such as
reading, writing, listening, speaking, accuracy and vocabulary are combined with 21 st C skills
such as collaboration, communication, critical thinking and problem solving. Through ISPs,
these skills are practiced and developed by creating authentic end products. The Project
Based Learning approach is the basic principle upon which ISPs are based. For the purposes
of this study, the overall framework of the projects will be described. In addition, there will
be a brief description of how the projects aim to help students develop their English language
as well as academic and information literacy skills associated with their future academic
studies. This paper also describes the teacher-research study conducted in the classroom
through a descriptive and reflective teacher journal. Finally, an area for further research will
be recommended to further develop students’ 21st century skills.

Keywords: 21st Century Skills; Project Based Learning; Information Literacy Skills; iBooks
 Introduction
Over the past two decades, there has been a great deal of interest in incorporating 21 st
century skills into teaching programs. The interest has been generated due to the challenges
that students face in the changing world and the need for educational programs to prepare
students for these challenges. Education programs at all levels, from primary to tertiary, need
to focus not only on 21st century competencies but also academic learning goals focusing on
content. With this realization in mind, teachers, education experts and business leaders got
together to design a framework which outlines the competencies and the skills 21st century
students require to be successful at school, at work and in other walks of life[ CITATION
Fra07 \l 1033 ]. At the heart of this framework, there are two main components. Firstly, the
focus is on student outcomes that focus on life and career skills, learning and innovation
skills, information, media and technology skills and the key subjects. The second component
of the framework highlights support systems such as curriculum, assessment, professional
development and the learning environment.
In accordance with the above mentioned 21st century skills framework, Zayed
University’s Academic Bridge Program (ABP), which is an English Foundations Program,
reviewed their curriculum in order to reflect upon the requirements placed on university
students regarding English for Academic skills (EAP),and 21 st century skills. The revised
ABP curriculum focuses on the four main English language skills of reading, writing,
speaking and listening for academic purposes as well as other soft skills such as critical
thinking, self-management, people, task management and information literacy outcomes such
as brainstorming, mind-mapping, searching effectively, evaluating sources, paraphrasing and
referencing.
After the curriculum review, it became apparent that much of the EAP component of the
syllabus could be addressed through the use of already published materials. However, what
the program still required was a set of core teaching materials to develop the afore mentioned
soft skills. After much deliberation, it was decided that these skills would be best taught
through a Project Based Learning (PBL) approach which gives equal importance to both
‘core content mastery’ and ‘21st century learning’ [ CITATION Buc13 \l 1033 ]. Buck
Institute for Education defines PBL as:
“Project Based Learning is a systematic teaching method that engages students in
learning important knowledge and developing 21st century competencies through an
extended, student-influenced inquiry process structured around complex, authentic
questions and carefully designed products and learning tasks” [ CITATION Buc13 \l
1033 ].
In defining what constitutes a high quality project, Buck Institute For Education (2013)
identified the following eight elements:
 Significant Content: the main skills and knowledge the curriculum identifies for each
content area
 21st Century Competencies: 4Cs (collaboration/ communication/ creativity/ critical
thinking) the skills that the students need to master to be successful at school and
beyond
 In-Depth Inquiry: a process of asking questions to arrive at answers
 Driving Question: an open-ended question that guides the students throughout the
process
 Need to Know: a list of essential questions students need to ask to inform their
research for the project
 Voice and Choice: students deciding on their own products and the tools they will use
for the project
  Revision and Reflection: having mechanisms for students to get feedback at regular
intervals to make revisions and for them to make reflections on their learning
 Public Audience: the need to have an authentic public audience to make the students’
experience more real and give it a real purpose.
Taking PBL and its eight essential elements into account, the researcher designed
Integrated Skills Projects (ISP) to address the needs of the ABP curriculum. ISPs
constituted a component of the curriculum with the following aims:
 to increase student involvement and motivation
 to focus on real world issues in the classroom
 to increase student voice and choice
 to integrate mobile technology in a meaningful manner into the program
 to provide a framework for alternative assessments
The ISPs were designed around 7 modules, each delivered through an electronic book
(Figure 1: ISP iBooks). As all ABP students are required to have iPads, the platform used
to create the electronic books was iBooks Author. The modules, delivered through iBooks
covered the following topics incorporating the 8 essential features of PBL mentioned
before:
 Module 1: Developing a Project Idea
This module has student groups choosing a topic that is relevant to their context and
generating a “driving question” on that topic. While doing that, they discuss what makes a
good driving question and evaluate several other driving questions.
 Module 2: Writing mini reflections
Students discuss why it is necessary to write reflections and learn about writing reflections.
 Module 3: Research Skills I
In this module, students learn how to do online research by getting to know URL addresses
and working on ‘key words’ to do effective searches. They then search for relevant sources
and keep all the necessary information (relevant quotes, website addresses etc) in an
information table.
 Module 4: Research Skills II
Students learn how to highlight the relevant information in a source and quote from sources
to show information as evidence. They then prepare a reference list for the sources they have
found.
 Module 5: Planning the product
This module focuses on planning the product. Students are encouraged to brainstorm and
come up with creative products. After discussing some tips on creating products students
choose a product and plan the production stage.
 Module 6: Presentation Skills
In this module, students are given some tips on how to undertake good presentations and
provided with some useful language to use in presentations.
 Module 7: Writing a Reflective Essay
Students are taught how to write a reflective essay in this module. In addition, they are
presented with ‘useful language’ to be used in presentations.

The Study
In Fall 2015, the ISP modules were introduced at the highest level of the program,
EGAP4. Towards the end of the semester, teachers and students participated in a survey as
part of the ongoing curriculum review process. One of the interesting outcomes of the
curriculum review was the high number of students who mentioned how ISPs helped improve
their ‘presentation skills’. This led the researcher, as the creator of the ISPs to find out if the
ISPs were indeed developing any other 21st century skills in addition to presentation skills as
they were originally intended to.
The aim of the study was to informally observe the skills being practiced by the
students as they were going through the process of doing the ISPs so that areas for further
development or for further research could be identified. To reach this aim, it was decided
that the teacher researcher would keep a journal during the period when her class was
engaged in the ISPs and make notes on different activities students were working on.
Cochran-Smith & Lythe (1993) define teacher journals as follows:
“Journals are accounts of classroom life in which teachers record observations,
analyze their experiences, and reflect on and interpret their practices over time.
Journals intermingle description, record keeping, commentary and analysis”
[ CITATION Coc93 \l 1033 ]
Based on this description, the teacher researcher recorded her observations for seven
weeks when her class of 13 was covering the seven modules of the ISPs. The main research
question for this study was: “To what extent are ISPs helping students develop 21st C skills
(more specifically the 4Cs – collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking)?”
Therefore, the teacher researcher designed a journal and made notes on all the activities
students were involved in in terms of the 4Cs. This was done for every module covered. For
example, an activity that required ‘critical thinking skills’ in the first module was ‘evaluating
driving questions’. An example of ‘collaboration’ in module 1 was ‘brainstorming for project
ideas as a group’. Throughout the journal, activities were listed in terms of which of the
4Cs they aimed to develop.
Results
A thorough analysis of the notes made in the journal revealed that, in addition to the
presentation skills that were highlighted by the students, there were many other 21 st century
skills practiced throughout the process of the ISPs. However, one skill that seemed to surface
very frequently in every module was ‘critical thinking skills’. Students were engaged in
some of the following sub-skills under this broad category of critical thinking skills:
• Brainstorming and thinking about issues from different perspectives
• Evaluating possible solutions to critical issues
• Thinking carefully about what they read and how it relates to the task in hand
• Questioning and testing what they read, evaluating and interpreting information
• Analyzing parts of an issue and noting how the parts connect to form a whole
• Analyzing their own experiences for reflection purposes
It was noted by the teacher-researcher that students found most of these tasks challenging
Therefore they sought the help of the teacher most when they were involved in tasks which
required them to perform the above mentioned tasks. As can be expected, they seemed to find
more straight-forward and abstract tasks easier. This could also be the reason why students
stated that ISPs were helping them mostly with presentation skills as they were not fully
aware of and thus could not articulate on the critical thinking skills they were engaged in
throughout the ISPs.

Conclusion and Future Recommendation

This study was an exploratory and informal one conducted by a teacher-researcher in
her own classroom. It was an attempt at understanding the different skills students practice
through their ISPs. Data was collected through a teacher journal where the teacher made
notes under the 4Cs of 21st Century Skills. Despite its limitations, this study helped identify
a future research project focusing on enhancing critical thinking skills which could benefit
the students especially in a pre-sessional program aiming to prepare them for their future
studies. Therefore, a future research question to investigate could be: “To what extent do ISPs
help improve students’ critical thinking skills?”
There are two key reasons that support the case for further research into this area.
First of all, research seems to indicate that Arab learners would benefit from further
developing their critical thinking skills. For example, a recent research undertaken by Al-
Dumairi and Al Jabari (2015) on 2 nd year university students in Palestine indicate that
students abstained from writing tasks which required them to use their critical thinking skills
such as inferring and analyzing. This was because they found them too challenging.
Although this study focuses on application of critical skills in academic writing skills, most
of the results are also applicable in the researcher’s context as both studies focus on Arab
learners in a Middle East university setting. As mentioned in the previous section, students in
this study also appeared to lack critical thinking skills demonstrated by the fact that they
found it difficult to perform some of the tasks which required them to question, evaluate and
interpret information as part of their ISP.
The second reason for undertaking this future research is that PBL can be an effective
and powerful tool to teach students critical thinking skills, especially if the projects are
structured in a manner that encourages critical thinking skills and students are supported
throughout the process[ CITATION Mer12 \l 1033 ]. Therefore, researching the
development of critical thinking skills in the context of project work seems to be a natural
choice. Since critical thinking skills are so crucial to be successful in today’s world, more
studies should be conducted to better inform the teaching of 21st century skills through
models such as Project Based Learning.
 References

Al-Dumairi, E., & Al-Jabari, N. A. (2015). Arab EFL Students' Application and Awareness of Critical
Thinking in College Writing: A Case Study. Arab World English Journal, 10.
Buck Institute For Education. (2013). Project Based Learning Toolkit Series - PBL for 21st Century
Success. California: Buck Institute for Education.
Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L. (1993). Inside/Outside: Teacher Research and Knowledge. New
York and London: Teachers College Press.
Framework for 21st Century Learning. (2007, January 25). Retrieved 2016, from Partnership for 21st
Century Learning: http://www.p21.org/about-us/p21-framework
Mergendoller, J. (2012, November 6). Teaching Critical Thinking Skills Through Project Based
Learning. Retrieved June 8, 2016, from P21: Partnership for 21st Century Learning:
http://www.p21.org/news-events/p21blog/1097

Visuals
Figure 1: ISP iBooks