From Twenty-First Century Skills to Twenty-First Century Digital Skills

In the twenty-first century, we are experiencing two distinct processes. In the first, the whole world is going through a process where pandemics, wars, and natural disasters leave us once again struggling to solve medieval problems in the twenty-first century. I tried to address these problems in my previous articles. In the second, we are experiencing processes in this century where we need to solve new problems that have never been encountered before in human history. Personal data security, blockchain technologies, robots, and artificial intelligence are the most well-known among these. I also tried to touch upon these in a few of my previous articles.

In this article, I would like to cover the Twenty-First Century Digital Skills mentioned in the study titled "Digital Skills for the 21st Century Creative Industries Workforce: Perspectives of Industry Experts" by Ester van Laar and others, published on firstmonday.org in 2019. Although the skills I will mention may not be directly aimed at solving the problems in the first process, they are very important for us to develop the competencies that can provide solutions to our new problems in the second.

The skills we need in the twenty-first century have been placed at the center of educational debates covering various competencies deemed necessary for success today. Various experts emphasize skills such as using information and communication technologies, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, productivity, and social and cultural responsibility. From an educational perspective, the Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21), developed in 2008 by various groups and organizations to define a vision for twenty-first-century education to ensure students succeed as citizens and workers of the twenty-first century, lists three types of skills: learning (creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem-solving, communication and collaboration), literacy (information, media, and ICT literacy), and life skills (flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross-cultural skills, productivity and accountability, leadership and responsibility).

Similarly, the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S) group has organized twenty-first-century skills as follows: Ways of thinking (creativity and innovation; critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making; learning to learn and metacognition), ways of working (communication, collaboration, and teamwork), tools for working (information literacy, information technology, and communication literacy), and living in the world (life and career, personal and social responsibility). In general, the focus of this approach to twenty-first-century skills is to ensure that students master twenty-first-century skills while preparing for working life.

When we look at the digital skills of the twenty-first century, we see a need to focus on the basic skills required to use the internet and the skills required to understand and use online content. Twenty-first-century digital skills are interpreted as a multi-layered version of the twenty-first-century skills I mentioned above, in which these basic digital skills are integrated. What is essential is what citizens and workers can do with information and communication technologies to support twenty-first-century skills.

It is possible to divide the digital skills we need in the twenty-first century into seven core groups (technical skills, information management, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving) and five contextual skills (ethical awareness, cultural awareness, flexibility, self-direction, and lifelong learning). Defining these skills briefly will help us understand them better:

Core Skills

Technical skills: Skills to use (mobile) devices and applications to recognize specific online environments to perform and direct practical tasks.

Information management: Skills to use information and communication systems to effectively search, select, and organize information to make informed decisions about the most appropriate information sources for a specific task.

Communication: Skills to use information and communication systems to convey information to others and ensure that meaning is expressed effectively.

Collaboration: Skills to use information and communication systems to develop a social network and to work in a team to exchange information, negotiate agreements, and make decisions with mutual respect to achieve a common goal.

Creativity: Skills to use information and communication systems to generate new or previously unknown ideas or to approach familiar ideas in a new way and transform these ideas into a product, service, or process that is accepted as new in a specific field.

Critical thinking: Skills to use information and communication systems to make informed decisions and choices about information and communication obtained using reflective reasoning and sufficient evidence to support claims.

Problem-solving: Skills to use information and communication systems to cognitively process and understand a problem situation, along with the active use of information to find a solution to a problem.

Contextual Skills

Ethical awareness: Skills to have awareness and knowledge regarding legal and ethical aspects while using information and communication technologies and to act in a socially responsible manner.

Cultural awareness: Skills to demonstrate cultural understanding and show respect for other cultures while using information and communication systems.

Flexibility: Skills to adapt one's thinking, attitude, or behavior to changing information and communication system environments.

Self-direction: Skills to set goals for yourself and manage progress toward achieving those goals in order to evaluate your own progress while using information and communication systems.

Lifelong learning: Skills to constantly explore new opportunities while using information and communication systems to continuously improve one's abilities.

If we can improve ourselves toward acquiring core and contextual skills, our problem-solving ability will increase in both areas.