Teaching 21st Century Skills: Teachers' Competence, Practices and Challenges

Abstract

The 21st century is rapidly changing the world in every dimension of man. Schools become the nerve centers for teachers and students to connect with the world and understand the issues that our modern world faces. Teachers, as key players in accelerating educational improvement continually design and evaluate skills needed to prepare skilled millennium generation to compete in the global economy. This study uses an exploratory-descriptive design. It investigates the present practices and competency levels of teachers in the teaching of the 21st-century skills in the curriculum as well as the challenges in its implementation. The study was participated by all teachers from the nine public secondary schools and nine private secondary schools representing the three congressional districts of the province of Bohol this school year 2018-2019. It was found out that there is a significant difference in the teachers’ assessment of their competence, practices, and challenges from both public and private schools. It was also shown that private school teachers have a high level of performance in their practices compared to that in the public schools. It was also revealed that public school teachers faced more challenges than those in private schools. Moreover, there is a moderately strong correlation between teachers’ competence and their practices in teaching 21st-century skills. This study concluded that public and private school teachers’ competence and their practices in teaching 21st-century skills are relational. Highly competent teachers tend to have good practices in teaching. Indeed, good practices of teachers are the results 83 of their competence. Conversely, when teachers do not have the competence, their practices are also affected adversely. Furthermore, this study recommends that an enrichment seminar-workshop must be provided to the teachers that targets on sharpening the 21st-century skills particularly on information, media, and technology literacy with a skilled and expert trainer and the school must provide each teacher the needed resources that are relevant to the 21st century educational needs.