This month’s blog post is brought to you by our sponsors, Bridge Education Group
21st-century skills is an umbrella term that refers to a set of competencies deemed essential in today’s educational and professional landscape. They include learning skills (critical thinking, creativity/problem-solving, collaboration, and communication), literacy (digital and technology literacy), and life skills (flexibility, leadership, and initiative, among others). The rationale behind their importance is that, alongside proficiency in one’s field of study or profession, acquiring these skills can significantly enhance learners’ chances of success in their educational and professional pursuits and contribute to a positive learning and working environment.
Many of these skills are either native or acquired early in life. Some people are naturally more creative or flexible than others; some are natural leaders, while others may have learned to communicate or collaborate in their family setting. However, in today’s rapidly changing world, the ability to master and pass on these “soft skills,” collectively known as 21st-century skills, has become a priority for educators, many of whom are just as new to them as the students they seek to instruct. As a result, nurturing soft skills has become central to teachers’ professional development.
How can we integrate 21st-century skills into the ESL classroom and teacher professional development? Can these skills be taught and learned like all other abilities, and if so, how? Let’s look at some examples, with the understanding that many of the following points apply to both students and educators.
Encouraging critical thinking and creativity
Critical thinking is possibly one of the most valuable 21st-century skills. When students and educators are faced with a myriad of often contradictory information, sorting out sound information from the background noise is essential.
Several steps are necessary to apply critical thinking, from an understanding of the context in which information is presented to becoming aware of personal biases that may impact our thinking process and decision-making. A useful exercise to bring some of these elements into focus is to practice a change of perspective. For example, teachers can present students with a story and ask them to rewrite it from the antagonist’s perspective, leading them to identify themselves with the background and motivation of the villain. A variation of this exercise is to use role-play. This may be an even more impactful activity as dramatization leads to a deeper identification with the story’s characters.
For educators, Bridge offers a course in promoting critical thinking skills as a part of its 21st-Century Teaching Skills micro-credentials bundle.
Finally, some language teaching strategies, like TPRS, require teachers to put themselves in their students’ shoes to better understand students’ challenges during language acquisition. Therefore, during professional development, teachers are asked to take a language class. Each teacher in the study group offers a class in their language of specialization and takes a class in a new language. Teachers are invited to reflect on and discuss their problems and how to solve them.
In many ways, activities that stimulate creativity closely correlate with those that promote critical thinking. Both require students and educators to think outside the box and remain open-minded, and both are valuable in problem-solving. Open-ended questions, shifting perspectives and considering problems from multiple angles are all effective practices for enhancing creativity and critical thinking. They can be applied both in the classroom and in professional development.
Enhancing collaboration
There are several ways to enhance collaboration in the ESL classroom. Encouraging students to work in groups whenever possible is an effective and accessible method to promote collaboration. Teachers should strategically group students to ensure that the most proficient ones do not end up doing all the work or overshadowing their less proficient peers.
An example of collaborative activity is a student-led survey. The students (or the teacher) determine the survey topic, write the questions, and send the survey to other students and possibly the faculty. They analyze the survey’s results and write a collaborative report. The teacher monitors the process, offering suggestions and corrections.
Depending on their work settings, teachers may have few opportunities to collaborate. For teachers working in school, peer observations, cross-curricular projects, or collaborative inquiry are all valid collaboration venues. But what of teachers working online or in small private language schools? Bridge’s micro-credential course in communicative, collaborative and interpersonal skills helps ESL teachers to master collaborative skills and develop strategies to integrate them in their classrooms.
Improving communication
Communication, intercultural understanding, and interpersonal skills are prized qualities in today’s job market and are at the core of language teaching and learning. After all, why do we learn a language if not to communicate with people from diverse cultures and backgrounds? This is especially true of ESL students. Coming from a multitude of backgrounds and learning a language that has become the world’s lingua franca, ESL students are regularly in contact with individuals from different cultures and must communicate effectively with them.
A first step to enhance communication in the ESL classroom is to make students aware that communication happens at several levels, such as body language, stress, and intonation. A simple exercise consists of writing a sentence on the board and demonstrating how shifting the emphasis from one word to another can alter the statement’s implication.
Class debates or simply opinion sharing are excellent ways to teach students how to discuss and disagree respectfully while practicing phrases to express their views and feelings.
Intercultural understanding is another important aspect of communication in the culturally diverse ESL classroom. A “show and tell” activity where students are asked to bring an artifact from their culture and explain its significance can be a fun, interesting way of focusing on cultural diversity. A traditional dish can replace the cultural artifact for additional enjoyment.
Teachers can hone their communication skills through peer coaching, role-playing in simulated classroom scenarios, or using case studies to analyze the needs of a diverse student population, such as ELLs, and promote cultural sensitivity. Bridge micro-credential courses can help teachers promote social, cultural, and global awareness in their classrooms.
Promoting information literacy
Today’s ELLs, especially younger ones, are likely savvier in digital technology than their teachers. They have grown up on cell phones and computers and don’t need much help navigating the world of technology. However, when it comes to information literacy and assessing information, they still need guidance and to sharpen their critical thinking skills.
The introduction of AI has added a further layer of complexity to information literacy. This relatively new, extremely powerful, and ever-evolving technology has the potential for use and abuse. Furthermore, AI can occasionally “hallucinate,” fabricating information it cannot provide. Unaware users risk being misled and accept the information provided uncritically.
Thus, information literacy goes hand in hand with critical thinking skills. To offer students proper guidance, teachers must keep abreast of technological innovation in the educational field through professional development.
Empowering students and teachers with life skills
Skills like flexibility, leadership, and initiative are vital for success in the workplace and are equally important for both teachers and students. These are examples of transferable skills, which help learners thrive beyond the classroom in academic, professional, and social contexts. When it comes to flexibility, language students and teachers may possess extra gear. Research suggests that having to switch between languages enhances brain flexibility. This, in turn, promotes fluidity in thinking, the ability to shift perspectives, and effective problem-solving.
Teachers can foster leadership and initiative by encouraging independent learning, assigning students leadership roles in class activities, and building their self-confidence and initiative. Bridge’s micro-credential course on instilling confidence and leadership in ESL students can assist teachers in facilitating leadership development and designing suitable activities and assessments.
21st-century skills, also known as soft or transferable skills, are essential in today’s educational and professional landscape. For educators to effectively teach these vital skills, they must first master them themselves. By choosing appropriate professional development, teachers can empower themselves and their students with the vital skills needed for success.
About Bridge:
With over 30 years of experience at the forefront of language education, Bridge is a global leader, providing comprehensive language training solutions and teacher education. Their customers include multi-national corporations, universities, and ministries of education, and our teacher training programs certify English teachers from over 140 different countries. To learn more about Bridge, please visit their homepage at https://bridge.edu/