Introduction

In the new era, social changes affect people and institutions in different ways. Although people
have more knowledge about economy, education and procedures that are not enough for
success. Educated people need creativity to produce new ideas, theories and new knowledge
as well. They require to move another phase who need able to evaluate what they read and
express themselves clearly both verbally and in writing. They need to be able to take
responsibility for their own continuing, life-long learning (OECD, 2008). Our requirements
and needs are changing day by day for sustainability and achievements and some of abilities
do not use any more on the other hand some of become more significant role in our life. It is
completely associated new knowledge age.The 21st Century Skills mean that overreach what
is traditionally being thought in our classrooms. These are considered for future generation of
students and which contain: critical thinking and problem solving; communication,
collaboration; and creativity and innovation (Turiman et al, 2011). The rapid changes in the
world need students to become more flexible and to produce new and useful ideas. Todays
student must be more active critical thinkers in order to make sensible decisions and compare
evidence. This is because, the international problems could be overcome with critical thinking
and problem-solving abilities. Therefore Students must learn and effectively use
communication skills in their lives. The modern medias power astonishingly get stronger and
the ubiquity of technologies with all specialities make life easier, for that reason having
communication skills and able to use technologies are very important for them. While it is
important to emphasize communication skills, it is bear in mind that collaboration skills such
as working effectively with any teams, to complete successfully a common goals and take
responsibility for work, are very vital within 21st Century Skills (NEA, 2011). This essay focus
on the importance of 21st Century Skills and Policy in terms of theoritical aspects and teacher
experiments. As I had experienced before new eras student educational requirements and
interests are different rather then previous generations. The technologic developments and new
world order influenced people world view and ideas.This essay emphasise some skills such as
critical thinking, problem solving and as well as communication skills. Therefore it will be
mentioned Dede (2010) and Barber (2000)s opinions upon this centruy skills and policiy.

There has been an important changes in the area of construction, manufacturing, transportation,
energy production and so on over the last decades (PPRC, 2010). These changes are associated
with information and knowledge. The emergence of new kind of technologies, especially
information and communication technologies (ICTs), which are more commonly known as
digital technologies, require some skills. Therefore, students need certain skills to catch and
interpret to this era. it provides new opportunuties to obtain and improve good skills, because
this matters is forcing to come up with new ideas and useful solutions (Lau 2011). Furthermore,
occupational requirements are changed due to the new century skill requirenments. Higgins
(2014) highlited that these days we hear calls from business and industries for young people
who eager to work together and who think more analitic and more creative in the way that they
can overcome diffuculties. A term 21st Century Skills is widely used however, there is no
specific information on this topic. According to Dede (2010) is that he searched and compared
some framework about what students should learn to become prepared to live in the 21st
century. In addition, he categorised 21st century skills into two groups. First one is prennial
which includes areas such as communication, creativity, and critical thiking. On the other hand,
the second group is contexual which is also vital to interpret and communicate the
information ( cited:Higgins, 2014). Nonetheless Silva (2009) claimed that these skills are not
new, it is just given us that is something like new and more significant.

There are many idea upon 21st century skills. However, the P21 learning framework makes it
easier to understand sufficiently. The figure 1.1 see below shows the structure and
compononents of the 21st century skills (P21, 2008)

There are many priorities, but focusing on critical thinking and inovation are paramout among
the 21st century skills. In addition, it is crucial to be productive and responsible for being
competative. Therefore, The link between critical thinking and education is obvious, one can
not learn well without thinking well (P21, n.d, p:8). Being able to understand the meaning of
crticial thinking have importance. From this perspective, the question of what is critical
thinking and why it is significant need to be answered.

Critical Thinking And Problem Solving Skills

At every grade level and in every subject, learning should include interpretation and high level
thinking and active using of knowledge. Critical thinking is a kind of reflective and independent
thinking (Higgins, 2014). Actually, there are excessive definition about critical thinking and
problem solving but Dewey`s definition (1997) should bear in our mind. In his book How
We Think, he defined critical thinking as a reclective thought and he argued that students
get to think through questions and reflect what they learn (P21 ,2015 p:1). The ability of
thinking critically is important whatever people want to do. If one studies on education,
research, management so on, critical thinking provides a quality for evaluating and reasoning
during the process. Thinking systematically can improve and help someone to express their
ideas effectively. Moreover, critical thinking plays a crucial role in creativity. For instance, on
Janury 2016 The World Economic Forum reported that the top three skills in the future that
supposed to be most relevant are thinking skills related to critical thinking and creativity
(Philosophyhkuhk, 2017)

Problem solving is another valuable skill in this century. First, people are prone to encounter
complex problems which affect the whole world such as pollution, global warming and
financial crises. Problem solving and critical reading are clearly neccesary for 21st century
education but it is also obvious that they are not adequate completely (Higgins, 2014). In
connnection with this communication, calloboration, creativity and innovation are also
essential with them (Trilling & Fadel, 2009).

Deliverable Goals and Strategic Challenges (Michael Barber`s Aspect)

In this part, readers are going to know what Barber`s discourse and opinion are with regards to
21st century skills, requirements and policy in a conference (Schooling for Tomorrow) held
in 2000. (Rotterdam) According to Barber (2000) education should not be similar as it was in
the 20th century as the requirement of education is different than every previous decade let
alone century. Hence, it needs to be rearranged for the new era.

Figuring out social accountability and mobility problems as well as adapting technological
advances to learing environment are important challenges to create better education system for
next generations. For instance, 20th centurys (Industrial Age) school system used to be set up
to deliver know what knowledge to the students. However, 21st century (Knowledge Age)
schools should teach more than know what and know how knowledge. In this century, it
is important to have global perspective and know what the big picure says. Therefore, every
century has different school system and is required different skills from those that is required
in the previous century. Due to these reasons, countries have done some reform in puplic
education system so as not to fall behind each other. He claims that We need to determine
the "deliverable goals" and "strategic challenges" facing 21st century education systems(
p:105). He spesified four deliverable goals and five strategic challenges. These are deliverable
goals which are achieving universally high standards, narrowing the achievement gap,
unlocking individualisation, promoting education with character.

Deliverable Goal 1: achieving universally high standards

In the 20th century, there were some populer ideas such as succes for all which was not
considered to be successfull. On the other hand some challenges for this era tend to make every
student to be successfull due to the high level of competence in the world. As a result, he
calimed that inputs and outputs of education became variables (p.115).

Some students need extra time than the others to be able to learn some topics. Moreover, some
of them need to take extra tuition and that should be provided. Some senior students tend to
learn better when they spend time in the area, where they can interact with other people in
different places like workplaces, gardens, parks and so on than those who spent time in schools.
Various teaching methods should use in order to provide a better learning environment for
different students who come from different backgrounds. In this regard, his statement If
standarts are a constant, then everything must be variable` will became our slogan(p.116) is
quite valuable to undersatand his the deliverable goal correctly.

Deliverable Goal 2: narrowing the achievement gap

Barber maintains that school improvement and policies has been increasingly promoted due to
the high challenge, high support system. This idea situmulates improvement of all schools.
For instance, schools in England were categorized in terms of their academic achievement.
Having identified roughly 600 schools that all restored to have continued to improve (p.118).
Neverthless he thinks that high challenge, high support model enhances the quality of
education but it is insufficient.
 Nor will it on its own do enough to narrow the achievement gap between schools in
disadvantaged areas and those elsewhere. Some countries have done reasonably well
in the past in minimising variations between areas but in others, including England, this
challenge is acute, given the historic levels of social and economic inequality. All systems
therefore need to give constant priority to narrowing achievement gaps between
different areas or groups of students.(ibid, p.118)

Deliverable Goal 3: unlocking individualisation

This goal is about an individualisation in the education. Making an effort to the
induvidualisation durin the teaching process should be highly desirable aim, due to providing
a quality education. Furthermore, some practises have been made in order to ensure more
individuity, for example approximately 1000 secondary schools in the UK made an
arrangement for meeting to provide individual support, as a result of this their behaviour,
achievement and attandence made progress (p.119). In addition, this activities improved
confidence, self-efficiency and engagement for success. Altough individualism brings about
some positive and efficient benefits, it might be very problematic and not to provide to become
universal easily, though.

In other respects, Hu suggests that national and school curriculum play an important role in
nations education system. Students should have individual curriculum which ought to be
designed to give an opportunuties for an enriched learning environment (p.119). From his
perspectives, 20th century approach was not supporting individualism adequately. The new
education system and curriculum should be designed to take into consideration the 21st century
needs.

Deliverable Goal 4: promoting education with character

The vast majority of schools are just focusing on academic success and ability. Nevertheless
there are many factors also have an impact on acedemic success such as habits, students,
attitudes and involment in school. Barber thinks that, every countries need to pay attention and
consider other variences in the education system. For instance, in the UK, some training courses
have been designed in terms of how teachers can enhance the motivation of students and how
they can teach high order thinking to students. Besides, citizenship has become a compulsory
element of the curriculum since 2002 in order to be enagaged in in schools and community.
Being a conscious citizen increases quality in society and education. Another important
character is inspection, schools need to inspector to observe and view in order to enhance their
qualifications in terms of social, moral, spirutual and cultural.

In this section, it will be discussed and examined Dede`s opinion which is made use of
Comparing Frameworks for 21st Century Skills.

The Rationale for Formulating 21st Century Skills

According to Dede (2010) 21st and 20th centuries capabilities are quite disparate that in terms
of needs, works and self-actualization. For instance, in the past, many types of work was done
by labors but now thanks to the tecnological improvements manpower has been supplanted by
machines and computers. He describes that how conventional skills have changed and
emphasises new skills needed for this era. People need to do kind of thinking when against
some problems which might be related to work or daily life. This kind of skill is such as
innonative problem-solving. He argues that perpatual ('perennial') skills -for example
calloborative skill- are transforming because of the nature. Moreover calloboration has been
precious skill, also it has become very significant particularly for knowledge based economy.
Calloboration is more efficient than face to face communication in this era due to the fact that
it involves working with people all over the world. He claims that 'contextual' skills are
essential which contains informational and communicational skills.

He states that In the legacy curriculum, little time is spent on building capabilities in group
interpretation, negotiation of shared meaning, and co-construction of problem resolutions
(ibid. p.3). In addition to this He claims that the current curriculum is already intensive and this
situation cause to some necessary skills make insignificant. Other problem are high-stakes tests
which prevents to asses core competencies effectively. Besides, he argues that

The stress on what may be underemphasized because those skills are inconsistent with
current classroom culture highlights a substantial challenge to infusing these 21st
century skills frameworks into educational practice and policy. At this point in history,
the primary barriers to altering curricular, pedagogical, and assessment practices are
not conceptual, technical or economic, but instead psychological, political, and cultural.
(ibid, p. 12)
21st century skills bring about some problem in during the assesment and evaluating process
because high order skillss are not able to measure with previous measuring technics. For that
reason educators attempted to use different asements such as rating scale and performance
assesment.

Teacher`s Perspective

The knowledge economy is a emerging defining characteristic of modern economies and

societies. In this era, nations are competing within this economy and transforming information
in the process. For this to occur, and to overcome any difficulties associated with this era, each
nation needs to train component teachers who have sufficient requirements and qualifications.
This is because teachers are the frontline that ensure intended changes in the 21st century occur
(IBE, 2017). Only effective teachers can make these changes. There are numerous specialist
characteristics that effective teachers poses for this knowledge economy. One of the most
significant characteristics is the educators ability to engage students (Kratz, 2011).

While I was a secondary school maths teacher in Turkey, I attended compulsory training
courses, delivered by the National Ministry of Education. These courses intended to prepare
us as teachers to respond to the demands of new era and to develop innovations. Effective
communication course was the one of the useful course. In this course we learned about the
importance of speaking slowly so that the student could understand us better. I have had
experiences of this while teaching. For instance, when I didnt give a lecture fluently, pupils
were having a difficulty in understanding.

In a different course it was stated that teachers also need to have adequate qualifications in
terms of digital literacy. It was argued that this phenomenon provides positive learning
outcomes for learners. Information and communication technologies help teachers while
engaging learners to depict the content (Dede, 2008). In addition to this, he argued that:

progress in a manner parallel to how a carpenter would use a saw, hammer,

screwdriver, and wrench to help construct an artefact. The two key points in this analogy
are (1) the tools make the job easier and (2) the result is of higher quality than possible
without the tools. (ibid, p.43)
Tough having a digital literacy skills support to teacher by some training courses, the training
of teachers is not enough to make students successful in the 21st century. That`s why, the
Turkish Government has invested enormous amounts of money in order to enhance quality of
education. Ministry of National Education determined that the Finish Education System is a
role model for redesigning Turkish schools. It was selected because, Finland started to develop
an information society very rapidly in the 1990s and as a result of this they caught success in
the Pisa all the exams (Sipil, 2012). In this context, they has been needed radical changes and
started Fatih Project. This project`s aim is that to make innovation and to enrich the learning
and teaching in this era. It is the one of the world largest educational project with giving tablet
pc to every students from grade 5-12 and providing interactive board in every school (ERG,
2017). From my point of view, this attempts and investments reveal the importance of digital
literacy for teachers. For instance, after we started to make use of Fatih Project in the schools,
many elderly teachers would have complain and talked about difficulty of using technology
and interactive board.
As I mentioned above, problem solving, collaboration and digital literacy are very significant
skills for this era`s students and these skills are considered while curriculum is being created
by education policy makers. Although collaboration and digital literacy skills are supported
with interactive boards and other technological tools but problem solving skills are need more
than that sort of tools. According to some of my colleagues, problem solving is a kind of ability
to make a calculation without any mistake and also capability to solve any math test.
Nevertheless problem solving skill should be associated with any problem which is faced in
the real life. As far as I experienced that teachers avoided to bring real life problems into the
class.
Another important skill is critical thinking for the 21st century students. This skill has been
discussing in the schools in my country how can they obtain and use this skill effectively. There
were some meeting after the school with headteacher and the other colleuges. Teachers had an
objection to current curriculum that were not encourage students to think critically. Many
teachers argued that the current education system converts pupils to race horses because of the
excessesive competition. Students just want to pass the exams and parents just support them to
get high marks from matriculation. As a consequence, teachers would not focus on to make
pupils think critically because of the parents concerns, even if teachers are aware of the
significance of critical thinking for 21st century.
Conclusion
21st century skills awareness should be considered by nations and educators in order to provide
qualified person for this era. As P21 organization mentioned that knowledge and information
era require more qualifications by virtue of technologic development. Any innovations also
necessitate well trained person who is equipped new era`s qualities. These qualities are problem
solving, collaboration and critical thinking. Barber`s and Dede`s ideas refer to the these
specialities for this era. In addition Barber think that we need to determine "deliverable goals"
21st century education systems. He spesified four deliverable goals These are universally high
standards, narrowing the achievement gap, unlocking individualisation, promoting education
with character. According to Barber getting these skills and deliverable goals might reach the
targets. On the other hand, Dede lay emphasis on communication and colaboraton that are will
be very crucial for 21st century. He also defined prennual and contexual skills and showed
differences between them. Prennual mean that students already owned skills but it has been
changing by force of new era`s innovations. Contexual skills are very important which contains
informational and communicational skills. Besides, He claimed that current curriculum is
already intensive and this situation cause to some necessary skills make unimportant. I faced
density of curriculum issues while I worked as a math teacher. My colleuges also had complaint
due to the this problem. Easing the curriculum may encourage to teachers and students more
focus on this era`s skills instead of examination concerns. Furthermore new era`s requirements
should be researched by the policy makers and governments to respond the demands of this
age.
Reference List

Dede C. (2008) Theoretical Perspectives Influencing the Use of Information Technology in

Teaching and Learning, Springer International Handbook of Information Technology in
Primary and Secondary Education, 20(3), pp 43-59

ERG, (2017). Egitimreformugirisimiorg. Retrieved 5 December, 2017, from

http://en.egitimreformugirisimi.org/issue/turkeys-fatih-project/

IBE. (2017). Teaching, Unescoorg. Retrieved 5 December, 2017, from

http://www.ibe.unesco.org/fileadmin/user_upload/archive/Publications/educationalpractic
esseriespdf/prac01e.pdf

Krotz S. (2015). Who Is The Effective Educator In The 21st Century? P21org. Retrieved 5
December, 2017, from http://www.p21.org/news-events/p21blog/1788-who-is-the-
effective-educator-in-the-21st-century

Liberty concepts. (2013). The Glossary of Education Reform. Retrieved 5 December, 2017,
from http://edglossary.org/21st-century-skills/

Sipil, K. (2012) Educational use of information and communications technology:

teachersperspective Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 2014Vol. 23, No. 2, 225241,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2013.81340

Tutkun, O. F. (2010) The Philosophic Dimensions of Curriculum in the 21st Century Gazi
Educatiom Faculty Magazine, 30 (3), pp. 993-1016.

OECD (2008) 21st Century Learning: Research, Innovation and Policy Directions
from recent OECD analyses. Paris.

Turiman P. et al. (2011) Fostering the 21stCentury Skills through Scientific Literacy
and Science Process Skills Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 59 pp.110-
116.

National Education Association (2011) Preparing 21st Century Students for a Global
Society:An Educators Guide to the Four Cs . Available at:
http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/A-Guide-to-Four-Cs.pdf (Accessed: 08 November
2017).

Trilling, B. & Fadel, C. (2009). 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times,
Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.

P 21. (2011). Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21). Framework for 21st Century
Learning. Retrieved from http://www.P21.org