Assessing XXIst century skills
- EdTech students
- Jan 16, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 29, 2018
By Ani Zurashvili
16 January 2018
In recent years, more and more people highlights how important teaching soft skills at school is for preparing students for future studies or workplace.
While there are lots of different soft skills, I will present some of the main categories, known as '21st century competencies'. When it comes to these skills, it is possible to separate three broad categories: cognitive, interpersonal and intrapersonal. Each of these groups covers some amount of skills that are considered as important and desirable characteristics to have for each student. Some examples of cognitive skills are critical thinking and creativity, while communication, collaboration and leadership skills are the parts of interpersonal competencies. Furthermore, growth mindset and learning how to learn, which represents intrapersonal skills significantly influence on increasing students’ potential.
Taken from Barbara Cimatti, 2016, p 99
Another useful classification of soft skills has been offered by the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD), which developed the five creative dispositions model for assessing pupils’ creativity in schools.
The first desired disposition is that pupils should be inquisitive, which means that they have to question presenting learning materials, investigate and gain additional information and challenge accepted assumptions by employing critical analyzing skills. Second is persistency, with a determination to tackle difficulties and existing problems. Third is the ability to imagine and tackle problems by gathering and synthesizing information. Fourth major characheristic is pupils’ ability to manage collaboration and cooperation with others. Last is discipline. In the 21st century, students need to develop these skills to manage their learning process.
Despite the fact that most researchers and professionals in education agree about the importance of soft skills, many traditional school systems are still not prepared to provide teachers with the necessary tools for developing and measuring soft skills. Therefore, effective measurement that is a key point to track the progress and develop the skills among students is crucially important.
However, there is a huge difference between the assessment of soft skills and traditional disciplines. For instance, most people think that schools should develop creativity among students, but there is no universal definition of creativity. Educators are facing a risk of using too simplified definition of creativity, pejorative comments such as “being unimaginative” or making assessment without context.
Taken from Hanover Research, 2014, p. 8
In order to provide students with the 21st century skills effectively, there is a need to establish a common baseline, which can be used for assessment and reviewing of the soft skills.
This requires developing assessment tools for measuring soft skills in students. Norton categorize assessment tools for soft skills into two groups: One is self-assessment, when individuals themselves rate their own competencies in certain skills. However, this approach depends entirely on the honesty and self-beliefs of individuals.
A second method is employing assessment quizzes and exercises. But both methods are quite narrow and cannot give us full picture of assessment.
This gap is filled by the report of Hanover Research 2014, which indicates three main method of assessing soft skills. First is a standards-based report card that is very well-known traditional assessment tool. It measures students’ performance as a result of examinations, final reports, presentations and etc. Second method for soft skills assessment is an assessment of a portfolio, which is a “collection of work that a learner has collected, selected, organized, reflected upon, and presented to show understanding and growth over time”[1].
Third method for assessing soft skills is digital badges that recognize pupils’ achievement in certain competencies, but which specific skills should be assessed and what should be the exact criteria still remains under question.
The evidence presented in this article suggests that more work is needed to categorize and clarify what is meant by the most essential soft skills and what are criteria to assess them. Different organizations, academic institutions or countries focus on different soft skills, their classification is often ambiguous and overlapping with another set of skills. The 21st century skills and OECD’s five creative dispositions model are good examples of defining soft skills; but the main challenge is the lack of common rules for effective assessment of the soft skills.
[1] Hanover Research, 2014, p.11
References
Comments