The Critical 21st Century Skills Every Student Needs and Why

Preparing a child for the world that doesn’t yet exist is not an easy task for any teacher. Step back and look at that picture from a broad perspective. What are the critical 21st century skills every student needs to survive and succeed in our world? What abilities and traits will serve them in a time that’s changing and developing so rapidly?

How Are Educators Responding?

The New Zealand Ministry of Education defines five key competencies for living and lifelong learning listed below:

• Thinking
• Using language, symbols, and text
• Managing self
• Relating to others
• Participating and contributing

The International Baccalaureate is a non-profit educational foundation created in 1968. It designs its programs to develop crucial intellectual, personal, emotional, and social skills. Their IB Learner Profile suggests that students should be conditioned by their learning to be:

• Inquirers
• Knowledgeable
• Thinkers
• Communicators
• Principled
• Open-minded
• Caring
• Risk-takers
• Balanced
• Reflective

The Common Core Standards Initiative also states primary areas of focus for their development. These are based on teaching our students the same kinds of 21st century skills. This excerpt is from their website:

The standards were drafted by experts and teachers from across the country and are designed to ensure students are prepared for today’s entry-level careers, freshman-level college courses, and workforce training programs. The Common Core focuses on developing the critical-thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills students will need to be successful.

Our Big List of Essential 21st Century Skills

We've given hundreds of presentations to educators and administrators in several countries over the years. Each time we’ve spoken, we have asked them what they feel are the most important 21st-century skills students need above all others. The answers that we’ve received most often are narrowed down below.

You’ll be able to see it correlates rather well with both New Zealand’s list and the IB Learner Profile. They certainly cover the Common Core’s bases, too. It’s good to know we’re all on the same page, isn’t it? That’s great news for our students!

So, according to the folks we’ve asked, the consensus is that students need transparency-level skills in these areas.

Essential 21st Century Skills Every Learner Needs

• Problem solving
• Creativity
• Analytic thinking
• Collaboration
• Communication
• Ethics, action, and accountability

Let’s talk more about why these skills are important. We’ll go through each point separately and talk about it in detail.

1. Problem solving

Students need the ability to solve complex problems in real time.

Why it’s important: In the future, complex problems that we can’t even conceive right now will be everywhere. As society advances, so will the complexity of its manageable conflicts.

The more we focus on students’  ability to devise effective solutions to real-world problems, the more successful those students will become. This is what Solution Fluency is all about. It means solving complex problems effectively in real time using unique and carefully designed solutions.

In addition to this, problem-solvers can work independently from higher supervision. They are initiative takers and enjoy risk, and they aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and make mistakes. They also learn from those mistakes, and habitually debrief their processes to create more efficient and economical solutions.

No pupil in the history of education is like today’s modern learner. This is a complex, energetic, and tech-savvy individual.

These are the kinds of people who will be successful in a global marketplace like ours. Such an individual is an asset to any workforce. It’s worth mentioning that in this future we’re talking about, workers who are unable to think proactively towards solving problems will have a hard time finding employment.

2. Creativity

Students need to be able to think and work creatively in both digital and nondigital environments to develop unique and useful solutions.

Why it’s important: Our digital students are in a constant state of stimulation and neural development with technology use. They are natural producers and consumers, or prosumers, of information.

Problem-solving is a skill that comes naturally to them and this can be advanced profoundly with the proper engagement in their learning. This comes from doing rewarding projects and meaningful tasks that give them challenges to overcome in imaginative ways.

Ask any student about what they like to create and you’ll get a myriad of different answers. They are constantly searching for ways to express themselves and their uniqueness. Through social media, they display this creative edge and are given constant and instantaneous feedback from their peers.

This same level of creative power is used as they face interesting challenges and figure out how to meet them with ingenuity and vision. This is why Creativity Fluency is one of the Essential Fluency skills.

Creativity is a vital outlet that inspires students to see who they are and what they can do, and to realize what they can accomplish. It is fundamental that this side of any student is allowed to shine forth in their learning.

3. Analytic thinking

Students need the ability to think analytically, which includes proficiency with comparing, contrasting, evaluating, synthesizing, and applying without instruction or supervision.

Why it’s important: Analytic thinking means being able to use the higher end of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy or higher-order thinking skills (HOTS).

Tasks that require linear thinking and routine cognitive work are being outsourced more and more. So it’s essential to guide students towards being able to perform analytic thinking. It is crucial to their ability to succeed in life after the classroom. Analytic thinking is a significant part of what makes up Information Fluency.

Our digital students are in a constant state of stimulation and neural development with technology use. They are natural producers and consumers, or prosumers, of information.

Analytical thinkers see data and information in many different dimensions, and from multiple angles. They are adept at conceptualization, organization and classification, and knowledge synthesis.

These types of skills are invaluable because they allow students to deal practically with problems of a social, mathematical, and scientific nature. It empowers them to make effective and level-headed decisions in their lives and relationships.

It’s easy to see why critical and analytical thinking skills are important to success beyond school.

4. Collaboration

Students must possess the ability to collaborate seamlessly in both physical and virtual spaces, with real and virtual partners globally.

Why it’s important: Students of the digital age are social by nature. They text, post, update, share, chat, and constantly co-create in technological environments with each other. When they are unable to do this in school, they become disengaged and unattached to their learning.

Connection and collaboration with others are essential not only to their learning but their mental and emotional health. It is a skill that educators must exercise with them regularly, and understanding Collaboration Fluency will assist with this.

Problem-solving is a skill that comes naturally to learners and this can be advanced profoundly with the proper engagement in their learning.

The work forces of the future (and even our present day) are globalizing due to the Internet. It is now the norm to communicate and market for global demographics instantaneously and effectively.

An organization’s business partners are now halfway across the world, and yet they meet and work with each other every day. The ability to collaborate and communicate in these situations is essential.

This kind of interaction goes hand-in-hand with the mindset of global awareness that is part of Global Digital Citizenship. Simply put, better collaborators make better students—and better citizens.

5. Communication

Students must be able to communicate not just with text or speech, but in multiple multimedia formats. 

Why it’s important: Communication is a broad term that incorporates multi-faceted levels of interaction and sharing information. Students love to communicate using technology. This is an essential part of Media Fluency. But it’s more than just being able to effectively use digital media. It’s about personal interactions as well.

We must remind our students that responsible communication practice puts forth their best representation of who they are as individuals in every relationship and alliance they make in their lives. Whether talking face-to-face, blogging, texting, or creating a visual product, their values and beliefs are defined by how well they communicate with others.

Encouraging them to develop and hone every aspect of their communication skills will serve them well in both their personal and professional lives.

6. Ethics, Action, and Accountability

This includes adaptability, fiscal responsibility, personal accountability, environmental awareness, empathy, tolerance, and global awareness.

Why it’s important: These are among the many characteristics of the Global Digital Citizen. A well-rounded and responsible global digital citizen practices personal, global, and online responsibilities geared towards creating a better world for everyone.

This is a selfless, helpful, and caring individual who is respectful of other cultures and belief systems, and diligent about being at their best with interactions of all sorts, both online and offline.

Teaching our kids about global awareness and Internet safety have become mainstream practices in education. It’s great to see such skills garnering the attention they deserve. 

The 21st century skills that we’ve just gone through are considered the essentials for our students’ future success. These all won by a landslide vote from the education professionals who have given their thoughts on why they feel these skills are most important. 

Editor's note: This post was originally published in 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Originally published Aug 2, 2016, updated October 18, 2021