Students’ perceptions of pedagogy for 21st century learning instrument (S-POP-21): Concept, validation, and initial results

S-POP-21 is a short instrument designed to measure Students’ Perceptions of Pedagogy for 21st century learning. Students’ perception of their exposure to pedagogy is argued to be more important than the quality of teaching in terms of influencing student outcomes and may explain variation in their academic achievement within a classroom. Yet there are few instruments that measure student perceptions of pedagogy. This is particularly true within the context of 21st century pedagogy where the focus to date has been on students’ perceptions of teachers’ pedagogical use of technology. This paper aims to overcome these limitations by developing the first valid and reliable short scale that focuses on students’ perceived exposure to elements of 21st century teaching and learning in secondary school. To this end, a short scale was developed for and implemented within a longer survey of secondary school students (n=3,863), with two random samples extracted for cross-validation. Following validation, results from the remaining respondents were used with another scale - SICKS (Short Instrument for Measuring Students' Confidence with ‘Key Skills') – in a novel study into whether there is a correlation between student's perceived exposure to 21st century pedagogy and their confidence in 21st century skills. The results show that there is indeed a correlation and in-depth exploration of the relationship highlights considerations that have implications for the ways teachers engage students in 21st century teaching and learning.