21st Century Skills and Its Applicability to Social Studies

Students’ learning should be connected to life after school. They need to acquire skills that enhance analytic reasoning and complex problem solving. This is divergent from the content/knowledge-based traditional academic skill. 21st Century skills are competencies students need to possess to be able to prepare for workforce, lifetime learning and key into global economy. The 21st Century skills are Knowledge (need to consider the significance and applicability of what is taught), Skills (need to develop the ‘4Cs’-creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration for absorbing knowledge and work performance) and Character (need to teach character traits such as performance–related traits-adaptability, persistence, resilience as well as moral-related traits-integrity, justice, empathy, ethics). Social Studies as a multidisciplinary discipline has knowledge, skill and character development as its core objectives with flexible curriculum that is easily receptive to integration of new ideas and emerging areas of knowledge. It is important to make learning of social studies life relevant and equip students with practical skills necessary to make them thrive in a world where change is a constant phenomenon. This paper therefore examined 21st century skills and its relevance to Social Studies. It stressed the significance of adequate preparation of students for jobs by merging knowledge with skills to ensure competence, effective and pragmatic utilisation of social technologies (social software and communication capabilities) so that they can compete favourably with their counterparts in other disciplines in employment market. The paper concluded that there is need for 21st century skills to be integrated into the teaching and learning of Social Studies to make it relevant to the current digital society, to make skill development job oriented and to help students develop capability to process and use information effectively.