Microsoft Word 225 Nguyen Van Son doc Tuyển tập Hội nghị Khoa học thường niên năm 2019 ISBN 978 604 82 2981 8 685 THE 21ST CENTURY COMPETENCES INTO ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION Nguyen Van Son1,2 1Doctor[.]
Tuyển tập Hội nghị Khoa học thường niên năm 2019 ISBN: 978-604-82-2981-8 THE 21ST CENTURY COMPETENCES INTO ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION Nguyen Van Son1,2 Doctoral School of Education, University of Szeged, Hungary School of International Education, Thuyloi University, Vietnam 1 GENERAL INTRODUCTION Citizens, especially young people are living the world which is changing dramatically day by day This requires them to make decisions, possess creative thinking, adapt their actions and attitudes to the current situations, learn with a high speed, believe in their own skills to solve problems (Halpern, 2008) UNESCO (2015) generalizes these above into “efficient communication with others, innovative thinking, respect for diversity and the environment, conflict resolution, team work, problem solving, and so on” (p 1) These competences are called the 21st century competences [called by Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S), the Partnership for 21st century skills (P21)], key competences (by European Union), transversal competences (preferred at the ERINet annual meeting in October, 2013) Although it is not easy to choose an official term, it may be true that all of them refer to skills and competences that learners need to face challenges of the new era In the hope of preparing the youth to confidently enter the competitive labor market and developing their potentials, the policy makers and educators have made great efforts to equip them with both specific content and more notably, necessary competences above The research acknowledges that transversal competences and skills have been integrated into the national curricula to meet new economic, socio-cultural demands as a result of globalization and booming development of ICT (Hipkins, Boyd , & Joyce, 2005; Voogt & Pelgrum, 2005) Given the role of key competences in the 21st century, this piece of writing utilizes content analysis to synthesize, analyze, and compare the 21st century competences frameworks and provide some recommendations for the curriculum or course developers in language education RESEARCH METHODS This study employs content analysis to collect and analyze the literature available and reach the conclusions RESEARCH FINDINGS Key competences in the 21st century provide the educators and policy makers with a useful framework that they can apply into designing a curriculum, a teaching program, or even a course They aim to develop these competences among the learners or young people so that those people will be able to work, study, and communicate well in an intercultural and integrated world which is changing rapidly day by day As noted above, there are quite a few frameworks for key competences developed by different prestigious organizations In this study, four of them will be selected and critically analyzed 21st century skills and competences for new millennium learners, which was initiated by Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED) (2005), aims to fulfill the requirements of learners in the new era of knowledge The framework is 685 Tuyển tập Hội nghị Khoa học thường niên năm 2019 ISBN: 978-604-82-2981-8 categorized into three groups of competency, namely using tools interactively, interacting in heterogeneous group, and acting autonomously In the first group, learners are expected to use language, text, symbol, knowledge, information, and technology interactively In the second group of competency, learners should be able to relate well to others, co-operate, team-work, manage and solve conflicts The last group focuses on acting within a big picture; forming, carrying on life plans and personal projects; and defending, asserting rights, interests, limits, and needs Key competences for lifelong learning proposed by the Council and European Parliament (2006) aids the members of European Unions in providing a Europeanlevel reference framework for developing 21st century skills among all the age groups The framework identifies eight competences which are communication in the mother tongue, communication in foreign languages, mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology, digital competence, learning to learn, social and civic competence, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, and cultural awareness and expression Partnership for 21st century skills (P21) (2009) in the USA mainly focuses on K12 education It was sponsored and developed by the US government and several wellknown organizations such as Dell Computer Organization, Apple Computer Inc., and Microsoft Corporation This framework encompasses four domains The first one emphasizes key subjects including English, reading, arts, math, science, geography, economics, history, civics, and government; and 21st century themes including global awareness, financial, economic, business, and entrepreneurial literacy, civic literacy, heath literacy, and environmental literacy The second domain refers to learning and innovation skills which entails creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, communication and collaboration The third domain accentuates information, media, and technology skills In the last one, the emphasis is on life and career skills They include flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross-cultural skills, productivity and accountability, leadership and responsibility In each domain and skill, the detailed description, as a list of criteria is provided Assessment and teaching of 21st century skills (ATCS) (Binkley et al 2010), sponsored by Intel, Microsoft, and Cisco, makes effort to provide a comprehensive definition of 21st century competences to formulate appropriate assessments in the classroom ATCS identifies categories of skills which are ways of thinking, ways of working, tools for working, and living in the world There are three subskills in ways of thinking, including creativity and innovation; critical thinking problem solving, decision making; and learning to learn, metacognition Ways of working refer to communication and collaboration Tools for working embraces information and ICT literacy The last category covers local and global citizenship, life and career, personal and social responsibility It can be seen that four frameworks all value collaboration, communication skills, ICT skills, and social skills Of importance are learning to learn, critical thinking, and problem solving All of them are strongly believed to be shape a global citizen in the 21st century, so the employers highly appreciate those who possess these competences They are listed as the prominent assessment criteria used to employ potential candidates It is strongly recommended that the educators apply the 21st century competences into designing a new curriculum or a new course and choose a suitable theoretical framework listed above so that the learners can get proper training to gradually meet the increasingly competitive requirements from the employers and become a global citizen whose capacity is sufficient for internationally living, working, studying, and communicating 686 Tuyển tập Hội nghị Khoa học thường niên năm 2019 ISBN: 978-604-82-2981-8 CONCLUSION st In this paper, the importance of the 21 century skills or key competences or transversal skills is emphasized Then, some frameworks of the key competences developed by well-known international organizations are presented and compared Finally, some recommendations are provided for the educators when they are going to build up a new educational program REFERENCES [1] Binkley, M., Erstad, O., Herman, J., Raizen, S., Ripley, M and Rumble, M (2010) Defining 21st century skills [Draft White Paper 1] Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills Project Available online at: http://atc21s.org/index.php/resources/ whitepapers/#item1, accessed August 2019 [2] European Parliament (2007) Key Competences for Lifelong Learning: A European Reference Framework Annex of a Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 on key competences for lifelong learning, Official Journal of the European Union, 30.12.2006/L394 Available online at: http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education_culture/p ubl/pdf/ll-learning/keycomp_en.pdf, accessed August 2019 [3] Halpern, D F (2008) Is intelligence critical thinking? Why we need a new definition of intelligence In P C Kyllonen, R D Roberts, & L Stankov (Eds.), Extending Intelligence Enhancement and New Constructs (pp 293310) New York: Routledge [4] Hipkins, R., Boyd , S., & Joyce, C (2005) Documenting Learning of the Key Competencies: What are the Issues? Wellington: New Zealand Council for Educational Research [5] Organisation For Economic Co-Operation And Development [OECD] (2005) The defini- tion and selection of key competencies [Executive Summary] Available online at: http:// www.oecd.org/dataoecd/47/61/35070367.p df, accessed August 2019 [6] Partnership For 21st Century Skills (2009a) Framework for 21st century learning Available online at: http://www.p21.org/documents/P21_Frame work.pdf, accessed August 2019 [7] UNESCO (2015) Transversal Competences in Education policy & practice Paris : United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [8] Voogt, J and Pelgrum, H (2005) ICT and curriculum change Human Technology; an Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments, 1(2), 157–175 687 ... solving All of them are strongly believed to be shape a global citizen in the 21st century, so the employers highly appreciate those who possess these competences They are listed as the prominent... developing 21st century skills among all the age groups The framework identifies eight competences which are communication in the mother tongue, communication in foreign languages, mathematical competence... recommended that the educators apply the 21st century competences into designing a new curriculum or a new course and choose a suitable theoretical framework listed above so that the learners can