21st century skills of 21st century Learners: A Comparative study of Science and Arts students

Abstract

           To cope up with this competitive digital era, students’ top priority should be tech-fluency. Therefore, education system must be embedded with essential 21st century skills to confront the life challenges in this competitive 21st century. The study delimited to three skills out of most highlighted fifteen components of 21st century skills. These three essential abilities were Critical and Logical Thinking Skill, Digital Literacy Skills and 3Rs Skills. Population of the study consisted of 72 F.G. secondary school for male students and 79 F.G. secondary schools for female students in Islamabad. Ten schools were sampled from each male and female secondary school for data collection. The number of sampled science students was 100 (5 from each school).  The number of sampled arts students was 100 (5 from each school). Therefore, 200 sample of students was taken for data collection through stratified random sampling. The survey approach using scales to measure the perceived level of critical thinking skill, digital literacy skill and 3Rs skill was employed in the study design. Hypotheses were tested by taking alpha 0.05, as level of significance. The results have been evaluated on the base of the t-test and the mean value. The findings of the analysis came up with the perceiving level of twenty-first century skills among secondary schools’ students. The findings revealed that in the overall perceived level of 21st century skills among schools’ students at secondary level with respect to their academic stream, no significant difference was found. The conclusion revealed that science group students were higher on digital literacy, whereas students showed non-significant attitude towards core subject and in perceived level of critical thinking. Hence, the study findings indicated that digital literacy skill is the significant determinant and critical thinking skill and 3Rs skills are non-significant determinant of the 21st century skills among students concerning study groups.