COMPARISON OF 21st CENTURY SKILLS AMONG SCIENCE AND ARTS SECONDARY STUDENTS OF ISLAMABAD PAKISTAN

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 151
F.G. secondary schools of Islamabad. The number of sampled science
students was 100. The number of sampled arts students was 100.
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. Data was analyzed using ttest. The findings revealed that there was no significant difference in the
overall perceived level of 21st century skills among secondary schools
students when compared according to their academic stream. It was also
found that science group students were higher on digital literacy,
whereas students showed non-significant difference was found in the
perceived level of critical thinking. It is concluded that the significant
difference was found with respect to digital literacy skill.