Investigating teacher candidates’ levels of teacher readiness and usage of 21st century skills : Readiness and usage of 21st century skills

Abstract

Having 21st century skills, exhibiting effective classroom management, being able to use educational technologies, establishing interdisciplinary relations, making process-oriented measurement and evaluation, presenting values education with activities and using modern teaching techniques are now inevitable for efficiency in education. This research is based on the results of a series of training activities and workshops for teacher candidates within the scope of the “Future Teachers Project”. The research, in which the quantitative method was applied, was conducted with 174 teacher candidates studying in different departments of universities in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 2021. As a data collection tool in the research, the “Readiness to Be a Teacher Scale” and the “21st Century Learner Skills Usage Scale” was used. The application of the research was carried out twice -pretest and posttest- at the beginning of the project and at the end of the project. In the study, it was determined that the education and activities applied outside of formal education increased the teacher candidates' readiness for teaching and their 21st century learner skills. Particularly, it was observed that teacher candidates who participated in such a project for the first time, made significant improvements in their “environment designing the teaching process” and “collaboration and flexibility skills” skills. In the context of these results, it can be suggested that teacher candidates participate in activities that will improve themselves in different dimensions of the teaching profession in addition to the formation courses they take at the university