Global competitiveness and local

INTRODUCTION

To attain global competitiveness and local, sustainable development through quality education, the United Nations General Assembly declared the Decade on Education for Sustainable Development (DESD, 2004) as an educational tool with its objectives in providing opportunities to improve and promote the vision and transition to sustainable development in all forms of education, awareness and community training; and to provide an enhanced profile of the important role of sustainable development in education.

To develop globalization through sustainability and efficiency in all aspects, Asia followed DESD as the UN decreed. Thus, ASEAN integration is directed to build a stable and sustainable society designed to provide economic, social, cultural, and environmental development. However, regardless of the potential benefits, it can provide for the efficiency and sustainability of Asian countries and the world, it can pose a threat to industries from the public or private sectors and large or small manufacturing or services. Workforce possessing knowledge and skills in industries are those directly and fully affected.

Job network evaluation report (2012) shows thirty-one (31) per cent of entrepreneurs worldwide are struggling to find qualified workers because of the difference in talent between qualified workers and skills and specific combinations of skills that entrepreneurs want. Today’s skills are broad and deep, reducing the industrial sector and affecting more than eighty (80) per cent of the companies evaluated. Human capital performance skills threaten our country’s ability to compete and come out as the most important business issue in our country.

With problems facing human resources in job mismatches, lack of knowledge and skills, these can lead to inefficiencies, lower production, an unstable business. Therefore, the education sector has an important role in providing the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed for human resources to meet global commitment is changing needs and requirements. Therefore, education at all levels must be met with intense and ongoing challenges for change to achieve excellence and sustainable development.

While sustainable education should be tailored for individual learners, identified skills in the context of sustainable development. It consists of envisioning, critical thinking, and reflection to help people learn to examine economic, environmental, social, and cultural structures, systemic thinking, building partners, and participation in decision-making to empower people (www.21stcentury.org).

In the current age of information, the main task is applied to sustainable education around the world. Recent educational revisions of educational systems focus on literacy, skills, and standards to support interdisciplinary thinking. It is the driving force and leading the role of the educational system in the global economy.

Our country, the Philippines, made the first step to competing globally. One of its manifestations is adopting the Enhanced Basic Education Act or RA 10533 in the K-12 curriculum. This move increases the visibility of translating the country’s education framework into global standards and simultaneously responding to the goals of ASEAN integration. Therefore, the adoption of 21st-century skills and studies in youth should take steps to achieve these goals.

With the rapid development of technology, the country develops towards information systems, in which ideas or knowledge function as products and commodities. It is important to realize that the community is facing the changing types of work required, but today’s youth also need to be skilled and educated for jobs that do not yet exist.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, formed in 2002, has advocated for 21st-century skills and made it at the centre of K-12 education. P21 Framework (2009) reported that our world economy has evolved from the industrial era to the information age and is now moving into an era of temporary creativity.

Wagner (2008) added, “in fact, our schools are not designed to prepare students for this reality.” The 21st-century skills ‘are key elements in supporting the youth to survive and excel in a new global environment. The same author mentions that this is a world where comfort with ideas and abstractions is a passport for good learning, where creativity and innovation are the keys to a good life, where the level of higher education which is a very different kind of education most of us have the only security available. Furthermore, Baniaga (2010) mentioned that to achieve 21st-century skills, education turned to technology integration evidence. This integration “can help the schools provide a world-class education that will enhance student achievement and develop 21st-century skills and provide educators with a valuable tool for teaching, developing and strengthening 21st-century skills by dramatically changing options for inquiry, analysis, and expression”.

21st-century skills will require workers to possess the ability to solve problems, collaborate, innovate, communicate, adapt, and analyze information. The educational sector needs to acknowledge the need to teach and enhance these skills and embrace the opportunities in our country and economy today.

To address the shift of trends and threats brought about by ASEAN Integration, the need to assess existing knowledge and skills is considered vital to students. Because educational institutions provide community workers’ needs, an exceptional and essential role is required in ensuring excellent industrial and academic skills. Thus, this research’s implementation is in the 21st-century skills of NIPSC Batad Campus Secondary Education students for A.Y. 2016-2017.

STATEMENTS OF THE PROBLEM

This study determined the skills of 21st-century skills of the Bachelor of Secondary Education graduating students of Northern Iloilo Polytechnic State College Batad Campus.

Specifically, this attempted to answer the following objectives:

What are the Secondary Education Students of NIPSC Batad Campus’s demographic profile in terms of age, sex, and educational attainment of father and mother?
What is the perceived level of 21st Century Skills of the Secondary Education Graduating Students of NIPSC Batad Campus regarding learning and innovation skills; information, media and technology skills; and life and career skills?
Are there a significant relationship between the profile variables and the respondents’ 21st Century skills in terms of learning and innovations skills; information, media, and technology skills; and life and career skills?

NULL HYPOTHESIS

There is no significant relationship between the profile variables and the respondents’ 21st-century skills in terms of learning and innovations skills; information, media, and technology skills; and life and career skills.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The framework for this study was investigated through the globalization theories of Thomas L. Friedman (2007). His review of globalization shifts offers insight into the need to teach 21st-century skills in our schools. He also provides a timeline for the forces that led to this need. Friedman’s insights offer the first indicators that education does not adequately address the 21st-century skills needed for life in a shifting global economy.

These “globalization skills” need to be addressed by society as a new focus of education to prepare a new generation for a future economy that hangs in the balance. In his book The World is Flat (2007), Friedman describes globalization’s evolution as having occurred during three great eras; globalization 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. The evolution of these eras can best be described as the global community moving from one that operated in isolation to one that operates collaboratively. This is made possible by integrating the personal computer and fibre optic cable (Friedman, 2007). Communication has grown exponentially and will continue to do so as technology catches up with infrastructure.

Currently, globalization provides individuals with the opportunity to collaborate and communicate from anywhere, regardless of the distance between them (Friedman, 2007). With the ease of communication and sharing of information, individuals will need to compete internationally for jobs. In this era, employees will need to possess specific skills that will allow them to be marketable in the new global economy. Education will play a vital role in society’s ability to survive and thrive in this economy.

Educators that comprehend these forces, and embrace the instructional opportunities they present, can better prepare students for future innovation and their opportunities. This new era of globalization necessitates a renewed purpose to educate the relevant skills needed for the 21st century. Wagner argues that the emergence of our rapidly changing society will require a shift from instructing for memorization and recall to instructing the skills needed for work, life, and citizenship in the 21st century. In today’s classrooms, students need relevant instruction rich in the skills needed for their future.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Antecedent Independent Variables Dependent Variables

21st Century Skills

Learning and Innovation Skills
Information, Media and Technological Skills
Life and Career Skills

Perceived Level of the 21st Century Skills

SEd Graduating Students’ Demographic

Profiles

Age
Gender
Educational Attainment of Father and Mother

Figure 1. This Figure Illustrates the Independent and Dependent Variables of the Study.

STATISTICAL TREATMENT

This section discusses the statistical treatment and formula necessary to evaluate correctly the data gathered. The data gathered were tabulated, analyzed, and interpreted.

The mean was used to describe the respondents’ demographic profile and the perceived level of 21st-century skills. Pearson r was used to determine whether there is a significant relationship that exists between the respondents’ demographic profile and their 21st-century skills.

Mean. The average of the set of scores and responses on the demographic profiles and 21st-century skills survey is divided by the total notes. The formula is as follows:

Where: = summation of the observed frequency

N= total number of respondents

For the

relationship between the demographic profile and 21st-century skills of the respondents in terms of learning and innovation skills, information, media and technology skills, and life and career skills, the Pearson Product–Moment Correlation was employed using the given formula:

Where: r- refers to the Pearson correlation coefficient

X- refers to the first variable.

Y – refers to the second variable.

Y – is the summation of X&Y.

Degree of Correlation

0 < | r | < 0.30 Weak Correlation

0.31 < | r | < 0.70 Moderate Correlation

0.71 < | r | < 1.00 Strong Correlation

METHOD AND INSTRUMENT

The study used the descriptive method and a designed survey tool, which consists of a profile checklist and a 15 item-questionnaire developed by the researchers and validated by NIPSC Batad Campus Statisticians with 0.79 as a very high positive correlation. The items in each skill were based on the indicators provided in P21 www.p21.org.)

Thirty (30) respondents were chosen using purposive sampling. According to Zulueta F. and Perez J. (2010), 30 is the minimum acceptable sample size for correlational research. Quantitative data and ascertaining profile variables and 21st-century skills were treated with frequency and mean, respectively. The Pearson-r was used to determine the correlation between profile variables and the 21st-century skills and the correlations between and among the dimensions of 21st-century skills.

The five-point Likert scale was used to describe responses in all dimensions and was used in a similar way to establish an efficient description for the area mean.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Out of 31 respondents, nine are males with a mean of 0.30, and 21 are females with a

mean of 0.70.

As to age, 24 respondents belong to the age bracket of 19-20 with the mean of 0.80, five (5) belong to 21-22 with the mean of 0.166, and 1 belongs to 23-above mean of 0.33.

As to the respondents’ mother’s educational attainment, eight (8) are college graduates with the mean of 0.266, 22 are high school graduates with the mean of 0.73, and zero (0) elementary graduates. As to the respondents’ father’s educational attainment, 18 are college graduates with a mean of 0.60, 12 are high school graduates with a mean of 0.40, and zero (0) elementary graduates.

Table 1 shows the results.

Table 1. Demographic Profile of the Respondents in terms of Sex, Age and Educational Attainment of the Respondents’ Parents (both father and mother).

Respondents

Frequency

Mean

Male 9 0.30

Female 21 0.70

19-20 24 0.80

21-22 5 0.166

23-above 1 0.33

Parents’ Educ. Attainment

Mother

College Graduate

8 0.266

High School Graduate

22 0.73

Elementary Graduate

0 0

Father

College Graduate

18 0.60

High School Graduate

12 0.40

Elementary Graduate

0 0

Perceived Level of the 21st Century Skills of the Respondents in terms of Learning and

Innovations Skills; Information, Media and Technology Skills; and Life and Career Skills

The respondents Learning and Innovation Skills has a mean of 3.57, which is described as “very good” in the arbitrary skills; the information, media, and technology skills have a mean of 3.01, which is also described as “very good”; and life and career skills have a mean of 2.96 which is “satisfactory” only.

Table 2 shows the results.

Table 2. Perceived Level of the 21st Century Skills of the Respondents in terms of Learning and

Innovations Skills; Information, Media and Technology Skills; and Life and Career Skills

___________________________________________________________________________

Dimensions on the 21st Century Skills Mean Description

__________________________________________________________________________________

Learning and Innovation Skills 3.57 Very Good

Information, Media and Technology Skills 3.01 Very Good

Life and Career Skills 2.96 Satisfactory

_________________________________________________________________________________

Arbitrary Scale Description

4.0 Excellent

3.0 – 3.99 Very Good

2.0 – 2.99 Satisfactory

1.0 – 1.99 Poor

Table 3A shows that sex and learning and innovation skills have an r-value of .000, which is highly significant at the 0.05 alpha level. Sex and Information, Media, and Technology Skills have an r-value of -0.277, which is not significant. Sex and Life and Career Skills have an r-value of -.425*, which is also not significant.

Table 3A shows the results.

Table 3A. Relationship Between the Respondents’ Demographic Profile(Sex) and their 21st Century Skills in Terms of Learning and Innovations Skills; Information, Media and Technology Skills; and Career Skills.

________________________________________________________________________

Correlated Variables Pearson r Description

_______________________________________________________________________________

Sex .000 Highly Significant

Learning and Innovation Skills

Sex

Information, Media and Technology Skills -0.277 Not Significant

Sex

Life and Career Skills -.425* Not Significant

_______________________________________________________________________________

Relationship Between the Respondents’ Demographic Profile (Age) and their 21st Century Skills in Terms of Learning and Innovations Skills; Information, Media and Technology Skills; and Career Skills.

Table 3A shows that sex and learning and innovation skills have an r-value of 0.036, which is significant at the 0.05 alpha level. Sex and Information, Media, and Technology Skills have an r-value of 0.021, which is also significant. Sex and Life and Career Skills have an r-value of -0.309, which is not significant.

Table 3B shows the results.

Table 3, B. Relationship Between the Respondents’ Demographic Profile (Age) and their 21st Century Skills in Terms of Learning and Innovations Skills; Information, Media and Technology Skills; and Career Skills.

Correlated Variables Pearson r Description

_______________________________________________________________________________

Age 0.036 Significant

Learning and Innovation Skills

Age

Information, Media and Technology Skills 0.021 Significant

Age

Life and Career Skills -0.309 Not Significant

_______________________________________________________________________________

Relationship Between the Respondents’ Demographic Profile (Mothers’ Educational Attainment) and their 21st Century Skills in Terms of Learning and Innovations Skills; Information, Media and Technology Skills; and Career Skills.

Table 3C shows that Mothers’ Educational Attainment and the respondents’ 21st-century skills have an r-value of -.158, which is not significant at the 0.05 alpha level. Mothers’ Educational Attainment and Information, Media, and Technology Skills have an r-value of -.230, which is not significant. Mothers’ Educational Attainment and Life and Career Skills have an r-value of -.192, which is also not significant.

Table 3C shows the results.

Table 3C. Relationship Between the Respondents’ Demographic Profile (Mothers’ Educational Attainment) and their 21st Century Skills.

________________________________________________________________________

Correlated Variables Pearson r Description

_______________________________________________________________________________

Mothers’ Educational Attainment

Learning and Innovation Skills -.158 Not Significant

Mothers’ Educational Attainment

Information, Media and Technology Skills -.230 Not Significant

Mothers’ Educational Attainment

Life and Career Skills -.192 Not Significant

_______________________________________________________________________________

Relationship Between the Respondents’ Demographic Profile(Fathers'” Educational Attainment) and their 21st Century Skills.

Table 3D shows that Fathers” Educational Attainment and the 21st-century skills of the respondents have an r-value of -.253, which is not significant at 0.05 alp level. Mothers’ Educational Attainment and Information, Media and Technology Skills have an r-value of -.368, which is not significant. Mothers’ Educational Attainment and Life and Career Skills have an r-value of -.368, which is also not significant.

Table 3D shows the results.

Table 3D. Relationship Between the Respondents’ Demographic Profile(Fathers'” Educational Attainment) and their 21st Century Skills.

________________________________________________________________________

Correlated Variables Pearson r Description

_______________________________________________________________________________

Fathers” Educational Attainment

Learning and Innovation Skills -.253 Not Significant

Fathers” Educational Attainment

Information, Media and Technology Skills -.368 Not Significant

Fathers” Educational Attainment

Life and Career Skills -.368* Not Significant

_______________________________________________________________________________

FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The study’s findings revealed that there is no significant relationship between sex and the 21st-century skills of the respondents. As to age and 21st-century skills, there is a significant relationship. Between the mother’s educational attainment and the respondents’ 21st-century skills, there is no significant relationship, the same with the father’s educational attainment and the 21st-century skills of the respondents.

To conclude, only one demographic profile of the respondents ‘age had a high correlation with their 21st-century skills. For the rest of the variables, the relationship is not significant.

For recommendations, schools should provide a world-class education that will enhance student achievement and develop 21st-century skills and provide educators with a valuable tool for teaching, developing, and strengthening ’21st-century skills by dramatically changing inquiry options analysis, and’ expression (Baniaga, 2010).

Students should encourage parents to benefit from alternative study or informal learning to develop their knowledge and skills to help improve their children’s personal and academic growth, as this study identified the level of academic attainment of parents with greater influence and contribution to the development of their children.

’21st-century skills such as learning and innovation skills, information media and technology skills, as well as life and career skills, are the crucial and primary skills that have to be developed among them. They are encouraged to develop critical thinking by being creative and innovative through experimentation, exploration, prediction, interpretation, visualization, information integration, and’ evaluation as rudiments of critical thinking skills. Besides, students should also collaborate with groups to adapt, learn, explore, and apply alternative perspectives to enhance their problem-solving skills.

Teachers, on the other hand, can enhance student creativity by encouraging intrinsic motivation and problem-solving. They need to promote regular brainstorming sessions, allow students to have multiple ideas, and create an encouraging learning environment. When students see their ideas inspired and accepted, they can become more creative, bringing potential classroom changes.

Parents need to be aware of their attitudes and their influence in developing their children’s 21st-century skills. Therefore, they need to take the initiative and take advantage of opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills.

Because school should have the primary role in learning new skills at the information age of training, it should provide a collaborative learning environment because of the creativity and the ability to study together to achieve the goal. Information, media, and’ technology skills are corresponding skills to harness the learning and innovation skills among learners.

For curriculum designers, the English curriculum should include additional courses that will enrich students to understand and use practical and conceptual tools for current technology applicable to education and professional life that students expect to adopt.

Training or seminars for students should be conducted annually to develop their ability to understand, adapt, evaluate and continue to use the advancements in information technology, media, and ICT-based literacy and make an intelligent decision about adopting new technologies.

Researchers should conduct similar studies to assess sociological and cultural diversity and their impact on life among the millennial workforce of professionals in the academic sector.

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Friedman, T. (2007). THE WORLD IS FLAT, A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century.

http://www.uic.edu.hk/~kentsang/powerst/Friedman_.pdf. Retrieved from July 10, 2016

Lynn, R. (1998). Sex differences in intelligence: some comments on Mackintosh and Flynn. Journal of Biosocial Science 30, 555-559.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2002). Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/P21_Report.pdf. June 15, 2016

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Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

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