AN INVESTIGATION OF THE 21ST CENTURY SKILLS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING (ELT) PROGRAMS IN TURKEY

The rapidly developing technology has affected our lives in many ways. The Internet has now directly affected our daily and business life, our education system and even our social life. For this reason, there is a need to develop some new skills required by our age in education. The concepts such as “Life and Career Skills”, “Learning and Innovation Skills”, “Information, Media and Technology Skills” have also entered our lives as the 21st century skills. This study aimed to investigate to what extent the 21st century skills were included in English language teacher training programs; to compare the perspectives of students and academics of the related programs with the program and to discuss the effectiveness of the program in terms of gaining the 21st century skills. For this purpose, the study adopted mixed methods research design based on both qualitative and quantitative data. The data were collected using triangulation method via document analysis, questionnaires for students and academics and face to face interviews. In addition, the ELT department programs of randomly selected Faculties of Education of 4 different universities were examined. The results have revealed that the curriculum provided by the Council of Higher Education are applied in all the participating ELT departments and it aims to develop the 21st century skills in prospective EFL teachers at some points.  However, the course contents of the curricula in those departments are limited to some of the skills which may break the integrity of the 21st century skills in professional life reflections. The participant academics and students believe that some of the components of the 21st century skills are included in their course contents but not completely. The students do not feel utterly confident about handling the 21st century skills in a real-life implementation