The 21st Century Skills Enhanced: Promoting Critical Thinking, Communication, Creativity and Collaboration Competencies among Social Studies Teachers and Students in Pankshin LGA, Plateau State, Nigeria

The study examined the effect of inculcating the 21st Century skills and the demonstration of its internalization among Junior secondary school Social Studies teachers and students in Pankshin LGA, Plateau State, Nigeria. The study was guided by four objectives, four research questions and two hypotheses. Exploratory research designed was employed for the study. The study population comprised of 43 Social Studies teachers in Pankshin LGA from which a sample size of 20 teachers using simple random sampling were selected. However, the students under the sampled teachers were put into 5 or 6 in a cluster for easy observation. This gave a total of 20 clusters for students. Descriptive and inferential statistics, including frequencies mean, standard deviation and paired sampled t-test were used to provide answers to the research questions and test the formulated hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study indicated that inculcation and demonstration of 21st century skills among teachers and students significantly improved. Challenges identified by the teachers in limiting their effectiveness in inculcating these skills are lack of training and limited knowledge of the skills, rigid curriculum structures, time allocation, difficulty in measuring the skills and large class size. The study recommended among others regular training of Social Studies teachers on techniques like three stayed one stray, think pair share that can enhanced the practices of the 21st century skills.