The Impact of Community Engagement on 21st-Century Competency Development among Pre- and In-Service Teachers: A Mixed-Methods Study

Despite policy mandates to embed “Four Cs” competencies—communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creative thinking—throughout teacher education, empirical evidence on how community-engagement initiatives foster these skills remains limited, particularly in Gulf contexts. Guided by sociocultural learning theory and Kolb’s experiential-learning model, this sequential explanatory mixed-methods study evaluates the extent to which structured community-engagement projects cultivate 21st-century skills among pre-service and in-service science teachers in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE). In the quantitative phase, 160 pre-service and 85 in-service teachers completed an adapted 21st-century-skills inventory (Cronbach’s α = 0.85). Descriptive statistics and independent-samples t-tests revealed that in-service teachers scored significantly higher on all four competencies, with the largest differences observed for critical thinking (t(243) = 4.72, p < .001, d = 0.60) and collaboration (t(243) = 3.41, p = .001, d = 0.43), suggesting a cumulative advantage of field experience. To elucidate these patterns, the qualitative phase employed semi-structured interviews with 20 purposively selected participants representing high and low survey quartiles. Thematic analysis indicated that authentic problem-solving with community stakeholders, iterative feedback cycles, and cross-disciplinary project teams were the principal mechanisms through which engagement activities enhanced the Four Cs. Participants also identified structural constraints—restricted instructional time, insufficient funding, and limited school–community partnerships—that moderated these gains. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that well-scaffolded community-engagement modules can accelerate the acquisition of transferable 21st-century competencies, particularly for novice teachers. The study recommends embedding sustained, resource-supported community collaborations into both initial teacher education and continuing professional development frameworks across the UAE and comparable settings.