Development and Validation of the 21st Century Collaboration Skills Scale for High School Students

The Collaboration scales developed in previous research have been designed predominantly for university students, teachers, or organizational contexts. This study developed and validated a Collaboration Skills Scale for high school students within the Twenty-First Century Skills (TCS) framework. An initial item pool of 230 items from eight collaboration scales was refined to 53 items after content validity assessment and a pilot test with 45 students. An exploratory factor analysis conducted with 655 students from 16 schools in Punjab, Pakistan, refined the scale to 17 items distributed across five factors: communication, team support, learning orientation, participation, and conflict resolution. A confirmatory factor analysis with 1,155 students from 28 schools subsequently validated the factor structure which demonstrated an acceptable model-data fit. The scale demonstrates strong reliability and validity for assessing high school students' collaboration skills. It offers educators, policymakers, and curriculum developers a robust tool to monitor collaboration competencies and align educational practices with the TCS framework.