5
Career and Life Skills
work-ready, prepared for life
magine that the SARS team Web site project was an actual
project of a global company that publishes medical informa-
tion for the general public on the Internet. Imagine also that
the team’s Web site, just like the student project, had won an
industry award for excellence in communication on a timely
How would the manager of someone on the team evaluate
that member’s work at the close of the project?
The manager might use a set of performance evaluation cri-
teria, a common practice in most businesses today, that includes
both work outcomes and skill ratings. The results might look
Though the set of evaluation criteria used to rate employee per-
formance in this example includes virtually all of the 21st century
skills we’ve discussed so far, the last fi ve criteria—the career and
life skills of the P21 learning framework (highlighted in Figure
5.1) are some of the performance qualities most often reviewed
We turn to these work and life skills next.
73
Table 5.1. Performance Evaluation Criteria.
Employee Performance Evaluation Worksheet
Criterion Evaluation Question Rating (1–4)
Overall work Was the project work of high quality, as well 4
quality as being delivered on time and on budget?
Technical Did the employee demonstrate a high level 3
competence of technical and operational skills and
Problem solving Did the employee solve problems eff ectively 4
and effi ciently as they arose?
Creativity and Did the employee come up with creative 4
innovation and innovative solutions to problems?
Communications Were the employee’s internal and external 3
project communications effi cient and
Teamwork Did the employee collaborate well with 4
other members of the team?
Flexibility and Did the employee demonstrate the 3
adaptability fl exibility to adapt to new and unexpected
Initiative and Did the employee show personal initiative, 4
self-direction self-motivation, and self-directedness in
Social and cross- Did the employee exhibit strong social skills 3
cultural skills and cross-cultural understanding of diverse
Productivity and Was the employee productive in use of time 3
accountability and other resources and in accounting for
Leadership and Did the employee demonstrate leadership 4
responsibility qualities and take responsibility for the
success of the project work?
Total 39
Exceeds
Overall Rating Expectations
career and life skills | 75
Learning and
Innovation Skills
Core Subjects and
21st Century Themes
Information,
Media, and
Technology
Skills
Figure 5.1. The 21st Century Knowledge-and-Skills Rainbow.
Flexibility and Adaptability
In times of change learners inherit the earth, while the
learned fi nd themselves beautifully equipped to deal with
a world that no longer exists.
We are in a time of great change. Flexibility and adaptability are
now essential skills for learning, work, and citizenship in the 21st
The rapid pace of technological change forces us all to adapt
quickly to new ways of communicating, learning, working, and
living. We switch jobs and careers more frequently, and entirely
new kinds of work are arising from innovations in many fi elds.
One of the few unchanging aspects of the 21st century
knowledge economy is the universal need to organize work into
well-defi ned projects carried out by global project teams on tight
time schedules with limited resources.
Whether the project at hand is for school, work, or around the
home, we all know it can take an unexpected turn that requires
rapid changes to our plans. Adjusting and adapting strategies to
accommodate new circumstances is an essential “fl ex-ability” that
everyone must develop in fast-changing times.
The ability to adapt—such as shifting to a whole new way of
looking at the problem at hand—can turn the unexpected to your
advantage, resulting in uniquely creative solutions and true inno-
vations that can help meet the 21st century demand for fresh ideas
The SARS Project team faced a number of tough challenges,
both technically, in implementing their Web site design, and collab-
oratively, in trying to coordinate their work across the globe. Some
of the best features of their Web site came from unexpected solu-
tions to their technical problems. For example, as the deadline for
the competition approached, team members were able to use their
different time zones to their advantage—passing text written in one
time zone to the graphics artist in the next for illustration, then on
to the programmer in the third zone to assemble all the elements
into a working Web page, and fi nally to the project coordinator to
test, edit, and suggest revisions for the team’s next round of work.
This allowed project work to continue around the clock.
As the employee performance evaluation form in Table 4.1 sug-
gests, another type of fl exibility and adaptability that is valuable
today is the ability to deal with criticism, setbacks, and even failure.
The skills involved in fl exibility and adaptability can be learned
by working on progressively more complex projects that challenge
career and life skills | 77
Flexibility and Adaptability Skills
• Adapt to varied roles, job responsibilities, schedules, and contexts
• Work eff ectively in a climate of ambiguity and changing priorities
• Incorporate feedback eff ectively
• Deal positively with praise, setbacks and criticism
• Understand, negotiate and balance diverse views and beliefs to
reach workable solutions, particularly in multi-cultural environments
Source: Copyright © Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Reprinted by permission of the
Partnership for 21st Century Skills, www.21stcenturyskills.org.
student teams to change course when things aren’t working well,
adapt to new developments in the project, and incorporate new
team members on both current and new projects. Students can
also develop high degrees of fl exibility and adaptability as part of
a “tech support” team for their school, helping their teachers to
quickly solve technology problems as they arise. (See Appendix A
Initiative and Self-Direction
The best place to fi nd a helping hand is at the end of your
In our always-on, fast-paced, fl attened world of work, time for
ex tended training and motivational development is in very short
supply. Workers must arrive motivated, ready to use their initia-
tive to get things done, and prepared to be highly self-reliant in
The amount of time busy managers have for mentoring and
guiding employees is quickly diminishing. Time, goals, project
plans, workload, and “just-in-time” learning must all be self-
managed and self-directed in today’s wound-up work world.
Though teachers may be familiar with having a fairly high
level of independence and autonomy in their classrooms, help-
ing students become more self-reliant and independent as learn-
ers has always been a challenge. Technology is helping, though,
providing a wealth of always-on self-service tools for researching
The teacher coaches of the SARS team were amazed at the level
of self-direction, motivation, and independence their students
demonstrated. They asked for help at the start of the project, espe-
cially technical help in selecting and using the right tools to create
their Web site, and occasionally during the course of the proj-
ect when they hit particularly tricky technical issues. Otherwise,
they mostly relied on each other to help solve problems or to fi nd
answers to their questions on the Internet. As one of the coaches
said, “The best thing about this group is, they know what they
Today’s students must prepare for the reality of 21st century
work and develop deeper levels of initiative and self-direction
skills as they progress through school. Offering each student the
ap propriate level of freedom to exercise self-direction and ini-
tiative is an ongoing, universal challenge for both teachers and
career and life skills | 79
parents. Music, dance, and theater performances; mentorships,
apprenticeships, internships, and community service projects;
and student-developed projects and hobbies all provide good
opportunities to develop a passion for a subject and to exercise
self-motivation, initiative, and self-direction.
Initiative and Self-Direction Skills
• Set goals with tangible and intangible success criteria
• Balance tactical (short-term) and strategic (long-term) goals
• Utilize time and manage workload effi ciently
• Monitor, defi ne, prioritize and complete tasks without direct
• Go beyond basic mastery of skills and/or curriculum to explore and
expand one’s own learning and opportunities to gain expertise
• Demonstrate initiative to advance skill levels toward a professional
• Demonstrate commitment to learning as a lifelong process
• Refl ect critically on past experiences in order to inform future
Source: Copyright © Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Reprinted by permission of the
Partnership for 21st Century Skills, www.21stcenturyskills.org.
Social and Cross-Cultural Interaction
Diversity is the one thing we all have in common.
Diverse work teams, scattered around the globe and connected
by technology, are becoming the norm for 21st century work. Di -
verse schools and communities are also becoming more common
The ability to work effectively and creatively with team
members and classmates regardless of differences in culture and
style is an essential 21st century life skill. Understanding and ac -
commodating cultural and social differences, and using these
differences to come up with even more creative ideas and solu-
tions to problems, will be increasingly important throughout
Recent research on the importance of emotional and social
intelligence to a child’s deve