Abstract:

Research on 21st century skills in education has shown that teachers are not properly prepared in their initial training to apply the most appropriate tools and strategies to their teaching practice.

The aim of our study is identifying the objectives leading to the development of 21st century competencies in future teachers, presented in the curricular units of Initial Teacher Training programs in Portugal.

The first step was to build an instrument consisting on a list of different competencies organized by dimensions, based on the most relevant frameworks and studies.

Subsequently, the analysis focus on 680 course unit sheets from 36 Initial Teacher Education master's degree courses from 16 active institutions in 2019/2020.
Methodologically, we developed a content analysis, where the objectives present in each curricular unit sheet were reviewed and grouped into the different dimensions of competencies.

Results show that:
(i) the objectives are directed at a small patch of competency dimensions, with gaps in several of them, and
(ii) the tools provided to future teachers to carry out activities that promote competencies development in students are reductive or non-existent.

Keywords:

21st Century skills, Initial Teacher Training, curriculum.