Gauging 21st Century Competencies of Chinese Students: A Rural-Urban Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Education systems worldwide have shown much interest in “21st Century Competencies.” In response to the call for better assessment of these competencies, we draw on a 4Cs framework (Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, and Critical Thinking) and develop the 21st Century Competencies Scale-4C on a sample of 5857 Grades Four to Nine Chinese students. The Scale demonstrates good validity and reliability, yet statistical variance exists across the urban and the rural subsamples. Our discussion revolves around rural-urban disparity. Our findings provide insights into policy, practice, and research regarding 21st Century Competencies that account for sociocultural dynamics within student populations. These findings may have implications for understanding 21st Century Competencies elsewhere.

Keywords:

• 21st Century competencies
• measurement invariance
• rural-urban disparity
• human capital
• China

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Zhang’s work in this article was supported by 2022 First-class Education Discipline Development Project, Beijing Normal University [grant number YLXKPY-XSDW202208] and 2019 Comprehensive Discipline Construction Fund of Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University [grant number 2019QNJS004]. Mu’s work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number DE180100107].