Abstract

21^st Century skills are skills that an individual possesses to achieve holistic development in order to contribute to the progress and development of the society/nation/world that he or she is part of. These are the skills that one ought to possess to think with clarity, act with purpose and deal effectively with every experience in this digitally transforming, technology enabled, fast moving world of today. If learning ought to be made meaningful, it must have a long-lasting effect on the minds of the learners. One of the ways to achieve this is through experiential learning. The 21st century abilities are mostly a result of experiential learning, which means that they are absorbed through observation, understanding, exercising, and practical experience. The current paper presents the linkages between experiential learning and achievement of 21^st century skills in a preservice teacher training classroom in order to make learning that is concrete and effective and suggests a model to map the same. Excerpts of activities that link development of 21^st century skills to experiential learning are suggested through these frameworks. This will help any preservice teacher educator to find linkages about how 21^st century skills can be integrated into the preservice teacher training classroom using experiential learning and mapping it with the achievement of the four aspects of the Kolb’s cycle. When adopted this can become one of the best ways of making a learner, especially a student teacher value its advantages and in turn cascade this learning to his/her wards who will be the future citizens of this country.

Keywords: 21^st century skills, experiential learning, preservice teacher education