The relationship between science teachers' use of 21st century teaching skills and their classroom management competencies

Individuals from successive generations raised in the evolving and dynamic environment must adapt to the current period and possess diverse qualifications. These qualifications can be acquired through appropriate education programs, are only possible with teachers equipped with 21st century skills. The aim is to contribute the education of competent individuals who can effectively adjust to the demands of the modern day by identifying the variables that influence the two dimensions of teacher skills and implementing necessary measures. By adopting this approach, one may become a pioneer in advances in science and technology, thereby leading to an improvement in the socioeconomic status. The aim of this research is, first, to determine the 21stcentury teaching skills levels and classroom management competency levels of science teachers, to investigate whether there is a significant relationship between these skills, to reveal how these competencies differ considering teachers' demographic variables, and finally, to examine the effect of using 21stcentury teaching skills on classroom management competence. The causal-comparative model, which is a quantitative research method, was employed in the study. The population of the research consisted of 714 science teachers on a provincial basis who were working in stated secondary schools affiliated with Manisa Provincial Directorate of National Education in the 2022-2023 academic year. The sample of the present study composed of 112 participants from the research population, chosen by the purposeful sampling method. In this research, "Demographic Information Form, the "21st Century Teacher Skills Use Scale" consisting of 27 items and developed by Orhan-Göksün (2016) to determine the use of 21stcentury teaching skills, and the "Classroom Management Competency Scale" consisting of 47 items developed by Çetin (2009) were used to collect data. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was applied to analyze the validity of the scales and it was concluded that the multi-factor structure of both scales was not valid in the data of this study. The goodness of fit values of the model generated by applying CFA to the single-factor structure were found to be satisfactory for the scales. In addition, reliability analysis was applied to the single-factor structure of the scales, Cronbach Alpha reliability and item-total correlation values were calculated and they were determined to be within the range of values accepted in the literature. As a conclusion, the scales were determined to be both reliable and valid. First of all, descriptive analysis was examined and demographic information of the participants was interpreted. To answer the research questions of this study, independent samples t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Pearson correlation analysis, and simple regression analysis were run. The research calculated Z-scores for the absolute skewness and kurtosis values of the scales, and concluded that the data had a normal distribution. For this reason, parametric tests were used in the analysis of the data. For the independent samples t-test, when the variances were distributed homogeneously, the "significance value in the equal variances option" was taken into account, while when the variances were not distributed homogeneously, the "significance value in the unequal variances option" was used. On the other hand, for one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), when the variances showed a homogeneous distribution, the "significance value of the ANOVA statistic" was used, and when the variances did not show a homogeneous distribution, the "significance value of the Brown-Forsythe statistic" was used. Analysis results showed that teachers' use of 21stcentury teaching skills and classroom management competencies are at a high level. In addition, it was found that the variables such as teachers' gender, age, years of seniority, length of service, marital status, management experience, region of work and district of affiliation did not significantly affect their 21stcentury teaching skills and classroom management competencies. For Classroom Management Competency, a significant difference was seen in favor of those aged 40 and under. Significant differences were detected in the use of 21st Century Teaching Skills according to educational status. It was determined that there was a statistically significant, positive and moderate relationship between the use of 21stcentury teaching skills and classroom management competence. Moreover, it was revealed that the use of 21st century teaching skills had a statistically significant and positive impact on classroom management competency. Key Words: 21st Century Skills, Science, Teacher Competency, Classroom Management, Teaching Skills