Determining teachers' 21st century skill levels and suggestions for developing these skills

The aim of this study is to determine the level of teachers' possession of 21st century skills and to provide suggestions based on teachers' opinions for the development of these skills. Within the scope of this purpose, an answer was sought to the question of what are the 21st century skill levels of teachers and what are the suggestions for improving these skills. In the research, mixed method research and explanatory sequential design were used as the research design. The thesis sample consists of 303 participants in the quantitative part and 15 participants in the qualitative part, pre-school and classroom teachers in the Şahinbey district of Gaziantep province in the 2024-2025 academic year. As a result of the analysis of the data, the qualitative data supports the quantitative data. The thesis results revealed that teachers' awareness of 21st century skills is generally high, but they need additional support and infrastructure at the point of technology integration. The findings show that age and seniority variables do not have a decisive effect on skill levels, whereas branch and gender variables make a difference in some areas. In the research, some suggestions are presented for the development of teachers' 21st century skills. First of all, it was emphasized that the quality and application aspects of in-service training should be strengthened. In addition, it has been determined that providing technological infrastructure and hardware support plays a role in facilitating teachers to integrate technology into their lessons more effectively. It is recommended to encourage collaboration and experience sharing among teachers; thus, strong productive and flexible teaching skills can be disseminated.