Impact of virtual vs. face-to-face learning on 21st-century skills among pre-service bilingual teachers

The so-called ‘twenty-first century skills’ (Dudeney, Hockly and Pegrum, 2014) have been identified as essential literacies for the young generation, who must use creativity and innovation, collaboration and teamwork, critical thinking, problem-solving, autonomy, flexibility and lifelong learning to function effectively. Bilingual pre-service teachers are entitled to develop these skills for both their own education and that of their future students (Savage and Barnett, 2015). This research will analyse the opinions of 45 bilingual pre-service teachers on the development of their twenty-first century skills through either online or face-to-face teaching. Quantitative and qualitative data will be scrutinized under a mixed-methods research, which will throw light on how participants think such skills are better developed. Findings will show that teacher students think that some of these skills are better developed under a face-to-face modality of learning (e.g. teamwork and collaboration), whereas others (e.g. autonomy and innovation) evolve better under an online framework of learning. Twenty-first century literacies push the educational boundaries of bilingual teachers as they are entitled to have a repertoire of communication skills that make us, teacher educators, pursue academic rigour regarding our own teaching and updated training.