The Future of Education

Teaching and learning in the 21^st century aim to produce students proficient in content knowledge, specific abilities, literacy, numeracy, and technology uses. From the 21^st century skills, soft skills were delineated from the student outcomes; and defined as intra- and interpersonal skills vital for personal development, social participation, and workplace success. This study has 3 goals: to determine the extent of integration of 21^st century-based soft skills in the current dentistry curriculum, to examine the perceived 21^st century-based soft skills of the student participants to serve as baseline data and teacher participants to determine if they have the skills that they are supposed to impart; and, to determine the relationship of the perceived 21^st century-based soft skills with various factors to justify the integration of the 21^st century-based soft skills in the dentistry curriculum. The 21^st century-based soft skills were grouped into four areas: communication, relationships and collaboration, critical thinking and decision making, and initiative and self-direction. Descriptive and cross-sectional analytic study design was employed where survey questionnaires were administered. Interview and documentary analysis were done as well to gather the pertinent data and these data were analyzed using STATA 12. The 21^st Century-based Soft Skills Integration Model is grounded and developed based on three models: Learning Model, Affective Learning Model, and Motivation Model. It forwards that soft skills such as communication, and relationships and collaboration influence teacher behaviors to motivate the learners to foster critical thinking skills, and initiative and self-direction skills to eventually influence student learning outcomes.