JONAED

In addition to customary academic skills, citizens need to possess other non-content knowledge skills and dispositions if they are to succeed in the 21st century society and workplaces. These skills by their nature cannot be taught as academic subjects but can be learned by participating in pedagogical activities. This study which adopted a descriptive survey design sought to find out the extent to which classroom activities in teacher education incorporate pedagogical practices which foster the development of 21st century learning skills. A total of 108 respondents made up of 64 pre-service science teachers and 34 science teacher educators drawn from a population of two hundred and thirty-six 400Level pre-service science teachers and seventy-seven teacher educators in the departments of science education in two federal government-owned universities offering teacher education programmes in South-East, Nigeria. A 42-item 4-point rating scale titled “Pre-service science teachers’ learning skills survey” which had a Cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefficient of 0.81 was used for data collection. Three research questions that guided the study were answered using mean and standard deviation while the hypothesis was tested using Pearson’s Correlation. Results showed that teacher educators and pre-service science teachers perceive that some classroom practices which foster the development of 21st century learning skills were implemented in pre-service teacher preparation in federal government-owned universities offering science teacher education in South-east Nigeria. Results also indicated that teacher educators report that classroom practices fostering critical thinking as well as creativity and innovation skills were not well implemented in teacher education. The study recommended that teacher educators and teacher education programmes should willfully endeavor to incorporate pedagogical practices that foster the development of 21st century skills in pre-service science teachers.