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Xingnan’s Journey in e21CC Development_2025_Aug 2025

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Our school's journey in E21CC implementation involved observing and learning from exemplary practices within our zonal network. This approach helped us understand the proven strategies of other schools, informing our own methods of developing 21st-century competencies in our students.

A key development has been the incorporation of PD time into School Contact Time and PLC. The PD committee shares lesson designs that incorporate E21CC outcomes into daily teaching and learning experiences. Their work shows alignment with our Singapore Teaching Practice (STP) and EdTech Pedagogical Scaffold. Through documentation of lesson implementations and student learning outcomes, we now have examples of practices that support our teaching approaches.

We see some progress in our teachers' understanding of E21CC elements in their lessons and in our students' responses to their learning experiences. We hope for more teachers to understand that E21CC is a natural fit in our curriculum, and how we can meaningfully design for and assess the attainment of E21CC by our students.

For our next steps, we have identified several areas of interest. We see potential in a broader Professional Development structure that could reach our whole school community. This includes the inclusion of E21CC outcomes in our Schemes of Work (SOWs), with these competencies being part of our daily teaching and learning activities. We are considering alternative assessment methods that might better reflect students' development in these competencies.

For our non-instructional programme students, we recognise opportunities and need to create platforms to support their Critical, Adaptive and Inventive Thinking (CAIT), Communication, Collaboration and Information Skills (CCI), and Civic, Global and Cross-Cultural Literacy (CGC). These platforms could offer spaces for student advocacy and leadership, where students might apply these competencies in relevant contexts.

Through these considerations, we hope to review and refine our approach to E21CC implementation, supporting each student's growth in these essential competencies in the school's year-end review and planning sessions.

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We set out to learn how we can be onboard E21CC development by understanding how the key enablers and possible pitfalls. During the session, we will share more on how we reengineered our school-based programmes to promote E21CC. We will also share how we are supporting teachers in their professional development in this area.
Through the 2-year journey, we gained the following key takeaways:
• Fit: Having a natural fit of 21CC to the discipline is important. Since Dec 2024, School has embarked on a review to work out the E21CC focus for each department. We also reviewed our student outcomes to determine our school-wide focus for E21CC. Based on our review, we aim to focus on Critical, Adaptive and Inventive Thinking and Collaboration and Communication Skills at the school level. The review led to changes in our school-based programmes including ALP, LLP. The school also developed 2 new learning spaces, the Blooming Gardens for our ALP and the Maker Space for our LLP that lends well to the development of these competencies.
• Focus: Besides focus areas for each IP subject based on the curricular requirements, we also designed our school-based VIEWAN XP curriculum to complement the needs of our pupils in terms of E21CC development. This has led to the re-engineered VIEWAN XP programme that leverages the Design Thinking Process to develop Critical, Adaptive and Inventive Thinking and Collaboration and Communication Skills. We have implemented this programme across all levels and we will be reviewing our findings at year end. Moving forward, we hope to learn how other schools assess their school-based programmes based on student outcomes.
• Finesse: To enable our teachers need to be able to facilitate the development of E21CC, the school has embarked on promoting thinking and discussion as the school’s key learning direction to support E21CC development. We have started open classrooms to develop teachers in their noticing skills. This is ongoing work and we hope to learn more on how other schools build teacher’s competencies in developing E21CC.

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Our school set out to develop a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the E21CC framework, with a focus on unpacking the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and values articulated under its learning goals. We sought to explore how we could purposefully structure curriculum and programmes to nurture these competencies in more authentic and sustained ways.

Over the past two years, we have taken deliberate steps to advance students’ E21CC development through curricular review and programme refinement. With Adaptive Thinking as a key focus, we aligned efforts across curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. We reviewed our signature programmes and were more intentional in embedding E21CC into key student experiences, particularly through the Integrated Learning Journey. Guided by our Total Curriculum Framework and its principles of Care, Choice, and Challenge, we designed learning experiences that encouraged perspective-taking, decision-making, and navigating ambiguity.

Emerging insights point to the importance of curriculum coherence in meaningfully integrating E21CC into existing programmes, rather than approaching it as an add-on; embracing intentional design to scaffold the development of competencies through clear principles; sustaining capacity building through professional learning conversations and sharing of practices; and leveraging assessment as learning to empower students to reflect on and apply the competencies.

Moving forward, we hope to deepen the integration of E21CC within and across subject disciplines, with a continued focus on Adaptive Thinking. We plan to refine our curriculum design processes to ensure greater alignment between learning outcomes, instructional strategies, and assessment approaches. We also hope to learn from other schools’ practices in designing progressive learning experiences, developing student-friendly success criteria for E21CC, and building teacher capacity to facilitate and assess these competencies.

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Over the past two years, our school has embarked on a purposeful journey to strengthen students’ 21st Century Competencies (21CC), focusing on Critical, Adaptive, and Inventive Thinking. Our goal was to build a school culture where these competencies are intentionally developed, applied, and reinforced across the total curriculum.

We began at the leadership level, engaging the School Management Committee in strategic conversations anchored on three Key Actions (KAs) for 21CC development:

• KA2: Envision 21CC goals and tailor plans to suit our school’s specific context
• KA6: Coordinate and reinforce continuous 21CC learning across various contexts
• KA8: Evaluate student outcomes and school processes in relation to 21CC development

To translate vision into practice, we spotlighted examples from our ALP-LLP and Science programmes to show how intentional curriculum design—through problem-solving and inquiry-based learning—could operationalise the KAs. Cross-disciplinary projects and iterative prototyping developed students’ competencies, while structured reflection, peer feedback, and use of 21CC meta-language supported growth. Students’ progress was tracked using learning journals and ongoing feedback for continual improvement.

The KP team also used the KAs to review departmental programmes and take stock of 21CC efforts. These leadership conversations acted as a springboard to engage staff, aligning with our goal to develop teachers as role models and facilitators of 21CC development.

Teachers demonstrated commitment by modelling key 21CC dispositions and using shared meta-language, empowering one another to design lessons that integrated subject learning with 21CC goals. School-wide professional learning, led by our Teacher Leaders, supported reflection on aligning 21CC competencies with subject outcomes. Subject teams selected pedagogical approaches using the Singapore Teaching Practice framework and explored how to gather evidence of students’ competency growth through classroom talk, processes, and artefacts.

Moving forward, we aim to deepen the consistency and intentionality of 21CC integration. This includes building teacher capacity to evaluate student development and learning more from other schools—especially in scaling 21CC efforts across subjects and creating robust tools that measure both student growth and teaching effectiveness.

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E21CC Blueprint @ Jurong West

Jurong West Secondary School has developed a distinctive approach to building future-ready competencies in our students that's gaining momentum. Our implementation of Enhanced 21CC represents a thoughtful transformation in the way we prepare students for tomorrow's challenges.
At the heart of our approach lies a dual-principle foundation: coherence and intentionality. We've integrated Professional Development, Instructional Programmes, and Student Development initiatives to create an ecosystem where meaningful learning thrives. Our three key committees – IP, SDT, and PD – work in synergy with Blue Sky Teams, driving significant changes in the design of learning experiences in the Total Curriculum.

Our revised JWSS Teaching and Learning Framework, anchored in 'How People Learn' theories, brings Enhanced 21CC to life through Assessment for Learning, Differentiated Instruction, and Metacognition. In tandem, Our JWSS Programme Design Tool, launched in 2025, has reshaped our flagship programmes like LIFE@JW and OSEP, embedding future-ready competencies into school life.

Central to our success has been our investment in staff professional development. Through structured Professional Learning Time and targeted workshops, our teachers have developed expertise within professional learning communities, fostering a culture of collaborative learning and innovation.
Looking ahead, we're taking measured steps to deepen our impact, expanding our Programme Design Tool's application while remaining committed to developing future-ready learners.

We invite you to learn more about our journey of educational transformation, where thoughtful innovation supports the development of future-ready learners.

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While LSPS cannot attend this session, Hui Ping has prepared a video of their efforts to connect the Dots for E21CC.

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Through this two-year zonal PLT cycle, our school aimed to: (a) glean good practices from the sharing by 21CCO colleagues and cluster schools, (b) meaningfully embed the development of students’ E21CC within the total curriculum, and (c) receive guidance on managing change effectively, ensuring alignment with school goals and sustainable implementation.
Our journey in advancing students’ E21CC over the past two years has been both meaningful and enriching. As we already had strong foundations in 21CC, our focus was on deepening understanding of emerging competencies and fostering greater coherence and intentionality in their development across the curriculum. At the strategic level, school leaders continued to prioritise E21CC while granting departments the autonomy to experiment at a comfortable pace. This balance created a climate conducive to internal sharing of good practices.
We refined our department review templates to incorporate elements from the 21CC development efforts form, providing key personnel with useful milestone checks. Dedicated time was also set aside for E21CC-related professional development and student experiences. Staff had opportunities to attend E21CC-focused PD sessions, and bite-sized sharing at the SMC level helped cascade key insights across departments. Departments also initiated discipline-specific efforts to develop various E21CC domains, and cross departmental collaboration resulted in the design of initiatives that further enhanced students’ competencies.
We kept our communication with the 21CC Office open, seeking clarity when needed and feeling thankful for their guidance and shared resources. One step we took was in piloting the ‘noticing’ strategy as an additional means of assessing E21CC at the Primary 5 level. Students’ reflections were scaffolded using age-appropriate prompts and used as a reference in the EAGLES (E21CC) award nomination process.
Moving ahead, our school aims to focus on how various departments can come together in a more coordinated manner to deepen and reinforce the development of students’ E21CC. We hope to further explore how these competencies can be meaningfully transferred across subjects and extended into broader aspects of school life. In addition, we are keen to learn how the noticing strategy can be more deeply embedded, so it becomes a natural part of teaching and learning. These efforts will help us refine our approach in a sustainable and impactful manner.

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Our P and HOD CCE joined us in 2025. We started our 21CC journey last year, spending time to sense-make and take stock of our existing 21CC development efforts and determine the school’s 21CC priorities. We also tried to identify and review our existing signature programmes to strengthen 21CC development.
Moving forward, we hope to enact the shifts for 21CC development through the identified signature programmes as well as support and sustain the shifts in pedagogical and assessment practices toward intentional 21CC development through our TTT. (*As the school is in the sensing making and stock-taking stage, the school will not be presenting as they wish to learn more from other schools during the conversation.)

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a) Our school's learning objectives through the zonal PLT:

- Understanding core principles of 21CC development (Coherence, Intentionality, Autonomy, Learner-Centricity and Sustainability)
- Developing an integrated School Workplan on 21CC, incorporating insights from other schools
- Supporting teachers in interpreting subject-specific Learning Goals and assessing 21CC outcomes

b) Our two-year journey has been transformative. Like learning to ride a bicycle, it required balance, courage, and persistence. Key developments include:

2024 Initiatives:

- /21CC and KPs designed an engaging staff session modelled after our ALP, demonstrating practical 21CC applications and fostering collaborative spirit, communication, and adaptive thinking

2025 Strategic Developments:

- Built teacher capacity through structured TL sharing sessions and meaningful dialogues
- Aligned PLC and Open Classrooms to showcase intentional 21CC development
- Developed assessment rubrics aligned with Eagles nominations and school awards
- Implemented regular monitoring through SSD follow-ups with TLs
- Created comprehensive ALP Workplan with defined learning outcomes
- Established EXCO review meetings for departmental progress evaluation

c) Moving forward, we aim to:
- Strengthen school-wide 21CC implementation capabilities
- Enhance daily lessons with intentional 21CC development
- Empower students in their 21CC journey through:
- Personal goal-setting
- Self and peer assessment
- Taking ownership of competency development