The ATC21S researchers concluded that 21st Century skills can be
grouped into four broad categories: (i) ways of thinking; (ii) ways of working; (iii) tools for working; and (iv) skills for living in the world (Binkley, Erstad, Herman, Raizen, Ripley and Rumble, in preparation). Within these categories, they identified ten skills as encapsulating all others and accommodating all approaches.The four categories and ten skills are shown in Table 1.The table also includes the skills in the key literature reviewed by ATC21S (Binkley et al., in preparation; Cisco, Intel and Microsoft, 2008) and outlined by the Confederation of British Industry (2007) following a consultation with its members. It can be seen that none of the organisations in Table 1 agree exactly on the skills that are needed for the 21st Century, but there is considerable overlap among them. In particular, problem-solving, and ICT operations and concepts, are listed by all organisations. Communication, collaboration, and information literacy (the ability to mine new information and interact constructively with it) are also listed frequently.