Exploring EFL teachers' assessment for 21st century skills: Practices and challenges.

The integration of 21st-century skills into education systems is being made in order to provide students with the skills they need to live successfully. Given the increasing complexities of 21st-century skills, the assessment process should portray its implementation in realistic and unexpected contexts. This mixed-method study examined how EFL teachers assessed the 21^st-century skills in the EFL classrooms. The study also investigated teachers' challenges in implementing the assessment practices for measuring 21^st-century skills in teaching a foreign language. 105 Indonesian EFL teachers participated in a self-report assessment of 21^st-century skills questionnaire consisting of 48 items on a Likert scale, and 6 EFL teachers participated in semi-structured interviews to corroborate the questionnaire results and identify challenges to the implementation of 21^st-century skills assessment. The findings of the questionnaire revealed that EFL teachers in secondary schools had strong preferences for 21^st-century skills practices such as collaboration, critical thinking, and the use of technology in the EFL classroom. Simultaneously, making local connections was the least widely adopted assessment of 21^st-century skills practices. According to EFL instructors interviewed, this might have occurred due to their lack of knowledge of 21^st-century skills assessment practices. Furthermore, semi-structured interview data revealed that EFL teachers in secondary schools encountered a number of challenges while conducting 21^st-century skills assessments. The three primary difficulties were challenges related to curriculum, challenges associated with students, and external challenges. The findings contribute to the existing literature on 21^st-century assessment practices and offer implications for teachers, school institutions, and educational policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]