Development of a twenty-first century skills scale for agri varsities

Abstract

A new twenty-first century skills framework and a 19-item scale was developed to bridge the gap between science and practice. A self-reporting 19-item scale was developed to measure twenty-first century skills of faculty and non-faculty staff of agri varsities. A total of 49 items were generated using deduction approach for four skills: communication and collaboration, leadership and responsibility, problem-solving and decision-making, and creativity and innovation. Two content validity techniques were used that reduced the number of items to 29. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted in Mplus and items with poor loadings and cross-loadings were removed in each round. After five rounds of EFA, a promising 19-item scale was identified that fit the data well based on multiple model fit indices. Confirmatory factor analysis further confirmed the construct validity of the items and a four construct scale was identified where creativity was the only skill that failed to load. The reliability of the scale was measured using Cronbach’s alpha which was above 0.70 for all the factors. Convergent and discriminant validity was analyzed using AVE, shared variance, and factor loadings. The implication and limitations of the scale were discussed.