There is widespread consensus around the importance of critical thinking as an educational objective (See for example, Deakin, 2014; Facione, 2011; Kompf & Bond, 2001; Kuhn, 2005; MCEETYA, 2008; Miller, 1990;

Van-Gelder, 2001 ). For example when the Council of all Australian Education Ministers met in Melbourne in December 2008, their meeting produced what is referred to as the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (MCEETYA, 2008) , in which the ministers expressed consensus on the common goal for the Australian curriculum to create opportunities for the development of critical thinking skills among students. However, in spite of such a high confluence of supporting views, there is little agreement over the meaning of critical thinking. In recognition of this conundrum Kivunja (2015d) asserts:

Critical thinking has been defined in many different ways, some as simple as “thinking which has a purpose” and “examining the thinking of others to improve our own” (University of Sydney, 2014: p. 1) ; equally simple as, “a commitment to using reason in the formulation of our beliefs” (Mulnix, 2010: p. 471) . (p. 431)

Generally, critical thinking refers to an individual’s ability to use a number of his or her general cognitive processing skills which fall into Bloom’s (1956) high-order thinking levels of analyzing, evaluating and constructing new ideas or creating. This rather general definition aligns well with that of the Californian National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking which defines critical thinking as “the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action” (NCECT, 2014: n.p.) .

Critical thinking is a super skill in the 21^st century “because it enables students to think deeply and to solve non- familiar problems in different ways” (Kivunja, 2015d: p. 433) . This is very important because we know that the 21^st century economy driven by digital technologies is typified by ever changing information which requires participants to have the capacity to manage and respond well to unfamiliar problems. It helps students to be open- minded, to question, not to take anything for granted and to think and reason through issues in a rational manner (Kompf & Bond, 2001) . It is a super skill because, as highlighted by Kivunja (2014b) , it equips graduates with “the skills that will enable them to be productive members in the Knowledge Economy, function effectively and responsibly and solve problems in ways that are sensitive and caring for others, society, the environment and the world as a whole” (p. 41). Facione (2011) puts it well when he asserts that critical thinking is essential for harmonious human society. Trilling and Fadel (2009) agree when they propose that training in critical thinking enables graduates to reason effectively, to engage in system thinking, develops their ability to make rational judgments and decisions, and enhances their ability to solve problems. These leaders in the field emphasize: “Critical thinking and problem solving are considered by many to be the new basics of 21^st century learning” (Trilling & Fadel, 2009: p. 50) . The Partnership (P21, 2011) says that critical thinking and problem solving are keys among the sets of skills that “separate students who are prepared for increasingly complex life and work environments in today’s world and those who are not” (p. 2). The Partnership further highlight the importance of critical thinking when they assert that critical thinking involves “looking at problems in a new way, linking learning across subjects & disciplines” (P21, 2015b: p. 1) .

As illustrated in Lippl’s (2013) Figure 1 presented earlier, communication is about understanding and sharing ideas. Piascik (2015) agrees and adds it involves “sharing thoughts, questions, ideas and solutions” (p. 1). Effective communication has always been an essential skill for success in business, family relationships and all walks of life. However, the instantaneous mix of people of different cultures that has been enabled by 21^st century information, media and digital technologies has made the need for effective communication more apparent and more vital than in previous generations. Whereas in the Industrial Age emphasis was on correct speech, fluency in reading, and accuracy in writing, the advent of information and digital technologies of the 21^st century has brought with it new dimensions which call for a deeper and broader set of communication skills for graduates to be able to be effective participants in the Communication and Information Age, where there is much greater diversity of cultures. As The Partnership for 21^st Century (P21, 2014) puts it, “Communication skills have always been valued in the workplace and in public life. But in the 21st century, these skills have been transformed and are even more important today” (p. 13).

Pedagogy abounds with research-based evidence indicating that interactional and transactional communication skills are essential for students’ success, not only in the classroom but also in life outside school after graduation. (Coulson, 2006; Cruickshank & Kennedy, 1986; Muijs & Reynolds, 2011; Wragg, 1984) . In The World Beyond the Classroom, Gerald (2015) asserts that communication is a super skill in the world because it is through communication that:

Thoughts, questions, ideas and solutions are shared. In today’s competitive world, communication skills in careers especially in business oriented careers are the most sought after quality of an educated person. Thus, being able to communicate effectively is the most important of all life skills. (pp. 10-11)

Trilling and Fadel (2009) explain well what effective communication in the 21^st century requires of graduates and why it is an essential skill. They say that graduates should be able to:

Articulate thoughts and ideas effectively using oral, written and nonverbal communication skills, listen effectively to decipher meaning, including knowledge, values, attitudes and intentions, use communication to inform, instruct, motivate and persuade, utilize multiple media and technologies, communicate effectively in diverse environments. (Trilling & Fadel, 2009: p. 55)

A close look at these requirements quickly highlights why communication skills are among the 4Cs super skills because it is hard to imagine how anyone could effectively participate in the workplace or in any meaningful relationship without practising these skills in some form of verbal communication, non-verbal communication, written communication, audio communication, visual communication, or digital communication. As shown in the above quote, effective communication is about getting your desired message across effectively to your target audience; and this requires training so that graduates gain the communication skills they need to utilize in the workplace after school. It is therefore essential that graduates be taught how to plan their communication and to make sure that they communicate clearly, concisely, concretely, coherently, correctly, completely, and courteously (Baird & Stull, 1992: p. 16) .

In the Good Practice Guide for the Bachelor of Laws at Flinders University (in Australia) “commissioned by the Law Associate Deans Network to support the implementation of the Threshold Learning Outcome 5: Communication and collaboration” (Handsley, 2011: p. 1) the Guide, following Kift, Israel and Field (2010) , defines collaboration skills as “the skills of teamwork, working in groups, and working cooperatively with others” (Handsley, 2011: p. 1) . Thus collaboration is important whenever teamwork, group work and cooperation are involved. It is noteworthy, as well articulated by Eggen and Kauchak (2012) , that in pedagogical practice these three elements of collaboration are not identical. However, as explained by Brady (2006) they all involve the sharing of “social and cultural experiences” (p. 9) among participants. When applied effectively, collaboration can have significant positive effects on the people involved as was experienced, for instance, at William Clarke College in New South Wales (Australia), where teachers who taught collaboratively as a pair in one class in which they organized the students to work collaboratively achieved some very impressive results for both teachers and their students (Raphael, 2015) . Impressive results about the power of collaboration to improve pedagogical practices, student management and professional collaboration were also found by Mary Brownell, Allyson Adams, Paul Sindelar and Nancy Waldron at the University of Florida and Stephanie Vanhover (2006) at the University of Virginia in their joint study on learning from collaboration. Many other leaders in this filed, including Kagan (1994) , Johnson and Johnson (2009) , Killen (2013) strongly endorse the power of collaboration to improve efficiency not only in teaching and learning but also in all walks of life after school. Thus, given the extent to which digital technologies have accentuated the confluence of social and cultural experiences among people, not only in one workplace but nationally and internationally, it is easy to appreciate why The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (P21, 2015a) included collaboration as one of the essential 4Cs super skills for successful learning and increased productivity in real work environments in the 21^st century.

The terms creativity and innovation are often used to refer to the conscious exploitation of “new ideas, or new uses of ideas, to add social or economic value” (IBSA, 2009: p.1) . The Partnership for 21^st Century (P21, 2007) says that “in today’s world of global competition and task automation, innovative capacity and a creative spirit are fast becoming requirements for personal and professional success” (p. 15). The Partnership (P21, 2014) emphasizes that in today’s economy fuelled by information and driven by digital technologies “creativity and innovation are key drivers in the Global Economy” (p. 24). As a matter of fact, the importance of creativity and innovation to be a foundation for the essence of survival of humans was well articulated by other leaders in the field such as De Bono (1995) who said “There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns” (p. 13). It is this emphasis on the vital role of creativity and innovation in the success of human endeavors that inspired The Partnership (P21) to characterize creativity and innovation as one of the 4Cs super skills essential for success in modern living. And it is important that this super skill be taught well because it is very complex involving, according Karlyn Adams (2006) the confluence of three components:

・ Knowledge: All the relevant understanding an individual brings to bear on a creative effort.

・ Creative Thinking: Relates to how people approach problems and depends on personality and thinking/ working style.

・ Motivation: Motivation is generally accepted as key to creative production, and the most important motivators are intrinsic passion and interest in the work itself. (Adams, 2006: p. 4)

The complexity of this super C skill is highlighted further by Teresa Amabile who explains that creativity involves some five complicated processes, namely, being able to disagree with others and yet feel comfortable about it, trying out solutions that are different from current ones, integrating knowledge gained from different fields, managing and solving difficult problems, and the ability to recognize a problematic situation, step away for a while looking for a solution, and return later with a potential solution (Amabile, 1998) .

Kivunja (2014a) postulated that “Whereas pre-21st century learning paradigms catered reasonably well for the pursuit of the moral purpose of education in turning out school leavers with specialized skills that were applicable in highly compartmentalized and specialized Industrial Age economies, 21st century skills require a new paradigm” (p. 81).… Teaching our students so that they become well-equipped with the 21st century skills is the new learning paradigm” (p. 85). To extend an understanding of the meaning of the New Learning Paradigm Kivuja (2015a) explains that:

The New Learning Paradigm is the new philosophical approach to pedagogy which posits that for education to truly meet “the moral purpose of education and help produce citizens who can live and work productively in increasingly dynamically complex societies” (Fullan, 2000: p. 4) , learning, teaching, assessment and curricula need to equip graduates with the skills that will enable them to contribute effectively to productive capacities of the 21^st century economy. These are the skills demanded by employers across all sectors of modern economies. (p. 55, in Press)

The full set of those skills is well articulated by The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (P21, 2008) in what they call the “Rainbow” or Framework for 21^st Century Skills (P21, 2011) outlined below.

As explained earlier (see Section 1), The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills is an organization that was formed in 2002 to find ways and make recommendations for how technology could be infused in all aspects of education throughout the USA at both primary and secondary levels (P21, 2008) . The Partnership comprises leaders from education, (such as the National Education Association), business, (such as Apple Computer Inc., Dell Computer and Microsoft Corporations), and community and government institutions, (such as USA Department of Education), that play key roles in education and in the development and use of modern technologies, particularly digital technologies, in education (P21, 2014) . When The Partnership met in Washington DC in 2002 they came up with a vision for moving USA education system to the digital world and epitomized it in what they called the Rainbow or Framework for 21^st Century Skills. In their words:

The Framework presents a holistic view of 21st century teaching and learning that combines a discrete focus on 21st century student outcomes (a blending of specific skills, content knowledge, expertise and literacies) with innovative support systems to help students master the multi-dimensional abilities required of them in the 21st century and beyond. (P21, 2015b: p. 1)

Their vision articulated four sets of skills representing 21^st student outcomes and four 21^st century learning support systems which The Partnership agreed on as those that would equip graduates from American schools with the skills essential for their success as productive members of the workforce in the Information Age. They articulated the four sets of skills as the traditional Core Subjects skills, the Life and Career skills, the Learning and Innovations skills as well as the Information, Media and Technology skills, supported by four systems, (P21, 2011) . The Partnership summarized the four sets of skills and the four support systems in a graphic that they called the “Rainbow” or Framework for 21^st Century Skills or Learning (P21, 2015b: p. 1) which is illustrated in Figure 2.

The Partnership says, and as shown in the Figure 2, “The key elements of 21st century learning are represented in the graphic… The graphic represents both 21st century student outcomes (as represented by the arches of the rainbow) and 21st century learning support systems (as represented by the pools at the bottom). Thus, in addition to the four sets of 21^st century student outcomes for the necessary skills delineated above, there are four sets of 21st century Support Systems shown in Figure 2 (as the pools at the bottom) categorized by The Partnership as Standards and assessments, Curriculum and instruction, Professional development and Learning environments. Not detailed in the Rainbow (Figure 2) but important to point out are what The Partnership refers to as the five Interdisciplinary 21^st Century Themes, which must be interwoven with the Core Subjects in preparing students for effective participation in the Knowledge Age economy. They delineated those five themes as, “Global awareness, Financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy, Civic literacy, Health literacy, and Environmental literacy” (P21, 2015d: p. 1) . A detailed discussion of what the Core Subjects are, the four Support Systems and the five Interdisciplinary Themes is given in Kivunja (2015a, in Press) . The skills that comprise the Life and Career set were discussed in detail by Kivunja (2015b) , those in the Learning and Innovations skills were unpacked in Kivunja (2014b) and those that comprise the Information, Media and Digital Technologies skills were elucidated in Kivunja (2015c) . Thus, the 4Cs are part of the full cohort of 21^st century skills as illustrated in Figure 2. As said earlier, “Teaching our students so that they become well-equipped with the 21st century skills is the New Learning Paradigm” (Kivunja, 2014a: p. 85) .

What is popularly referred to as Bruner’s 5E Instructional Model is a learning cycle with a very interesting history. The model has its origin in science rather than pedagogy. It is the brainchild of a leader in the biological sciences community Dr. Rodger W. Bybee (Bybee et al., 2006) who, while executive director at the Colorado Springs Biological Science Curriculum Study (BSCS) Educational Centre, developed it in collaboration with six of his colleagues. Bybee and his team argued that if we could get learners to engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate as they learn, these processes would enable them to maximize their participation in active learning and lead to deep (Entwistle, 2000; Flewelling & Higginson, 2002) rather than surface learning (Lublin, 2003) . Because each of these five learning processes starts with the letter [e], the model was accordingly called the 5E Instructional Model.

The huge success of this model when applied in teaching science attracted scholars outside science of whom Jerome Seymour Bruner (1966) was the pedagogical vanguard. In The Process of Education Bruner (1960) argued that the purpose of education was not simply to transmit knowledge but mainly to facilitate the process of active cognition and the development of problem solving skills among learners, which the learners could then apply in similar or new situations to gain new knowledge, through active learning. Bruner (1961) further proposed the concept of discovery learning, which, like Vygotsky (1929) postulated that students learn through constructing knowledge by themselves and argued that this constructivist approach was maximized if students were scaffolded and given opportunity to discover meaning by themselves through engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration and evaluation. Bruner then made this, 5Es based constructivist learning even more popular in pedagogy by suggesting that with proper “scaffolding” (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976) the learners could use the 5Es to “concentrate on the difficult skills…in the process of acquiring knowledge” (Bruner, 1978: p. 19) . Thus, the 5E Instructional Model became very popular in pedagogy because Bruner showed how it could be used to facilitate learning as conceptualized by several leading scholars in the field (including himself), through active learning (Piaget, 1954) , constructivist learning (Vygotsky, 1929) , discovery learning (Bruner, 1961) and scaffolding (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976) . As a result, while acknowledging the origin of this model in the biological sciences, it is fair to say that Bruner was at the forefront of its understanding and application in pedagogy. As it is one of the well-known instructional models in education, and one that reflects the important contributions to pedagogy by the vast majority of experts in the field, including “aspects of the behaviourist and cognitivism models” (Jobrack, 2013: p. 5) , it makes good sense to use it here to illustrate how we could teach the 4Cs super skills in today’s classrooms and lecture theatres. As said earlier, this does not mean that other models could not be used.

For brevity, the illustration of how each of Bruner’s 5Es could be used to teach each of the 4Cs is summarized in the following five tables, respectively. The examples are listed against the relevant Cs but with imagination, planning and differences in learning stages the examples could be used for multiple Cs.