Asia Pacific Journal of Education

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Integrating 21 century competencies into a K-12
curriculum reform in Macau

Bing Wei , Jiajia Lin , Sitong Chen & Yue Chen

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To cite this article: Bing Wei , Jiajia Lin , Sitong Chen & Yue Chen (2020): Integrating 21 century
competencies into a K-12 curriculum reform in Macau, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, DOI:
10.1080/02188791.2020.1824893

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2020.1824893

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ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2020.1824893

Integrating 21st century competencies into a K-12 curriculum

reform in Macau
a
Bing Wei , Jiajia Linb, Sitong Chen a
and Yue Chena
a
Faculty of Education, University of Macau, Macau, China; bThe Center for MBA Educational Management, Shanghai
University, Shanghai, China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In recent decades, the term “competencies” has been widely discussed Received 4 March 2020
and become an impetus for innovating school curriculum and instruction. Accepted 13 September 2020
This study focused on a recent K-12 curriculum reform in Macau with the KEYWORDS
purpose of exploring the issue of integrating 21st century competencies in Competencies; curriculum
the subjects-based curriculum documents, i.e., Requirements of Basic reform; Macau;
Academic Attainments (RBAAs). Based on an analytical framework of 21st Requirements of Basic
century competencies, the distributions of those competencies Academic Attainments
embedded in “curriculum goals” of 39 RBAAs across the K-12 schooling (RBAAs); 21st century
were analysed. Key findings can be summarized in three ways: (1) the competencies
category of “Ways of thinking” takes the most proportion while that of
“Tools for working” takes the least from primary to senior secondary with
“Living in the world” being most concerned in pre-primary; (2) discrepan­
cies exist among the distributions of ten 21st century competencies across
the K-12 schooling and (3) some competencies are more concerned in
some certain learning domains. The results of this study have provided
two implications for the issue of integrating 21st century competencies in
the school curriculum in the rest of the world: a reasonable relation should
be taken between key competencies and curriculum goals and different
competencies will be emphasized at different educational stages and for
different subjects.

Introduction
In recent decades, the term “competencies” has attracted the attention of international organiza­
tions, educational theorists and curriculum developers, and become an impetus for innovating the
curriculum and instruction at lower and upper secondary levels (Hala´sz & Michel, 2011). The
significance of this term for school education is that young people should be prepared for engaging
in complex socio-economic contexts that have been substantially influenced by globalization and
digital technology (Beetham & Sharpe, 2013; Benade, 2014; Loveless & Williamson, 2013). In aca­
demic literature and those officially released documents, this term is often preceded by an adjective,
appearing as “key competencies”, “core competencies”, “generic competencies”, or “transversal
competencies”. Among those various terminologies, the term “21st century competencies/skills” is
more commonly used and specifically developed for redefining the aims for education or learning
outcomes according to the capabilities needed in the 21st century (Binkley et al., 2012; Trilling &
Fadel, 2009). For consistency in the text, the term “21st century competencies” is used in this article.
Although the titles of the frameworks for 21st century competencies are varied and were developed
by different organizations and academic groups (e.g., European Union, 2008; Organisation For

CONTACT Bing Wei [email protected] Faculty of Education, University of Macau, Macau, China
© 2020 National Institute of Education, Singapore
2 B. WEI ET AL.

Economic Co-Operation and Development [OECD], 2005; Partnership For 21st Century Skills, 2009),
the competencies they emphasize are similar. For instance, based on their analysis of eight frame­
works that addressed the 21st century competencies around the globe, Voogt and Roblin (2012)
found that a set of common competencies could be identified: “collaboration”, “communication”,
“ICT literacy” and “social and/or cultural competencies (including citizenship)”, and most of those
frameworks also involve “creativity”, “critical thinking”, “productivity” and “problem-solving”.
Concerned with varied rationale, purposes and targeted populations of the frameworks for 21st
competencies established by different economics in the world, Shi et al. (2016) found that what
competencies were emphasized was linked with the developmental levels of those economics.
Specifically, “learning to learn and life learning” was more concerned in the middle and lower
economics whilst “self-recognition and management” was more emphasized in the higher ones
(Shi et al., 2016). The integration of 21st century competencies in subject-specific curricula has
become an important issue in recent years. Wang, Lavonen, and Tirri (2018) investigated the
integration of such competencies into national primary science curricula in China and Finland and
indicated that significant differences between the two countries had to do with their educational
traditions. Despite the “horizontal consistency” (p. 315, Voogt & Roblin, 2012) among the frameworks
in terms of the competencies needed in the 21st century, it is implied from those studies above that
there might be differences among various specific curricula and educational programmes with
regard to the integration of these competencies. As we know, school curriculum development has
never occurred in a vacuum and is inextricably linked to historical, cultural, economic and political
aspects in a given society (Kelly, 2009; Marsh & Willis, 2003). Hence, it is much more complicated than
the articulation of 21st century competencies in those frameworks in a rhetoric way. Partly because of
this, the curricular integration of 21st century competencies is one of the controversial issues (Voogt
& Roblin, 2012). Based on these considerations, this study focused on a recent K-12 curriculum reform
in Macau, which was sparked by the notion of “core competencies” (Guo, 2016), with the purpose of
exploring the integration of 21st century competencies in the official curriculum documents of
school subjects, i.e., “Requirements of Basic Academic Attainments” (RBAAs). Specifically, this study
was guided by this question: How are 21st century competencies integrated into RBAAs in Macau?
The results of this study will share the experiences of integrating 21st century competencies in
Macau, and thus shed light on the problems and issues of implementing these competencies in
school curricula in the rest of the world.

K-12 curriculum reform in Macau

The initiation of curriculum reform
Macau is a small city of 30.5 square kilometres, located in the south coast of China, approximately 60
km west of Hong Kong. It has a population of 670,900 with a percentage of 95% being ethnic Chinese
(DSEC, 2019). As a Portuguese colony, its sovereignty was returned to China in 1999, and now it is
a special administrative region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China, usually called Macau SAR.
Since the return of sovereignty to China, the Macau SAR Government has exercised control over
education and attempted to make new educational policies, which represents a move towards
centralization (Tang, Wong, Wang, & Cheng, 2018; Vong, 2014). In 2006, the government of Macau
SAR stipulated the Non-Tertiary Education System Law (The Law of Number 9/2006, Macau) with the
purpose of establishing a new system of K-12 education and ensuring the quality of schooling in this
special administrative region of China. As stipulated in this law, enhancing the scientific and
humanistic literacy of citizens is clearly stated as one of the general objectives of K-12 education.
In 2009, Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (usually called DSEJ in Portuguese for short), the top
educational administration of Macau SAR, established a blueprint as response to the development of
society, economy and culture, which symbolized the initiation of non-tertiary education curriculum
reform at Macau (Guo, 2016). In this blueprint, the notion of “core competencies” was interpreted
 ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 3

into six “key capacities” (Reading and language, Using mathematical thinking and methods, Using
information technology, Communication and collaboration, Critical thinking and innovation and
Problem-solving) and three “21st century personal characters” (Moral and civic, Healthy and
Aesthetic) (DSEJ, 2009). Based on some preparatory work, DSEJ issued an administrative regulation
in 2014, entitled the Curriculum Framework for Formal Education of Local Education System (No.15/
2014). In this curriculum framework, there are six learning domains, they are: (1) Language &
literature; (2) Maths; (3) People, society and humanity; (4) Science and technology; (5) Physical
education and health and (6) Arts. Each of them is composed of various school subjects. For example,
two subjects, “natural sciences” and “information technology”, are incorporated into the learning
domain of “Science and technology”.

Requirements of Basic Academic Attainments (RBAAs)

It is stipulated in the Non-Tertiary Education System Law (The Law of Number 9/2006) that Macau SAR
government would be responsible for formulating “requirements of basic academic attainments”
(RBAAs) for those subjects offered in the four educational stages (pre-primary, primary, junior
secondary and senior secondary). In 2015, DSEJ issued an administrative regulation, entitled the
Requirements of Basic Academic Attainments for Formal Education of Local School System (No. 10/
2015). As stated in this official document, RBAAs refer to “those basic competencies stipulated the
government that students should possess when they complete studies at the end of various
educational stages, including basic knowledge, skills, capacities, emotions, attitudes, and values”.
According to Wang (2015), a local educational scholar, the definition of RBAAs used in Macau was
a result of the combination of scholarly achievement in Japan, where this phrase was originated
(Zhong, 2003, 2016) with the discussion of the notion “competencies” in the west. In fact that the
form of RBAAs was adopted in the curriculum reform was due to the specific educational back­
ground in Macau. In the colonial time, under the Portuguese rule, Macau took a laissez-faire
approach to school education and the decentralized education system was used as a response to
the less developed economy. The decentralized education system in Macau featured the following
characteristics: private schools predominating in the schooling system, diversity of school curricu­
lums, no unified requirements for school graduates, and the absence of a standard career and pay
structure for teachers (Tang et al., 2018). In terms of instruction mediums, for example, there are
three types of schools speaking in Chinese, English and Portuguese, respectively. Since Macau SAR
was established in 1999, the new government has exercised greater responsibility for and control
over education. A large variety of measures and strategies have been introduced to address quality
concerns, including initiating new education regulations and rules, centralizing the curriculum
system in K-12 (Vong, 2014). However, it is not realistic for the government to adopt the forms of
“curriculum frameworks” or “curriculum standards” commonly appearing in neighbouring regions,
like mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, to unify the school curricula across various types of
schools given the deep-rooted decentralized education system in Macau. What the government was
able to do was to stipulate the basic or lowest requirements for the graduates of each educational
stage in the K-12 schooling (Wang, 2015). Three features of the RBAAs for each subject were
highlighted in the above administrative regulation, they are (1) basic: the requirements can be
attained by most students through efforts; (2) realistic: the requirements are based on the existing
curricula and traditions and (3) developmental: the requirements can be used to fulfil personal and
social needs in the future. After a couple of years of discussions and elaborations among subject
experts, teacher educators, experienced teachers and policymakers, the RBAAs for various subjects
offered in the four educational stages of K-12 schooling were completed and were promulgated by
Macau SAR in 2017, which were assumed to be effective since the fall of that year.
In each RBAAs document, there are three major sections, i.e., “curriculum rationale”, “curriculum
goals” and “performance requirements”. For instance, the curriculum rationale for the RBAAs for
natural sciences in junior secondary schools is articulated from three aspects: (1) paying attention to
4 B. WEI ET AL.

the differences among individual students, elevating their science literacy; (2) taking notice of the
interdisciplinary connections, guiding students to understand the relationship between science,
technology, society and environments and (3) advocating scientific inquiry and attaching impor­
tance to the diversification of teaching methods. The curriculum goals of the RBAAs for natural
sciences in junior secondary schools are suggested as follows:

(1) Maintain and develop students’ curiosity and craving for knowledge about natural phenom­
ena; reinforce their interests in and passion for learning science.
(2) Allow students to understand basic scientific knowledge; be able to explain common natural
phenomena by using relevant scientific concepts and principles.
(3) Help students master some basic scientific methods and skills; guide them to solve practical
problems related to natural science.
(4) Lead students to realize the significance and basic process of scientific inquiry; enhance their
experience in and develop their primary ability of scientific inquiry.
(5) Enable students to gradually cultivate such scientific spirit as constant thinking, daring to
question, being rigorous in searching for the truth, willing to practice and being good at
cooperating with others.
(6) Guide students to comprehend the relationship between science, technology, society and
environment; pay attention to science-related social issues to allow them to initially form the
awareness of actively participating in the discussion of social issues.
(7) Lead students to understand the nature of science, nurturing their awareness of applying
scientific knowledge, methods and attitude in viewing and solving personal and social issues.

The third section comprises four learning topics: (1) Scientific inquiry, (2) Physical science, (3) Life
science and (4) The Earth and space science. Totally, 122 “performance requirements” are set in these
four learning topics in this RBAAs document (Wei, 2019).

Methodology
This study took content analysis as the research methodology to explore the issue of integrating 21st
century competencies in RBAAs, officially promulgated K-12 curriculum documents in Macau.
According to Stemler (2001), there are two approaches to coding data in content analysis, emerging
coding and a priori coding. In this study, a priori coding approach was adopted, that is, the coding
was based on the categories that had been established prior to the analysis.

Analytical framework
To address the issue of integrating 21st century competencies in the RBAAs, an analytical framework
is needed. The analytical framework of this study was adapted from that suggested by Binkley et al.
(2012), which contains 10 competencies grouped into four categories: (1) Ways of thinking, (2) Ways
of working, (3) Tools for working and (4) Living in the world. According to Binkley et al. (2012), the list
of 10 competencies was purported to suggest an example of how to think about assessing 21st
century competencies. In the original framework, each category of 21st century competencies is
defined as an integration of the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that young people of our time
are required to have. However, each one has its own focus: Ways of thinking includes competencies
focused on the cognitive domain; Ways of working consists of competencies needed to carry out
a project, such as collaboration and communication; Tools for working highlights the competencies
in comprehending or using “tools” and Living in the world involves the competencies to negotiate
the changing world with respect to life, social and cultural responsibilities (Binkley et al., 2012). Later,
this framework was modified by Wang et al. (2018) by providing the definition for each competency.
Recently, Binkley et al. (2012)’s framework has been widely recognized in the literature (e.g., Morgan,
 ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 5

2016; Tan, Choo, Kang, & Liem, 2017; Tan, Lee, & Cheah, 2017; Valtonen et al., 2015) and proved to be
a valid analytical tool in assessing curriculum documents in the view of 21st century competencies
(Wang et al., 2018). In the present study, Binkley et al. (2012)’s original framework (10 competencies
under four categories) was adopted with operational definitions of each competency borrowed from
the modified framework (Wang et al., 2018). In addition, to assist the coding process (see below)
correctly and precisely, some key words and phrases of each competency were created with
references to the original framework of Binkley et al. (2012) and its definition given by Wang et al.
(2018) and used as hints to track the competencies embedded in the RBAAs. The details of this
analytical framework are presented in Table 1.

Data sources
The officially released RBAAs for those subjects offered at the four educational stages (pre-primary,
primary, junior secondary and senior secondary) made up the data sources of this study. In total,
there are 39 RBAAs for various subjects at different educational stages. All of them are available on
the official website of DSEJ.1 According to Morris and Adamson (2010), curriculum purposes can be
defined at several levels of detail in the curriculum process. As an important component of the
RBAAs, “curriculum goals” are more specific than curriculum rationales but broader than academic
performances, which intensively reflect the functions and values the subject-based curricula are
expected. Based on this consideration, “curriculum goals” of each RBAAs were selected as the target
texts for analysis in this study. Comparatively, the pre-primary stage is special in that there is only one
RBAA where eight curriculum goals are set. At the other three educational stages, from primary to
senior secondary, various RBAAs have been developed for subjects (such as English, Chinese and
Mathematics) or subject clusters (such as Natural Sciences, Social Sciences). The numbers of RBAAs
and curriculum goals at the four educational stages are listed in Table 2.

Data analysis
As mentioned previously, 21st century competencies are generally referred to various capabilities
that are needed in the future. However, the school curriculum is usually unfolded at different
educational stages and for various subjects. To address the issue of integrating 21st century
competencies in the RBAAs, as a first step, it is needed to understand how they are distributed in
different educational stages and various subjects belonging to different learning domains. Therefore,
content analysis was adopted to provide answers to three research questions: (1) how are the four
categories of 21st century competencies distributed in RBAAs in different educational stages? (2) how
are the ten 21st century competencies distributed in RBAAs in different educational stages? (3) how
are the ten 21st century competencies distributed in RBAAs for those subjects belonging to different
learning domains? As a research methodology, content analysis aims to discover and describe the
phenomena under consideration by compressing large volumes of words into fewer content
categories based on explicit rules of coding (Berg & Lune, 2017; Bernard, Wutich, & Ryan, 2017;
Stemler, 2001). In general, it is composed of six procedures: unitizing, sampling, recording/coding,
reducing data to manageable representations, abductively inferring contextual phenomena and
narrating the answers to the research question (Krippendorff, 2004). In practice, as Krippendorff
(2004) suggested, the relationship among them is not linear but includes iterative loop. Referring to
these six procedures and their relationships, this study was primarily conducted in the following
steps.
Firstly, each curriculum goal in those RBAAs was treated as a unit of analysis and was coded
according to the analytical framework (see Table 1). However, one curriculum goal would probably
consist of more than one competency; in this case, this curriculum goal was divided into two or more
units of analysis. Take the first curriculum goal in the RBAAs for Chinese Language (First Language) as
an example: “Help students understand Chinese culture and cultivate their interest in Chinese
 6

Table 1. Analytical framework for 21st century competencies (adapted from Binkley et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2018).
Category Competencies Definitions Keywords/phrases
Ways of Creative thinking Imaginative (thinking from various novel aspects), inventive competency, which involves the generation of new ideas Create, innovation,
Thinking creativity, unconventional
B. WEI ET AL.

Critical thinking An ability that involves the evaluation, analysis, synthesis, and interpretation of something, to provide a judgement or Elaborate, analysis,
promotes thinking or valuing ideas, facts, and methods from different perspectives, usually from an opposite perspective. evaluate, inference,
illustrate, inductive,
comprehensive, decision-
making
Learning to learn Refers to the ability to pursue and persist in learning, to organize one’s own learning, reflecting on the learning, and adjusting Learning to learn,
the learning process, including through effective management of time and information, both individually and in groups. lifelong learning,
plan to study,
independent study,
organization learning,
adjustment, flexibility
Ways of Collaboration A competency in studying or working with one or more individuals in groups, where participants help and support each other Cooperation, collaboration,
Working with complementary skills, interacting to create a shared understanding that none had previously possessed or could have community,
come to on their own. partnership,
association,
coordination,
work in groups,
social relationship
Communication The competency of using words, sounds, signs, or other behaviours to express or exchange information, such as ideas, Communication,
thoughts and feelings, to someone else with respect or listening to other people. contact, discuss,
communicate, express
Tools for Information literacy Reflective exploration of information, understanding of how information is generated and evaluated, and a series of Achieve information,
Working comprehensive capabilities that use information to create new knowledge and reasonably participate in the learning collect information,
community, including information awareness, information knowledge, information skills, and information ethics. select information,
organize information,
search information,
information application,
describe information,
interpret information
ICT literacy Refers to the ability to recognize, locate, and use information needed for a certain context efficiently and effectively via (Multi-) media,
information and communication technology. technology,
Internet
(Continued)
Table 1. (Continued).
Category Competencies Definitions Keywords/phrases
Living in Citizenship Refers to competency in participating in civic activities/in society-related activities. Civil activities,
the world social activities
Life and career A set of different competencies in understanding unstable situations, settling the challenges in a changeable world. Life, positive values,
healthy lives, social
adaptability,
attitudes of life
Personal and social Refers to competency in tolerance and respect for people different from themselves and of other backgrounds, for example, in Endure,
responsibility race, ethnicity, lifestyles. It includes cultural and global awareness and sensitivity and personal identification. respect,
multi-culture,
inter-culture,
global consciousness
ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION
7
8 B. WEI ET AL.

Table 2. The numbers of RBAAs and curriculum goals at various educational stages.
Educational
stages Pre-primary Primary Junior secondary Senior secondary Total
RBAAs 1 12 13 13 39
Curriculum goals 8 87 112 95 302

characters and culture as well as their love for China and Macau SAR; meanwhile, guide students to
care about contemporary cultural life, respect and understand multi-culture”. Referring to the
analytical framework, two competencies are involved in this curriculum goal: (1) “their love for
China and Macau SAR” showed the competency of Citizenship, which was an essential competency
that manifests a citizen’s sense of belonging for their country and hometown; (2) “care about
contemporary cultural life, respect and understand multi-cultures” showed the competency of
personal and social responsibility because they were a sign of personal responsibility, social respon­
sibility and cultural awareness. Thus, this curriculum goal had been separated into two parts: (1)
“help students understand Chinese culture and cultivate their interest in Chinese characters and
culture as well as their love for China and Macau SAR” and (2) “guide students to care about
contemporary cultural life, respect and understand multi-culture”.
Secondly, in the process of coding, a priority was given to those curriculum goals where
keywords and phrases appeared (see Table 1). For a curriculum goal where keywords or
phrases did not appear, we judged its connotations in the view of operational definitions of
21st century competencies (see Table 1) and determined which competency or competencies
are implied in it.
In a pilot study, the RBAAs of two subjects (natural sciences in junior secondary school and
Chinese language in primary school) were randomly selected and the first two authors indepen­
dently coded curriculum goals involved in them according to the analytical framework. The reliability
of the coding was established with a 95% agreement between the two authors. The difference
between the first two authors mainly rested in their understandings of some keywords and phrases.
To solve this problem, we clarified the meanings of those words and phrases and removed a couple
of words with ambiguous meanings. In the formal coding, independent coding and reviewing were
also conducted by the first two authors to reduce the subjectivity and ensure the reliability of the
data. For different or controversial opinions, discussions were held to reach a consensus. It should be
noted that all the documents are in Chinese and the coding was done before translation into English,
and an English expert was invited to check the correctness of the translation. Totally, the frequency
of 21st century competencies was counted as 451 in those 302 curriculum goals, which was
distributed among the four educational stages: 9 (pre-primary), 116 (primary), 171 (junior secondary)
and 155 (senior secondary) respectively.
Thirdly, when the coding was finished, the frequency and percentages of 10 competencies and
four categories they belong to in the four educational stages were calculated to answer the first
and second research questions. Considering junior secondary is an intermediate educational stage
and is the final stage of compulsory education (K-9), the RBAAs for all subjects offered at this
educational stage were chosen to answer the third research question. Specifically, the percentages
of the frequency of the 10 competencies coded from relevant subjects in each of the six learning
domains were counted: (1) Language & literature: “Chinese (First language)”, “Chinese (Second
language)”, “Portuguese (First language)”, “Portuguese (Second language)”, “English (First lan­
guage)” and “English (Second language)”; (2) Maths: “Math”; (3) People, society and humanity:
“Morality and citizenship”, and “Society and humanity”; (4) Science and technology: “Natural
sciences”, and “Information technology”; (5) Physical education and health: “Physical education
and health” and (6) Arts: “Arts”.
 ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 9

Results and discussion

Results of content analysis are reported in this section to answer the three research questions,
respectively. Moreover, the distributions of the 21st century competencies across various educational
stages are discussed with social, economic and educational problems and issues observed in Macau.

Distribution of the four categories of 21st century competencies across educational stages
Frequency and percentages of four categories of 21st century competencies at the four educational
stages (from pre-primary to senior secondary) are shown in Table 3.
As shown in Table 3, generally speaking, the distributions of 21st century competencies in RBAAs
for primary, junior secondary and senior secondary are similar in that Ways of thinking has the
highest percentage while Tools for working occupies the lowest one. However, the pre-primary stage
is an exception in which Living in the world has the highest percentage (44.4%). Among these four
educational stages, comparatively, the percentage distribution in primary school is the most homo­
geneous as the difference among the four categories is minimal (from 16.4%-28.4%). Considering
educational goals and students’ psychological and physiological characteristics in each educational
stage, it is believed that the distributions in different stages are reasonable. Moreover, the feature of
highlighting the category of Ways of thinking can be seen as a response to social demands in Macau.
As an intersectional venue of the east and the west, Macau is a micro-economy and a free port, with
the tourist and gambling industry highly dependent on tourist overseas, external investment and
external labours. Thus, to prepare for the competitive world, school students are required to acquire
basic knowledge and skills needed in the modern society, cultivate opening attitudes to the outside
world and adequate thinking and creative abilities as well (Guo, 2016).

Distribution of ten 21st century competencies under four categories across educational
stages
Ways of thinking
The distributions of three competencies under the category of Ways of thinking at four educational
stages (from pre-primary to senior secondary) are shown in Table 4.
Comparing the distributions in educational stages from primary to senior secondary, a similar
pattern can be identified, that is, Learning to learn occupies the highest percentage while Critical
thinking takes the second place, and Creative thinking has the lowest one. Although this pattern is
not suitable for pre-primary education, Learning to learn also takes the highest percentage (66.7%) at
this stage, followed by Creative thinking, but no appearance of Critical thinking.
Thus, it can be said that Learning to learn is the most emphasized competency in K-12 schooling
in Macau, and its percentages in different stages are at around 45% (Primary, 48.5%; Junior

Table 3. Frequency and percentages of four categories of 21st century competencies in RBAAs at various educational stages.
Categories Pre-primary Primary Junior secondary Senior secondary
Ways of thinking 3 (33.3%) 33 (28.4%) 58 (33.9%) 59 (38.1%)
Ways of working 2 (22.2%) 32 (27.6%) 49 (28.7%) 29 (18.7%)
Tools for working 0 (0.0%) 19 (16.4%) 23 (13.5%) 20 (12.9%)
Living in the world 4 (44.4%) 32 (27.6%) 41 (24.0%) 47 (30.3%)

Table 4. Frequency and percentages of competencies under the category of Ways of thinking at various educational stages.
Competencies Pre-primary Primary Junior secondary Senior secondary
Creative thinking 1 (33.3%) 8 (24.2%) 13 (22.4%) 12 (20.3%)
Critical thinking 0 (0.0%) 9 (27.3%) 21 (36.2%) 19 (32.2%)
Learning to learn 2 (66.7%) 16 (48.5%) 24 (41.4%) 28 (47.5%)
10 B. WEI ET AL.

secondary, 41.4%; Senior secondary, 47.5%) or more (Pre-primary, 66.7%). It is interesting to note that
this finding is different from Shi et al. (2016)’s research, which found that “learning to learn and life
learning” was more concerned in the middle and lower economics.
Except for the curriculum goals in the RBAAs for pre-primary education which do not involve
Critical thinking, the percentage of this competency at other educational stages is at around 30%.
Critical thinking is often described as “think critically”, “solve problems” and so on and has its
emphasis on students’ ability to solve subject-related problems in real contexts (Cottrell, 2017). For
instance, it is stated in curriculum goals of the RBAAs for the subject of Social and Humanities in
junior secondary education that “Help students to preliminarily grasp the essentials of critical
thinking, experimental judgment, problem-solving as well as action practice”. Creative thinking
has its percentages at about 25% at the educational stages from primary to senior secondary
education (see Table 4). Some typical words about this competency such as “imagination”, “creativ­
ity” and “innovation” often appear in curriculum goals in the RBAAs. For example, “Inspire students’
thinking, imagination and creativity” is mentioned in curriculum goals of the subject of Information
Technology in primary education, “Develop students’ awareness of mathematics application and
innovative sense so that they can ponder on and judge some mathematical models embedded in the
real world” in curriculum goals of the subject of Mathematics in senior secondary education.

Ways of working
The distributions of two competencies under the category of Ways of working in the four educa­
tional stages (from pre-primary to senior secondary) are presented in Table 5.
As shown in Table 5, two competencies under the category of Ways of working both account for
50% in the pre-primary education. Nevertheless, the competency of Communication takes the
highest percentages at around 80% in the stages from primary to senior secondary education. In
the RBAA documents, Communication often appears with other competencies. For instance, in
curriculum goals of the subject of Portuguese Language (First Language) in senior secondary
education, it states that “Improve students’ communication skills and promote the basic progress
in their language, cognition and metacognition”, which indicates that cultivating communication
competency is one way to promote the development of metacognition. This feature of emphasizing
communication skills is also linked to social demands in Macau. Under the background of the
increasing connection among various regions and countries in the world, Macau is attempting to
build “the tourist hub of the world” and “the platform of collaboration and service between China
and Portuguese speaking countries” (Guo, 2016). This ambition entails foreign language capacities of
the youth, helping them get along with people coming from different cultures.

Tools for working

The distributions of two competencies under the category of Tools for working in the four educa­
tional stages (from pre-primary to senior secondary) are shown in Table 6.

Table 5. Frequency and percentages of competencies under the category of Ways of working at various educational
stages.
Competencies Pre-Primary Primary Junior secondary Senior secondary
Collaboration 1 (50.0%) 6 (18.8%) 8 (16.3%) 7 (24.1%)
Communication 1 (50.0%) 26 (81.3%) 41 (83.7%) 22 (75.9%)

Table 6. Frequency and percentages of two competencies under the category of Tools for working at various educational
stages.
Competency Pre-primary Primary Junior secondary Senior secondary
Information literacy 0 (0.0%) 11 (57.9%) 17 (73.9%) 12 (60.0%)
ICT literacy 0 (0.0%) 8 (42.1%) 6 (26.1%) 8 (40.0%)
 ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 11

As indicated in Table 6, there is no competency about information literacy or ICT literacy in pre-
primary education. At the rest stages (primary and secondary education), Information literacy
accounts for a higher proportion than ICT literacy. As for information literacy, “obtain information”,
“analyze information” and “interpret formation” often appear as key phrases in curriculum goals. For
example, it is stated that “Cultivate, preliminarily, students’ ability to obtain, organize and analyze
information” in curriculum goals of RBAAs for the subject of General Studies in primary education
and that “Enable students to articulate their personal and analytical response to informational and
literary texts” in curriculum goals of the subject of English Language (First Language) in senior
secondary education. Compared with ICT literacy, which mainly refers to the application of media,
information technology, Internet and so on, Information literacy has a wider connotation which
involves the sense, knowledge and ability related to information (Eisenberg, Lowe, & Spitzer, 2004;
Grassian & Kaplowitz, 2001). With the development of knowledge economy and ICT widely used in
the society, in our view, it is urgent for young people of Macau to develop information literacy.

Living in the world

The distributions of three competencies under the category of Living in the World in the four
educational stages (pre-primary to senior secondary) are presented in Table 7.
As displayed in Table 7, Citizenship and Life and career are of equal importance in pre-primary
education and both of them occupy the percentage as 50% without the competency of personal and
social responsibility. However, Personal and social responsibility has the highest percentage in
primary and junior secondary education while Life and career occupies the largest proportion in
senior secondary. In view of the teaching objectives and characteristics of students’ physical and
mental development in different educational stages, we thought such distributions are reasonable.
The competencies under the category of Living in the world are closely related to social situation in
Macau. Currently, Macau is attempting to be a democratic society and its development is more and
more dependent on “qualified citizens” with necessary consciousness and senses of rights, participa­
tion, oversight, responsibility and personal mindsets, such as equity, dependences, freedom and
rationalism, etc. (Guo, 2016). In addition, since returning to China in 1999, especially with the
liberalization of the gambling industry in 2001, Macau has seen a rapid growth of the economy,
which also resulted in some social problems such as gambling addiction, abuse of drugs, porno­
graphy and violence. Therefore, young people in Macau are expected to have a set of competencies
in understanding and dealing with those challenging issues in lives, careers and communities in the
future.

Distribution of ten 21st century competencies in RBAAs among different learning domains
Percentages of the 10 competencies in RBAAs for subjects in each of the six learning domains in
junior secondary are presented in Table 8.
As shown in Table 8, the percentages of the ten 21st century competencies in each of the six
learning domains are various. The most striking is that Science and Technology is the only domain
which includes all 10 competencies with focus on Critical thinking (19.0%). For the three learning
domains (Language and Literature; Personal, Social and Humanity; and Arts), they incorporate all
but one competency and the missing one is Life and career, ICT literacy and Information literacy,
respectively. It is interesting to observe that the competency they most emphasize is different:

Table 7. Frequency and percentages of three competencies under the category of Living in the world at various educational
stages.
Competencies Pre-primary Primary Junior secondary Senior secondary
Citizenship 2 (50.0%) 11 (34.4%) 12 (29.3%) 11 (23.4%)
Life and career 2 (50.0%) 9 (28.1%) 14 (34.1%) 22 (46.8%)
Personal and social responsibility 0 (0.0%) 12 (37.5%) 15 (36.6%) 14 (29.8%)
12 B. WEI ET AL.

Table 8. Percentages of the 10 competencies in RBAAs for subjects in six learning domains at the junior secondary stage.
Language & People, society & Science & Physical education &
Competencies literature Maths humanity technology health Arts
Creative thinking 5.0% 25.0% 4.2% 7.3% 0.0% 16.7%
Critical thinking 6.3% 37.5% 16.7% 19.0% 0.0% 12.5%
Learning to learn 16.3% 25.0% 8.3% 7.3% 14.3% 16.7%
Collaboration 3.8% 0.0% 4.2% 7.3% 14.3% 4.2%
Communication 42.5% 12.5% 4.2% 6.3% 0.0% 12.5%
Information literacy 12.5% 0.0% 12.5% 15.2% 0.0% 0.0%
ICT literacy 1.3% 0.0% 0.0% 15.7% 0.0% 4.2%
Citizenship 3.8% 0.0% 25.0% 7.3% 0.0% 4.2%
Life and career 0.0% 0.0% 8.3% 7.3% 71.4% 20.8%
Personal and social 8.8% 0.0% 16.7% 7.3% 0.0% 8.2%
responsibility

Communication by Language and Literature (42.5%), Citizenship by Personal, Society and

Humanity (25.0%) and Life and career by Arts (20.8%). The most emphasized competency is closely
associated with the nature of the learning domains. However, for the learning domains of Maths
and Physical education and Health, less than half 21st century competencies are included: four
competencies (Creative thinking, Critical thinking, Learning to learn and Communication) by Maths
and three competencies (Learning to learn, Collaboration, Life and career) by Physical education
and Health. Even so, the most emphasized competency in these two learning domains is also
linked to the nature of the learning area: Creative thinking in Maths and Life career in Physical
education and Health. In sum, the distributions of 21st competencies in the subjects belonging to
different learning domains are varied and the emphasized competencies are closely associated
with the nature of the subjects.

Conclusions and implications

In this article, we have reported the integration of 21st century competencies in the official docu­
ments of Requirements of Basic Academic Attainments (RBAAs) for various school subjects in the latest
curriculum reform in Macau. Based on the framework suggested by Binkley et al. (2012), we focused
on the distributions of ten 21st century competencies under four categories in the RBAAs at various
educational stages and among different types of learning domains. The findings of this study can be
summarized in three ways. Firstly, at a general level, the category of “Ways of thinking” takes the
most proportion and that of “Tools for working” takes the least across educational stages from
primary to senior secondary, while the category “Living in the world” is most concerned in the stage
of pre-primary. Secondly, at a specific level, discrepancies exist among the distributions of ten 21st
century competencies across the K-12 schooling, which are believed to conform to the young child’s
physical and psychological characteristics. Thirdly, more competencies are incorporated in the four
learning domains (Language and Literature; People, Society and Humanity; Science and Technology;
and Arts) while less in other two (Maths; and Physical education and Health).
As discussed in the preceding section, 21st century competencies integrated into the RBAAs for
various subjects in the K-12 schooling reflect social demands on education in the age of globalization
and digital technology. Featured with those 21st century competencies, it can be viewed that the
curriculum reform in Macau, at least at the level of curriculum goals, has not been confined in the
acquisition of subject knowledge and skills, which is the tradition of school education in Chinese
societies (Gu, 2006); instead, it emphasizes the cultivation of students’ creative thinking, commu­
nication skills and the abilities and willingness of lifelong learning in the contemporary society. All of
these emphases would be beneficial for young people to be accommodated in the future society. In
view of the educational visions and ideas advocated in the Non-Tertiary Education System Law and
the Curriculum Framework for Formal Education of Local Education System, both of them are top
official documents that guided the curriculum design in Macau, it can be said that the curriculum
 ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 13

reform in this region is on the right way in integrating 21st century competencies with subject matter
in the form of RBAAs.
As argued by Gordon et al. (2009), three approaches can be adopted to guide the curricular
integration of 21st century competencies in school education, they are: (a) be added to the already
existing curriculum as new subjects or as new content within traditional subjects, (b) be integrated as
cross-curricular competencies that both underpin school subjects and place emphasis on the acquisi­
tion of wider key competencies and (c) be part of a new curriculum in which the traditional structure of
school subjects is transformed and schools are regarded as learning organizations (cited as in Voogt &
Roblin, 2012). It seems that it was the second approach that has been adopted in the K-12 curriculum
reform in Macau. As we described earlier, the intention of adopting RBAAs as a curricular form was to
stipulate the basic requirements for subject teaching at the various educational stages but it does not
intend to change the existing school curriculum structures. According to Wang (2015), as official
curriculum documents, RBAAs set specific requirements for school subjects, serving as the guidelines
of the curriculum reform, and can be used as the criteria of assessing the quality of K-12 education in
Macau. In this sense, as we speculate, Macau has taken the first step in implementing the 21st century
competencies in the school curriculum by providing operational manuals for school teachers, teacher
educators and curriculum developers to integrate 21st century competencies with existing teaching
materials, instructional programmes and assessment tools, and will ultimately transform the school
education of this region. The case reported in this article has added scholarly knowledge to the
literature on the issue of curricular integration of 21st century competencies in two ways.
First, as for the nature of 21st century competencies, as indicated earlier, it generally refers to
attitudes, skills, abilities, capacities, behaviours and values that the young should have when
engaging in the complex socio-economic and political contexts that are deeply influenced by
globalization and information technology. With regard to this aspect, “21st century competencies”
are seemingly identical with “curriculum goals”. But they are different things. According to Cui and
Shao (2017), there are three types of relations between key competencies and curriculum goals. The
first is the separated relation, that is, there is no essential relation between them. The second is an
intersected relationship, that is, some overlaps exist between key competencies and curriculum
goals. The third is the inclusive relation with two cases: key competencies included in curriculum
goals and curriculum goals included in key competencies. In this study, as we found, all of the ten
21st century competencies under four categories could be retrieved among curriculum goals but
some curriculum goals could not be compatible with any of those 21st century competencies. That is
to say, curriculum goals are inclusive of 21st century competencies, implying that the scope of
curriculum goals is broader than that of 21st century competencies. As we know, the “curriculum
goals” is an essential part of a curriculum – its content should be defined within the subject matter
involved and its expression and presentation should be in regular forms. In this sense, the notion
“21st century competencies” or whatever terms used has provided an input to reconstruct the
“curriculum goals” for a given curriculum in a future direction.
Second, as displayed in this study, across the four education stages (from pre-primary to senior
secondary), similar distribution patterns have been identified at the level of the four categories of
21st century competencies; when taking a closer look, however, big differences could be observed at
the specific level of competencies. This result suggests that the types and proportions of 21st century
competencies in an educational stage should be projected with the considerations of physical and
psychological characteristics of students enrolled in that stage. Moreover, as found in this study,
different 21st century competencies are manifested in different learning domains, which is thought
to be associated with the nature of those subjects. Therefore, it is not appropriate to expect a subject
to cultivate all of 21st century competencies; on the other hand, it is unrealistic to expect one 21st
century competency to be integrated into all school subjects. Based on the results of this study, we
suggest that a systematic and long-term consideration should be given to the deployment of those
21st century competencies in the K-12 schooling with different competencies emphasized in differ­
ent stages and subjects.
14 B. WEI ET AL.

Note
1. The official website of DSEJ: www.dsej.gov.mo.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Bing Wei, an associate professor of science education in Faculty of Education, University Macau. His research interests
include science curriculum development, history and philosophy of science, and science teacher education.
Jiajia Lin, an instructor, The center for MBA Educational Management, Shanghai University, China, a former Master
degree’s student of Faculty of Education, University of Macau. Her reserach interests include educational administration,
and curriculum development.
Sitong Chen, a PhD student of science education in Faculty of Education, University of Macau. His research interests are
science teaching and learning, and STEM education.
Yue Chen, a postgraduate student of Master of Education in Faculty of Education, University of Macau. Her research
interests include science teaching, and science teacher development.

ORCID
Bing Wei http://orcid.org/0000 0002 5591 8025
Sitong Chen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2444-8988

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