The focus of schools on twenty-first– century competencies and students’ experience of these competencies

The importance of teaching twenty‐first–century competencies has increasingly been emphasised. Little is known, however, about how schools actually approach teaching such competencies. We investigated (1) how innovative and innovating secondary schools in the Netherlands implement a focus on self‐regulation, collaboration and creativity in their curriculum and (2) how and to what extent schools’ curricular focus was reflected in students’ self‐reported mastery of these competencies. To answer the first sub‐question we used the data of 16 school portraits. The second question was addressed with a quasi‐experimental study. About 551 students from 51 tenth grade classes (age 15–16) of 12 schools completed questionnaires measuring their self‐reported competencies regarding self‐regulation, collaboration and creativity, and the extent to which they experienced a curricular focus on self‐regulation, collaboration and creativity in their schools. The article describes how innovative and innovating schools aim at developing their students’ self‐regulation, collaboration and creativity through curriculum content, pedagogy and school organisation. It appears that the stronger a schools’ curricular focus on self‐regulation, collaboration and creativity, the more students indicate they master these competencies, and the more they improve in self‐regulation and collaboration skills between the ninth and tenth grade.