Developing the Twenty-first Century skills needed for sustainable development and quality education in the era of rapid technology-enhanced changes in the economic, social and natural environment

The technology-driven changes in our social, economic, natural, and digital environments require the transformation of strategies, methods, and approaches to teaching and learning to meet the sustainable needs of modern society. The characteristics of quality education are defined:(1) in terms of content as skills for functioning in a global society, creativity and innovation, digital and interpersonal skills, and (2) in terms of delivery as self-regulated learning, learning of transferable knowledge and skills, and student-centred problem-based and collaborative learning. Our research addresses the identification and analysis of factors for effective pre-service teacher education for sustainable development using models of multicriteria decision-making using ICT-driven learning to enhance critical thinking, decision-making, judgement, negotiation, leadership, risk propensity, teamwork, problem solving, and self-regulation. The basic objective of the proposed research project is to identify the factors that contribute to the development of higher-order thinking skills in pre-service teachers preparing for education for sustainable development. Teachers are key actors in the process of developing student skills and competencies in elementary schools. Therefore, the proposed project will develop a technology-based and discipline-transferable model based on Education for Sustainable Development factors to help design and implement pedagogical changes through technology with artificial inteligence powered solutions. Such qualified teachers will be key agents of transformative learning in the context of innovative pedagogy in schools, as well as developers and agents of innovative pedagogy for quality education and raising the educational attainment of students. The research is divided into three phases: (I) Determining the factors for quality education of future teachers to meet the goals of technology-driven sustainable development and 21st century skills. (II) Developing, implementing, and evaluating learning models based on multi-criteria decision-making models for prospective teachers. (III) Develop, implement, and evaluate transfer learning models for student skill development. In the research we will use quantitative and qualitative data collection techniques: Surveys, tests, expert panel, observation, analysis of documents related to pre-service teachers' performance. Depending on the level of data collection, we will use qualitative and quantitative data processing techniques. A methodology based on analytical hierarchical and network processes will be used to develop multi-criteria decision making models. Originality is attributed to the studied factors of ICT-enabled pedagogical change to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals among pre-service teachers, the measured level of their 21st century skills, and their impact on the quality of technology-enhanced instruction in elementary schools, which is also reflected in increasing literacy. Designing and implementing transformative learning within an innovative pedagogy can make an important contribution to achieving the goals of Education for Sustainable Development. We expect that the project results will provide empirically and experimentally verified arguments (1) for the use of the developed methodology in determining pedagogical change in the field of pre-service teacher education, (2) for the implementation of student-centred ICT-enhanced learning and teaching as synonyms for higher education in an era of technologically driven and dynamic changes in the economic, social, and natural environments, and (3) for transformative and innovation student learning as a lever to increase literacy. The results of the research will make an important contribution to the development of education sciences and quality education for the development of 21st century skills in terms of sustainable development, competitiveness in the labour market and the well-being of society.