Arab Educational Information Network

The 21st century imposes contemporary and evolving demands for skills to address its increasing challenges and to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs) through a generation of youth capable of leading their societies toward progress and prosperity. Accordingly, the present study aimed to design and implement a training program focused on developing 21st-century skills and to assess its impact and effectiveness in improving cognitive, emotional, and leadership competencies to support sustainable development among university students in Egypt. The study adopted an experimental design involving 75 Egyptian university students majoring in psychology, randomly assigned into two groups: an experimental group that received a blended training program (delivered both online and face-to-face) consisting of 17 sessions, and a control group that received no training. Assessments were conducted before the program, after its completion, and in a follow-up evaluation one month later. An Arabic-language scale developed to measure cognitive, emotional, and leadership competencies was used. Data were analyzed using t-tests and effect size calculations to evaluate the program’s effectiveness. The results showed that participants in the experimental group exhibited significant improvement in their cognitive, emotional, and leadership competencies as core skills for sustainable development, compared to the control group, with statistically significant differences (p < .05). Effect size analyses revealed high values across all domains (η² between 0.915 and 0.925), reflecting the strong impact of the training program. (Published abstract)