The purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service teachers’ perception on 21st
century teacher competencies and to provide practical suggestions for pre-service teacher
programs. Specifically, this study developed a survey questionnaire based on the 21st
century teacher competencies presented by the Korea Education and Research Information
Service and surveyed 279 students, who want to be a teacher, in the college of education of
private university in Seoul. The study results were as follows: first, pre-service teachers’
perception on importance of competencies higher than their perception on retention in all
categories. Second, the MANOVAs were conducted to analyze the differences of pre-service
teachers’ perception on 21st century teacher competencies depending on their grade levels
and the results revealed that ‘rapport building with learners’and ‘expertise in content’of
practice competencies in importance perception, and ‘social skills’of fundamental
competencies and ‘rapport building with learners’ of practice competencies in retention
perception were different by grade levels. Third, the results of educational needs assessment
indicated that ‘expertise in content’was the highest need of the pre-service teachers, and
‘creativity’ and ‘instructional design and development’were the next respectively.