A Window into the classroom

Dirk Van Damme
by Division Head, Innovation and Measuring Progress (IMEP) and Head of Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)

An excellent teacher is what makes students learn and succeed in school. Everything else – standards, curricula, assessments, resources, school leadership – come second. Yet, what do we actually know about what teachers are doing?

Classrooms seem to be the ‘black boxes’ of the education system. There is not an awful lot of research on classroom teaching practices, but TALIS 2008 provides some self-reported data on teaching practices and professional activities including participation in collaborative learning with colleagues. The main TALIS report, published in 2009, compared the relative preference for three different teaching practices – structuring, student oriented and enhanced activities – across the 23 different countries that participated in the survey. The report showed differences between countries regarding the extent to which teachers are favouring directive and teacher-directed practices over more activating and learner-centred ones. These TALIS results were received as rather disappointing signals, suggesting that the teaching profession was relatively resistant to change in many countries.

In collaboration with the TALIS programme and as part of its Innovative Teaching for Effective Learning project the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) has just released a research report which delves deeper in the TALIS data on teaching practices in classrooms and schools. Based on some advanced analytical tools (multilevel latent profile analysis), this new book called Teaching Practices and Pedagogical Innovations: Evidence from TALIS  identifies underlying profiles in teachers’ classroom practices. A large set of variables about teachers, such as gender, training, subjects taught, but also their pedagogical beliefs, the degree of professional development, the amount of feedback and appraisal received, etc., were brought together and in each country different profiles of teachers were distinguished.

The scientific and policy implications of this research are huge. Many learning researchers and education policy makers strongly – and rightly so – believe in the benefits of more student-oriented, self-regulating approaches to teaching and learning. This suggests that a particular form of teaching is outdated and should be replaced by a more innovative one. Consequently, this report now suggests that we should not look at the quality of what happens in classrooms in an ‘either-or’ way. While it is true that the best teachers differ from their colleagues in their relative use of activating, student-oriented ways of teaching, they also use more structuring, teacher-driven forms of classroom practice. Teaching quality is a matter of diversity of practices, not of one set of practices against the other. Excellent teachers are those teachers who master a large repertoire of teaching practices, which they can deploy according to learners’ needs and varying classroom conditions. Those teachers are also the ones who actively advance their own professional competence by professional development and who feel more satisfied and effective about their own work.

A final important finding is that there is also a clear difference between these teacher profiles in the degree of co-operation with other colleagues and engagement in collaborative learning communities in and outside schools. Excellent teachers view teaching as a collective responsibility within the profession, not as an individualised thing happening behind closed doors. They open the doors of their classrooms, inviting colleagues to engage in what they are doing but also disclosing what happens in classrooms to the outside world. It is that kind of teachers we need to work with our kids.

Links:
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) Activities
OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)
Teaching in Focus Briefs

Photo credit: © By happy via

What can be done to support new teachers?

by Kristen Weatherby
Senior Analyst, Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)

While many students in the Northern Hemisphere are starting a new school year, this is also the first day of school for thousands of new teachers around the world. Walking into a new classroom – “your own” classroom – for the first time can be exciting and daunting. The pressures on a new teacher are many: administrative tasks, classroom management issues, dealing with potentially intimidating parents, challenges of developing lessons and marking homework and more. Most importantly, though, new teachers need to take what they learned in the weeks or months of teacher preparation, as well as their knowledge of the subject area, and put that to practice in shaping and motivating the learning of the 25, 50 or 150 students in their classes.

It’s no wonder that on average nearly 10% of teachers leave the profession within the first 1-3 years of teaching. But as our new Teaching in Focus brief shows, there are many practices that schools and countries can put in place that might help new teachers stay teaching.

Many media reports attribute the high attrition rate of new teachers to the fact that they are placed in difficult classrooms in challenging or underresourced or otherwise hard-to-staff schools. Data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) refutes that claim. On average, new teachers surveyed in TALIS (those with two years of teaching experience or less) reported classrooms and school situations similar to those of their more experience colleagues, with nearly no differences in language or socio-economic status of their students, for example. So if these challenges don’t exist, what is making new teachers leave?

At the root of the issue seems to be a new teacher’s level of confidence in his or her own teaching ability. TALIS asks teachers to report on their own feelings of self-efficacy. Not surprisingly, new teachers report significantly lower levels of self-efficacy than their more experienced colleagues. The TALIS report The Experience of New Teachers discusses research on how self-efficacy can relate to a teacher’s instructional practices as well as student achievement. It can thus be rather important for a teacher to feel good about his or her on abilities as a teacher.

As the TALIS data shows, and the Teaching in Focus brief enumerates, there are programmes and policies that schools and governments can put in place to help new teachers. Activities like mentoring and induction programmes, when combined with feedback on a new teacher’s practice, can help provide support and additional professional development to new teachers.

To learn more about this topic, check out this month’s Teaching in Focus brief. Look for further Teaching in Focus briefs @ www.oecd.org/edu/talis on topics relevant to the experience of teachers in the coming months.

Follow TALIS and Kristen Weatherby @Kristen_Talis
Photo credit: Back to School sign / Shutterstock

Hooked to be connected!

by Lynda Hawe
Communications Officer, Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), Directorate for Education OECD

Concerned parents are becoming more and more anxious as they watch their bright children getting completely absorbed by and attached to new mobile devices.  Young people’s attachment to digital media and connectivity will shortly reach a level of almost universal saturation. In some OECD countries, more than 95% of 15-year-olds use an internet connected computer daily while at home. How many of us have experienced frustration while trying to get kids to actually listen, as their eyes remain glossily glued to their favourite pet gadget?  So just how worried should we really be? Well, it still remains difficult to clearly identify the risks or rewards of such behaviour, especially in relation to long-term learning and brain functions.  But first, let’s be reassured - it’s not all bad news!

The OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) has just released an inspiring new publication called Connected Minds: Technology and Today's Learners, authored by Francesc Pedró. This book has wisely researched technology in relation to emerging issues for education.  Particularly, given that digital media and connectedness are an essential part of the lives of today’s learners, schools and teachers must now cope with the new responsibilities in relation to these skills.  This explorative book tackles the issue and helps to contribute to filling the knowledge gap.

Frankly, it’s not about the technology, but it’s all about connectedness. Connectedness, which is the capacity to benefit from connectivity for personal, social, work or economic purposes, is having an impact on all areas of human activity. Consequently, devices and gadgets are less important than the ability to be connected and seizing the opportunities that connectedness offers. Education is expected to play an important role in this transformation as it can equip individuals with the required skills for harnessing the opportunities that the knowledge economy and society offers.

In particular, teachers need to be well prepared in terms of the potential pedagogical benefits of new technologies. Challenges for schools and teachers are to better integrate the new digital media and the resulting innovative social practices into the daily experience of schooling.  With the objective to help learners to make the most out of connectedness, while enabling teachers to improve their skills. In addition, teachers should simultaneously pay attention to the different needs of learners and provide increased support to those who come from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds.

It is very reassuring to discover that Mobile Learning is emerging as one of the solutions to the challenges faced by education. As described in UNESCO’s Mobile Learning project, it offers unique characteristics in comparison to conventional e-learning: personal, portable, collaborative, interactive, contextual and situated.  As well as the fact that it highlights "just-in-time-learning", since instruction can be delivered anywhere and at anytime.

Nobody can predict what new technologies may bring, or how the teaching and learning experience in education will evolve over the next decade.  So in the meantime, let’s just stay aware of the learning opportunities, while keeping a caring eye on the gadget screens as well as a little clock beside the video-games, see Setting Computer Limits Tips.   Of course, not with the intention to deprive youngsters of all the fun, but just to ensure that the final rewards will fully outweigh any eventual risks.

Links:
OECD work on New Millenium Learners
Activities: Centre for Eduational Research and Innovation (CERI)
Photo Credit: © Eric Audras/Onoky/Corbis

The “extra” in extracurricular activities

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education

It may be tempting for school systems that are trying to reduce expenses to trim the “extras” from their budgets, including school-sponsored extracurricular activities. But are these activities just a luxury that schools can no longer afford? The latest issue of PISA in Focus makes the case that the availability of extracurricular activities at school is positively related both to student performance and to students’ attitudes towards learning.

As part of the PISA 2006 survey, which focused on student performance in science, school principals were asked about the kinds of extracurricular activities they offered their students. On average across OECD countries, 89% of students attend schools whose principals reported that science-related field trips were commonly offered, 56% of students attend schools that hold science competitions, 48% of students are in schools that encourage involvement in extracurricular science projects, 42% are in schools that organise science fairs, and 41% are in schools that have science clubs.

While the types of science-related extracurricular activities vary across countries, their relationship with better student performance is consistent throughout. In 22 of 31 OECD countries and 14 of 17 partner countries and economies, students in schools that offer more science-related extracurricular activities tend to perform better in science than do students in schools that offer fewer such activities. And in 21 OECD countries and 12 partner countries and economies, this positive relationship holds even after accounting for students’ socio-economic background. However, in two countries, the relationship is very different:  in the United States, students in schools that offer fewer of these kinds of science-related activities tend to perform better in science, after accounting for students’ socio-economic backgrounds; while in Montenegro, the relationship is negative both before and after accounting for students’ backgrounds.

And there’s more at play than test scores: PISA also found a link between the availability of school-sponsored extracurricular activities and students’ belief in their ability to handle science-related tasks, known as self-efficacy, and their enjoyment of learning science. In 22 OECD countries, 7 partner countries and 1 partner economy, students in schools that offer more of these kinds of activities tend to have higher levels of self-efficacy in science; and in 20 OECD countries, 2 partner countries and 1 partner economy, they also enjoy learning science more. In no country or economy is there a negative relationship between science-related extracurricular activities and positive attitudes towards learning science.

These findings from PISA can’t determine conclusively whether being exposed to science-related extracurricular activities enhances students’ attitudes towards science or whether students with more positive attitudes towards science are attracted to schools that offer more of such activities; both could be true. But what these results do show is that these kinds of activities are positively related not only to student performance, but also to students’ attitudes towards learning and their belief in their own abilities. With that in mind, school leaders should carefully weigh the benefits of these “extras” against their cost when making tough budgetary decisions.

Links:
For more information:
on PISA: www.pisa.oecd.org
PISA in Focus: Link latest issue "Are students more engaged when schools offer extracurricular activities?"
Photo credit: Teen science experiment / Shutterstock

The role of unions in developing a skilled workforce

by Randi Weingarten
President, American Federation of Teachers

As we slowly recover from the worst economic recession since the 1920s, labour markets around the world remain turbulent. We are facing more social and economic inequality with wages stagnating and many people dropping out of the workforce entirely.

How can the American Federation of Teachers and other trade unions around the world help?

First, unions should be viewed as part of the solution, not as something to overcome. Labour-management collaboration is essential to developing skilled workers and, in turn, to creating better jobs and higher salaries. Workers need to be represented at the bargaining table and—regardless of the trade or profession—unions can be an important partner. That is the key to developing a flexible, smart workforce ready and equipped to be full partners with management.

If our workforce is going to thrive in the 21st century, we need to begin by changing much about our approach to education—from inside the classroom and larger school environment, to how we care for children, to how labour and management work together across the world.

In every country, a flourishing economy requires a strong education foundation as well as the ability to innovate and to communicate. It also requires teachers who are prepared and supported on every level and who are invested in helping students succeed in school and in life.

In Singapore, for example, where I spent time with teachers and students earlier this year, schools are focused on growth and achievement. However, as I observed numerous diverse groups of children deeply engaged in learning, I saw nothing that could be construed as “teaching to the test”—something that educators in the United States continue to contend with. In Singapore and in other countries with high-performing education systems, schools have listened to their teachers and collaborated with them to ensure the best education practices are implemented.

Additionally, the OECD can work with education unions to collaborate on important skills-developing issues, including:

• Global teaching standards—These include guidelines to ensure high-functioning, well-prepared, continuously improving teachers in every classroom. However, teachers cannot do this alone. They should be given the continuous support and respect they deserve –which, in large part, means treating education as a shared responsibility.
• Educational  equality—We can address issues of educational inequality worldwide through expanding and enhancing the successful efforts of countries in which every child receives a good education regardless of economic status. We also need to level the playing field for poor children by ensuring the availability of early childhood education and wrap-around services. We can address these issues before they become significant obstacles to learning.
• Curriculum—Ensuring a well-rounded, robust curriculum that prepares students for the future is essential to advancing workforce preparation. A child’s studies should focus on accessing and sorting information to solve complex problems and develop higher-level thinking skills, as opposed to finding answers to simple questions learned by rote. Businesses can help prepare students through mentoring and internships, while at school we can offer more project-based learning to ensure the mastery of skills sets.
• Models of collaboration—The OECD and unions can disseminate examples of labour and management working together to solve problems. Sharing best practices and successful partnerships can help lead to greater and more effective co-operation.

Education by itself will not address the jobs crisis, nor can education by itself address inequality. But without education, the fight for jobs and fair societies cannot be won. We’re excited to take part in the process.

Links:
Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC)
American Federation of Teachers
See also: OECD Skills Strategy

Visit our interactive portal on skills: http://skills.oecd.org

More blogs with Randi Weingarten:
‘An obligation to systematise success’
‘Internationalist, not isolationist’
Photo credit: Child hands on top of each other / Shutterstock

A Curriculum for the Next Billion

by Charles Leadbeater
Author of Learning from the Extremes and Innovation in Education: Lessons from Pioneers Around the World, published by Bloomsbury with the support of the The Qatar Foundation’s WISE initiative.

Today, global companies are fascinated by the prospect of what the World Economic Forum calls ‘the next billion’ – the future consumers of the developing world whose income is rising from around $2 a day to between $5 and $7 a day. Most of these people are recently arrived in rapidly expanding cities, often living in the poorest areas: every month about 5 million people in the developing world move to cities.

If we were to look at these families as parents and learners, what kind of education will they be looking for? Or to put it another way, if we were to design a curriculum with ‘the next billion’ what would they want?

Having spent much of the last three years visiting a wide variety of education projects in cities across the developing world, it strikes me that the first thing that people want is facility with a global language, usually English, but also in some places Spanish and, in others, Mandarin. They want a language that will give them access to people and jobs linked to global networks and trade – a business hotel, a job in retail, manning a phone in a call centre – rather than confining them to ply their trade in purely local markets.

Next they want a mastery of basic mathematics, the ability to understand numbers and do fairly basic sums, like working out discounts or more complex applications like planning a production schedule. Maths is foundational to much else that people need, and want. to learn.

The third ingredient is digital literacy. People need to be able to work competently and capably with computers, and not just the basics of the Microsoft world of Word and Excel, but increasingly the world of the web and social media, apps and programming. They need to be comfortable with having to learn, and learn again, as technology changes.

None of that, however, is worth very much unless they are skilled at working together with other people. So the fourth thing their education needs to give them is a well-grounded experience in social skills so they know how to respond to customers and work well with their colleagues, to find collaborative solutions to problems. Some of those skills are social and relational, based on empathy and sympathy. But others are more about collaborative self-government, which is why it is so important that education provides children with ample, structured, challenging opportunities to work together, in groups, on projects which they can make their own. As social media spreads so it will open up ever more opportunities for people to find one another and come together to achieve common goals. Citizens will need to learn how to make the most of these technologies, for better government, richer culture and more successful businesses.

All of this needs to be married to entrepreneurial and creative capacity, by which I mean the ability to spot an opportunity, mobilise support to take it, learn how to take risks and recover from setbacks. Most of the ‘next billion’ will find themselves working in small entrepreneurial companies. Studies of the urban poor show that many have to hold down two or three jobs to survive. Their education needs to help them become micro-entrepreneurs, adaptive and resilient, fleet of foot. Learning to juggle work if, not balls, is a key skill.

The slim core skills set out above might provide the starting point for thinking about the kinds of skills all young people might need in the years ahead, in the developed and the developing world.

Yet that is only at best half the story. Setting out what people should learn is just the starting point. How they learn is almost as important. Effective learning needs to be a structured, well-designed, highly engaging activity which challenges and stretches young people as well as supporting them and building their confidence. It needs to pull people to it, by the laws of attraction. Too much of the time at school it is the other way around: people are pushed into learning they do not really understand and cannot make meaningful.

To be motivating learning needs to be intrinsically satisfying and to offer at least the distant prospect of a pay-off: a better job; a practical skill; a useful way of thinking.

Achieving that will mean that learning will have to become more connected to, if not located in, the real world of work and production. The most impressive and attractive places to learn in future, in the developed and developing world, will give young people ample opportunities to design and make, produce and sell things, with their hands and their heads. They should go to school to learn by working and having fun. They should study by making and building rather than sitting and listening.

Too often education is seen as a pristine preparation for a later career. Work is held at bay for as long as possible. I doubt we can afford that distinction in the future in which education increasingly seems to be losing touch with the real world that young people live in – and the real world seems increasingly unwilling to give them the jobs they crave. We need learning to give young people a real sense of what creative, satisfying, productive work can be, so they can take those standards and expectations into their later working life.

All innovators succeed by challenging ingrained conventional wisdom. Breaking down the barriers between work and learning will be one of the chief opportunities for educational innovators in the decades to come, especially if they want to meet the needs of the next billion parents and children entering formal education.


Links:
Innovation in Education: Lessons from Pioneers around the World
See also: OECD Skills Strategy

Visit our interactive portal on skills: http://skills.oecd.org
Languages in a Global World: Learning for Better Cultural Understanding

Photo credit: Population of our World in Colour / Shutterstock

Are Teachers Getting the Recognition They Deserve?

by Kristen Weatherby

Senior Analyst, Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)

More and more countries are having discussions about how to evaluate the quality of their teaching workforce and, subsequently, how to reward teachers for their work. The OECD’s newest series of briefs, Teaching in Focus, launches this month with a discussion of the appraisal and feedback teachers receive and the impact of both on their teaching.

Teaching is often thought to be an isolating profession, with teachers receiving little or no feedback that enables them to improve their teaching practice. Data from the  Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)  supports this claim in many countries, indicating that more than one in five of all teachers in the 24 countries surveyed report never received a formal appraisal of their teaching practice. Indeed even those teachers who are receiving formal appraisals may not ever learn the results of those appraisals. In several countries, teachers reported never receiving any feedback on their work regardless of whether they had received a formal appraisal.

Yet teachers are eager for information that will help them improve their teaching. The vast majority of teachers (79%) feel that the appraisal and feedback they have received are helpful in the development of their work. Those teachers who do receive appraisal and feedback report changes in their teaching practice as a result of this information, especially in the areas of improving student test scores, student discipline and classroom management. Furthermore, teachers in nearly half of TALIS countries find that being publicly recognised for their work is closely connected to their own feelings of self-efficacy.

The message seems pretty clear: If countries want to improve the quality of their teachers, they need to provide teachers with feedback on their teaching that helps them make changes to their practice.

To learn more about this topic, check out this month’s Teaching in Focus brief. Look for further Teaching in Focus briefs on topics relevant to the experience of teachers in the coming months.

Follow TALIS and Kristen Weatherby @Kristen_Talis
Photo credit: Blue stage with falling stars / Shutterstock

Taking stock of education and skills: the youth perspective

With his vantage point at the helm of the largest youth platform in the world, European Youth Forum (YFJ) President Peter Matjašič is well placed to assess the state of education and skills across Europe. Indeed, the YFJ represents millions of young people by way of national councils from Iceland to Azerbaijan, lobbying such important international bodies as the European Union, the Council of Europe and the United Nations to adopt policies that are in the best interests of European youth.

Educationtoday met with him at the OECD Forum to get his views on the state of young people's education and skills across the continent today.

educationtoday: How can today's students and young workers prepare themselves for rapidly evolving labour markets? 

Peter  Matjašič: The YFJ has been working on education since its inception fifteen years ago, focusing on quality and equality of access. We have a holistic view of education. Formal education must be supplemented by non-formal education, by which I mean you still have an organised activity, but one that is not organised by universities or colleges but by youth organisations, for example. Plus informal learning, which is what you gain from life experience.

Education is not necessarily enough. What we strive for is what we call youth autonomy. And to make the transition to the labour market, there are certain tools, such as internships.

The Youth Guarantee is another measure to ensure no young people are out of employment, school or training for more than four months. It means there are public programmes that ensure young people can get an internship or be retrained.

educationtoday: How do you ensure companies don't simply use internships as a means to get skilled young workers at little cost? 

Matjašič: First of all, for us it was important to put things into perspective. To do this, we carried out a survey of 4 000 interns across Europe last summer. We found the majority of interns enjoy being an intern, but at the same time they are aware of their precarious status. So, internships can be good tools if they're managed properly. For example, interns should be paid at least the minimum wage of the country they work in. To ensure this, we developed the European Quality Charter On Internships and Apprenticeships and pushed EU policymakers to propose it. The commission picked it up and will present a proposal themselves.

educationtoday: You mentioned entrepreneurship. This involves a certain measure of independent-mindedness and creativity. How do you think schools can better equip young people with these qualities?

Matjašič: The so-called life skills, or soft skills, are not being acquired through education. The value of peer-to-peer education you get in youth organisations is immense. Education needs to be hands-on with analytical thinking, which tends to be more the case in Northern Europe, whereas in Southern Europe teaching is often more ex-cathedra, where students simply learn what the teacher tells them. And this model in times of crisis fails young people in that studying hard is no longer enough to get a job.

I would also add that the way society sees entrepreneurship needs to be changed. Today, too many young people see it as solely about profit.

educationtoday: To what extent do you feel there is a skills mismatch today in Europe? 

Matjašič: The problem is in part because there's a disconnect between education and jobs. But at the same time, we aim to foster autonomous and active citizens. We don't want young people to be told, for example, they have to study mechanics because that's where jobs are. They need to be informed to make the right decisions. Proper career orientation in schools is key.

educationtoday:  Do you think there is a problem of over-skilled or over-educated young people today?

Matjašič: From a technical perspective, in terms of the level of education they have, yes. However, if you look at the actual knowledge young people have, I have my doubts as to whether they're over-skilled. They're definitely over-educated for certain things. But I would say it's more up to the individual today. People feel they need a master's degree because a bachelor's is not good enough anymore, so you have a proliferation of degrees, which makes them less valuable. The knowledge is no longer the focus, and I see this as a danger. We don't want education to just be a tool to enter the labour market

educationtoday: What can be done to ensure young people today have a broad education that allows them to be active citizens? 

Matjašič: Non-formal education, informal learning and volunteering need to be recognized. People can then have specific knowledge from formal education and life skills from youth organisations, for example. Interdisciplinary approaches are also important.

Links:
European Youth Forum
OECD Skills Strategy
OECD Forum 2012
Photo credit: OECD Video Invest in skills to boost jobs and growth

Discussing education and skills with the 2012 OECD Global Youth Competition winners

The winners of the 2012 OECD Video Competition hail from no fewer than three continents and four very different countries: Uganda, India, South Korea and Australia. Yet despite this, the videos they made on education and skills all highlight the need for major change in education systems if they are to provide young people with the skills necessary to thrive in the 21st century.

Kato Jonan, 24, (Uganda) Rachit Sai Barak, 20 (India), Sharon Chan, 24 (Australia), and Young Bu Kwon, 25 (Korea), sat down with us to expand on their views on education and skills.

educationtoday: Your videos all touch on the inadequacies of formal education. In what ways can schools better equip young people with the skills they need to have successful careers and be engaged citizens?

Rachit: Schools are competitive and stressful in India. The government treats young people as a future resource rather than treating them as a stakeholder. The focus should be on providing youth with life skills.

Kato: Students see education as something they have to go through without thinking of what it can help them become or what jobs it can help them get. The government should put aside some funds to create institutions to teach young people practical skills when they're not in school.

Sharon: Schools focus too heavily on books and studying. They need to look at skills outside of the classroom and help students apply those skills and fine-tune them. They should create a strong relationship with the community to see what skills are required.

Young Bu: Many Koreans think education is the only way to get a job, but then when they get a job they are disappointed. They learn and learn but they don't know what their goals are.

Kato: What I think should be done is to provide mentors to young people so they can decide what they want to do.

 

educationtoday: Do you think focusing on providing young people with the right skills for the job market is a good approach? 

Sharon: I think you can talk to employers to see what they require and try to build that into students' education, but at the same time what students require should be considered. That could be achieved through mentoring programmes.

Rachit: Education is not just about skills and jobs, it's about knowledge. I think the Better Life Index is a great example to look at. It would be good to give that wide perspective to children.

Kato: If the government wants to encourage people to take up certain professions, they have to start from childhood. But students should not have to pay for their education, as is the case today in Africa.

Rachit: The focus should be on potential not skills.

educationtoday: In your opinion, what are the key skills young people should be taught? 

Sharon: Decision making, the ability to innovate, problem solving and critical thinking are all important.

Rachit: Government should focus on life skills and practical skills.

Kato: I think we need entrepreneurial skills and computer literacy.

Young Bu: The most important thing for young people is to know themselves.

 

educationtoday: The need for creativity and innovation is a common thread in your videos. How can schools encourage creativity and and ultimately foster entrepreneurship?

Sharon: My school had a lot of competitions and projects where I had to think for myself and solve different problems. In my opinion, it's something schools can't teach you; they can help you develop it.

Rachit: In India, you see almost no use of music or dance in school. They can be used to help children learn, but they're not considered important. Using these arts to teach can help young people think differently.

Kato: They need to put students in concrete situations. In Uganda, we have a subject called Entrepreneurship, but you don't acquire any practical skills, you simply memorise information to pass an exam.

Young Bu: In Korea, students spend around 12 hours per day studying. We're not taught to discuss, to communicate; we're just taught to study. We learn by memorising, so there is little creativity. There should be free time at school where students can do what they want.

Sharon: There should be an environment that provides support and allows students to take risks.

Kato: Children who have non-academic skills should also be given a chance.

 

educationtoday: Your videos also touch on the power of co-operation to help children learn effectively. How do you think schools can be made more co-operative?

Sharon: Teamwork is the ideal scenario for encouraging co-operation.

Rachit: There should be collaboration among different fields, such as science, commerce and humanities.

Kato: It should be introduced in lower levels. It's often considered cheating when students work together, but that's what happens in companies.

Links:
OECD Video Competition
OECD Forum 2012
OECD Skills Strategy
OECD Better Life Index

What should students learn in the 21st century?

By Charles Fadel
Founder & chairman, Center for Curriculum Redesign 
Vice-chair of the Education committee of the Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Visiting scholar, Harvard GSE, MIT ESG/IAP and Wharton/Penn CLO

It has become clear that teaching skills requires answering “What should students learn in the 21st century?” on a deep and broad basis. Teachers need to have the time and flexibility to develop knowledge, skills, and character, while also considering the meta-layer/fourth dimension that includes learning how to learn, interdisciplinarity, and personalisation. Adapting to 21st century needs means revisiting each dimension and how they interact:

Knowledge - relevance required: Students’ lack of motivation, and often disengagement, reflects the inability of education systems to connect content to real-world experience. This is also critically important to economic and social needs, not only students’ wishes. There is a profound need to rethink the significance and applicability of what is taught, and to strike a far better balance between the conceptual and the practical. Questions that should be answered include: Should engineering become a standard part of the curriculum? Should trigonometry be replaced by more statistics? Is long division by hand necessary? What is significant and relevant in history? Should personal finance, journalism, robotics, and other new disciplines be taught to everyone - and starting in which grade? Should entrepreneurship be mandatory? Should ethics be re-valued? What is the role of the arts – and can they be used to foster creativity in all disciplines?

Skills – necessity for education outcomes: Higher-order skills (“21st Century Skills”), such as the “4 C’s” of Creativity, Critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and others are essential for absorbing knowledge as well as for work performance. Yet the curriculum is already overburdened with content, which makes it much harder for students to acquire (and teachers to teach) skills via deep dives into projects. There is a reasonable global consensus on what the skills are, and how teaching methods via projects can affect skills acquisition, but there is little time available during the school year, given the overwhelming amount of content to be covered. There is also little in terms of teacher expertise in combining knowledge and skills in a coherent ensemble, with guiding materials, and assessments.

“Character” (behaviours, attitudes, values) – to face an increasingly challenging world: As complexities increase, humankind is rediscovering the importance of teaching character traits, such as performance-related traits (adaptability, persistence, resilience) and moral-related traits (integrity, justice, empathy, ethics). The challenges for public school systems are similar to those for skills, with the extra complexity of accepting that character development is also becoming an intrinsic part of the mission, as it is for private schools.

Meta-Layer:  Essential for activating transference, building expertise, fostering creativity via analogies, establishing lifelong learning habits, and so on. It will answer questions such as: How should students learn how to learn? What is the role of interdisciplinarity? What is the appropriate sequencing within subjects and between subjects? How do we develop curiosity? How do we facilitate students’ pursuing of their own passions in addition to the standard curriculum? How do we adapt curricula to local needs?

So what is actually being done to ensure that our workforce is skilled for 21st century success and  to ensure that students are skilled, ready to work and contribute to society?

The global transformation, often called the "21st century skills" movement is helping move schools closer to learning designs that better prepare students for success in learning, work and life. The OECD Skills Strategy is responding to this by shifting the focus from a quantitative notion of human capital, measured in years of formal education, to the skills people actually acquire, enhance and nurture over their lifetimes. My hope is that schools, universities and training programs will become more responsive to the workforce and societal needs of today, and students will increasingly focus on growing and applying essential 21st century skills and knowledge to real problems and issues, not just learning textbook facts and formulas.

This will raise levels of creativity and innovation, and provide better  skills , better jobs, better societies, and ultimately better lives.

Links:
21st Century Skills – Learning for Life in our Times, by Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel, Wiley.
Center for Curriculum Redesign

Photo credit: Finger smileys / Shutterstock

Starting Strong: The people helping to raise young children

by Kelly Makowiecki
Assistant to the Early Childhood Education and Care Project, Directorate for Education

For my generation, the concept of a stay-at-home parent seems like something of the past. And even if you want to stay home for the first few years of your child’s life, who can afford not to work these days? So what are kids up to during those precious, formative early years after their parents go back to work and before compulsory school begins around age 5 or 6? At some point, a lot of them enter into a formal education or care setting and are the responsibility of someone other than their family.

Who are the people we turn to for help in the immensely important role of raising our young children? And can we value them as much as we depend on them?

That’s difficult to judge when, for starters, the early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce consists of a wide variety of actors with an equally wide range of qualifications.  Those working as preschool/kindergarten teachers tend to have higher qualification requirements than those working in child care centres or family day care: the former usually need a university degree, while the latter sometimes only need to complete compulsory education. But in countries like Japan and Portugal, the same university-level qualification is required for both job types.

Maybe they’ve completed a 4-year teacher training programme or have a vocational degree in child care. Maybe they have prior learning or work experience that was converted into credits towards an ECEC certification, which is popular in countries like the Netherlands and New Zealand. No matter the pathway taken into the profession, professionals need to be equipped with the knowledge and skills that enable them to foster a high-quality pedagogic environment conducive to favourable cognitive and social outcomes for children.

So perhaps more important than the qualification level itself is the content of the training required to obtain the qualification. When entrusting a child with a childcare professional, we expect them to know about how children develop and learn. We want them to be trained in nurturing children’s perspectives and responding to their needs. Such skills ensure that kids are provided with the strong start they deserve.

Thanks to a growing body of research, the importance of high-quality ECEC is increasingly apparent. Academic institutions all over the world have or are developing programmes of study in this field. Governments are investing in recruiting better trained staff and undertaking campaigns to raise the profile of the profession. Employers are encouraging their staff to pursue ongoing training to fill in knowledge gaps and maintain their professional quality.

Are these endeavours cheap? No. Are they worth it? Yes. The ECEC workforce is on the front line of helping to ensure that young children develop the skills they need to be successful in compulsory school and beyond. School failure and its social costs later in life can be far more expensive.

The OECD has been reviewing ECEC for well over a decade; and it is no wonder that improving workforce qualifications, training and working conditions has emerged as a policy priority across countries. To learn more, check out Starting Strong III: A quality toolbox for early childhood education and care, a new OECD publication to be launched at a Roundtable in Oslo, Norway on 23-24 January 2012.

Links:
For more information about OECD’s work on early childhood education and care (ECEC): www.oecd.org/edu/earlychildhood
Online quality toolbox for early childhood education and care: www.oecd.org/edu/earlychildhood/toolbox
Investing in high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) (PDF 1.79 MB)
OECD-Norway High-level Roundtable: Starting Strong: Implementing Policies for High Quality Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC)

Related blog posts:
Starting Strong: what should children learn?
Early childhood education: an international development issue

Photo credit: Microsoft

Starting Strong: what should children learn?

by Matias Egeland
Consultant, OECD Directorate for Education

In Norway, where I’m from, we believe children have the right to progress at their own speed, and enjoy a childhood of pleasure and freedom. The fundamental idea, shared by several Nordic countries, is that childhood is the time to have fun, as opposed to being in school (or anything resembling school for that matter). Admittedly, this sounds very nice, if not a bit idealistic.

While it is important for children to be just children, the early years are also especially formative and important for children to develop skills and competencies . The importance and value of good quality care and education for children is becoming increasingly clear, and have shown to impact things as diverse as creativity and life-time earnings.

As the early years represent a crucial chance to shape and impact children and their future development, the key question is which traits and abilities do we want children to acquire and harness?

The curricula that shape and guide early childhood programmes have traditionally been divided between those seen to focus on “academic” learning in specific subject areas, and those seeking a “comprehensive” approach more focused on children’s social development. The Nordic take on child care has tended towards that of the “comprehensive” approach.

The countries that tend to favour an “academic” approach usually see the child as  a young person to be formed, the child presenting an investment for society. They try to centre curricula on what is considered “useful” learning. However, what actually is “useful” for children to learn should be given some thought.

The “soft” skills favoured in a “comprehensive” approach such as self-confidence, creativity, independence and initiative are useful beyond giving children a happy childhood. Indeed, these personality traits are important for making children capable life-long learners. Initial knowledge of geography is likely not as important as confidence and willingness to learn for later academic success. For example self-control and attentional control are found to be a stronger predictor for school readiness than IQ and entry level reading or math. Moreover, these traits are proving increasingly important for later labour market success.

Soft skills that can be fostered in the early years are not just useful, they are also important from an equity perspective. They can play a key role in evening out the gap between children who are less likely to develop confidence and emotional control in their home setting. A US study showed that children from professional families experience around six positive verbal interactions (affirmations or encouragements) for each negative one (prohibitions, being told off, etc.). In contrast children in families on welfare experience two negative interactions for each positive one. Furthermore, as the Economist put it in a recent article: “the qualities that employers in the service sector want are those the middle classes acquire at home: articulacy, confidence and smartness”.

Confidence and emotional control do not develop automatically, but can be facilitated by skilled professionals by focusing on children’s perspectives and through active use of play . What goes into the curricula that guide what children learn and do in a care or education setting is of great importance. The new OECD publication “Starting Strong III: A Quality Toolbox for Early Childhood Education and Care” states clearly that curriculum matters and lessons from the Nordic, and other, countries  suggest that focusing on the “child” and effectively using  play as a learning strategy can  benefit children's development. 

Starting Strong III will be launched in Oslo on January 24th. Having invested hugely in child care, revamped their curriculum and reformed their kindergarten staff education, the Norwegian minister of Education, Kristin Halvorsen, is hosting an OECD Roundtable on Early Childhood Education and Care. Ministers, policy-makers and stakeholders from across the world are coming together to address the challenges in achieving high-quality child care and education.


Links:
For more information about OECD’s work on early childhood education and care (ECEC): www.oecd.org/edu/earlychildhood
Investing in high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) (PDF 1.79 MB)
OECD-Norway High-level Roundtable: Starting Strong: Implementing Policies for High Quality Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC)

Photo credit: iStockphoto, Microsoft Partner