Designing 21st century learning environments

by Marco Kools
Analyst, Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Innovation is a key element of today’s societies and economies, and that includes how we learn. Much has been written about innovation in education, but what does it really mean in practice in terms of content, organisation of learning, roles of teachers, etc.? How does one design a powerful learning environment that enables students to thrive in the 21st century?

The just released OECD publication Innovative Learning Environments responds to these challenging questions. This publication is based on the detailed analysis of 40 in-depth case studies of powerful 21st century learning environments (schools) that have taken the innovation journey. It presents a new framework for understanding these learning environments and is a valuable addition to the toolbox of those who believe in the value of innovation in education to ensure its central preoccupation – improve learning.

The analysis of these case studies shows that rethinking the four elements of the "pedagogical core" - learners, educators, content and resources - is fundamental to the innovation of any school or learning environment. Regarding content, innovative learning environments often seek to develop 21st century competences, as well as innovating specific knowledge domains or subject areas. Many of these practices go hand-in-hand with a more open and flexible use of space, informed by particular models of how learning should be organised. Here the aim is often to open up and “deprivatise” educational spaces, creating visibility and breaking down the close association between a particular learning space and a single teacher.

Innovating these core elements requires rethinking of the organisational patterns that deeply structure schools – the single teacher, the segmented classroom with that teacher, the familiar timetable structure and bureaucratic classroom units, and traditional approaches to teaching and classroom organisation. Many innovative learning environments for example use time more flexibly than is traditionally the case in schools. This flexibility often goes hand-in-hand with individualised learning plans where each learner may be working on something different, as well as with educational philosophies determined to make schooling less bureaucratic.

A key question for governments to consider therefore is what they can do to enable schools to become innovative learning environments, while meeting the requirements of public accountability. This is one of the key issues being investigated by the Innovative Learning Environment (ILE) project and its sister project Governing Complex Education Systems (GCES), which are activities of the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI).

The analysis of the case studies also shows how learning environments can become “formative organisations” through strong design strategies with corresponding learning leadership, evaluation and feedback, and how opening up to partnerships helps grow social and professional capital, and allows for sustaining renewal and dynamism.

The case studies further confirm and amplify our earlier research findings on learning, and what this means in practice (see The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice). In order to be most effective, learning environments should:
· Make learning and engagement central.
· Ensure that learning is social and often collaborative.
· Be highly attuned to learner motivations and emotions.
· Be acutely sensitive to individual differences.
· Be demanding for each learner but without excessive overload.
· Use assessments consistent with learning aims, with strong emphasis on formative feedback.
Ideally all of these principles should be met, not just a selected few.

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“Much has been written about learning environments, and about innovation but nowhere will you find such a deep and cogent portrayal of the key principles as in the OECD’s report, Innovative Learning Environments. Learners, pedagogical core, learning environments, partnerships, sustainability – it’s all captured in this remarkable volume.”
(Michael Fullan, OC, Professor Emeritus, OISE, University of Toronto)

“Everyone in education is talking about innovation. What is different here is that the best of what we know about learning is at the centre and is richly illustrated with real cases to answer the question, ‘What will this look like?’”
(Helen Timperley, Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland)

Links:

Centre for Educational Research and Innovation CERI
The Nature of Learning:Using Research to Inspire Practice
Innovative Learning Environment project 
Governing Complex Education Systems

Photo credits: Cover © Inmagine LTD.

Meet the typical student

by Ignacio Marin and Corinne Heckmann
Innovation and Measuring Progress division, Directorate for Education and Skills

With the new academic year beginning (in the Northern hemisphere at least), more than 23 million people across the OECD and G20 countries will be heading to university for the first time this year. As the latest Education Indicators in Focus brief shows, these new students will be a more diverse group than ever before – but some things don’t change.

Who are the average new entrants?

If you look at the averages, new entry students these days will be female, 22 years old, and about to embark on over four years of study in the social sciences. But these averages conceal wide variations between nations – in some countries such as Belgium, Japan and Indonesia, students still generally enter university straight from school, whereas in places like Iceland, New Zealand and Sweden the average age is over 25, with young people tending to spend time in the workforce before going on to full time study. Completion rates vary too. On average just 70% of students will graduate with a degree, with women more likely to succeed than men, but in Japan the graduation rate is over 90% while in Sweden and Hungary it’s less than half. Not that that necessarily means their education is wasted – some students drop out because they have already found a well-paying job. In Sweden and the United States, modular systems mean students can dip in and out of university and the labour market, gradually building up the credit for a degree.

Social sciences, not sciences
Social sciences, business and the law stand out as the most popular fields of study almost everywhere, except in Finland (where engineering heads the list), and Korea and Saudi Arabia where humanities are more popular. The non-social sciences lag behind, especially among women, with 39% of male students and just 14% of female ones choosing science-related fields. In Belgium and Japan the figure was just 5% for women and even in the best performing countries (Greece, Indonesia, Italy and Mexico) just 19% of female students went for the sciences. Among the men the spread was even wider: while 58% of male students in Finland chose science-related fields – including engineering, manufacturing and construction – in Argentina it was as low as 18%.

Widening access – up to a point
Access to higher education is widening everywhere, but particularly in the fast-growing G20 economies. China has now overtaken the United States in the number of university students with India taking third place. In OECD countries 60% of young people go to university – up from 39% just 15 years earlier and students are more likely than ever to go abroad for an education. But not all the barriers to tertiary education have been swept away. Coming from an educated background still makes young people almost twice as likely to enter university than the average – and in some places more than three times as likely. Much as things have changed, there’s still more to be done to give young people an equal start.

For more information
On this topic, visit: 
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators 
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm

Order in the classroom

by Marilyn Achiron 
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

There was a good reason why our teachers demanded our attention in class: it wasn’t about power; it was about performance – ours. As this month’s PISA in Focus shows, the disciplinary climate in schools is strongly related to student performance.

You might be surprised to learn that, according to the reports of students who participated in PISA 2009, most students in most PISA-participating countries and economies enjoy orderly classrooms. For example, across OECD countries, more than two out of three students reported that never or hardly ever is there noise and disorder in their classrooms. In some countries, classrooms are models of orderliness: fewer than one in ten students in Korea and Thailand reported that they cannot work well in class because of disruptions; and fewer than one in ten students in Japan, Kazakhstan and Shanghai-China reported that their teacher has to wait a long time for students to quiet down before they can begin class.

But orderly classrooms are not ends in themselves; they seem to be the preconditions for learning. In 55 countries and economies that participated in PISA 2009, students in schools where the classroom climate is more conducive to learning tend to perform better. True, schools with more positive disciplinary climates also tend to have other qualities that are related to better student performance. For example, the students in these schools generally come from more socio-economically advantaged backgrounds. Indeed, in 36 countries and economies, there is a positive relationship between schools’ disciplinary climate and the average socio-economic status of their students.

But PISA results show that even after accounting for the socio-economic status and other characteristics of both students and the schools they attend, including the educational resources available to the school, the way the school is governed, and how the school assesses the performance of its students and itself, in 31 countries and economies, schools with a more positive disciplinary climate tend to perform better. In other words, disciplinary climate is one of few school-level characteristics that show a significant positive relationship with performance consistently across countries. In fact, given the strong relationship between students’ socio-economic status and disciplinary climate, results from PISA suggest that a positive disciplinary climate in school can reduce the impact of a student’s socio-economic status on his or her performance. That is, in more orderly classrooms, students from all backgrounds have the same chances to succeed in their school work.

So maybe orderly classrooms really are, in the end, about power: about students being able to use their inherent power to seize opportunities to learn and work to realise their potential.

For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No.32: Do students perform better in schools with orderly classrooms?
Photo credit: Children in a classroom with a teacher/ @ Shutterstock

When life means school again

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress division, Directorate for Education and Skills

“Non scholae, sed vitae discimus” (after Seneca)

September’s here again. For millions of kids living in the northern hemisphere September means the end of summer vacation and the start of a new school year. For some of them it means an encounter with something they haven’t experienced before, for many others it is a return to already familiar routines. But for all of them school is going to be the place where they are going to spend the greater part of their young lives.

Children are starting school at an ever younger age,OECD’s recent Education at a Glance 2013 shows that in 2011 on average over 84% of all four year-old children were enrolled in some form of formal education, which is 5% more than in 2005. In 25 OECD countries at least half of three year-old children participated in early childhood education, and in countries such as Belgium, France, Iceland, Norway and Spain 95% or more found their way to their first educational institution.

At such very young ages the school doesn’t appropriate most of the time that one is awake, but things change at ages five or six when children move on to primary school. In 2011 intended instruction time for primary school pupils averages some 800 hours per year in OECD countries, but it exceeds 900 hours in Australia, Canada, Chile, Israel, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal. Slightly more than half of the time at primary school went to instruction in reading, writing, literature, math and science. For most of the time children are grouped in classes which are on average 21.2 pupils large. The trend of school days starting earlier and ending later is reinforced by the trend of smaller classes. In 2000 an average primary school class was  1.5 pupils bigger.

When moving on to lower secondary education (around age 12) the school experience intensifies again. Total intended instruction time now reaches 924 hours per year on average. Instruction now takes place in slightly bigger classes – 23.3 students on average (coming from 24.6 in 2000) – but the ratio of students to teachers drops from 15.4 in primary education to 13.6 in lower secondary education.

At the end of lower secondary education, when in most countries the age of compulsory education is reached, students have accumulated 7 751 hours of instruction in primary and lower secondary school. But many students naturally continue their school careers and move on to upper secondary education, to tertiary education or to some form of continuing education. 2011 enrolment patterns show that a five year-old  pupil can expect to have an average school career of more than 17 years of full-time and part-time education before the age of 40, but in Nordic countries where participation levels are high, an average school career extends over 19 years. In 2011, as a percentage of their age group, students counted for 84% between ages 15 and 19, and 28% between ages 20 and 29. Whereas in 2000 these figures were 76% and 22% respectively.

OECD societies have transformed into heavily scholarised societies, where school becomes important earlier in the life course, where children spend the major part of their time at school, where their educational experience is becoming more intensive,  where more young people stay on in education well beyond the age of compulsory education, and where average educational trajectories take longer than ever in human history. This trend is partly the outcome of public policies to improve the educational opportunities of populations, partly the result of families’ aspirations for better futures for their children. Public policies and private demand go hand-in-hand in producing more educated people. But – as PISA demonstrates – the amount of time appropriated by schools bears no strong relationship to the quality of skills with which young people have to confront the real world.

Links:
Education at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators: The book is now available
For more information: Education at a Glance : www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm
Photo credit: Schoolchildren at home time /@ Shutterstock