The OECD Tohoku School: Moving forward together

Interview with Kohei Oyama and Yoko Tsurimaki, Students of the OECD Tohoku School Project

During a break from the OECD Forum, two students (11th grade and 12th grade) from the OECD Tohoku School Project shared their learning experiences with Cassandra Davis and Meredith Lunsford of educationtoday. They began by explaining the student-designed OECD Tohoku School logo. Like many things in Japan, every element of the logo has a significant meaning. The 15 multi-coloured arrows piercing through the bull’s-eye represent the 15 regions of Japan touched by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 2011. Each arrow carries a unique colour to represent the individually diverse personalities that the respective regions hold. The tri-coloured rings surrounding the arrows represent the past, present and future of Japan. The most significant facet of the logo is the individual arrows pointing upwards from right to left, following Japanese calligraphy. This is meant to represent each region’s path reaching toward a common goal: to move forward together.

educationtoday: The OECD places a high value on student motivation, curiosity and creativity. In collaboration with the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and Fukushima University, there has been an importance placed on the idea of “creative recovery”. What does “creative recovery” mean to you? Why is “creative recovery” important (versus traditional forms of recovery and reconstruction)?

Kohei Oyama: There have been several types of recovery, with infrastructure being the basic component. But in Tohoku we have focused on creative recovery. We creatively think about the people affected by the tsunami and the futures that they seek. Then, we creatively think about how to draw people back into the impacted areas.

educationtoday: The OECD Tohoku School Project works through a series of project-based workshops which include lecturers, hands-on experiences and discussion. Has this project-based learning changed the way you learn? How?

Yoko Tsurimaki: What we do at the Tohoku School is different from a “regular” school in that we don’t follow a curriculum that is given to us by our teachers. Instead, we design the curriculum ourselves, we decide the best course of action to facilitate recovery and, then, we implement it.

educationtoday: What other Tohoku School derived methods can we use to foster creativity in order to facilitate recovery and reconstruction?

Kohei: The student-driven learning method used in the Tohoku School project is the best strategy for other schools to implement. The students have the freedom to decide what they want to learn and how they want to implement these ideas.

educationtoday: The students carrying out this project were anticipated to gain real-life skills such as initiative taking, leadership, critical thinking, co-operation and creativity. What are some of the skills that you learned through the Tohoku School project? What skills did you learn that you think will transfer into your real life? What skills do you imagine will be useful in your future career?

Kohei: The most important skill that I learned through this process is how to communicate effectively. Both inside the classroom and outside the classroom, communication is a necessity. If you have a great idea, you must still be able to communicate that idea to others in order to make it a reality. Otherwise, the idea will be lost through miscommunication.

Yoko: The most important skill I have learned is critical thinking. But, I have also learned so much about the differences in value systems inside and outside of Japan. Within Japan, there is increasing internationalisation and it is becoming more and more necessary for future generations to be able to communicate effectively with other people and other cultures.

educationtoday: Since the launch of the Tohoku School Project two and half years ago, the mission has been for the students to organise an international event here in Paris to show to the world the attractiveness and creative recovery of your country. What is the major achievement or the take away message from the Tohoku School?

Yoko: To be able to demonstrate how hard the junior high and high school students have worked. Through all of the ups and downs, we have persevered and accomplished what we set out to do.

Kohei: This journey has been like sailing on a ship. It wasn’t always easy and there have been many waves. However, if the ride had always been stable (like in school), we wouldn't have really learned the skills needed in real life situations, full of unexpected surprises! Instead, we have so much to take away from this experience.

As we concluded the interview, we were presented with t-shirts and bags that had been designed by the students of the Tohoku School. The appreciation of the OECD’s support on education and skills development in Japan is evidenced in the students’ answers to our questions as well as this meaningful gesture of gratitude.

Links:
OECD Tohoku School
OECD Forum
Japanese version of the OECD-Tohoku School website
Image: ©OECD Tohoku School

Arts education in innovation-driven societies

by Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin, Senior Analyst and Project Leader, Directorate for Education and Skill, and 
Ellen Winner, Professor and Chair of Psychology, Boston College

There is growing consensus that today’s economies require people who can contribute and adapt to innovation. In addition to strong technical skills, many international task forces on the future requirements of our societies have identified skills such as creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration as critical. Some even see the rise of a “creative class” as the driver of growth, and subject to a growing international competition for talent.

In this context, education systems have to equip students with the skills required for innovation societies, and some countries take this agenda very seriously.

Artists are role models for innovation in our societies, along with scientists and entrepreneurs, and thus it is not surprising that many see arts education as a means of developing skills critical for innovation. According to Arne Duncan, the US Secretary of Education, “education in the arts is more important than ever. In the global economy, creativity is essential. Today’s workers need more than just skills and knowledge to be productive and innovative participants in the workforce. […] To succeed today and in the future, America’s children will need to be inventive, resourceful, and imaginative. The best way to foster that creativity is through arts education”.

In a new OECD report, Art for Art’s Sake? The Impact of Arts Education, the extent to which arts education fosters skills such as critical and creative thinking, motivation, self-confidence, and the ability to communicate and cooperate effectively is assessed. The book also examines whether arts education has an impact on learning non-arts disciplines: reading, mathematics and science.

This kind of exercise typically reveals the scope of our ignorance, and indeed currently many intuitively plausible assumptions are not backed by any empirical evidence. However, a few interesting and robust findings emerged that deserve more attention from parents, teachers and policy makers.

Acquiring foundational skills, notably reading, writing and arithmetics, is a major objective for many countries. Over and over, the PISA study finds that too many 15-year olds have only a basic proficiency in text understanding.

Strong evidence shows that theatre education in the form of enacting stories in the elementary level classroom (classroom drama) strengthens verbal skills (reading, writing, text understanding, etc.). Unfortunately, this does not seem to be a prevalent school practice in many schools.

Music education also has a clear causal impact on verbal skills, probably via its facilitation of auditory skills: music training improves phonological skills, the ability to hear speech in a noisy environment, and there is preliminary evidence that it might facilitate foreign language learning.

What about creativity? And social and behavioural skills? Here we have much less evidence. There are a few studies linking enhanced creativity with theatre and dance education, but their limited number as well as their correlational designs make it impossible to draw causal conclusions. There is also no more than tentative evidence regarding the impact of arts education on behavioural and social skills such as self-confidence, self-concept, motivation, communication and cooperation, empathy, perspective taking and the ability to regulate one’s emotions. Initial evidence concerned with education in dramatic art appears the most promising, with a few studies revealing that drama classes enhance empathy, perspective taking, and emotion regulation – plausible findings given the nature of such education.

Don’t misread these findings. The lack of evidence does not imply a lack of impact. We find very plausible the assumption that different forms of arts education have an impact on creativity, critical thinking and attitudes. For example, Studio Thinking 2 shows that visual arts teachers at their best promote reflection, meta-cognition and other creative habits of mind. They do so by teaching students to evaluate their own works and those of their peers, and asking students to talk about their working process. Research is now called for to test whether students in arts classes actually develop these habits of mind.  Other disciplines could learn from arts education how to nurture innovation-friendly habits of mind.

The impact of arts education on non-arts skills and on innovation in the labour market should not be the primary justification for arts education in today’s school curricula. Students who gain mastery in an art form may discover their future career or a lifetime passion. For all children, the arts allow for a different way of understanding than, let us say, the sciences. Arts education allows students to express themselves freely and to discover, explore and experiment. They also give them a safe place to introspect and find personal meaning. In this respect, the arts are important in their own rights for education.

Nevertheless, Art for Art’s Sake? shows that one way to foster skills for innovation societies may well be through the arts, as Arne Duncan put it.

Links:
Arts for Art’s Sake? The Impact of Arts Education, by Ellen Winner, Thalia Goldstein and Stéphan Vincent­Lancrin
Art for Art’s Sake? Overview
Kunst um der Kunst Willen? Ein Überblick
CERI Innovation Strategy for Innovation and Training
Art for Art’s Sake? A gift to philanthropists and policymakers, OECDInsights
Photo credit:Cover © Violette Vincent.

Evaluation and assessment is for everyone

by Deborah Nusche and Claire Shewbridge
Analysts, Directorate for Education and Skills

Some may ask if all the time, money and effort invested in evaluation and assessment is worth it. The terms evaluation and assessment may strike fear into the hearts of some students, teachers and parents. Are they not just a way to control and constrain what goes in the classroom? Is this just not more unnecessary work for us? What on earth do they have to do with student learning?

A three-year comprehensive review of evaluation and assessment approaches around the world was brought to its grand finale in Oslo last week. The idea of the international meeting was for the OECD to put its own advice into practice: after conducting a major review of policies, do not put the results on a shelf but put them to good use. Bring stakeholders together, discuss the results of the evaluation exercise, and identify strategies to go forward. Already, over the past three years, countries that were reviewed by the OECD have done this on a national level and the results have been pretty impressive.

The main purpose of the OECD’s review was to investigate how these could be embedded in teaching and learning processes themselves, to improve student learning and give helpful information for all those involved:

Students need to be clear about what they are aiming to learn and how they can evaluate their own progress. Engaging students as active participants in assessment will help them develop capabilities in analysing their own learning and becoming self-directed learners. The representative of the European School Student Unions said it very clearly at the conference: Students do not want to be ‘passive objects’ of evaluation and assessment, they want to be actively involved, not just in their own assessment, but also in the evaluation of their teachers and schools.

Teachers also need assessment information that is reliable and consistent across schools in order to understand student strengths and weaknesses in relation to expected standards, to target future teaching and improve classroom instruction. They need feedback on their own performance to guide their professional and career development, and they should contribute to the self-evaluation of their schools.

School leaders can use school self-evaluation processes to steer whole-school improvement and provide accountability information to their communities, employers and the educational administration.

Parents typically want to know how their children are doing and how schools are helping them achieve. Providing evaluation and assessment information to parents is key to building strong school-home partnerships and can facilitate school choice.

Policy makers need aggregated information to monitor the performance of schools and education systems and ensure that national education goals are met and society at large also needs credentials about the quality of education and the achievement of standards in the education system.

Bringing the pieces together 
But if so many actors within the education system are involved in designing and using assessment and evaluation, is there not a risk that too many cooks spoil the broth? Most countries have a whole range of provisions for student assessment, teacher appraisal and school evaluation that have developed quite independently of each other. A key concern is to bring all these pieces together in a coherent framework to create synergies for learning. The OECD Review gives some ideas on how to do so:

• Take a comprehensive approach: All the components of assessment and evaluation – student assessment, teacher appraisal, school evaluation, school leader appraisal and education system evaluation - should form a coherent whole. This will generate synergies, avoid duplication and prevent inconsistency of objectives.
• Align evaluation and assessment with educational goals: Evaluation and assessment should align with the principles embedded in educational goals. 
• Focus on improving classroom practices: To optimise the potential of evaluation and assessment to improve what is at the heart of education – student learning – policy makers should promote the regular use of evaluation and assessment results for improvements in the classroom.
• Build consensus: Ensure that all the stakeholders are involved early and understand the benefits. 
• Place students at the centre: Students should be fully engaged with their learning and empowered to assess their own progress. The development of critical thinking and social competencies should also be monitored.

Links:
OECD Review on Evaluation and Assessment Frameworks for Improving School Outcomes
Synergies for Better Learning: An International Perspective on Evaluation and Assessment
Photo credit: © AKS - Fotolia.com

Creativity in schools: what countries do (or could do)

by Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin
Senior Analyst and Project Leader, Directorate for Education

Are we really serious when we say that schools should nurture creativity and other skills for innovation? An increasing number of countries see fostering of creativity and critical thinking as the next educational challenge: traditional good grades may no longer suffice to equip the workforce with the skills needed to fuel innovation-driven economic growth.

The recent international OECD-CCE-Singapore workshop gave 30 education decision-makers from 12 countries the opportunity to share the lessons from Asian educational initiatives aiming to foster pupils’ creativity and critical thinking. While most of these initiatives build on project-based, research-based, and other active pedagogies, some start to use design thinking methods to scaffold the learning of innovation skills.

Singapore and Korea are two good examples of countries emphasising creativity, critical thinking and character building in their curricula. Since 2009, Korea expects its schools to foster creativity as part of quality subject-based learning – but also to devote almost 10% of overall school time to projects and other transversal activities that foster creativity. As for Singapore, their “Desired Outcomes of Education” include critical and inventive thinking as well as social and emotional competences. At the end of secondary school, among other things students are expected to be “resilient in the face of adversity”, “innovative and enterprising” as well as “able to think critically and communicate persuasively”.

A visit at Haig Girls’ School in Singapore showed that this is more than just words. Creativity and innovation are at the heart of the project of this elementary school. Teachers have developed common criteria to monitor their students’ progress in “critical thinking” and in “creative and inventive thinking”. Students also assess themselves and their peers by answering questions such as “I am able to brainstorm multiple ways to reach a solution” (critical thinking) or “I am able to connect ideas in an interesting and creative manner to create a unique idea” (creative thinking).

Among its multiple projects, the school also asks pupils to engage in genuine innovation activities. After a long collective brainstorming, a small group of pupils has imagined and prototyped an inventive way of closing an umbrella—a useful invention in a country where it rains almost every other day. Why use two hands to fold your umbrella and risk one of them getting wet when you could do it with just the one hand holding the handle? To keep you dry and speed up the closing process, the girls have replaced the press-stud on the small band that is generally rolled around the fabric to fasten the umbrella tight with a magnet. The magnet is heavy enough to make the band twist around the pole before adhering to the magnetic frame and keeping the fabric tight. Ingenious, no?

Including creativity and other skills for innovation in national curricula is a helpful starting point for them to be taken seriously in school. The next step is to also formally assess these skills. Singapore and Korea have thus changed their national exams and assessments to incentivise teachers and students to pay due attention to them in their teaching and learning.

Prototype tool for assessing pupils’ creativity in schools

Could we develop simple formative assessment tools to help teachers and students to pay more attention to habits of minds conducive to creativity in the school context? A recent OECD working paper,  “Progression in student creativity in school”, reveals how assessment helps specify and clarify what creativity really means, especially as there are many different views about what it is. A prototype tool for assessing pupils’ creativity in school maps the dispositions of creative habits of minds along 5 dimensions: inquisitive; persistent; imaginative; collaborative; disciplined (each dimension including 3 sub-dispositions). The findings of two field trials in English schools show that the assessment tool led teachers to be more precise and confident in developing their pupils’ creativity, and learners to be better able to understand what creativity entails and to record evidence of their progress. Such tools are an important step to raise daily awareness of skills in thinking and creativity and see them materialise in school learning.

While the journey ahead is still long, it is encouraging to see countries taking action and starting to share the tools and lessons that will eventually make all students and teachers reach the promised land.

Links:
For further information on CERI Innovation Strategy for Education and Training, please visit our webpage: www.oecd.org/edu/innovation
The following working papers should be of interest:
• Progression in student creativity in school: first steps towards new forms of formative assessment by Bill Lucas, Guy Claxton and Ellen Spencer
• Assessment and Innovation in Education by Janet Looney
• Bringing about curriculum Innovation by Kiira Kärkkäinen
View our video of Howard Gardner discussing creativity and 21st Century education as well as his interview.
Summary reports and presentations on education for innovation can also be found in our conference webpage.
Diagram: Lucas, Claxton and Spencer (2013)
Photo credit: Shutterstock / Girl with umbrella