Are schools ready to join the technological revolution?

When it comes to technology, education seems stuck in the age of chalkboards. But at an international conference on technology in education, held in Qingdao, China, last week, I got the feeling that educators and education ministers might finally be ready to join the technological revolution.

Right now, at a moment when information and communication technologies are changing the way we live in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways, only around 37% of schools in Europe have high-end equipment and high-speed Internet connectivity, a figure which ranges from 5% in Poland to virtually 100% in Norway. But when asked, between 80% and 90% of school principals say that their schools are adequately equipped when it comes to computers and Internet connectivity – even principals in the many countries where the equipment is clearly substandard. So is technology not that important? Or are school leaders not aware of the potential of ICT to transform learning?

The situation is even more puzzling than that. PISA measured students’ digital literacy and the frequency and intensity with which students use computers at school (look out for the PISA report on digital technology in education to be published in September). One might think that the more students use computers at school, the better their digital skills. But in fact, the relationship is not so simple. Students who use computers moderately at school have somewhat better learning outcomes than students who rarely use computers; but students who use computers frequently at school do a lot worse, even after accounting for their socio-economic status and other background factors.

Put these data together and one can draw two conclusions:

One is that building deep, conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking requires intensive teacher-student interactions, and technology just distracts from this valuable human engagement.

Another is that we haven’t yet become good enough at the kind of pedagogies that make the most of technology; that adding 21st-century technologies to 20th-century teaching practices will just dilute the effectiveness of teaching. If students use smartphones to copy and paste prefabricated answers to questions, that’s surely not going to help them to become smarter. If we want students to become smarter than a smartphone, we need to think harder about the pedagogies we’re using to teach them.

Technology can amplify great teaching, but great technology cannot replace poor teaching. We also know from our TALIS survey that even in the best-performing school systems, teachers cite improving their ICT skills as the second most important priority for their professional development.

What can we take away from all this?

First, education is a personalised service, so technology can only go so far in improving learning outcomes.

Second, the impact of technology on education delivery remains suboptimal because we tend to overestimate the digital skills of both teachers and students, because of often naïve policy design and implementation strategies, because of a poor understanding of pedagogy, and because of the generally poor quality of educational software and courseware. Few children would choose to play a computer game of the same quality as the software that finds its way into many classrooms around the world.

What could we gain if we fixed these problems?

The most obvious gain would be to dramatically expand access to content. Why should students be limited to a textbook that was printed two years ago, and maybe designed ten years ago, when they could have access to the world’s best and most up-to-date textbook? Equally important, technology allows teachers and students to access specialised materials well beyond textbooks, in multiple formats, with little time and space constraints, as we saw at the Qingdao conference.

Second, technology provides great platforms for collaboration in knowledge creation, where teachers can share and enrich teaching materials. It can also make feedback to students, teachers and parents faster and more granular.

Third, technologies can support new, inquiry-based pedagogies that focus on learners as active participants. For example, we can enhance experiential learning, with remote and virtual labs, we can pursue project-based, hands-on and collaborative learning, and we could deliver more formative, real-time assessments. The conference in Qingdao displayed some interesting developments to that end, including highly interactive, non-linear courseware, based on state-of-the-art instructional design, sophisticated software for experimentation and simulation, social media to support learning and teaching communities, and using games for instruction.

But if we continue to dump technology on schools in a fragmented way, we won’t be able to deliver on any of these promises technology holds. Countries need to have a clear plan and build teachers’ capacity to make that happen; and policy makers need to become better at building support for this agenda.

Given the uncertainties that accompany all change, educators will always opt to maintain the status quo. If we want to mobilise support for more technology-rich schools, we need to become better at communicating the need and building support for change. We need to invest in capacity development and change-management skills, develop sound evidence and feed this evidence back to institutions, and back all that up with sustainable financing. Last but not least, it is vital that teachers become active agents for change, not just in implementing technological innovations, but in designing them too.

by Afif Shato

Links:

International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Post-2015 Education

PISA in Focus brief: Are boys and girls ready for the digital age?

Photo Credit: Digital classroom / @Shutterstock

Supporting social and emotional skills to balance our lives

by Andreas Schleicher 

Director, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

As we know from personal experiences, when we feel a deep sense of well-being we are far better able to absorb new information, take risks and be more responsible for our lives.  So don’t we want that for all our kids?  

But growing up is often quite a challenging period.  Ensuring that kids have a wide variety of skills to help them cope with some of life’s challenges may not always occur naturally. Sometimes they will need help in building social and emotional skills - which are the kind of skills involved in achieving goals, working with others and managing emotions. These skills play an indispensable role in all stages of life. Essentially, along with cognitive and learning abilities, it is equally important that our youth develop social and emotional skills in order to balance and ground their personalities and strengthen their characters. Some examples are: Perseverance, the ability to keep going when things get tough and rough (like when the sports teacher demands that you to run another 10 laps of the pitch and you’re already exhausted). Caring, the capacity to be kind to others and to be able to show and feel empathy (like supporting an upset friend by listening and comforting them irrespective of other priorities or personal time constraints). Self-esteem is being able to feel good and being proud of their personal achievements and comfortable with their physical appearances (regardless of any unpleasant comments from peers).

A new book launched today by the OECD, entitled Skills for Social Progress: The Power of Social and Emotional Skills, addresses the importance of these types of skills to enhance and balance our lives. This report confirms international research studies, which validate the need for a steady set of cognitive, social and emotional skill in order to succeed well in life. Fortunately, some of these skills are flexible and adjustable during the growing up years, allowing policy makers, teacher and parents the opportunities to provide the right kind of learning environments to support and nurture them. In the past, we often thought that these types of skills couldn’t be successfully quantified, but fortunately this report demonstrates that they can be measured meaningfully, within cultural and linguistic boundaries. Additionally, the OECD is going to develop more measures and an international comparative framework, in order to better grasp youth’s current and future needs for social and emotional skills. So this report augments the reflection on how future policies could best encourage and nurture the development of social and emotional skills, of course, working hand in hand with parents and teachers. 

Not surprisingly, we need a wide range of diverse skills to contribute to the economy, support better social outcomes and build more unified and tolerant societies. Cognitive abilities such as literacy and problem-solving remain crucial. But, people with strong social and emotional foundation skills thrive better in a highly dynamic labour market and rapidly changing world.  Investing in these skills will be central to addressing numerous socio-economic challenges, and for ensuring prosperous, healthy, engaged, responsible and happy citizens.

Links:

Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) 

Skills for Social Progress: The Power of Social and Emotional Skills  

Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives: A Strategic Approach to Skills Policies 

Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) 

Photo credit: Little Girl Climbing Rock Wall / @Shutterstock

Spoiled for choice?

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

Would you rather choose where to send your child to school or have the decision made for you based on where you live? Many parents would rather choose, in the belief that with choice comes the chance of getting a better education for their child. But results from PISA find that education systems do not necessarily benefit as a result.

As this month’s PISA in Focus explains, where parents can choose the school that their children attend, socio-economically disadvantaged parents can end up choosing the best school among a more limited set of choices than more affluent parents; as a result, the benefits of school choice may not accrue to the same extent to disadvantaged students as to their more advantaged peers. And if affluent families are more likely to opt out of the neighbourhood school than poorer residents of the same area, competition may increase socio-economic segregation in schools.

To understand how school choice works in practice, PISA asked parents to rate the importance of different criteria for choosing a school for their children, from “not important at all” to “very important”. Among the list of 11 possible criteria given to parents, one is directly related to the quality of teaching and learning (“The academic achievements of students in the school are high”), but only a minority of parents rated this as “very important” (except in Korea, where 50% of parents did).

Three of the criteria for school choice listed in the parent questionnaire are related to direct or indirect monetary costs (“the school is a short distance from home”; “expenses are low”; “the school has financial aid available”). For more affluent parents, these cost-related factors weigh less than the quality of instruction in their choice of schools, as shown by the proportion of parents who rate the different criteria as “very important”. But in 10 out of the 11 countries and economies that distributed the parent questionnaire, disadvantaged parents tend to choose their children’s school as much on the basis of cost-related factors as on the quality of instruction. These data therefore suggest that parents of different socio-economic status do not seek the same information about schools before choosing one; and even if they have information about the quality of instruction, it may not be the deciding factor.

PISA results also show that, on average across countries, school competition is not related to better mathematics performance among students. In systems where almost all 15-year-olds attend schools that compete for enrolment, average performance is similar to that in systems where school competition is the exception.

What this means is that school choice may actually spoil some of the intended benefits of competition, such as greater innovation in education and a better match between students’ needs and interests and what schools offer, by reinforcing social inequities at the same time.

Links:
PISA 2012 Findings
PISA in Focus No. 42 : When is competition between schools beneficial?
OECD PISA for Parents Facebook page
Photo credit: Set of colorful lockers  / @Shutterstock 

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.

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

How did the smartest kids in the world get that way?

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

Last week, students, teachers and parents in New York State were stunned to learn that not even one in three third-through-eighth graders passed the new, state-wide English and math exams – tests aligned with the effort now underway in the United States to foster deep analytical and problem-solving skills and introduce more rigorous standards, known as the Common Core, into the country’s education system. While most US states have adopted the Common Core, disappointing first results are dampening enthusiasm for the reform: some states have already stopped rolling out the new exams, citing cost concerns.

I can think of one person who probably isn’t surprised by either the test scores or the resultant sulky foot-dragging to implement reforms: journalist and author Amanda Ripley.  In her new book, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way, published today in the United States by Simon and Schuster, Ripley sets the scene for what is turning out to be a battle for the soul of US education. Using PISA 2009 results as the backbone of her story, Ripley sets out to find out why it is that American students are falling behind their contemporaries in countries that aren’t as wealthy or innovative as the United States. “PISA could not tell me how those countries got so smart, or what life was like for kids in those countries, day in and day out, compared to life in America,” she acknowledges. So with three American teenagers as her guides, she explores the human dimension of PISA results: what school is really like for students in Finland, Korea (two PISA top performers) and Poland (a rapidly improving PISA participant).

She follows 15-year-old Kim from rural Oklahoma to Pietarsaari, Finland, where the American exchange student learns first-hand what the Finnish word sisu (roughly translated: strength in the face of great odds, and then some) really means; she follows 18-year-old Eric, a high school graduate who also completed the demanding International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, from suburban Minnesota to Korea, where he planned to spend a year experiencing the “pressure-cooker” of that country’s education system; and she follows Tom, 17, a voracious reader from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to Poland (“[he wanted] to live somewhere where people knew the names Dostoyevsky and Nabokov”) to discover how one country could come so far so fast.

In lively, accessible prose, Ripley paints a warts-and-all picture of both the “education superpowers” and the failing American education system, and discovers the solution to the “mystery” of effective education. It involves rigor (“The problem with rigorous education was that it was hard”), learning how to learn – and recover – from failure (“’Success,’ as Winston Churchill once said, ‘is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm’”), and parents who are involved in their children’s education, not so much by being active in parent-teacher associations or coaching a sports team, but by reading to their young children every day and talking with their older children about their day or about what’s going on in the world. “They let their children make mistakes and then get right back to work. They teach them good habits and give them autonomy,” Ripley observes.

Regular readers of the educationtoday blog, PISA in Focus, or the PISA initial reports will be familiar with most of the data and some of the conclusions in The Smartest Kids in the World. But Ripley’s book looks at the data from a new perspective: that of the students who are the beneficiaries -- or victims -- of their countries’ education systems. Those stunned parents and teachers in New York State and elsewhere would do well to read this book first if they are inclined to blame their children’s/students’ poor results on a new test.

Links:   
OECD PISA for Parents
Videos on Finland and Korea as part of the Strong Performers, Successful Reformers video series
 Photo credit: Evaluation symbol  / @Shutterstock

Earmarking Justice

by Justine Doody
Freelance Journalist and Editor, SGI News

In his State of the Union address on 12 February 2013, US President Barack Obama proposed a new initiative to improve access to high-quality early childhood education. The action is much needed: according to OECD figures from 2010, only 51 per cent of US children were enrolled in pre-primary education at age three, rising to 69 per cent at age four.

By comparison, in New Zealand, which became in 1986 the second country in the world to have its ministry of education take responsibility for early childhood education, 95 per cent of children in 2012 had been through an early childhood education programme before starting school at five years old.

Early childhood education is linked to improved prospects for future learning and employment. And, as the new Intergenerational Justice Index (IJI) study from the Bertelsmann Foundation's Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) project shows, it can help to level the playing field in terms of allocating resources fairly between older and younger generations.

As demographic changes lead to ageing populations in many OECD countries, the increased weight of older people in voting systems means they have more power than ever before to direct policy preferences. So, more than ever, it is important that countries take steps to ensure their policies provide future generations with at least the same chances that their parents and grandparents had.

Estonia Ranks Top, the United States Bottom

To find out which countries best provide for younger and future generations, SGI's Intergenerational Justice Index (IJI) measured OECD countries on several indicators: ecological footprint, child poverty, public debt per child and spending bias towards older generations.

The best performing country, SGI found, was Estonia, while New Zealand achieved a creditable fourth place. The United States ranked bottom of all the 29 countries studied, followed by Japan and Italy. If these countries do not change their current policy directions, their young people will grow up facing burdens of injustice, in terms of public debt, ecological degradation, and social immobility, that will be difficult, if not impossible, to overcome.

IJI offers policy recommendations that could help to shift the balance and help countries to improve their levels of intergenerational justice. The study suggests intergenerational earmarking as a way to rebalance public spending towards the young. Revenues raised in addressing one form of intergenerational justice, for example, environmental taxes, could be used to mitigate other areas of injustice, for instance by offering child tax credits or family allowances.

Proxy Votes for Children Could Foster Intergenerational Justice

Another interesting, albeit potentially controversial, recommendation is the introduction of proxy voting for children. Parents would be given the right to vote on behalf of their children, with a child's vote equalling one-half of an adult vote. In this way, children would be given a voice in politics, and parents would be rewarded for their societal contribution.

High-quality early childhood education is especially important. Research has found that children who participate in early childhood programmes are more likely to graduate from high school, hold down jobs, and earn more money. They are less likely to find themselves on state welfare or to go to prison.

The experience of high-quality early childhood education particularly benefits children from disadvantaged backgrounds, which means that providing early childhood programmes could work as a corrective social justice measure as well as an intergenerational rebalancing.

In New Zealand, beginning in 2007, three-year-olds were offered two free years of pre-school. Children attend programmes for 20 hours a week, 48 weeks of the year. The government hopes that by 2016, 98 per cent of children will receive early childhood education.

But despite this excellent record, there are concerns about the programme's future. Education unions complain that funding cuts are affecting the quality of early childhood education. Recently, the word 'free' was removed from the government strategy; now, almost half of early childhood education providers, hit by increasing costs and lower subsidies, are asking for extra fees from parents. Shifting costs onto parents could limit the availability of high-quality education for disadvantaged families.

Prospects for the US Seem Bleak

The US government says that in the United States, only 3 in 10 four-year-olds have access to high-quality early childhood education programmes. Socio-economically disadvantaged children are least likely to be in early childhood education programmes: just 59 per cent of the poorest US children are in pre-kindergarten, as compared to 90 per cent of children from wealthier homes. The president's programme is to implement free access to high-quality pre-school for all four-year-olds from families at or below 200 per cent of the poverty line.

To receive federal funding, states would have to meet strict requirements. All teachers must have a bachelor’s degree and be given access to on-going professional development. Teachers’ salaries should be comparable to those for teachers in higher levels of the education system. Class sizes should remain small and activities should cover the entire school day. Curricula should measure up to state standards and programmes must be continuously evaluated. As it stands, few states would be able to meet these strict standards and qualify for federal money.

However, it is unclear how the US programme would be financed. The president’s 2014 budget proposal includes a plan to pay for universal preschool by increasing taxes on cigarettes, which could have positive public health outcomes as well as providing a revenue stream for the programme. But even if the tax succeeded in getting past the vested interests that would oppose it, such “sin taxes” have diminishing returns over time, raising questions about future funding.

Any new federal funding is supposed to be matched by state funding. But because of budget constraints, many states have already cut funding for their existing early childhood education programmes, casting doubt on their willingness to provide more dollars for a new federal initiative.

And the larger, on-going struggle between those who wish to cut government spending in the name of austerity and those who favour Keynesian expansion seems to be resolving itself in favour of the budget-cutters.

So, even in the face of the overwhelming evidence that early childhood education has economic benefits that go beyond the moral claims of social and intergenerational justice, the future of the US initiative is uncertain. Absent new will to act from both sides of the US political divide, the prospects for the United States improving its dismal rating on intergenerational justice seem bleak.

Links
Find out more on OECD work on Early Childhood Education and Care
Education at a Glance 2012
Starting Strong; Starting Strong II; Starting Strong III
Doing Better for Families
Photo credit: Bulb idea with human hand / Shutterstock

Grade expectations

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills 

They’re a source of both anxiety and pride, but school marks can also have long-term consequences for students. Most teachers reward student achievement, but also the skills, attitudes, habits and behaviours that are necessary for lifelong learning. However, as this month’s PISA in Focus  points out, the tendency of teachers to award higher marks to girls and socio-economically advantaged students than to boys and disadvantaged students – even if they perform equally well in school and have similar positive attitudes towards learning – is cause for some concern.

Marks help to promote student learning by informing students about their progress, alerting teachers about their students’ needs, and certifying the degree to which students have mastered the tasks and competencies valued by teachers and schools. Schools and teachers recognise this: more than 95% of students in the countries and economies that participated in PISA 2009 – except Korea – attend a school that measures student achievement through teacher-prepared tests, student portfolios or student projects. In most cases, students receive feedback on these assessments in the form of school marks.

As PISA results show, few countries and economies share the same marking schemes; in fact, even schools within a country may have different ways of marking. In addition, different education systems establish their own ways of informing students that they have failed a class or an assessment. In some countries, the marking scheme allows for only one possible value for failing. This means that students who fail do not know how far they are from meeting the passing criteria. This is the case in Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Serbia and the Slovak Republic. Other countries establish the passing mark somewhere in the middle of the marking scale, which gives students some idea of how far they are from passing. In Ireland, for example, the grading scale ranges from 0 to 100, but only scores below 40 are considered unsatisfactory or failing. In some countries, such as Austria, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic, the remaining values on the marking scale reflect the quality of the passing mark in clear and distinct labels, such as “sufficient”, “good”, “very good” and “excellent”; meanwhile Belgium (Flemish Community), Italy and Ireland use a wider array of numeric values (e.g. 50 to 100, 10 to 20 or 6 to 10).  Analyses suggest that countries and economies that have a grading system with a limited number of values and use labels that refer to clear categories of achievement (e.g. “sufficient”, “good”, “very good”, “excellent”) can better differentiate students’ performance.

Students often base their expectations of further education and careers on the marks they receive in school; and school systems use marks to guide their selection of students for academically oriented programmes and, later, for entry into university. So whenever teachers reward – or punish – certain student characteristics that are unrelated to learning they may inadvertently shape a student’s future according to factors that have nothing to do with the student’s abilities, talents and personal goals.

That’s why it’s a good idea for school systems to promote marking practices that reward the behaviours and attitudes that help students to learn – so that more students can make the grade.

Links:
For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No. 26: Grade Expectations
Grade Expectations: How Marks and Education Policies Shape Students' Ambitions 
Photo credit: Test score sheet / Shutterstock

2much 2handle? Schools, social networks, and cyber bullying

by Tracey Burns
Analyst and Project Leader,  Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

“I’m really worried but I don’t know how to react” my friend told me over coffee the other day. Her daughter, 11, had told her that she was being bullied online, but would not say by whom.

“What can I do? And how do I know if it’s serious or not?”

A just released OECD publication looks at how rapid technological development has changed the way we interact with each other and our communities. Despite the enormous potential of the Internet to reshape our world, there is a downside to infinite connectivity. Internet fraud, privacy concerns and identity theft are all part of the online world. For parents and children, worries about cyber bullying and protecting children from explicit content and online predators are crucial.

Cyber bullying occurs when a child, preteen or teen is threatened, harassed, or embarrassed by another young person using the Internet. A number of high–profile tragedies, for example teens who committed suicide as a result of cyber bullying, have brought this topic to the top of policy, education, and parental agendas. However the extent of cyber bullying is hard to estimate, varying from more than 10% of surveyed internet users aged 9 16 years in Australia, Estonia, Denmark, Sweden and the Russian Federation to between 2- 3%, in Italy, Portugal and Turkey. While cyber bullying is worrisome, bullying offline is still reported to be more common.

Interestingly, the bully and victim roles are often interchangeable and related: those who admitted bullying others were more likely to report being bullied themselves, both online and offline. Guides to protecting Internet users make it clear that the best preventive strategies involve awareness, constant vigilance, and keeping an open dialogue about children’s concerns and online lives. For education, this poses a series of tough questions. What responsibilities do educators have in monitoring student’s time online during school hours? How can different parental standards of safety be accommodated?

The advent of cyber bullying is just one example of technological changes sweeping OECD countries. Trends Shaping Education 2013 looks at 14 of these trends and their possible impact on education, including:

• Social networking: Founded in 2004, Facebook had over 1 billion active users by September 2012. Should schools see social network sites as an opportunity to extend the learning process/experience beyond the classroom?
• Increasing diversity of local content: Since the mid 2000s the diversity of languages on the Internet has increased dramatically. There are now over 250 languages online, with English, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish comprising the top five. Does local diversity of Internet content lead to better or worse quality of information available for students?
• The evolution of the Internet: In January 2009, there were 15 000 downloadable applications, or “apps” available. By September 2012, this figure had grown to over 1.5 million. Is there a market for educational apps to improve learning in the classroom and extend it beyond?

The transformation of the Internet is felt throughout the entire world, including the poorest regions. Trends Shaping Education 2013 provides a powerful snapshot of these trends and links these data to the evolution of our classrooms and schools. How can educators develop their students’ critical capacity to use and contribute to the wealth of information available at the click of a button? What kind of quality control should we expect from e-learning? How can teachers make the best use of ICTs for teaching and learning?

These are just some of the questions we must ask ourselves when planning for the medium and long term of technology in our education systems. Our world is changing. The question is: are our schools evolving too?

Links:
Trends Shaping Education 2013

This is the second of a series of blogs issued for the release of Trends Shaping Education 2013. You can find the first one here:
The weight of nations: the shape of things to come?

Photo credit: Cyber bullying concept/ Shutterstock.com

The weight of nations: the shape of things to come?

by Tracey Burns
Analyst and Project Leader, Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

At lunchtime, Marco can be found in the bathroom stall of his secondary school. He is not ill. Rather, he is eating his lunch away from the eyes of his peers, sensitive to his weight problem and hoping to avoid being teased and targeted by bullies. Like many obese children, he struggles with poor self-esteem, anxiety, and depression.

Growing affluence has had positive influences on the health of OECD citizens. Less premature death and infant mortality, and longer and healthier lives have all been associated with our increased economic well being. But, does affluence lead to indulgence? A just released OECD publication shows that obesity among adults and children threatens to grow into a severe public health crisis.

Across all countries, the average   Body Mass Index  (BMI) increased between 1980 and 2008. This trend is universal, and it is swift. In 1980, just under half of countries had an average BMI classified as “overweight”. By 2008, this figure had grown to 87% of countries, with Mexico and the United States at the top of the list. Only China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and Korea still fall within the “normal” range, but their averages are also on the rise. Given the speed and uniformity of the trend, it is not an exaggeration to label it an epidemic for OECD (and increasingly BRIC) countries.

What does this mean for education? Schools can teach reading and writing, but combatting obesity requires learning about healthy behaviours and tools for managing one’s body, including non cognitive skills such as impulse control. Reducing junk food in school cafeterias is a start, but challenging negative assumptions and stereotypes that can shape teacher and student expectations is crucial. On a practical level, even simple details like the size of desks, chairs, and yes, washrooms, will need to be rethought.

Rising obesity is just one example of profound changes sweeping OECD countries, trends that are shaping the way we live and the future of education. Trends Shaping Education 2013 looks at 70 of these, including:

• Aging populations and the need for lifelong learning to develop and reinforce skills across the lifespan;
• An increasing divide between the rich and the middle class and the role of education in reducing (or reinforcing) inequity;
• The growing number of single-person households and the role of schools in building a sense of community and combating alienation in urban environments;
• A decline in voter turnout and the role of schools and universities in fostering civic literacy.

It is astonishing just how universal these trends are. In 100 pages this book provides a powerful snapshot of globalisation at work and links this data to the evolution of our classrooms and schools. It captures the transformation of our societies, and asks hard questions about how these trends will affect our education systems and what they mean for teaching and learning.

What role can education and schools play in improving civic participation and well-being in our modern societies? What does it mean for education that our societies are becoming more diverse? How might schools continue to foster a greater sense of community for their students and families in urban environments? These are just some of the questions we must ask ourselves when planning the future of our education systems. Policy makers, school leaders, teacher educators, and teachers can and should take an active role in this critical reflection, as well as parents and students. Behind every graph in Trends Shaping Education 2013 there is a Marco (or Maria, or Stan) hidden from sight in school, waiting for the weekend to come.

Links:
Trends Shaping Education 2013
Obesity and the Economics of Prevention: Fit not Fat
Education and Social progress

Photo credit: Obesity in Children / Shutterstock.com

What you get out of schooling is often what you put in

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education 

Does having a positive attitude towards school make it more likely that a student will get good marks? Or does getting good marks make it more likely that a student will have a positive attitude towards school? The latest edition of PISA in Focus reports that the answer to both of those questions is yes: positive feelings about school are often linked in a virtuous circle with high performance. According to results from PISA 2009, across OECD countries, nearly nine out of ten students think that school has taught them things that could be useful in a job, and around three-quarters of students think that school has prepared them for adult life and has helped to give them confidence to make decisions. In most countries, students who think school is useful are more likely to have high PISA test scores in reading; and students who have high scores in reading tend to report that they think school is useful. In 48 countries and economies, those students who performed well in reading tended to report more positive attitudes towards school than those who had lower scores.

In all participating countries and economies, students’ positive attitudes towards schooling are related to positive attitudes towards their teachers and to their perceptions that the classroom environment is conducive to learning. In fact, these associations are mutually reinforcing: Students who have good relations with their teachers and who study in classes that are conducive to learning tend to think that school is useful – and their positive attitudes make the climate for learning at school even better.

Perhaps surprisingly, PISA also found that a student’s background or the type of school he or she attends is only weakly related to his or her attitudes towards schooling. In 21 participating countries and economies, socio-economically advantaged students tended to report more positive attitudes towards school, but the opposite was noted in nine countries and economies. And students attending private schools don’t necessarily have better attitudes towards school than public-school students: students in private schools tended to report more positive attitudes towards school than students in public schools in only nine of 49 countries and economies with comparable data.

In many countries, the one student characteristic that is associated with positive attitudes towards school is gender. In 28 of 65 participating countries and economies, girls tended to report more favourable attitudes towards school than boys (when the questions involved classroom atmosphere and various student and school characteristics were considered together). Only in Australia, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Kingdom did boys tend to report more positive attitudes towards school than girls.

While it’s a little difficult to pin down exactly what influences students’ attitudes towards school, results from PISA clearly show a link between positive attitudes towards school and good performance in reading, and between positive attitudes and an atmosphere in the classroom that is conducive to learning. This implies that, to a greater or lesser extent, students’ own attitudes towards school can shape the quality of their learning experiences.

Links:

For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/

PISA in Focus No. 22:How do immigrant students fare in disadvantaged schools? 

Photo credit:  Student showing thumbs up / Shutterstock

OECD Education Today… and tomorrow

by Barbara Ischinger
Director for Education

If you want to know what we’ve been doing over the past year or so, I invite you to take a look at the latest edition of Education Today 2013: The OECD Perspective. It covers the most important results and policy recommendations that have emerged from our work in early childhood education, compulsory schooling, higher education and lifelong learning. It also discusses such overarching topics as equity of opportunity, the benefits of education, and innovation.

When we think of innovation in education these days, we immediately think of technology: getting more computers into more classrooms, offering online courses to students in higher education. But as Education Today points out, while the industry for digital educational tools is growing, fewer than half of the specialised companies in that industry operate in the formal primary and secondary school sector. The report also notes that just because there are ICT devices in the classroom, it doesn’t mean that either teaching or learning strategies are changing. And while there are great expectations that online learning will attract those who have left – or have been left behind by – the education system, namely students from disadvantaged backgrounds or unmotivated students, so far there is no proof that this is happening.

New evidence (see the presentation by Patricia Kuhl here) shows that young children learn best when they make eye contact with their teachers – which means that they will never learn as much, or as well, sitting in front of a device. We’ve also found  that students’ attitudes towards using new technologies in school is far from what we might expect: they are more reluctant to use them than their image as “digital natives” suggests. And PISA  results show that the best-performing students are those who are motivated by their teachers.

What this evidence tells us is that no technology can replace the best teacher. But it also suggests that the best way to integrate new technologies into the classroom is to get the best teachers involved in developing the right pedagogical approaches to using them – and to include students in researching which strategies are the most effective. (This is how it’s done in Finland, a consistently high-performer in PISA.) New teaching approaches that incorporate these technologies should then be monitored and evaluated, and the results of those evaluations widely disseminated to avoid duplication of effort and begin promoting best practices. I plan to raise many of these issues in my keynote address to the LearnTec convention on “Future Learning” in Germany next month.

Looking further ahead, and towards potential lifelong learners, in late 2013 the OECD will oversee an Education and Skills Online Assessment that will help adults to identify their individual strengths and weaknesses in literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments. This assessment is linked to our Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), which will issue its first set of results in October 2013. The fact that the individual assessment will be conducted exclusively on line is an acknowledgement that the ability to read and navigate through digital texts is now essential if we want to participate fully in society. All the more reason – if any more were needed – to begin developing these skills today, in our youngest students, to give them one of the basic tools for learning throughout the rest of their lives.

Wishing you peace, prosperity and inspiration through learning…

For more information about OECD work on education:
www.oecd.org/edu

Photo credit: Little golden students with laptops /Shutterstock

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