A report from the Brookings Institution uses international examples to make the case for the importance of “21st century skills” as goals for education systems. It focuses specifically on the development of new assessment methods as a primary means to help countries integrate these 21st century skills – such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and communication – into curricular reforms.
Lorrie Shepard, of the University of Colorado Boulder, reviewed Education System Alignment for 21st Century Skills: Focus on Assessment. Professor Shepard found the report very useful if the reader understands that it tells only part of the story.
The report is a review of
research and a policy analysis rather than an empirical study. Its main
contributions are (a) the identification of three challenges to
implementing a 21st century skills agenda, and (b) the organization of
key ideas and research to possibly address these challenges.
A major limitation of the
report, however, is its presumption of a domain-general approach to
teaching and assessment of 21st century skills. The report does not
acknowledge the possibility of, nor does it consider supporting evidence
for, adopting discipline-specific contexts for the development of 21st
century capabilities. Yet extensive reviews of research from the
cognitive and learning sciences explain the benefit of jointly
developing deep understandings of content along with participatory and
thinking competencies.
Although such
discipline-specific curricula and learning progressions create problems
for large-scale comparative assessments that cross curricular
jurisdictions, policymakers need help addressing this dilemma
explicitly. This is because discipline-specific approaches are better
for teaching and deep learning but problematic when attempting to
develop large-scale international assessments, and possibly even
national assessments.
Find the review, by Lorrie Shepard, at:
Find Education System Alignment for 21st Century Skills: Focus on Assessment, written by Esther Care, Helyn Kim, Alvin Vista, & Kate Anderson, and published by The Brookings Institution, at:
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