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Rethinking Education
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Andreas Schleicher presents important data that should be considered for the Future of Education looking at digitalisation, labour markets and changes in the work force, inclusion, the need for creativity and other social and emotional skills and the importance of teachers in building the Future of Education. Find out more about the OECD work in Education at https://www.oecd.org/education/
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Rethinking Education
- 1. Rethinking Education – From the Classroom Up Andreas Schleicher
- 2. Many disconnects Financial economy Infinite growth imperative Gross domestic product The wealthy Technology Governance Real economy Finite resources of planet Well-being of people The poor Social needs Voicelessness of people
- 3. The future will continue to surprise us Impact Uncertainty Climate change Ageing Data breaches General Artificial Intelligence Energy cuts Internet disrupted Economic shocks Natural disasters (cyber) war Pandemics The future will always surprise us
- 4. New sources of growth Growth
- 5. Figure 1.4 The rise of Big Tech Annual revenue of top four companies from the Fortune 500 in 1960 vs “Big Four” tech companies, 2005-2020 Source: OECD(2019), An Introduction to Online Platforms and Their Role in the Digital Transformation, https://doi.org/10.1787/53e5f593-en; companies’ annual reports; and https://macrotrends.net 0 100 200 300 400 500 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Annual revenue (USD billion) Apple Facebook Amazon Google 0 100 200 300 400 500 2005 2008 2011 2014 2017 2020 General Motors Exxon Mobil Ford Motor General Electric
- 6. Work to live or live to work? Working and living
- 7. Labour markets undergoing rapid, fundamental change 7
- 8. Tasks without use of ICT Tasks with use of ICT Non routine tasks Routine tasks Non routine tasks Routine tasks Tasks without use of ICT Tasks with use of ICT Two effects of digitalisation
- 9. Non routine tasks, Low use of ICT Non routine tasks, High use of ICT Routine tasks, Low use of ICT Routine tasks, High use of ICT Non routine tasks, Low use of ICT Non routine tasks, High use of ICT Routine tasks, Low use of ICT Routine tasks, High use of ICT ( Two effects of digitalisation
- 10. Skills and the risk of automation [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] R² = 0.273 170 190 210 230 250 270 290 310 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 Risk of automation Skills (PIAAC Numeracy)
- 11. Many teenagers aspire to jobs that are at high risk of automation (PISA) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Australia United Kingdom Ireland New Zealand United States Finland Norway Canada Singapore Israel Sweden ECD - Sample Average Belgium Denmark Korea Chile Austria Netherlands Italy Spain Estonia France Czech Republic Poland Slovenia Cyprus Greece Germany Japan Lithuania Slovak Republic Advantaged Disadvantaged
- 12. Interconnected, knowledge societies Knowledge and power
- 13. The wisdom of crowds Number of pages in all wikis, 2001-2021 Figure 3.2 Source: Wikimedia (2021), Pages to Date, All Wikis, https://stats.wikimedia.org/ 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 Number of wikis (Millions)
- 14. Digital navigation skills (PISA) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Singapore 38 Korea 39 B-S-J-Z (China) 39 Hong Kong (China) 34 Chinese Taipei 46 Macao (China) 39 United Kingdom 22 Japan 34 United States 30 Canada 26 New Zealand 30 Netherlands 22 Australia 26 Finland 20 Ireland 20 Israel 17 UAE 25 Slovenia 20 Russia 22 Poland 29 Brunei Darussalam 26 Malta 18 Croatia 19 Estonia 24 Austria 22 Malaysia 27 Belarus 27 OECD average 24 Germany 22 Belgium 27 Lithuania 22 Czech Republic 27 Overall average 22 France 28 Latvia 18 Turkey 36 Thailand 24 Qatar 23 Hungary 25 Portugal 26 Italy 25 Switzerland 23 Albania 11 Denmark 16 Luxembourg 28 Norway 16 Bulgaria 14 Indonesia 14 Spain¹ 23 Chile 25 Sweden 18 Slovak Republic 19 Philippines 19 Costa Rica 21 Greece 18 Iceland 31 Serbia 18 Mexico 15 Brazil 15 Kazakhstan 20 Montenegro 14 Georgia 15 BiH 12 Panama 17 Uruguay 8 Peru 18 Colombia 22 Dominican Republic 9 Baku (Azerbaijan) 15 Kosovo 7 Morocco 6 Strictly focused navigation Actively explorative navigation No navigation Column2 % Fig 3.7 Percentage of students who self activated the multiple-source by clicking hyperlink Highly effective navigation Actively explorative navigation Limited navigation No navigation
- 15. -75 -50 -25 0 25 Bogota Daegu Helsinki Houston Istanbul Manizales Moscow Ottawa Suzhou mean scale difference (students and parents) mean scale difference (teachers) 15 Figure 4.3 15-year-olds report lower creativity than 10-year-olds Age gaps in creativity
- 16. There is no Planet B Our changing nature
- 17. 0 5 10 15 20 25 1961 1963 1965 1967 1969 1971 1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2021 Global hectares (Billions) Carbon footprint Cropland footprint Built-up Land footprint Fishing Grounds footprint Forest Products footprint Grazing Land footprint World Biocapacity An outsized ecological footprint Humanity's ecological footprint by land type against Earth's biocapacity, global hectares (gha), 1961-2021 Source: Global Footprint Network (2021), National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, https://data.footprintnetwork.org; Lin, Wambersie and Wackernagel (2021), “Estimating the Date of Earth Overshoot Day 2021”, https://www.overshootday.org/ Figure 5.1
- 18. Resilience: Living in an imbalanced world Sustainability: Keeping the world in balance A balancing act
- 19. Education… • Change in consumption and lifestyle patterns • Personal finance and investment choices • Employment choices • Social influence • Volunteering • Community services • Voting for candidates • Financing parties • Social activism …shapes political commitments …impacts on local communities …influences business practices …influences others‘ behaviour Education can shape individual behaviour that…
- 20. Global issues covered in the curriculum (PISA) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Climate change and global warming Equality between men and women in different parts of the world International conflicts Causes of poverty Migration (movement of people) Hunger or malnutrition in different parts of the world Global health (e.g. epidemics) % Principals who reported that there is a formal curriculum for the following topics:
- 21. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 "I think my behaviour can impact people in other countries" "I can do something about the problems of the world" "It is right to boycott companies that are known to provide poor… "When I see the poor conditions that some people in the world live… "I think of myself as a citizen of the world" "Looking after the global environment is important to me" Percentage of students who agreed or strongly agreed with the following statements: Students’ agency regarding global issues (PISA, average) Fig VI.5.1a
- 22. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Singapore Korea Hong Kong (China) Chinese Taipei Albania Canada Ireland United Arab Emirates Colombia Australia Peru Viet Nam New Zealand Malta Thailand Hungary Mexico France Dominican Republic Chile Brunei Darussalam Portugal Malaysia Slovenia Israel Panama Iceland Latvia Croatia Costa Rica OECD average Poland Philippines Lithuania Scotland (United Kingdom) Macao (China) Germany Estonia Turkey Lebanon Bulgaria Spain Italy Switzerland Ukraine Serbia Montenegro Austria Kazakhstan Moldova Uruguay Baku (Azerbaijan) Jordan Bosnia and Herzegovina Argentina Greece Brazil Slovak Republic North Macedonia Morocco Saudi Arabia Romania Kosovo Indonesia Percentage of students who reported they could do this task easily or with some effort % Students' self-efficacy regarding global issues "Explain how carbon-dioxide emissions affect global climate change" Table VI.B1.2.4
- 23. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Kosovo Jordan Thailand Chinese Taipei Indonesia Viet Nam Baku (Azerbaijan) Kazakhstan Turkey Philippines Dominican Republic Moldova United Arab Emirates Saudi Arabia Malaysia Morocco Hong Kong (China) Panama Montenegro Colombia Macao (China) Romania Albania Ukraine Hungary Mexico Lebanon Poland Greece Bulgaria Malta Slovenia Iceland Costa Rica Serbia Brunei Darussalam Austria Singapore Portugal Latvia Brazil Lithuania OECD average Slovak Republic Peru New Zealand France Croatia Argentina Estonia Bosnia and Herzegovina Switzerland Italy North Macedonia Canada Australia Spain Korea Chile Germany Uruguay Scotland (United Kingdom) Ireland Percentage of students who reported that they take this action % Students taking action "I choose certain products for ethical or environmental reasons, even if they are a bit more expensive" Table VI.B1.5.8
- 24. Student agency Students learn and develop their agency in interactions with others e.g. peers and friends, teachers, parents, siblings, others from any communities they belong to etc. (co-agency), and also in dynamics of a group (collective agency).
- 25. [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] R² = 0.47 330 380 430 480 530 25 35 45 55 65 75 85 Average reading score Percentage of students who disagreed or strongly disagreed that their intelligence cannot change very much (%) OECD average OECD average Growth mindset and reading performance Fig II.14.3 More students holding a growth mindset Higher performance Similar relationship within most countries (Figure III.14.2)
- 26. -0.05 -0.04 -0.03 -0.02 -0.01 0.00 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 Motivation to master tasks Self-efficacy Fear of failure Learning goals Value of school Change in the index Growth mindset and student attitudes Change in the following indices when students disagreed or strongly disagreed that "your intelligence is something about you that you can’t change very much“: Fig III.14.5 All linear regression models account for students' and schools' socio-economic profile
- 27. Participation in formal education continues to expand. International collaboration and technological advances support more individualised learning. The structures and processes of schooling remain. Educational monopolies remain: Schools are key actors in socialisation, qualification, care and credentialing. International collaboration and digital technologies power more personalised teaching and learning practices. Distinct teacher corps remain, although with new divisions of tasks and greater economies of scale. Goals and functions Organisation and structures The teaching workforce Governance and geopolitics Scenario 1: Schooling Extended
- 28. Traditional schooling systems break down as society becomes more directly involved in educating its citizens. Learning takes place through more diverse, possibly privatised and flexible arrangements, with digital technology a key driver. Fragmentation of demand with self-reliant “clients” looking for flexible services. Schooling systems as players in a wider (local, national, global) education market. Diversification of structures: multiple organisational forms available to individuals. Diversity of instructional roles and teaching status operating within and outside of schools. Goals and functions Organisation and structures The teaching workforce Governance and geopolitics Scenario 2: Education digitised
- 29. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Progressive return of students (e.g. by age cohorts) Classroom based teaching and learning in shifts Hybrid model of distance and classroom based teaching and learning Return to normal scheduling and student attendance Student and teacher returns contingent upon results of antibody testing Classroom teaching conducted in schools’ outdoor spaces Strategies beyond the pandemic (Averages across 36 countries, May 2020) Table 17 %
- 30. • Many online and distance learning and other innovative approaches such as AR, VR and AI were created, adapted and expanded. New learning experiences Image sources: Electude Classroom and Labster Labs’ virtual labs; Oxford University’s LIFE project, a smartphone- based virtual learning platform
- 31. Learning analytics • Learning analytics helps educators personalise learning • in real time • as a reflective tool • Data come from sensors, learning management systems and digital activities of learners • When should you shift to a new activity? • Are you losing the attention of learners? • How do you struture instruction time (lecture, small group, discussion, assessment, practice, etc.)? • Which students do you talk to and support the most?
- 32. Assessments and exams New types of assessments through simulations and games Adaptive assessments Hands-on assessment in vocational settings Increasing reliability of machine rating for essays Predictive models may disrupt the exam model
- 33. Schools remain, but diversity and experimentation have become the norm. Opening the “school walls” connects schools to their communities, favouring ever-changing forms of learning, civic engagement and social innovation. Strong focus on local decisions; self- organising units in diverse partnerships. Schools as hubs function to organise multiple configurations of local-global resources. Flexible schooling arrangements permit greater personalisation and community involvement. Professional teachers as nodes of wider networks of flexible expertise. Goals and functions Organisation and structures The teaching workforce Governance and geopolitics Scenario 3: Schools as Learning Hubs
- 34. 34 Psychological well-being of 10-year-olds I felt calm and relaxed I felt cheerful and in good spirits I felt active and vigorous I woke up feeling fresh and rested My daily life is filled with things that interest me Percentage of 10-year-old students who reported feeling like this “most of the time” or “all of the time” (international average) Figure 3.2 0 20 40 60 80 100 10-year old boys 10-year old girls
- 35. 35 Psychological well-being of 15-year-olds I felt calm and relaxed I felt cheerful and in good spirits I felt active and vigorous I woke up feeling fresh and rested My daily life is filled with things that interest me Percentage of 15-year-old students who reported feeling like this “most of the time” or “all of the time” (international average) Figure 3.2 0 20 40 60 80 100 15-year old boys 15-year old girls
- 36. Students who are more stress resistant, optimistic and energetic indicated higher current psychological well-being amongst 15-year-olds 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 8.00 Bogota Daegu Helsinki Houston Istanbul Manizales Moscow Ottawa Sintra Suzhou Change in well-being related to a one standard deviation increase in skills Stress resistance Optimism Energy Social and emotional skills most strongly associated with current psychological well-being, by city 36 Figure 3.8
- 37. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 Responsibility Persistence Self-control Stress resistance Optimism Emotional Control Empathy Trust Co-operation Tolerance Curiosity Creativity Sociability Assertiveness Energy Self-Efficacy Achievement motivation Task performance Emotional regulation Collaboration Open-Mindedness Engaging with others Other outcomes Change in skills Better student-teacher relations are linked with improved social and emotional skills 37 Relations between student-teacher relations and social and emotional skills, 15-year-olds Figure 5.9 Task performance Collaboration Open-mindedness Engaging with others Other outcomes Emotional Regulation
- 38. Some students learn at high levels All students learn at high levels Routine cognitive skills Complex ways of thinking and working Curriculum, instruction and assessment Student inclusion Standardisation and compliance High-level professional knowledge workers Role of teachers ‘Tayloristic’, industrial Flat, collegial, entrepreneurial Work organisation Primarily to authorities Primarily to peers and stakeholders Accountability The past The future When fast gets really fast, being slow to adapt can make education really slow
- 39. NEW GOALS MODERNISING INNOVATION GLOBAL POTENTIAL VIRTUAL LEARNING OLD STRUCTURES DISRUPTING RISK AVOIDANCE LOCAL REALITY FACE-TO-FACE EDUCATION Trends Shaping Education 2020 Assessing risks, leveraging opportunities Tensions and paradoxes require smart responses
- 40. Find out more about our work at www.oecd.org/education Email: Andreas.Schleicher@OECD.org Twitter: SchleicherOECD Wechat: AndreasSchleicher and remember: Without data, you are just another person with an opinion Thank you
Editor's Notes
- Education has fueled amazing progress, but it also leaves us with some fundamental disconnects. Think of the growing disconnect between the infinite growth imperative and the finite resources of our planet; between the financial economy and the real economy; between the wealthy and the poor; between the concept of our gross domestic product and the well-being of people; and between technology and social needs; And, at the same time, we know that strategic investments in education can help reduce economic inequality in the long run. In fact, one of the most powerful features of education is that it can help tackle the sources of economic inequality, and not just tinker with its consequences.
- At this moment, our eyes are still focused on the pandemic, which has massively disrupted education Some believe that nothing in education will be like in the days before
- Looking to the future, there are new sources of growth
- Intangibles are key in today’s economy. An example of their power is the growth of a few tech companies compared to the declining revenue of the traditional companies that dominated the Fortune 500 decades ago The great thing is that unlike tangible assets, knowledge can be used repeatedly and in multiple places at the same time, and that’s what explains the rapid growth of Big Tech companies in just a few years.
- The way we live and work also shapes the future of education
- The dynamics behind that are not difficult to understand The kind of things that are easy to teach and test have also become easy to digitise and automate And technology intensive tasks are a on the rise
- You put the two things together and you see the future of work
- All of this has consequences.
- When you look at the career aspirations more closely, you also see that between 30 and 40 per cent of teenagers aspire to jobs that are at high risk of automation, particularly youths from poor families aim for jobs that are likely to disappear.
- Knowledge also means power
- The world is more connected. Before, people engaged with and learned from those near them. Now, people engage with and learn from people around the world, instantly. For example, only an elite few produced traditional encyclopaedias or the mass media of the 20th century (newspapers, radio and TV), today’s social media and internet sites like Wikipedia are fed by the masses who generate the content. As you can see here, the number of pages in all wikis grew from about 10 000 to over 250 million in just 20 years.
- Are we equipping young people to deal with this kind of diversity and knowledge? What happens when they encounter each other, and different knowledge? Being a digital native doesn’t mean you are digitally skilled. Here you see the share of 15-year-olds who are highly effective navigators on the internet or at least capable to actively explore information. As you see there is no country in the Western world with at least half of the student population good at navigating the digital world. Some students have limited navigation skills but often a majority did not even demonstrate basic navigation strategies. So technology seems way ahead of student capacities.
- Now I had already mentioned that students’ creativity and curiosity were lower among 15-year-olds than among 10-year-olds. That’s not just reflected in student self-reports, also the ratings from parents and from teachers gave a similar picture, at least in most jurisdictions, although you can see in Suzhou that the drop reported by students is much larger than what parents say. And teachers don’t seem to observe a drop. That drop in creativity could be a reflection of the fact that education systems often expect compliance from students, with the potential consequence of driving out curiosity and creativity as students grow older and stay longer in the education system.
- And not surprisingly, let me conclude with a look at the environment
- As you can see here, since 1970, our ecological footprint has consistently exceeded Earth’s biocapacity, which you see here marked by the dotted line. In 2021, we exceeded it by over 70%, which means that globally, we lived as if we had 1.7 planets available instead of just one. Rates of consumption vary by country: for example, the United States consumes as if it had five Earths available, France three and Colombia slightly over one. On average, OECD countries consume the equivalent of over three Earths.
- Preparing for that will always be a balancing act. A balancing act between fostering sustainability, keeping the world we know in balance, and resilience, living in a structurally imbalanced world. Education is the key on both fronts, particularly when it comes to issues like climate change that oblige us to see the bigger picture, make better trade-offs between the present and the future, and between situational values – I will do whatever the current situation allows me to do – and sustainable values that help us align individual and collective well-being.
- Most obviously, education provides people with the scientific knowledge and skills that underpin a green economy. And according to PISA, knowledge about the science of the environment was the single best predictor for the environmental attitudes and behaviour of young people. But education can also shape individual behaviour that influences political commitments, whether that is financing parties or social activism It can shape behaviour that impacts on local communities, think of volunteering or community services It can shape individual behaviour that influences business practices, think about changes in consumption and lifestyle patterns, personal investment choices or employment choices. And of course, our own behaviour will always influence the behaviour of others.
- Look at this. At the surface, the sustainability agenda has made it into school curricula. Among OECD countries, close to 90% of school principals say they have a formal curriculum dealing with climate change and global warming, and that’s true also for issues like poverty or migration.
- But things look different when you look at this through the lens of students. In our latest PISA survey, over three quarters of 15-year-olds said that the climate agenda is important and urgent to them, and that they think of themselves as world citizens. But when we asked them do you feel you can do something about this or do you think what you do matters for people in other places, the bars got much shorter. That’s the crux of education today, we make young people passive consumers of prefabricated knowledge, but we don’t do enough to empower them to mobilise their cognitive, social and emotional resources.
- Singaporean and Korean students excel when they had to explain how carbon-dioxide emissions affect global climate change. They have an amazing level of academic knowledge…
- But just a minority of Singaporean and Korean 15-year-olds said they would choose certain products for ethical or environmental reasons even if they are a bit more expensive. That’s the disconnect between knowledge and behaviour.
- A growth mindset is a good example of the kind of social and emotional skills that matter You can see here that where education systems succeed with equipping young people with a growth mindset, they are much more likely to see better results in academic results too.
- Niemand weiss, wie die Zukunft aussehen wird, aber ein Weg wie wir uns besser auf die Zukunft vorbereiten können liegt darin, uns auch verschiedene Zukunftsszenarien einzulassen. Ein Szenario ist die Fortschreibung des Status Quo.
- But what’s most interesting, just 22% of the OECD countries were aiming to return to the status quo. Over half of them looked to hybrid models as the new normal, where virtual and on-site learning environments are integrated. Think about, something that was at best at the margins of education six months ago, has now become the new normal. At least in ambitions.
- The most visible benefit has been greater personalisation. While you study math on a computer, the computer can now study you and then make your learning experience so much more granular, so much more adaptive and so much more interactive. The pandemic has brought a tiny niche out in the mainstream.
- Learning analytics holds perhaps the greatest promise. Together with sensors and learning management systems, teachers can now get a real sense of how different students learn differently, where students get interested and where they get bored, where they advance and where they get stuck. And so teachers get a much better sense of how they can structure learning time and which students need what extra support. Again, an area the pandemic has greatly accelerated in some parts of the world.
- We are also seeing big leaps in assessment and exams, whether you talk about assessments through simulations, hands-on assessment in vocational settings, or machine learning algorithms scoring essays. The time of multiple choice bubble sheets is over and learning and assessment are becoming fully integrated.
- The WHO has an interesting metric to assess the psychological well-being of students which we used here for 10-year-olds. You can see a generally positive picture although you see consistently lower results for girls than for boys.
- Psychological well-being dips in adolescence, the bars are generally shorter for 15-year-olds than for 10-year-olds, and that dip is particularly pronounced for girls.
- The results show that students’ social and emotional skills are closely related to students’ psychological well-being after accounting for socio-economic status and gender. This is particularly the case for stress resistance, optimism and energy. So being optimistic is consistently related to both a higher level of life satisfaction and current psychological well-being, and you see this works across cities.
- And this seems to matter too. Students who get along well with their teachers report higher social and emotional skills, particularly greater curiosity, optimism and achievement motivation. Curiosity and achievement motivation both indicate a love for learning and doing well at school. So it seems that students who get along well with their teachers are more engaged, want to do well in school and like learning more. To the extent that you can read a causal nature into this relationship, improving social and emotional skills could be a way to help students enjoy better social relations in school and vice versa.
- And there is a lot more that the future will demand from tomorrow’s teachers. When you could still assume that what you learn in school will last for a lifetime, teaching content was at the centre of education. Today, the dilemma for teachers is that the kinds of things that are easy to teach and test have also become easy to digitise and automate. Tomorrows teachers need to enable students to become lifelong learners, to manage complex ways of thinking and complex ways of working that computers cannot take over easily. In the past when you only needed a small slice of well-educated people it was efficient for governments to invest a lot in a small elite to lead the country. But the social and economic cost of low educational performance has risen substantially and all young people now need to leave school with strong skills. In the past, governments tended to tell their teachers exactly what to do and exactly how they want it done, with Tayloristic methods of administrative control and accountability to get the results they want. Today the challenge is to make teaching a profession of high-level knowledge workers. But knowledge workers don’t like to work in schools organised as industrial workplaces, the future is flat, collegial and entrepreneurial, and people look outwards rather than upwards.
- You can help governments navigate the risks and leveraging the opportunities. What is the right balance between modernising and disruption. How do we reconcile new goals with old structures How do we support globally minded and locally rooted students and teachers How do we foster innovation while recognising the socially highly conservative nature of education How do we leverage potential with existing capacity How do we reconfigure the spaces, the people, the time and the technologies to create powerful learning environments. Again, this is not a government project, this is a whole of society project and I believe the philantrophic sector can make such a difference.