OECD Conference Educating for Innovative Societies on 26 April 2012 - Session 1: Opening by Dirk Van Damme, OECD

1. Paris, 26 April 2012
Educating for innovation-
driven societies
Dirk Van Damme
Head of Division
OECD Directorate for Education

2. Skills and education for innovation
« 21st Century Skills »
Education
and
training
Skills
Innovation

3. Skills for innovation
• Is innovation hampered by a
lack of qualified personnel?
Education
and • What skills/qualifications
training foster innovation in the
economy?
Skills • Has innovation led to a change
in the level and type of
education demanded?
Innovation
• Are certain uses of workforce
skills associated with more
innovation?

4. Individual skills for innovation
• Education systems have to
produce skills for three
modes of innovation:
– Elite model (R&D, breakthrough)
Education – Democratic model
and (organisational learning,
training
incremental)
– User-driven model
Skills • What skills shall everyone
have in an innovation-driven
society?
Innovation
– Adapt to creative destruction
(LLL)
– Readiness for tertiary education
– Participate in innovation
process as user and producer

5. What individual skills should
education systems foster?
Technical skills
(know-what and know-
how)
Behavioural and Skills in thinking
social skills and creativity
(Self-confidence, energy,
(Critical thinking, ability
perseverance, passion,
to make connections,
leadership, collaboration,
imagination, curiosity,...)
communication)

6. Education for innovation
• Curriculum
– How broad or narrow?
– Should some specific fields be
privileged?
Education
and • Pedagogy
training – Are some pedagogies more
effective in fostering
simultaneously all the sets of
skills?
Skills
• Assessment
Innovation
– How to give equal weight in
assessments to all sets of skills for
innovation?
– Can we develop new tools that will
help teachers to assess progress in
creativity, critical thinking, and
social and behavioural skills?

7. Educating for innovative societies
• Conversation with Howard
Gardner
• STEM education
– How to teach them to develop
simultaneously all the sets of skills
Education in mathematics and in science?
and
training
• Arts education
– What do we know about the impact
of arts education on skill
Skills development?
– What role does it play in innovation
more generally?
Innovation • Developing new tools for
assessing 21st century skills
– Creativity
– Collaborative problem-solving (PISA
2012 and 2015)
– Other sets of skill

8. THANK YOU
www.oecd.org/edu/innovation