Shaping, not predicting, the future of students

by Anthony Mann
Senior Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo is reputed to have once said that there’s no point making predictions because nothing is set in stone. It is hard to predict the future, but in
education policy at least it is not altogether impossible.

We know, for example, from data accumulated over many years that people who exhibited certain attributes when young are more likely (sometimes very much more likely) to do better in work as adults. They are much more likely to find work after leaving school or university and to earn more than people who are otherwise just like them.

Studies have shown, for example, that youngsters can expect to do better in work as adults if they read well at 10 or gain higher levels of qualifications.  We know as well, not least from recent OECD studies, that the children of wealthier parents routinely do better than their classmates from poorer backgrounds, even if they show the same academic promise as children.

It’s unsurprising to learn that academic ability and social background have a big influence on how well young adults can expect to do once they leave education and get into work. This is unsurprising and, for school teachers, more than a little depressing as social background is pretty much fixed, and improved academic ability is a process that is slow and always comparative. Depressing too because the predictive qualities of doing better in school are irrelevant to huge numbers of lower achievers from more modest backgrounds.

But what if there were other, more practical indicators available? Indicators that are relevant to all young people?  Indicators that could provide teaching staff with useful information about which children needed more attention to help them prepare for their transitions into work?

These are questions addressed in a recently published report, “Indicators of Successful Transitions: Teenage attitudes and experiences of the world of work”,  from the research team at the Education and Employers charity based in London. (Full disclosure: I led the team before joining the OECD). Drawing on UK longitudinal datasets and statistical analyses that allow a like-with-like comparison of teenagers moving into adulthood, the study was designed to provide teaching staff with a practical tool for assessing how well their students were being prepared for their ultimate transitions into work.

Trawling through research literature which uses UK datasets which follow thousands of young people from childhood into adulthood, like the British Cohort Survey and the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, alongside new analysis of the same datasets, the research team found a number of significant associations between the attitudes and experiences of teenagers related to the working world – and what happened to those teenagers when they became young working adults. For example, studies link better adult outcomes to both teenage career aspirations that are more confident, realistic and ambitious, and the extent to which young people are involved in real workplaces, whether through their schools or in part-time work.  Other research highlights the ultimate value of teenagers’ social networks in helping them find employment or access information about jobs and careers.

In all, 15 such indicators were identified and grouped together into four themes within a questionnaire for young people: thinking about the future; talking about the future; experiencing the future; and thinking about school. The questionnaire was tested with careers guidance professionals in six English secondary schools with some 800 students aged 14 to 16. In this pilot, schools explored the effectiveness of the indicators as a tool for identifying students (at all levels of achievement) who require greater attention and determining the quality of activities undertaken by students.

In addition, the guidance professionals were asked for feedback on the details of the questionnaire and how the questionnaire could be most practically used in schools. They responded that they found the indicators to be effective in identifying students requiring more support. What this means in practice is that both high and low achievers can have poorly informed careers aspirations. Both groups of students might have given insufficient thought to the breadth of their career options and how their current education or training could best relate to their future selves. Practitioners with a good understanding of the needs of students reported that the questionnaire provided reliable results. The indicators were felt to work especially well for 16-year-olds who are approaching a key transition point in the English education system. Based on this feedback, the questionnaire and marking schedule were revised and confirmed.

We may not be able to tell the future with certainty, but we can draw on reliable evidence to make better judgements about the conditions under which young people can expect a brighter future.  The Education and Employers study harnesses great evidence to provide a new tool for schools determined to prepare their students well for working life.

Links
Educational Opportunity for All – Overcoming Inequality throughout the Life Course
Indicators of successful transitions: Teenage attitudes and experiences related to the world of work

OECD work on skills: www.oecd.org/skills

Photo credit: @Shutterstock

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How to prepare students for the complexity of a global society

by Anthony Jackson, Director, Center for Global Education at Asia Society
Andreas Schleicher, Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

In all countries, rapidly changing global economic, digital, cultural, and environmental forces are shaping young people’s lives and their futures. From
Boston to Bangkok to Buenos Aires, we live today in a VUCA world: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.

The world’s growing complexity and diversity present both opportunity and challenge. On the one hand, globalization can bring important new perspectives, innovation, and improved living standards. But on the other, it can also contribute to economic inequality, social division, and conflict.

How well education systems prepare all of their students to thrive amid today’s rapidly changing world will determine the future prosperity and security of their nations – and of the world as a whole. Global competence education is what will empower students to do just that. Globally competent students can draw on and combine the disciplinary knowledge and modes of thinking acquired in schools to ask questions, analyse data and arguments, explain phenomena, and develop a position concerning a local, global or cultural issue. They can retain their cultural identity but are simultaneously aware of the cultural values and beliefs of people around them, they examine the origins and implications of others’ and their own assumptions. And they can create opportunities to take informed, reflective action and have their voices heard.

On top of the complexity of our increasingly interconnected world, and the call of employers for better intercultural skills, we’ve watched in recent years as waves of nationalism, racism, and anti-globalism have swept across countries around the world. It makes global competence education that much more critical. To put it simply, the number-one solution to combating nationalist fervor is increasing global understanding.

Both the United Nations and OECD have prioritized global citizenship and global competence education in recent years, with good reason. Globally competent individuals are aware, curious, and interested in learning about the world and how it works, beyond their immediate environment. They recognize the perspectives and worldviews of others and are able to interact and communicate with people across cultures and regions in appropriate ways. And most critically, globally competent individuals don’t just understand the world (which is no small thing in and of itself)—they are an active part of it. They can and do take action to solve problems big and small to improve our collective well-being.

At the end of the day, it is globally competent individuals who will be able to solve the world’s seemingly intractable problems. And it’s up to our world’s educators to prepare those individuals for their global futures.

Schools can make an important difference. They are the first place where children encounter the diversity of society. They can provide students with opportunities to learn about global developments that affect the world and their own lives. They can teach students to develop a fact-based and critical worldview and equip students with an appreciation of other cultures and an awareness of their own cultural identities. They can engage students in experiences that facilitate international and intercultural relations. And they can promote the value of diversity, which in turn encourages sensitivity, respect and appreciation.

But how to do that? In a new publication by the Center for Global Education at Asia Society and OECD, Teaching for global competence in a rapidly changing world, we set forward the PISA framework for global competence developed by OECD, which aligns closely with the definition developed by the Center for Global Education. Based on Asia Society’s extensive experience supporting educators in integrating global competence into their teaching, the publication also provides practical guidance and examples of how educators can embed global competence into their existing curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

As the publication demonstrates through its myriad examples, teachers from around the world have already recognized the importance of teaching for global competence. In one example from a political science teacher in India, students visited a nearby refugee camp to learn about the complexity of the global refugee crisis; in another, a social studies teacher in Mexico guided her students to make recommendations for reducing corruption that they then presented to local officials.

But it also shows that for all students to develop global competence – regardless of their wealth, ethnicity, gender, or background – we need to create access to high-quality professional learning for every teacher in the world. Teachers prepared to develop students’ global competence is a requirement for a sustainable, livable future.

Professional learning for teachers is key, and that requires leveraging digital technology to rapidly build capacity at scale. The challenge now is providing access to these types of professional development resources for all teachers, to transform their teaching methods, their classrooms, their schools – and, eventually, each and every one of their students.

Links
Teaching for global competence in a rapidly changing world
Preparing our youth for an inclusive and sustainable world - The OECD PISA global competence framework
PISA 2018 Global Competence

Photo credit: Asia Society 

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