Teaching Assessing 21st Century Skills

Go beyond traditional paper-and-pencil tests! This book provides a framework and practical ideas for assessing 21st century skills such as problem solving, collaboration, and creativity.

This second volume of papers from the ATC21STM project deals with the development of an assessment and teaching system of 21st century skills. Readers are guided through a detailed description of the methods used in this process. The first volume was published by Springer in 2012 (Griffin, P., McGaw, B. & Care, E., Eds., Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills, Dordrecht: Springer). The major elements of this new volume are the identification and description of two 21st century skills that are amenable to teaching and learning: collaborative problem solving, and learning in digital networks. Features of the skills that need to be mirrored in their assessment are identified so that they can be reflected in assessment tasks. The tasks are formulated so that reporting of student performance can guide implementation in the classroom for use in teaching and learning. How simple tasks can act as platforms for development of 21st century skills is demonstrated, with the concurrent technical infrastructure required for its support. How countries with different languages and cultures participated and contributed to the development process is described. The psychometric qualities of the online tasks developed are reported, in the context of the robustness of the automated scoring processes. Finally, technical and educational issues to be resolved in global projects of this nature are outlined.

As the 21st century unfolds, the pace of change in the world is accelerating. The authors believe a combination of cognitive skills (skills students will need to succeed academically) and conative skills (skills students will need to succeed interpersonally) is necessary for the 21st century. This clear, practical guide presents a model of instruction and assessment based on these skills.

The routine jobs of yesterday are being replaced by technology and/or shipped off-shore. In their place, job categories that require knowledge management, abstract reasoning, and personal services seem to be growing. The modern workplace requires workers to have broad cognitive and affective skills. Often referred to as "21st century skills," these skills include being able to solve complex problems, to think critically about tasks, to effectively communicate with people from a variety of different cultures and using a variety of different techniques, to work in collaboration with others, to adapt to rapidly changing environments and conditions for performing tasks, to effectively manage one's work, and to acquire new skills and information on one's own. The National Research Council (NRC) has convened two prior workshops on the topic of 21st century skills. The first, held in 2007, was designed to examine research on the skills required for the 21st century workplace and the extent to which they are meaningfully different from earlier eras and require corresponding changes in educational experiences. The second workshop, held in 2009, was designed to explore demand for these types of skills, consider intersections between science education reform goals and 21st century skills, examine models of high-quality science instruction that may develop the skills, and consider science teacher readiness for 21st century skills. The third workshop was intended to delve more deeply into the topic of assessment. The goal for this workshop was to capitalize on the prior efforts and explore strategies for assessing the five skills identified earlier. The Committee on the Assessment of 21st Century Skills was asked to organize a workshop that reviewed the assessments and related research for each of the five skills identified at the previous workshops, with special attention to recent developments in technology-enabled assessment of critical thinking and problem-solving skills. In designing the workshop, the committee collapsed the five skills into three broad clusters as shown below: Cognitive skills: nonroutine problem solving, critical thinking, systems thinking Interpersonal skills: complex communication, social skills, team-work, cultural sensitivity, dealing with diversity Intrapersonal skills: self-management, time management, self-development, self-regulation, adaptability, executive functioning Assessing 21st Century Skills provides an integrated summary of the presentations and discussions from both parts of the third workshop.

Highly qualified and competent teachers are fundamental for equitable and effective education systems. Teachers today are facing higher and more complex expectations to help students reach their full potential and become valuable members of 21st century society. The nature and variety of these ...

Great events in history have always brought about great changes in the lifestyles of humans. Every invention, every great war and every discovery has challenged the ways in which people lived up until that point. The 21st century bears the effects of various advancements in several different parts of human life. Sometimes it is called a “space age”, sometimes an “information age”, or a “computer age”. Some people have called it a digital age, or new media age too. However it is named, the time in which we live has challenged the lifestyles of the past and has brought about new requirements in skills and practices. Media literacy, leadership, critical thinking, and problem solving, are among the new skills required by the 21st century. However, the relationship between these skills and education has not yet been fully established. To this end, this book discusses these skills through theoretical and empirical studies in the context of Turkey.

An emerging body of research suggests that a set of broad "21st century skills"-such as adaptability, complex communication skills, and the ability to solve non-routine problems-are valuable across a wide range of jobs in the national economy. However, the role of K-12 education in helping students learn these skills is a subject of current debate. Some business and education groups have advocated infusing 21st century skills into the school curriculum, and several states have launched such efforts. Other observers argue that focusing on skills detracts attention from learning of important content knowledge. To explore these issues, the National Research Council conducted a workshop, summarized in this volume, on science education as a context for development of 21st century skills. Science is seen as a promising context because it is not only a body of accepted knowledge, but also involves processes that lead to this knowledge. Engaging students in scientific processes-including talk and argument, modeling and representation, and learning from investigations-builds science proficiency. At the same time, this engagement may develop 21st century skills. Exploring the Intersection of Science Education and 21st Century Skills addresses key questions about the overlap between 21st century skills and scientific content and knowledge; explores promising models or approaches for teaching these abilities; and reviews the evidence about the transferability of these skills to real workplace applications.

An essential resource for teaching and assessing student's use of technology This comprehensive book offers a practical pathway for developing twenty-first-century skills while simultaneously strengthening content-area learning. Digital Learning contains a wealth of research-based practices to integrate the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) National Education Technology Standards (NETS) for both students and teachers. Each of the suggested project-based learning examples (in Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and Geography) can be used successfully as stand-alone units, but are even more effective when approached in a cross-disciplinary way. Provides detailed descriptions of each of the NETS, how to teach them, and how to know if students are meeting them Includes dozens of activities that integrate the NETS with each content area and align with Common Core standards Gives clear instruction on teaching twenty-first-century skills Includes a complementary DVD with video interviews and project maps to help see how students are progressing The digital learning described in this book has been created to meet the diverse needs of students in a variety of situations.