Educational Assessment in an Information Age – serie

This book provides a detailed description of research and application outcomes from the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills project, which explored a framework for understanding the nature of these skills.

This book provides a detailed description of research and application outcomes from the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills project, which explored a framework for understanding the nature of these skills. The major element of this new volume is the presentation of research information from the global assessment of two 21st century skills that are amenable to teaching and learning: collaborative problem solving, and learning in digital networks. The outcomes presented include evidence to support the validity of assessment of 21st century skills and descriptions of consequent pedagogical approaches which can be used both to teach the skills and to use them to enhance key learning goals in secondary education systems. The sections of the volume are connected through a focus on the degree to which innovative assessment tasks measure the constructs of interest. This focus is informed by conceptual and methodological issues associated with affordances of 21st century computer-based assessment. How understanding of the nature of the skills, as derived from these assessments, can guide approaches to the integration of 21st century skills in the classroom, is informed by initiatives adopted by participating countries. The guiding questions in this volume are: "Do the assessment tasks measure the constructs?" and "What are the implications for assessment and teaching in the classroom?" It is the third volume of papers from this project published by Springer.

Rapid—and seemingly accelerating—changes in the economies of developed nations are having a proportional effect on the skill sets required of workers in many new jobs. Work environments are often technology-heavy, while problems are frequently ill-defined and tackled by multidisciplinary teams. This book contains insights based on research  conducted as part of a major international project supported by Cisco, Intel and Microsoft. It faces these new working environments head-on, delineating new ways of thinking about ‘21st-century’ skills and including operational definitions of those skills. The authors focus too on fresh approaches to educational assessment, and present methodological and technological solutions to the barriers that hinder ICT-based assessments of these skills, whether in large-scale surveys or classrooms. Equally committed to defining its terms and providing practical solutions, and including international perspectives and comparative evaluations of assessment methodology and policy, this volume tackles an issue at the top of most educationalists’ agendas.

Rapid—and seemingly accelerating—changes in the economies of developed nations are having a proportional effect on the skill sets required of workers in many new jobs. It faces these new working environments head-on, delineating new ways of thinking about ‘21st-century’ skills and including operational definitions of those skills.

This second volume of papers from the ATC21STM project deals with the development of an assessment and teaching system of 21st century skills.