Different, not disabled: Neurodiversity in education

by Tracey Burns
Senior Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

Feeling out of place. Too big, too short, too wise, too ignorant – these are all situations Gulliver experiences in Jonathan Swift’s classic of English literature. Gulliver’s Travels give us an idea of how important our environment is when it comes to defining ourselves. It also gives us a 19th century look into the very modern concept of diversity.

Diversity in the classroom includes differences in the way students' brains learn, or neurodiversity. Diagnoses of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) have risen dramatically in the last two decades. This is not an issue that is isolated to a few countries: ADHD diagnoses have increased dramatically in Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Similar patterns are seen in the prevalence of ASD, which occurs along a spectrum of severity and includes Asperger syndrome, a condition some have argued Swift experienced himself. Children with ASD tend to have difficulty with social interaction, dealing with change, and flexible thinking. Cognitive abilities of children with ASD can range from gifted to severely challenged. Stigmas attached to the diagnosis in some countries can result in under identification; for example, two-thirds of ASD cases identified in a Korean sample when diagnostic assessments were administered were otherwise undiagnosed and untreated.

A new Trends Shaping Education Spotlight looks at how education systems work to meet the needs of these students and ensure that all types of learners thrive at school and beyond. There is a growing trend towards all children having the right to be included in typical classrooms if the families so choose (i.e. inclusive education). Inclusive education can help neurodiverse students develop social skills that can encourage social integration and friendships with their peers. It can also help dispel myths: for example, in a survey conducted in the United States, 43% of participants believed wrongly that learning disabilities are correlated with IQ.

In order to deliver on the promise of inclusive education, teachers need support. In many countries teachers now commonly have classes with a diverse range of learning preferences and abilities, including children with different cognitive abilities, hyperactivity, and emotional difficulties. Many teachers feel inadequately prepared for this: in the last two versions of the TALIS survey, teachers consistently identified teaching students with special needs as their first need for professional development (teachers were not asked specifically about neurodiverse students). Student behaviour and classroom management were identified as their third professional need. In addition to supporting teachers, one of the other big challenges is assessing neurodiverse students. Standardised tests are not designed for neurodiverse students, and comparing scores – even with modified questions – may not be appropriate.

On the other hand, assessments reinforce the fact that: 1) academic learning is not secondary for neurodiverse students; 2) it is appropriate to have academic goals for these children, as for all children; and 3) monitoring outcomes for neurodiverse students can help keep systems accountable for achieving learning gains for all.

Small changes, for example alterations of structure and time, can help ADHD students who may find it difficult to sit for long periods. For students with ASD, nonverbal intelligence assessment could be considered, along with other adaptive measures such as taking the test in a quiet room alone.

On a system level, one important concern to take into account is the impact of a competitive test culture on identifying which students are considered neurodiverse: when stakes are high in school assessment, teachers and schools may try to intentionally leave low-performing “neurotypical” students out of the test population by classifying them as “special needs". This is the case, for example, in the United States: in states that have passed laws that tie funding to results on standardised testing, the rates of ADHD diagnosis have also been rapidly increasing. Despite the challenges, avoiding assessment is not a solution: if educational methods are to improve, there first needs to be more evaluation of programmes and evidence-informed practices to support neurodiverse students.

Being able to embrace diversity in all its forms is a key aspect of life in the 21st century. Thankfully, the voyages of Gulliver – in which the traveller who "isn't like the others" is tied up or otherwise mistreated/misunderstood – are long gone. But more can still be done to help our education systems ensure that all types of learners thrive. In order to make that happen, we need to support our teachers and learners, and take a hard look at how the system as a whole operates.

Links
Trends Shaping Education Spotlight No. 12: Neurodiversity in Education
Trends Shaping Education 2016
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) 
New Insights from TALIS 2013

Personalising Education

Join us on Edmodo

Photo credit: @Shutterstock

What today’s teachers need to know

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

I’ve often said that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers. How, then, do teachers become really good at their jobs? One important way is by learning from one another – across classes, across schools, and yes, even across countries. That’s why the OECD is a knowledge partner of the 2017 Qudwa Global Teachers’ Forum, which is being held in Abu Dhabi on 7 and 8 October. The Forum is bringing together more than 900 teachers from 83 countries to discuss “Teaching for Tomorrow”.

The focus of the forum couldn’t be more timely. According to reports by the World Economic Forum, one-third of the skillsets required to perform today’s jobs will be entirely redundant by 2020. And experts assert that nearly two-thirds of children entering primary school today will end up working in jobs that do not yet exist. The dilemma for teachers is that the kinds of things that are easiest to teach and easiest to test, are precisely the things that are also easy to digitise, automate and outsource. If we want to educate students for their future, rather than for our past, we need to better understand the future and what it implies for teaching today.

“Qudwa” is the Arabic word for “role model”. Teachers are role models for their students, and they can also be leaders in their communities. They need to learn how best to prepare children for living and working in this new, highly digitised world so that tomorrow’s communities are cohesive and productive. We know so much more about what makes for effective teaching; and we now have the tools to amplify and share this knowledge so that we can develop a global network of change leaders.

Participants at the forum will be sharing information and exchanging their views about the most effective teaching strategies, using technology in the classroom, making schools more inclusive, and engaging with parents, among many other topics. Most of the discussions will be based on data collected by the OECD: a strong foundation on which a high-quality teaching force – and thus high-quality education systems – can be built. Like all of us, teachers need inspiration to perform at their best; I’m certain they will find lots of it in Abu Dhabi this weekend.

Links

Qudwa Global Teachers’ Forum

Read the OECD Policy Briefs

Follow the conversation on Twitter: #Qudwa2017

Photo credit: Qudwa Global Teachers’ Forum

Why teaching matters more than ever before

by Stavros Yiannouka, CEO, WISE – World Innovation Summit for Education and Andreas Schleicher, Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

Teaching and learning lie at the heart of what it means to be human. While animals teach and learn from each other through direct demonstration, observation and experience, humans are unique in their ability to convey vast quantities of information and impart skills across time and space. We are also, as far as we know, unique in our ability to engage in and convey our thinking around abstract concepts such as governance, justice and human rights.

Technology has always played an indispensable role in this process. Starting with language and then writing, humanity was able to separate the process of teaching and learning from the constraints of direct demonstration, observation, and experience. The invention of paper and ink, and then the printing press, exponentially increased the quantity of knowledge that could be captured, stored, and disseminated. In this context, modern information and communication technologies are no more than extensions of a trend that began several millennia ago.

Technology however was not solely responsible for advancing teaching and learning amongst humans: abstract thought has perhaps played the most important part through the development of concepts such as education and knowledge. Formal education may have begun as an exercise in training royal accountants and scribes but it very soon expanded to incorporate literature, if only so that those accountants and scribes could, in their writing, emulate the great authors and poets of their time.

Much has changed in how we think about and practice education. Although in theory we still expect education to serve the dual purpose of imparting useful knowledge and skills, and instilling values, in practice most modern education systems place far greater emphasis on the former over the latter. The reasons for this are manifold. In large part it has to do with the pressures placed on education to support social development and thus to demonstrate ‘a return on investment.’ But it also has to do with the rise of moral relativism in some countries, the belief that values systems are inherently subjective and therefore best left to parental and cultural upbringing.

This overtly utilitarian view of education lies at the heart of the modish idea that information and communication technologies can to a large extent replace teachers. If education is viewed solely as a process for imparting useful knowledge and skills then it is likely that technology will render traditional teaching redundant in the not too distant future. But education is always more than this, if its purpose is also to impart values, to inspire, and to socialise, it is one of the most enduring relational activities. It is no accident that high performing education systems from Finland to Singapore, all place the teacher at the heart of the enterprise. Much is expected from teachers but much is also given in the form of professional development, autonomy, and respect.

Technology alone cannot perform this role. But technology can amplify great teaching. And it can build communities of teachers to share and enrich teaching resources and practices. Imagine the power of an education system that could meaningfully share all of the expertise and experience of its educators using digital technology. What if we could get our teachers working on curated crowd-sourcing of educational practice, wouldn’t that be so much more powerful than things like performance-related pay as an approach to professional growth and development? Technology could be used to create a giant open-source community of teachers and educators outside schools and unlock the creative skills and initiative of its teachers, simply by tapping into the desire of people to contribute, collaborate and be recognised for it.

Throughout history, teaching was viewed as a noble and even spiritual calling. In the age of accelerations, it can be even more so.

Links
2017 WISE Summit: "Co-Exist, Co-Create: Learning to Live and Work Together"
For more on education and education policies around the world, visit: http://www.oecd.org/edu
PISA 2015: Compare your country

Join our OECD Teacher Community on Edmodo


Photo credit: @Shutterstock 

Closing Italy’s skills gap is everyone’s business

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

Italy is the birthplace of Leonardo, Galileo and Armani. For centuries, skilled Italians have been recognised for their contributions to the world’s art, science, and culture. A relatively small country, with scarce natural resources, Italy today is among the world’s leading industrialised economies and is home to millions of firms, including many small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), who play a prominent role in many key global value chains. So the skills of Italy’s population matter. Not only for their own country, but also for their contribution to the future prosperity and well-being of the global community. 

Italy’s future prosperity depends upon the skills of its people

Today, Italy is facing a skills gap. OECD Surveys measuring the skills of 15 year-olds (PISA) and adults between the ages of 16 and 64 years old (Survey of Adult Skills, PIAAC) have detected a significant shortfall in skills  compared with other countries. Despite progress achieved over the past decade, young Italians’ PISA scores in literacy and science are still relatively low compared with the OECD average. Adults display an even larger skills gap compared to their peers in other OECD countries. In 2012, some 13 million adults between 25-64 scored at the bottom of the PIAAC ranking,  while in some southern regions 2 out of 3 adults were found to be functionally illiterate. Poor skills are paralleled by stagnant productivity growth, which indicates that Italy may be trapped in a low-skilled equilibrium in which both the supply of, and the demand for, skills are weak.

Implementing recent reforms requires concerted efforts  

Italy has recently embarked on a major reform effort aimed at boosting the development, activation and use of people’s skills. For example, the 2014 Jobs Act introduced a major overhaul of labour market settings to favour open-ended contracts (over fixed-term ones) and strengthen active labour market policies. The following year, the Good School Act made work-based learning compulsory for all high schools, in order to provide students with real life experiences and a much broader range of learning opportunities. But Italy did not stop there, and in 2015 put in place Industry 4.0, a 3-year programme that provides firms with targeted support to help them transition to digital technologies and boost their demand for skilled workers. 

Implementation of these reforms has met with many challenges. They can only be addressed by generating synergies among different skills policies, engaging more with key stakeholders and improving the multilevel governance of the national skills system. 

Italy faces 10 skills challenges

Today, the OECD Secretary General is in Rome to launch the OECD Skills Strategy Diagnostic Report for Italy, together with a high-level panel of Ministers and undersecretaries. The report applies the framework of the OECD Skills Strategy to identify 10 skills challenges for Italy as it seeks to maximise its future skills potential. It includes a rich set of comparative data and evidence and offers concrete examples of how other countries are tackling similar skills challenges. 

With regards to developing relevant skills, the report focuses on:  

1. Equipping young people across the country with skills for further education and life; 

2. Increasing access to tertiary education while improving quality and relevance of skills;

3. Boosting the skills of low skilled adults.

When activating people’s skills, Italy will need to tackle the challenges of:  

4. Removing supply- and demand-side barriers to the activation of skills in the labour market;

5. Encouraging greater participation of women and youth in the labour market.

Italy also needs to make better use of the skills it has by: 

6. Making better use of skills in the workplace;

7. Leveraging skills to promote innovation.

Finally, Italy urgently needs to improve its overall skills system by: 

8. Strengthening multilevel governance and partnerships to improve skills outcomes;

9. Promoting skills assessment and anticipation to reduce skills mismatches;

10. Investing to improve skills outcomes.

Each of these 10 skills challenges are well known in Italy. By adopting a systemic approach to their analysis, this report underscores the need for renewed efforts to adopt a whole-of-government skills strategy that cuts across ministerial silos and gives an active role to key stakeholders, including civil society.  To close its skills gap, Italy needs to mobilise everyone’s energies to ensure that skills policies are implemented effectively and help deliver inclusive growth. 

Taking action today

The diagnostic phase of the OECD National Skills Strategy project in Italy has brought together many different ministries and a large number of stakeholders to gather insights and start generating a common narrative about the skills challenges facing Italy today. Developing concrete plans for action will mean building on the many reforms already underway and the continued engagement of all stakeholders.

The OECD stands ready to support Italy as it builds the skills that will empower its people to generate a new wave of well-being, prosperity and innovation that will benefit everyone, everywhere.

Links

OECD Skills Strategy Diagnostic Report: Italy

OECD National Skills Strategy

Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC)

For more on skills and skills policies around the world, visit: http://www.oecd.org/skills/

Follow the conversation on twitter: #OECDSkills

Join our OECD Teacher Community on Edmodo

Photo credit: @Shutterstock

Why innovation becomes imperative in education

by Dirk Van Damme 
Head of the Skills Beyond School Division,  Directorate for Education and Skills

Since Harvard economists Goldin & Katz published their ground-breaking book The Race between Technology and Education (2008), education has come face-to-face with the challenges of a world continuously altered by technological innovation. Education is generally perceived to be a laggard social system, better equipped to transmit the heritage of the past than to prepare for the future. This perception is not entirely accurate; OECD/CERI work on Measuring innovation in education (2014) demonstrates that education is a system that is not change-averse.

From a historical perspective, education has adjusted to the needs and opportunities of the 2nd Industrial Revolution, for example by introducing natural sciences into the curriculum – although it took many years for that to happen. Will education have the luxury of time to confront the current wave of technological change and innovation? How will it react to the challenges of digitalization and artificial intelligence?

On 25-26 September some hundred education policy makers from national governments and international organisations and representatives from the emerging education industry gathered at the 3rd Global Education Industry Summit (GEIS) in Luxembourg to discuss these questions. Jointly organised by the OECD, the European Commission and Luxembourg, the GEIS aspired to be a platform for discussions on how education can embrace innovation and how the education industry can be involved in that endeavour. This year the focus of the event was on opening up education, with the title Schools at the crossroads of innovation in cities and regions. A background report with the same title provided the substantive materials to support the discussions: it suggests that schools need to  reach out  to regional economies and local communities to be part of innovation ecosystems in order to contribute with knowledge and learning opportunities, but also to get incentivised to become more innovative themselves.

One of the most visible outcomes of the discussions was that education policy makers and industrialists are not yet on the same page. While the latter forcefully argued for a sense of urgency and more drastic changes, the former made a case for piecemeal engineering of a very complicated system. Some participants concerned with the economics of education argued that innovation will become a systemic imperative, driven by the exploding cost of current models. Over time PISA scores remain rather flat, while the cost of education is increasing. “You can’t keep squeezing the model; you need to change the production function”. But education policy makers argued that education needs to be inclusive, taking into account not only the innovation pioneers but many other stakeholders as well.

Part of the discussion was about what we exactly mean with ‘innovation’. Spectacular changes at the frontier of scientific discovery and technological inventions attract of lot of attention. But in broader definitions, such as the one adopted by the OECD Innovation Strategy, innovation is not only about the latest state-of-the-art disruptive technologies, but also about the breadth of societal changes, including social innovation. Innovation is also about the knowledge and skills that make societies future-proof, including capacities and capabilities for using, integrating, accepting novel solutions to challenges.

Some representatives from innovative schools were invited to the Summit to share their views and experiences. Some of them convincingly argued for greater diversification, moving away from the standardization and uniformity that has characterised education’s solutions to the challenge of the 2nd Industrial Revolution and its demand for mass education. In the past standardisation was the easy answer to the increasing need  of access and equity, but the future will require education to implement systemic diversification to meet very different economic and social needs and to provide opportunities to very different talents.

On how schools should progress, education industry representatives applauded the call for schools to open up and become partners in innovation ecosystems in regional economies and societies. Networking and connecting schools with business and local communities will be essential drivers of innovation in education; opening up is the best strategy to address change and connect schools with what’s happening in the outside world.  Industry representatives recognised that this would involve more risk-taking by schools, but that’s what is expected from all social systems in a period of rapid transformation. The status-quo is not an option, and not risk-free either.

Opening up education to businesses was, however, an idea that provoked a rather strong reaction from the side of Education International, the representative of teacher unions, against the dangers of commodification and privatization of education. Employers can play a role in education, but education works for the greater public good and should not be submitted to the economic interests of for-profit actors. Others argued that innovation will never endanger the critically important role of teachers, quite  the contrary. Innovation-proof education systems will have to rely on a very strong, mature profession. But the teaching profession will have to move away from an industrial model to a professional model. We need to take a giant leap forward in the process of professionalization of teachers.

In the end there was an idea on which all participants agreed: the critical role of governments to steer innovation in education. Increasing school autonomy, decentralisation, complexity and technological disruption make the task of governing education systems more difficult, but also move the governance challenge to a higher level, that of leadership in a period of change. Democratic government is and will be the system through which change and innovation in education will happen. But this will only be possible by empowering schools and supporting those that promote innovation.

Links

Schools at the crossroads of innovation in cities and regions

3rd Global Education Industry Summit

Follow the conversation: #GEIS2017

Why it matters if you can't read this

by Tanja Bastianic
Statistician, Directorate for Education and Skills 

Adults who lack basic skills – literacy and numeracy – are penalised both in professional and private life. They are more likely to be unemployed or in precarious jobs, earn lower wages, have more health issues, trust others less, and engage less often in community life and democratic processes.

Basic skills are not complicated. What we measure in the OECD Survey of Adult Skills is the ability to process the information needed to perform everyday tasks – to read the instructions on a bottle of aspirin or to know how many litres of petrol are needed to fill the tank.

In Australia, around three million working-age adults – one in five – currently have low basic skills and are living with the consequences. And if Australia doesn’t tackle this problem, it risks being left behind by countries investing more successfully in the skills of their people, especially in a world where work is undergoing a rapid technology-driven change and people have to adapt to new circumstances (See figure).

Many Australians with low levels of education have low skills – this comes as no surprise, as they often quit education at an early stage. Perhaps more surprising is that a higher level qualification doesn’t guarantee advanced basic skills. The OECD study published today, Building Skills for All in Australia: Policy Insights from the Survey of Adult Skills shows that 17% of Australians with a vocational Certificate IV, Advanced Diploma or Associate Degree still have low levels of basic skills. 

Australia’s post-secondary VET (Vocational Education and Training) system is inclusive and caters to adults with different needs, including those with poor basic skills.  This is a real asset to the Australian education sector. But the OECD argues that providers of post-secondary VET could do more to help those students with poor basic skills.

The study also highlights specific weaknesses in the numeric skills of young women in Australia, indicating that far greater attention should be devoted to ensuring that young women participate fully within Australia’s wider efforts to strengthen mathematics within secondary education. Opportunity exists, moreover, to better support young people who are Not in Education, Employment or Training (the NEETs) to reengage in learning whether through the development of pre-apprenticeship provision or access to better childcare for young mothers.

The OECD Australia review follows a number of similar studies on low basic skills conducted in the United States, England, and Finland. The OECD’s work on adult learning and skills is designed to help countries identify where skills-related challenges arise among adults, and then offer them an opportunity to redirect their skills policies and investments. The review of Australia is part of this work.  

Helping adults to improve their basic skills remains a challenge nearly everywhere and there are no easy answers. But the alternative – of doing nothing – is even worse. So each of these studies help us all understand the challenges better and offer a menu of interventions to help countries tackle the issue. 

Links

To read the report, visit Building Skills for All in Australia: Policy Insights from the Survey of Adult Skills

To read a literature review about the problem of low basic skills, visit Adults with Low Literacy and Numeracy Skills: A Literature Review on Policy Intervention

Figure: Share of adults with low basic skills (literacy and/or numeracy level at or below 2)

Photo credit: @Shutterstock 

Education reform in Wales: A national mission

by Kirsty Williams AM
Cabinet Secretary for Education, Welsh Government

It’s an exciting time for education in Wales.

This was noted by the OECD earlier this year, when it recognised that government and sector are working closely together with a commitment to improvements that are “visible at all levels of the education system”.

This week, as Wales’s Education Secretary, I published our new action plan for the next four years. Entitled ‘Education in Wales: Our national mission’, it builds on the strong foundations already in place in our system. But we are setting the bar even higher, ambitious as we are in our expectations for our young people, for our teaching profession and for our nation.

As a relatively small country and a still-young democracy, we have too often seen these as challenges rather than opportunities. Through the OECD, we have had the opportunity to learn more about other systems and their reform journeys.

It is true that no two countries or systems are the same. However, as a bilingual system committed to both equity and excellence, we are not only learning from others, but our innovative approach is in fact attracting international attention. And Wales will remain open to ideas, visits and co-operation!

It is our approach to curriculum reform, within a reformed system, that is often of most interest. Work is well underway on this, led by a group of pioneer schools who are working in partnership with government, regional education consortia, international experts, universities, business and third sector, and right across the education profession. It is not the product of secret meetings in some Government back-office.

The OECD said in its recent review: “To support the realisation of its education objectives and ultimately its vision of the Welsh learner, Wales should continue its curriculum reform… ensuring that its reform journey is comprehensive and effective.”

Therefore, as we continue with our reforms, we will bring a renewed focus to four key ‘enabling’ objectives.

Education in Wales

Firstly, ensuring a high-quality education profession. We will support teachers in being lifelong professional learners through new standards, a national approach and reformed initial teacher education.

Secondly, identifying and inspiring leaders to raise standards. We need to address a previous lack of emphasis on leadership. Therefore we will establish a national leadership academy, reduce bureaucracy through business managers and improved communication and co-operation, and revise the qualification for school leaders.

Thirdly, ensure that our schools are inclusive, dedicated to excellence, equity and well-being. We will extend our targeted support for learners from disadvantaged backgrounds, provide dedicated support for our ‘more able’ learners, and be innovative in identifying and measuring well-being alongside attainment.

And fourthly, improved assessment, evaluation and accountability within a self-improving system. We will be consistent and clear about the things we wish to value and measure through a new annual national education report and report card, formative assessments and a new assessment & evaluation framework that focuses on improvement all levels.

The OECD report and advice was unambiguous: hold our nerve, stay the course, but do more to communicate, clarify and ensure coherence in our programme. Focus on leadership in delivering a much-needed new curriculum in a timely manner.

‘Education in Wales: Our national mission’ responds to those recommendations and sets out our collective responsibility to raise standards, reduce the attainment gap and deliver a system that is a source of genuine national pride and public confidence.

Links
Education in Wales: Our national mission
The Welsh education reform journey: A rapid policy assessment (OECD)
Curriculum for Wales blog

Follow the conversation on Twitter: #EducationMissionWales

Photo credits: Welsh Government Education