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This paper marks the second in a series of five reports detailing the work of the Optimizing Assessment for All (OAA) project at Brookings to strengthen education systems capacity to integrate 21st century skills into teaching and learning, using assessment as a lever for changing classroom practices. Twenty-first century skills (21CS) are now firmly entrenched as learning goals in education systems worldwide, but their actual implementation in teaching and assessment practices is lagging behind. With these learning goals--which prioritize how to get answers rather than just providing a correct response--we are facing new challenges and exploring new solutions. This report describes the collaborative activities undertaken by the OAA project with three countries in Asia--Cambodia, Mongolia, and Nepal--to create 21CS assessment tasks. OAA and partners worked with the countries to identify the 21CS skills that countries value, hypothesized what these skills might look like in classroom assessment tasks, and developed and piloted these tasks to ensure that teachers can use them in classrooms. The mechanics of the activities are described in detail to illustrate the methods used in the OAA project and by the countries. Comprehensive descriptions of work over a 20-month period from 2018 to 2019 include multicountry workshops, individual in-country workshops and convenings, regional meetings hosted by the Network on Education Quality Monitoring in the Asia-Pacific, virtual communications, and maintenance of an online platform for document sharing and management. Frequently, assessment studies focus primarily on the tools or tests. For the OAA project, the primary focus was on the process: How do you develop tasks that reflect current curricula and that integrate 21CS into teaching and learning practices? From this process, it became clear that rethinking the classroom culture is necessary. Concerns expressed during pilot task implementation highlight some of the complexities associated with collaborative work, about not always prioritizing correct answers, and about building knowledge together. The OAA initiative took just one step in the process of integrating 21CS into the curriculum. The development and introduction of assessment tasks in the classroom is a disruptive force acting as a lever for change. The challenge will be how to deal with that force adaptively. [For the first report, "Optimizing Assessment for All: Framework for Understanding Project Goals and Scope," see ED602945.]

This framework marks the first in a series of five reports detailing the work of the Optimizing Assessment for All (OAA) project at Brookings to strengthen education systems' capacity to integrate 21st century skills (21CS) into teaching and learning, using assessment as a lever for changing classroom practices. In a world of rapid advancement and change, people and societies need a new mixture of skills to thrive. It is no longer accepted that education devoted mainly to the memorization of facts will prepare people to be thoughtful, productive, and engaged citizens. Rather, people of all ages need a broad set of skills, including cognitive, social, and technological, to evaluate and apply knowledge in ways that meet the new demands of a changing social and economic landscape. These skills, such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, information literacy, and communication, among others, are often broadly referred to as 21CS or transversal competencies. Countries around the world are including 21CS in their national education goals and policies, signaling their commitment to addressing the changing needs of their learners. However, countries are faced with challenges on how to implement these policies due to disconnects between different parts of the education systems; lack of understanding on how teaching and learning 21CS looks in the classroom; and limited measurement expertise in the area of 21CS assessment. Between December 2017 and April 2020, the Optimizing Assessment for All (OAA) project will address these challenges by strengthening education systems' capacity to integrate 21CS into their teaching and learning, using assessment as a lever for changing classroom practices and building that capacity. The OAA project has emphasized developing existing capacity and resources and changing mindsets to cultivate and support a new generation of assessment specialists within the participating countries and regions. OAA has worked in two regions--Asia and sub-Saharan Africa--and three focus countries within each region have participated in a capacity-building approach for designing, developing, and piloting classroom-based assessments of 21CS. [Support was provided by Porticus.]

There has been a major shift in educational learning goals--as seen most recently by Goal 4.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals--focused on global citizenship education and education for sustainable development. The shift concerns recognition of the need for education systems to equip learners with competencies such as problem solving, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication. The focus on these "21st century goals" is visible in education and curricular reform, and has been promoted by global discussion of changing work and societal needs. This paper describes global, regional, and national examples of this shift, and then focuses on implementation challenges. The paper focuses most explicitly on the issue of assessment but asserts that any major reform in an educational philosophy shift must ensure alignment across the areas of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. The paper identifies several challenges to implementation of this educational shift. These include the need for clear understanding of the necessary skills and the need for clear descriptions of what different levels of competencies in skills might look like. The paper identifies possible assessment approaches, using examples to highlight effective strategies for assessment of the skills, while acknowledging the technical difficulties associated with "capture" of behaviors in scoring and reporting them. Following a discussion of the cross-cultural issues relevant to assessment of 21CS, the paper looks at three countries--Australia, Kenya, and the Philippines--to identify how they are approaching the assessment and teaching of 21CS in their basic education sectors. The countries' varied emphases on curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment are of particular interest as a majority of countries around the world explore how to approach these challenges. These examples lead to the conclusion that learning progression models are key to ensuring alignment through the education delivery system. [Support was provided to Brookings by Porticus.]

The changes in the economy and society in this century have placed a greater emphasis on the skills that citizens need to be successful. This diverse set of skills, often referred to as 21st century skills, and including critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, communication, and socio-emotional skills, among others, are in high demand as the need for rote or routine-based knowledge decreases due to automation in the workplace (Rotherham & Willingham, 2010). In education specifically, there is the concern of a global learning crisis--that students are not fully prepared with the skills they need to thrive in today's rapidly changing world (The Education Commission, 2017). With the learning goals of education shifting to include a broader range of skills, the challenge globally is how to support students in developing these skills. The components of the education system must be aligned to support the development of 21st century skills, and the qualitatively different structure of these skills requires some completely new approaches, both in the measurement aspect and collection of assessment data. A major issue that confronts education systems is a deficiency in the effective use of collected student learning outcomes data. Notwithstanding the huge sums that are dedicated to its collection, a proportional commitment is not made to its strategic analysis or its dissemination. The main purpose of this publication is to provide guidance on how data from 21st century skills assessment can be used and interpreted in terms of learning outcomes to inform teaching and learning. Towards this purpose, the authors put forward actionable recommendations that are both applicable and relevant to the current state of assessing these 21st century skills to enhance learning outcomes, as well as forward-looking in anticipating the future of assessment. In this publication, the authors consider the purposes of collecting student achievement data associated with 21st century skills, discuss how these data are currently used in various contexts and the challenges associated with each, and finally provide key principles for effective data use both generally and specific to major stakeholders. [Support was provided by Porticus.]

For marginalized girls in developing countries whose life outcomes are threatened by poverty and gender-based discrimination, life skills education can arm them with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to rewrite their futures. Oftentimes, their only access to education is through non-formal spaces provided by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Therefore, understanding how non-formal actors can better design and deliver life skills programming for such populations is especially important. In this study, the authors conducted (1) a comprehensive literature review of non-formal life skills programs for girls in developing countries; and (2) a cross-national study of the landscape, design, alignment, and intended outcomes of 103 life skills programs in Ethiopia, Lebanon, and Tanzania. Specifically, they asked who these programs serve, what skills are targeted, what approaches are used, whether there is alignment between what programs offer and what girls need, and what outcomes programs aim to help girls achieve. Key takeaways and policy implications: (1) programs try to teach a breadth of skills, but there is a definition issue to address in program design; (2) there are gaps in what life skills programs measure; (3) life skills practitioners may be missing a key opportunity to inform evidence-based policy and scale programs; and (4) formal and non-formal education stakeholders can learn from each other to improve girls' opportunities for life skills development. [The report is co-written with the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI).]

How can young women in developing countries best be prepared for success in their lives and livelihoods? Life preparation requires learning different types of knowledge and skills in formal, non-formal, and informal learning contexts. Since the advent of the Education for All initiative in 1990, the international community has recognized that in addition to academic knowledge like basic literacy and mathematics skills, young people need to learn so-called "life skills" (UNESCO 2004 & 2012; UNICEF 2012). Life skills are the combination of skills (what one has), knowledge (what one knows), and attitudes (what one believes and values) that constitute a set of competencies (what one can do) that enable youth to adapt to, function and thrive in society. They enable individuals to translate knowledge, skills, and attitudes into specific behaviors to cope with, navigate, or transform life's challenges (Kwauk and Braga 2017). To successfully function as adults in society and to navigate the social, economic, and political challenges of the 21st century, young people must be able to think critically, participate politically, live peaceful and healthy lives, create and pursue economic opportunities, navigate and use new technologies, and process information in ways that translate into positive individual and societal development. Four appendices are included. [This report was co-written with the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI). References are included in separate sections of the report.]

This report describes an initiative undertaken from 2016-2017 by the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution and Education International (EI) to develop tools to measure the breadth of learning opportunities to which children and youth are exposed in an education system. The Breadth of Learning Opportunities (BOLO) initiative provides tools to document (1) whether opportunities are provided for learning across a diverse group of domains; and (2) how the key dimensions of an education system (curriculum, assessments, teacher supports, monitoring, and school resources) align to support delivery of breadth of learning opportunities. First, the authors provide the rationale for developing these tools. Next, they describe the tools developed through this initiative. They then explain how the tools can be adapted, and some of the questions the tools might be used to answer. This report is part of a package of documents, which includes the most recent version of the tools, a description of how the tools were developed, and case studies of tool piloting in Kenya and Mexico.

This study investigated the measurement of social emotional competence in low-income youth by assessing the validity of responses derived from the widely used, teacher-rated Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA). Based upon the five-component social emotional learning model proposed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, the teacher-rated DESSA shows promise as an easy-to-administer, strengths-based assessment tool for teachers from low-income communities. In a sample of 313 kindergarten students from a southeastern city, three competing measurement models were tested (one-factor, correlated five-factor, and higher order five-factor) using confirmatory factor analyses. Results revealed that, relative to the one-factor model, the higher order five-factor framework had the best model-data fit, although the first-order factors were highly correlated with the second-order factor. Further, zero-order correlations showed that the DESSA was associated with both direct and teacher-reported measures of school-related outcomes. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed. [This paper represents the advance online publication in "Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment."]

The Skills for a Changing World project presents evidence of a movement of education systems globally toward a more explicit focus on a broad range of skills that our 21st century society needs and demands. This movement can be seen in the vision and mission statements of education systems as well as through their curricula. Although clearly endorsed at the policy level, implementation is just beginning in some countries. The issues surrounding this, particularly in the context of within-country social and economic changes, are brought to light in this report by a study of education stakeholders in four countries--Mexico, South Africa, Kenya, and the Philippines. The authors sought to understand the attitudes and perceptions of key education stakeholders by reviewing the education space in these countries which have all recently extended mandated years of education and/or included a focus on 21st century skills in their offerings to students. Through interviews and focus groups, parents, community members, teachers, teacher trainers, and education administration and policy personnel answered two primary questions concerning skills most highly valued in their communities: (1) What are the skills you associate with a successful person?; and (2) What are the skills that are important for children and students to develop? For both questions, responses from the stakeholders were organized into four categories--21st century skills, academic skills, character traits, and workforce and society characteristics. key findings include: (1) Stakeholders across all four countries highly value 21st century skills for learners; (2) Within each country, there appears to be tension between recognizing the importance of holistically-developed learners and the current structures of the education system that limits what is feasible to accomplish in classrooms; (3) Attitudes and perceptions of key stakeholders reflect the priorities of each country; and (4) Stakeholder groups who work closely with the learner (i.e., parents and teachers), as well as government personnel, emphasize the importance of skills for success.

UNESCO's Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau for Education has been working on education quality under the name of 'transversal competencies' (TVC) since 2013. Many of these competencies have been included in national education policy and curricula of countries in the region, but now the importance accorded them is increasingly gaining attention. As policy makers increasingly require their systems to provide evidence of 21st century skills acquired by their learners, implementation challenges highlight the need for a stronger alignment between curricula, pedagogy and learning assessments. UNESCO Bangkok's Network on Education Quality Monitoring in the Asia Pacific (NEQMAP) undertook this regional study to examine components within countries' learning assessments that show how these apply to and can measure transversal competencies. This report provides valuable information on how learning assessments are already capturing TVC and is useful for a broad range of education stakeholders, not only test developers, but also curriculum developers, teacher trainers and teachers. Particularly important is the need to align these skills and competencies across the entire education system.