Assessing 21st century skills

Back to the NSBA conference:

As inevitably happens at these conferences, at some point you wish you could be in two places at the same time. So I missed the session on "Assessing 21st century skills" - an important issue that I've mentioned previously - but I did manage to get the notes and capture some key ideas.

First, a brief mention of what is meant by 21st century skills, and why it's becoming important.

Most people understand that many of the jobs requiring routine manual labor have left our economy, and those that remain are not well paid. What fewer people realize is that many of the jobs involving routine cognitive skills are leaving as well. (For example, x-rays are now typically "shipped" overseas electronically, where routine diagnoses are performed for a fraction of the cost.)

The consequence for the next generation is that the best jobs are going to require highly developed communication and critical thinking skills. So how do you "teach" these skills - and how do you measure what you've taught?  Not only does there have to be accountability to students, parents and political stakeholders, teachers need to know whether their teaching has been successful.

Educators and business leaders are increasingly questioning whether current educational assessment systems – which rely primarily on multiple choice exams - focus too heavily on whether a student can recall discrete facts, rather than the ability to complete complex thinking and problem-solving tasks.  Nor are these assessments typically designed to measure how well students can apply what they know to new situations.

So, in addition to the "summative" assessments to which we've become accustomed, we need to develop effective “formative" assessments, in which the assessment becomes part of the learning process. This provides immediate and continuous feedback to both the student and the teacher. Other benefits of formative assessments are that students tend to become resources for one another, and they are more likely to take ownership of their learning.

A number of these “formative” assessment tools have already been developed, such as “mClass” for mathematics and the TerraNova Performance Assessments, but there is clearly more to be done.

A postscript from the spring issue of “Threshold”: at Stanford Medical School, they use gaming to teach emergency room teamwork. (Collaboration is another important 21st century skill.) In the interactive game, each student treats the “patient” working through an avatar whose decisions can be analyzed after the exercise.