Assessment of Transversal Skills for Students

Proposal Outline Our consortium, led by the Cyprus Ministry of Education, proposes to focus on the issue of developing and assessing transversal skills in the context of a large scale pilot located in secondary compulsory education. Policy objective: Numerous organisations have identified the need to develop transversal skills, sometimes referred to as 21st century skills, among learners in formal education. There is limited evidence of how this can be achieved in education, particularly across large numbers of schools and learners. There is currently a gap in our knowledge as to how education systems can implement and assess these skills. Specific objective of the experimentation: The specific objective of this experimentation is to define an agreed set of transversal skills so there is clarity around what they mean across the consortium. In addition, there is need to develop robust assessment procedures to assess these skills so that stakeholders can make valid and reliable judgements on the attainment of these skills. Methodology: Initially, there is a need to develop an agreed set of criteria around transversal skills and to operationalise these so teachers can design learning activities which facilitate the development of these skills among their students. This will require initial desk research and the creation of tools that enable teachers to design appropriate learning tasks. Students will then engage in project work where they will have opportunities to develop these skills. On completion of the learning tasks teachers, learners and other stakeholders will need to evaluate how successful students were in developing these skills. The EU Call documentation is strongly advocating an experimental research design evaluation methodology. However, following initial discussion within the consortium it is proposed we develop a mixed-methods approach that gathers a mix of quantitative and qualitative data from the school field trials. Liabilities, constraints and opportunities: Many education systems are considering the implications of moving away from testing “knowledge” to assessing skills and competences. However, there are limited examples of how such approaches or policies can be designed and implemented. The opportunity here is to explore at scale what transversal skills might look like across a range of curriculum areas, how these can be assessed in a robust fashion, and how assessment data can inform practice at school and education system levels. Operational capacity: The consortium has a wide range of expertise to carry out this work. We have potentially 18 organisations involved in the proposal. The group consists of national ministries of education, evaluation organisations, universities, teacher education organisations, project management experts and industry partners. Common to all parties is a desire to trial how we define and assess transversal skills at scale so each country can learn from this evaluation, inform relevant policy in their own country, and help influence policy at European level. Further elaboration: Our project will focus on defining a set of transversal skills that learners can develop on a daily basis during their second-level schooling. We plan to develop a set of indicators and online tools to facilitate the assessment and self-assessment of these skills by teachers and learners. It is envisaged that these assessment tools will utilise social media, data analytics and cloud based technologies while also building on the emerging use of ePortfolios. It is envisaged that by developing such tools teachers will be able to infuse assessment more into instruction and ultimately improve student learning. In addition there is a recognition that we need to develop lifelong learners where each learner “sees themselves as their own teacher”. Here again data and feedback can play a key role in providing quality feedback to learners so they can plot what direction their le