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Drawing on material presented at the OECD Programme on Educational Building's conference in London on "Creating 21st Century Learning Environments," this richly illustrated book presents the latest in innovative design for schools and analyses needs for the future. It does this through a series of thematic analyses, presentations, and school visits. The conclusions summarize planning and construction issues and make suggestions for the construction industry.
ICT has profound implications for education, both because ICT can facilitate new forms of learning and because it has become important for young people to master ICT in preparation for adult life. But how extensive is access to ICT in schools and informal settings and how is it used by students?
Drawing on data from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Are Students Ready for a Technology-Rich World? What PISA Studies Tell Us, examines whether access to computers for students is equitable across countries and student groups; how students use ICT and what their attitudes are towards ICT; the relationship between students’ access to and use of ICT and their performance in PISA 2003; and the implications for educational policy.
Assessing Scientific, Reading and Mathematical Literacy: A Framework for PISA 2006 presents the conceptual framework underlying the PISA 2006 survey. It includes a re-developed and expanded framework for scientific literacy, an innovative component on the assessment of students’ attitudes to science and the frameworks for the assessment of reading and mathematics. Within each domain, the framework defines the content that students need to acquire, the processes that need to be performed, and the contexts in which knowledge and skills are applied. The domains and their aspects are also illustrated with sample tasks.
This publication aims to identify what works in the policy and practice of adult learning, drawing on the experience of nine OECD countries: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom (England). It defines the features of a desirable system of adult learning, including ways to motivate adults to learn and methods to deliver appropriate services. This book will be indispensable to policy makers and those involved in the practice of adult learning.
This joint publication of the OECD and the European Commission gives policy makers practical tools to tackle weaknesses in many countries' career guidance systems including limited access, particularly for adults; failure to develop career management skills; inappropriate training; and poor service coordination. In simple, non-technical language, this publication addresses a broad range of policy issues that that are central to the effective delivery of career guidance services. These include: how to widen access to career guidance; ways of improving the quality of career information; ensuring that staff qualifications meet policy objectives; and improving strategic leadership.
OECD countries are attaching rising importance to lifelong learning and active employment policies as tools of economic growth and social equity. Effective information and guidance systems are essential to support the implementation of these policies, and all citizens need to develop the skills to self-manage their careers. Yet there are large gaps between these policy goals and the capacity of national career guidance systems. Based upon a review conducted in 14 OECD countries, this publication explores how these gaps might be narrowed. It advocates improved national co-ordination arrangements and greater attention to research and data collection to inform policy makers. It also promotes the development of improved and more specialised training programmes for practitioners and the creation of more specialised career guidance organisations for the delivery of services.
Fears of the prospect of growing social exclusion have become important concerns in recent years for many countries. Improving the quality of education and the standards attained by students to improve employability is one of the tools being used to prevent exclusion. However, changing social realities are leaving young children and students more exposed than ever to failure at school and unemployment.
It is becoming increasingly clear that communities, education systems, schools and teachers are not equipped to deal with the many problems which arise and when social or health services become involved conflicts of interest can arise leading to actions which are not always in the clients' best interests.
The necessity to provide greater co-ordination among these services, to improve their efficiency and effectiveness and to provide a seamless support to meet the holistic needs of students and their families is now becoming more accepted. Such an approach, inter alia, is community-based, emphasises prevention rather than being crisis-oriented, is customer-driven rather than being focused on an agency, and is accountable through outcomes rather than inputs. For many, better co-ordination of services is seen as the only solution available which is commensurate with our present democratic societies.
All of the papers in this book were presented at a conference held in Toronto, Canada. They are original and have been written by policy-makers from different ministries, researchers from different disciplines and clients who come variously from Canada, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, and the USA.
Is there a "new learning economy"? Do regions and cities play new roles in terms of governance and intervention in order to promote learning, innovation, productivity and economic performance at the local level? Such questions are high on the political agenda everywhere. This publication, which views the debate from the perspective of a regional learning economy, clearly answers in the affirmative. Of central importance is the idea that learning regions and cities, which are especially well attuned to the requirements of the new learning economy, may be fostered through the development of appropriate strategies of public governance and intervention. The relationships between various forms of learning and economic performance at the regional level are analysed and provide strong evidence of the importance of individual and firm-level organisational learning for regions’ economic performance. Case studies of five regions and cities indicate that social capital affects both individual and organisational learning.
This book identifies important economic barriers to expanded investment in lifelong learning, describes outlines financial strategies for addressing them, and reviews recent experience with various co-financing schemes. It includes country-by-country reports on innovative co-financing arrangements for lifelong learning.
Some 15 to 30 per cent of our children and youth are at risk of failing in school where learning and behaviour problems touch ever younger children. In many countries with very different political and cultural backgrounds, these challenges are being met by increasing the co-ordination of education, health and social services, a process often galvanised by a broader involvement, extending to business and senior citizens. This is more than merely tinkering with statutory systems of service provision. Current services are mismatched; our vision of the family and its needs is changing along with the balance between prevention and remediation, and the ways that professionals work together. This book provides the detailed stories of how this process has developed in seven OECD countries: Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United States. It looks at system change from the points of view of policy-makers, managers, practitioners and service users. It provides information on the background to the changes, highlighting what was provided to help the changes happen and investigating the process of change and the outcomes of the reforms. The scope of the work is broad: it covers pre-school, school age and transition to work.
This report provides internationally comparable data from upper secondary schools. It sheds light on how these schools are managed and financed, on their approaches to and difficulties in securing qualified teachers, and their efforts to support the professional development of teachers. The report is based on OECD’s International Survey of Upper Secondary Schools that was conducted in 2001 in Belgium (Fl), Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland.
The mobility of students, professors, knowledge and even values has been part of higher education for centuries, but it has recently grown at an unprecedented pace. This presents many new opportunities among which are increased access to higher education, strategic alliances between countries and regions, as well as the expansion of human resource and institutional capacity. Parallel to these opportunities are an equal number of challenges: a potential increase in low quality or rogue providers, a lack of recognition of foreign qualifications by domestic employers or education institutions, along with elitism and the tensions it creates. This book casts light on these opportunities and challenges, especially for developing countries willing to leverage cross-border higher education as a tool for development. It discusses the concept of capacity-building through cross-border education, emphasising the critical role of quality assurance and trade negotiations.
As China's "open door" economic policies result in remarkably high and sustained levels of growth, demands on the skills and knowledge of its population have fundamentally changed with inevitable pressure on the education system.
This volume provides a distinct flavour of the challenges and opportunities inherent in the very fundamental reforms under way in the higher education sector in China, as seen through the eyes of some of those directly involved.
Who finances educational facilities? What are the criteria used and how are they applied? Each country has its own system; however, the general trends are towards diversification of funding sources and decentralisation of responsibility. This publication examines the links between decentralisation and new means of financing. Although local control can guarantee greater effectiveness and responsiveness to local needs, central government remains responsible for ensuring access to equity and equality of educational opportunity. The greatest challenge in education funding consists of achieving compatibility between these objectives and technological development.
Many educational experts are identifying a critical shift from supply-led systems — operating to procedures decided by educational authorities, schools and teachers — towards systems which are much more sensitive to demand. But, whose demands should these be? What are they? And how will schools recognize and cope with them? This book examines different aspects of the demand concept and presents international evidence from Austria, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Denmark, England, Finland, Hungary, Japan, Poland, Spain, and the United States to reveal attitudes and expectations.
This book is a compilation devoted to high quality school and university buildings from 21 countries. Full-colour photographs and plans illustrate the 55 educational facilities selected by an international jury in recognition of their forward-looking response to the changing environment of teaching and learning. Readers will also find an overview of activities of the OECD Programme on Educational Building in the context of lifelong learning, carried out in collaboration with other organisations specialised in teaching, research and resource management.
Access to institutions of higher education is as important for disabled people as it is for non-disabled students, since it can offer them the same opportunities for employment, social inclusion and poverty alleviation. Inclusive practices in schools also encourage the need for greater access in higher education. This book offers a detailed account of practices in Canada (Ontario), France and the United Kingdom, and provides additional information on the situation in Germany and Switzerland.
Are the new information and communication technologies transforming education and learning in OECD countries? There is certainly an upsurge in investigations and inquiries into e-learning by all kinds of parties and interest groups -- governmental, professional, commercial -- and from education communities.
The universal « mega-trends » associated with globalisation mean that partnership in providing e-learning material is needed to manage cost and complexity in the face of competition that may come from any part of the world. This raises important questions about the public interest and the public good especially in school education which find different responses in different OECD countries; yet increased public-private sector partnering appears a well-nigh universal phenomenon.
This publication explores closely the e-learning developments respectively in the school and in the higher education sector in terms of market prospects and partnership creation. The fastest developments are seen in post-secondary and corporate education. However, technology alone does not deliver education success. It only becomes valuable in education if learners and teachers can do something useful with it. There is now a definite shift of focus from technology to content and people in several OECD countries.
Following the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2000, scepticism about e-learning replaced over-enthusiasm. Rhetoric aside, where do we stand? Why and how do different kinds of tertiary education institutions engage in e-learning? What do institutions perceive to be the pedagogic impact of e-learning in its different forms? How do institutions understand the costs of e-learning? How might e-learning impact staffing and staff development? This book addresses these and many other questions.
The study is based on a qualitative survey of practices and strategies carried out by the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) at 19 tertiary education institutions from 11 OECD member countries – Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States – and 2 non-member countries – Brazil and Thailand. This qualitative survey is complemented by the findings of a quantitative survey of e-learning in tertiary education carried out in 2004 by the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education (OBHE) in some Commonwealth countries.
This report seeks to provide some answers by identifying and examining the economic and financial issues that arise in implementing the goal, and the strategies that the public and private sectors are pursuing to achieve it. It deals with issues such as individual learning accounts, recognition of non-formal learning, and measures to raise rates of return to lifelong learning.
The report is intended to provide a basis for continued in-depth discussion by public authorities and the social partners. It aims to inspire future actions that ensure that lifelong learning serves as a sustainable and equitable strategy for human development.