Year Inward Review: A Hold Off Dorsum At Our Close Pop Posts Of 2018

By Amar Toor
Communications too Digital Officer, Directorate for Education too Skills

Photo credit: Element5/Unsplash

It's been some other productive twelvemonth hither at the OECD Directorate for Education too Skills, too we're gearing upwardly for an fifty-fifty busier 2019. Next year, we'll liberate novel information from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Teaching too Learning International Survey (TALIS) too the annual Education at a Glance publication, inwards add-on to our steady flow of working papers too policy briefs.

We'll comprehend all the latest word hither on Education too Skills Today, amongst insights from OECD analysts too experts from across the terra firma of education. But earlier nosotros expect equally good far ahead, here's a expect dorsum on some of our most pop posts from 2018.

• "How Japan’s Kosen schools are creating a novel generation of innovators"

In our most pop shipping of the year, OECD Education too Skills Director Andreas Schleicher describes his catch to a genuinely unique schoolhouse inwards Japan:

“At Kosen schools, learning is both cross-curricular too student-centred, too teachers are mainly coaches, mentors, facilitators too evaluators. This is non i of those contrived, one-week projects that accept straightaway croak quite stylish inwards many schools some the world; on the contrary, Kosen students volition typically move for several years on developing too realising their big ideas.”

• "How Finnish-inspired teaching methods improved learning inwards a United States of America of America classroom"

Guest author Janet English linguistic communication writes nearly what she learned inwards adapting Finnish teaching methods to her classroom inwards California:

"[H]ow did I adjust Finnish methods to an American classroom? I combined the Finnish pedagogical approach for optimizing learning amongst the American approach of increasing competition. The result: high rates of proficiency too increased pupil motivation to solve problems."

• "Taking a intermission from the Internet may endure goodness for learning"

Drawing on recent PISA findings, analyst Alfonso Echazarra notes that although Internet connectivity is increasing across the globe, it appears to accept diverse effects for dissimilar pupil groups: 

"However, this greater connectivity may non necessarily endure goodness word for disadvantaged students. In every schoolhouse system, students who reported using the Internet to a greater extent than frequently, especially on schoolhouse days, scored lower inwards scientific discipline than students who reported using the Internet less frequently." 

• “How tin plow over the axe teaching standards ameliorate teaching?”

Reflecting on her ain sense equally a instructor inwards Hungary, analyst Nora Révai makes a compelling illustration for how rigid standards tin plow over the axe ameliorate teaching:

"When I started teaching English linguistic communication inwards my native Hungary, I was excited, confident, too perhaps a chip nervous, nearly managing a grouping of students too helping them grow. My outset twelvemonth went well: I established goodness relationships, my students were actively engaged inwards their learning, too they made huge progress. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 twelvemonth later... the sense was alone different."

• "Why nosotros should dispel the myth of migrants equally a homogeneous group"

Andreas Schleicher, OECD Chief of Staff Gabriela Ramos, OECD Deputy Secretary General Ludger Schuknecht too Stefano Scarpetta, caput of the Directorate for Employment, Labour too Social Affairs, debate for a to a greater extent than nuanced persuasion of migrants too the skills they convey to their novel homes:

"On television, inwards newspapers too on social media, migrants are often described inwards blanket terms: they’re generally unskilled, they accept picayune run a endangerment of integrating inwards their host country, too they are a burden on the populace pocketbook because they rely on benefits to a greater extent than than they contribute to financing them. It’s a wide generalisation, too it often forms the terra firma of a polarised debate. But the information state another, to a greater extent than differentiated story."