The National Research Council's (NRC) Board on Testing and Assessment proposes a two-day workshop on assessing 21st century skills building on two previous workshops. The first workshop explored employer demand for employees who possess these broad transferable skills, which were defined as adaptability, complex communication, non-routine problem solving, self-management/self-development and systems thinking. The second workshop considered the intersection between science education reform goals and the 21st century skills, examined models of high quality science instruction that may develop the skills and discussed teacher readiness to integrate the skills in instruction. Both workshops expressed the need for assessments that can measure the attainment of 21st century skills. This workshop is to describe research on assessment of 21st century skills to inform policies and practices. The workshop is lead by an expert in assessment and convenes an expert committee of educational measurement specialists, cognitive psychologists and experts in job analysis and employment testing along with practitioners in schools. The committee investigates the types of assessments available and associated technical reports and designs the workshop to review them. Knowledgeable experts are commissioned to write papers and speak at the workshop. An individual author writes a summary report to be disseminated by the NRC. In the second year the NRC reconvenes the leadership of all three workshops to identify the next steps to provide research-based guidance to educational leaders seeking to infuse 21st century skills into instruction.
. The first part of the workshop, held on January 12-13, 2011, in Irvine, California, focused on research and measurement issues associated with assessing 21st skills. The second part, held on May 4, 2011, in Washington DC, focused on policy and practices issues. To provide a focus for the workshop, the steering committee defined three broad clusters of 21st century skills: cognitive skills, interpersonal skills, and intrapersonal skills. A report summarizing the workshop discussions was reviewed in accordance with NRC procedures and published in September, 2011. It is available at: www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13215. In Phase 2, the NRC built on this workshop and other previous NRC activities on 21st century skills to conduct a consensus study of deeper learning and 21st century skills. The final report, along with the report brief, press release, and responses to the study, can be found at: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/DBASSE/BOTA/Education_for_Life_and_Work/index.htm The consensus report defines "deeper learning" as the process of learning for transfer. Through this process, students develop a blend of transferable knowledge and skills which the committee refers to as "21st century competencies." These competencies fall into three broad domains: The cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal domains. Comparing this definition of deeper learning and 21st century competencies with the new Common Core State Standards in mathematics and English language arts and the NRC Framework for K–12 Science revealed important areas of overlap. However, developing these higher-order competencies within the disciplines will require additional instructional time and resources to support sustained instruction and practice. The report identifies instructional design principles to foster deeper learning and development of 21st century competencies in the cognitive domain. Further research is needed to determine whether these principles, derived from research in the cognitive domain, could plausibly be applied to design instruction aimed at interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies. The report recommends that foundations and federal research agencies support studies on teaching and learning for transfer, as well as research to: increase our understanding of the relationships between 21st century competencies and adult outcomes; shed light on how to design instruction to help students develop transferable knowledge and skills in the interpersonal and intrapersonal domains; and determine whether and to what extent knowledge and skills developed in one discipline or subject area can transfer to another. The primary intellectual merit of phase 1 of this project was to move the discussion about 21st century skills forward -- from discussions that primarily centered on identifying the skills to discussions about approaches for assessing them. In the process, workshop participants discovered that there were no agreed-upon definitions of these skills; without agreed-upon definitions, it is difficult to develop assessments that can be used on a large scale. Furthermore, questions were raised about the extent to which assessment results would be trustworthy and have fidelity. That is, there were questions about how susceptible assessments might be to faking (especially under high-stakes conditions) and the extent to which assessments could be designed so that they captured the actual processes involved in emonstrating the skills. Laying out the concerns provided the first step toward addressing some of the challenges, laying the foundation for the consensus study. The intellectual merit of Phase 2 includes clarifying the meaning of "deeper learning" and "21st century skills" and identifying instructional design principles to develop 21st century competencies, based on a thorough review and synthesis of the research from several subfields of psychology and the cognitive sciences. In addition, the study reviewed and synthesized research in economics to illuminate what is known and remains unknown about the relationship between individual competencies and adult outcomes (including labor market, educational, and health outcomes). The study also identifies important gaps where further research is needed, as noted above. The NRC staff and committee members have been actively engaged in disseminating the report, making presentations to large and small audiences of educational policymakers, community college faculty and administrators, employer associations, foundations, and other groups interested in 21st century skills. The report has been well-received and interest in the report remains high 9 months after its release. The widespread interest in the consensus report reflects the broader impact of the project. Most children across the United States, of varying socio-economic status, ethnicity, and physical and mental ability, enroll in elementary and secondary education. Therefore, the report’s recommendations to support deeper learning and the development of transferable competencies in the context of K-12 education could potentially enhance learning, motivate, and prepare diverse children and youth for advanced study in science or other fields.
