Late in 2022, the OECD published the following topical items, which may be of interest to readers:
Does higher education teach students to think critically?
This large publication explores the signs that the skills supply of graduates no longer matches skills demand in the labour market with quantitative qualifications mismatch turning into a severe issue in many countries. The report states that employers and economic organisations express with increasingly louder voices that they are no longer confident that graduates have acquired the skills needed for the 21st Century workplace, in particular, generic skills such as problem solving, communication, creativity, and critical thinking.
The report contends that more transparency is needed about the skills students acquire which has not been a strength of most higher education systems. Transparency tools such as international rankings are quite good at capturing research-related measures or input measures in education quality but do not provide any insights into students’ actual learning outcomes. The few available measures, for example, provided by the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), are far from sufficient and strengthen the demand for more and better metrics.
This volume reports on the work pursued between 2016 and 2021 to assess critical thinking and written communication, and associated skills in higher education institutions in six countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Mexico, Finland, and Chile). It is a follow-up to the OECD-led Assessing Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) feasibility study and is one of the first international studies of generic skills proficiency in higher education institutions. It does not provide definitive answers but shows the power of assessing critical-thinking skills and how such assessments can feed into the policy agenda in higher education at national and international levels.
There is a brief section on assessing students' generic learning outcomes in Australia and New Zealand.
Creativity, critical thinking and climate education for the green transition
In December 2022 the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills published this article which asked what sort of teaching and learning is needed for climate action? It noted the consequences of climate crisis are global, complex and interrelated with critical impacts in diverse fields. Not only do students need nuanced understandings of the science underlying climate change and its consequences, they need strong creativity and critical thinking skills to be able to use that knowledge to generate and evaluate ideas for mitigation, adaptation and action.
The new PISA report, Are Students Ready to Take on Environmental Challenges? shows a link between scientific knowledge and pro-environmental attitudes. The more students know about science, the more likely they are to be concerned about the environment. However, this is no guarantee of climate action. Students need support to mobilise their knowledge into action, develop a sense of purpose and agency, and maintain that over time.
Empowering young people with creativity and critical thinking skills during their lessons at school is key to supporting their role in the green transition. Education systems can support young people to enable them to develop the scientific and environmental knowledge and creativity and critical thinking skills needed to create and evaluate responses.
To support teachers in implementing teaching for climate action on the ground, the OECD has published example lesson plans showing how the science related to climate can be taught in a way that provides opportunities to young people to develop their creativity and critical thinking. These lesson plans can be adapted to fit a range of needs and contexts or used by teachers as inspiration to create their own teaching approaches.
