Can students be overconnected?

By Francesco Avvisati
Analyst, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

In the pursuit of happiness, Aristotle famously wrote “Meson te kai ariston”: moderation, staying away from both excess and deficiency, is best. The past weeks of holiday celebrations reminded many of us how there could be too much of even the good things in life, e.g. too much eating and too much drinking.
Similar advice may apply just as well to young people’s use of the Internet. Most 15-year-olds in OECD countries spend at least some time each day wandering through cyberspace as part of their media diet. As this month’s PISA in Focus reports, in 2012, every day or almost every day, a large majority of 15-year-old students (71%, on average across OECD countries) browsed the Internet for fun, e.g. on video-streaming sites, and participated in an online social network (73%). In most OECD countries, more than one in two students reported spending two hours or more on line every day on weekends.

While spending up to about two hours on line every day is the norm, some students consume Internet services (or video games, particularly if they’re boys) for much longer than this. In fact, for quite a few students, the time spent every day on the Internet does not appear to have many limits – apart from the 24 hours that make up a day. On average, about 7% of students in OECD countries reported spending more than six hours on line every day outside of school – including on schooldays. In the Russian Federation and Sweden, one in eight students so reported.

Children gain access to a host of educational resources and engaging experiences through digital devices and the Internet, but concerns are also mounting about the possible harmful consequences of unrestricted Internet use. Children clearly need to be protected from online threats , such as exposure to harmful content or contacts (think pornography or cyber bullying), online fraud or abusive marketing practices, and privacy-related risks, such as identity theft. Many of these risks existed well before the Internet, but measures to protect children from the corresponding offline threats (such as physical barriers, age-related norms that prevent access to certain spaces, and adult supervision) are difficult to migrate and enforce in a virtual space that is inherently open.
Research has also shown that extended screen time in itself may have negative consequences, e.g. on adolescents,  sleep,  physical activity and social well-being.

 PISA data confirm a troubling relationship between the time teenagers spend on line outside of school and their sense of belonging at school. Results clearly indicate that extreme Internet users (those who spend six or more hours per day on line during weekdays) are twice as likely as moderate Internet users (those who spend between one and two hours per day on line) to report that they feel lonely at school (14% compared to 7%). Extreme Internet users are also particularly at risk of being less engaged with school and of scoring below their peers in the PISA assessment of mathematics.

While these findings cannot prove cause and effect, they suggest that avoiding excess, when it comes to using technology, is important not just for students’ leisure time, but also for how effective school systems are in promoting students’ learning. A concerted effort by schools and parents can help students to become critical consumers of Internet services and electronic media. Schools can raise awareness about the risks that children face on line and how to avoid them; and parents can help their children to moderate their screen time and balance it with other recreational activities, such as sports and, equally important, sleep.

Links:
Does it matter how much time students spend on line outside of school? PISA in Focus, N.59.
Quelle est l’incidence du temps que les élèves passent en ligne en dehors de l’école ? PISA in loupe No.59 (French Version)
The protection of children online report
Electronic media use and sleep in school-aged children and adolescents: A review
Sleep and use of electronic devices in adolescence: results from a large population-based study
Is spending time in screen-based sedentary behaviors associated with less physical activity: a cross national investigation
Adolescent Screen Time and Attachment to Parents and Peers
Photo credit: wireless man with blue waves over head© Shuttershock

Is the gender gap in higher education widening?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Division, Directorate for Education and Skills




Share of female bachelor’s graduates by field of study (2013)

One of the most remarkable consequences of the expansion of education in OECD countries over the past decades is the reversal of the gender gap in education. From outright exclusion and discrimination in educational institutions less than a century ago, girls and young women have conquered schools and colleges. In 2013, 55% of all students graduating from a general secondary education programme were girls – ten percentage points higher than in 2000. In learning outcomes, girls now largely outperform boys, though not in all subjects. Last year, the OECD published The ABC of Gender Equality in Education: Aptitude, Behaviour, Confidence, the most thorough study yet of gender differences in PISA performance. In reading, the gender gap across countries is equivalent to one year of schooling. However, in mathematics boys still outperform girls in six out of ten countries. Most worrisome is the finding that, across subject fields, 60% of all low performers are boys. Low achievement among boys, often combined with a lack of motivation and behavioural issues, and the prospect of an increasing share of unskilled men entering the labour force in the near future, is now one of the most important challenges education systems need to address.

But does this trend extend to colleges and universities? Surprisingly, the widening gender gap in higher education has raised far less public and political concern than that in secondary education. Yet, the numbers are astonishing. The latest Education Indicators in Focus brief  provides the most recent data available on graduates of bachelor’s programmes. In 2013, six million students across OECD countries graduated from a higher education institution with a bachelor’s degree; 58% of them were women. This percentage ranges from 69% in Sweden to 45% in Japan. Besides Japan, only Germany, Korea, Switzerland and Turkey still have more male than female graduates. So, in terms of graduation rates, the gender gap is as significant in higher education as it is in secondary education. And comparing the female graduation rate of 58% to the fact that 54% of new entrants in bachelor’s programmes are women, women also seem to be more successful than men in completing their studies.

Part of girls’ success in secondary education may be related to hidden biases in assessments and/or the effects of a largely female teaching force. But the absence of these biases in tertiary education suggests that young women’s achievement and success in college has to be attributed to stronger motivation and harder work.

An OECD study  published in 2008 provides a historical perspective, demonstrating that the trend has been going on for some time now. In 1995, equal shares of men and women were enrolled in higher education. Yet in 1998, 54% of the degrees awarded went to women. The reversal of the gender gap has happened over only a few generations: in 2014, 24% of 55-64year-old women had a tertiary degree, compared with 26% of men; but among 25-34year-olds, 46% of women, but only 36% of men, had a bachelor’s degree.

The chart above adds an important dimension to the picture: the gender gap varies across fields of study. The chart compares the shares of female graduates in the STEM fields combined, with the shares of female graduates the fields of education, humanities and social sciences combined. In the latter group, women represent over 60% of all graduates. Around 80% of all graduates in education, health and welfare are women. In contrast, only 31% of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in science and engineering went to women. In Belgium, Chile, Finland, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland, less than 25% of graduates in science and engineering are women. In contrast, around 40% or more of these graduates in Canada, Italy, Poland, Turkey and in the partner countries Saudi Arabia and South Africa are women. These gender differences in bachelor’s degrees across fields of study resemble the divergent career expectations among 15-year-old students, as recorded by PISA, and the gendered life and career choices later on. They also account for a significant share of the gender gap in earnings from employment.

So the picture for young women is decidedly mixed. Girls and young women are using education – first at secondary, then at tertiary level – as part of a strategy to improve their life chances. Their success in colleges and universities is an important component of their overall greater participation in the economy and society. Yet, huge gender differences in the choices of subjects pursued in higher education, combined with powerful and persistent gender stereotypes in work places and along career paths, prevent women from reaping the full benefits of their higher education.

Links:
Who are the bachelor’s and master’s graduates? Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 37, by Corinne Heckmann and Camila de Moraes
Les indicateurs de l'éducation à la loupe, issue No. 37 (French version)
Higher Education to 2030, Volume 1, Demography.
The ABC of Gender Equality in Education; Aptitude, Behaviour, Confidence

Chart source: OECD Education database

The trends shaping the future of education

by Tracey Burns and Rebecca Lavinson
Directorate for Education and Skills

Did you ever wonder if education has a role to play in stemming the advance of diseases such as diabetes and dementia? Or what the impact of changing family structures might be on our children, schools, and communities? Or whether new technologies are fundamentally changing the way students think and learn?

The OECD's work on Trends Shaping Education looks at major social, demographic, economic and technological trends affecting the future of education. The newest edition of the publication will be released on 18 January . Here’s a sneak peak.

Are cities the new countries? This provocative chapter looks at our increasingly urban lives and the impact this has on education. Across all OECD countries, the percentage of the population living in urban areas has grown from 60% in 1960 to around 80% in 2013. This number is only forecast to increase, with some countries expected to become almost entirely urban by 2050.

Some have argued that cities are now the most relevant level of governance, small enough to react swiftly and responsively to issues and large enough to hold economic and political power. And indeed city life is distinctive, to the extent that cities in two very different countries, such as New York City and Shanghai, will tend to have more in common with each other than with the rural communities in their own country.

Looking for examples? A number of trends stand out: citizens are becoming more engaged in the running of their cities, facilitated by the potential of new technologies and social networks. Examples include Occupy Wall Street, which spread across more than 1,500 cities with the help of social media. Fix My Street, an application which allows residents to use an online map to report street problems and needed repairs, has spread in one form or another to over 16 OECD countries. Similar technologies exist for a wide variety of other services. Are we witnessing the "uberisation" of our economies, a process where the consumer (and citizen) can bypass traditional service providers and have more control over what they want, and when they get it?

Another trend is the rise of smart transportation. Since 1863, when London opened the first metro system, there has been a steady increase numbers and forms of public transportation. There is now an emphasis on services that reduce pollution and increase flexibility, such as electric car and bike-sharing. Launched in Copenhagen in 1995, bike-sharing has since spread to 676 cities worldwide, and there are now more bike-sharing systems than metro systems. Currently, China hosts the largest bike share programme in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, which supplies over 80,000 bikes. This trend illustrates the innovation potential of urban areas, but it also underlines the importance of reducing pollution to sustain liveable environments.

Education can and does play a role in all of this, teaching civic literacy, providing the skills needed for community engagement, and supporting creativity and innovation throughout the lifespan. Designing liveable urban spaces and encouraging smart transport in increasingly dense cities will require urban planners and engineers, as well as the research and innovation hubs needed to fuel their work. And of course schools will continue to be responsible for ensuring the safety of students, especially those in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Education can and should be prepared to adjust and grow along with urban environments. The lessons students are taught in school will carry forward into their communities, giving schools and universities a direct path to positively impact their immediate surroundings.

Urbanisation is a topic that links global, national, city and family levels trends together alongside technology. How can technological developments facilitate citizen engagement? How do cities encourage international cooperation? What role should education play in these arenas?
Want to know more? Then keep an eye out for the soon to be released 2016 edition of Trends Shaping Education. In addition to cities, other chapters examine global trends such as increasing migration and climate change, national trends on government spending in health and pensions, familial trends of child well-being as well as technological trends. Ultimately, we would like the users of this publication to come away asking “How might this trend influence education, now or in the next 10 years?” The future of our education systems depends on it.

Links:
Trends Shaping Education 2016
Trends Shaping Education Urban Spotlight
Governing the City (2015)
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)
Photo credit: Trends Fashion Marketing Contemporary Trending Concept @Shutterstock 

Backpacks and belonging: What school can mean to immigrant students

by Marilyn Achiron 
Editor, Education and Skills Directorate

How school systems respond to immigration has an enormous impact on the economic and social well-being of all members of the communities they serve, whether they have an immigrant background or not. Immigrant Students at School: Easing the Journey towards Integration reveals some of the difficulties immigrant students encounter – and some of the contributions they offer – as they settle into their new communities and new schools.

Results from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) indicate that students with an immigrant background tend to perform worse in school than students without an immigrant background. Several factors are associated with this disparity, including the concentration of disadvantage in the schools immigrant students attend, language barriers and certain school policies, like grade repetition and tracking, that can hinder immigrant students’ progress through school.

But successful integration is measured in more than academic achievement; immigrant students’ well-being and hopes for the future are just as telling. This report examines not only immigrant students’ aspirations and sense of belonging at school, but also recent trends in Europeans’ receptiveness to welcoming immigrants into their own countries – the context that could make all the difference in how well immigrant students integrate into their new communities. The report includes a special section on refugees and education, and an extensive discussion on education policy responses to immigration.

Links:

Immigrant Students at School: Easing the Journey towards Integration
Overview: Helping immigrant students to succeed at school - and beyond
For more work on migrants see: OECD Migrant Insights

A watershed for Scottish education

by David Istance 
Senior Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

This is a watershed moment for Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, say some of the country’s education stakeholders. They’re talking about the ambitious education reforms that were rolled out in Scotland’s schools five years ago. What better time for a review of the reforms? Improving Schools in Scotland: An OECD Perspective, published today, provides just that.

So what kind of watershed has Scotland’s education reform programme reached?

First, the programme is at a “watershed” as a statement of fact: the main curriculum programme has now been implemented, and the overhaul of teachers’ education and qualifications is nearly complete. This is watershed meaning “key transition moment”.

Second, it can be seen as a “watershed” as so much of the hard work of redesign has been accomplished and essential building blocks have been put in place. This is about unleashing the full potential of the Curriculum for Excellence after a 13-year gestation period. Hence the very positive sense of watershed as “take-off point”.

But “watershed” may mean something altogether less inspiring: concerns over achievement levels and rumblings over the new teachers’ qualifications combined with a febrile political environment might yet unpick key elements of the Curriculum for Excellence despite its longevity. This would be the more ominous meaning of watershed as “make-or-break moment”.

The recommendations contained in this new review might influence which kind of watershed this turns out to be for the Curriculum for Excellence: will it be key transition moment, take-off point, or make-or-break moment?

The OECD report notches up many points to admire in Scottish schooling, not least among them enviable levels of consensus, clear enthusiasm (including among young people for learning), and political patience. But for the full potential to be realised, the OECD review team believes some key changes will be needed.

There should be a more ambitious theory of change and a more robust evidence base available right across the system, especially about learning outcomes and progress. The Curriculum for Excellence needs to be understood less as a curriculum programme to be managed from the centre and more as a dynamic, highly equitable curriculum being built continuously in schools, networks and communities. And the success of that implementation process needs to be closely evaluated.

There is a key role for a strengthened “middle”, covering local authorities, networks and collaboratives of schools, teachers and communities, and teachers’ and head teachers’ associations. As local authorities assume more prominent system leadership in a reinforced “middle”, the shortcomings of those authorities falling behind in performance and expertise will need to be addressed. Learner engagement is a prerequisite of powerful learning and improved outcomes, and that argues for innovating learning environments, especially in secondary schools, beginning in the most deprived areas.

All this should contribute to creating a new narrative for the Curriculum for Excellence, the OECD review report argues, and this will be an essential ingredient if the existing watershed moment is to become “take-off point”.

Links:
Improving Schools in Scotland: An OECD Perspective
Photo credit: Education Scotland

What students don’t want to be when they grow up

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Education and Skills Directorate

Who wants to be a teacher? As this month’s PISA in Focus shows, in many countries the teaching profession is having a hard time making itself an attractive career choice – particularly among boys and among the highest-performing students.

PISA 2006 asked students from the 60 participating countries and economies what occupation they expected to be working in when they are 30 years old. Some 44% of 15-year-olds in OECD countries reported that they expect to work in high-status occupations that generally require a university degree; but only 5% of those students reported that they expect to work as teachers, one of those professional careers.

The numbers are even more revealing when considering the profile of the students who reported that they expect to work as teachers. If you read our report on gender equality in education published earlier this year, you may remember that girls tend to favour “nurturance-oriented” careers more than boys do – and teaching is one of those careers. In almost every OECD country, more girls (6%) than boys (3%) reported that they expect to work as teachers. This statistic is particularly worrying when you recall that the majority of overall low achievers in school are boys, who could benefit from the presence of more male role models at school.

PISA in Focus also reveals that the highest-performing students in reading and mathematics do not necessarily aim to become teachers. For example, in Argentina, Australia, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal and Turkey, students who aspire to become teachers score significantly lower in reading and mathematics than students who expect to work in professions other than teaching.

While PISA can’t follow these students into adulthood, the Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) gathers information on the literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills of adults. The 2012 survey found that, in many countries, teachers have poorer literacy and, in particular, poorer numeracy skills than individuals who work in other professions. In Japan, however, not only do teachers have the highest numeracy skills among teachers working in all other countries that participated in the survey, they are also as proficient in numeracy as Japanese adults who work in other professions.

But maybe in this instance, as in so many others, it would be wise to “follow the money”. According to Education at a Glance, teachers earn significantly less, on average, than similar educated workers in other fields earn. For example, lower secondary teachers earn 86% and upper secondary teachers earn 91% of what tertiary-educated full-time workers in other fields earn. Which is not to say that students are only concerned about the size of their prospective bank accounts; in fact, many 15-year-olds probably don’t know how much their teachers earn. But pay is often a reflection of how socially valued different jobs are. Adolescents might be more inclined to aspire to become teachers if they see that their own teachers are highly valued members of society.

Links:

PISA in Focus No. 58 Who want to become a teacher? Francesca Borgonovi and Seong Won Han

PISA á la loupe No. 58 Qui veut devenir enseignant? (French version)
PISA in Focus No. 58 underlying data

Education at a Glance 2015: OECD Indicators 

The ABC of Gender Equality in Education: Aptitude, Behaviour, Confidence

Photo credit: Question mark on green blackboard / chalkboard. Nice chalk and texture @Shutterstock

Opening up to Open Educational Resources

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Technology has a profound impact on our lives. A few days ago, an inmate who spent 44 years
behind bars was released from prison and could not believe what he saw on the streets: people with wires in their ears using strange devices to talk to invisible friends. Maybe his confrontation with the modern world would have been less of a surprise if he had visited a school first.

Technology has indeed entered the classroom; but it has not yet changed the ways we teach and learn to the same extent that it has transformed our way of communicating in the outside world. In our private lives we freely share experiences, thoughts and feelings with friends all over the world; but in classrooms we tend to stick to the traditional carriers of knowledge – textbooks, which are certified for use by the bureaucracy and well-aligned to a prescribed curriculum.

But maybe this is about to change. Technology could give education access to the nearly unlimited teaching and learning materials available on the Internet, which are often in much nicer and pedagogically better-designed formats than can be developed by individual teachers. “Open Educational Resources”, or OER as we call them, are not new, but we are now seeing a real breakthrough in availability, usability and quality. In 2007, the OECD analysed the emergence of OER in its book, Giving knowledge for Free. A new publication, Open Educational Resources: A Catalyst for Innovation, supported by a generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, takes stock of where we are in 2015.

The most immediate benefit of OER is the open (through open licenses) and free (in most cases at no cost) access to quality teaching and learning materials, often in multimedia formats. OER provide an alternative to costly textbooks and, hence, might lead to significant savings for both schools and learners. International organisations, such as UNESCO, and national governments, such as the federal government in the United States, see an enormous opportunity in OER to widen access to high-quality teaching and learning resources in poor countries or among disadvantaged communities of learners.

A few years ago, the development of free and accessible resources was stymied, partly because of some resistance among education publishers and ill-adapted intellectual property regulations. But over the past few years we’ve seen OER mainstreamed into several education systems.

But OER has an even much richer potential. As the title of the new book suggests, OER is also a catalyst for innovation in education. For example, we know from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) how important teacher collaboration is for the development of professional practice, efficacy and job satisfaction. We also know how difficult it is to convince teachers to work together, even within the same school. One of the most interesting characteristics of OER is that, if licensed properly, they invite users to continuously improve and update educational resources. OER enables teachers to engage in communities of practice not only for exchanging resources, but also for modifying and developing resources collaboratively. Teachers willing and able to enrich their teaching practices beyond the prescribed curriculum and available textbooks will find OER to be a fantastic way to connect to colleagues all over the world to jointly develop new resources. The OER depositories are full of resources that have been developed by inspired teachers working together.

Some people and organisations fear that technology will lead to the de-skilling and disempowerment of teachers. Yes, there is a risk that the availability of an infinite wealth of information on the Internet may deprive teachers of their authority as being the possessors of knowledge, or that it may engender a laissez-faire attitude among teachers. But the professional responsibility of teachers goes well beyond asking students to look for information in Wikipedia. OER invite teachers to reinvent their professional responsibilities and add to their pedagogical expertise and experience to enable students to turn information and knowledge into real learning.

The potential of OER to catalyse change and innovation in education is not yet well understood by many governments. But that is changing, too. A small survey, the results of which appear in the book, found that most governments are now considering various policies to support the production and use of OER, such as indirectly or directly funding them, developing codes of practice or guidelines for the production or use of OER, launching information campaigns aimed at schools, legislating the use of OER, supporting the development of OER repositories and/or encouraging research into OER. In the end, perhaps OER will be one of the most significant and substantive ways that technology will transform teaching and learning.

Links:

Open Educational Resources: A Catalyst for Innovation

Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources
Open Educational Resources (OER) Web page
OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)

Photo credit: © vege - Fotolia.com