TEACH21st: Teaching and Transfer Effects of 21st Century Skills - Collaborative Problem Solving in Digital Environments

The world-leading educational expert, Sir Ken Robinson, once concluded that "schools kill creativity"- a skill among others that is relevant to meet the needs of the 21st century. Indeed, most of the educational systems around the world focus almost exclusively on core skills, such as literacy, numeracy, and academic skills, largely ignoring the necessity to develop other skills, such as creativity, critical thinking, digital literacy, and collaboration. These skills, however, play a key role in solving real-world and workplace problems that are often complex, fuzzy, and ill-defined. The current study addresses the need to help students develop these so-called "21st century skills" and use them in a variety of situations and contexts. Specifically, the purpose of this study is two-fold: First, we explore how collaborative problem solving (ColPS), a critical 21st century skill, can be taught in classrooms (trainability). To accomplish this, we design training material together with teacher design teams, and train teacher educators and teachers through a professional development program to implement it in their classrooms. Three teacher education institutes are involved in this project, and the subjects Mathematics (i.e., programming) and English have been chosen as the teaching subjects. The study establishes a randomized controlled trial and compares two treatment groups (i.e., ColPS training classes with or without teachers who participated in the initial professional development phase) with a control group. Second, we investigate whether the training of ColPS skills affects other competences in the domains taught and in other domains (transfer effects). Key outcome variables include ColPS performance, ColPS dispositions, digital and subject-specific competences. This aim necessitates the use of several assessment approaches and will build on the project groups' previous research on assessment of 21st century skills. The development phase (phase 1) of this project has resulted in four different teaching programs (materials and practices), which were piloted during fall 2020 and spring 2021. Autumn 2021, one of the teacher-design projects "TEACH21st- programmering og samarbeidslæring i ungdomsskolen" (translation: computational thinking and collaborative problem solving in lower secondary school) was selected for the upscaling and implementation in a larger group of schools. During spring 2022 we have recruited schools to take part in the larger study. However, because of the ‘Covid-19 pandemic the project was slightly delayed because of the scarce access to schools for researchers and outsiders. In the last phase of the TEACH21st-project, the 16 teachers taking part in the project received a professional development training by attending a workshop in January 2023. The aim of this workshop was to introduce the teachers to the newly developed teaching material and suggested practices. Further, during spring 2023, the teachers implemented this in their own classes (N= 32). We have investigated the implementation of the teaching material, and to what extent this teaching programme effects the students' motivation, and subject learning (e.g., mathematics and programming) and other relevant domains (e.g., collaborative problem solving). Data from the implementation of the teaching program has been collected through the use of observations, interviews with teachers, and teacher and student reflections related to each session. The data material consists of: - Observations in classes, N = 28 - Interview with teachers, N = 16 - Focus group interview with students, N = 2 groups (6 students in each group) - Session 1 - 4 reflection forms Teachers, N = 12-16 - Session 1 - 4 reflection forms Students, N = 488 - 570 - Assignments (session 4), N = 426 By the end of the TEACH21st project, we have worked on data analysis, scientific publications, book writing, and finalising the project. We have received positive feedback from teachers and students who have participated in the project. And at the request of the teachers, we are in the process of finalizing a book together with Gyldendal, which will be published during autumn 2024. Moreover, to close the project, we held a closing conference in Oslo, with 75 participants. The project has received much praise for its design, which has aided to link research and practice more closely together. You can read more about the TEACH21st project, the academically strong project group, teaching materials, results and publications on our website: https://teach21st.usn.no.

Lærerne som har deltatt i prosjektet har endret egen praksis, og gir positive tilbakemeldinger på undervisningsoppleggene som er utviklet i regi av prosjektet. De mener at oppleggene er motiverende og inkluderende for elevene, tar hensyn til progresjon og elevenes faglige utvikling. Videre har de satt spesielt stor pris på at oppleggene også inneholder aktiviteter som er engasjerende for elevene og positiv avbrekk fra tradisjonell klasseromsundervisning. Disse lærerne delte sine erfaringer på vår sluttkonferanse i november 2023, og inspirerte andre lærere. Videre har lærerne ønsket seg en bok med læringsoppleggene, noe vi holder på å utarbeide og vil utgis i løpet av høsten 2024. Denne boken vil potensielt bidra til endringspraksis hos mange flere lærere i Norge. Videre har prosjektets desig med bruk av lærerdesign-teams inspirert forskerkolleger- og vi mener flere vil i fremtiden bruke liknende design for å redusere gapet mellom forskning og praksis. Vi vil bidra til å spre informasjon om vårt prosjektsdesign igjennom vitenskapelig og populærvitenskapelig publisering.

The world-leading educational expert, Sir Ken Robinson, once concluded that "schools kill creativity" - a skill among others that is relevant to meet the needs of the 21st century. Indeed, most of the educational systems around the world focus almost exclusively on core skills, such as literacy, numeracy, and academic skills, largely ignoring the necessity to develop other skills, such as creativity, critical thinking, digital literacy, and collaboration. These skills, however, play a key role in solving real-world and workplace problems that are often complex, fuzzy, and ill-defined. The current study addresses the need to help students develop these so-called "21st century skills" and use them in a variety of situations and contexts. Specifically, the purpose of this study is two-fold: First, we explore how collaborative problem solving (ColPS), a critical 21st century skill, can be taught in classrooms (trainability). To accomplish this, we design training material together with teacher design teams, and train teachers through a professional development program to implement it in their classrooms. The study establishes a randomized controlled trial and compares two treatment groups (i.e., ColPS training classes with or without teachers who participated in the initial professional development phase) with a control group. Second, we investigate whether the training of ColPS skills affects other competences in the domains taught and in other domains (transfer effects). Key outcome variables include ColPS performance, ColPS dispositions, digital and subject-specific competences. This aim necessitates the use of several assessment approaches, and will build on the project groups' previous research on assessment of 21st century skills.