1. What does research and international data say?
Various OECD member and partner countries/jurisdictions, schools and teachers increasingly use the following types of curriculum innovations when attempting to renew, upgrade and/or transform curricula to make them more relevant and responsive to the demands of the 21st century, as reported in the latest OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 thematic curriculum report (OECD, 2020[1]).
In advancing the use of such curriculum innovations, however, countries, jurisdictions, schools, teachers and students themselves reported that they often experience growing equity gaps. This publication aims to take a pragmatic approach to addressing the equity issues when introducing these curriculum innovations. Therefore, this report is not an in-depth study on equity in education in broad terms; it sets out the equity issues within the specific scope of the selected foci as curriculum innovations.
This section aims to clarify the definitions and interpretations about the concept of “equity” and similar concepts in the specific context of curriculum design and redesign; take stock of what is known in this evolving field from research, but also from international curriculum data and analysis as well as concrete case studies.
Unsurprisingly, such innovations are still evolving in many cases and, therefore, accompanying evidence to support their effectiveness, feasibility and accessibility is often limited, especially when it comes to achieving equity goals through curriculum innovations. That being said, this section highlights some promising tools, frameworks and concrete examples – such as Design Thinking and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) – that can inspire and help curriculum designers to leverage opportunities for creating more equitable and inclusive curricula.
Aspirations for equity in curriculum redesign are often built around divergent assumptions. Before specifying what ensuring equity in curriculum design entails, it is important to understand the difference between the similar but distinct concepts “equality”, “equity” and “inclusion”. This said, the distinction gets often blurred as these concepts also overlap when we discuss them from different vantage points, e.g. opportunities to learn and learning outcomes.
A considerable amount of literature defines and interprets the differences between these, often with highly contested political and policy debates (Levin, 2003[2]). This report defines the terms pragmatically in the specific context of curriculum development. Figure 1 illustrates different possible approaches for ensuring that all learners benefit from learning. The image portrays four scenarios representing whether or not students’ opportunity to watch a game (access) can be affected by individual (height) and/ or surrounding conditions, such as structural barriers (fence) or provided support (boxes).
The baseline scenario on the left ‘No action’ presents a case where no intervention is made; only the tall student in green T-shirt is able to watch the game and the character in orange T-shirt (assuming the role of a policy maker) is thinking of how others can get to see the game, too. There are at least three approaches the policy maker can consider in the context of curriculum design (scenarios on the right):
Equality in curriculum: the policymaker provides the same box to all students, such as a minimum/common standards or core/essential learning in the curriculum design context. This way, all students have access to watching the game.
Equity in curriculum: the policy maker provides the boxes in accordance with the needs of each student; the student with green T-shirt does not need any boxes to watch the game, while the shortest student in orange receives two boxes and the student in white receives one. This is similar to the case of preparing a mother language curriculum for migrant students, for example.
Inclusion in curriculum: the policy maker can consider the fundamental barrier, i.e. fence being the obstacle to watch the game, and provides an alternative solution by replacing it with the net. This way, all students can watch the game without any subsidies or support (boxes). In this scenario, students in wheel chair can also watch the game without any additional support. This will, however, pose questions about political economy of reform related to the removal of the fence or the creation of a new net, etc.
All three approaches have their own reasoning as interventions. The complexity of curriculum design requires one or more of these approaches to benefit the individual student, depending on his/her specific context.
Note: In the “equality” and “equity” scenarios above, the students in faded colours indicate variations among countries on how to ensure equality and equity in curriculum design and implementation for students with special needs (SEN). It is important to highight that those special needs include not only students with physical disabilities, but also those with unobservable traits, such as learning disabilities and mental health disorders.
Source: OECD inspired by and adapted from City for All Women Initiative, 2015, https://www.cawi-ivtf.org/sites/default/files/publications/advancing-equity-inclusion-web_0.pdf.
Equality in curriculum design
Equality in curriculum development can be defined as giving all students equal treatment in curriculum, as represented in Figure 1. The same number of boxes with the same size and shape is given to all individuals depicted, independently of their height. The same treatment is assumed to give equal learning opportunities to all students.
In curriculum design, equality means offering the same opportunities to all, such as the same curriculum content, same instruction time, same methods. This approach is taken, for example, when setting the minimum standards, common standards, or core/essential learning standards.
However, this does not mean that everyone will benefit from the same curriculum to the same extent since there are other factors that will influence the students’ learning experiences and outcomes, such as socio-economic characteristics, gender and others.
For example, a recent OECD curriculum analysis report on physical/health education indicates that the design choice of activities in the curriculum matters for ensuring access and participation of all students. The study shows that girls are less likely to participate in certain types of activities due to the content suggested in physical education/health education curricula. Even though ball games are known to be associated with less participation among girls than boys, ball games are still the most prevalent content in physical education curricula in a number of countries. (OECD, 2019[3]).
Equity in curriculum design
Equity in curriculum development can be defined as giving all students opportunities to reach the core or essential knowledge and skills that allow them to participate in further education and society without lowering expectations due to their personal and social backgrounds (e.g. special learning needs, socio-economic background, gender, ethnic origin, location) (Voogt, Nieveen and Thijs, 2018[4]; OECD, 2020[5]). From an equity perspective, the focus is on ensuring that all students can achieve the intended outcomes (the view) by providing the most appropriate number and size of boxes to ensure that everyone sees the game.
Accordingly, the equity scenario in Figure 1 implies preparing a separate, additional curriculum or other support measures to supplement the curriculum. This approach recognises that adaptations in the curriculum (e.g. content, instruction time) may be needed to ensure that diverse learners are offered the necessary opportunities to learn1 so that all students can achieve the core/essential knowledge and skills needed for participation in society (OECD, 2020[5]).
Recognising diverse students’ needs
An equity approach to curriculum development will then start by acknowledging that certain individual and contextual differences among learners, such as socio-economic characteristics (e.g. parental education and occupation, educational resources available at home) are related to disparities in student performance (OECD, 2013[6]; OECD, 2014[7]). For example, research shows that students with low socio-economic backgrounds are likely to have far fewer opportunities to learn formal mathematical content (Schmidt, Zoido and Cogan, 2014[8]).
Research on individual differences, in particular the disparities in learning and access related to students with special education needs (SEN) and students of lower socio-economic backgrounds, suggests that curriculum design approaches can be leveraged to respond to the needs of diverse students (Darling-Hammond et al., 2020[9]).
Literature further suggests that social and/or individual differences in students’ backgrounds may be associated with unfair limitations to their learning achievement, educational attainment and broader development outcomes. It is important to consider these when designing and redesigning curriculum as they can serve as potential identifiers of vulnerable students. For example:
family structures (Santín and Sicilia, 2016[11]; Dronkers, Veerman and Pong, 2017[12]);
migrant, ethnic or racial, minority background, such as indigenous background (Chetty et al., 2018[13]; Sørensen et al., 2015[14]; UNESCO, 2018[15]; Nusche, 2009[16]; OECD, 2017[17]; Rutigliano, 2020[18]);
geographic location (Cresswell and Underwood, 2004[20]; Pegg and Panizzon, 2007[21]);
special education needs (SEN), i.e. learning disabilities, physical impairments and mental health conditions. (WHO, 2011[22]; Brussino, 2020[23]);
low performance or under-preparation in prior learning (OECD, 2017[10]);
gifted and talented students with exceptional abilities in learning (Jarvis, 2018[24]);
gender and sexual orientation (UNESCO, 2019[25]; Kosciw, Palmer and Kull, 2014[26]; Vecellio, 2012[27]; Reygan, 2009[28]; Kosciw et al., 2020[29]; Martino, Kassen and Omercajic, 2020[30]; Case, Stewart and Tittsworth, 2009[31]; Rubén, 2018[32]; Barrientos and Lovera, 2020[33]; Kosciw and Zongrone, 2019[34]).
The list suggested is not exhaustive. The OECD’s Strength through Diversity project highlights the intersectionality among these various dimensions of diversity as well as implications for policy making (Figure 2).
Defining who the vulnerable students are may depend on local contexts and transitory conditions (e.g. students with limited access to Internet in times of school closures, brought by unpredictable factors such as natural disasters and pandemics).
Personal and social circumstances, such as gender, socio-economic status or ethnic origin, should not be obstacles to their success. Examples of barriers to an equitable curriculum include:
Adapting curriculum to the students’ needs
To accommodate different students’ needs, policy makers often design a system with an unequal distribution of resources. An equitable curriculum should be able to provide all students with a school experience that enables them to be socially mobile and have the opportunity to succeed in life, regardless of their personal and social backgrounds (Muller and Young, 2019[35]). Therefore, the equity approach suggested in Figure 1 would result in some type of curriculum adaptations (e.g. extracurricular remedial learning) to ensure that such students would receive additional support to eventually benefit from a rich mathematics curriculum that includes formal mathematics content. Other examples include offering mother-language learning for migrant students or specific curriculum adaptations to support gifted and talented students in reaching their full potential.
A recent international curriculum analysis by the OECD Future of Education of Skills 2030 project also reveals the types of curriculum adaptations countries/jurisdictions have in place to achieve greater equity. The analysis builds on data collected through the OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 Policy Questionnaire on Curriculum Redesign (E2030 PQC). In general, a number of OECD and partner countries already make special curriculum provisions for certain groups of students that they have identified as vulnerable (Table 1).
SEN students are highlighted by most countries/jurisdictions (92%). For example, in Australia, teachers can adapt content and pedagogies for students with disabilities (including learning disabilities). Teachers are able to draw on the curriculum, particularly as the learning areas can be enhanced by the use of the general capabilities and the cross curriculum priorities, to take account of the learning needs of individual students.
Reflecting on cultural and linguistic diversity, 72% of participating countries/jurisdictions reported that they provide special curriculum provision for language learners, non-native speakers and/or immigrants. Also reflecting on historical legacy, 56% reported that curriculum provision considers the specific needs of indigenous or minority students. Some countries/jurisdictions design a needs-based language curriculum specifically for migrant students, to give them access to instruction in their mother language or to training in the language of instruction of the host country. In Finland students from multilingual families (foreign background) are offered optional lessons in their family’s language. For instance the city of Helsinki offered optional lessons in 40 different languages in 2015. Students with an immigrant background are also entitled to take part in instruction preparing them for basic education. This preparation lasts usually one school year and it is provided in public basic education schools. Mexico put in place multi-grade schools for children of migrant agricultural day-labourers. Korea and Japan support the reverse situation, i.e. support students who return to the country from abroad.
Another aspect to consider includes individual differences in students’ curriculum experiences. Well over one-third of countries/jurisdictions include provisions for gifted or talented students (42%). Around one third of countries include provisions for early school leavers or potential dropouts (31%). Hungary makes efforts to identify potential dropouts and keep them in school. Japan supports students who are often absent from school.
Family backgrounds are another factor: 28% address socio-economic disadvantages and 14% address geographic disadvantages. Ireland has an Action Plan for Educational Inclusion (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools [DEIS]), which focuses on addressing and prioritising the educational needs of children and young people from disadvantaged communities, from pre-school through second-level education (3 to 18 years). In Hong Kong (China), the Education Bureau (EDB) established in 2002 jointly with the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust a Life-wide Learning Fund, which subsidised the participation of disadvantaged students in life-wide learning activities organised or recognised by schools for well-rounded development. From 2019 onwards, the Fund has been replaced by the new and recurrent Student Activities Support Grant, which is provided by the Education Bureau to continue subsidising financially students in need to participate in life-wide learning activities.
Inclusion in curriculum design
Inclusion in curriculum development can be defined as offering all learners a high quality curriculum that allows them to reach their full potential just as they are, by respecting their diverse characteristics, needs, abilities and expectations and by removing structural and cultural barriers, including biases and discrimination.
Inclusive curriculum refers, therefore, to a curriculum that acknowledges and values students’ differences and embraces diversity so that all students can experience an enriching school life.
The inclusion scenario in Figure 1 illustrates an inclusive approach to curriculum design as it suggests that all students can benefit from the learning opportunities as they are. The notions of inclusion and equity are inevitably related as both acknowledge learners’ diverse profiles and needs. In fact, some literature treats inclusion as one aspect of equity (OECD, 2004[36]; Field, Kuczera and Pont, 2007[37]; OECD, 2020[5]). That being said, some fine distinctions can be made between an equitable and an inclusive curriculum.
In an inclusive curriculum, every student is appreciated and valued for who they are: “it is about changing the system to fit the student, not changing the student to fit the system” (UNICEF, 2014[38]; OECD, 2020[5]). Unlike the equitable approach to curriculum development, an inclusive curriculum does not assume the same standards for all learners, but respects and values their unique needs, talents, aspirations and expectations. In doing so, it strives to create learning environments where broader societal and education goals of inclusion are celebrated and to remove barriers to participation by certain groups of students, including those created by unstated school norms, values and beliefs referred to as “hidden curriculum” (Jackson, 1968[39]; Bernstein, 1971[40]; Snyder, 1971[41]; Power et al., 2018[42]; Apple, 2019[43]).
Authentic inclusion takes place when the boundaries between mainstream and minority students cease to exist, all students learn with and from one another and can achieve their full learning potential. While the equity approach (e.g. preparing additional or different curriculum for those in need) may inadvertently invite stigmatisation (e.g. students in “remedial classes” may be regarded as weak learners), an inclusive curriculum aims at instilling in learners a positive sense of self-esteem and self-worth as well as a sense of belonging in the school and in society (OECD, 2020[5]). For this reason, an inclusive curriculum have the potential to more explicitly support not only the learning but also the well-being of all learners, while supporting societal values of diversity.
Examples of barriers to an inclusive curriculum include:
lack of recognition of students’ prior knowledge and life experiences in designing learning progression in curriculum;
a disconnect between curriculum content and textbooks and the social and cultural background of learners;
any form of discrimination, systematic and cultural biases in curriculum content, instruction materials, learning activities, forms of assessment and learning environment.
To help remove such barriers for inclusion, curriculum designers may draw on design principles, such as flexibility, student choice, engagement, teacher agency and student agency (see OECD (2020[44])). To embed such principles in curriculum while also encouraging the emergence of innovative solutions, curriculum designers can also consider the use of an interdisciplinary design methodology for concrete problem-solving called Design Thinking. Another practical tool for curriculum designers is the Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a well-developed research-based framework created specifically for helping design inclusive curricula and learning environments. These tools are discussed in the sequence.
Design thinking
When considering ways to design and redesign curriculum with equity and inclusion in mind, a design thinking approach can be helpful. Design thinking is a human-centred approach to solving problems with a drive towards innovation. It includes a process, skills, and mindsets.
The process, adapted for curriculum analysis, includes four phases (Goldman and Kabayadondo, 2017[45]):
4. prototype cycles.2
The problem space is the initial exploration of what the focus and scope of the problem is. Understanding and delineating clearly what the problem is and why it is considered a problem starts with examination of research and some stock-taking of current and past solutions.
Once the problem space is defined, the empathising phase takes place. Here, designers strive to develop a deeper understanding of end-users and their needs beyond initial assumptions. This requires carefully listening to the users and trying to understand their expectations, needs and experiences as the central parameter for finding appropriate solutions to problems affecting the users. Thus, during this stage, curriculum designers place students’ interests and needs at the centre, which offers opportunities for special attention to hidden factors, the needs of vulnerable students, or unheard student voices. This responds to international recognition of the fundamental rights of children stated in the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, particularly with respect to Article 12, under which State Parties should ensure children’s freedom to express their own views on all matters that have direct implications for them as soon as they are able to form their own views and in accordance with their age and maturity.3
Designers then go from a wide range of brainstormed options to a narrow selection of potential solutions to develop as prototypes, test, and refine. During this stage, curriculum designers can reflect on policy questions, e.g. what their needs are, to what extent differentiated provision is appropriate to serve such needs, whether or not universal approach can capture such needs most effectively, what would be the costs associated with each of these approaches, etc. These steps often follow an iterative process, which is well-suited for ill-defined or unknown problems (Brown, 2009[46]).
Design thinking developed greatly since its first mention by cognitive scientist Herbert Simon in 19694 (Simon, 1996[47]). It amalgamated different approaches and is now applied to many fields – architecture, business, engineering, technology, etc. – as an umbrella term for multi-disciplinary, human-centred methods to find creative solutions to problems, involving research and rapid idea generation, engaging diverse stakeholders.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) allows curricula to be inclusive by removing barriers for all types of learners. UDL is a research-based framework for designing curricula, learning environments, and tools. It was originally adapted from the movement that sought to design buildings accessible to people with physical disabilities. Deliberately designing buildings for inclusion of such groups benefits everyone. For example, ramps are used by people in wheelchairs, those with strollers, and those with bicycles.5
By removing barriers that may be experienced by diverse students, the UDL approach to curriculum aims to foster motivated, self-directed, and life-long learners (Meyer and Rose, 2014[48]; Meyer and Rose, 2000[49]; Schreiber, 2017[50]; Hall et al., 2014[51]). These goals align with those of student agency and well-being in the OECD Learning Compass.
UDL was successfully adopted into teaching and learning for students with special needs, but it can be adapted for all types of learners. A greater understanding of how we learn, combined with new technological advancements, demonstrates novel ways to engage students and provide tools to help teachers facilitate effective learning (Dehaene, 2020[52]). In the UDL framework, designers are called to remove barriers around:
The Why of Learning (motivation), by providing multiple means of engagement. This is the engagement principle. Curriculum designers can make learning more engaging by adapting to learners’ interests, by valuing learners’ curiosity, by building in a sufficient level of challenge, by making learning interactive and dynamic, and by making visible the usefulness of learning for a given purpose.
The What of Learning (content), by providing various means of representation (e.g. text, visuals, multi-media, the language of the learner, adaptive digital materials and tools). This is the representation principle. It targets physical, perceptual, and cognitive barriers that get in the way of learning for students with diverse needs and talents.
The How of Learning (goal-setting, strategies, and skills), by allowing multiple ways for students to demonstrate what they know. This is the action and expression principle. It has direct implications for how to design assessment and examinations (e.g. beyond written text or standardised formats).
These dimensions of learning correspond closely to the key competencies of the OECD Learning Compass 2030. The What of Learning can be mapped to disciplinary content knowledge and also to certain types of skills (e.g. knowing how to perform certain tasks). The How of Learning relates to self-regulation skills. The Why of Learning relates to student agency (sense of purpose), epistemic knowledge (why learn mathematics or science? how do mathematicians and scientists think?), as well as to attitudes and values, such as resilience and a growth mindset that sustains and improves learning.
Figure 3 summarises the UDL guidelines for designing inclusive curricula, learning environments and tools. By deliberately striving to remove barriers to learning, the UDL framework is well aligned with the societal goals of justice and fairness in designing curricula that work for all learners, including those in vulnerable situations.
Source: CAST (Centre for Applied Special Technology) (2018), Universal Design for Learning Guidelines, Version 2.2 [graphic organiser], Wakefield, MA.
Combining different approaches
For vulnerable students to be well supported and better served, E2030 PQC participating countries/jurisdictions provide different types of general provisions to ensure equality, equity, inclusion (Table 2).
A majority of countries explicitly include references to inclusion/anti-discrimination policies in their curriculum (91%). In Portugal, teachers make the necessary adaptations to the curriculum for students with specific needs within the framework set by the law on inclusive education. UDL is a methodological option underlying the law. Moreover, inclusion has gained a wider reach through a process that aims to respond to the diversity of the needs and potential of each student, by increasing their participation in the processes of learning and educational community life.
In most countries/jurisdictions at least a part of the curriculum is centralised at the national level to ensure a common core that will provide equal learning opportunities to all students (85%). Besides the core curriculum, flexibility is often granted to schools and teachers to adapt curriculum content, pedagogies or assessment to the local context and students' needs. Japan reports that the National Curriculum Standards intend to provide students with a uniform level of education wherever they live in Japan, while at the same time recognising different learning needs, interests and difficulties of students. In Argentina, the curriculum standards approved at the federal level identify the key content that all students should have the opportunity to acquire from kindergarten to higher secondary education. The curriculum standards are thus conceived as a way to ensure a degree of homogeneity across provincial curricula, which further develop the curriculum building on the core contents set by the federal standards. In Singapore, the national curriculum is designed so that there is quality learning in every classroom, in accordance with the “Every learner, an engaged student” vision (Heng, 2011[53]).
Over two-thirds of countries/jurisdictions provide general support programmes or services accessible to all students including guidance, counselling and/or career advice (70%). In Québec (Canada), the Basic School Regulation for Preschool, Elementary and Secondary Education requires school boards to establish several programs for student services to help students to progress in their various types of learning. These services include, among others, academic and career counselling and information, psychological services, psychoeducational services and health and social services. In Scotland (United Kingdom) the Education (Additional Support for Learning) Act provides the legal framework for the provision of additional support for learning for all children regardless of background, needs and whether education is provided in a “mainstream” school or in a “special school”. The Act states that all children are entitled to support being needed for any reason, and for short or long term periods determined by the individual learning needs of the child or young person.
61% allow local flexibility on curriculum content, pedagogies or assessment. These provisions can translate into students exceptionally being given instruction at a lower grade or even being relieved of a subject by the principal in agreement with the parents (Denmark); and special measures or exceptions applied to pupils with special educational needs, non-native speakers or those with behavioural difficulties (Estonia). In Portugal, schools’ autonomy allows a flexible management of the curriculum and of the learning spaces and schedules, so that the methods, timing, instruments and activities can respond to the singularities of each student.
A little more than one quarter (27%) provide dedicated teacher training to ensure equal access to learning opportunities. For example, in Ireland a number of guidelines have been prepared to help teachers ensure quality access to the curriculum for students with general learning disabilities and with special education needs. Teacher training is available in relation to some of these areas. In New Zealand, teachers are provided with an extensive range of (non-mandatory) support and guidance for particular focus areas, including special education and gifted education.
In addition to the general provisions shown above, some countries/jurisdictions try to remove barriers to learning by the provision of free textbooks. Digitalisation can potentially improve access to textbooks and other learning materials, but their cost may remain too high for some households. Textbooks, digital or paper-based, can indeed be costly, and it can be unrealistic for some families to purchase them. That makes the accessibility and affordability of quality textbooks for all students a concern for policy makers, school leaders and teachers.
Furthermore, the diversity of students within countries, whether low-income, SEN, or language minorities, may make accessing these resources even more challenging. Overall, there are differences across E2030 PQC participating countries/jurisdictions in the student groups to whom textbooks are provided. The majority of countries/jurisdictions provide textbooks free of charge either to all students or only to a targeted group of students, i.e. to public school students or students in need (Table 3). Of those, 62% of countries/jurisdictions provide them to all students and 26% only to public school students, while also 26% provide them to students in need only. Providing free textbooks to all students, often explicitly covers the entire cycle of basic or compulsory education, as in the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Korea and Portugal.
The ways in which assistance for textbooks is provided to students in need also differ across countries/jurisdictions. DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in School) is the main policy initiative in Ireland to address educational disadvantage at school level. Although Ireland does not have a national free textbook programme, individual state primary and post primary schools can benefit from a school book grant, with schools participating in the DEIS Programme receiving an enhanced rate. Schools are encouraged to use these funds to set up book rental schemes. Singapore has similar programmes, where students on the Ministry of Education Financial Scheme are given free textbooks. In Hong Kong (China) textbooks published by private publishers are not provided free of charge to students, but the government offers financial assistance to families in need.
Making equality, equity, and inclusion a priority
In spite of the various nuances involved in the definitions of equality, equity and inclusion as seen earlier, in practice, actual curricula set out one of these goals or a combination of them as the societal goals.
Many OECD and partner countries/jurisdictions explicitly include cultural diversity, equality, equity, justice and fairness as societal values in their curricula6 (Table 4). E2030 PQC data reveal that diversity figures prominently in the curricula of participating countries/jurisdictions (73% of countries/jurisdictions explicitly mention cultural diversity in their curriculum). This is followed by equality (62%), justice (57%), inclusion (46%), equity (41%) and fairness (35%).
Some countries/jurisdictions include a combination of these values in their curricula while others make a clear choice for one of them. Australia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Norway, Ontario (Canada) and China explicitly mention all six values (Table 4). Others only mention one: Lithuania (inclusion), Poland (cultural diversity), the Russian Federation (cultural diversity), Scotland (United Kingdom) (justice), Turkey (justice) and Wales (United Kingdom) (cultural diversity).
That some countries do not explicitly include these values in their curriculum may not mean that they do not build their curricula on these principles. It may indicate that some values are tacitly understood and thus do not need to be highlighted in the curriculum, or they are highlighted elsewhere in education policy. When a particular value is highlighted in a curriculum, it may also signal specific national priorities, while needing to recognise that the actual implementation requires careful monitoring of actions and practices in reality.
For the scope of this report, the focus is on the equity and equity-related values, as defined in the earlier section. Specifically, what are the potentials and constraints of ensuring equity and inclusion through curriculum innovations, in particular four main trends in curriculum change: digital curriculum, personalised curriculum, cross-curricular content and competency-based curriculum and flexible curriculum (Box 1; for more details, see (OECD, 2020[1])).
1. Digital curriculum refers to digitalisation of curricula to support all students to achieve their educational goals. In addition to digital content, it can include organisational features and formats used to articulate curricular content, such as e-textbooks, online materials and repositories, and technological tools to deliver the curriculum, including both hardware and applications such as YouTube, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital platforms. The definition varies across countries/jurisdictions, and is evolving as schools experiment with a greater number of digital applications (Pepin et al., 2015[54]; Graesser, McNamara and VanLehn, 2005[55]; Papadakis, 2016[56]).
2. Personalised curriculum, also known as individualised curriculum, differentiated curriculum or tailored curriculum, refers to an approach that offers individualised instruction to students. Personalised learning has many definitions and connotations (Maguire, Ball and Braun, 2013[57]), but its main purpose is to contribute to equity and inclusion by tailoring instruction to students’ individual needs, skills and interests (Pane et al., 2017[58]). Although personalised curriculum is not necessarily technology-based, current approaches do make use of technology.
3. Cross-curricular content and competency-based curriculum, refers to curricula built across the boundaries of subject areas. Such a curriculum emphasises the importance of interdisciplinary knowledge and offers cross-curricular content to enable students to connect knowledge across different disciplines (OECD, 2018[59]). Some generic competencies, such as critical thinking and creativity, are thought to be best developed through a cross-curricular approach to meet students’ interests and needs, by helping students become responsive citizens in a technology-driven globalised world (McPhail and Rata, 2015[60]).
4. Flexible curriculum refers to the ability of schools and teachers to make local decisions about their curriculum. Flexible curricula allow schools and teachers a certain amount of freedom to make site-specific curricular choices on learning content and goals, pedagogy, assessment, and time and place of learning (Jonker, März and Voogt, 2020[61]; Nikolov et al., 2018[62]). For instance, when learning content intended in the curriculum, say sustainable development, teachers and students may choose to study in depth one environmental issue that deeply affects their local community (e.g. diversity of ocean life in coastal areas). A flexible curriculum welcomes such opportunities for contextualising learning.
Source: (OECD, 2020[1]), What Students Learn Matters: Towards a 21st Century Curriculum, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/d86d4d9a-en.
Digital curricula that work for all students
The promises of a digital curriculum are attractive: as technology allows for greater adaptation and integration of content, materials and activities, it can help students be motivated to learn, progress at their own pace, and continue learning beyond the classroom – anytime, anywhere. A recent OECD report describes in more detail the growing trend towards using technology to expand learning opportunities, improve teachers’ practices and create more adaptive education systems, despite different paces of digitalisation across countries/jurisdictions7 (OECD, 2020[1]). For example, the use of learning analytics and AI seem promising not only for teaching and learning, but also assisting in classroom management.8
Since the use of digital curriculum and tools has the potential to transform teaching and learning, many countries are making deliberate efforts to adopt technology, including changes towards a digital curriculum. Table 5 shows a variety of ways in which technology is used in E2030 PQC participating countries/jurisdictions to facilitate curriculum delivery, pedagogy, assessment and even school administrative processes in OECD and partner countries/jurisdictions:
Use of teaching and learning technologies: Countries/jurisdictions report a wide variety of technologies used to support different aspects of teaching and learning. Several countries/jurisdictions refer to the availability of computers and internet access. In Japan, the National Curriculum Standard states that schools should ensure an appropriate learning environment for using computers and information and communication networks, as well as provide learning activities in which students appropriately utilise technological aides. In some cases, the requirements in the curriculum to use technological devices concern only specific subjects. For example, in Denmark there is a requirement to use digital dictionaries for Danish and foreign languages, GPS for physical education and digital resources and databases for sciences.
Use of assessment technologies: The use of technologies to support assessment is also reported by several countries. In Finland, ICT technology is used at different levels of curriculum implementation in different subjects, including to support assessment methods and cooperation with parents. In Scotland (United Kingdom) assessment arrangements such as the use of a computer with text-reading software are designed to remove barriers to candidates, for example when a candidate may have a difficulty with reading the questions in a question paper in the external examination.
Use of technologies to support parental involvement: Digital technologies provide opportunities to strengthen communication channels between schools and parents, and to facilitate parents’ involvement in their children’s education. Ontario (Canada) is developing an interactive digital curriculum and resource platform that will help not only educators, but also parents and students access curriculum and learning resources in a user- and mobile-friendly manner. Over time the site will become increasingly interactive with more content and features based on user feedback. Finland reported that information and communication technology (ICT) is pervasive in the curriculum and used to support cooperation with parents.
Use of assistive technologies: With a broad variety of assistive technology tools nowadays available (e.g. speech synthesizer/voice recognition apps, screen readers, etc.), countries/jurisdictions are removing barriers and thus enhancing the learning of students with cognitive disabilities or physical impairments. For example, New Zealand, Portugal, and Scotland (United Kingdom) report the use of assistive technologies to support SEN students.
Guidance to teachers on appropriate use of technological aides: In Scotland (United Kingdom), there is no specific reference to the use of technology in the curriculum. The decision on its use depends on the teacher. Education Scotland’s National Improvement Hub provides a number of self-evaluation questions to practitioners to help them reflect on their approach to the use of technology.
Additions to curriculum content: Many countries have introduced new digital and/or ICT-related content in the curriculum (Table 2 in (OECD, 2020[1])). But supporting students to acquire the technical knowledge they need to be able to use digital technologies is not the only concern countries/jurisdictions have. Ensuring that students can use technology safely and without putting their well-being at risk (e.g. online privacy risks, avoiding sleep deprivation), has also become a priority. British Columbia (Canada), Finland, Ireland, Québec (Canada) and Costa Rica report the inclusion of curriculum content on safe and responsible use.
E2030 participating countries/jurisdictions have adopted a number of different approaches to bridge the digital divide by making changes in infrastructure, adapting and developing digital tools, making connections to student assessment, and providing training and professional development (Table 6).
Most countries/jurisdictions (71%) are adopting or developing digital tools, such as virtual learning environments or integrated learning and teaching platforms to increase opportunities for flexible learning. Scotland (United Kingdom) makes extensive efforts to promote digital learning and teaching, as outlined in its Digital Learning and Teaching Strategy. For example, Glow, Scotland’s national intranet for learning and teaching provides all learners and practitioners with industry-standard productivity and collaboration tools at no cost. It also provides professional learning communities and practitioners resource-sharing features, such as the National Numeracy and Mathematics hub. Learning apps are also likely to supplement digital textbooks and other educational resources. They will be particularly relevant when physical access to school is difficult (e.g. due to weather conditions or during the COVID-19 crisis of 2020), but also when students need tailored learning experiences in a particular domain to optimise their learning. In Estonia digital or e-learning materials include e-textbooks, e-workbooks, educational videos and e-tests. In an interactive web environment, e-Koolikott (E-School Bag),9 students can access digital study materials, and teachers can create collections of e-materials. This environment offers preschool, basic, general, and vocational education study materials, with open access to everybody. The open platform and learning management environment, Opiq10 includes textbooks, study kits, a diary and a self-assessment system that are widely used. In addition, a large number of e-tasks and diagnostic tests for learning are compiled. A collection of 88 e-tasks and 69 diagnostic tests in five areas (mother tongue, natural sciences, mathematics, foreign languages and social sciences) were published. Based on test feedback, teachers can plan further learning activities and determine what should be retaught, what should be reinforced, and who should be offered individual activities. Students also receive feedback on their learning. In Hong Kong (China), the Education Bureau operates a one-stop education portal with information, resources, interactive communities and online services. It promotes the use of information technology to enhance learning and teaching, facilitating exchanges among schools and teachers, encouraging students to make effective use of e-learning, and providing web-based learning, teaching and assessment tools for students.
Quite a few countries also make connections between the platforms mentioned above and student assessment (58%) by conducting computer-based standardised assessment, providing self-assessment tools or teacher access to longitudinal student performance data. In Scotland (United Kingdom), the Glow platform enables the creation of e-portfolios where learners can review their achievements and track their progress. In 2016, Estonia created an electronic environment system to prepare tasks and conduct tests, including state exams to monitor the development of key competencies that ensure the ability to live creatively, entrepreneurially and flexibly in life.11 In New Zealand, the government funded two digital tools to enable teachers and learners to build shared curriculum and monitor learning progress.
In a number of cases (55%), countries/jurisdictions also provide professional development opportunities to teachers through dedicated training, support services, or encouragement of peer-learning through communities of practice. Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland (United Kingdom) and India offer (or plan to offer) dedicated teacher training. In Scotland (United Kingdom), a national team of digital officers have been delivering virtual professional learning at national, regional and local levels. Hungary, New Zealand, Scotland (United Kingdom), Hong Kong (China) and Kazakhstan, encourage or provide the means to build communities of practice between teachers, online or offline. Portugal is running a Digitalisation Programme for Schools at the national level where professional development figures prominently. The dimensions of the programme are: i) equipment loan and free connectivity for every student and teacher; ii) teacher training according to their digital proficiency level and focused on the use of digital technologies for teaching and learning in all subjects/areas of the curriculum; iii) design, in each educational context, of an action plan for the digital development of the school, based on schools leadership training sessions organised by Digital Ambassadors allocated to the school associations training centres; iv) development of communities of practice for teacher trainers and Digital Ambassadors so that peer-learning is promoted and encouraged.
However, countries/jurisdictions still struggle with concerns related to equal access to devices and the Internet, either through a lack of access in schools or a lack of well-prepared teaching personnel. Nearly half of countries/jurisdictions (45%) are thus also making changes to basic infrastructure (e.g. by ensuring basic IT infrastructure/minimum internet connectivity in schools, providing additional ICT devices in school, etc.) and providing training and professional development opportunities for teachers. For example, several countries/jurisdictions made (or are planning to make) changes in their ICT infrastructures to increase the inclusiveness of learning, and equity in access to digital learning opportunities. This includes providing basic IT infrastructure and minimum Internet connectivity in schools, additional ICT devices in schools, and putting in place measures for greater inclusion of disadvantaged groups, both in schools and out of schools (such as student populations in the periphery, in hospitals or in prisons). New Zealand, Poland, Scotland (United Kingdom), Hong Kong (China) and India, are investing in stable Internet or Wi-Fi connections in schools. Argentina and the Russian Federation are proposing measures particularly targeted to vulnerable populations (such as student populations in hospitals or prisons or in rural and remote areas). Portugal provides equipment and free connectivity for all students and teachers at national level, allowing the access to digital textbooks/other educational resources, the use of collaborative tools that promote innovation and creativity, as well as the use of digital tools for external assessment purposes.
Digital literacy to prepare students for the real world
In our rapidly changing world, which relies so heavily on technology, digital literacy is a cornerstone for students to successfully navigate the social, civil, economic, and occupational roles of adulthood (OECD, 2019[63]). Such digital tools also help develop future competencies for the future that can only be obtained through the use of such technology. This can lead to a path of lifelong learning and help prepare youth for their adult life. These tools can also help students to personalise their learning experience.
The growth of new technologies, such as AI (Figure 4) signals unprecedented demand for competencies in technology-rich environments, particularly information-processing skills.
Source: (OECD, 2019[64]), Measuring the Digital Transformation: A Roadmap for the Future, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/888933928331.
While work and life in the future will require knowledge of and comfort with diverse forms of technology, a recent OECD Survey of Adult Skills reveals that, on average, only about one in three adults in participating countries are very proficient in problem solving in technology-rich environments (31.1%) (Figure 5). The country-level comparison shows significant discrepancies between countries with a large proportion of adults who demonstrated good levels of proficiency in such skills (New Zealand and Sweden) and those where only a minority of adults scored at the same level (e.g. Poland, Lithuania, Chile, Greece, Turkey).
Note: Adults included in the missing category were not able to provide enough background information to impute proficiency scores because of language difficulties or learning or mental disabilities (referred to as literacy-related non-response). The missing category also includes adults who could not complete the assessment of problem solving in technology-rich environments because of technical problems with the computer used for the survey.
Cyprus, France, Italy, Jakarta (Indonesia), and Spain did not participate in the problem-solving in technology-rich environments assessment. Results for Jakarta (Indonesia) are not shown, since the assessment was administered exclusively in paper and pencil format.
1. Note by Turkey: The information in this document with reference to “Cyprus” relates to the southern part of the Island. There is no single authority representing both Turkish and Greek Cypriot people on the Island. Turkey recognises the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). Until a lasting and equitable solution is found within the context of the United Nations, Turkey shall preserve its position concerning the “Cyprus issue”.
Note by all the European Union Member States of the OECD and the European Union: The Republic of Cyprus is recognised by all members of the United Nations with the exception of Turkey. The information in this document relates to the area under the effective control of the Government of the Republic of Cyprus.
2. The sample for the Russian Federation does not include the population of the Moscow municipal area.
Countries and economies are ranked in descending order of the combined percentages of adults scoring at Level 2 and at Level 3.
Source: Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) (2012, 2015), Table A2.6, https://doi.org/10.1787/888933365903.
Closing gaps in digital competencies, therefore, remains a policy priority for eliminating digital divides now and in the future. Some of the digital tools may help teachers and students interact with other technologies. Using a digital curriculum makes technology in the classroom part of the normal school experience, reflecting the world outside school. It allows students to naturally gain skills and experience working with digital tools that they will need to master as adults. The more students are exposed to these tools, the more they may be able to effectively transition to the workforce and a more digitalised civic life.
However, it takes time for students and teachers to adapt to the use of digital curriculum resources (Rosen and Manny-Ikan, 2011[65]). A quality curriculum considers broader contextual opportunities and the needs of both students and the community (OECD, 2020[1]; Darling-Hammond et al., 2020[9]). Teachers may be supported to develop their digital skills or other pedagogical knowledge through various measures, such as training by professional organisations or local governments, or through peer-learning and online workshops. The Future Classroom Lab (FCL) in Brussels (Belgium) and the European Schoolnet Academy are a few examples in the European context. Box 2 explains how a school network in Korea swiftly incorporated digital tools to support teachers in response to school closures due to the pandemic in 2020.
As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries/jurisdictions pivoted to digital and online approaches to learning. With no roadmap on how to proceed, schools and stakeholders were left with no choice, but to innovate themselves and adapt to this uncertainty.
In February 2020, the Korean Ministry of Education took the unprecedented step of transitioning to full online education. Some critical challenges for adapting to this sudden need included how to quickly prepare teachers – many of whom were unfamiliar with such practices – for online teaching and how to keep students motivated during remote learning.
The Future Class Network (FCN), a grassroots organisation that has been leading innovative education in Korea, played an important role by promptly designing and testing solutions to train teachers on a large scale for adapting swiftly to online instruction. Within FCN, its prevailing culture of valuing student-led peer learning and experiences with minimising lecture-based lessons in their classrooms helped them in envisioning new strategies for online teaching and learning while still maintaining student engagement, collaboration and participation.
To realise this, around ten leading teachers came together and exchanged ideas to enhance the quality of online classes and improve them through trial and error. As raw as it were, this core group of teachers shared their experience through an online interactive workshop with other fellow teachers at FCN. The experience was well received and quickly multiplied with ten teachers influencing many others.
In April 2020, the Korean Ministry of Education approached FCN and suggested that they share with general teachers their breakthrough strategies for quickly training teachers for online instruction, thus supporting them during school closures. FCN first large-scale, real-time online interactive teacher training was very successful. FCN reached about 4 000 individual teachers from primary and secondary education in a period of 2-3 weeks.
Prior to the training, almost all teachers expressed their fear of moving to online classes and a resulting sense of confusion. After four hours of hands-on online engagement and peer learning, teachers gained new confidence to overcome their fears and started expressing their curiosity and desire to explore further possibilities for using ICT in support of student learning. The content of the workshop was grounded on experiencing the perspective of students in an online class, from which participants learned how to design online lessons that encourage active student engagement.
Three additional mass online interactive training sessions followed and by February 2021, a total of 17 000 teachers had participated in the training. A monitoring study to gauge the effectiveness of training suggested that teachers who participated in the online workshop went beyond surviving the Covid-19-related school closures to start a deeper reflection about the competencies that students need in the future and how they need to adapt their teaching to support them.
A critical concern during the Covid-19 pandemic is the widening of education gaps. FCN’s strategy for that is to encourage peer learning among students, which frees up some time for teachers which can be dedicated to the more vulnerable learners. These can be more easily identified through real-time monitoring of their individual performance and engagement in digital environments.
FCN is currently expanding its online teacher training to support teachers outside of Korea facing similar challenges. This year, with the support of the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), FCN started providing online interactive workshops to master teachers in Azerbaijan with the aim to make them trainers of other teachers in their own country. FCN intends to continue assisting other communities. To this end, discussions are underway with educational institutions in Viet Nam, Lebanon, and other countries for teacher capacity-building projects. The accumulated experience of FCN has shown that even in times of crisis, a student-centred education, as emphasised by the OECD Learning Compass for 2030, does not need to be compromised but can rather be leveraged to support student and teacher agency.
Source: The OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 School Networks – Korea Future Class Network. Chanpil Jung (CEO) and Soon Jong Kim (Director of Teacher Training).
Efficient and effective use of technology may facilitate additional learning potential in a more equitable manner. For example, digitised textbooks can be accessed and shared by a larger number of students, depending on the licenses obtained from textbook publishers.12 They may be more rapidly updated and aligned with changes in the curriculum, and interactive resources can be accessed directly from these books. Parts can be printed and distributed by teachers for non-commercial purposes, and students do not need to go to the library to check out physical copies or carry them around, which could be physically challenging.
Experiences with a digital curriculum are likely to vary from simple applications (e.g. digitalisation of materials and posting of instructional tools on a website), to hybrid models (combining online/remote learning and face-to-face instruction), to a curriculum that is delivered entirely through a digital platform. This is the case of the Foundry College (Box 3), which built online courses based on the latest neuroscience findings of how one learns (content organisation, feedback structure, engagement with peers and tutors, etc.). Their digital platform offers online courses to adults that can interact live with their instructors and peers in a flexible format that suits the busy schedules of working adults.
The Forge online classroom offered by the Foundry College replicates and improves upon a physical classroom experience by engaging students in active learning, providing faculty with real-time data to support learning, and facilitating a sense of community between students and faculty – something that asynchronous online learning platforms cannot do. Its design is built on the latest knowledge of learning sciences.
In fact, the Foundry College, a public institution, benefits from years of expertise of its founders/leaders in applying learning science to practical innovations in higher education in the private sector, e.g. at the prestigious Minerva Schools at the Keck Graduate Institute. Their vision for putting that wealth of expertise at the service of public goods was at the heart of their motivation for founding the Foundry College.
What Makes The Forge Different?
Unlike other platforms, built for the business world, The Forge is designed specifically to facilitate learning in online courses by integrating best practices from the science of learning:
Student engagement: a community where participants see each other face-to-face in a scrolling video matrix, take part in live breakout group sessions, and engage in real-time polls;
Breakout groups: small groups of 2-8 students, each with their own live video session, for activities like debates, role-plays, and group problem solving;
Data to help students learn: real-time data within the platform ensures appropriate breakout groups and feedback on participation, as well as regular updates on student attendance, engagement, and learning progress.
The Forge uses forms of active learning to promote student success by engaging students dynamically with the lesson. The Forge’s features guide and encourage instructors toward effective active learning methods – even if they were not previously aware of them.
While students are in small breakout groups (which has proven to be most effective for active student engagement), the teacher is provided with a heat map identifying breakout group activity and signalling where and at what point a teacher intervention might be beneficial.
Finally, as users of digital curriculum resources, teachers are usually interested in their practicality (i.e. a decrease in administrative workload and a good fit with routines and practices) (Choppin and Borys, 2017[66]). This allows teachers to focus more on teaching, providing feedback to students, offering additional support to students who need it most while spending less time on bureaucratic reporting requirements and administrative tasks (OECD, 2018[67]).
Including, engaging, and motivating students
Student motivation is always important in the learning process (Dweck, 1983[68]). Millions of primary and secondary students worldwide take virtual courses (Davis and Ferdig, 2010[69]). However, research shows that not all students are successful (Roblyer, 2008[70]; Davis and Ferdig, 2010[69]). Students who lack motivation and digital skills, and are not able to self-regulate their learning need extra support in virtual schools, as do students with medical issues (Davis and Ferdig, 2018[71]).
Traditional curricula typically have majority-group learners in mind. Designing a digital curriculum offers policy makers the opportunity to co-construct a curriculum with learners, teachers and leaders from minority groups, and to recognise them as change agents, to avoid marginalising learners from these groups (Schönfeld et al., 2020[72]).
The use of interactive applications, such as games and the use of virtual reality (VR), could increase motivation (Information Resources Management Association, 2018[73]), while at the same time increased digital use raises concerns related to student health, such as altered sleep cycles, excessive screen time with potential negative effects on mental health, such as feelings of isolation (Song et al., 2014[74]; Ferguson, 2017[75]; Przybylski and Weinstein, 2017[76]), depression (Bezinović et al., 2015[77]; Ikeda and Nakamura, 2013[78]; Kim et al., 2010[79]) and addiction (Young, 1996[80]) as well as health risks associated with reduced physical activity levels (Balram, 2020[81]; Information Resources Management Association, 2018[73]; Burns and Gottschalk, 2019[82]; Sisson et al., 2010[83]). In one study, a gaming approach to computer-science education in secondary school increased learning and motivation of students in comparison with a traditional curriculum (Papastergiou, 2009[84]). In the experiment, observations of students while using the learning application revealed a greater level of engagement, interest and enthusiasm among students in the gaming condition compared to students in the traditional group; they also showed interest in the application, but were nevertheless less attentive and engaged.
The students independence inherent in a digital curriculum must be supported by teachers, in line with a co-agency model, to avoid the risk of students who lack basic skills to benefit from such approaches missing out on optimal learning experiences (OECD, 2019[63]). Students may also need to balance the use of digital tools with opportunities for the traditional physical presence of teachers, which allow for closer collaboration and can strengthen the student-teacher relationship (Jonker, März and Voogt, 2020[61]; Graham, 2006[85]). The research is inconclusive at this stage, and more research is needed to illustrate the complex relationship between student motivation and the use of technologies.
At this stage the use of technologies carries a lot of potential for making learning more relevant and authentic for learners, stimulating their curiosity and intrinsic motivation, and supporting the development of their individual agency, such as finding purpose in their learning and making sense of the world around them. For example, digital formative assessment can become one of the potential tools to promote students’ agency in their learning process, as well as their motivation for learning, which can promote equity and inclusion. Using such tools to change the fundamental makes the difference between “digitalisation of curriculum” (i.e. putting the existing curriculum into digital form) and “digital transformation of curriculum” (i.e. changing the fundamental concepts of learning and teaching), where a curriculum becomes a transformational tool for everyone to achieve the ultimate goals of education in shaping a future that ensures the well-being of self, others and the planet.
Student choice, and customised, individualised and adaptive learning
Digital curriculum resources can include the use of learning analytics to inform teachers about their students’ achievement and provide suggestions for how to organise adapted instruction. Research in this area is still exploratory, but preliminary findings suggest that learning analytics may improve teaching and student achievement most when teachers are prepared to act on the information provided to them in a pedagogically sound and effective way (Volman and Stikkelman, 2016[86]). Learning analytics can also be used to identify early warnings of learning difficulties, thus giving educators and learners a chance to intervene earlier and ensure better learning throughout a learning programme or module (Akçapınar, Altun and Aşkar, 2019[87])
For customised and individualised learning, teachers and students favour the possibilities of digital curriculum resources. In addition, for-profit, private-sector education providers have a tradition of offering individualised learning as a complement to “mass education” in school, in particular, by embedding adaptive assessment systems into digital curriculum resources. This often results in modest gains in learning compared to programmes offering similar courses without adaptive systems (Yarnall, Means and Wetzel, 2016[88]).
This said, teachers, policy makers, and researchers are attracted by the potential of digital curriculum resources because students experience transformative learning through the collective, interactive capabilities of digital materials, rather than simply learning in an isolated way. Research suggests that adaptive use of digital curriculum resources can respond to the needs and interests of students, and has shown positive effects on learning for low-achieving students, and for students from low socio-economic backgrounds, rural settings, developing countries, and with disabilities (Voogt, van de Oudeweetering and Sligte, 2017[89]).
Taking advantages and disadvantages into account, countries/jurisdictions have developed diverse policies regarding learning resources and digital textbooks, and strategies for enabling student access in their local contexts. As digital technology (including the use of mobile technology) becomes more accessible, and in light of the added flexibility that digital textbooks provide to teachers and learners (e.g. integration of content, pedagogy and assessment), e-textbooks are becoming more popular in various OECD and partner countries13 (OECD, 2020[1]). While some digital textbooks look like their paper versions, they provide additional features, including the ability to integrate digital content from various sources and in various formats, to track individual students’ assignments and feedback (with customised student and teachers interfaces), to offer tasks that vary in difficulty level for the same content, to link to relevant content in different grade levels, and more. (Figure 6)
Source: See Box 7 in What Students Learn Matters: Towards A 21st Century Curriculum (OECD, 2020[1])
AI is another application of increasing interest to teachers, allowing them to further customise content in the classroom, enabling more personalised learning (Box 4). AI can also help support teachers and students by delivering content and helping students with frequently asked questions, such as in the use of AI assistants and/or Intelligent Tutoring System thus relieving teachers from preparing repetitive information and from other routine monitoring tasks of student learning (UNESCO Education Sector, 2019[90]). However, the consequences of implementing diverse technologies on a large scale (e.g. learning analytics, digital textbooks and AI) are still unknown.
New forms of public-private collaboration and partnership, for example, are likely to evolve in response to growing demands for such services. Some governments may set standards for new education services, such as Ed-Tech, or relax regulations in the existing industries, where appropriate. The typical trends include, for example, publishers developing e-textbooks and software companies developing new learning management systems and/or learning apps. The introduction of private partners into the curriculum delivery process may raise other dilemmas, such as the dependency on specific digital services providers or escalating costs after trial versions of services expire.
Avanti Fellows is among India’s largest and most effective science and math education organisations and runs large, system-wide interventions in Haryana and Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya schools. They provide after-school instruction that helps students prepare for competitive examinations and enter good medicine and engineering universities. They make extensive use of technology for interactive online classrooms and explicitly aim at reducing learning gaps in math and science among students.
During the Covid-19 lockdown period, state governments of Haryana, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, and Madhya Pradesh agreed to a common teaching and course coverage plan with daily lessons. In collaboration with the state governments, Avanti reaches over 800,000 students every day through more than 6,000 teacher-moderated WhatsApp groups.
These students receive daily messages with a curated playlist on YouTube, PDF assignments, and notes. Over 40% of all students are engaged in these WhatsApp groups and 90% of them participate in weekly quizzes.
Early data indicates that learners are learning new concepts in a purely remote way with an average score of 50% of learned content.
Avanti now focuses on making learning personalised. In the first phase, Avanti has built adaptive lessons that combine videos with quiz items and guide the learner down different learning paths based on their performance. These lessons are built on Google Forms. In the next phase, the lessons will be delivered as interactive videos by layering assessments within the videos to truly understand what part of each video worked for the learner.
As learners respond to questions, Avanti will identify the specific segments that were particularly engaging and effective. This will help generate personalised recommendations for each learner based on their learning level and in their local language. Avanti will leverage AI and machine learning models to effectively drive this phase.
Avanti’s platform will always be free for learners and, unlike most existing solutions, the AI models and the data gathered will be open to researchers as a public good.
Source: Presentation by Akshay Saxena and Panchali Dutta (Avanti) at the Education 2030 Thematic Working Group 3 “Aligning assessment and pedagogies with curriculum changes” webinar which took place on 25 September 2020.
Similarly, digital technology can be leveraged to enhance the involvement of parents in their child’s education. Dost Education, a private, non-profit company in India, builds and maintains parental engagement in their child’s education by opening a path to ongoing communication and customised information through the use of mobile technology (Box 5).
Dost Education empowers aspiring middle-income parents in India to improve their children’s early development and school success. Through widely available mobile technology, Dost delivers local language curricula and a communication platform to arm parents with the knowledge and resources they crave.
Dost helps parents of any literacy level boost their child’s early learning and development at home. Through 1-minute podcasts delivered via phone calls four times a week (“phonecasts”), Dost solves everyday parent problems and nudges parents to turn regular moments into learning moments. Current content covers cognitive development, socio-emotional skills, and school preparedness.
Experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, to supplement the early-learning content, Dost built a six-week-long COVID-19 module addressing stress, physical and mental health for both adults and young children, and recommending positive behaviour management techniques to adopt health routines, build resilience, and create a safe environment at home.
Source: HundrED GLOBAL COLLECTION: 2021. Petrie, Christopher. Katija Aladin (2020). HundrED Research. https://hundred.org/en/research; Published Autumn 2020
Growing awareness that an inclusive curriculum also takes into account the important role of parents in supporting their children’s learning is also demonstrated by the consideration of parents themselves as potential readers – if not primary readers – of the curriculum. A recent OECD Future of Education and Skills study reveals that in 86% of participating countries/jurisdictions, parents are considered target readers of the curriculum. In four of those countries (the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, and Singapore) parents are the main audience for the curriculum, together with teachers, students and the wider public.14
Alignment with curricula contents, assessment, support systems, and learning pathways
Digital curricula may ensure equity by aligning curriculum content to learners’ developmental needs in several ways: 1) offering individually targeted assessment by computerised adaptive testing; 2) providing supplementary support with intelligent tutoring systems; and 3) developing learning pathways by using big data and/or AI technology (Chen, Liu and Chang, 2006[91]; Scheltens F., 2020[92]).
Digital curricula that support vulnerable students in particular
Digital curriculum resources offer opportunities for all learners and, when tailored to students according to their needs, talents, potential for learning, interests and expectations, flexibility opens a variety of learning paths as well as ways to scaffold and enrich learning, promoting inclusion for all. But digital curricula have special potential to improve both learning and the learning experience of vulnerable students. For example, they can be tailored to students with special needs, by combining them with the use of assistive technology and tools (Box 6). They can also respond to the cultural and linguistic diversity of minority students and support designing materials that counter gender and racial stereotypes. They can bring high-quality learning materials and activities to poorly resourced schools and remote rural areas, helping to close gaps in learning opportunities. They can also provide targeted tutoring to low-performing students, helping to close performance gaps. Furthermore, they can provide a host of options for continuous learning in times of crisis, when students may not have access to schools, as is the case with displaced students (e.g. refugees) or students experiencing school closures due to natural disasters or pandemics.
However, not all teachers, students and parents have equitable access to or understanding of digital resources. This could complicate efforts to achieve equity through digital, technical, and curricular materials (Donlan, 2016[93]). Policy makers need to realise that the different perspectives of various stakeholders have an impact on how digital curriculum resources are understood and can be used (Choppin and Borys, 2017[66]). Tensions between different stakeholders on the use of digital curriculum resource materials may lead to unclear messages to teachers, students, and parents about the ultimate goals of a digital curriculum (Choppin and Borys, 2017[66]; Selwyn, 2007[94]). Opportunities must be deliberately embedded into the design of an inclusive curriculum, and they depend on other, concurrent equity measures, such as equal access to infrastructure (computers, laptops, broadband, etc.) and guidance and information for parents on the benefits of such resources.
Students with special needs
By taking advantage of digital technology, digital curricula can serve the special needs of individual students. This can include: accessible formats for Braille readers; text to speech software (for reading) or voice recognition for keyboard entry (for writing); adaptable font sizes and colours; adapted language (for ease of comprehension); and adaptive testing built with algorithms that help with early detection of language impairment. It can also include the use of augmented reality, immersive virtual reality (VR) and motion recognition technology so users can map virtual spaces and change screen representations according to their needs. Assistive technologies, such as magnifying apps and screen readers, can also support SEN students. Such tools remove a number of physical and cognitive barriers to learning for students with visual, auditory or other impairments, thus supporting equitable access to opportunities to learn (See OECD (2020, p. 11[1]) report on the recognition time lag between policy makers and school leaders).
At Chiba Prefectural Nagareyama School for Special Needs Education in Japan, the unique curriculum is implemented in order to support the exercise of student agency for students with special needs, with reference to the OECD Learning Compass 2030. Approximately 300 students of high-school age with learning disabilities attend this school.
Schools for students with special needs are encouraged to design a personalised and flexible curriculum. In Japan, typically, certain learning areas (Ryo-iki) do not require grading and students receive a qualitative evaluation, while subjects (Kyo-ka), such as language and mathematics require schools to give students a grade (Hyo-tei). At these schools, more flexibility is also given on assessment to better meet the individual’s differing needs. For example, a grade is not required for students with learning disabilities, even for subject areas.
This school has been designated as an experimental school by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and has introduced a unique new learning area (Ryo-iki) called “My Time”. During “My Time” class, each student consults their teachers, sets out what competencies they wish to develop, design how to achieve the goal, and work towards achieving the goal. Support and learning activities are adapted to suit individual needs so they vary from student to student. To facilitate the creation of individualised plans, the school created an original ICT application easy for special needs students to use, to assess themselves and set their objectives.
In this application, students can choose between different cards, depending on what kind of state they are in and where they want to go with various competencies. These cards include pictures that are visually easy to understand for students with learning disabilities and have 6 levels, which are the rubrics set by the teachers. The method of choosing a card makes it fun for students. Each student can use it at their own pace and receive feedback from teachers.
Using this application, students decide the competencies they want to develop or improve on, think about how they would cultivate them, anticipate paths for problem solving, take actions to implement solutions, and reflect on their learning.
By engaging students actively in such iterative cycles of the OECD’s Education 2030’s Anticipation-Action-Reflection (AAR) for problem solving, teachers aim to develop students’ competencies and students’ agency, which are necessary for students to be able to thrive in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous society. To promote a whole-school approach to curriculum implementation, teachers work together to enhance the quality of learning for each student by connecting what students learn and experience during “My Time” and what they learn in their existing subjects, with the aim of supporting both students’ learning at school and their learning for life.
Source: The website of Chiba Prefectural Nagareyama School for Special Needs Education https://cms1.chiba-c.ed.jp/nagareyamakotogakuen-sh/
Gender, socio-economic background and the digital divide
Differences in access to ICT and digital technology related to students’ socio-economic status and gender potentially play a role in increasing gaps in learning opportunities and outcomes. For example, PISA data reveals that boys and socio-economically advantaged students are more likely to have earlier access to digital devices than girls and students from disadvantaged backgrounds (OECD, 2013[6]).
Innovative curriculum designers must then use digital curricula to minimise, rather than aggravate discrepancies in educational outcomes. Overall, digital textbooks promise a variety of possible advantages, but other issues may arise, such as questions of access to digital devices.
Other efforts to incorporate digital tools, like digital learning materials or apps, could also be a barrier for students from low socio-economic backgrounds, as they may not be able to access them at home (Donlan, 2016[93]). In cases when teachers expect work outside of class, as in a flipped-classroom model,15 students may not be able to complete assignments. The digital divide means more than just the inability to look up content or questions at home for a report; it has implications for accessing digital tools more broadly.
Students and teachers in poorly resourced schools
Policy makers face a challenge to develop a digital curriculum that does not exacerbate differences in learning opportunities and educational outcomes across diverse populations of students. Accessing the digital resources outlined earlier in this section requires a connection to the Internet. Hardware, software, and Internet access are all requisites for equitable access to digital learning materials.
However, not all schools are equally resourced and this may impact the capacity to provide quality instruction (OECD, 2019[95]). PISA data reveal that in some countries disadvantaged schools are more likely to suffer from a lack of physical infrastructure and educational material, like textbooks, laboratory equipment and computers (41 PISA participating countries and economies). Furthermore, in some countries disadvantaged schools are more likely to face shortages of education staff (45 participating countries and economies) (Figure 7). (OECD, 2019[95])
Note: Statistically significant differences are shown in a darker tone. The socio-economic profile is measured by the school's average PISA index of economic, social and cultural status (ESCS). For this analysis, the sample is restricted to schools with the modal ISCED level for 15-year-old students. Countries and economies are ranked in ascending order of the difference in the mean index of shortage of education staff.
Source: OECD, PISA 2018 Database, Tables II.B1.5.13 and II.B1.5.14, https://doi.org/10.1787/888934037678.
PISA data also show that in countries where resources are allocated more equitably, more students have a greater chance to succeed (Figure 8). Basic school infrastructure, such as laboratory equipment and Internet connectivity, as well as access to textbooks, are important factors in reducing gaps in learning and performance. Technology can also be used to provide infrastructure at a lower cost, such as in virtual labs (Vincent-Lancrin, 2019[96]). Deliberate efforts to ensure equal access to optimal conditions for learning do pay off.
Note: Equity in resource allocation refers to the difference in the index of quality of schools’ educational resources between socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged schools.
1. A significant relationship (p < 0.10) is shown by the solid line.
Source: (OECD, 2014[97]), Pisa in Focus no. 44, How is equity in resource allocation related to student performance?, https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisainfocus/pisa-in-focus-n44-(eng)-final.pdf
Exposure to additional digital tools, such as computers or digital tools for improving writing practice, improves the academic performance of disadvantaged students (Janxia, Sansing and Yu, 2004[98]; Jesson et al., 2018[99]). Providing resources, support for teachers and effective learning strategies (which can include digital curricula and tools) have all demonstrated success in supporting disadvantaged students (OECD, 2012[100]). To sustain the use of digital curriculum resources over time, teachers may need additional professional development, especially in socio-economically disadvantaged schools or in settings where student performance is low (Fishman et al., 2011[101]).
Although some communities may have Internet access, speed of access or reliability may be low. Some communities may finance or co-finance connections to reduce costs and enable more people to access those resources. There is also significant variation in the quality of textbooks, either in terms of physical condition or the extent to which material is up to date. A digital curriculum may require the creation of smart learning spaces, such as technologically enabled libraries, classrooms (for individual and group activities), laboratories (for real-time simulations) and playing fields (for use of wearable technology or performance-tracking tools), and also mobile technology that extends learning beyond the school walls. Students in well-resourced schools are more likely to adopt and more quickly benefit from new technology in teaching and learning (Zhao and Frank, 2003[102]).
As discussed, digital curriculum resources may continue to change, and additional resources may be needed in contexts where teachers often lack the time to spend on additional learning. Policy makers may need to provide additional resources or support, where needed. A one-size-fits-all approach to supporting digital curricula could be a disservice to teachers and students in schools that lack adequate resources.
Rural schools with multiple risk factors
Policy makers need to ensure that digital curriculum resources are accessible to all learners, particularly students in rural areas and schools with many students from low socio-economic backgrounds (Courtney and Anderson, 2010[103]). Research refers to a large number of students, particularly those in rural areas, who enrol in online courses to prepare themselves for further education, who need local support to prevent them from dropping out (De la Varre, 2014[104]).
Research suggests that adaptive use of digital curriculum resources can respond to the needs and interests of students, and has shown positive effects on learning for students from rural settings, low-achieving students, students from low socio-economic backgrounds, students from developing countries and students with disabilities (Voogt, van de Oudeweetering and Sligte, 2017[89]).
Displaced students with additional challenges in times of crisis
In times of crisis, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic or when serving displaced students (e.g. refugees and immigrants), it may be even more challenging to ensure equity in learning for all students. However, new resources may guide approaches to implementing such a model (UNHCR and partners, 2020[105]; You et al., 2020[106]). For example, components such as building relationships with students and families, constructing a vision for equity, and engaging students about their learning experiences may all be effective in designing and implementing innovative curricular practices, especially during COVID-19 (see Box 7).
Personalised curricula that work for all students
A personalised curriculum recognises that students learn differently, with different learning needs and at different paces. It also acknowledges that students differ in prior knowledge, skills, attitudes and values, and provides various entry points that allow students some degree of choice to tailor how they learn to what they need to learn. By providing learners with means to learn that match their unique interests and needs, a personalised curriculum has the potential to make learning more engaging and motivating. This can support students’ performance and overall sense of well-being (OECD, 2006[107]). A popular way for countries to expand the range of subjects students can chose to learn according to their own interests is to offer extra-curricular activities. These, in addition to out-of-school activities, can address students’ interests in areas not covered by the standard curriculum, but are likely to vary in the extent to which they are personalised to fit individual needs.
For students to fully benefit from a personalised curriculum, they need to be active participants in their own learning journey, be able to self-regulate, and develop the metacognitive skills required of self-directed learners. Based on students’ input, teachers can adapt their instruction and learning environments in a way that best matches individual learning interests. Teachers can also continuously personalise a curriculum and make it rigorous and coherent, by selecting the right types and levels of challenge from which students can grow. This is especially important to avoid stigmatisation that this may be a second class type of curriculum (often associated with lower parental aspirations or teacher biases).
Some ways to do this include the use of scaffolding (including UDL), peer learning, adaptive teaching and learning, and the use of ICT and various digital tools to support such personalisation. The beliefs of teachers regarding their students, particularly whether they have a growth mindset (as opposed to fixed and stigmatising views about what students can accomplish) are important elements in successfully embracing the requirements of a personalised curriculum. Teacher education and professional development can further enhance teachers’ preparedness for this type of innovation.
Recognition of individual differences such as students’ prior knowledge, dispositions, motivations, pace of learning, learning progression
A growing body of research suggests that differences in students’ prior knowledge, dispositions, motivations, pace of learning, and learning progression may influence the way they learn best (Duncan et al., 2007[108]; Dweck, 1983[68]; Hanna Dummont, 2010[109]).
The context where learning takes place is just as important. It is useful to have a learning environment characterised by a curriculum with intellectual substance and instructional design that encourages interest, meaningfulness and challenge through developmentally appropriate, cognitive, emotional and behavioural engagement, particularly as children gain more autonomy and enter adolescence (Eccles and Roeser, 2011[110]).
A personalised curriculum, if implemented properly, has the potential to change the curriculum structure from a one-size-fits-all linear learning-progression model to a differentiated, non-linear learning-trajectory model, from which all students can benefit. Box 8 offers one example of how the goals of personalised learning can be productively combined with the use of technology for a learning experience that is targeted to learners’ specific needs (both in different learning areas and different proficiency levels).
Khan Academy is a personalised learning resource for all ages tackling mathematics, science, computer programming, history, art history, economics and other subjects. Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalised learning dashboard that empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside the classroom, in more than 40 languages.
Khan Academy aims to provide free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Their interactive practice problems, articles, and videos help students succeed in mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, economics, finance, grammar, and many other topics. With personalised learning, students practice at their own pace, first filling in gaps in their understanding, then accelerating their learning. Khan Academy provides teachers with data on how their students are doing so they can identify gaps in learning and provide tailored instruction to meet the needs of every student. They also offer free personalised SAT and LSAT practice in partnership with the College Board and the Law School Admission Council.
Nearly 20 million learners use Khan Academy every month in over 190 countries and over 40 languages in addition to versions of their site in Spanish, French, and European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Source: HundrED GLOBAL COLLECTION: 2021. Petrie, Christopher. Katija Aladin (2020). HundrED Research. https://hundred.org/en/research; Published in autumn 2020
Despite growing interest in the potential of personalised curricula, many teachers may still feel unprepared to tailor their practices to best meet the individual needs of all students on a regular basis. Data from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveal that, on average across OECD countries, about 30% of students are in schools where principals reported that student learning is hindered by teachers not meeting the needs of individual students (OECD, 2019[111]). When looking at the country-level data (Figure 9), it becomes clear that in many countries this proportion is higher than the OECD average.
Among teachers, this may reflect a lack of awareness, willingness, or ability to be sensitive to their students’ needs. This is where teachers’ capacity to identify learning needs and adapt teaching accordingly is vital. Among school principals, it may reflect high expectations for teachers to respond to students’ needs and future interests, and to support their learning by personalising the curriculum at classroom level.
*Data did not meet the PISA technical standards but were accepted as largely comparable.
Source: (OECD, 2019[112]), OECD, PISA 2018 Database, Table III.B1.7.1, https://doi.org/10.1787/888934030971
StatLink: https://doi.org/10.1787/888934240788.
When teachers have the opportunity to adapt the curriculum to be more student-centred, they need to exercise professional judgment, exploring their students’ potential, setting boundaries, and providing guidance to achieve a “negotiated curriculum” that is conducive to coherent, productive and better learning. Implementing a new curriculum may require additional skills and knowledge to effectively meet students’ needs. For example, students’ interest in the use of technology in the classroom and greater access to the Internet and personal devices would need to be linked to purposeful learning activities, as well as shared awareness of what limits should be observed by teachers and students to minimise online risks for students and disruptive behaviours in the classroom (Burns and Gottschalk, 2019[82]).
Extracurricular activities
The availability of extracurricular activities plays an important role in personalising curricula. These activities can enhance students’ psychological and social well-being, and can improve student performance directly through tutoring and homework support, or indirectly, for example through drama clubs, science and mathematics competitions, and the like.
At the same time, academically oriented extracurricular activities may harm students’ psychological and physical well-being when they are geared only towards test preparation, which some countries/jurisdictions report to be linked to curriculum overload (OECD, 2020[113]).
These activities can be publicly or privately funded, which plays into the question of access. Socio-economic background often determines students’ access to extracurricular activities, which has equity implications. Students with other responsibilities at home may be precluded from participating in extracurricular activities outside of school.
Access to publicly funded activities could alleviate the financial burden for families linked to personalised curricula, and make participation more equitable. Countries/jurisdictions can also provide equal opportunities for more diverse options and ensure equity by providing relevant public support for certain targeted groups of students, such as low-income students or those who speak another language at home.
Countries/jurisdictions take many different approaches to manage the overlapping boundaries between curricular content and extracurricular activities (particularly those offered in schools). In India, for example, the national education policy (Ministry of Human Resource Development Government of India, 2020[114]) mandates no hard separation between curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities. The aim is that students be offered age-specific and interest-specific experiences in physical education, arts and crafts and vocational skills. The same applies to the content of different activities.
Access to extracurricular and out-of-school activities
Most countries/jurisdictions do not collect data on these activities. However, currently available data from E2030 PQC participating countries/jurisdictions (Table 7) offer some glimpses about the sources of funding for extracurricular activities, which have implications for equity. Across participating countries/jurisdictions, publicly funded in-school activities are most common (reported by 96% of countries/jurisdictions), followed by publicly funded out-of-school activities (75%). Privately funded in-school activities are least frequent (42%) while 58% of countries report privately funded out-of-school activities.
Types of extracurricular activities
Activities that go beyond traditional academic subjects can also support a personalised curriculum by proposing a wide range of learning experiences that attract students’ interests.
According to E2030 PQC data, the activities most often proposed by countries/jurisdictions are music, arts and cultural activities/groups (47%), and sports activities/groups (47%) (Table 8). Fewer countries/jurisdictions propose STEM activities/groups (26%), solidarity and volunteering activities/groups, including with local communities (26%), language activities/groups (24%), and student assemblies and other student bodies (21%). Also, the formats of these activities vary across countries/jurisdictions:
Music, arts and cultural activities/groups: Schools in the Czech Republic offer drama clubs, as well as music and artistic activities, such as ceramics and drawing. Portugal also mentions music, theatre, and journalism as activities offered by schools. In Québec (Canada) extracurricular activities respond to needs expressed by local communities, through offerings decided by governing boards composed of parents, school staff, students, and community representatives. They work with local partners such as museums to provide activities in and out of school. Denmark follows a similar approach that includes the surrounding community, where schools work with local organisations, including music and photo schools. Turkey’s offerings include sightseeing trips to social and historical sites. China offers choir among other activities, and Kazakhstan offers multiple artistic competitions, such as classroom decoration, New Year’s post cards, and drawing.
Sports activities/groups: Sports clubs often centre on regional outdoor activities, such as surfing, bodyboarding and canoeing in Portugal. Countries/jurisdictions also cite competitions and championships in different athletic disciplines, such as school championships in volleyball, basketball, and gymnastics in Kazakhstan.
Student assemblies and other student bodies or student involvement in governing boards of schools/centres: Some examples include projects such as the Democracy Education and School Assembly project in Turkey, where local student elections are framed in a national context. In India, school assemblies and student councils are nationally mandated.
Solidarity and volunteering activities and groups: Ireland offers activities with community learning and development organisations. Turkey includes visits to science centres. China, Costa Rica, and Kazakhstan propose science fairs. In Costa Rica, schools organise drug addiction prevention events under the DARE programme.
STEM activities/groups: Chile proposes activities to stimulate mathematics learning. Portugal offers activities in scientific, technological and environmental areas. The Russian Federation provides more technology-heavy extracurricular activities, such as robotics, 3D modelling and prototyping.
Language activities/groups: Schools in Chile often offer reinforcement training in languages, with the types of activities varying from school to school. Kazakhstan holds a languages day of the nations of Kazakhstan, and subject Olympiads, as well as thematic classroom hours dedicated to specific topics, including language activities.
Other local examples: In Hong Kong (China), the out-of-classroom learning opportunities strategy, also known as life-wide learning, is adopted in all schools to enable students to gain a variety of experiential learning (including the five essential learning experiences of intellectual development, physical and aesthetic development, moral and civic education, community service, and career-related experiences). Held outside the classroom, these aim to facilitate students’ exploration of their interests and abilities, development of values and skills, and whole-person development. The strategy also promotes students’ quality reflection on their learning experiences to enhance deep learning. To this end, the Education Bureau has stepped up its financial support, through the provision of a new and recurrent Life-wide Learning Grant since 2019, for all publicly-funded primary and secondary schools to organise more diversified life-wide learning activities for students. All students are entitled to publicly-funded life-wide learning activities in the five domains mentioned above, which include, among others, activities in sports, arts and community service.
Students’ motivation, self-regulation, and metacognitive skills
A personalised curriculum has the potential to positively motivate students and raise their expectations about their own potential to excel in school and in life, which is particularly important among students from disadvantaged backgrounds (OECD, 2017[10]).
A case study in Australia suggests more motivation and positive attitudes toward school among students in a school where personalised learning was one of the strategies of reform (Prain et al., 2013[115]). The effects were also felt among teachers, who reported more co-operation. In addition, students themselves report their desire to have autonomy and a say in decisions in their education (Simmons, Graham and Thomas, 2015[116]), suggesting that personalised approaches to learning are desired by students and could promote their well-being.
For all students to benefit from a personalised curriculum, they must be aware of it and ready to successfully adapt to such a model. Personalised learning should be intentional on the part of both teacher and student, and self-regulatory skills are important in being able to adapt (Duckworth et al., 2007[117]). Students need to have the self-regulatory skills and metacognitive ability to understand how they can appropriately adapt their learning to meet their needs (Eccles and Roeser, 2011[110]; Schunk and Zimmerman, 1994[118]).
As mentioned earlier, digital tools can offer seamless ways for students and teachers to adapt a personalised curriculum. Box 9 shows one example of an instructional platform that is well-suited for personalisation of learning.
Newsela brings together engaging, accessible content with integrated assessments and insights to supercharge reading engagement and learning in every subject. Though most powerful as a digital platform, Newsela can be used without devices or the Internet, instead relying on print options and offline access.
Newsela’s instructional content platform solves the problem of reading engagement holistically for students, teachers and principals. It offers adaptive reads for every subject, combined with assessment tools such as quizzes, annotations, and writing prompts.
Learners can access dynamic, game-changing content from premier sources such as the Washington Post, Smithsonian and Biography.com, covering topics students care about. Every article comes in five reading levels, tailored to the skill level of each reader. As learners pick up new literacy skills, the language becomes more sophisticated.
Assessments are integrated directly into articles to help students engage with the content and to give teachers and principals actionable insights on students’ activity and progress that can be used to improve learning outcomes. The platform’s most important function is to enable teachers to assess students’ abilities and adjust their instruction in real time.
As well as improving reading skills in general, Newsela aims to boost learners’ media literacy. By pairing news consumption with reading comprehension practice, Newsela helps students to develop the higher-order critical thinking skills they need to vet information on their own.
Source: HundrED GLOBAL COLLECTION: 2021. Petrie, Christopher. Katija Aladin (2020). HundrED Research. https://hundred.org/en/research; Published Autumn 2020
Fixed vs. growth mindsets and educator bias
Growing evidence confirms the importance of students’ own beliefs and attitudes about various educational outcomes. Their aspirations for the future, their beliefs about what they can achieve, how they explain their own academic success (or failure), their perception of how difficult certain subjects are, and their reaction to stigmatising treatment are just some of the factors that can determine levels of engagement, persistence, resilience and performance among learners (OECD, 2017[10]; Blatchford, 1997[119]), citing (Brown, Brown and Bibby, 2008[120]; Köğce et al., 2009[121]; McLeod, 1992[122]).
For example, a study in the United Kingdom examined teaching practices in response to students’ diversity. The authors maintain that teachers who rejected ideas of fixed ability sought to “enhance the capacity of each child in their class to learn, and to create the conditions in which their learning can flourish more fully and effectively” (Ainscow and Miles, 2008[123]; Hart, 2004[124]; Kuhl, 2019[125]).
The subtle, but potentially harmful impact of biased and fixed views of students’ abilities and prospects can be deliberately acknowledged in the curriculum as a way to steer a practice that is more compatible with the offer of equitable personalised curricula. A quality curriculum should thus be one that moves from deficit approaches to teaching, to asset approaches; from strict judgments about academic performance to a stronger commitment to whole-child development; from a culture of degrees and qualifications to aspirations for lifelong learning.
Teacher readiness and competencies to personalise curricula
The value of a personalised curriculum that promotes equity in learning opportunities and experiences can be undermined if it is not accompanied by corresponding changes in teacher education and professional development. Teachers’ readiness and ability to adapt the curriculum to target the needs of individual students or specific subgroups of students depends to a great extent on the kinds of pre-service and in-service education they receive (Carter, 2016[126]; Klingner, 2016[127]; Paine, Aydarova and Syahril, 2017[128]; Paniagua, 2018[129]; Paniagua, 2018[130]; Guerriero, 2017[131]).
Some practices are not innovations in and of themselves, but their use can be put at the service of personalised learning and teaching, and be recognised in teacher preparation, as well as in professional development:
Scaffolding (including UDL): Scaffolding is a process of providing learners with the tools to learn, and to do so just beyond what they currently know. It seeks to provide the tools to enable students to learn effectively, rather than to put the onus exclusively on the student (Vygotsky, 1987[132]).
Peer learning: Students can learn from interactions with peers, group work and peer feedback. Students who are shy or wary of authority figures like teachers can benefit from opportunities to learn from their peers, rather than always relying on teachers’ expertise (Mazur, 1997[133]; Bandura, 1971[134]).
Adaptive teaching and learning: Adaptive teaching and learning refers to the use of alternative instructional strategies and resources to meet the learning needs of individual students (Wang, 1980[135]). This requires teachers’ understanding of individual students’ varying interests, skills and performance level in order to select activities, materials and strategies to match those specific needs. The advantages of adaptive teaching and learning have been widely recognised especially for supporting instruction in the same classroom to a diverse group of students (Parsons et al., 2011[136]; Parsons et al., 2010[137]).
The use of ICT in teaching and learning: ICT can provide additional tools and techniques to facilitate learning. It also can provide a platform for students to interact with their teacher and with learning materials more effectively and fluently in real time (van Dijk, 2005[138]; Kale, 2018[139]; Soomro, 2017[140]).
Personalised curricula that support vulnerable students in particular
For students at risk, a personalised curriculum can be the difference between meaningful, enriching learning experiences and demotivating, disengaging experiences that lead to low performance and increased learning gaps. The specific profile of a student determines the shape and form of a personalised curriculum, but a lot can be done at the design stage to offer a quality curriculum to every learner and help all reach their full potential. This may entail: 1) using assisted technology to help students with disabilities become more independent learners; 2) providing frequent and early screening to identify students’ capabilities and needs; 3) offering the curriculum in the language of the learners (including sign language); 4) valuing the social and cultural background of students in school; 5) including positive images of diversity in the curriculum (gender, social, cultural and racial); and 6) addressing overt and hidden teacher biases that can stigmatise students and hinder learning.
Students with special needs
A personalised curriculum can support students with special physical, cognitive or learning needs. Teachers must understand these needs and design and adapt the curriculum accordingly, believing in the potential in every student.
Singapore adapts curricula to special populations. It conducts an early screening of students’ learning needs for either low-performing students or those with specific needs. Incorporating such approaches in curriculum design increases the chances for a systematic assessment of students’ needs, rather than relying uniquely on teachers’ judgments on who deserves such levels of curriculum adaptation. One way to respond to students who might lag behind is through Learning Support for Math, a programme implemented by schools for students who do not have the basic numeracy skills and knowledge needed to follow the mathematics curriculum (OECD, 2017[10]). This programme represents an early effort in curricular intervention aimed at supporting such students. Students benefitting from this programme are identified through a screening process at the beginning of Primary 1. As part of small groups, students continue attending mathematics lessons within regular curriculum time, while at the same time receiving additional support to help them develop the knowledge and skills needed for regular classes. For example, games and multi-sensory activities are conducted frequently during lessons to make learning engaging for them. Such initiatives may lead to decreasing gaps between low and high-performing students.
Some countries/jurisdictions experience challenges, such as stigmatisation associated with special needs education or getting buy-in from the general public for targeted interventions. It is important that personalisation not be interpreted as special support for a certain group of students. It should be understood as individualised support for any student in need of such assistance. In Finland, support measures in the form of special-needs provision have been found to reduce the stigma associated with special-needs education and have instead promoted inclusion (Halinen and Järvinen, 2008[141]). This complementary support is provided in regular classroom settings and offered to all who need it across learning areas, such as those with difficulties in speech, reading, writing and mathematics, including for the most talented students (Halinen and Järvinen, 2008[141]).
Linguistic and cultural diversity
Acknowledging the importance of students’ cultural and personal identity in curriculum design sends a clear message to learners about the importance of adapting learning experiences in a way that capitalises on the richness of their unique cultural background and traditions, rather than neglecting them. The deliberate effort to translate the curriculum into various languages is an example that brings the curriculum closer to the realities and contexts of students, facilitating further personalisation.
Curriculum and curriculum guidelines may appear in several different languages, as shown in Table 9, which reports data from E2030 PQC participating countries/jurisdictions. This may vary by level of education, and not all languages are necessarily official languages of the country/jurisdiction.
The number of languages in which the curriculum is available ranges from one language in Australia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Korea, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Turkey, the United States, Argentina, Brazil, China, the Russian Federation and Viet Nam to 11 in South Africa, 12 in Hungary, and 22 in India.
In New Zealand, for example, the national curriculum is composed of the New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, the curriculum specifically designed to serve the Maori community. The curriculum also acknowledges New Zealand Sign Language as one of the country’s official languages and sets guidelines for schools that chose to provide teaching in those languages16.
There is limited research examining this topic, but studies suggest benefits for students learning in their native language. For example, students in Tanzania and South Africa who have to learn in English rather than their native language do not perform as well (Brock-Utne, 2007[142]).
Socio-economic considerations
Gaps in achievement by socio-economic status vary across countries/jurisdictions, but they are a common phenomenon of education systems worldwide (OECD, 2012[100]). Explanations range from school quality and parental support, to equitable investments, and others (Brooks-Gunn and Duncan, 1997[143]; Duncan, Magnuson and Votruba-Drzal, 2017[144])
Personalised learning approaches can address differences in school readiness, achievement, and well-being. For example, early childhood education programmes offering a range of holistic services aimed at low-income families can help improve school readiness (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, 2010[145]). Indeed, learning begets learning, and early skill achievement translates into later skills, and educational, civic and employment outcomes (Heckman, 2011[146]; OECD, 2012[100]). In addition, providing additional resources, either financial or human, can enable more personalised attention to learning to boost the skills of children from low socio-economic backgrounds.
Approaches to personalised curricula have limited research support, but there is some indication that personalised approaches to mathematics curricula help low socio-economic students in particular. Research in Australia suggests that personalised approaches to the mathematics can help students’ performance in mathematics, suggesting the potential for personalised curricula to help more broadly (Prain et al., 2013[115]).
That being said, caution is in order. There is no reason to believe that all types of personalised approach will benefit all students equitably. Curriculum designers recognise, for instance, that students who choose their areas of study based on their interests, and play an active role in designing their own learning path are likely to have increased motivation and better development of metacognitive skills, such as learning to learn (Vansteenkiste, Lens and Deci, 2006[147]).
PISA data (OECD, 2013[148]) suggest that the performance of disadvantaged students in mathematics is negatively affected by certain pedagogical approaches, such as teachers letting students decide their own procedures or give problems that require thinking for an extended time (Figure 10).
Other approaches, such as asking students to explain how to solve a problem or giving problems that can be solved in different ways, are found to have a more positive effect on both socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged students. This implies that a personalised curriculum must be carefully designed and implemented, with planned teaching strategies to ensure that all student groups can benefit from it.
Note: Disadvantaged (advantaged) schools are those schools whose mean PISA index of economic, social and cultural status (ESCS) is statistically lower (higher) than the mean index across all schools in the country/economy. Statistically significant values for disadvantaged schools are marked in a darker tone. All values for advantaged schools are statistically significant.
Source: (OECD, 2013[148]), PISA 2012 Database, Table 2.25b, https://doi.org/10.1787/888933377210. .
The role of gender
A substantial body of literature addresses how gender disparities in students’ achievement and aspirations for the future (including further education and career choice) link to biased gender stereotypes found in teaching and learning experiences (OECD, 2015[149]; UNESCO, 2019[25]; OECD, 2015[150]; Borgonovi, Ferrara and Maghnouj, 2018[151]). In many countries, while women with university degrees outnumber men, they lag in STEM degrees (UNESCO, 2019[25]). On average, there are almost four times as many boys as girls who expect to be employed in engineering and computing in OECD countries, and close to three times as many boys as girls in partner countries and economies (OECD, 2015[149]). Teacher and student bias may contribute to these trends.
A study in Australia from 2008 to 2014 examined how gender bias or stereotypes in curricular practices could be behind the low participation of females in three elective subjects (technology studies, engineering technology and information processing, and technology [upper-secondary]). Lack of support, or gender-biased views from teachers and school counsellors on the potential for female success in STEM fields can be linked to low female participation in these subjects. The authors recommend curricular approaches that increase the exposure of female students to STEM subjects in basic education, to support their choice of these subjects in upper-secondary school (Everitt and Pianca, 2015[152]).
Other examples of gender bias were identified in physical education. Lower participation of girls in moderate and vigorous physical activity during physical education classes at school were linked to a curriculum that favours male-oriented sports in some countries and a shortage of female teachers in this field (OECD, 2019[3]).
Appropriate personalisation of curricula might, therefore, be shaped and determined by biased beliefs among teachers and other staff.
Eliminating educator bias about students’ ability and potential
A prerequisite for teachers to adequately cater to learners’ diversity relates to the types of beliefs, attitudes and expectations that underlie their practice. Teachers with deterministic or fixed beliefs about students’ learning ability or associated gender stereotypes are known to limit students’ learning, especially those from vulnerable populations, such as low-performing students, those from disadvantaged backgrounds, or those from indigenous, ethnic or linguistic minorities, as well as immigrant students (Ainscow and Miles, 2008[123]; Schleicher, 2018[153]; OECD, 2017[10]; UNESCO, 2019[25]).
Making explicit references to the types of beliefs and expectations that foster equity in the provision of personalised curriculum, rather than offering additional advantages to high-performing students, can help teachers and school leaders reflect collectively on the belief system behind their practices and the potential consequences for different types of students. Bartolome (1994[154]), cited in (Ainscow and Miles, 2008[123]), argues that “even the most pedagogically advanced methods are likely to be ineffective in the hands of those who implicitly or explicitly subscribe to a belief system that regards some students, at best, as disadvantaged and in need of fixing or, worse, as deficient and therefore beyond fixing”.
Cross-curricular content and competency-based curriculum that work for all students
Curricula based on cross-curricular content and competencies have the potential to make learning more meaningful. Students make explicit connections between knowledge that cuts across subjects, and see how particular competencies can be developed and applied to various learning areas. A cross-curricular content and competency-based approach to curriculum design can support deeper understanding to improve the quality of learning for all students. It supports some of the twelve OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 Design Principles, such as “Interdisciplinary”, “Transferability” and “Authenticity” (See OECD (2020[44])).
One popular interdisciplinary approach to the curriculum is enquiry-based learning. However, studies on the effectiveness of such practices usually look at the performance of students in a single learning area, such as science, where it is practiced most often. So it is difficult to know to what extent these practices help with other types of outcomes. For example, do they help students make connections between different learning areas, and between what they learn in school and the real world? And do they help students improve as self-directed learners?
Another interdisciplinary approach includes explicit instruction, which has been reported as useful in helping students develop critical thinking. Whatever the strategy, it is essential that teachers be prepared for these more holistic approaches to learning. Perfecting the art of teaching in this way will take time, expertise, and effort towards continuous improvement.
Enquiry-based curricula
Several studies document the efficacy of integrative and enquiry-based curriculum. The Science Writing Curriculum (Hand, Therrien and Shelley, 2013[155]; Hand et al., 2018[156]) showed improved critical thinking skills, through improved science test scores. Carroll (1997[157]) demonstrated the positive effect among low-income students of an innovative elementary math curriculum that emphasised exploring mathematics in real-life settings and sharing solutions to mathematical problems.
These types of curriculum can contribute to equity because they empower students by offering more engaging, practical, and demanding learning experiences for all students (Thadani et al., 2010[158]), and they integrate literacy into science teaching (Tong et al., 2014[159]; Hand et al., 2018[156]). But they also require teachers to be prepared to lead such enquiry-based practices, which can vary considerably from one setting to another.
Interestingly, PISA data on science performance across countries has not shown positive associations with an enquiry-based approach to learning science (OECD, 2016[160]). Figure 11 shows that a number of practices typically associated with enquiry-based teaching and learning are actually negatively associated with science performance among 15-year-old students. PISA data reveals, however, that students who are more frequently exposed to such practices hold stronger epistemic beliefs about science, and are more likely to work in a science-related occupation when they are 30 than students less frequently exposed to such practices.
1. The socio-economic profile is measured by the PISA index of economic, social and cultural status.
Note: All differences are statistically significant.
Source: (OECD, 2016[160]), PISA 2015 Results (Volume II): Policies and Practices for Successful Schools, https://doi.org/10.1787/888933435628.
Not enough elements are available for a more granular analysis of what may explain such international results, but variation across schools and teachers in what they consider enquiry-based learning and how it is implemented could make it difficult to identify consistent results.
Explicit instruction in competencies
A recent meta-analysis showed that explicitly teaching generic competencies is the most effective instruction strategy for teaching critical thinking skills (Abrami et al., 2015[161]).
Pedagogy and the role of teachers are essential to achieve equity in integrated science curricula, especially in determining which approach will work best with all types of students. Therrien et al (2017[162]) found that explicit instruction rather than discovery learning is a feasible option in science enquiry curricula that is beneficial for all students, particularly those with learning disabilities.
Teacher confidence, experience, and support
Teachers’ experience is also important for how integrative curriculum is taught. Lie et al (2019[163]) found a positive correlation between student attitudes towards STEM subjects and the experience teachers have with such a curriculum. They suggest that professional development can help teachers gain confidence and reduce their anxiety, leading to an improved learning environment for all students. Thadani et al. (2010, p. 158[158]) emphasised the importance of support for teachers in the form of curricular materials and professional development on implementing enquiry curricula in STEM subjects. Such curricula aim to contribute to equity, but there are often major conflicts with the normal routines of many teachers. A concerted effort to train and support teachers may be needed for cross-curricular content and competency-based curriculum to be successful.
Cross-curricular content and competency-based curriculum that support vulnerable students in particular
Connecting content across the curriculum is considered an effective approach to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds or those with special needs. It can give authenticity and purpose to their learning, and thus enhance their motivation. But the research is limited and mixed. In particular, it may be unrealistic to consider that it is possible to close any sort of achievement gaps between low- and high-income students through cross-curricular content and competency-based curriculum, as the theory would not explicitly point to an advantage for low-income students.
Integrated approaches
Favourable associations have been found in some programmes for at-risk students. For example, science enquiry curricula that emphasised argumentation (Hand, Therrien and Shelley, 2013[155]; Hand et al., 2018[156]), integration with literacy (Tong et al., 2014[159]) and knowledge construction (Thadani et al., 2010[158]) showed positive effects on student learning among low-income and minority groups. However, not all studies support the efficacy of such approaches.
Minding gaps: STEM curricula
A recent study on the impact of a STEM curriculum for elementary and middle school students based on engineering design found achievement gaps for black students (middle-school level only), for students with English as a foreign language (elementary level only) and for special education students. Attitudinal differences were found for girls, but not for the other sub-groups (Lie, Selcen Guzey and Moore, 2019[163]). In short, a curriculum alone may not be able to close achievement gaps.
However, as a tool to prepare students for civic life, health and the workforce, cross-curricular content and competency-based curriculum may be a good approach for all. A forward-thinking curriculum that connects relevant and pressing themes may indeed better prepare all students for success, especially in a rapidly changing world.
Flexible curricula that work for all students
The research on a flexible curricula is limited, and the results available on various forms of flexibility are mixed. For example, flexibility in content may inadvertently have negative effects on students’ performance and can even lead to increased equity gaps between groups of students. Therefore, it is important that flexible curriculum be discussed in the context of curriculum autonomy, where local entities are empowered to make informed decisions, based on the realities of the students.
What seems to matter most is not simply the adoption of flexibility but how it is used.
When positive effects are found, they tend to be in combination with adaptive instruction and enriched activities that give students targeted opportunities for building upon where they are. It supports some of the twelve OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 Design Principles, such as “Choice”, “Student agency” and “Teacher agency” (See OECD (2020[44])).
Using flexibility in assessment, and in the time and place of learning are sensible ways to give students better conditions for learning, and for showing what they know and what they can do. The use of flexible curricula has been reported to be more frequent when curriculum reform explicitly encourages an inclusive approach to instruction (Volman and Stikkelman, 2016[86]).
Box 10 illustrates how a particular student in France benefited from a change from a rigid to a more flexible curriculum.
At the Education 2030 project’s Informal Working Group meeting held in Paris, France in October 2018, meeting participants discussed the issue of ensuring equity through curriculum innovations. Speaking on behalf of students was Maxime, a university student in France and an Ashoka Young Changemaker. He shared his own personal story about why he dropped out of secondary school, explaining that he was actually a lover of knowledge but that the school environment had been a frustrating place for him. Maxime felt that his profile did not seem to fit into the institution, as teachers always tried to “fit him into boxes”.
While Maxime found it easy to learn things and gain knowledge, he struggled with reading and writing, and was diagnosed with dyspraxia, also known as developmental co-ordination disorder. In addition to finding it difficult to read and write, Maxime also holds his hand in the wrong position when writing, so the task is actually painful to perform.
His disability made it difficult for him to be in class. Teachers had trouble seeing his potential, and even though Maxime knew he had the capacity to learn, he found himself failing in school over and over again. His mother fought to have his disability recognised by schools with little success. He developed behavioural issues that were disruptive and difficult for teachers to manage, which resulted in Maxime being kicked out of several schools.
In France, the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports has an initiative called projet d’accueil individualisé (PAI) (personalised care project), which defines adaptations made to the schooling of students with health problems, e.g. diet, schedule adjustments, exemptions from certain activities and substitution activities. Maxime said his mother went through a complicated process to obtain a PAI for him. Adaptations to his schooling included allowing him to use a computer to type instead of writing with a paper and pencil, and he had someone dedicated to helping him throughout the school day. However, even with his PAI, schooling remained difficult for him.
Teachers and schools were not prepared to work with Maxime. Repeatedly, they recommended he attend a specialised school or encouraged him to do an internship in place of classes. Teachers said negative things about him, and some seemed afraid of him and his case. He grew tired of dealing with the struggles of his learning disability and could not keep going to school.
He dropped out and did nothing for a year after leaving school. He was depressed. His mother encouraged him to get back into society and do something with his life. His greatest source of inspiration was a friend who excelled at school. Maxime spent a lot of time talking with him – deep, philosophical conversations about life and learning. His friend told him he could be really good at school too and encouraged him to try going back.
Maxime contacted the Ministry of National Education to inquire about opportunities for a student like himself. He learnt of a new and innovative high school for students who had dropped out of school, and he enrolled. This school and the teachers that worked there opened Maxime’s eyes to new ways of learning and a world of opportunity in which he could realise his potential.
The main goal of the school is to help students obtain their French baccalauréat (high school diploma), and the school has flexibility to work with students to help them reach that goal. The programme is only two years as opposed to the traditional three years of lycée (high school); the weight of the curriculum is reduced to focus on the most important elements students need to learn to obtain their diploma; classes are small with 9 to 12 students per teacher; and teachers use innovative pedagogies to engage students, e.g. blended learning through flipped classrooms.
Most importantly, teachers worked as a team and spent time talking about individual students, attuned to their needs and sensitive to their personal struggles. School did not become easy for Maxime – writing a sentence remained difficult for him – but teachers were empathetic and supportive. They worked closely with Maxime, and he was not only engaged in his learning experience but he was engaged in school life as well, taking on the role of head of his school’s youth council. He graduated in 2017 and went on to attend university.
Maxime believes curriculum should be something malleable for the teacher and students, as rigidity in the education system does not allow the students to fulfil their potential. Schools and teachers need to listen to student’s challenges and help them find their path to success. He concluded with a powerful analogy: instead of education being like a running race in which everyone starts equal, we need a run in which everyone can cross the finish line.
Source: The OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030, Focus Group 3 (Students). Maxime Zwartjes (Student)
Flexibility in content
(Cornelisz and van Halem, 2016[164]) report that offering flexibility in content may lead to undesirable differences between schools, resulting in increased gaps between students from affluent backgrounds and students from impoverished backgrounds. For example, schools with more resources may be able to better support the training or other tools needed to implement the curriculum flexibly.
Flexibility in pedagogy
Most research has been conducted on differentiation practices, a form of flexibility in pedagogy. A recent systematic review (Deunk et al., 2015[165]) on this theme in primary education showed that:
Streaming or tracking students in homogeneous classrooms has a small negative effect, in particular for students with average abilities;
Homogeneous grouping according to ability within classrooms has overall zero to small effects, but a slight positive effect on students with higher abilities compared to students with lower abilities;
School reform programmes with an emphasis on differentiation, such as Success for All (Borman et al., 2007[166]), show small to medium effects sizes for all students.
Effects are larger when homogeneous grouping is embedded in environments that include adapted instruction and monitoring student progress. In addition, differentiation in the form of adapted instruction combined with enrichment activities resulted in positive effects on reading, but not on motivation to read (Volman and Stikkelman, 2016[86]).
Flexibility in assessment
Flexibility in assessment refers to what and how skills and knowledge are assessed. From an equity perspective, this could mean flexibility in how students are assessed differently based on their different backgrounds to bring out the full potential of each student. Adaptations are frequent, for example, when assessing the learning of students with special needs. As discussed earlier, providing various means for students to demonstrate what they know is one of the key principles of UDL.
Assessment must be thought about holistically, with the community and context in mind. Some approaches are likely to be more beneficial than others for all types of students. For example, formative assessment may be less stressful and can be better adapted for all types of students than high-stakes tests (Hayward and Spencer, 2012[167]).
Flexibility in time and place of learning
Flexibility in where and when students can learn also helps students of different backgrounds and with different needs. The use of a digital curriculum has the potential to seemingly expand such flexibility, particularly through some form of blended curriculum, which allows students to continue learning outside of school (Jonker, März and Voogt, 2020[61]). A digital curriculum is not, however, the only way in which the place(s) for learning and the timing reserved for learning can be made more flexible.
For example, a high school in the United States lets students start school at 3:00 pm to enable them to work, take care of family needs, or because of their sleep schedule (Lavery, 2020[168]). Students from disadvantaged backgrounds in particular may benefit from alternative schedules, as they may need to support their family’s needs. Such flexibility could help students who are ‘young carers’ who help care for a family member who is disabled, physically or mentally ill, has a long term serious illness, including aging parents or grandparents.
Similarly, service learning (David, 2009[169]), apprenticeship programmes and work-based learning (OECD, 2018[170]), outdoor learning and learning in nature, e.g. by using community facilities for swimming, ice skating and climbing (OECD, 2019[3]) are some other ways in which learning takes place outside of the traditional boundaries of the school walls. They can be positive options for inclusion and engagement of all students in various forms of learning by supporting team work and social responsibility, school-to-work transitions and well-being. Such options can also help students of all backgrounds to connect their learning to their cultural and social context and to experience authentic learning. Diversifying the modes of representation of content (e.g. by presenting them in ‘real life’ settings) is one of the UDL principles: it removes barriers to learning by allowing learners a range of possibilities for engaging with learning.
Flexible curriculum that supports vulnerable students in particular
Some studies show that a flexible curriculum can be beneficial for both specific groups of students (e.g. gifted students) and for all students (Rao and Meo, 2016[171]). Apprenticeship and work-based programmes, for example, can be particularly helpful to youth at risk (e.g. school drop-out and/or unemployment) who may lack basic literacy and numeracy skills, soft skills or even relevant networks or role models to support them into a smooth school-work transition (OECD, 2018[170]).
When coupled with a digital curriculum added flexibility in where and when to learn can also benefit other groups of students, such as those who need to learn from home, hospitals, rural or remote areas or from refugee camps (See Box 7).
Flexible and inclusive approaches for teaching students with disabilities have also been successful, as perceived by teachers in Finland (Lakkala, Uusiautti and Määttä, 2016[172]). When curriculum reforms in Finland encouraged inclusive methods of instruction, teachers described more differentiated and flexible practices. However, it is unclear how this translated to student performance, and overall research on the impact of a flexible curriculum on specific groups of students is scarce and fragmented.
The conceptualisation of digital, personalised, cross-curricular content and competency-based curriculum, and flexible curriculum innovations discussed in this report is still new and often disputed. As a consequence, research on the implications for how they can be leveraged to close equity gaps rather than enlarge them remains limited, often exploratory and fragmented. This review suggests the following areas for further study:
Factors contributing to impact: More granular analysis of student competencies is required to ensure impact of curriculum innovations on student learning and other outcomes, including fairness, inclusiveness, and well-being. In particular, self-regulation is an important competency in curricula that assume some kind of student control over their learning (e.g. personalised curriculum, digital curriculum and flexible curriculum). Research needs to understand interventions that help increase self-regulatory skills, particularly among students at risk. More granular analysis of teacher competencies is also required to ensure impact on student learning and other outcomes. As with research on the impact of curriculum innovations and equity with students, little is known about prerequisites for teachers.
Implications for teaching preparation and professional learning: As a curriculum is often designed with a majority of students (or a normative profile of students) in mind, it may be difficult for teachers to see opportunities in the curriculum to ensure equity in learning. Redesigning curricula to be dynamic and inclusive of all types of learners requires structural changes, including changes in the mindset of practitioners, policy makers and entire communities. Teachers may also need explicit support on how to embrace such innovations while ensuring that they are inclusive of diverse groups of students and individual students’ needs.
Efficacy of digital innovations to promote equity: In general, the research on the efficacy of digital curricular innovations is thin. The knowledge base for the efficacy of digital curricular innovations among specific groups, such as low-income, language-minority, or SEN students, is even spottier and less clear. Innovations focused on student well-being and not just achievement are particularly needed. The consequences of implementing diverse technologies (e.g. learning analytics, digital textbooks, and AI) are still unknown. Similarly, research assessing effectiveness, accessibility and affordability of ‘e-textbooks’ is a growing need.
Impact of personalised curriculum on student well-being. Theory and related research may suggest that personalised learning is an effective tool to teach and engage students. While numerous anecdotes are reported on how personalised learning promotes student well-being, robust evidence is still to be developed.
The role of developers, particularly in educational technology: In two of the four curriculum innovations (digital curriculum and personalised curriculum) for-profit and mixed business educational models emerge alongside the public education sector. Further research is needed to investigate the implications and risks of such developments as well as choice from an equity perspective.
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Notes
← 1. Opportunities to learn or OTL generally refers to the input of schooling that researchers recognise as necessary and predictive of successful learning. This is highly relevant in examining learning gaps among groups of students and identifying schooling factors that may be responsible for increasing equity gaps. Variations exist in how to operationalise and measure opportunities to learn (OTL). Existing research conceptualises the key variables of this construct as being related to the amount of instruction time, the curriculum content and the quality of instruction as key elements of the enacted curriculum that are predictive of academic learning (Stevens, 1996[177]; Kurz, 2011[173]). In PISA 2012 (OECD, 2013[174]) OTL in relation to mathematics literacy is operationalised through three indices that measure students’ degree of exposure to three kinds of curriculum content: word problems, formal mathematics topics and applied mathematics problems.
← 2. Presentation by Shelley Goldman at the OECD Education 2030 Future of Education and Skills Informal Working Group meeting in May 2018. See also (Goldman and Kabayadondo, 2017[45])
← 3. The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CRC.aspx#:~:text=Article%2012&text=States%20Parties%20shall%20assure%20to,and%20maturity%20of%20the%20child).
← 4. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-thinking
← 5. For UDL at a glance, watch the video: https://youtu.be/bDvKnY0g6e4
← 6. For a broader discussion on the role of values in the curriculum, refer to the OECD curriculum analysis report Values in the Curriculum, (OECD, forthcoming[176]).
← 7. See Table 4. Stages of digitalisation of the curriculum in (OECD, 2020[1]), What Students Learn Matter: Towards a 21st Century Curriculum.
← 8. The report gives examples, such as 1) enhancing pedagogy (e.g. making integrated curriculum content, lesson plans, and worksheets available); 2) monitoring learning (for individuals and groups); 3) identifying specific areas where students might be struggling (e.g. specific content or specific types of problems); and 4) supplementing face-to-face learning with artificial tutors/coaches for students. New ways of using AI are expected to continue evolving from the time of writing.
← 10. https://www.opiq.ee/Catalog
← 11. https://www.innove.ee/eksamid-ja-testid/uldpadevustestid/
← 12. For an example of the growing use of e-textbooks, please see Box 7. E-textbooks in Estonia, in (OECD, 2020[1]).
← 13. Table 5 Extent to which countries/jurisdictions encourage digitalisation of textbooks in (OECD, 2020[1]). What Students Learn Matter: Towards a 21st Century Curriculum.
← 14. Source: OECD E2030 PQC survey, item 1.4.1.
← 15. In a flipped classroom approach, students learn about new content as part of their homework and use their face-to-face time with the teacher to clarify questions and develop a deeper understanding of the material. This instructional strategy aims at supporting students’ deep learning (Bergmann and Sams, 2012[175]).
← 16. https://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum