Key Messages
We are facing unprecedented challenges – social, economic and environmental – driven by accelerating globalisation and a faster rate of technological developments. At the same time, those forces are providing us with myriad new opportunities for human advancement. The future is uncertain and futures often surprise us; but we need to be open and ready for it and we can also surprise our future. Some strategies include: 1) forecasting future needs of society and actively taking into account the students’ needs, interests and voices when designing curriculum, and 2) backcasting, i.e. articulating a shared vision for student profiles as desired student outcomes, then looking back to today to identify curriculum changes necessary to achieve the shared vision.
In recent years, countries and schools are making a significant shift towards a 21st century curriculum: e.g. 1) Digital curriculum; 2) Personalised curriculum; 3) Cross-curricular content and competency-based curriculum; and 4) Flexible curriculum. However, changes are made more slowly than expected or desired.
Time lag occurs due to: 1) recognition time lag; 2) decision-making time lag; 3) implementation time lag; and 4) impact time lag. In reality, most delays arise in the implementation phase as a result from a lack of stakeholder buy-in, insufficient teacher preparation or teacher capacity to implement reforms, and variations in the pace of change across regions, localities or schools in decentralised education systems.
Across these types of 21st century curriculum, what is commonly articulated are future visions on the student profiles such as student agency, co-agency and transformative competencies (creating new value, taking responsibility, and reconciling tensions, dilemmas, trade-offs and contradictions), which are all well aligned with the OECD Learning Compass 2030.
Student agency and co-agency are both highlighted in many curricula; student agency (33 %) emphasised in areas such as national language, humanities, and technologies/home economics, and co-agency (27%) also emphasised in national language, humanities and technologies/home economics.
Among transformative competencies, creating new value is present more frequently (35%) in areas such as national language, arts, and technologies/home economics; taking responsibility (29%) in national language, humanities and physical education (PE) health; and reconciling tensions (19%) in humanities and national language learning area.
Among skills, attitudes and values for 2030, cognitive skills are the most highly emphasised, e.g. critical thinking (66%) problem solving (59%) both in almost all subject areas; this suggests that these cognitive skills are considered highly transferable across any learning areas. The metacognitive skills, learning–to-learn, is also included in all areas but to a lesser extent (36%). Attitudes and values are also included in curriculum but to a lesser extent, e.g. respect (31%) in areas such as national language, humanities; trust (15%), in humanities, PE health,
Anticipation, action and reflection are embedded in almost all areas, suggesting they are considered as transferable competencies. However, anticipation, which is increasingly becoming an important competency to manage uncertainty, is articulated to a lesser extent (34%) than action (43%) and reflection (41%).
Five key lessons learned from unintended consequences countries experienced when tackling time lag issues suggest:
1. Do not underestimate teachers’ fear of the unknown and allow them space for mistakes as current accountability systems, when blindly put into practice, put pressure teachers to keep status quo with what they already know;
2. Empower teachers, rather than diminishing their agency, especially when developing innovative curriculum through new educational technologies, because easy-to-apply automation can deprive opportunities for them to think and find creative solutions, and they should be aware of individual differences among students;
3. Acknowledge the need for incremental changes to the curriculum while maintaining aspirations for transformational change, as the political economy of reform is high in either directions – costs of action and no-action;
4. Avoid reform fatigue among stakeholders by designing synergies between curriculum change and other educational reforms, because some reforms are too frequent or contradictory that schools, teachers, and students would get confused and would need stable, coherent and sustainable changes;
Use structure and discipline when making changes to the digital curriculum, being aware of cyber security threats and personal data issues. Of the four types of a 21st century curriculum, digital curriculum is a new development and therefore more conscious efforts are required in advancing digital transformation in curriculum.
