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by Stuart W. Elliott U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine New technologies tend to shift jobs and skills. New technologies bring new products, which shift jobs across occupations: with the arrival of cars, the economy needed more assembly line workers and fewer blacksmiths. New technologies also bring new work processes, which shift skills in jobs: with the arrival of copiers, office workers needed to replace ink cartridges but not use carbon paper. Economic history is full of examples of new technologies causing such shifts. Workers often worry that new technologies will destroy old jobs without creating new ones. However, economic history suggests that job destruction and creation have always gone together, with a shift in jobs and skills that leaves most people still employed. Will artificial intelligence (AI) differ from past technologies in the way it shifts jobs and skills? To answer that question, we need to know which skills will be supplied by AI a...

by Rose Bolognini Communications and Publications Co-ordinator, Directorate for Education and Skills What do innovative learning environments around the world look like? How might they be led and evaluated? What policy strategies stimulate and support them? For the past decade the OECD’s Centre for Education Research and Innovation (CERI) has addressed these and similar questions in an international study called Innovative Learning Environments . Now drawing on their extensive research within this project  – from the nature of learning, to innovative cases, to leadership and strategies – CERI has translated these findings into a practical handbook , aimed at educators, leaders and innovative policy-shapers. It gives a set of tools based on this extensive international knowledge source as well as succinct summaries of the research accessible to practitioners. The handbook is divided into four chapters: i) The principles of learning to design learning environments; ii) The OECD “7+...

by Tracey Burns Project Leader and Senior Analyst, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, so do the risks we face. A disease breaking out in a village in Africa, a bank crashing on Wall Street or a protest in a distant country can all potentially “snowball” and influence the world financial, health or security order. While very different topics, environmental degradation, financial crises, cyber-attacks and social instability both within and in between countries have all been identified as risks for OECD countries and indeed, the whole world. Their global nature means that all of these risks require a co-ordinated international response. Education has a key role to play: as a preventative tool, it can be used to raise awareness as well as shape the attitudes and responsible behaviours of a generation of conscious global citizens. Education can also mitigate the effects of risks by equipping students with the knowledge and skills nee...

by Andreas Schleicher Director, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills People have quite different views on the role that digital technology can and should play in schools. But we just can’t ignore how digital tools have so fundamentally transformed the world around schools. Students unable to navigate through our complex digital landscape are simply no longer able to participate in our social, economic and cultural life. In the past, education was about teaching people something. Now, it’s about helping students develop a reliable compass and the navigation skills to find their own way through an increasingly uncertain, volatile and ambiguous world. These days, we no longer know exactly how things will unfold, often we are surprised and need to learn from the extraordinary, and sometimes we make mistakes along the way. And it will often be the mistakes and failures, when properly understood, that create the context for learning and growth. A generation ago, teachers could expect th...

by Tracey Burns Project Leader , Directorate for Education and Skills, OECD “I don’t actually have an attention problem. I just take the pill when I need to be sharp”. Legal drugs such as Ritalin, used for treating attention deficit disorder, are increasingly being repurposed by healthy students to feel sharper on exam day. "Smart drugs" allegedly improve memory and concentration. In addition to Ritalin other drugs are also taken to aid learning, such as modafinil, normally used to treat sleep disorders. University students can rely on them to pull all-nighters during exam weeks. The belief (true or not) that these drugs might boost academic performance has grown along with their availability – both through a marked increase in the number of prescriptions and  through more prevalent online markets where prescriptions are not as carefully scrutinised. This raises a series of ethical and practical questions for education. Do smart drugs provide some students with an unfair adva...