View Public Project: Assessment of Transversal Skills for Students [PR117500] = ATS 2020

Institutionen

• Zentrum für technologiegestütztes Lernen und Bildungsinformationssysteme (Universität Krems) (2019-)

Personen

• Baumgartner, Peter

• Ghoneim, Andrea
• Grundschober, Isabell

Bildungssysteme müssen - in Ergänzung zu fachlicher Ausbildung - neue Zugänge finden und neue Aktivitäten entwickeln, durch die Lernende Kernkompetenzen erwerben und fächerübergreifenden Fähigkeiten entwickeln können. ATS2020, ein Projekt zur Bewertung fächerübergreifender Fähigkeiten, entwickelt Bewertungszugänge und -praktiken für 10- bis 15-jährige SchülerInnen in über 200 Schulen in 10 EU-Ländern, in denen das ATS2020 Lehr-Lern-Modell pilotiert wird. Das Konsortium des EU-geförderten Projects wird vom zypriotischen Bildungsministerium und dem Pädagogischen Institut von Zypern geleitet.

Strategieziel: Entwicklung von transversalen (fächerübergreifenden) Fertigkeiten und Fähigkeiten, die auch als "21st century skills" bezeichnet werden, für LernerInnen in formalen Bildungssystemen (Schulen). Da bisher noch wenig Evidenz dafür gegeben ist, wie dies in der Bildung erreicht werden kann, insbesondere für größere Zahlen von Schulen und Lernenden, soll gezeigt werden, wie Lehr-Lernaktivitäten zur Entwicklung solcher Fähigkeiten implementiert und wie fächerübergreifende Fähigkeiten bewertet werden können.

There is an urgency for education systems to explore new approaches and to design new activities that will equip learners with core transversal skills and competences to match the demand of a 21st century society. The Assessment of Transversal Skills 2020 Project (ATS2020) is developing and testing assessment approaches and practices across a range of real-life classrooms in 10 pilot countries working with more than 200 schools and involving about 20,000 learners, aged 10 to 15 years. The consortium of the EU-funded project, led by the Cyprus Ministry of Education and the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute.
Policy objective: Numerous organisations have identified the need to develop transversal skills, sometimes referred to as 21st century skills, among learners in formal education.  There is limited evidence of how this can be achieved in education, particularly across large numbers of schools and learners.  There is currently a gap in our knowledge as to how education systems can implement and assess these skills.

The project consortium designs a robust evaluation framework aimed at “evaluating the potential impact of such an innovative approach by testing it through trials in the field” followed by both quantitative and qualitative methods and analysis. This stems from the need to transform our educational systems in order to accommodate, facilitate and develop 21st century learning, assessment, teaching and skills.

The experimentation is carried out using reliable monitoring, evaluation and reporting procedures.

The ATS2020 website (http://ats2020.eu) gives insight into events and milestones. A resource portal (http://resources.ats2020.eu/) offers lesson plans of participating teachers for a range of subjects as well as the ATS2020 skills framework, guidance materials for the projects' ePortfolio spaces (Mahara and Office 365/OneNote Class Notebook) and assessment scaffolding tools. The Department of Interactive Media and Educational Technologies (IMB) of Danube University Krems, leading the workpackage on Technology and Tools, maintains a workpackage ePortfolio on Mahara with a bibliography, a blog, Mahara tutorials and insight into the work on supporting the ATS2020 schools with educational technology: http://mahara.ats2020.eu/view/view.php?id=178, furthermore, a dissemination portfolio of the IMB provides information in German and English at http://mahara.ats2020.eu/view/view.php?id=11497.

an agreed set of criteria around transversal skills and to operationalise these so teachers can design learning activities which facilitate the development of these skills among their students.  This will require initial desk research and the creation of tools that enable teachers to design appropriate learning tasks.  Students will then engage in project work where they will have opportunities to develop these skills.  On completion of the learning tasks teachers, learners and other stakeholders will need to evaluate how successful students were in developing these skills.
The EU Call documentation is strongly advocating an experimental research design evaluation methodology.  However, following initial discussion within the consortium it is proposed we develop a mixed-methods approach that gathers a mix of quantitative and qualitative data from the school field trials.
Liabilities, constraints and opportunities:
Many education systems are considering the implications of moving away from testing “knowledge” to assessing skills and competences.  However, there are limited examples of how such approaches or policies can be designed and implemented.  The opportunity here is to explore at scale what transversal skills might look like across a range of curriculum areas, how these can be assessed in a robust fashion, and how assessment data can inform practice at school and education system levels. 

ATS2020 focuses on defining a set of transversal skills that learners can develop on a daily basis during their second-level schooling. A set of indicators and online tools helps facilitating the assessment and self-assessment of these skills by teachers and learners.  These assessment tools utilise social media, and cloud based technologies while also building on the emerging use of ePortfolios. Thus, teachers are able to infuse assessment into instruction and ultimately improve student learning, making the whole educational process learnre-centered. As a result, lifelong learning is enabled, because each learner is acquiring skills of self-directed learning.

• Lehren und Lernen (Prozesse und Methoden) / Lernen / selbständiges Lernen
• Lehren und Lernen (Prozesse und Methoden) / Lernen / computergestütztes Lernen
• Bildungsinhalt (Themenfeld) / Bildungsinhalt / Geisteswissenschaften / Medienerziehung
• Lehren und Lernen (Prozesse und Methoden) / Unterricht / Unterrichtsmethode / interdisziplinärer Ansatz