Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the digital competence displayed by a primary school teacher who implemented an interdisciplinary cross-border lesson that was designed with the lesson study methodology and involved two countries--Brazil and Chile. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative methodology was adopted via the case…

This paper marks the second in a series of five reports detailing the work of the Optimizing Assessment for All (OAA) project at Brookings to strengthen education systems capacity to integrate 21st century skills into teaching and learning, using assessment as a lever for changing classroom practices. Twenty-first century skills (21CS) are now…

Drawing on experiences from a large-scale Nordic co-design research project, this paper explores the development of cross-border blended education with the aim to strengthen students' Nordic identity and knowledge of neighboring Nordic languages illuminating the flow of didactical designs students were offered to engage in, i.e. the knowledge…

Although the number of countries conducting large-scale assessments has increased significantly over the past two decades, this has not necessarily led to the effective use of learning assessment data in policy-making and planning. To better understand the reasons for this, the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP)…

Little is known about how middle school students problematize socio-scientific issues (SSIs), particularly contemporary energy challenges. To address this need, we developed and implemented an instructional module focused on a local wind energy issue and conducted research to explore how sixth-grade students frame, reason, and make decisions about…

Large-scale learning assessments can be used to generate performance and contextual data on student learning outcomes. They can be national, regional, or international; school based or household based. The UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP-UNESCO) has conducted a qualitative study to explore both how and why learning…

Purpose: The digital age has provided new possibilities for the connected learning. To better understand these opportunities in the school context, the purpose of this paper is to examine what kinds of learning communities emerge in international learning projects and how tools and technologies support students' inquiries and peer connections.…

Children explore their environment through experiences and each experience is meaningful in developing their environmental consciousness and identity. On the basis of the drawn landscape experiences, the present qualitative study set out to find out what landscapes the participating students deemed worth conserving. The data consisted of the…

Purpose: The goal to stimulate perspective taking and inference making on social phenomena, such as gender roles in society, has proven to be difficult to achieve in general and in particular for primary school students. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to develop creative models and concepts for learning that provide guidance addressing these…

Students' attitudes and conceptions seem to be influenced by social/cultural contexts and interactions with other students from diverse backgrounds. Therefore, educators need to study attitudes, conceptions, and career choices in relation to diversity indicators. Such was one focus of the Science Education for Diversity project, which involved…

The focus of this paper is a case study of a Texas-based school that implemented global projects to connect their students with many states and countries as a platform for integrating collaboration and communication skills, technology tools, and cultural diversity into an existing curriculum. The school introduced videoconferencing at every grade…

This article focuses on the leadership used by the principal in a collaborative ICT project. The case study chosen was a school project conducted within the NCCE project (Nordic Cross Country Education). The EU funded project ran for three years in grades 5-9 in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The goal of the project was to develop cross-border…

This paper explores the role of organising data in representing numerical data in an organised way--a skill which does not come naturally to most students. Grade 6 children were given a series of lessons on organising data and then representing the data graphically. It was found that after instruction, more students were able to reorganise the…