21st-Century Skills in Context: The Sacramento and Santa Barbara School System

• In Event: 70.056 - Developing 21st-Century Skills for All Students: Results From the International Study of City Youth

Abstract

The objective of the paper is to examine the development of 21st century skills for 15-year-old students in the city of Bergen. At 274,000 inhabitants, Bergen is the second largest city in Norway, although relatively small city by international standards. Norway is “among the highest-spending countries in the world where education is concerned” (Tveit 2012, p. 222), with a longstanding commitment to publicly funded universal education, characterised by high levels of equity and democratic values (Møller and Skedsmo 2013).

Lower secondary education in Norway is delivered predominantly in comprehensive high schools with students undertaking a universal program of study until 10th Grade (apart from one elective choice available in 8th/9th Grade) at which point students select from a range of 12 upper secondary programs (3 academic, 9 vocational) with choice dependent on 10th Grade results.

In response to international performance in PISA, reforms were introduced in 2006 to prioritise individual student achievement (Fasting 2012) and introduce new forms of testing to monitor system performance (Tveit 2012). The reforms were supported by a new cross-curricular approach, Knowledge Promotion, which aimed to “help all pupils develop fundamental skills that will enable them to participate fully in our knowledge society” (OECD 2009, p. 12). The approach is built around basic skills such as reading, writing, mathematics and ICT skills, to be developed across all subjects (Fasting 2012, p. 269). The new approach retained all of the core subjects and changed structure, assessment and content within each subject.

In addition to skills within the current curriculum, the Norwegian education system arguably has a strong tradition in the development of certain 21st century skills, especially those related to civic engagement and life satisfaction. Norwegian students have scored highly on the international CIVIC study, and measures of health and wellbeing are relatively high (Møller and Skedsmo 2013, p. 350). Tviet (2013) also notes that Norwegian teachers have a propensity to recognise effort and motivation when assessing student work, suggesting that these 21st century skills may be central to underlying understandings of educational success in the Norwegian system.

In 2014, 2,329 15-year-old students in 25 Bergen secondary schools took part in the International Study of City Youth (ISCY) baseline survey. The paper will explore results on measures of 21st century skills within the ISCY Student Survey. Preliminary analysis of the data suggests that Bergen students scored similarly to other ISCY cities on most scales, although fair-mindedness (or the extent to which students value fairness in society) emerged as higher than any other city included in the current analysis.

Detailed analysis of results will be undertaken to compare schools in Bergen with schools in other cities, using a range of measures derived from scaled instruments established through international literature. Results from this analysis will be presented in the paper, to shed light on the real achievements of Bergen secondary students on a range of 21st century skills, and the system-level factors that may contribute to these results.

Authors

• Russell W. Rumberger, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Jay Plasman, University of California - Santa Barbara