Nurturing creative thinking

An agricultural example shows that helping people flourish is an organic and unpredictable process. Like a farmer sowing seeds, someone creates conditions for children to grow as creative and critical thinkers. Creativity cannot be taught ‘directly’, but educational practice can provide the means, opportunities and a fertile environment for the creative mind to flourish. However, fostering creativity in schools is a challenging task, especially for teachers as they have to follow innovative teaching practices and play the new roles of mentor, facilitator and orchestrator of learning. This booklet focuses on eight key principles that primary and secondary teachers can follow in order to cultivate creative thinking in students. These principles are mainly inspired from a review of evidence-based research on creativity and innovation in educational contexts, as well as from authors’ own experiences as educators and life-long learners. The eight leading principles, which can easily be followed by teachers worldwide, are the following: promote creative thinking through all school subjects; influence creative thinking through well-designed learning spaces; increase the use of open questions; engage learners in meaningful and authentic activities; enhance creativity through collaboration; make efficient use of educational technologies; allow for mistakes and sensible risk-taking; and, last but not least, learn how to assess and reward creativity. These manifold principles aim at triggering teachers’ reflection on their everyday practices and encourage them to arrange creative thinking activities that offer authentic, interdisciplinary, open, and pleasant learning experiences to all students throughout the entire curriculum.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

Towards a Mapping Framework of ICT-enabled Innovation for Learning

ICT is regarded as a key enabler of innovation and creativity in E&T and for learning at large. Based on desk research and on previous JRC-IPTS studies, this report provides a definition and classification of ICT-enabled innovation for learning that has significant scale and/or impact at system level, both within formal Education and Training and outside formal settings. A mapping framework is also proposed that can be used for an in-depth analysis of existing initiatives showing how ICT-enabled innovation is implemented on a large scale. Finally, the report provides a preliminary application of four diverse initiatives on the proposed mapping framework.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

Promoting Effective Digital-Age Learning: A European Framework for Digitally-Competent Educational Organisations

Digital technologies are being incorporated in exciting and promising ways at all levels of education. To consolidate progress and to ensure scale and sustainability education institutions need to review their organisational strategies in order to enhance their capacity for innovation and to exploit the full potential of digital technologies and content. This report presents the European Framework for Digitally-Competent Educational Organisations (DigCompOrg). This framework can facilitate transparency and comparability between related initiatives throughout Europe and play a role in addressing fragmentation and uneven development across the Member States. The primary purposes of DigCompOrg framework are (i) to encourage self-reflection and self-assessment within educational organisations as they progressively deepen their engagement with digital learning and pedagogies (ii) to enable policy makers to design, implement and evaluate policy interventions for the integration and effective use of digital learning technologies.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

Capturing schools’ digital capacity: Psychometric analyses of the SELFIE self-reflection tool

Results from self-reflection tools for schools’ digital capacity can lead to evidence-based decisions within the school community and/or the development of an action plan for a better integration of digital technologies. Thus, it is important that the information derived from self-reflection tools is complete, accurate, and relevant. However, usually self-reflection tools do not show evidence of the quality of the information provided. In this paper, we focus on SELFIE, a new, comprehensive, and customisable self-reflection tool for schools’ digital capacity, and we analyse the quality of the information that it provides. In particular, we look at discrimination and difficulty item parameters (using item response theory), we analyse the reliability (using Cronbach’s alpha and Omega) and the construct validity (using confirmatory factor analysis) of its core items. We find support for the tool quality and conclude that schools using SELFIE are provided with accurate information on their digital capacity. Additionally, we discuss ideas for further improving the tool and future research work. The innovative design of the SELFIE tool and the psychometric analyses of its core items are a novelty in the field of schools’ digital capacity and can provide insights for the development of self-reflection tools for school communities

EntreCOMP: Το ευρωπαϊκό πλαίσιο αναφοράς για την ικανότητα του επιχειρείν

Tο Ευρωπαϊκό Πλαίσιο Αναφοράς για την Ικανότητα του Επιχειρείν (EntreComp) που παρουσιάζεται στην παρούσα έκθεση φιλοδοξεί να φέρει κοντά τους νευραλγικούς τομείς της εκπαίδευσης και της εργασίας, συμβάλλοντας στην κατανόηση, προώθηση και καλλιέργεια της ικανότητας του επιχειρείν. Ο απώτερος στόχος είναι η απελευθέρωση του δυναμικού των ευρωπαίων πολιτών ώστε να συμμετέχουν ενεργά και με αυτοπεποίθηση στην κοινωνική πρόοδο μεταμορφώνοντας τις ιδέες τους σε πράξη

Teacher collaboration and students’ digital competence - evidence from the SELFIE tool

This paper explores the relationship between students’ digital competence acquisition, teaching practices, and teacher professional learning activities. We analysed insights provided by 59,452 teachers through SELFIE, an online self-reflection tool for schools’ digital capacity. Using ordinary least squares regressions with school fixed effects, we focus on students’ digital competence and find that the use of digital technologies in cross-curricular projects is the teaching practice most related to the acquisition of students’ digital competence. On the other hand, we also find that teachers’ participation in teacher networks is highly correlated with the implementation of cross-curricular projects with digital technologies. The results further suggest that the use of digital technologies for teacher collaboration (in professional learning activities and in implementing cross-curricular projects) can have great potential and importance in the digital age, both for teachers and learners

Horizon Report Europe - 2014 Schools Edition

The NMC Horizon Project from the New Media Consortium is a long-term investigation launched in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years in education around the globe. The NMC Horizon Report Europe: 2014 Schools Edition, the first of its kind for Europe, examines six key trends, six significant challenges and six important developments in educational technology that are very likely to impact educational change processes in European schools over the next five years (2014-2018). The topics within each section were carefully selected by the Horizon Project Europe Expert Panel, a body of 53 experts in European education, technology, and other fields. They come from 22 European countries, as well as international organisations and European networks. Throughout the report, references and links are made to more than 150 European publications (reports, articles, policy documents, blog posts etc.), projects (both EU-funded and national initiatives) and various policy initiatives from all over Europe. The Creative Classrooms multidimensional framework, developed by European Commission’s JRC-IPTS on behalf of DG EAC, was used for analysing the trends, challenges and technologies impacting European schools over the next five years. The analysis reveals that a systemic approach is needed for integrating new technologies in European schools and impacting educational change over the next five years.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

SELFIE Forum – Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age: 4-5 April 2019, Madrid

The SELFIE tool, launched by the European Commission in October 2018, aims to support schools with the use of digital technologies for teaching and learning. SELFIE consists of a series of reflection questions and statements for school leaders, teachers and students from upper primary, secondary and vocational schools. Schools can customise the questionnaires and can add up to eight questions of their own. Once participants have replied to the statements, the school receives a detailed report with insights as to how technology is being used. It can help identify gaps and start a discussion in the school and form the basis for an improvement plan. SELFIE is one of 11 actions in the Digital Education Action Plan adopted by the Commission in January 2018. Under the action plan, SELFIE is to be made available to 1 million users, including schools in Western Balkan countries. SELFIE has been developed by the European Commission with more than 80 education policy and research experts from across Europe. In the first six months since its launch, over 300,000 students, teachers and school leaders have used the tool that is available in 31 languages. The first SELFIE Forum took place on 4-5 April 2019 in Madrid. The event was hosted and co-organised by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training. The 1.5-day event gathered almost 200 policy makers, researchers, students, teachers and school leaders from 35 countries, EU Member States, Western Balkans, European Free Trade Association and non-EU countries, which had participated in the pilot phase of SELFIE. Participants discussed feedback on the tool, shared practical examples of SELFIE use and in particular, discussed how schools could be supported with the next steps once they had completed SELFIE.JRC.B.4-Human Capital and Employmen