Fostering and assessing creativity and critical thinking in education

Project Objectives

Creativity and critical thinking are key skills for the complex and globalized economies and societies of the 21st century. There is a growing consensus that higher education systems and institutions should cultivate these skills with their students. However, too little is known about what this means for everyday teaching and assessment practices.
This project at the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) aims to support higher education institutions to innovate in their teaching and nurture students’ creative and critical thinking. The project builds an international community of practice around teaching, learning and assessing creativity and critical thinking. It seeks to identify the key contextual factors and effective approaches to foster these skills in higher education settings, develop and implement exemplary instructional practices and assess the effects of innovative pedagogies on students and faculty members.

Methodology

About 25 higher education institutions from 13 countries joined the project. Participant institutions work with professors and instructors to change their courses and assessments with the intent of developing students’ creativity and critical thinking along with disciplinary content and skills. This redesign of courses relies on a shared definition of creativity and critical thinking made visible through a common international rubric. Beyond this common goal, institutions and their faculty preserve full pedagogical freedom. The project encompasses several domains and disciplines, including teacher education, medical and health sciences, engineering, psychology, natural sciences, architecture, economics, and environmental studies.

The OECD developed a comprehensive monitoring system to assess the impact of the project using both quantitative and qualitative data. This includes online questionnaires administered to students and faculty members at several stages of the project. Questionnaires were designed to measure progression of a series of skills, beliefs and attitudes. These are also administered to faculty and students in control groups to provide means for comparison and better appraise the outcomes of the pedagogical changes. Qualitative reporting based on interviews, focus groups and class observations, complement quantitative data collection to provide evidence of the effects of the different pedagogies tested.

Collaboration with faculty members started in 2019 with the development and implementation of faculty professional learning workshops and the (re)design of courses and assessments. The implementation of new courses in classrooms and amphitheatres will take place in 2020 and 2021.

Outlook and Outcomes

The findings of the project will be published in an international report in 2023. The monitoring instruments developed for the evaluation of the impacts of the project will also be made public. The pedagogical resources (rubrics, redesigned courses, assessments, faculty professional learning plans, etc.) will be shared under a Creative Commons licence so that they can inspire faculty and institutions internationally.

Beyond contributing to the common good of teaching excellence in higher education, participating institutions develop their innovation and improvement capacity in teaching and learning thanks to their involvement in an international network of like-minded institutions. Ultimately, the project aims to trigger a sustainable improvement process in teaching and learning in higher education and beyond.

Events and publications

International meetings

International conference "Creativity in Education Summit" (Paris, 23-24 November 2023). Videos and presentations available at this link.

International conference "Creativity Education Summit: Creative Thinking in Schools" on 17 October 2022 in Paris, France.

International online event on "Policies at the institutional and system levels to foster 21st Century Skills in Higher Education" on 12-13 January 2022

Creativity and Critical Thinking Skills in school: Moving a shared agenda forward on 24-25 September 2019 in London, United Kingdom
Assessing Progression in Creative and Critical Thinking Skills in Higher Education on 20 June 2016 in Paris, France

Material

NEW!!! Fostering higher-order thinking skills online in higher education: a scoping review (Cassie Hague, February 2024)

NEW!!! Supporting Teachers to Foster Creativity and Critical Thinking: A draft professional learning framework for teachers and leaders (Cassie Hague, November 2023)
The assessment of students' creative and critical thinking skills in higher education across OECD countries (Mathias Bouckaert, April 2023)
Fostering creativity and critical thinking in university teaching and learning (Alenoush Saroyan, October 2022)
Does Higher Education Teach Students to Think Critically?

(Dirk Van Damme, August 2022). Check the Spanish translation of the report ("¿La educación superior enseña a pensar críticamente?")

How governments and universities can support 21st-century skill development
Remote online exams in higher education during the COVID-19 crisis - Policy brief and blog post
Fostering Students' Creativity and Critical Thinking - What it means for school.
Educating Higher Education Students for Innovative Economies: What International Data Tell Us
Promoting Skills for Innovation in Higher Education: a literature review on the effectiveness of problem-based learning and of teaching behaviours

Skills for Life: Fostering Creativity (Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin, October 2021)
Skills for Life: Fostering Critical Thinking (Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin, October 2021)

PISA 2021 Creative Thinking Framework (April 2021)

Inter-American Development Bank: Skiils for Life series

Rubrics for teacher and students

Webinars

Evaluating ideas: navigating an uncertain world with critical thinking

Playing with ideas:Cultivating student creativity, innovation and learning in schools

Embedding creativity in education: Ireland’s whole-of-government approach

Teaching, learning and assessing 21st century skills in education: Thailand’s experience

Empowering students to innovate:India's journey towards a competency-based curriculum

Why and how schools should nurture students' creativity

Engaging boys and girls in learning: Creative approaches to closing gender gaps

Related links

Project "Teaching, assessing and learning creative and critical thinking skills in education in primary and secondary education"; find more information here.

The beta version of the OECD CERI Creativity and Critical Thinking App is now available!

www.oecdcericct.com

The app brings together the pedagogical resources developed in the primary and secondary phase of the project with the aim of supporting changes in teaching and learning. Please register as a teacher to ensure you have access to all resources (whatever your status).

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

The CERI project team on Teaching, Learning and Assessing Creative and Critical Thinking Skills is looking for some partnerships to expand its bank of pedagogical resources and collaboration within countries, as well as make the objectives and instruments it developed more visible. Here below a call for proposals that summarises the types of support and partnerships it would welcome in 2023-24.

More information here.