Assessing and enhancing 21st century skills in formal and informal learning environments

“Assessing and enhancing 21st century skills in formal and informal learning environments” is a teacher education development project funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture and one of the government's priority projects that began in 2018. It aims to establish a national network devoted to the study and implementation of transversal skills in teacher education in the contexts of formal teaching and informal learning as well as to develop a definition of transversal skills, based on international research literature, that complements the 2014 Finnish Basic Education Curriculum objectives. In addition, the concrete goal is to train (pre-service and in-service) teachers to integrate and assess transversal skills in formal teaching and informal learning environments.

The project is implemented as a collaboration between Tampere University, the University of Jyväskylä, and the University of Helsinki.

A 10 ECTS course "Teaching and assessing 21st century skills" is developed at the Faculty of Education and Culture of Tampere University for Master's level teacher education students. The course has already been implemented once in the spring of 2020 and will be held again in spring 2021 and fall 2021.

The digital learning environment, Laatuska, is being developed as part of the project. Its purpose is to help teachers assess transversal skills according to the Finnish basic education curriculum, in both subject-specific teaching and multidisciplinary learning modules.

Since the aim for this project is to have a lasting impact even after it ends, the project focuses on the development of an open access material bank. The material bank contains expert videos and lectures on transversal skills and corresponding theoretical frameworks.

At the end of the project, a peer-reviewed book on the teaching of transversal skills will be published. The work will consist of articles about the theoretical background, history and future outlooks of transversal skills, teaching and assessment of transversal skills and how transversal skills are reflected in curricula at different levels of education.