Phase One
ATC21S began with more than 250 researchers, practitioners and assessment experts defining the current state of education.
Five working groups across more than 60 research institutions produced white papers about their findings to help governments move from theory to the practical implementation of assessing, teaching and learning 21st-century skills.
The white papers are available from our white paper page.
Phase Two
As a result of this work, ATC21S selected two 21st-century skills that encompass all the major skill areas identified by the team. Hypotheses were developed around these skills, and the learning progressions from novice to expert were defined:
- Collaborative problem-solving
- ICT literacy — learning in digital networks.
Phase Three
In Phase Three the ATC21S team focused on task development and pilots, where assessment tasks for the two skills were developed.
Founder countries Australia, Finland, Singapore and the U.S. worked in “cognitive laboratories,” where researchers interacted directly with students and teachers — essential to understanding how students think and work through tasks and how teachers develop the students’ competencies and teaching interventions.
Phase Four
Now in Phase Four wide-scale fieldwork trials are being conducted in Australia, Finland, Singapore and the U.S., with associate countries joining in to help test how language and culture affect the 21st-century teaching and assessments.
Phase Five
Resources will be placed in the public domain. Government policy-makers, teachers, school systems and assessment institutions will be able to use and modify the existing research and materials to bring the two 21st-century skills into the classroom and utilize the model to build out the remaining skills.