Creativity for Everyone: Integrating the 21st Century Skills in Russian Schools

Abstract

This study is part of the OECD Center for Educational Research and Innovation’s project Teaching, Assessing and Learning Creative and Critical Thinking Skills in Educationand uses action research methodology. It seeks to elaborate a teaching format to develop 21st century skills within the framework of a particular school subject, making participation in such classes available for as many teachers and students as possible. The study puts forward an approach to designing contextual problems that students are offered to solve collaboratively in the classroom. Key components of such assignments are described, which allow for fostering creativity within specific school subject domains. The results from testing the validity of such assignments are presented. Accessibility of subject-specific teaching practices enhancing 21st century skills is assessed by analyzing the outcomes of focus groups consisting of teachers and students who participated in the assignment validity assessment.

Keywords

• creativity
• 21st century skills
• collaborative problem solving
• contextual problems
• assignment design
• schooling practices