Editor's Note: The following essay comes from "Meaningful education in times of uncertainty," a collection of essays from the Center for Universal Education and top thought leaders in the fields of learning, innovation, and technology.
Authors: Luis Crouch, Chief Technical Officer, International Development Group - RTI International; Carmen Strigel, Director, Technology for Education and Training - RTI International
There has been increasing attention on skills that are considered important for succeeding in school, work, and in life: so-called "21st century skills". An extensive amount of literature, both technical and non-technical, suggests that these skills, such as problem-solving and resilience, are important in predicting future outcomes at school and in the workplace. It seems clear that such skills are important for individuals to master and, therefore, they are important to assess.
This post was originally published on the USAID Education in Crisis and Conflict Network blog. Re-posted with permission.
Put simply, education development can be described as work dedicated to the incremental betterment of learners’ experience with and success in educational systems in lower-income settings. It is about making educational systems, and all the many moving parts that comprise them, work better to reliably produce quality outcomes for all children. These truisms would seem to make education development work fertile soil for the use of improvement science methods, which aim to use disciplined inquiry and scientific methods to make social systems work better for the people they serve.
