Top Class: The OECD Education Policy Podcast | Teachers, PISA, Students
OECD Education & Skills
Everything you need to know about teaching and learning in one podcast. Top Class, the OECD Education Podcast, interviews leading educators, researchers and policy experts about the big issues facing education systems around the world.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed and arguments employed on the "TopClass" podcast and the recordings contained therein do not necessarily represent the official views of the OECD, its member countries, or non-members who have participated in any related work. This site may display third party videos or recordings. The inclusion of such videos or recordings does not imply any endorsement of, or responsibility for, the opinions, ideas, or information presented in these videos. The "TopClass" podcast is subject to the Disclaimers section of the General Terms and Conditions of the OECD website. http://www.oecd.org/termsandconditions/
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed and arguments employed on the "TopClass" podcast and the recordings contained therein do not necessarily represent the official views of the OECD, its member countries, or non-members who have participated in any related work. This site may display third party videos or recordings. The inclusion of such videos or recordings does not imply any endorsement of, or responsibility for, the opinions, ideas, or information presented in these videos. The "TopClass" podcast is subject to the Disclaimers section of the General Terms and Conditions of the OECD website. http://www.oecd.org/termsandconditions/
Episodes
Mentioned books
Oct 18, 2018 • 12min
What is the true value of higher education?
Some of the most striking findings from Education at a Glance , our annual report on the global state of education, focused on the value of higher education today. Has the value of a university degree changed over time? And what impact does this have on the job market? OECD Director for Education and Skills Andreas Schleicher sat down with us to discuss these and other key issues from the report.
www.oecd.org/education/education-at-a-glance/
Jul 19, 2018 • 20min
Why social and emotional skills matter in 21st century education
Purely knowledge-based models of education – those that prize rote learning over all else – are slowly becoming relics of the 20th century. Education is now moving towards a more well-rounded, whole-child approach that puts greater emphasis on a student’s overall development than on the number of dates they can recite. In this version of education, social and emotional skills are as important as cognitive ones. But what exactly are these skills? How do we measure them? And are they really learnable? Miloš Kankaraš and Francesca Gottschalk, Analysts in the OECD’s Directorate for Education and Skills, discuss the new value placed upon social and emotional skills, as well as the significance of emotional well-being as part of overall development.
Jun 19, 2018 • 19min
How physical and mental health affects student learning
Increasingly sedentary lifestyles and poor attitudes towards diet and nutrition are having hugely damaging effects on the overall health of the younger generation. This is not only bad for the body, but for the mind too – remember that children are now also confronted with an extremely complex world where the truth is a moving target and new lifestyle-altering technologies appear every other month. But what effect does poor physical and mental health have on the learning process? Dr. Uwe Pühse, Head of Sport Science at the University of Basel, and Tracey Burns, Senior Analyst in the OECD’s Directorate for Education and Skills, discuss the potential damage that can be done to a student’s education, and what we can do about it.
May 3, 2018 • 21min
What we can learn from classrooms in the world’s top-performing education systems
Lucy Crehan, education author and former teacher, shares insights from her visits to classrooms in top-performing education systems. Topics include teaching practices in Finland, Canada, Japan, Shanghai, and Singapore, group learning and well-being in Japan, the importance of relationships in education, and an outstanding teaching example in Sweden.
Apr 17, 2018 • 17min
Why education systems must support students with an immigrant background
With more people settling abroad than ever before, societies are becoming increasingly diverse. Nowhere is this shift more observable than in the classroom. But what effect does migration have on the students themselves? How should schools respond to the newly multicultural student body? Francesca Borgonovi, Senior Analyst at the OECD, and Jens Nymand-Christensen, Deputy Director-General for Education and Culture in the European Commission, discuss findings from a new OECD study (co-financed by the European Commission) on the performance of students with an immigrant background, analysing how these students fare in the education systems of their host countries. Despite challenges, some students succeed against the odds, and this is referred to as their “resilience.”
Mar 7, 2018 • 23min
Confronting gender imbalances in science, technology, engineering and mathematics
Is there an equal share of men and women working in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (or STEM)? Do girls and boys in school have preconceived biases about whether they should pursue these subjects? To celebrate International Women’s Day and as part of the OECD March on Gender initiative, Caitlyn Guthrie, Advisor in the OECD’s Directorate for Education and Skills, and Raffaella Centurelli, Advisor in the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation, discuss gender imbalances in the STEM fields, both in school and in the job market, suggesting workable ways to reduce gender inequity and promote equal opportunities for all.
Mar 2, 2018 • 25min
Educating educators: Training teachers and school leaders for the 21st century
How will new teachers and school leaders prepare themselves to face the complexity of the 21st-century classroom? And what do today’s teacher and school leader training programmes look like across the globe? David Liebowitz and Hannah von Ahlefeld, both former teachers and current OECD Analysts, talk about the challenges of training teachers and school leaders, drawing on their experience in schools and their work at the OECD to analyse a number of different approaches.
Feb 6, 2018 • 24min
What does it mean to be a citizen of the world? Educating for global competence
In a society that is becoming more and more interdependent, the next generation will have to use a brand new set of skills and a new level of understanding in order to work well with their peers from every nation - a set of skills known as "global competence". Andreas Schleicher, Director of the OECD's Directorate for Education and Skills, Anthony Jackson, Director of the Asia Society’s Center for Global Education, and Mario Piacentini, an Analyst at the OECD's Education and Skills Directorate, discuss what these skills entail, their importance, and how we can integrate them into existing education systems worldwide.
Nov 27, 2017 • 18min
What collaborative problem solving can tell us about students' social skills
Do today’s students really know how to work well together? For the first time ever, the Programme for International Student Assessment 2015 (otherwise known as PISA) examined students’ ability to collaborate to solve problems and the necessary social skills involved in that process. Andreas Schleicher, Director of the OECD's Directorate for Education and Skills, and Jeffrey Mo, Analyst for the OECD'S PISA team, discuss the results of the survey and why collaborative problem solving was chosen as a new test criterion.
Nov 27, 2017 • 24min
What is ‘neurodiversity’ in the classroom and how should we respond to it?
Not every student’s brain works and learns in the same way. Classrooms are increasingly becoming more aware of what is known as "neurodiversity" among their students, a term used to describe neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD and ASD. We talk to Tracey Burns, Senior Analyst in the OECD's Directorate for Education and Skills, about how neurodiversity affects classroom learning and what schools can do to accommodate children that learn in a different way.
