The Philippines approach to assessment of 21st century skills

Representatives from the Philippines Department of Education, the National Educational Testing and Research Centre (NETRC), and the Assessment Curriculum and Technology Research Centre jointly presented a symposium at the Singapore National Institute of Education, Redesigning Pedagogy conference. The symposium, chaired by Dr Esther Care, focused on how the Philippines is approaching the assessment of 21^st century skills within their national curriculum and assessment program. The symposium presented the work completed to date on the 21^st Century Skills in the Philippines project. Four papers were delivered as part of the symposium:

1. Assessment of 21^st century skills in the Philippines – a model: This paper described the process followed by the Philippines Department of Education in identifying skills valued for the Filipino school graduate. The process involved identifying skills along with relevant sub-skills, framework development and descriptions of individual skills along with key markers of competence. These key markers provided the initial outline of a test blueprint for development of assessment tasks.
2. 21st century skills – problem solving across selected disciplines: This paper first reviewed the application of problem solving skills to subjects in the Philippines curriculum and the development of a progression of problem solving capacities. Second, the paper discussed a review of the Grade 6 curriculum and described opportunities for development of assessment tasks that would sample problem solving skills within the particular subject area.
3. 21st century skills – ICT literacy across disciplines: This paper explored the concept of ICT Literacy within the Philippines 21st century assessment framework. In this framework ICT Literacy includes technology literacy and information literacy. This paper sought to explore these skills, their differences and similarities, across subject areas to understand how the skills can be organised within the curriculum.
4. 21st century skills in Science studies: In this paper, a subject-specific focus was taken, exemplifying how different 21st century skills can be demonstrated through science studies. A worked example of a particular science task was presented, illustrating how a student can demonstrate increasing levels of proficiency through their responses to the task.