Introducing Assessment Tools for 21st Century Skills in Finland

The Finnish national interest in the enhancement of 21st century skills has highlighted a need for and interest in developing tools and methods for teaching and assessing such skills. In this chapter, we present and analyze the development process of online assessment tools in the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills study (ATC21STM) from the Finnish perspective. (The acronym ATC21STM has been globally trademarked. For purposes of simplicity the acronym is presented throughout the chapter as ATC21S.) The development process was implemented according to the guidelines of the international project through four phases, namely concept checks, cognitive laboratories, pilot studies and trials. These phases are analyzed from the student and teacher perspective. This chapter presents the experiences, possibilities and challenges of introducing and developing the assessment tasks for 21st century skills in the Finnish comprehensive schools across the different phases of the study. An essential element of the process was the need to translate and localize the tasks to the Finnish contexts and language. The chapter also discusses ideas for the further development of such tasks towards more collaborative research design.