The Search for Innovative Learning Environments

This chapter starts with the core competences and knowledge that OECD education systems aim to develop in their students for the 21st Century to argue that the current organisation of OECD education systems may well not provide the optimal environments to facilitate the acquisition of these skills. It analyses four sources to enrich the reform agenda: a) findings and principles derived from the learning sciences; b) research-based innovations; c) the experience and lessons of alternative schooling; and d) some highly innovative cases in the field. It concludes that these offer the basis of a new paradigm at the centre of the educational reform agenda.