Top Class: The OECD Education Policy Podcast | Teachers, PISA, Students - podcast cover

Top Class: The OECD Education Policy Podcast | Teachers, PISA, Students

OECD Education & Skillswww.oecd.org
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/
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Episodes

How To Tackle Cyberbullying - At School, At Home And Online

Cyberbullying is a growing problem worldwide and has serious consequences for students. It can take place on social media, gaming platforms and mobile phones, and often involves scaring, angering or shaming an individual or group. The experience can be incredibly traumatic for young people, who sometimes feel that escaping from it is impossible. It can also have academic consequences, with OECD data suggesting that students who are regularly bullied score lower on reading tests. As digital techn...

Jan 27, 202333 min

Why Gen Z is Our Planet's Best Hope

From the autumn of 2019 till the pandemic shutdowns, schoolchildren in the millions marched to save Earth from irreparable climate crisis. Calling on world leaders to keep the planet’s temperature rise below 1.5°C by cutting carbon emissions, teens organised an unprecedented scale of climate strikes around the globe. And they are still going. Evidence from PISA 2018 bears out Generation Z’s environmental commitment: more than 2/3 of 15-year-olds in every country and economy feel they need to tak...

Dec 19, 202221 min

How I learned to stop worrying and love math

The uproar over the 2021 Revision of the California Mathematics Framework shows us how passionate people are about mathematics – and how we learn it. For many, however, math arouses not so much passion as fear, even, loathing. But does it have to be this way? Jo Boaler is a professor of mathematics education at Stanford University. She is the author of nine books on mathematics learning, including Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead and Live Without Barriers. In 2013, Boaler taught the first-ever Massiv...

Oct 28, 202227 min

Money matters for global education

There’s a gaping hole in the global education budget and it’s 200 billion US dollars deep. Yearly. Part of the problem has to do with taxes: Many developing countries raise less than 20% of their GDP in tax revenues and out of this, education should take up between 4 to 6% of GDP. That’s a tall order in deficitary times. Michael Ward, OECD Senior Analyst specialising in global educational development issues and Bert Brys, Senior Tax Economist at the OECD, walk us through efficient education spen...

Sep 16, 202228 min

The shortest way to a good report card? Hip hop

Sometimes the road to doing well at school goes through surprising places, like hip hop. In 2015, the Lycée Turgot in Paris pioneered a programme for 15- to 18-year-olds that combines regular academic classes with hip hop dance. The brainchild of teacher David Bérillon, Hip Hop Turgot now has students from all over the country, as well as the city’s less privileged catchment areas. Diversity is just as important as dancing in this small programme, along with academic excellence, and the social-e...

Sep 01, 202224 min

Is digital media literacy the answer to our disinformation woes?

Never before has critical thinking been so…critical. With so much compromised information online, how do we know what’s opinion? What’s fact? And what’s disinformation? Education can teach us to ask questions, check sources, and understand how algorithms impact the information we’re getting. And, none of this needs to be taught in STEM-based computer science courses – digital media and algorithmic literacy can be cleverly integrated throughout the curriculum. Kara Brissin-Boivin is Director of R...

Aug 05, 202225 min

The hard reality of school for LGBTQI+ students

For many LGBTQI+ students, school can be a hostile place. Bullying and the social and emotional strain of not feeling part of the sexual and gender mainstream is tough, especially for teens. Can teachers, principals, students and governments come together for the well-being of LGBTQI+ students? Can schools be safe, and creatively and intellectually stimulating places where LGBTQI+ students can not only learn in peace but succeed beyond their wildest dreams? That is the goal. To celebrate Pride m...

Jul 07, 202223 min

Disinformation and its discontents

When factual information comes under attack, societies head into Orwellian waters. OECD’s Andreas Schleicher and Molly Lesher discuss disinformation and other forms of “untruths” and how to get the measure of a tenacious and elusive phenomenon. Societies can tackle harmful information through citizen- and AI-driven fact-checking and content tagging. Platforms can boost transparency and collaborate with governments to tamp down fake news and synthetic media. But the best defence of all is educati...

Jun 10, 202227 min

Career Ready, Set, Go

Kim Kardashian has been apprenticing with two lawyers for the past few years to become a lawyer herself in California. Apprenticeships like Kardashian’s “reading law” and vocational education training are career pathways that not enough young people are considering when deciding on what to do after high school. And maybe they’re not thinking about what happens after graduation because schools aren’t getting them “career ready” enough. New analysis of national longitudinal datasets and 2018 Progr...

May 20, 202225 min

For Ukraine’s refugee students, school is urgent

After the immediate needs of food, medical and psychosocial care, and housing, comes education. According to the UNHCR and UNICEF, “education for refugee children is arguably the best means available to help them, here and now, and to transform their futures.” Estonia is one of the countries on the front line for refugees fleeing the war. We talk to Viivian Jõemets, Chief Expert at the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research, specialising in language learning and migration, and OECD analyst ...

Apr 28, 202226 min

How Estonia put the “e“ in e-education

Estonia was the top performing European country in PISA 2018 in reading, math and science. And it’s done this with an education budget that is 30 % lower than the OECD average. Does digital strategy have something to do with Estonia’s success story? Estonia’s Ambassador-at-large for education, Birgit Lao, explains. Host: Clara Young; Producer: Ilse Sánchez Pacheco

Mar 23, 202223 min

Unlearning gender bias with Iceland’s Margrét Pála Ólafsdóttir

Iceland has topped global charts on gender equality for nearly a decade. One of the country’s more radical approaches to breaking gender stereotypes is a school method called Hjalli. Margrét Pála Ólafsdóttir opened the first Hjalli pre-school in 1989. Here, children play with open-ended toys, wear school uniforms and use gender-neutral learning materials. More unusually, girls and boys have separate classes throughout most of the day. In 2006, Margrét Pála Ólafsdóttir received The Knight’s Cross...

Mar 09, 202220 min

Switching on the curiosity lightbulb with MIT’s Mitch Resnick and OECD’s Rowena Phair

“Why is the sky blue?” “Why do people get sick?” “Why aren’t there any more dinosaurs?” Sometimes it feels like children never stop asking questions. And they shouldn’t. A recent OECD International Early Learning and Child Wellbeing study shows that children who are curious have stronger language and number skills, and better self-control. So how do we keep students curious and creative even after they’ve outgrown kindergarten? Rowena Phair, senior analyst at the OECD, and Mitch Resnick, Profess...

Feb 21, 202223 min

Are student loans a financial house of cards? Lorraine Dearden discusses

People who graduate from university have on average better health, better life expectancy, and better earnings than those who don’t. But many students just can’t afford higher education, especially in countries where there’s less public money going into grants, bursaries and tuition waivers. With higher education budgets possibly tightening, where will the money come from? Lorraine Dearden, Professor of Economics and Social Statistics in the Social Research Institute at University College London...

Nov 22, 202123 min

How climate education can get us to net-zero: a talk with Lorenzo Fioramonti and Nita Seng

In the OECD’s PISA survey of 66 countries in 2018, 88% of high-school principals reported that climate change was covered in their school’s curriculum. But it was Italy that was the first country in the world to make climate change coursework mandatory in all public schools. As Italy’s Minister of Education, University and Research in 2019, Lorenzo Fioramonti drove Italy’s climate education reform. Nita Seng is a middle-school math and science teacher in the United States and co-director of Subj...

Nov 04, 202122 min

From Nepal to the UK: Gen Z fights for climate education

Are schools teaching students enough about climate change? And are they empowering them to do something about it? In PISA 2018, an average of 88% of high-school principals in 66 countries reported that climate change was covered in the school curriculum. But maybe this needs to come earlier. We hear from Shreya KC, 23, from Solukhumbu, Nepal. Shreya was a delegate at COP25 in Madrid, Spain in 2019, an organiser of the Mock Cop initiative in 2020, and is currently the National Network Coordinator...

Oct 14, 202132 min

Talking to one of the best teachers in the world

Alperton Community School is in one of London’s lowest-income areas, Brent. Almost half of the children there live below the poverty line. And yet this secondary school is in the top 1-5% of the country in terms of qualifications and accreditations. What’s Alperton’s secret sauce? Well, to start with, its teachers. Andria Zafirakou teaches arts and textiles at Alperton. In 2018, she won the Varkey Foundation Global Teacher prize – what is essentially the Nobel prize in teaching. Host: Clara Youn...

Aug 31, 202127 min

Children’s e-safety with Elizabeth Milovidov and Tracey Burns

Children have probably spent more time online this year than they ever have before. Which is why the OECD’s newly adopted Recommendation on Children in the Digital Environment comes right in time. How much do children know about the privacy of their data? Or how to tell the difference between good and bad information? How do we deal with cyberbullying and hate content? Elizabeth Milovidov is an expert on digital parenting and children’s digital rights at the Council of Europe. Tracey Burns is a ...

Jul 15, 202126 min

Michael Ungar on why post-pandemic resilience “takes a village”

We’ve heard a great deal about what boosts our immune system during this pandemic. But what boosts our “commune” system? Michael Ungar, director of the Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University, Canada, discusses how community helps us through hard times. And as young people navigate through the pandemic and its aftermath, their resilience will serve them well – a resilience not of individual grit, but formed through the people around us. Host: Clara Young; Producer: Taline Shahinian.

Jun 23, 202126 min

The many futures of education with Keri Facer and Tracey Burns

If we looked into a crystal ball, what kinds of school would we see? Would classes be happening exclusively within school walls with a teacher in front and students in rows? Or would it be a robot conducting class? Would some school be online? Or would learning take place anytime and anywhere? The OECD has put together four scenarios of what the future of education might be. Keri Facer, Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol in the UK, and Tracey Burns, Senior A...

May 25, 202124 min

MIT’s Sanjay Sarma on the human-digital classroom: it doesn’t have to be a Zoom lecture

Remote schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic has opened our eyes to the difficulties of intersecting digital technologies and traditional schooling. Sanjay Sarma, who is Vice President for Open Learning at MIT, talks about online learning and how it can work hand-in-hand with teachers and students… with some serious cognitive science know-how.

Apr 30, 202123 min

How did schools keep students engaged during the pandemic? Stories from the US and Japan

Over the course of 2020, millions of students across the globe were unable to attend classes due to school closures, meaning that countries were forced to rely on emergency measures to keep learning going. Online classes were a popular choice in countries that had the technical capacity, but strategies differed between countries and depended heavily on the context of each area. In this podcast, we talk to Earl Phalen, Founder and CEO of George and Veronica Phalen Leadership Academies, Ryoko Tsun...

Feb 22, 202130 min

How can we help young people tackle misinformation during COVID?

It could be said that there have been not one but two pandemics being propagated across the world over the past year. Alongside the spread of COVID-19 there has been an equally prolific spread of misinformation surrounding the origins, characteristics and treatments of the virus – some are calling it an “infodemic”. False information about the crisis fuels division and hinders government efforts to control the spread, especially in areas with already low levels of trust in government. The young ...

Dec 04, 202029 min

Will the coronavirus crisis lead to a fundamental change in education?

As schools closed across the globe due to the COVID-19 pandemic, education systems were forced to come face to face with the limitations of traditional schooling. In all sectors, technology picked up the slack when physical work environments became unfeasible, and education was no exception – technologies that were previously relegated to the fringes of pedagogical practice suddenly became the only way teaching and learning could take place. Coronavirus has rapidly accelerated society’s increasi...

Sep 17, 202027 min

How has coronavirus affected school-leavers’ chances of entering the job market?

The transition from school to the world of work is one of the most pivotal moments in a young person’s life – it’s a time of high pressure and high uncertainty, and one that requires an equally high level of resilience to manage. Enter the coronavirus crisis, and suddenly this difficult transition gains a brand new set of complications. To discuss the current situation for school-leavers entering the job market, we caught up with Ingrid Schoon, Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at...

Jul 09, 202027 min

How have countries dealt with coronavirus school closures and what’s next for education?

With schools closed around the world, students and teachers are having to find new ways of learning outside of the classroom. Meanwhile, governments are working hard to assess the impact of school closures and make plans for education in a post-crisis world – a world that may well be fundamentally altered. What have the government responses been like so far? Have they worked? And does the crisis imply that we need to change the way we educate the next generation? In this episode, we invited Fern...

Apr 29, 202030 min

What life is like for high schoolers during the coronavirus crisis

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in school closures in countries across the globe, forcing many students to continue their learning from home. The news is full of government responses and updates from political leaders, but comparatively little airtime is given to those affected most by school closures. What is the sudden switch to home learning actually like for a student? Does it work? What are the major challenges? To find out, we spoke to three high school students in three different co...

Apr 27, 202018 min

The view from the classroom: What do today’s learners say about the future of education?

A lot of talk goes on about the future of education – in ministry offices, school staff rooms, even household kitchens. But one voice is routinely left out of the discussion: that of the students themselves. A defining – and inescapable – feature of “the future” is that it’s always just around the corner. But why is it that we so rarely consult those who are about to face what’s around that corner? In this episode of TopClass, we sit down with students from across the globe to ask what they beli...

Feb 11, 202012 min

What role will artificial intelligence (AI) play in the classroom?

Much talk about technology in the 21st century is focused around the advent of a new level of computing: artificial intelligence (AI). No sector will go untouched by AI’s reach and capabilities – and this includes teaching. Teachers today already have access to a wide range of technologies that they can use in the classroom, technologies that are getting smarter, sleeker and faster by the day. But how will teaching change if that technology has the ability to adapt, learn and even make decisions...

Jan 24, 202018 min

What is PISA’s role in global education? A conversation

You’re no doubt hearing a lot about education these days, with the release of the latest results from PISA. Over the two decades of its existence, the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment has convened a growing number of countries – now around 80 – to participate in its triennial assessment of what 15-year-old students know and can do. But PISA has also attracted some criticism along the way. Yong Zhao, professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas, and Aaron Be...

Nov 28, 201922 min
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