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66 references
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- Vol 4 RE: Chapter 23
future-ready learninglearner agencyethical judgmentteacher autonomylifelong learning ecosystemsdigital transformationReport Evidence summaryAt a glance
Prepared for the International Summit on the Teaching Profession, this report considers future-ready learning, digital transformation, and partnerships for lifelong learning. Education should equip learners with knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that support agency, ethical judgment, resilience, and the ability to create new value under uncertainty.
Key ideas
Teachers are central to this work and need professional autonomy, collaboration, learning opportunities, and policy support to design richer environments rather than deliver fixed content. Digital tools and AI can personalize support, expand access, streamline work, and improve system information, but may also distract, deepen inequality, threaten privacy, or reproduce weak pedagogy. Transformation therefore requires infrastructure, capability, evidence, and governance, not technology acquisition alone. The report also argues that schools cannot remain isolated from families, employers, communities, and other institutions.
Why it matters
Partnerships, vocational pathways, workplace learning, micro-credentials, and community hubs can connect formal education with changing life and work. Governments and teacher organizations should jointly shape reforms so innovation strengthens relationships, professional expertise, inclusion, and coherent lifelong learning ecosystems.
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- Vol 4 RE: Chapter 26, App C
lifelong learninglearner engagementlearner resilienceadult learning transitionsdigital inclusionlearning guidanceReport Evidence summaryAt a glance
Education Policy Outlook 2025 examines how systems can develop engaged, resilient lifelong learners amid rapid digitalization, demographic change, and longer working lives. It argues that opportunities alone do not ensure participation: learners need the will, skills, and means to direct and sustain learning.
Key ideas
Will includes curiosity, confidence, motivation, and purpose; skills include cognitive, social, emotional, and digital foundations; means include time, finance, guidance, relationships, and accessible provision. Analysis of more than 230 policies across 35 systems focuses on four moments when engagement is especially malleable or vulnerable: early childhood, adolescence, mid-career, and the approach to retirement. Policy should build early dispositions, prevent teenage disengagement, make adult learning compatible with work and family, and support later-life transitions and contribution. Digital tools can widen access and personalize pathways but may also deepen inequalities or overwhelm learners.
Why it matters
The report calls for coordinated governance, guidance, flexible recognition, targeted support, and evaluation across education, labour, and social policy so people can learn, unlearn, and relearn throughout life.
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- Vol 4 RE: Chapter 26
adult learning participationworkplace learningadult reskillingstackable provisionlearning barriersrecognition of learningReport Evidence summaryAt a glance
Using new data from the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills, this report compares participation in formal, non-formal, and informal job-related learning across OECD countries. Around two in five adults participate in formal or non-formal learning, but rates differ greatly among countries and participation has stagnated or declined in many systems.
Key ideas
Apparent narrowing of gaps sometimes reflects falling engagement among previously advantaged groups rather than improved access for underserved adults. Older adults, people with lower education or skills, lower earners, migrants in some contexts, and workers without employer support face persistent barriers involving cost, time, information, scheduling, and relevance. Much workplace training is short and driven by compliance or safety, which may be insufficient for substantial reskilling. The report distinguishes accredited study, organized short learning, and intentional learning through work and colleagues, showing how each contributes differently.
Why it matters
It recommends flexible and stackable provision, guidance, financial and employer support, recognition, quality assurance, and targeted outreach so adult-learning systems build transferable capabilities rather than merely record participation.
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- Vol 4 RE: Chapter 24
generative artificial intelligencecognitive engagementhuman-centred augmentationai literacycurriculum alignmentdigital equityReport Evidence summaryAt a glance
The 2026 Outlook synthesizes emerging evidence about generative AI in teaching, learning, assessment, guidance, and educational administration. It stresses that better task performance with a general-purpose model does not automatically produce learning: students may obtain polished answers while bypassing the cognitive effort that develops knowledge and transferable skill.
Key ideas
Educational value depends on explicit pedagogy, well-designed interaction, feedback, reflection, and alignment with curriculum. GenAI can serve as tutor, practice partner, creative collaborator, teacher assistant, and administrative aid when humans retain goals and judgment. Systems should protect foundational and independent thinking, use AI selectively, and distinguish learning without AI, learning through purpose-built educational AI, and responsible use of general tools. Recommendations include investment in research and curriculum-aligned resources, sustained professional learning, equitable access, privacy and safety protections, transparency, evaluation, and alternatives where digital divides persist.
Why it matters
The report favors human-centred augmentation: technology should enrich practice and relationships, not replace productive struggle, teacher expertise, or the social purposes of education.
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- Vol 7 RE: Chapter 12, App B, App D
adolescent well-beingdigital technology usespecification-curve analysiseffect sizeobservational evidencescreen-time associationsJournal article Evidence summaryAt a glance
Orben and Przybylski reanalyse three large adolescent datasets using specification-curve analysis to examine the association between digital-technology use and well-being. Instead of selecting one plausible set of variables and analytic choices, they estimate many defensible specifications and display the distribution of results.
Key ideas
Associations are generally negative but very small, with digital use explaining no more than about 0.4% of variation in well-being. The paper also compares this magnitude with ordinary activities and characteristics, showing how large samples can make trivial relationships statistically significant. Because the data are observational and measures of technology use are broad and self-reported, the analysis cannot establish causal effects or identify impacts of particular platforms, content, or users. Its major contribution is methodological as well as substantive: conclusions should be robust to analytic choices and interpreted by effect size.
Why it matters
For educators and families, the findings argue against broad alarm based solely on screen-time correlations while leaving room for targeted attention to individual harms and contexts.
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- Vol 2 RE: Chapter 9
scientific argumentationcollaborative discourseevidence-based reasoningconceptual understandingcounterargumentscience educationJournal article Evidence summaryAt a glance
Osborne argues that scientific understanding requires knowing not only established explanations but how claims are evaluated through evidence and critical discourse. Classroom science often privileges authoritative presentation and practical activity while offering too little opportunity to compare explanations, challenge reasoning, and justify conclusions.
Key ideas
Research reviewed in the article suggests that structured argumentation can improve conceptual understanding, reasoning, and understanding of scientific practice. Productive argument involves claims, evidence, warrants, counterarguments, and revision, undertaken collaboratively rather than as competitive debate. Such discourse does not emerge automatically: students need worthwhile questions, relevant knowledge and data, norms for respectful critique, language support, and teachers who press for justification without taking over the reasoning. Teachers therefore require professional learning in recognising and facilitating argument.
Why it matters
For educators, the paper supports designing regular opportunities for students to make thinking public, evaluate alternatives, and change their minds in response to evidence. The aim is disciplined sensemaking, not simply increasing the amount of classroom talk.
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Edition abbreviations
- TE
- Teacher Edition
- PE
- Practice Edition
- RE
- Research Edition
Citation checks
References are checked against publisher records, scholarly indexes, DOI or ISBN metadata, repositories and author records where available. An entry marked [Citation not verified] preserves the wording found in the relevant volume without attributing findings to an unconfirmed work.
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