Optimizing Assessment for All: developing 21st century skills-embedded curriculum tasks

To be successful in today’s world, students need to have a broad set of knowledge, skills, habits, and traits that go beyond what has traditionally been taught in the classroom, such as rote memorization-based skills. These broad sets of competencies - such as critical thinking, collaboration, problemsolving, technology and information skills, and communication, among others - are often referred to as 21st century skills (21CS). This report is intended to help educators adapt and develop new ways of assessing 21CS in their classrooms. It provides information about the process followed in the Optimizing Assessment for All (OAA) project at Brookings and includes examples of assessment strategies for capturing 21CS, specifically problemsolving, collaboration, and critical thinking. The report includes assessment tasks developed by the three focus countries in Asia (Cambodia, Mongolia, and Nepal) and the three in Africa (the Democratic Republic of Congo, The Gambia, and Zambia), providing a step-by-step guide to the development and adaptation of 21CS assessment tasks.